Friday, September 2, 2016

Four for Fridays!

I just can not believe how fast the weeks just seem to be going lately. My daughter is going back to school this weekend and then my son is getting married this month it is just coming to fast for me. Here are your questions.

1) Do you have any plans for the Holiday Weekend?

2) For Labor Day Weekend have you ever went on a vacation when you were younger?

3) Do you think the schools should start two days before a three day weekend?

4) Do you think all employers should close for the Holiday Weekend?

Have a safe and fun Holiday Weekend!

Open Blog - Friday


Everything tastes better on Friday.

Wednesday, August 31, 2016

The damage done


Fender is bent.  Hood is sprung.  Shit.

Dear Madame Zoltar

Hello, my Kings and Queens!  How are you?  We received some much needed rain.  But we still could use some more.  So get out there and do your rain dance.  If anyone asks what you're doing, ask 'em to join you.  Before long, you might get a few hundred to do their rain dance.  That's no guarantee it'll rain, but it sure would be fun!  Maybe make it an annual event in every late August or early September.  Unfortunately, neither Real Racine nor the Downtown Racine Corporation have given my idea their blessing, so it'll go nowhere.  Maybe if we slip a few dollars to lying John . . .

I read below where Mr. OrbsCorbs talked about being in an accident today.  I called him immediately and asked what had happened.  He said he was at the corner of Graceland Blvd. and Hwy. 31, facing the west, attempting to get across the roadway to head south.  He looked to the left and there was some traffic way off and he looked to the right and there was nothing.  He pulled out to make his turn and he hit the right rear of a car speeding north on Hwy. 31.  He was amazed there was a car there.  There wasn't a second ago.  Mr. OrbsCorbs sounded a little depressed.  Now he has a $100 ticket and the right front headlight assembly of his truck is destroyed.  (That poor man.  Nothing but bad seems to happen to him.)  I asked again if he was OK, and he said yes.  I told him to call me with any problems he might have.

I'm proud that the JT Irregulars have received permission to reproduce Mr. Art Kumbalek's column, Art For Art's Sake, from the Shepherd Express.  Mr. Kumbalek has been writing the column for over 30 years.  I hope he has another 30.  He's definitely a blue collar, south side Milwaukee man.  (I think.)  Welcome, Mr. Kumbalek, to the JT Irregulars.  We look forward to a long relationship.        

The battle of teaching Junior how to drive continues with SeƱor Zanza at the helm, mostly.  They're using my car.  I can't even think of the times Junior has driven my car.  I don't want to even hear about it unless I need to call my insurance agent.  When and if Junior gets his license, he's not driving my car around.  He'll have to get his own, which means work to generate money.  Ha-ha, that'll be the day.   He's growing up.  The responsibilities increase.  Oh yes, and he'll have to pay for his own auto insurance, which will be high just because he's a young, male driver.  I have Safeco. but I don't know what will be the best for him.

Hey, how about that arena idea?  I wonder how many will receive how much as this farce moves along?  The Chicago Tribune thinks we've got it made: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1987-07-08/news/8702190931_1_marina-project-boat-slips-lakefront-redevelopment  So what the heck, with so much money coming in, we might as well build the arena/hotel.  Maybe there will be a few extra bucks to replace some streetlights.  Ha-ha!  We can dream, can't we?

Thank you all for coming here to read my blog.  I so love the attention.  Blog readers are some of my best friends.

How much will the repairs to Mr. OrbsCorbs' truck be?  Ask madamezoltar@jtirregulars.com

It's supposed to be cool for the next few days, but then it will warm up again.  Enjoy the waning days of summer.  

Open Blog - Wednesday


I agree.

Tuesday, August 30, 2016

"Caveat Selector"

From Shepherd Express:

By Art Kumbalek 3 hours ago


I’m Art Kumbalek and man oh manischewitz what a world, ain’a? So listen, as America’s essayist it now and again occurs to me the possibility exists that there could be unwary or non-focking-informed first-time readers who may not know what they’re getting themselves into when they peruse this page; so here, smack-dab in the middle of my gala 30th year whipping out essays for this Shepherd newspaper, I figure it’s time again to play ball and bean you my “product warning,” “consumer caution,” “Hit the Dirt!” citation.

Space prevents me from sounding the alarm every week; so I would behoove you to either memorize the following or keep this page handy so that you can refer to it week upon week before digesting my latest dispatch, what the fock.

Warning: The views, news and opinions expressed in any one of my essays are strictly mine and they ought to be yours, too. And because they might not be yours, too, is the reason I churn out these goddamn essays in the first focking place ’cause I tell you, if everybody and his brother thought and felt about things the same way I did, I’d find regular life to be a much more many-splendored thing than I currently do; and so there’d be no need for me to write an essay anymore and no need for you to read them and get bent all out of shape. It’s all so simple.

And don’t forget you can sometimes come away with some good old-fashioned useful information as a reward for slogging through the rest of what you might feel is bald-faced blather. For example, how ’bout right now I give you a diet tip I found in a little story about a dangerous food to avoid, OK?

So this dietitian was gasbagging a large audience the other day to the tune of “The material we put into our stomachs is enough to have killed most of us sitting here years ago. Red meat is awful. Soft drinks erode your stomach lining. Chinese food is loaded with MSG. Vegetables can be disastrous to some. And none of us realize the long-term harm caused by the germs in our drinking water. But there is one thing that is the most dangerous of all, and we all have eaten or will eat it. Can anyone here tell me what food it is that causes the most grief and suffering for years after eating it?”

Some old guy in the back row stood up and said, “Yeah, wedding cake.”

Warning: This essay will contain plenty of crude as well as a smattering of purportedly foul language that some would swear doesn’t have a place in so-called “good writing,” which leads directly to the next warning. (Sorry about the two “fockings,” one “fock” and one “goddamn” that already got focking slipped in above before you got to this warning.)

Warning: This essay has abso-focking-lutely nothing to do with “good” writing. Hey, this is a newspaper, not Oprah’s Book Club, for christ sakes. Now about this supposed need to segregate your foul language from your good writing: This was not hardly always some kind of standard of choice on the part of writers who today are known as “good” who wrote books yesterday that today are known as “good.” Hell, no.

Nay, a segregated and separated state of fair and foul was for two reasons: one, ’cause of the heavy-duty censorship going around like chicken pox in the olden days; and two, because people got the short-stick on freedom of expression, they were long on reading ’tweenst the lines.

In fact, I’ve delved into some hardcore investigation and boned up on this very topic whatever-it-is, and wouldn’t you gast your flabber to know that Hermie Melville’s original title to the whale book was Moby Focking Dick until some pisspot wrote a prissy letter to his publisher? Same damn thing happened to the Russian guy Dostoyevsky (The Brothers Kara Focking Mazov), and it happened more recently to Papa “Watch Where You’re Aiming That Thing” Hemingway (For Whom the Focking Bell Tolls). Jeez louise, they even made one guy change his own name, from Fockner to Faulkner.

The last instance of this practice occurring that I know of came in 1960 with Harper Lee’s To Kill a Fockingbird just so it could win one of those Pulitzer Prizes. She was so upset with the forced title change to “Mockingbird” that she never wanted to publish another book the rest of her life, I kid you not.

Warning: Do not, I repeat, do not even think of operating any kind of machine while reading this essay, with the exception of a cigarette lighter or cocktail blender.

Supplement Fact: It’s my job to speak the unspeakable, think the unthinkable, make up the unmakeable and ledge the illegible, not yours, ’cause I’m Art Kumbalek and I told you so.

Read more: http://shepherdexpress.com/article-28353-caveat-selector.html

Open Blog - Tuesday


Have a great day.

Sunday, August 28, 2016

"DNA sequencing saves young Racine girl"

From JSOnline:

, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 9:56 p.m. CDT August 27, 2016

"Alan Mayer stared at a wall in the intensive care unit at Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin, worrying as his patient, 15-month-old Addyson Valley, grew dangerously ill.

"The pediatric gastroenterologist had placed her on the highest doses of calcium and phosphate a patient can receive, yet her levels remained desperately low. The heart depends on calcium to beat properly, and the infant’s deficiency threatened to send her into cardiac arrest.

"Also, Addyson’s gut was leaking protein, impairing the function of her intestines and raising fears that a buildup of fluid outside the vessels could turn her body into a boggy swamp. She could, in essence, drown in her own body fluid.

"She was bloated. She was lethargic. She was dying."

"Addyson had been sick all of her short life, projectile vomiting most food, lagging severely on the growth charts, going through one infant formula after another, and one medical test after another. No one knew what was making the Racine girl sick. And since arriving in intensive care, she had grown steadily worse.

"'We’re doing something to make her sicker,' the doctor told himself, noting that all they’d done was to feed her formula.

"'Let’s stop feeding her,' Mayer told the medical staff. As he said it, he realized he’d been in this situation before.

"'It’s the Nic story again.'"

Read more: http://www.jsonline.com/story/news/health/2016/08/27/dna-sequencing-saves-young-racine-girl/89412240/