Give Disney the Brush; Not Because of a Tragedy, But Because of Old Walt

 “To create a land that would make this dream reality, we pictured ourselves far from civilization, in the remote jungles of Asia and Africa.” WALT DISNEY 

“We knew that Disney was aware that this was a problem, and yet they encourage people to be there,”  Disney Guest in the wake of the horrific death of a toddler at Disney Resort 

To be perfectly fair, Old Walt intended to have guests be awed by mechanical plastic alligators in Anaheim.  Disney today is a very far stretch from Walt's vision - it is a corporate banana republic.

Disney will do everything to keep the horrific death of a baby snatched by one of Florida's ubiquitous alligators - in The Happiest Place on Earth's controlled environments - out of Court.  No signs for alligators?  Why worry.  Disney has plenty of worry and well it should.

I expect the Disney guest, quoted above, will get a threatening call from the suits for " The Happiest Place on Earth - that you can shell out a year's salary for you and the family."

Already there are voices calling for 'examination of parents,' as in the recent Cincinnati Zoo incident when a toddler managed to get into the gorilla exhibit and escaped only because of the quick thinking zoo response team. The magnificent Silverback was killed and the world seemed to want to lynch the parents of the little boy.  Now, Disney ranked the 66th on the Forbes 500  appears to be at DEF CON Six.

Disney's beaches remained closed on Thursday and the company was "conducting a swift and thorough review of all of our processes and protocols," Jacquee Wahler, vice president of Walt Disney World Resort, said in a statement Thursday.
"This includes the number, placement and wording of our signage and warnings," she said in the statement.
There was a "no-swimming" sign near the water, but there were no alligator warning signs where the attacked occurred, a Disney spokesperson confirmed Wednesday.

Disney, like McDonald's, is not my cup of tea -flying, steaming, or otherwise.



McDonald's lost any and all appeal for me when it exchanged the winking fat guy, "Speedee" for the predatory child molesting Ronald McDonald. I refused to take my kids to McDonald's ( 1984-Present) and encouraged them to consume products made by Mom & Pop joints in the neighborhood.  Primarily because the corporate culture creeped me out.

Likewise, Disney went south for me during the late 1970's and 1980's when the oily suits replaced lovable Old Walt and anyone else with his DNA. Yet I am widowed Dad who was joyfully married to an artistic woman who loved her Mickey and Minnie. The Dude abides.

My kids loved Disney!  What little kids do not?  I have probably the most comprehensive and thoroughly useless VHS collection of the Disney Canon from Steamboat Willie to Lilo and Stitch. We even went to Orlando on two occasions.  They sold beer at Epcot. I joined a Universal Brotherhood of Disney Dad's in Tow!

I friended Dad's from France, an Orangeman from Belfast, a Sikh and a Latvian auto dealer.  At Disney Resorts you can hear -

"Maintenant écoute. Rapide les pleurs . Tout le monde doit attendre en ligne . Ce voyage côte votre maman et moi un poumon . Maintenant , éteignez les ouvrages hydrauliques!" French

"Tagad klausīties . Quick raudāšana . Ikvienam ir jāgaida rindā . Šis ceļojums krasts jūsu Mamma un Me plaušu . Tagad , izslēdziet ūdens darbus Latvian

In every tongue!  Translated to - " Now listen. Quit the crying. Everyone must wait in line. This trip cost your Mom and Me a lung. Now, turn off the water works!"

To which, in every tongue, wives would override with " Lighten up! For Once?  Okay?"

I make light of Disney . . .they can take it.

They dish it out aplenty, as well.

I do not make light of the horrific loss of a sweet angel to Melissa and Matt Graves of Nebraska.  My God, there is nothing so horrific as the loss of a child.

My hope is that maybe families will begin to see the World of Wonder dreamed up by the Chicago North Side Irishman, back in the 1950's.  Go to places where America's past is honored. Go to places that give children a sense of wonder - right in their own backyards,  No lines and you won't have to cough up a lung.

My kids seek out great hamburgers, because they know what they are and who makes them.  If they want toys, take them to a toy store; Top Notch throws together some serious burger over on 95th Street.

Disney and McDonalds are business; not family.

Walt said it best, “A man should never neglect his family for business."

Life of Muhammad Ali is Errol Garner's "April in Paris"

Since early Saturday, June 4th 2016, I have read, watched and listened to tributes, remembrances and analyses from ink-slingers, talking heads and tweedy fops that contort the life of Muhammad Ali, the father-in-law of my friend Mike Joyce, in pretzel logic so his life and his passing from this life makes their own pet theories somehow important.

Muhammad Ali was a one of the greatest athletes in human history and a genius.

He was an Adonis for most of his seventy four years here with us and man of wit and grace.  

You can not explain the life of Muhammad Ali by making him into a Black Joe Hill, a muscular Howard Zinn, a testicular Gloria Steinem, or a good humored Donald Trump.

I understand Muhammad Ali by listening to Errol Garner's April in Paris from Concert by the Sea

Its is all here -humor, power, love, artistry, joy, righteous anger, gratitude, humilty and grace in the hands of two man blessed by God. 

Was I a Headline This Morning? My Adventure on Chicago's Dan Ryan Expressway ( 9-9:46 AM on May 23, 2016)

 "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no." Ian Betteridge's Law of Journalism

" A Semi driver was shot and seriously wounded as he drove north on the Dan Ryan Expressway near 95th Street on Thursday night, the second shooting on a Chicago expressway in five days and among more than a dozen this year, state police said." - Chicago Tribune

Taking a friend to the airport is a task that most of us view as a simple obligation to family and friends.  Taking a friend to the airport in Chicago is another matter. For a resident of the Morgan Park neighborhood, the choice of route depends upon the airport - Midway Airport, or O'Hare. Midway is a breeze - head north on Cicero Ave to 63rd street and get in the right lane.  Going to O'Hare should be determined by the Tolls, or the Chicago traffic. One can easily go directly to O'Hare on Interstate 294 and pay a couple of tolls, if one is going directly to O'Hare. My task required a trip to River Forest; thus, the Dan Ryan and the Ike.

Recently the stretch of the Dan Ryan between 127th Street and 95th Street has been the site of a number of lethal thug killings and woundings.  These incidents that the media and political social justice charlatans call 'gun violence' have boosted Chicago's reputation as the nation's number one Thug Comfort Zone and will only increase the municipal exeunt omnes brought on by such law makers and loud mouths.

I left the barn for my good deed a few minutes before 9 AM.  As my friend's flight on United was scheduled for 1:45 PM and required a three hour pre-TSA Mugging arrival and the one hour and change it takes to get to Division and Harlem, I did not wish to shoot craps with Jane Byrne Interchange Cluster Hug.

Driving 111th Street east to Ryan is a breeze.  People from Beverly, Morgan Park, Roseland, Mount Greenwood, Washington Heights and Fernwood are generally traffic observant and friendly.  There is also the neighborhood's bastion of Service and Protection - the 22nd District of Chicago Police Department at Monteray - just before the Dan Ryan entrance ramp on Hamlet Street.

There was a red light before the ramp and I was enjoying WCDB 90.5 jazz,when my car jarred.

The driver of a red, late-model Nissan Altima had bumped me. As it was slight bump, I turned in my seat and waved off any concern for the driver's inattention, or technical problem.  Seconds passed and the light changed.  I took my foot off the brake and checked my rear view mirror - the driver, a thirty-something African American man, was screaming at me and laying on the horn - He was saying that I am a Caucasian Fornicator of Oedipal Inclinations.

I recalled the recent spat of Dan Ryan shootings.  Though they took place during wee small hours of the mornings, perhaps the huge thick portion day-break was not out of the question: 1. the man hit me. 2. I was sure that he was not infuriated because I had not given him the opportunity to make a clean breast of things concerning his violation Secretary of State Jesse White's Rules of the Illinois Roads. The driver was going apeshit and now was trying to run me off the road.

I am a very good driver and I did not want to allow my nemesis to pull up even with me.  After checking on-coming traffic in the rear views, I hit the brakes and swerved in behind the red Nissan and we engaged what can only be described as an expressway dogfight - doing vehicular Immalmans, and two dimensional barrelrolls from 111th Street all the was to 87th Street when I managed to secure my place behind this person who intended no good for me.

On several occasions my enemy in this duel of American ( I drive a Chevy) and Japanese cars managed to pull up next to and began lowering his window. With my peripheral vision I gauged traffic and looked for a firearm and hit the brakes whenever he was close to giving me a more robust burst from his arsenal of epithets concerning my race, or a sound hosing of 9mm pills.

Just past 87th Street, I made a call to 911 and asked for Illinois State Police - I gave the make, model and Illinois license plate numbers and hung up.  I was not going to pull over and test Dame Fortune with this gent. All the time I managed to stay behind this guy.

No State Troopers anywhere, Not at 63rd.  Not at 47th Canaryville.  Not at Sox Park.  Not at Chinatown and the guy was staying with me - though just ahead me.  He kept turning his head to shout at me.   I called again and was told that ' we are covering an accident.'

I followed him to the Ike at the Jane Byrne Interchange onto 290 and west side.  The guy pulled as far to the right as he could and I remained on his tail.  He faked an exit at Racine. Another at Western Ave. and gave no indication that he was going to allow me top avoid a confrontation with him.

Finally, he gave up at Homan Ave. and I continued on to pick up my friend and take her to O'Hare.  we arrived in plenty of time.

After fulfilling my simple task on that particular Holy Trinity Sunday, I headed back to 111th Street and went into 22nd. District Headquarters and made a hit and run complaint, as that was my only means of getting on the record - he hit me on Hamlet Street and that was not on the Dan Ryan.  I did not pull over and 'wait' for the Illinois State Police show up.

Mostly, I did not wish to be headline - 63 year old shot in yet another expressway incident - no suspects.

As it is, I was blessed by God.

I have no idea what the other guy is all about.

6:30 AM at St. John Fisher Parish: An Existential Moment in Stained Glass

"Why I so much prefer autumn to spring is that in the autumn one looks at heaven--in the spring at the earth."--Søren Kierkegaard

These May mornings are fall like.  For the last two weeks you would believe that it was time to rake leaves.

God wakes me up and the least I can do say some small thanks.  After prayers, the morning ablutions and whisker landscaping it is time to pound the pavement to 6:30 AM services at my neighboring parish St. John Fisher.  Located in what is called West Beverly ( the area north of my Morgan Park neighborhood) the walk is a splendid mile and change that takes me up Talman Avenue and some of the most beautiful homes in the 19th Ward on south side of Chicago.  Unlike the tony mansion and massive bungalow phalanxes crowding the Ward east of Western Avenue and the blue collar raised ranches and Cape Cods and frames of Morgan Park and Mount Greenwood, West Beverly aka St. John Fisher Parish, or just Fisher, features streets where every home sports a unique architectural jacket.  The photo above is an example.


St. John Fisher Grammar School is the most desired placement in the neighborhood for the children of cops, firemen, CPS teachers, nurses and Cook County and City Hall Government mandarins of every rank.  The school run by Sister Jean McGrath is one of most successfully enrolled schools in the Chicago Archdiocese.

 A forty foot high cross marks St. John Fisher parish campus of Church, school, rectory and convent.

 The church represents the post-World War II architecture found in parishes on the far southwest side - departures from the huge granite, marble Gothic, Lombardy, and Romansque churches found in the older south side parishes.  It is a large open and comfortable place of worship.

 The parish is named in honor of a martyr to Henry the Eighth's glandular theology of the Anglican and Episopal denominations. St. John Fisher was a bishop who went to King Henry's chopping block before St. Thomas More who seemed to have had a better public relations appeal in history.

 Our Lady was crowned by the kids of the parish a few weeks ago.

 Early morning services are attended by a baker's dozen of regulars.

 My daily perch is in the last pew on the south side of the church which features this stained glass representation of Abraham's interrupted sacrifice of his lad Issac in the most existential episode of the Bible. The knife is up!  Will Abe really bring it down on his kid?  God's Hand Shows Up!

 Since the beginning of Lent and right up to this morning, I have studied this window.

I realized that the young man depicted as ISSAC in the stained glass went to Mount Carmel.  He is wearing the 19th Ward requisite tonsorial headwear - a brown MC baseball cap with brim turned around to keep the sun off the kid with see-through Irish skin on his neck.(click on the photo for a better look)

Preserve The Family Restaurant and Steak House - The Golden Steer

A brilliant banker, writer and culinary journeyman, Steve Jordan, lamented the manic idiocy that passes for Food Shows on cable television.  He noted that what had once been a comfortably informative sharing of recipes and food prep techniques is now a mere rat-race of reality TV tryting to beat the clock.

Cable has done more to kill history than Howard Zinn - witness the History Channel Lineup: Pawn Stars, American Pickers, Ice Road Truckers, Counting Cars.  Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall is  the greatest holistic consideration of an epoch of history and the History Channel is a cartoon station with very rare exceptions. So too. have become  Cookin Channel Food Network treatments like Chopped, Rev Runs Sunday Dinners, Cupcake Wars, and Cutthroat Kitchen.

People who relish these television servings of shallow and empty I.Q. calories, also tend to flock to LongHorn Steakhouse, Chipotle, Applebees, Chilies, Olive Garden and other trick-name ( PTSD McNugget's Shamrock Pub Grubs) big-box swill troughs.  Family owned restaurants offer better food and often better parking, service and mosty certainly atmosphere.

Yesterday, I treated my lady friend to dinner at Forest Park's. Golden Steer*.

This is a family owned and operated steak house run by the same family since 1969,  "Owners/Chefs Kiriakos (Charlie) and Gus Tzouras bring more 35 years experience in creating meals that will warm up your stomachs and your souls."

Tell me about it.

We arrived at 4:30 P.M. and were greeted by two lovely women who have worked at this restaurant for more than two decades. The hostess informed me that she also works as a soda jerk in an old fashiones icecream parlor during the day.  Our waitress was a decades long veteran who said," We love coming to work here and if we get fired, we are hired back the same day - go figure."

Loyalty begets great service.

I ordered a T-Bone medium rare with baked potatoe, roasted asparagas and Roqueford salad and the exquiite Miss Sullivan ordered the broiled scrod, baked potatoe and house salad and shared the broiled asparagas.  After we placed our order the Owner/Chef Charlie asked if we would mind moving to another table, as a large family had come in with more guests than the reservations taken - it was big Mexican American family celebrating a young lady's graduation from Dominican University in River Forest.  We were only too happy to jump tables.

By 5 P.M. the restaurant was filled to capacity and the bar was thick with people waiting for a table.

The food was wonderful and our waitress was attentive and sweetly salty with me, " Want me get a wheel chair to roll out after tucking away the grub, Honey?" Truth be told, I took home 3/4the of the T-Bone and Miss Sullivan carried away half of her scrod.

Before I could call for the bill,  the owner and our lovely waitress put a thick slice of Tiramisu between us and order us to do it justice.  I did most of the heavy-lifting.  This was Chef Charlie's thank you to us for moving to another table.  Family means much to a family business.

Will family owned and operated restaurants be around for future generations?

I rather doubt it.  Look at what passes for television and look at the forest of Applebees, Longhorns, Chili's and DT McPtomaine's.

*Get to Golden Steet - there are no on-line reservations - you must call in 

CALL US NOW

708-771-7798

What to do on Friday: March 11th 2016 - Let's See? Free Trump Passes or Pay a Sawbuck and Watch Leo Win State Title?

Donald Trump?  You can have him.  Not as President, I hope, nor pretty much anything else, but he's all your's.



He is going to be at UIC (Cement City) on Friday and is giving away free passes to hear him talk about himself. Caveat!  If you go to see Trump, you also must endure Chicago's GangBanger Emeritus clown Congressman Luis Gutierrz. Lord Have mercy! Two humps on the same cement?  Nah. Pass.

You see, both humps are here to help Hillary Clinton nail down the Oval Office.

The only thing that could get me anywhere near that hump Trump might be an all you can eat gift certificate for Tufano's Vernon Park Tap, which is within walking-away distance of the UIC Pavilion.

So you have that going on.

Leo High School is in the IHSA Class 1-A Final Four.

So, I intend to drive 2 hours and fifty-seven minutes away from the clown show at Cement City and drive to Whiskey City - Peoria, IL and watch the mighty, mighty Leo Lions defeat Woodlawn ( no small task that) and then return on Saturday to watch the same-said Lions cut off the nets in the Carver Arena.

You see, Donald Trump is exactly same kind of clown as the ones who get all of the urban media face-time and ink-slop over race-hustling, thug murder and street activism.  There is absolutely no difference, whatsoever, between Trump and any of the insta-loudmouth-Reverend- prophet -activists the media worship.  In fact, the very same words of affection used to 'justify' the local blatherskites, apply to Donald H. Trump: "fiery, speaks his mind, helps so many, concerned, at times divisive, obnoxious, contoversial, but always news worthy."

Uh,huh.

The fact is that street hustling stiff-collars and Donald Trump have done and will do nothing for kids, old people, or starving blind match girls.

I would much rather enjoy the joy and sparkle of the faces of fifteen young men and their coaches engaged in the formative combat that is athletic competition, where no one is a victim and outcomes matter.  Score more baskets; cut nets off of the rims attached to expensive backboards at the Carver Arena.

Leo High School ( the maintenance staff, the ladies who run the offices and Leo the parents, the teachers,  the administrators, the Alumni, The Big Shoulders Fund, and the many generous non-Leo donors who are Catholic and Jewish ) knows that Black Lives Matter, Blue Lives Matter, Lives in the Womb Matter and All Lives Out of Womb Matter a whole bunch and our kids will tear off nets because of that knowledge.

Street hustlers say that they know it, but they could care less and do absolutely nothing to ever make a difference here, or anywhere, unless Jay Levine, or Carol Marin can broadcast their words and totally ignore anything else.

Cardinal George knew Leo High School stood for everything in my above parentheses  and Acted upon it.  Cardinal George, to use the media word 'advocated' for Leo High School and also acted to raise money sending checks from his personal account and not the Archdiocese bank accounts, or some creep State legislator, or City Hall stooge to scratch up a taxpayer funded boondoggle.  Mostly, Cardinal George ministered to students, counselled individual kids from Grand Crossing, Englewood, Gresham and Canaryville without a call to the Tribune or the Sun Times.  No bishop of Chicago, ever did more for kids at Leo than the late Cardinal George.

Chicago wants Francis Cardinal George in its memory hole - forgotten.

Donald Trump wants everything in a memory hole.

Now, I am no fan of Trump, as I am no fan of race baiting, street hustling prophets, but that does not mean you should not delight in their words and the media words about them.  Oh, Hell No!

That's just me.

However, I am a huge fan of pure high school achievement - athletic and academic.  I am a huge fan of Facta Non Verba: Deeds and Not Words.

Two hours and fifty minutes, two tanks of gas at praeter-Cook County prices, parking in Peoria and a $10 ticket to the Carver is well worth being anywhere near bumptious ass who wants to help Hillary Clinton become President.

Terror Town Gets a Pass and a Police Officer Does the Time

"The constitution applies to felons, it applies to drug addicts, You don't get a pass every few years because you work in Terror Town*." Judge Kendall

The Constitution obviously takes an entitrely different application althogether to the judicial mindset of United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois Virginia Kendall, when it comes to serving Chicago Police Officers in this Post BLM Era.  The Black Lives of Women and Men Serving in CPD Blue can expect getting two and and one half year Federal sentence reduced to two years, by judicial fiat, however.

Chicago Police Officer Aldo Brown received a two year sentnce from Judge Kendall for his October conviction of "excessive force for hitting and kicking a convenience store clerk in September 2012. Brown testified at his trial that he began throwing punches at Jecque Howard at the Omar Salma shop on East 76th Street only after he realized Howard had a handgun in his back pocket."



Officer Aldo Brown worked in Terror Town, not far from where I work every day.   Terror Town, like O Street, is another hip media-driven set of real estate that colorfully adds luster to 'compelling narratives' for hand-wringers and nod-with-conviction arm-chair activists in Evanston, Hyde Park, Highland Park and the hispter havens of elites in Wicker Park, Lakeview, or the political ruling class bed-room community Lincoln Square.

Those of us who live and work in ,and near,  the Terror Towns, The Englewoods, the Greshams, the Grand Crossings and actually interact with residents and CPD professionals daily, know that this conviction of Officer Aldo Brown is more political theatre than jurisprudence and wide walk around Justice.

God Help Us. God Save Us from the constant shower of bullshit! Ora Pro Nobis.

 *Terror Town is a nickname for a violent area in Chicago, Illinois. Individuals in the area claim that Terror Town refers to 75th and 79th streets between Yates and Colfax. This particular area in Chicago is on the East Side and is filled with various gangs such as the Black P. Stones and Gangster Disciples. Apart from its violent history, this particular area gained notoriety due to the rising fame of 2 of its residents, Lil Herb and Lil Bibby. Both Herb and Bibby are members of the Black P. Stone gang and often make reference to both Terror Town and their gang in songs.
Read more at: http://www.hipwiki.com/Terror+Town+(Chicago)

Early Voting Bonus - How About a Forrest Claypool Dunk-Tank?

I usually vote on the stated Election Day, primary elections are a huge pain in the ass with all of the same names sneaking into GOP and DNC conventions.  I usually need to bone up on candidates and issues.

This primary is easy.  I am drawing Democratic ballot and will vote for two people.  The rest I will have some fun with - this primary is an insult to every voter in America; I shall return the compliment.

I usually vote on election day, but I could be induced to try early voting, if the City Election Commissioner would offer free back-to- school CPS left-overs, Wilco's Jeff Tweddy and Gang playing on a flat bed truck in the parking lot, or. better yet. a dunk tank featuring CPS/CTA/Cook County/ Chicago Parks/City Hall multi-pension jackpot career grifter, lightweight, dim-bulb and chinless wonder Forrest Claypool squeezed into a Chicago Logo speedo over big-ass barrel of chilled Lake Michigan Straight.

After chopping teachers and staff at CPS, this smarmy soulless Klepto-bureaucrat and WTTW regular could use a Polar Plunge*.

The temperature of his pasty pelt could then match that of the blood coursing through Temple Claypool.

Someone, maybe Commisioner Bill Kresse, or a Bill Kresse Imitator, wearing a huge Flava Flav style clock on a gold chain could collect each I Voted chit and shout enthusiastically as the alarm clock clangs, 'WHATBOYIE???? What????  WHAT TIME IS IT? Dunk Time!"

Each citizen emerging from a designated early voting polling place rewarded with an I VOTED sticker, or palm card could march up to the dunk tank and collect three yellow plastic coated 12" softball for a shot at the metal target/release trigger and plunk Claypool into the icy brine.

Kids and Veterans t'row free all day!

CPS teachers showing proper identification get two additional balls - a metaphor for the apparatii missing from most elected officials and every insider-career grifter.

March can be chilly.

But nothing is so cold as the endless placement and pension looting by Progressive Shakman Sanctioned creeps in government.

* Chicago's real hero James Sheahan raises millions fro special needs youngsters.

Trump: Strong bands, if bands ungrateful men could tie.

Hey, he says what we all feel!


I get Trump, the Yin to Hillary Clinton's Yang, and I can do nicely with out him.: " A name to all succeeding ages curst./For close designs, and crooked counsels fit."

Voter anger is real.  Anger untempered by thought, based upon shared truth is rage and rage only works in Jerry Bruckheimer movie epics, or Mad Max reconfigurations.

Trump reminds me historical persons like Earl of Shaftesbury in King Charles II's court, the odious Thomas Boleyn who pimped out his children for merry old King Henry VIII and an Italian school teacher turned journalist after the First World War.

Mostly, I am reminded of John Dryden's portrayal of Shaftsbury from his 17th Century mock epic Absalom and Achitophel. The poem is splendid example of quality hack work and was no doubt commissioned by King Charles, when his enemies introduced the Exclusion Bill, " which would keep the Catholic James from the throne, using Charles’s illegitimate son, the duke of Monmouth, a puppet of Shaftesbury, as a possible claimant to the throne. Although the bill passed in the Commons, it was rejected by the Lords because of the king’s strong opposition."

Shaftsbury, like Trump, was a skilled political hater.

Some had in courts been great, and thrown from thence,
Like fiends, were harden'd in impenitence.
Some by their monarch's fatal mercy grown,
From pardon'd rebels, kinsmen to the throne;
Were rais'd in pow'r and public office high;
Strong bands, if bands ungrateful men could tie. 

    Of these the false Achitophel was first:
A name to all succeeding ages curst.
For close designs, and crooked counsels fit;
Sagacious, bold and turbulent of wit:
Restless, unfixt in principles and place;
In pow'r unpleas'd, impatient of disgrace.
A fiery soul, which working out its way,
Fretted the pigmy-body to decay:
And o'er inform'd the tenement of clay.
A daring pilot in extremity;
Pleas'd with the danger, when the waves went high
He sought the storms; but for a calm unfit,
Would steer too nigh the sands, to boast his wit.
Great wits are sure to madness near alli'd;
And thin partitions do their bounds divide:
Else, why should he, with wealth and honour blest,
Refuse his age the needful hours of rest?
Punish a body which he could not please;
Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease?
And all to leave, what with his toil he won
To that unfeather'd, two-legg'd thing, a son:
Got, while his soul did huddled notions try;
And born a shapeless lump, like anarchy.
In friendship false, implacable in hate:
Resolv'd to ruin or to rule the state.   John Dryden

I was saddened to read about Trump Mask anti-Mexican nonsense between Gary Andrean Catholic High School and Bishop Noll Institute.    Giving the media any ammo to pick at scabs, or trump-up divisive rage is bad enough, but giving a black eye to two very fine Catholic schools is galling - all over the misplaced notion that Trump will do anything for anyone.

Really good people tell me that America needs Trump.

These same people shouted at me that America needed Obama.

America needs to read something besides Talking Points Memo, the New York Times and listening NPR who are as much responsible for Trump, as they are for Hillary Clinton.

. . . . In friendship false, implacable in hate:
Resolv'd to ruin or to rule the state.

Sun Times Editorials Add Up, Only If You You Really Stink At Math

I took a sound beat down every day from Sisters Doralese and Gertrudis, ( Sisters of Mercy ,bye the by) through Sixth and Seventh Grades at Little Flower Grammar School in the mid-1960's, due to my profound inabilities where numbers are concerned.

Pay attention, or I'll give something to whimper about . . .' take the sum of any . . . .' and shave that mustache, Boyo!

In Eight Grade, I took B Honors, because the nun I had thought that I was someone else and graded accordingly.

I did learn to add, subtract, multiply and divide and fractions.

The Editorial Board of the Chicago Sun Times?  I would have been proud to have them sit around around me in those swell desks bolted to the hardwood of Little Flower.  I would have been spared a few cuts and thrashings, from the two Irish women, my Bogman Grandpa Hickey called 'Life's Unplucked Flowers,' when women were present, or 'hairy-faced old Galway Bitches,' between the two of us.

The Chicago Sun Times thumps its Saltine-like chest and thunders like Governor Le Petomane in Blazing Saddles, because the Workers Compensation Payouts are not like New York City's and that the Finance Committee is operating according to the rules of its charter.

The City paid out a whopping 115 million dollars 2011, but no where in the editorial is proof of illegality.

What the editorial amounts to is this - the City is bleeding dollars from the public schools, the CTA and special relationships like this between Friends of Richie Daley and Valerie Jarret in real estate swindles that add up actual theft.

In same edition is Watchdogs ( Tim Novak who investigated Obama/Rezko/Jarret/Allison Davis slum real estates in 2008, but magically vanished around election day), but appears again with Vanecko lad, in keeping with the  paper's Kochman bleatings.

The editorial deals with John Dewey Math (there might be theft Q.E.D. there is!) and Watchdogs in math that Archimedes could understand.

Now, Lookee H'yar!
Here’s how the Davises and Vanecko handled the pension money, according to documents obtained over the past nine years from the five pension funds.

• $9.9 million was lost on the purchase of the 344-unit building at 1212 S. Michigan Ave. Using pension money, Davis and Vanecko paid $65.2 million in September 2006 to buy it — and sold it about five years later for $65.5 million. The pension funds never got any money from the sale.

• $2.8 million was lost on two loans to the owners of the Chicago Defender’s former home, a boarded-up building at 2400 S. Michigan Ave. It’s unclear why DV Urban lent pension money to developers Brian O’Connell of LaGrange and his partner, Matthew A. O’Malley, a politically connected restaurateur who has been battling City Hall over a sweetheart deal to operate the Park Grill restaurant in Millennium Park. After a bank foreclosed on the Defender building, O’Connell and O’Malley sold the property in 2014. The pension funds didn’t get any money from the sale.

• $2.65 million helped DV Urban pay $11.7 million in 2007 for a commercial building at 217 N. Jefferson St. The building was sold last year for $14.5 million — one of the deals that helped the pension funds recover $6 million.

• $6.5 million was used by DV Urban toward $11.5 million it paid for a 162-unit apartment building at 7100 S. South Shore Dr. It was sold last year for $6.75 million, helping return some money to the pension funds.

• $3.5 million went toward $4.2 million DV Urban paid for the stores at 3508 S. State St., part of the CHA’s redevelopment of Stateway Gardens. The pension funds hope to sell the land this year.

• $16.9 million went to loans to developers of 3030 N. Broadway, where a Mariano’s store is being built, and to buy adjacent land at 3013-17 N. Waterloo. The property is expected to be sold this year.

• $4.2 million was invested with the firm Sydney Partners, which paid $10.5 million for a 15.6-acre industrial property at 3348 S. Pulaski. DV Urban leased part of the space to the city. But, beset by environmental problems including polluted soil, the property was sold for just $5.4 million in 2014, and the pension fund money was lost.

• $4.5 million was earmarked to buy the former headquarters of the National Association of Letter Carriers’ Chicago branch at 1411 S. Michigan, next door to the Chicago Firehouse restaurant owned by O’Malley. The deal ended up in court when DV Urban backed out of the deal, asking the letter carriers to return the money — which the union had used to build its new headquarters. The lawsuit was settled out of court, but the pension funds lost all of their money.

Now, I was taught round off decimals at .5 and adding these here figures comes to -

$30 M in losses from City Worker Contributions to Pension Funds - no how about that?  Might call for a old timey stem-winder of an editorial!

Instead, Michael Shakman beefed that he was not getting his cut from Ed Burke's Finance Committee and the harrumphing went viral.

$ 30M is a not, to be sure, a whopping 115 million dollars paid out to workers compensation claims according to the existing law and rules, but $30M in real loss to people who trusted politicians and had their savings picked clean by Progressively Approved Valerie Jarrett slumlords, just might be investigation worthy of city newspaper.  Nah.  Gentlemen, we goota protect our phoney baloney jobs!

Now, here is smelly part.  While cops and school teachers took an investment beating that would have warmed cold-hearts of the two above-mentioned Sisters of Mercy.

Valerie Jarret's slum-lord partner ( Valerie is somehow absent from Tim Novak's investigation) Allison Davis and one of the Vanecko boys made out like porch-climbers.

“The investment was effectively a total loss for DV Urban,” says Miller-May of the teachers pension fund.
DV Urban was paid $8 million in management fees between 2006 and 2012, when the pension funds got permission from a Delaware judge to fire the company.
A little over $1 million, for property-management fees, went to a company owned by Cullen Davis*, another Davis son, who oversaw some of the apartment buildings bought with pension money.
Another $1.7 million went to two companies, including Newport Capital Partners, to manage the DV Urban portfolio and sell off the assets in an effort to recover as much money as possible for the pension funds.
Beyond the money lost on the investments with DV Urban, the pension funds also had to pay $2.5 million for attorneys who fought the firm for two years in courtrooms from Chicago to Delaware over control of the real estate investments.

That's $13 million in money looted from City Workers and tucked in the wallets of slumlords added to $30m in losses comes to a very real $ 43 M beat down of City Workers, not a possible boondoggle.

Where is the editorial on this one?  Somethings don't add up.  Like editorial three-monte providing cover for Rahm, while doing absolutely nothing.

Alderman Ed Burke is playing according to the rules approved by the City of Chicago and he does seem worried a bit nor should he.  He knows this is not newspaper, but a daily political fog machine.

* Like the Ayers/Obama papers held hostage at Cement City, better late than never.
Whenever I am near a Progressive Do-Gooder, I throw both hands over the Left check of my ass to protect my wallet.
Whenever a Progressive Do-Gooder gets near poor people, they rake in millions, properties get boarded up, and people die.

Smearing a Justice - The Poison of Progressive Bad Ideas is the Breakfast of Champions

Bad and chemicals and Bad Ideas are the Yin and Yang of madness -from Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut

I had an exchange with a young Progressive teacher recently.  This person is smart, but, in the words of Kurt Vonnegut poisoned with 'bad ideas."  We were discussing youth boxing programs.  I stated that The Leo Boxing and Celtic Boxing programs did more for poor inner city young men, than activists, race hustling political priests and tweedy academics.  In our exchange Gandhi came up and I noted that lawyer Gandhi was not averse to actually showing up early and helping others to set-up chairs, as far cry from media hungry street agitators and activist.  This teacher responded that Gandhi was " better man than our late Supreme Court Justice, Scalia, who sat in his chair and took this county back 100 years. Gandi did not harm anyone working with a chair...but Scalia's politically/religious motivations continue to help the wealthy and hurt the poor. He was pro birth and anti life"

The young teacher applied the talking points (bad ideas) right out of Talking Points Memo - a script warehouse for group thought

This is nothing new, shocking, or something required to be ignored by the media. They will and do.

The trouble comes when people accept and never challenge bad ideas.

Justice Scalia was a towering intellect and probably the greatest Supreme Court Justice, since Oliver Wendell Holmes - the Great Dissenter.

However, immediately upon his death the folks at Bad Idea Central began to smear Justice Scalia and it continues.

Bad Ideas are the coin of our realm, I am sad to say.

In his hilarious and humane novel Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut's protagonist, Dwayne Hoover, is mentally ill.  In Vonnegut's way of thinking,  human beings are just 'large rubbery test tubes' and we are filled with either 'good chemicals, or bad chenicals' - Sometimes 'bad chemicals' sit deep in our bodies like fused explosives that will only go off, when triggered by 'bad ideas.'

Vonnegut, who was raised as an atheist by German American Free Thinkers seriously doubted free will.  He disliked religion entirely.

Free Will was something that Vonnegut thought was a dodge, created by organized religions. Rather, we were products of some cosmic crap-shoot and endowed, by No One, with either good chemicals, or bad chemicals and introduced to good ideas, or bad ideas.

Vonnegut seemed a very good, kind and wildly thoughtful man.

Today, I think he might  agree with me that our American condition is quite mad - nuts, milky in filberty, off the chump, crazier than rodents in that old timey out-house.

I do not necessarily believe that our God-given human make-up is a crap-shoot.  Neither did the late Justice Antonin Scalia. Scalia believed that human beings are free agents and the Law was provided to protect, check, or correct the choices we make as individuals and citizens.

Bad ideas abound, because bad ideas are agreed upon and forced down the throats of Americans.  The bad ideas are rooted in group thought.

This morning, I read the latest "Kick the Corpse of Scalia" in  The Washington Post, 

When Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died 11 days ago at a West Texas ranch, he was among high-ranking members of an exclusive fraternity for hunters called the International Order of St. Hubertus, an Austrian society that dates back to the 1600s.
After Scalia’s death Feb. 13, the names of the 35 other guests at the remote resort, along with details about Scalia’s connection to the hunters, have remained largely unknown. A review of public records shows that some of the men who were with Scalia at the ranch are connected through the International Order of St. Hubertus, whose members gathered at least once before at the same ranch for a celebratory weekend.

The piece goes on to 'suggest' -in an investigative report - but no where reports a nefarious plot in involving Justice Scalia with some crypto-Masonic Catholic Odessa File billionaires.

A Secret Society? They must not be trying too hard.  Hillary's e-mails and Obama's college records stay hidden in plain sight to the American media 'investigative reporters."

I want Glenn Greenwald to fire up The Guardian and all of his satellite hipster-doofus websites to get to the bottom of Justice Scalia's possible membership in the Ancient and Honorable Order of Turtles!*

I read this piece of "investigative journalism" and thought about Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions(BoC). Wheaties is not the BoC, but the martini's served to Dwayne Hoover by a wise-cracking waitress, which adds to his Cosmos-given 'bad chemicals.'  Wheaties had Bruce Jenner on its boxes at the time it was published in 1973 - how about that?

Justice Scalia will never appear on a box of Wheaties and, unless bad ideas get called out for what they truly happen to be, more young, earnest teachers will help the Talking Points Memos - Our National Warehouse of Bad Ideas - murder memory, shared truth and our country.

Speaking of Bad Ideas: Trump, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.

Breakfast of Champion, anyone?

* I am a member - inducted 1972 by Buzzy Lawson, Ma Fleming's Saloon at Swedes in Delavan, WI.

If Cooking Matters, Go to Rosario's !

After Mass this morning, I'll take a swing over to Rosario's Sausage,  because I read a story about a man who tried to trade a baby for fifteen Big Macs.  Mother of God.  This poor gluttonous louse stole a baby, only to barter for food that would gag a maggot.

Please note the photo that I chose for this piece (it tells the story )-  over Rosario's is a corporatist road sign distracting drivers' attentions from a business worthy of their coin.

I tried to keep my children from Mickey D's, not because I am food snob, or nutrition Nazi, but because the entire corporatist Ronald McDonald Clown Happy Meal net offends me to the marrow.

Families make better foods than corporations. Wal-Mart offends me because it makes people lazier and murders generations of family businesses on main streets universal.  I was anti-WalMart long before the Brooks Brothers Bolsheviks of SEIU leadership.

For hamburgers and hot dogs my kids went to Pop's at 111th Kedzie, Top Notch on 95th, Fat Tommy's on 111th and the now closed Wonder Burger at 110th & Kedzie.

Pizza Hut, Little Caesar's and Domino's were all verboten in Casa Hickey.

Whether or not those lessons impacted, I am not sure, but at least they were presented, like going to Mass on Sunday: " You belong to the Club; you go to the meetings."

For good cooking, ingredients matter.  Rosario's makes great sausage daily and  the place opens at 9:30 A.M. and will be packed.

I am making Penne ala Vodka Cream Sauce for two.

I could go to Jewel(s), Mariano's, or Pat and Jacks for Italian Sausage, but am cooking for someone I love, respect and like to see smile over a plateful of my efforts.



Rosario's, like the long-gone Sardi's in the Old St. Mary of Mount Carmel parish on 69th Street back in the 1960's-70's, is place where the respectful buy Italian meats, spices, cheese and condiments worthy of the genre - Italian Cooking.

I will have big pot of lightly salted

This a temple, a sanctuary of sausage perfection and family owned purveyor of priceless products for modest purses.

There is also the neon sign showing pigs and cows only too delighted to leap into the meat grinder like straight-ticket Ward Democrats at a polling place.

I will buy the spicy sausage ( out of casing) and brown the hell out of it over medium heat in a Olive oiled caste iron skillet.  No need for the McCormicks crushed red pepper flakes and so I will add four cloves of crushed garlic, one small red onion chopped to the Rosario's goodness, until brownish.  I will add a 28 ounce can of  Red Gold brand crushed tomatoes with the liquid and cook until eye-ball reduced,  Then I will add three shots of good vodka and cook for a good while - timer be damned,

Lastly, in goes heavy cream and chopped basil and a pinch of oregano.

Withe penne cooked to the tooth, in it goes like the happy cows and pigs and gets a thorough tossing in a skilletful tasty.

I will plate with Basil, crusty Dago bread and hand grated Parmesano.

Our world has family owned, loving and true treasure like Rosarios Sausage.  Skip the convenient. Go for the genuine

Rosario's Italian Sausage
8611 S Pulaski Rd, Chicago, IL 60652

Pope Francis Goes All Robert Frost on the Trumpster

He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours."
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
"Why do they make good neighbours? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

I like Pope Francis; can't say much for Donald Trump other than he knows exactly how to PT Barnum alot of people.

The Pope gets a bad rap, because the Media  likes to parse his words and drive bigger wedges between people.

As far as immigration goes, you never see or hear of people beating down the doors, swimming rivers, hazarding the oceans, or slipping under razor -concertina wire to get into Honduras, Nicaragua, Cuba, Red China, or Venezuela.

America is great because of capitalism. Oddly, the very people who have amassed great fortunes because of that fact have given birth to people like David Rockefeller, Katrina Vanden Heuvel , the Kennedy Clan and Hollywood stars and moguls who want to see America become Honduras, Nicaragua, Cuba, Red China, or Venezuela. Wasn't it Ronald Reagan who shouted famously, "Tear Down This Wall" and conservatives, liberals, rich and working folks cheered mightily?

America has rich people . . .no really.

It also has, thanks to the well-larded efforts of David Rockefeller, Katerina Van Heusen, the Kennedy Clan and Hollywood stars and moguls, a disappearing Middle Class.

The American Middle Class was created by the very tensions, compromises and common sense sparked between the people of great wealth and the working class ( Real Labor - the skilled private sector trade unions) in often bloody conflict.  Peace did out. The American Middle Class is the greatest economic and social justice miracle in history and the people like  David Rockefeller, Katrina Vanden Heuvel , the Kennedy Clan and Hollywood stars and moguls are embarassed by that fact. The Middle Class is, was and always shall be despised, used and intimidated by the elites.

The Middle Class is toxic tosocialism and much more offensive to pure Marxism. American Progressives were not born out of the working Middle Class.  They were and are very wealthy people who use that wealth to force policies and laws meant solely to eliminate the Middle Class.

Immigration, refugee suffering, voter registration of illegals and Sanctuary Cities are examples of the compelling narratives and faux coversations that develop policies and legislation used by the very wealthy, university educated and politically intimidating Progressives who want an American oligarchy - very few people of wealth and power.  The ACLU, Planned Parenthood, the Southern Poverty and Law Center, the 501 (c) 3 mega-bucks policy birthing foundations like MacArthur, Rockefeller, Joyce and Woods Funds position billions of dollars toward the ends that will bring this about.

Donald Trump knows this and uses simple, crude, loud and well placed sentences and paragraphs out into the atmosphere intended to gather good people into his camp.

Pope Francis is a priest.

They both know that a wall, a border, or a fence is merely a metaphor - so is a bridge.

What is ignored in all of this hoohah is the fact that Donald Trump is no different from the very people who insist that the American Middle Class disappear, like work of the elves in Old Bobby Frost's poem.

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours."
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
"Why do they make good neighbours? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,

Well, as Frost notes, " it's not elves exactly."  Hell, no it is David Rockefeller, Katerina Vanden Heuvel, the Kennedy Clan and Hollywood stars and moguls and Donald Trump, his own bad self.

The American Media is Progressive. The American Media love Donald Trump as much as David Rockefeller, Katrina Vanden Heuvel, the Kennedy Clan and Hollywood stars and moguls, because it knows Trump wants the very same thing - an American oligarchy.

Something there is that does not love America and the American Middle Class - it ain't Pope Francis.

A Simple Way to End Urban Slaughter -Kick the Policy Wheel in the 'Old Loving Tackle'

pol·i·cy 1  (pŏl′ĭ-sē) etymology: [Middle English policie, art of government, civil organization, from Old French; see police.]
           n. pl. pol·i·cies
1. A plan or course of action, as of a government, political party, or business, intended to influence and determine decisions, actions, and other matters: American foreign policy; the company's personnel policy.
2.
a. A course of action, guiding principle, or procedure considered expedient, prudent, or advantageous: Honesty is the best policy.
b. Prudence, shrewdness, or sagacity in practical matters: It is never good policy to speak rashly.

After widespread criticism of Chicago's yearlong delay in releasing video of a police officer's fatal shooting of a teenager, Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced Tuesday that the city will begin releasing video of shootings by police within two to three months of each incident.
Emanuel cast the new policy as a break from the past for a city that has been sluggish in releasing recordings of controversial police encounters, though civil rights attorneys said the policy still allows for too much delay. Chicago Tribune

The word policy comes from the Middle French word for police.   If It Ain't Policy It Gets Ignored. Policy begets lawyers, lawsuits and future policy. Hence the Policy Wheel 2016.

The Policy Wheel whirls dervishly! Hell, it is making Western Civilization -now a microaggression in its utterance - disappear.

More importantly, Policy kills police officers and good policing by police women and men; yet, politicians apply policy universal for political gain and then demand good policing of police officers who stand a very good chance not going home at the end of a shift.

Policy is used by everyone - usually to no good effect.  Gutless, lazy, unimaginative and ambitious mediocrities in all walks of life turn to policy to make decisions they do not wish to stand with, punish the people who work for them, make budget cuts in the workforce, deny access to funding programs they want to see ended and point to when called on the carpet by some higher-up, gutless, lazy, unimaginative and ambitious mediocrity.

Here in Chicago, when a Mayor steps on his Johnson, he points to the failed policies he inherited with taking his oath of office - “On the police use of force, this is not [new]. Everybody knows we have had other issues as it relates to the Abbate case, the Burge torture, the Summerdale [district scandal]. Every mayor, my predecessors — have dealt with this in one way or another,” Rahm Emanuel

Then, announces new policy -"(The task force) helped the city take a bold step forward, in a comprehensive way, to establish the rules going forward that are clear to everybody," Rahm Emanuel

Politicians ( Policy Breeders) want to make sure that their policies have the backing of the University of Chicago Crime Lab Boys - who already articulated the very 'policies' that have turned Chicago into a thug comfort zone - This from the U of C Crime Lab:

" Basic scientific research has dramatically changed our understanding of what drives human behavior, what types of social conditions are the most important risk or protective factors for violence involvement, and how to manage and direct the activities of large-scale organizations – including the challenges of taking good ideas and making them work at scale. Government agencies are typically not equipped to translate basic science into policy innovations. We need to ensure that the frontier of policy innovation takes advantage of the frontier understanding from basic science of people and organizations."

The University of Chicago Crime Lab? Good lord. Arrive at pre-conceived conclusion and then round-up the necessary facts to 'prove' it. What PC nonsense and what political ninnies. N.B. " Basic scientific research has dramatically changed our understanding of what drives human behavior, what types of social conditions are the most important risk or protective factors for violence involvement, and how to manage and direct the activities of large-scale organizations – including the challenges of taking good ideas and making them work at scale. Government agencies are typically not equipped to translate basic science into policy innovations. We ( University of Chicago Gobshites) need to ensure that the frontier of policy innovation takes advantage of the frontier understanding from basic science of people and organizations." from the UofC Crime Lab: about us.

The frontier of "policy innovations" - geld cops and scuttle justice. Epic fail - scientific facts are indisputable!

That crappola is what Cook County will use to end urban slaughter - Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart calls it a 'home run.'

N.B. - Government agencies are typically not equipped to translate basic science into policy innovations
You mean like -CeaseFire: Safe Zones: Gun Buy Backs the much put-upon IPRB: the Wrongful Everything Industry . . .?

Political worms working the loam.

Here in the action-packed world of urban Catholic education, policy worms its coils and attempts to be like CPS, a policy laden monster of titanic ineptitude.  Failed teachers, educators and too many administrators, hug policy - especially ZERO TOLERANCE POLICY.

I told a Catholic high school principal once that "policy is for . . . ."  I used a word employed pan-gender to indicate possession of a female reproductive organism, . . . a synonym for See You Next Tuesday that begins with the consonant P.

If a student violates dress code by wearing a black polo instead of a seasonal white polo, go up ask the student why.  Perhaps, there had been a laundry mishap. Do your job.  Don't hide behind policies Zero or Robust!

Policy comes from like-minded gutless,lazy, unimaginative and ambitious mediocrities found in our more prestigious colleges and universities.

The University of Chicago not only built the atomic bomb, birthed scores of conservative Nobel Prize winners, but also forests of pages of policies that became Yellow Brick Road for Forrest Claypools, Richard M. Daleys, Rahm Emanuels and Barack Obamas.

In short, policy aborted thought, vision and charity quicker than Kermit Gosnell with baby's noggin and sharp scalpel in his bloody mitts.

My humble plea to restore thought, vision and charity to all human aspirations and endeavors is this -

When a politician, bureaucrat, activist, Ralph Martire, or school administrator utters the word policy, policies, or equine scat like this:

Our other goal is to ensure that policymakers have adequate feedback about what their innovations are accomplishing so that policy approaches get better over time. While randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are the standard for testing innovations in medicine, they remain far too rare in the areas of crime policy and social policy more generally. It is very difficult to identify the causal effects of policy interventions in the real world, a problem that can lead to unhelpful or even quite harmful policy decisions. Without good evidence, policymakers have no basis for allocating scarce public-sector resources across different potential uses other than hunches and politics.

Kick them, or a have much more athletic and robust friend do so, squarely and honestly in the balls.

It is an empirically tested and proven scientific fact that a good, well-aimed and swift kick in the nuts, will end any and all idiotic inclinations.

When people depend upon shared universal truths, witness their small place in human society and acknowledge the Prime Mover, then, and only then, will thugs be punished for their crimes.

Homicides may diminish, but gutless, lazy,unimaginative and ambitious mediocrities will think twice before using the P-Word. 

I Am Dust - Ash Wedensday 2016

"By the sweat of your face/you shall eat bread,/till you return to the ground,/for out of it you were taken;/for you are dust,/and to dust you shall return."  Genesis 3:19


I am dust.

Today, is the first day of the rest of my life - Ash Wednesday, a day we Catholics and many Christians use as time remebering Christ's 40 days in the desert fending off Satan.

I have not fended off Satan.

I am dust, bone sinew, lard, muscle and ego.

Jesus was born in Roman occupied Palestine more tha 2,00 years ago with me in mind. He was later tortured, scourged, mocked, crowned with thorns and crucified with me in mind.  He rose from the dead and Triumphed over sin, death and despair with me in mind.

My problem is was and has been that I do not keep Christ in mind.  I allowed myself to listen to Satan and put things above people.  I am an afflicted - self afflicted  - gambler. Satan still has my ears of the last few months. I forget how blessed I am.

Today, I will remember how blessed I am and I will take ashes and pray and fast try to give Satan the 'not welcome here' mat.

Ashes - I am Dust. 

Exit Lepidus: End the Damn Lists Already!

SCENE I. A house in Rome.
ANTONY, OCTAVIUS, and LEPIDUS, seated at a table
ANTONY
These many, then, shall die; their names are prick'd.
OCTAVIUS
Your brother too must die; consent you, Lepidus?
LEPIDUS
I do consent--
OCTAVIUS
Prick him down, Antony.
LEPIDUS
Upon condition Publius shall not live,
Who is your sister's son, Mark Antony.
ANTONY
He shall not live; look, with a spot I damn him.
But, Lepidus, go you to Caesar's house;
Fetch the will hither, and we shall determine
How to cut off some charge in legacies.
LEPIDUS
What, shall I find you here?
OCTAVIUS
Or here, or at the Capitol.
Exit LEPIDUS

THE WAR ON LISTS
Around this time, Shepherd made a rare daytime trip to a bookstore. When he couldn’t find a book he was looking for on the shelves, a clerk informed him the book must not exist because it hadn’t appeared on any publisher’s list the clerk had ever seen. Shepherd was positive the book existed, but no amount of insistence on Shepherd’s part could budge the clerk from his certainty. This encounter would prove to be the fuel for the fire to come.

Only one list matters and that is the mythical list St. Nicholas keeps concerning who is naughty and who is nice.

Those whom our reified Yule Saint pricks down may also keep lists.

If, however, you have come to a point in your life where you no longer believe that a ghostly gent with an Arctic address will be bring sacks full of X-Boxes and Barbies down the chimney, please ignore lists, don't compile lists and,  please, for the love of God,  do not encourage the over-paid imbeciles seated at some keyboard do so.

List-O-Mania, it might empirically and historically argued has helped create American Morons.

Polls and lists have become the drug of choice for people too lazy to read, walk down the street, think for themselves, entertain themselves and most all to love themselves.

Since, the late 1950's, beginning in New York City's radio stations and tabloids, lists have been compiled on any all topic, destination, person, incident and policy. One voice alone, stood in the way of List-O-mania and that was Hammond, Indiana  born writer and wit Jean Shepherd.  He was martyred and only allowed to pop his head above our shallow culture with A Christmas Story, for having taken on the New York Times Bestsellers List.

Shepherd's battle against Lists rivals the Alamo, Wake Island, Bataan, the Chosin Reservoir and Khe Sahn.  What the. . . Sorry, guilty me making a list.

When God created the Universe (First Cause), He put into motion a series of events where matter collides with will and all things tend back to Him.

Like an Omnipotent/Omniscient Minnesota Fats, Mr. Trinity chalks up and stokes the cue in the only Act of Eternal Will that really matters - energy, force and matter scatters with the end of making us balls hit a pocket and return to the Brunswick bay near His loins - Big Bang!

Now, I have played pool and some idiot has, on occasion, grabbed a ball (cue and numbered), blocked the ball, bumped the table, spilled beer on the path of my sure-shot, or. otherwise. loused up the game.  That lousing up by Lists is taking place in our Universe, Boys and Girls.

Polling has given us Barack Obama and Donald Trump.

Lists have made us stupid.

Let's pass over Polling, just for sake of not having an argument - 99.9% of my immediate family love Obama and I, because I have met and spoken with President #44 on more than few occasions, think that he is a dope.  Likewise, 100% of my immediate and extended family ( myself included for the same reasons as not in the previous sentence) believe that Donald Trump is the turd in our National punchbowl.

Thus we are free to excoriate Lists. Lists were used to proscribe people deemed expendable by tyrants  from Croesus, to Hitler, to Stalin, To Mao, to Nixon, to Valerie Jarrett.  A proscription list meant that you and your family deader than Kelsey's Nuts.

Lists can be used for good as in the case of Poor Richard's Almanac, Seven Deadly Sins, Cardinal Virtues and such.  Lists comprised by the superior gender stop the flood of cash from checking accounts, due to male impulse buying in grocery stores.  However, as with anything once moderation has been scuttled the ship of sense sinks; bringing us to our Idiocy Universal.

God made the Universe. Who made the world? Carpenters and Bricklayers.  Had to squeeze that one in.

Yes, God made the Universe and saw that it was good.  Now,  God Help Us All, there is a Listverse.  It is bad, very bad.

One can not open a magazine, a newspaper, or website without being hammered senseless by Lists of -Top Tens - Forbes Plutocrats & etc.

I received a 25th Birthday present in 1977 from a cousin. The son of screenwriter and novelist Irving Wallace - one David Wallechinsky had just published a smoking hot bestselling tome of nonfiction -  The Book of Lists: The Original Compendium of Curious Information.  It was great take to bathroom literature and ,once done so, never allowed on the coffee table ( like I had one).

I have no idea where that gift ended up. I went through it.  Now, I curse it.  I should have smelled this skunk in the underwear drawer of America's soul.

Things went rampant from 1977 onward.

Rather than read great books, participate in drama, study history, practice athletics, live the virtues, Americans examined lists of everything and anything.

People need to go out and discover.  Lists keep people home bound.



I discovered a great pizza place on the Northside of Chicago on my last birthday, when I was treated to an Evening With John Cleese Being Talked Over By Roe Cohn *at the Atheneum Theatre.  It was raining and exquisite Miss Terry Sullivan and I wandered in search of a pre-show eatery and by luck took a right going south on SouthPort at George Street and at the end of the block found a tiny saloon with best pizza I have ever tasted.

We managed this discovery without the aid of a YELP, much less a Chicago Magazine Pay-to-Play Listing of approved venues and events.

Our experience was made all the more Nearer My God to Thee, because no list went into our discovery.

That is what God intended all of us to do.

* John Cleese is an enormously talented wit; Roe Cohn is on the radio, despite his limitations, intellectual and social.
The entire show consisted of Roe Cohn talking over John Cleese and telling stories about his shallow life. Tickets were over $56 for general admission.   The pizza at Side Saloon balmed the fact that Roe Cohn bored a hole through a capacity audience. Prick Him Down, Antony!

Mr. Harold Green - Leo Hero: Facta Non Verba

When Leo High School welcomes Moms, Dads, Students and Staff, the bags of Mickey D's cast-off paper and plastic, battalions of styrofoam trays with chicken bones, legions of Frito-Lay parcels, squads of empty pints of Bumpy Face Seagrim's Gin, scraps of Sun Times Redlines and wet matted bits of penny saver coupon bundles are no where to be seen on the grounds.

Elves must pick up and toss the detritus of modern urban thoughtlessness and 'disappear it' into City of Chicago waste bins on our 79th Streetcape.

This morning I traveled from my home in Morgan Park six miles to the south and west of Leo High School, up Western Avenue (plowed and somewhat salted), east on 87 Street (plowed and somewhat salted) and north on Racine ( unplowed, nor salted) to 79th Street east ( (plowed and salted) and into the Leo Parking Lot ( unplowed at 4:45 AM).

I got out of the Malibu and said my morning Leo Memorare and noticed that the sidewalks and pathways around the school were already cleared.

When snow blankets the pathways and sidewalks, some miracle men must have bolted from their quilty blankets in the Sixteen Degree frost of the morning and cleared  our winter waves of white stuff.

No, my dears, Mr. Harold Green and Army veteran and a family man with the strength of eight lesser mortals did that.

Harold shoveled all of Leo's campus and then cleared the CTA benches for people who wait to swipe their hard-bought Ventra Cards for travel to work and school - not in Harold Green's job description. With all of that done - Harold will drive to Beecher, Illinois, South Holland, Roseland, Brainard and back to Leo High School with twelve students.  Now, some mincing person might offer, " Well, that's his job."

Mr. Harold Green gets to work at Leo High School at around 4AM - rain, shine, snow and trouble: Never late, never absent. During the day, while perched on my rump in the Development cubicle, I see Mr. Harold Green haul, lift, fix and fetch in and out of the school - 'Go to Menards: Get coffee for visitors; Jump Start my Car . . .' and ,one day, just prior to Leo's Annual Veterans Observance I received this inter-office memo :

Pat,

1.  Harold Green will pick up coffee.

3.  Harold Green will set up 3-4 rows of chairs.

4.  Harold Green will set up podium and sound system.

5.  I spoke to Mrs. Latifi and she will have NHS students greet and help older veterans cross the street.

7.  Mrs. Hill will have 1-4 students sing the National Anthem.

Thanks,

Well, it is his job, after all.

Yes, it is.  Have a nice day, Cupcake.

Mr. Harold Green is the Leo High School go-to-guy that educators and most otherwise nice people rarely notice.

I'm not so nice.  I notice.

Harold Green is my idea of a mythological Titan.

Harold Green expects to do his work.  That is all that Harold Green needs to say about it.