Today’s fun fact to know and tell: Michigan state legislators are about to take an 18-day break, earmarked for deer hunting. Someone once told me that opening day of gun season is a school holiday in West Virginia; I don’t doubt it.
But today isn’t opening day of anything but the polls. I’m alerting the media there will be a photo opportunity to capture me voting later this morning. Not much on the ballot here — a couple of school-board seats, and a power grab by the mayor of Grosse Pointe Woods to take full control of city council. He already has a 4-3 majority, but that’s not enough, I guess. I’m voting against his endorsed candidates; if the last seven years have taught us anything, it’s that dissent is good. Also, we need some oxygen in our commercial district and a view to the future that’s wider than that of a 70-year-old retiree.
Note: The above paragraph contains more information about the council race than you could read in the local weekly, which told me a lot about each candidate’s degrees but nothing about the power split.
OK, then. This will be brief. I’m on another of my semi-annual Get Your Shit Together binges, which requires me to spend less time online and makes my life very boring. Not only to you, but to me — yesterday I finished my to-do list and, in the grips of a near-spasmodic desire to get the hell out of my house, took a drive into Detroit. Always, always a treat. I regret I forgot my camera, because, as usual, the city served up a heapin’ helpin’ of ugly-lovely treats. My two new favorite business signs: LIQUOR ISLAND and, at an exterminator’s, ROACH KILLER. If I lived in Detroit, I would so totally buy my booze at Liquor Island, you’d probably never see me anywhere else.
The drive was so entrancing I pretty much forgot the excuse for my errand — to hit some junk furniture stores in search of another refinishing project. Craigslist has been no help, as it seems the entire industry has been taken over by particleboard. Doesn’t anyone discard nice oak pieces that have been painted for decades? Is everyone trying to get rich on eBay? Curse them all.
OK, the bloggage:
As bad as local TV news gets here, it can always get worse: In Fort Wayne, they asked two mediums to predict the mayor’s race. If nothing else, this was as pretty a package you can get on a redefinition of “it’s all bullshit:”
Both mediums use meditation to peer into the future, but they both said their visions are just a peek into what might be.
“I only see what’s destined at one moment in time. There is still free will, free choice to off set what is destined,” said Peters.
“Nothing is written in stone,” explained Smith.
Off to vote! Alert the media!
Danny said on November 6, 2007 at 10:01 am
Just tell them not to shoot an albino deer. From the story:
On this season’s deer opener, a Minnesota woman shot one of the rarest kinds around; an albino deer. Mary Rakotz of Avon got the 6-point buck on Saturday in Mille Lacs County.
She said it was thrilling to see the rare animal, but 100 times more exciting to be able to actually take it home.
Well, Mary-Jo Gunrack. Good for you. What rare animal should we kill and mutilate next for your enjoyment? I bet she has a mullet.
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Connie said on November 6, 2007 at 10:08 am
From my Michigan school day memories…. I would say the boys were out of school for both the first day of deer season and the first day of pheasant season.
And I took a certain amount of flak at my 9/30 reception for having an open bar when the guys had to hit the road early for the first day of bow season. Huh?
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Joe K said on November 6, 2007 at 10:14 am
Danny,
They want albino deer shot.
The dnr dosn’t want the bad gene’s passed along to healthy deer. Although they look unique they are bad for the deer population as a whole.
Joe K
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Connie said on November 6, 2007 at 10:19 am
I see I am back on comment moderation, having lost all my cookies in my recent upgrade. That’s OK. Until I figured out that I had to sign in again WordPress threw out at least two comments that I decided not to bother repeating.
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Jeff said on November 6, 2007 at 10:25 am
Buck Fever Day isn’t “officially” a day off school, but attendance plunges by 40% on that Monday, and there aren’t many students in the building, either. I once had to reach an administrator on Buck Fever Day to get a letter of agreement for a grant, and found the most junior semi-principal was about all that was around *in the county*, and she was a she (not that quite a few ladies were out blasting away).
Wise West Virginians stay off the interstates on Opening Day, too, fearing the ricochets of the not-too-far-off-the-beaten-path Pennsylvanians (or so was said around Morgantown and along the Monongahela River).
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Kim said on November 6, 2007 at 11:00 am
Ack. Local news just kills me. Is it any wonder our communities (let’s leave the country out of it for the moment) are run by a bunch of morons? Nobody takes it seriously.
I’m not a serious person by nature (to wit: at soccer game #2 last night some opposing team player’s cell was going off constantly. So after threatening to answer it for 40 minutes I finally did, all breathy and come-hithery, and feeling, yes, a little like that middle school teacher who just took her student for a little r&r in Mexico.) But come on. It all starts at home, so get off your tails and vote. No excuses.
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Jen said on November 6, 2007 at 12:26 pm
I saw the story about the mediums predicting the mayoral race in Fort Wayne, and I was appalled that someone OK’d it. Even worse, it was shown 5 minutes into the newscast! Maybe it would have been OK if it was a little funny tag at the end of the newscast, but to stick where hard news was supposed to be…it was just bad.
Great website, by the way! My dad (Joe K) told me it was a good blog, and he was right. I’ve been lurking for a while…perhaps I’ll start commenting.
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brian stouder said on November 6, 2007 at 3:19 pm
Jen – indeed, this place is a pleasant oasis.
Say – leaving aside What the Dead Know, there is What We Learn from the Dying – a surprisingly good essay –
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21643646/
an excerpt
My first day of medical school was a series of inspirational talks. The tone, set by the anesthesiologist who led off, was lighthearted. His subject was “Everything you will ever need to know about medicine.” This turned out to be just three things, which he had us all recite: Air goes in and out. Blood goes round and round. Oxygen is good. Just keep these in mind, he said, and you’ll be okay.
By the end of the day, we were as blank as the huge whiteboards at the front of the room. Within the next 24 hours, these would start filling up with diagrams of cell-transport mechanisms, cartoons of developing embryos, maps of the brachial plexus. But on that first day, the lectures were so inconsequential that only one speaker bothered to write anything down. This was a pathologist who also wanted to reduce medicine to its essentials. He scrawled a single word on the board: DEATH.
Just avoid this one thing, he said, and we’d be okay.
The word stayed up there on the whiteboard the rest of the day. I waited for someone to notice and wipe it away, but no one did. It was gone the next morning, replaced by the Krebs cycle, that happy intracellular Rube Goldberg mechanism that keeps us all alive, whether you can diagram it from memory or not, thank God.
Whoever scribbled the Krebs cycle in place of that single stark word gave us our real orientation to medicine. Despite death’s modest appearance that first day, what we were really learning wasn’t “Don’t Fear the Reaper” so much as “Don’t See the Reaper.”
Made me think of our resident healthcare provider people, Mary and Marcia
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Danny said on November 6, 2007 at 4:42 pm
And Blue Öyster Cult.
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alex said on November 6, 2007 at 4:50 pm
When I was a kid, I must confess, I thought it was “Don’t fear the reefer.” And despite having been shamed for it, I heeded the advice just the same.
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Danny said on November 6, 2007 at 4:58 pm
I still get lyrics wrong. It’s a constant source of amusement around my house. Just the other week, my wife busted me on Abba’s Take a Chance on Me. I was singing “Olie Oxen Free” instead of “Honey, I’m still free.”
…sigh.
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alex said on November 6, 2007 at 6:07 pm
As for the deadpan spot on the local news with mediums calling the mayoral race, it’s no more wacked-out than the race itself. There are Kelty supporters who thoroughly believe his victory is preordained by God and won’t they be surprised.
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nancy said on November 6, 2007 at 6:19 pm
Danny, sounds like you need to become acquainted with the concept of mondegreens.
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LA mary said on November 6, 2007 at 6:51 pm
I love the Bee Gees song, Bald Headed Woman. Also that Neil Diamond song about “She’s got the wasted movement…”
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del said on November 6, 2007 at 8:35 pm
Or AC DC’s “Dirty Deeds, Dumb Don’t Cheat!”
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Adrianne said on November 6, 2007 at 8:43 pm
No, it’s “Dirty Deeds Done with Sheep!”
And the ever-popular Jimi Hendrix riff: “‘Scuse me, while I kiss this guy!”
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Danny said on November 6, 2007 at 10:17 pm
And the ever-popular Jimi Hendrix riff: “‘Scuse me, while I kiss this guy!”
kissthisguy.com is a good site for misheard lyrics. People fill out answers to questions like how old they were when they found out they were singing the wrong lyric, how they found out and if they are taking any interesting medications.
My first discovery was with Van Halen’s song Jump. I thought it was “Jump, Maxwell, jump” not “Jump, might as well jump.” My sister-in-law and wife were crying they were laughing so hard.
And especially after I calmly explained that I figured it could have been the same Maxwell from the Beatles’ song Maxwell’s Silver Hammer and that I just thought that Maxwell guy got around. The icing on the cake was when I told them I probably sang it incorrectly at the top of my lungs at a VH concert as a teenager.
Ugh. Sometimes I feel like Charlie Brown in a Lucy World.
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Joe K said on November 6, 2007 at 10:19 pm
The girl with colitas goes by.
Joe K
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alex said on November 6, 2007 at 10:25 pm
Lucy in Disguise with Diamonds! I knew that had to be it, Joe!
Then there was that Brazilian song from the ’60s. “The girl with emphysema goes walking…”
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Kirk said on November 6, 2007 at 10:59 pm
Re: Maxwell jump. You and me both, Danny.
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John C said on November 7, 2007 at 6:07 am
I had a college roomie who sang “Too much pressure, in the material world” to the Police song “Spirits in the Material World” I know, I know, they sound nothing alike. It’s bizarre. But it still runs through my head whenever I hear that song.
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Sue said on November 7, 2007 at 11:26 am
Back to the deer season stories: I heard today that they are now marketing pink guns, you know, for the ladyfolk. Also, I would like to share with you a true story about the hunting culture in Wisconsin: I went into a hobby store looking for some nerf-type slingshots to use as an extra incentive in a question-and-answer game for my Sunday Schoolers. (If they answered a question correctly, they not only got a point but got to take two shots at a box target for extra points. Amazingly inspiring for 8-year-old boys.) When I explained what I was looking for to the salesperson, he suggested another game… why not make a cut out ark, and a bunch of cut out animals, then the kids could take turns shooting the animals as they were coming off the ark. He was so sincere and trying so hard to help I could not laugh at him. I love Wisconsin.
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Danny said on November 7, 2007 at 11:44 am
Sue, that is priceless.
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