How truly bizarre – TIME Magazine’s staff writer John Cloud turns in this article In Defense of Applebee’s. In particular, my Applebee’s, the one in Jamestown, over and against the more local establishments. It clearly goes against his inclinations, but after several hit-or-miss dining experiences (“My meal was prepared with indifference. My bison sirloin was… Continue Reading
Monthly Archives: July 2006
πολύτιμος μαργαρίτης εἶ…
Πάλιν ὁμοία ἐστὶν ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν ἀνθρώπῳ ἐμπόρῳ ζητοῦντι καλοὺς μαργαρίτας·εὑρὼν δὲ ἕνα πολύτιμον μαργαρίτην ἀπελθὼν πέπρακεν πάντα ὅσα εἶχεν καὶ ἠγόρασεν αὐτόν. – Jesus… Continue Reading
A little political clarity
I’ve often found it hard to place myself on the traditional political “line”: On some issues, I definitely lean “left” (meaning, in common usage, “liberal”). Those tend to be social and economic issues, particularly those regarding civil liberties. On the other hand, I’m fairly traditional in my approach to morality and ethics, and more “conservative”… Continue Reading
Podcast updates
Two new semons posted to the podcast. Find out what canoes, brides, and sanctuaries have in common…… Continue Reading
Your morning dose of perspective
We all know that there are lots of people on this earth. But most of us have only a handful of close friends. We’ve got a social circle of dozens. Our acquaintances number in the hundreds. Our towns, for the most part, can be measured in the thousands, if not the hundreds. Few of us… Continue Reading
For the passive-aggressive chef in all of us
Why confront someone with your frustrations directly, when you can nurse your grudge and stab them in the back repeatedly? That’s the premise behind good ol’ Midwestern passive aggression. Now you can let both your hostilities and your pot roast simmer while you carve something (or someone?) up, using the Voodoo Knife Set! One hears… Continue Reading
Women like me…
Alas for me, in this context, “like” is a preposition and not a transitive verb. See, I got a letter from Marie Claire magazine recently. Seems a magazine I’d gotten a free subscription to went belly up at the turn of the year, and their subscribers were being offered to receive Marie Claire for the… Continue Reading
Want to be scared?
If you’re in the mood for a horror story in the making, spend some time considering this article in Maclean’s, compliments of Mike. David Walker, comptroller general of the United States, and numerous other financial experts warn, Cassandra-like, of an impending economic crisis in the US of unthinkable proportion: A trillion is a hard number… Continue Reading
Where the red flag flies
With temps expected to hit 105 or so this afternoon (and already rising above 80), the Litchville area has been swallowed up into the Red Flag alert I mentioned yesterday. The record-breaking heat and the typical North Dakota gustiness, along with our crackling-dry grass, makes this a perfect environment for “explosive fire growth potential,” to… Continue Reading
Star Wars ASCIImation
When I first discovered the Internet, it was strictly a text-only affair. Although some hearty souls were trading images through clever tricks like binhexing, most of us were limited in our online expression to what we could depict in QWERTY. Or rather, in ASCII – the designation for the standard set of text characters. But… Continue Reading