Category: Off-Topic

You Can’t Make This Stuff Up

Laura2 Comments

My blogger friend Diane and I met in WordPress Blogging 101. She blogs at the fantastic LadiesWhoLunchReviews.  We have a lot in common, including geography.  I live north of Chicago, and she lives southwest of Chicago, but we’re both proud Chicagoans.  In fact, we are both so proud of the news around our fair city that we wanted to share two of these stories with you.

Not that we are in favor of impaired driving, at all. These stories are only funny because luckily no one got hurt.  I look at these as cautionary tales.  The lesson of mine would be: if you think, “let’s blow this popsicle stand” is the appropriate response to “you are under arrest,” you might have had a few too many.  Or perhaps: remember that many restaurants deliver.

Diane has a companion piece here, and be sure to click on that, because it’s equally head-shaking.  Driving in the Chicago area is not for the meek.

According to the Chicago Sun-Times and Fox News, reporting here, a 60-year-old woman was arrested Easter Sunday evening at a McDonald’s in suburban Chicago, after she allegedly was found passed out in her car in the drive-through lane just after 9 at night.

Witnesses reported that the car had been blocking the drive-through lane for at least 20 minutes by the time the police arrived.  And I know Chicago drivers, so I bet some of the folks stuck behind her might have been laying on their horns just a bit during that 20 minutes.

But, heck, some good might have come of this.  Blocking a fast food drive-through might have saved a few people’s arteries that night.  Maybe a few people decided to just go home and eat celery sticks, or turn in early.  I mean, it was after 9 at night; that’s bedtime for many of us suburbanites.

Anyway, when the police arrived and found the drive-through sleeper, they decided to charge her with allegedly being under the influence of alcohol.

But this is where the story takes another twist.  Once they arrested her, the police brought her into the station to book her.  At which point she allegedly attempted to “flee” the booking area and leave the station.  Except, of course, that she was at a police station. Meaning that there were lots of police there to stop her.  And I’m thinking that they probably had taken away her keys in the first place.

So, yes, the phrase “Darwin Awards” comes to mind.

But then again, she was probably still hungry.

——————

By Victorgrigas (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

A Few Thoughts, No Pens

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DSC_9602

Yesterday was a sad day.  I was working on an ink review post, but it didn’t seem as important.  So here are words I like from other people.  Two wonderful writers and a wonderful musician.

“I composed a beautiful letter to you in the sleepless nightmare hours of the night, and it has all gone: I just miss you, in a quite simple desperate human way. You, with all your un-dumb letters, would never write so elementary phrase as that; perhaps you wouldn’t even feel it.” – Vita Sackville-West, letter to Virginia Woolf

“Each one of us has lived through some devastation, some loneliness, some weather superstorm or spiritual superstorm, when we look at each other we must say, I understand. I understand how you feel because I have been there myself. We must support each other and empathize with each other because each of us is more alike than we are unalike.” – Maya Angelou

 “We gon’ be alright.” – Kendrick Lamar

Things I Learned This Week

Laura4 Comments

apple pie

1. Pie for breakfast. “It’s a thing,” my older daughter told me. And it turns out that it is! How could I have missed this?  Allrecipes calls pie for breakfast “the most important pie of the day.”  Outstanding!

2. March Madness. Our alma maters crashed and burned in the first round of the NCAA basketball tournament.  I’m way past “my bracket is busted” and basically at, “just rip it up.”  It’s okay; I can still watch.  The commercials are much better than on normal t.v.  And when my mind wanders, there’s always pie.  For example, how many pie pieces could one eat in a day?

3. March weather. It is a truth universally acknowledged that whenever I had the opportunity to take photographs for the blog this week, the clouds would immediately come out and the light would become dull.  Once I gave up, the sun would shine.  So I am out of ideas here.  Other than those involving pie.

No.  I totally have some ink reviews coming up.  There’s one that’s sort of cherry pie in color, and one that’s like asparagus, which you could put in quiche. And another that would be the color of blue jello pie, if there is such a thing. And omg there is such a thing!

4. Easy spring pie.  Jello pie, any color you choose.  It’s really a thing. Is this a great country, or what?!

Happy St. Patrick’s Day

Laura2 Comments

green bagels for St. Patrick's Day

And this is roughly reason number 1,979 why I love Chicago: green bagels for St. Patrick’s Day.  I love the melting pot.

Though, yeah, the green color looks slightly strange in a bagel.  Only kids would actually eat those, probably.  Or Shrek.  Or the guy in charge of Lamy Safari color choices.

Music Break!

Laura1 Comment

I just like this song.  Stevie Nicks famously wrote Landslide in the 1970s, after a fight with her boyfriend and bandmate Lindsey Buckingham.  Fleetwood Mac recorded it in 1975, on the brink of stardom, but this particular song didn’t actually become a hit till years later.

I still have the record, but I like the version in this video, filmed at a concert in the 2000s.  There’s a different resonance thirty years later. Nicks survived hard times with drugs and difficult relationships, and I can’t imagine not rooting for her.  I like seeing Nicks and Buckingham playing together now, each seemingly in a happier and more peaceful place.  If we’re lucky, we all get through uncertain or hard times.

That said, the most moving version I’ve ever heard of this song was when my older daughter’s high school chorus performed it when they were seniors. It was an incredibly moving song from young adults, on the brink of so much that’s exciting, but also challenging and uncertain.  “I’ve been afraid of changing / ‘Cause I’ve built my life around you / But time makes you bolder / Even children get older / And I’m getting older too.”

Stevie Nicks dedicates this version to her father.  That’s part of getting older, too.  “Can I sail through the changing ocean tides / Can I handle the seasons of my life?”

I like seeing this video, because its answer is “yes.”

So, It Really Could Be the End of the World Now?

Laura4 Comments

 

I read the other day that the Chicago Cubs are the heavy preseason favorites to win Major League’s Baseball’s World Series in 2016.  This is serious.

I’ve mentioned that I grew up a Cubs fan. That is not a prudent thing to be. The Cubs have the longest record of championship futility in American professional sports.  I grew up watching Cubs teams lose. Every single year. Some bad teams, yes, but also some good teams that still managed to claw defeat from the jaws of victory. Every. Single. Year.  I’ve been there, done that and I do actually have the tee shirt.

The idea that people would bet real money on the Cubs winning the World Series this year, at only 4-1 odds, is perhaps not technically crazy. One team will win, and there are only 30 teams. But are the Cubs at 4-1 a good bet?

I’m not saying, I’m just saying.

Well, if these are the end of days, at least I have enough ink.

Grab Your Life Jackets

Laura9 Comments

We have not had the greatest ten days or so in our extended family. But the very same day we hit that iceberg, I got something in the mail that I turned out to be a life raft of sorts.  My new album Art Angels from Grimes arrived.

Now, Grimes is, to me, an awe-inspiring genius, but she’s no Adele in terms of appeal.  So I fully expect most people to be saying, who?” Or, if you know her stuff, maybe even, “hmm.” And you know what?  You are fine with that.  I am not pushing her. She’s definitely not for everyone.  Bless her, she doesn’t want to be.  I love that about her — she is singular and she is true to herself.

To give you an idea of Grimes, what’s probably the best song on her new album is called Kill v. Maim, and she said she wrote it from the perspective of Al Pacino in The Godfather Part 2 except he’s a vampire who travels through space. So.

You like to think she’s just playing with people there.  However, the video lends some support to that concept, since it’s so bloody that I wouldn’t link innocent people to it.  Tarantino fans, though, could Google it. And I think it’s great — especially before the rivers of blood begin to run down people’s faces and necks.

But, while it’s perhaps not as fantastic as Kill v. Maim, my favorite song on the album might be another song, called California. Grimes has explained this one as an f-you song, aimed at a music reviewing site.  However, what I love about California is its irresistibly happy pop beat.  It’s an upbeat f-you song.

My favorite part is  when she sings, “And when the ocean rises up above the ground / baby, I’ll drown / in Ca – al- al – al – al- California.”

Okay, maybe that sounds … not upbeat.  But when you hear it, it’s a happy, even triumphant, drowning.  (I mean, she is in California.)

I took a meditation class last year with an awesome teacher who said when things get difficult, remember to ride the waves. Don’t try to fight what’s happening — you can’t change it any more than you can change ocean waves. Just ride the waves. I’m going to say that it’s nice to do that with a smile on your face.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqa9xx2vBQc