On This Date in (Mark's) Automotive History

The 2007 Honda Fit - the car I'm currently driving, which replaced a 1996 Dodge full-size van - turned over 50,000 miles today. It's a silver Sport model, though I don't think of it as a sporty car, to be honest. It's all of three cylinders and five forward gears in the automatic transmission, four small tires and an iPod jack.

That's my car - it's Chicago, and the Blues Brothers, and old jazz, Louie Armstrong, Dave McKenna, Kristen Chenoweth, Broadway musicals, Dr. Demento, The Beatles, Deep Purple, Cheap Trick and Steely Dan; it's Rich Mullins, Sierra and, not the least, eight sets of Carolyn Arends, she of relative minor fame who deserves relative major fame.

And, truth be told, it's also 23 sets of Frank Zappa and three of Black Sabbath; podcasts of NPR's Fresh Air, Car Talk, Science Friday and A Prairie Home Companion, Old Time Radio Comedies and Old Time Radio Thrillers (138 and 143 of the latter two, respectively). And it's Bill Cosby, Larry the Cable Guy, Woody Allen, the 2000 Year Old Man, Allan Sherman, Eric Idle/Monty Python and 19 other comedians.

All told, it's 5,764 songs and 535 podcasts.

Here's a sample of what I heard at lunch time:

• A segment of Dean Martin's Las Vegas show from 1966 or '67
• Bye Bye, Love - Simon and Garfunkel
• Not Alone - Carolyn Arends
• Truck Drivin' Song - Weird Al Yankovic
• Drive My Car - The Beatles
• American Woman - The Guess Who
• Dancing Days - Led Zepplin
• Ain't Misbehavin' - Leon Redbone
• Mighty River - Louis Armstrong
• A segment from Larry the Cable Guy
• Sweet Thing - Van Morrison
• All is Well - Carolyn Arends
• Loves Me Like a Brother - The Guess Who
• Love Was New - Chicago
• Oye Como Va - Santana
• Oh, What a Beautiful Morning - Oklahoma Cast Album
• The Boston Rag - Steely Dan
• In My Life - Bette Midler
• If Love Is Trouble - Dizzy Gillespie
• I Need You - The Beatles
• The Andy Griffith Show Theme
• Love From a Heart of Gold - How to Succeed in Business Cast Album
• Soap Theme (TV Show)

Chicago, As It Was

Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders:
They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again.
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger.
And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities;
Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness,
Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Building, breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse, and under his ribs the heart of the people, Laughing!
Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.

Poet Carl Sandburg in Chicago Poems, 1916

Love This Lyric . . .

. . . from West of Hollywood, Steely Dan

I'm way deep into nothing special,
Riding the crest of a wave beaking just west of Hollywood


Way deep into nothing special??? Sounds cynical to me.

In My Fifties, Looking Back to High School

". . . one finds, especially by the time one reaches one's fifties, that there are a limited number of types of people in the world, and you went to high school with every single one of them. You can visit the Eskimos, you can visit the Bushmen in the Kalahari, you can go to Israel, you can go to Egypt, but everybody you meet is going to be somebody you went to high school with."

Humorist P.J. O'Rourke

I don't know if this is especially true - perhaps it's just because I'm not observant enough - but I do know that I look back to high school every now and then. It's funny, isn't it, that we spend some 17-18 years growing up, moving through grade school, middle school and high school, and then find ourselves looking back from twice that distance (35 years for me), thinking about those years.

Shouldn't my high school years be overshadowed by things that came after? Four years in my life versus all that came with a 28-year marriage, four kids, a career, nice home, et al. But here I sit on the couch, reading the PJ O'Rourke quotation and I find myself walking the halls at Prospect High School, completing a verb quiz in German class, intercepting a pass during gym, driving my '67 Olds through the neighborhood, finding that I don't fit in everywhere, working at the A&P, drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon at the beach with the gang . . . It couldn't have been as much fun as I remember it was, could it?

And the really funny thing is that I know my dad generally feels the same way - especially when we talk about growing up in Plainville, Kansas - and he graduated 71 years ago!

And the Name Is . . .

"Bishop's Gate"

Yes, this is the name of the band which will be performing a reprise of the "Beatles Service" I wrote for church. Bishopsgate is written into a line in the song Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite - "The celebrated Mr. K. performs his feat on Saturday at Bishopsgate".

I should note that we didn't have a name the first time we did the service.

“Bishopsgate” itself is a road in London, named for one of the seven original gates in the city wall. (See the wikipedia.org article here for a more lengthy description.)

The band members are on board; next, I have to talk to upper-management at church - the senior pastor. We're not going to do this during an actual service time. It's to be scheduled after a pot-luck dinner on a Saturday night. This frees us from the approx. 60-minute limitation of Sunday morning. Indeed, I think I'll add a little more!

Time: Perhaps This Is What I've Been Trying To Say

“I have begun to suspect that time is, in some sense I don’t yet fully comprehend, subjective to the viewer. What a day signifies to me is quite different than what it signifies to you. How strange my day might seem, were I able to see it through your eyes.”

“When we are young . . . the days crawl by. I remember summers of my youth that seemed to last for generations. But as we grow older, the months and years flit by like dragonflies, one after another in their dozens. But by the calendar, a day is still a day, is it not? Why is it, do you suppose, that the duration of a span of time should seem so different to us in one circumstance than another?”

The character Ling Xuan in Chris Roberson’s short story,

“The Sky Is Large And The Earth Is Small”.

The Beatles Service: Reprise

So. . .people - namely my wife Nancy and friend Carol - are after me to do The Beatles Service again. For those of you who don't know - and you are without number - I wrote an entire church service using the music of the Beatles and re-written lyrics. We ran it at all four services (Saturday night and three on Sunday) the week after Easter in 2007. Then we added one more service for the confirmation kids.

I had a lot of people tell me how much they liked it - that was nice. But the best compliment I received was from one of our (now) pastors. She said, "I want to tell you that this was the best service I have ever been to at Messiah, and I've been to a lot!" That was nice . . .

So we're looking at a Saturday night "extra" service, as it's sometimes difficult to schedule things within the framework the ELCA provides our churches. And now I'm thinking, "Why do only an hour's worth of Beatles music?" I have a lot of music I'd like to do, and three drama's as well (all musical). We could make it a full two hours! Why not? If you're going to do it, do it right!

We'll see what happens . . .

Eternity

"Do not try to live for ever. You will not succeed."

"What is life but a series of inspired follies? The difficulty is to find them to do. Never lose a chance: it doesn't come every day."

"I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. Life is no 'brief candle' for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations."

George Bernard Shaw

A Tribute to Mediocrity

"Only the mediocre can always be at their best."

As heard on Car Talk on National Public Radio.

Remember Willy Loman?

"For a salesman, there is no rock bottom to the life. He don't put a bolt to a nut, he don't tell you the law or give you medicine. He's a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine."

The character Willy Loman from Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman"

Top Ten Ways to Increase Church Attendance

Tonight's "Top Ten List" comes to us courtesy of my friend Louie da Garbage Man who found this in the Pope’s garbage and sent it to his cousin, who sent it to his uncle, who sent it to his bookie, who sent it to me . . . .

From the home office in Vatican City . . .

Number 10: New rule: No more Broccoli on Fridays during Lent

Number 9. Official language of the church now igPay atinLay

Number 8. Services piped on closed circuit TV to nearest Sports Bar

Number 7. Priests to be addressed as “dad”

Number 6. Bible replaced with “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten”

Number 5. Sins can be redeemed with Betty Crocker coupons

Number 4. No more nuns – bunnies!

Number 3. For each parishioner: Christmas bonus checks!

Number 2. Communion to feature bratwurst and beer

And tonight's number one way to increase church attendance . . .

Next Pope will be Jewish!

Originally written for Pastor Chuck Merkner's 20th anniversary at Messiah Lutheran Church in Wauconda, IL in February, 2006.

On Chicago's Bid for the Olympics

Excerpts from the weekly podcast of NPR commentator Frank Deford:

Poor Chicago, odds-on favorite to host the Games in 2016, is thrown out on its keister by the International Olympic Committee, a cabal that loathes the United States only slightly less than do the Taliban and Roman Polanski.

As for that quadrennial global reality show, Chicago's abject rejection is no one's fault here - not the President's, not Oprah's; for once we can't even blame the Cubs. Rather, the greasy antics of the International Olympic Committee make Chicago's own fabled politics look by comparison like Periclean Athens. The IOC members still hold it against the United States that the Atlanta Olympics were so tacky, and that the Salt Lake City Olympics highlighted the IOC corruption that has so often attended the selection of host cities.

Forget it, America; any US metropolis that may be pondering a bid for the 2012 Olympics would be more wisely advised to petition St. Augustine to become the designated City of God. It would have a much better chance to earn that distinction.

"Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour."

"Lies are a lubricant in the social machine. They ease the friction when two moving parts mesh imperfectly."

From Babel's Fall'n Glory We Fled, Michael Swanwick

A Good Word: Poignant

1 : pungently pervasive
2 a (1) : painfully affecting the feelings : piercing (2) : deeply affecting : touching b : designed to make an impression : cutting
3 a : pleasurably stimulating b : being to the point : apt

synonyms see pungent, moving

---

I have recently gotten onto Facebook and have connected with a friend from grade school (who I had lunch with today) and another from high school. I graduated high school 35 years ago, and have now had various memories brought back into focus from 1974 and earlier. The word poignant - as in both painfully affecting the feelings and deeply affecting/touching - seems to fit the bill as the perfect word to use.

Here am I, from 1972, ready to take on the world! Notice the smile . . .

We Interrupt This Broadcast . . .Breaking News!

But only good news! My son Tim passed his Paramedic exams, and daughter Amy and son-in-law Matt have successfully bid on a house!

Lord, I feel old . . . great!

Words To Live By?

“Any idiot can face a crisis; it is this day-to-day living that wears you out.”

Writer Anton Chekov

“One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being.”

Author May Sarton

“Since it is difficult to join them together, it is safer to be feared than to be loved when one of the two must be lacking.”

“The fact is that a man who wants to act virtuously in every way necessarily comes to grief among so many who are not virtuous.”

Philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli

This Guy Got It Right

"There is no fun in doing nothing when you have nothing to do. … Idleness, like kisses, to be sweet must be stolen."

English author and Dramatist Jerome K. Jerome

How Soon They Grow Up

That's what everyone tells you . . . and it's true. Tim and Amy in this photo, the day after Amy's wedding. The "shutter shades" went with the 80's band that rocked the reception. "XC" on Tim's shirt means "cross country"; the "W" stands for Wauconda. Get the message?

Note the talented beer bottle grip that holds not only the bottle, but also the cap.

Gotta luv em!

You Am What You Is

"Homo sapiens [are] a tiny twig on an improbable branch of a contingent limb on a fortunate tree."

Naturalist and Science Writer Stephen Jay Gould

A Study in Opposites

"No matter how much a woman loved a man, it would still give her a glow to see him commit suicide for her."

American Satirist H. L. Mencken

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of being an ideal Grace.

I love thee to the level of everyday's

Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.

I love thee freely, as men strive for Right.

I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.

I love thee with the passion to put use

In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints—I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.

"How do I love thee? Let me count the ways..."

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

(Public domain. )

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Edna St. Vincent Millay
I saw that name in print today
Some notes about the Sonnet form
Ten syllables; that is the norm
But not for me

A Poem: Foreseeing

Foreseeing

by Sharon Bryan

Middle age refers more
to landscape than to time:
it's as if you'd reached

the top of a hill
and could see all the way
to the end of your life,

so you know without a doubt
that it has an end—
not that it will have,

but that it does have,
if only in outline—
so for the first time

you can see your life whole,
beginning and end not far
from where you stand,

the horizon in the distance—
the view makes you weep,
but it also has the beauty

of symmetry, like the earth
seen from space: you can't help
but admire it from afar,

especially now, while it's simple
to re-enter whenever you choose,
lying down in your life,

waking up to it
just as you always have—
except that the details resonate

by virtue of being contained,
as your own words
coming back to you

define the landscape,
remind you that it won't go on
like this forever.

"Foreseeing" by Sharon Bryan,
from Flying Blind. © Sarabande Books, 1996.

And Now, the Happy News

Weighing in at Weight Watcher's today . . . total lost to date: 20 pounds!

Still workin' out, and still feelin' good!

Since I've been watching my weight (in earnest) I've gone from 292 on my home scale to 265, but I started WW after I had already started losing weight. That accounts for the difference.

So, 8 more pounds to go until I reach my 10% (and initial) target. The rest of the targets go like this: haven't been below 260 for four years or so; haven't been below 250 for probably 16 years (since I worked at Kemper Insurance); haven't been below 240 in even longer. My doctor set my target at 235 (back four years ago or so); he thought that would be about the best I could hope for, without training for marathons. But, while my two bad hips won't let me run, I am working out, so perhaps it's not out of the question to drop below that.

Looking back to April I see that I've taken a while to get to this point, so I won't try to rush the remainder, which I think is the correct thing to do. Guess we'll see, in about a year or so!

I Do Most Of My Work Sitting Down

"I do most of my work sitting down; that's where I shine."
- Humorist Robert Benchley


I do most of my work sitting down, as I
Am a computer programmer. Not
A desirable job, to say the least, rather
I consider myself to be just another

Tradesman, plying his trade like any
Other would do, driving nails, bending
Pipe (of one variety or another), tarring
Roofs of buildings, plowing furrows . . .

A computer is just another tool,
Is it not? Like a hammer, a saw, an anvil
(Though perhaps much more like an anvil
Or an anchor than I’d like it to be.)

Some days, like today, I rather wish I
Was Garrison Keillor, Teller of Tales
Of Lake Wobegon, or Harry Connick, Jr.,
A Singer of Popular Songs . . . but I’m not.

Not that I don’t shine, sometimes;
Sometimes I impress with the speed
At which I pound out code, fingers
Lighting the keyboard on fire, Logic

Firing on all synapses, it’s all there
Before me, like the world laid out at
The feet of Christ himself. For a time
I have it All Together; I am Happy.

Arbeit Macht Frei, nicht? A Self-
Sacrifice in the form of endless labor.
Or should a sign be posted:
Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here.

For this is not the sacrifice Christ
Made for us; the means of salvation.
This is the sacrifice of time away from
Those we love, to be able to support

Those we love. And realizing that, it
Seems evident and obvious that
I cannot really be Happy, even in
The minor successes of working.

But I am often Happy sitting down
Wife next to me on the sofa, watching
Dancing with the Stars, rubbing her
Feet, and, quietly, loving her.


© 2007 Mark Dopita

Today's Weight Watchers . . . Hooray!

Yes, the results are in. My Weight Watchers weigh-in this morning showed me down a full four pounds! At home, where I weigh myself each day, I dropped below 270 yesterday (269.4). So, excellent progress is being made! Is it possible that I could soon approach the 260 mark? I'll give it six to eight weeks . . .

It's Election Night!

Here in Island Lake and Wauconda. I don't have any results yet, but can comment on one thing: the advisory referendum to build the Illinois Route 53 extension through Lake County appears to be passing about three to one. Perhaps this means that "53" will be built, after all. I had thought it was dead-and-forgotten until I saw signs for the referendum during the past six weeks or so.

I'll comment on some of the results as they become available . . .

And I only have a couple of comments: I'm happy with our choice of mayor and trustees, generally. My advice to them would be to make sure we have good police and fire protection; make sure the garbage is picked up; make sure we have a clean water and sewer systems; continue to provide some pre-school and park board programs. If you do so, you'll be re-elected.

Route 53 was approved (as I noted above) but there are really no plans yet in place to build it. It doesn't mean too much to me, except that its future path crosses my route to work.

Participation was pitiful - 16% in Lake County; probably no better in McHenry county. I, personally, have voted in every election since I was old enough to vote. I wish everyone did.

I Fell Off the Plateau!

Okay, I guess I wrote yesterday's post a day early. This morning, when I stepped on WII Fit, I found I had lost 2 pounds! That's the breakthrough I've been waiting for. If I drop just over two more I'll be down below 270 for the first time in four years or so. And when I'm down below 270 it's on to 260!

To be perfectly honest, the lowest I've been for years was my low point four years ago - 258. Since I switched jobs - I've been at my current job for 16 years - I haven't been below 250. My long-term goal for this year (and on through the future) is to get down to 235. I haven't been there for 20 years, or so.

Weight Watchers sets intermediate goals of 5% and 10%. My 5% goal is 14 pounds; I may get there this week when I weight in. The 20% goal gets me down to 260, right near my "historic low".

I can only pray that I don't lose focus; keep workin' out and keep eatin' smart.

Plateau . . . 'd (A Weight Watchers Word)

For the last ten days or so I've stayed in a one-pound weight range. No real progress, though the Weight Watcher's scale did show me down .6 pounds from the previous week. This morning, though, no change at all from yesterday. Could this be a sign of good things to come?

I reviewed my Weight Watcher's log, and have found that while I've lost weight every week except one, I lose much more every other week. On the even weeks I'm down a total of 3 pounds, while on the odd weeks I've lost a total of 9 pounds. Seems to be a pattern - one I hope repeats itself this coming week!

Oh, and for you Weight Watcher purists, I realize that a plateau isn't considered to be in place unless your average weight loss is .5 pounds per week or less (since joining the program) and your weight hasn't changed for several weeks. So I guess this is a "mini-plateau".

Workin' Out . . . Just in Case You Were Wonderin'

So here's the good news:

Fifteen pounds lost since the beginning of the year; twenty from my last-Autumn "high point". Inches lost: 14 1/2, 1 1/2 in the waist alone. (I've been able to pull my belt in two notches.) Body fat: down 3%.

Next measurement: 6 weeks or so.

Poetry: My Lover Asks Me

My lover asks me:
"What is the difference between me and the sky?"
The difference, my love,
Is that when you laugh,
I forget about the sky.

Nizar Qabbani

Workin' Out, But Gettin' Olde

Okay, so I'm working out for the first time ever, really. It's not quite the end of my first month, and I'm already feeling better and seeing a difference. But . . . I've found that I'm not really very flexible any more.

I'm using a personal trainer to help me get started with a workout regimen. She was stretching me out at the end of my first workout and found that she couldn't stretch out my hips. She suggested Yoga; I went to the doctor. (I have been rather stiff for a while.) I was sent from my Internist to a Othopedist. X-rays were taken, and I met with the doc.

Guess what? I have bone growth around the hip socket - where no bone growth should be - so I'm not flexible for good reason. I'm basically locked from pointing my toes inward, rolling my hips in, that is. Want to see what's wrong? Stand up and point your toes in toward each other as far as you can (but don't hurt yourself). How far can I point my toes in? Not at all . . .

Aging . . . bah! Youth is wasted on the young!

Removed Books, Added Blogs

Not sure this is really important, but there ya go! I hadn't been keeping "Books" up to date, and with Blogs I don't have to!

On to Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina . . .

. . .for this week's training class. Traffic to the airport was clogged-up a couple of times, while the flight was good. I'm only five miles from the Raleigh-Durham airport, so there wasn't much to getting to the hotel. I spent part of the day in Cary, NC, browsing around through a couple of shops. Dinner was at Cracker Barrel, while I finished the third book in the series by Gregory Maguire on which the musical Wicked is based - A Lion Among Men. (The other books are Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West and Son of a Witch.)

Tomorrow starts the training class . . . hope it's "good"!

High School Pranks

We were talking at dinner tonight, and the subject of pranks came up (somehow, I don't remember exactly why). Pranks and high school seem to go together well. Here are a couple:

That Locker Had Balls!

When my son Andy was in school, he and some friends decided to pull one that is still probably remembered even today. (My friend Larry would be proud; see below.) The guys went to a local driving range, loaded up with about 200 purloined golf balls and got into the high school (somehow; again, details are a little fuzzy here).

One of the guys held open the top corner of the locker while the others poured in the range balls . . . all of them. At the beginning of the day, with the halls packed with students, the owner of that locker opened the door, and, well it was off-to-the-races to try to pick up all the golf balls! I understand it was quite a sight!

The Cookie Stealer Gets His

Back in the 70's, at my high school, a bunch of us had fourth-hour gym class. Fourth hour was also the first of three lunch hours, so we used to detour through the cafeteria and get a large, 5-cent sugar cookie to eat on the way to class.

The trouble with that was that the shop classes lined the hall on the way to the locker room, and the shop teachers used to stand outside their classes, looking for students eating on their way to their next class. If they saw you with something, they'd take it from you and send you on their way. I lost a couple of cookies like that.

My friend Larry used to grab his sandwich from his locker and eat it as he walked to gym class. He got tired of having his sandwich taken, so he decided to get even. One morning, he made a "special" sandwich - bologna on white with very generous amounts of ketchup layered on both sides of the meat.

Larry grabbed his sandwich that morning and pretended to eat it on the way to class. The "Cookie Stealer" - I can't remember the teacher's name - seeing Larry's sandwich, demanded that Larry give it to him. So Larry pressed the sandwich into the teacher's hand and gave it a good squeeze, forcing out a river of ketchup. We left the instructor looking down at his hand and the soggy, sodden, ketchup-y mess Larry had given him. And what could he do? He demanded the sandwich, and Larry complied!

This is Winter 2008-2009

We have had quite a Winter . . . to date. Lots of snow, cold (with a capital "K", as my father would say), heavy rain (which washed the first substantial snowfall away) . . . But here it is 17 Jan 2009, and I really have yet to be cold.

I don't know why I don't get cold. Perhaps it's because I walk around barefoot a lot of times, and don't bother putting on shoes even to go outside in the garage. And even though some days are really cold - like last Thursday - they're still beautiful. We had clear blue skies, a full sun and just a slight breeze. When I walked in from working out at lunch time, I took a few very deep breaths of the cold air, and it felt great!

The sun makes all of the difference in the world, I think. It certainly makes me feel good about the days. I can't imagine what it would be like if it was overcast all the time as it is rumored to be in, say Seattle. (Sorry, Seattle, if this is un-true.)

Another thing - once it's stayed below zero for the daily high, it seems mighty warm when it gets back into the 20's. We went from -20 as the low Thursday night/Friday morning to a high in the 20's today - a 40+ degree swing. And it really felt warm this afternoon.

We'll see what happens in the coming few weeks, but so far this Winter, so good!

A Little Humor

I was going with this girl in college, but we decided we couldn't get married because of religious differences. She was an atheist and I was an agnostic, and we couldn't agree which religion NOT to bring the children up in.


My buddy broke up with his girl one time for religious differences, too. She thought she was god, and he didn't.


When a woman dies and goes to Heaven, she's called an angel.

When several women die and go to Heaven, they're called an angel choir.

If all of the women on Earth were to die and go to Heaven, we'd call it peace on Earth.


Thanks to Woody Allen and some un-named guy I met in Milwaukee last weekend. The latter sat down by me while I was waiting for my wife and her friend to return from the necessary and the last joke is the only thing he said to me.