Tag Archives: news

Icy What You Did There

As I was herniating myself the other day while out shoveling my driveway for the 87th time this winter after a surprise un-forecasted overnight snow of seven inches, I stopped to try and remember what my lawn looked like and got to conTIMplating exactly why I live in Minnesota, being that it is so nonsensically cold here that Satan has his own line of credit at the local Burlington Coat Factory.

Why would anybody voluntarily reside where you have to watch heart-warming movies to keep your body temperature at a survivable level and the phrase ‘beating the heat’ has no meaning other than an NBA win over Miami?

Then there is the whole ‘Neighbor Challenge’ thing.  Notice our Christmas card from 2010: Continue reading →

Am I Racist if I Dream of a White Christmas?

Evidently writing about racism is like working for the CIA:  just when I thought I was done and out, they pull me back in.  Race, racism, race baiting, race profiling, race walking, race horses, race for the cure, emb-race the suck—enough already!  It’s time that we as a culture dug deep, looked within, and somehow found the strength to stop being so stupid.

The latest manufactured media hullabaloo is about the race of Santa Claus.  That’s right, Santa Claus.  And it all started with Slate blogger Aisha Harris.

Who?

Exactly.

Aisha got everybody riled up by saying that Santa should be a penguin.

A what?

Exactly. Continue reading →

Save the Animals! Ban Environmentalists!

I remember as a kid listening to ‘Animal Stories,’ a regular feature on WLS Radio in Chicago whereon two DJs known as ‘Uncle Larry’ and ‘Li’l Snot-nosed Tommy’ would bring all the low-information voters up-to-date on actual happenings in and around the monarchial animal kingdom.  Usually, said stories consisted of how a certain animal came to meet its unfortunate and untimely death in a bizarrely humorous and/or particularly grisly manner.

For example, Uncle Larry might tell Li’l Tommy about how the key to the city was given to a cat for saving its owner’s life then at the ceremony, the cat scratches the mayor as it is being held up to the crowd and in painful surprise is subsequently dropped into an operating wood chipper; or maybe how a black bear was shot by a neighborhood-watching brown bear who was reported on the news as being a polar bear further fomenting the whole bear-relations situation to where it was unbearable. Continue reading →

Shouldn’t Veterans’ Day Be March Fourth?

This past week was Veterans’ Day here in America and, as always, it brought to the fore awareness of correct apostrophe usage.   Veteran’s Day was originally established as “Armistice Day” to commemorate the aptly-named Treaty of Versailles being signed in the Palace of Versailles outside the town of Versailles but was later changed to Ve’terans Day to recognize all the new and improved veterans after they realized that The Great War that was The War to End All Wars wasn’t actually that great and didn’t end all wars at all but instead caused a number of follow-on wars and thus created more veterans that needed recognizing.

And so traditionally on Veterans D’ay, the government shuts down in such a way that doesn’t even make the news and people get together to post gratitudinal platitudes on Facebook.  Being a veteran myself, I received a number of thank-yous for my ‘service’ that included keeping America safe for democracy, defending the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic, and seeing how many foreign-made beverages I could get past the customs agent. Continue reading →

One (More) Reason I Will Never Be a Marine Biologist

I will never be a marine biologist.  Those who are close to me know that I do not use flowery deodorants.  Less literally, those who are close to me also know that I do not like big things in the water.  And when I say big things in the water I mean animate, alive things like sharks or squids or Loch Ness monsters.  Boats and their ilk are okay, but anything that moves of its own will and is bigger than a Chipotle burrito will make me scream like Howard Dean in Iowa.

It doesn’t even have to be especially scary; it just has to be of significant size.  Even things that might be large, but absolutely harmless like halibut or tuna or Chris Christie; if they are big and they are in the water, they freak me out.  Out of the water I am fine.  If I were to see  Chris Christie or a halibut in Costco, no problem.   Continue reading →