Memnison Journal

Take a look at the gravestone to the right; that’s from one of my family members; translated from the German, it reads “Born in the year 1736: Heinrich Rittenhouse…” and trails off into the grass. Wikipedia’s entry on the Mennonite church / movement notes: Persecution and the search for employment forced Mennonites out of the [...]

Is the controversy over building a mosque near ground zero a grand distraction or a grand opportunity? Or is it, once again, grandiose demagoguery? It has been said, “Nero fiddled while Rome burned.” Are we not overly preoccupied with this controversy, now being used in various ways by grandstanding politicians? It looks to me like [...]

University of Dayton basketball playing for the NIT championship, 7 pm.  Be there.  Aloha!

In Northern Ireland (and I’m sure my readers will correct me), the political system is way unrelated to the rest of UK politics – its own microcosm. You have a multiple divide in politics there – ethnic, religious, class, minority/majority issues, republican versus monarchist, and who smote who first and last. When you get these [...]

The local Sioux Falls paper notes that the voting percentage in the most recent school board election was 3.55% in an editorial asking for voting to be made easier by eliminating precinct voting in favor of at-large polling places scattered around the city. Personally, I think that’s more likely to confuse the heck out of [...]

A new book on the 2008 presidential season with lots of behind the scenes goodies has a lengthy excerpt bit on the New York magazine size, where John and Elizabeth Edwards get seriously toasted: entitled “Saint Elizabeth and the Ego Monster” if that gives you a heads-up.  It’s pretty brutal. The line that kept coming [...]

“Two Gentlemen of Lebowski” – a Shakespearian version of THE BIG LEBOWSKI, just as odd.   It talks about Johnsons and marmots, so it can’t be all bad. [Alarums. Enter OLIVER and the two NIHILISTS, bearing a marmot] Forsooth! This be a place Of residence, and much a private place.— O excellent marmot! WALTER Nihilists! I [...]

Four ten year old girls make enough noise to wake the living and unliving dead.  In the meantime, i’m hiding in my office in the basement and listening to the rumbling of elephants across my ceiling from afar.

As some of you may have sussed out, since November of 2007, I’ve been working 99% of the time out of my basement office…with a huge long line of doctor’s excuses, bases on either my non-healing foot wound, or my weak response to infections casing raging problems on and off.  The office finally said that [...]

Guy is away, and his friends troupe in and wrap his entire apartment for Christmas.  Including stuff in the freezer, towels on the rack, you name it. (video)

Michael Jackson commissioned fantasy art about himself that defies description; one of the pieces resembles a Communist Chinese propaganda poster with Comrade Michael leading the oppressed children of the world…just check out the pieces and imagine how much he spent on this stuff. I’m thinking of a Botticelli-like painting like that first one with Bernie [...]

Screwups at Arlington National Cemetery have misplaced cremated ashes re-buried as ‘unknown soldier’ because they scooped out the urn when digging a hole at a gravesite. dumped the dirt in their landfill, and only later found out the dirt contained an urn with ashes….

I’m really tired of the rumbledy-toss of big banks buying small fry – and then going under due to hilarity at the home office. We use two banks and a credit union; the latter is WAY out of state, and I’d transfer over to that except that we’d never have a local bank. Bank #1 [...]

Nurrrrrrrrr.

Just the thing for your Thanksgiving feast: White Castle Hamburger stuffing to go with your turkey.  Mange! Vite, vite! Yes, I’d use it for fun if we were having a weird-food-party this New Years Eve.  Which, unfortunately, we won’t.  (Mere and I like White Castle; its one of the odd tastes that I got from [...]