Tractors On Parade (And Trucks Too)

On Friday during the lunch hour, folks down on Library Mall were treated to the spectacle of some vintage International Harvester trucks and tractors.





They had been assembled from far and wide for the 2009 Red Power Round Up which was held at the Alliant Energy Center. RPRU is a gathering of International Harvester collectors who show off their refurbished tractors, trucks, and, presumably, whatever else has an IH logo on it.

Here are some trucks from the 1940s:





And check out this baby:



Above is a 1948 Model KB-2 Woody station wagon. All of the woodwork is original. The interior was gorgeous.







And here are a couple of the many tractors.





This last one is a 1941 Farmall MD. A couple owned it and the wife told me that it was found in a field up north. The "D" in the model name refers to the fact that it has a diesel instead of a gas engine.

Before long, the collectors headed back.





The reason why the IH folks put their vehicles on display in Library Mall was that the Wisconsin Historical Society is home to the archives of Cyrus McCormick and International Harvester.

McCormick patented a reaper in 1834 and went into the farm implement business. Thirteen years later he left Virginia for Chicago where he founded the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company which became the largest such company in the country by 1858. It merged with the Deering Harvester Company in 1902 and the conglomerate was christened International Harvester.

In addition to this year being the 200th anniversary of the births of Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin, it is also the bicentennial of McCormick's birth. The WHS archives on State Street has relevant some items on display in its halls. When you're done looking at those, you can look up how IH determined what color their tractors should be in 1950 and amaze your friends with your arcane knowledge.

Addendum: Speaking of arcane knowledge, I was wondering how McCormick's archives ended up at the WHS instead of Chicago so I asked. Here's what archivist Pete Shrake told me:

In 1919, the family-supported McCormick Historical Association, which included the original core of the archival collection, had outgrown its quarters in the McCormick mansion at 675 Rush Street in Chicago. It was then moved to the large stone carriage house at the rear of the property, where extensive remodeling provided a library, museum, offices, and facilities for research. When the land and buildings were sold in an estate settlement in 1949, the holdings were placed in storage until 1951, at which time Anita McCormick Blaine, after having had her representatives investigate as many as thirty repositories, presented the complete collection to the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. Here, at this Midwestern location, Mrs. Blaine concluded that the outstanding American history library of the Society, and the reputation of the University of Wisconsin as a liberal arts and agricultural institution, would assure maximum use of the Collection by researchers.

The McCormick Collection of 1951 was composed of the papers of Cyrus Hall McCormick; domestic and foreign correspondence and business papers of the various McCormick companies in Chicago prior to 1902; and a number of collateral collections relating to agriculture and particularly to McCormick’s native state of Virginia, including the papers of James D. Davidson and James McDowell of Rockbridge County, Virginia. However, since the arrival of the original Collection at the Society, it has been augmented greatly by the addition of other papers, many of them paralleling the inventor's manuscripts but most of them widening the fields of interest and sources for research. The papers of Nettie Fowler McCormick, the inventor's widow, were presented to the Society in 1953 and 1956 by the Nettie Fowler McCormick Biographical Association, along with the papers of her daughter, Mary Virginia McCormick. Shortly thereafter correspondence and reports relating to her son, Stanley R. McCormick, were received; and in 1958 the papers of another son, Harold F. McCormick, were presented by Harold's son, Fowler McCormick. In 1958 also, most of the papers of Anita McCormick Blaine were presented by Mrs. Blaine's granddaughter, Anne (Nancy) Blaine Harrison, and were completed with additions sent by Mrs. Harrison in 1971. In 1960, the papers of Cyrus H. McCormick, Jr., including much material on the McCormick companies and the International Harvester Company, were given by his son, Gordon; and additions were received from Gordon McCormick's estate in 1968.

In 1959 the International Harvester Company shipped several truckloads of farm implements and models to Stonefield, the Society's farm and craft museum at Cassville; and when the old McCormick Works at Chicago was closed, nineteen tons of financial ledgers were sent to the Society, all relating to the McCormick companies, other parent companies of the International Harvester Company, and International Harvester itself. Following the death in 1955 of the coordinator of the McCormick Collection, Herbert A. Kellar, his papers were added, including those of Everett E. Edwards and Solon Robinson, used by Kellar in his own research. Other, smaller groups of papers have been received at various times since 1951.

Mad Man Moon

Yesterday The Dulcinea and I met up with a trio of friends last night to catch Moon out at Sundance. What follows contains spoilers so caveat lector.

Moon concerns Sam Bell (played by Sam Rockwell), the lone worker at a lunar mining operation who is nearing the end of his 3-year commitment as the jack-of-all-trades who ensures a steady supply of helium 3 for Earth. Automated equipment strip mines the moon's surface in search of the energy-rich isotope but Bell must drive out to the large vehicles, which resemble Jawa sandcrawlers, to grab containers of helium 3 to bring back to the base and send back to Earth via rocket drones.

With his term nearly over, Bell is agog with the thought of returning home. Real-time communications have been out for some time and he has had to settle for uxorial video postcards that are perpetually tardy. Keeping him company is GERTY, a robot assistant voiced by Kevin Spacey. GERTY brings to mind HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey with its comforting voice and its eye which, like HAL's, has a black iris but a white pupil. GERTY also has a small screen featuring a yellow smiley face that changes expressions to mirror the conversation. Indeed, Moon has many loving references to classic sci-fi films of the past - off-Earth mining recalls Outland - but 2001 is invoked almost constantly. There's the videophone that Dr. Floyd used to phone home from Space Station V, for instance. Bell is shown running on a treadmill which mimics Poole running in circles on the ringed part of Discovery. There's also a scene where GERTY volunteers to reboot itself so that video footage is erased which stands in contrast to HAL which fought to the death in order to keep Bowman from shutting it down. As the film progresses, Blade Runner is invoked, but I'll get to that later.



At a pivotal point in the film, Solaris came to mind. Bell is getting some hot water from a dispenser when he turns to look back and sees a dark-haired woman sitting in his chair. He sees her again as he is driving on the lunar surface attempting to board one of the mining machines. This hallucination causes him to lose sight of his target and crash.

We are then shown Bell on a table in the infirmary. Curiously enough, he looks fine, perhaps too fine. GERTY tells him to go back to sleep and leaves to attend to other business. Instead, Bell maunders back to what passes for the control room and finds GERTY engaged in a real-time conversation with a couple corporate types on the videophone. Bell's suspicion is further aroused by the fact that GERTY won't let him leave the base to fix the mining machine which is out of commission. He eventually conjures up a problem and an excuse to go outside which gets GERTY to relent. A short drive across the surface, he finds himself at the site of the disabled mining machine and the rover which he had previous crashed. Bells enters the vehicle only to discover the original, hallucination-prone incarnation of himself which he takes back to the base.

At this point there are two Sam Bells running around the base. It is revealed that they are clones of an ur-Sam Bell. The evil mining company keeps a larder full of them who have a lifespan of three years. Blade Runner is evoked here with the clones (briefly) pondering their status much the way replicants did as well as having their limited lives. It is also at this point that Moon failed me. The first act (i.e. – everything up to and including the clone revelation) was excellent. I appreciated how director Duncan Jones kept things interesting with only one actor by giving Bell a relationship of sorts with GERTY – they weren't just human and machine. Moon is certainly a tour de force for Rockwell. We also got to know Bell as someone who was ready to return to Earth and resume his marriage.



However, I found the scenes with the two clones to be, for the most part, lacking. When the clones discover their true identities, they don't seem particularly phased. Bell #1 doesn't seem to care while Bell #2 can only lash out in anger. They eventually form a kind of fraternal bond but I expected more pondering, I expected more scenes with them coming to grips with who they really are and the situation they find themselves in. The deeper, more Phildickean aspects of their predicaments were glossed over, much to my disappointment. Jones and screenwriter Nathan Parker want us to look at the contrasts between the Bells in order to gain some kind of understanding about inner space but the distinctions are without difference. The cloned twins do and say nothing of significance. It's all light and no heat. Bell #1 doesn't come across as a man whose 3-year exile has imparted wisdom or taught him anything but rather as someone who has been worn down and is ready to break.

There are a couple scenes in the first act and early in the second which were very effective in creating atmosphere and coloring the viewer's perception of Bell but these devices were quickly dropped. One involved Bell back on Earth in bed with his wife. They are entwined and the camera tracks across their bodies underneath the sheets until a dingy, spacesuit-clad Bell is seen at the foot of the bed reaching out towards the lovers' feet.



The second involves Bell on the bed in the infirmary coming into consciousness. Focus here is incredibly shallow and keeps his cheek and chin from being clear simultaneously. Instead his right eye and cheek are in focus one moment with his chin and mouth the next. The cinematography here adds a slight but palpable sheen of disorientation to the proceedings which would have been appropriate later in the film as well. However brief, the daydream bed scene was ripe with insight into Bell's state of mind, something sorely lacking in the second and thirds acts of the film. It's a shame that these devices were not allowed to become motifs and give us greater access to the Bells' collective mind.

Despite the severe unevenness of Moon, I have to give Jones and Parker credit for making a hard sci-fi film instead of one that is a melodrama that happens to take place on the moon or an action flick in outer space. Not only that, but they also created a 90-minute story that, for all intents and purposes, involves one character. I sincerely hope that they try again with this genre because, although Moon is a failure, it is a most intriguing one.

Tab Tearing - How Annoying

Like many other people, I upgraded to Firefox 3.5 last month. It wasn't long before I got annoyed. I'd be happily doing my thing when suddenly a new window would spawn taking one of my tabs with it. The Dulcinea got frustrated with the same problem on her Mac so I looked into the matter.

This feature is called "tab-tearing" whereby, if you drag a tab from the Tab Bar, it comes up in a new window and pisses you off. While there isn't an option to stop this behavior, there is an extension that will do the trick.

Turning Madison Into Copenhagen

On Wednesday The Cap Times had an article which described Madison's bike friendliness, which, bicycle advocates say, has stagnated. This may very well be the case. I no longer use a bike as my primary mode of transportation as I did back in the 1990s. Indeed, my two-wheeler is in a state of severe disrepair. Still, I was glad to see the bike path bridge over East Wash go up and have no problem with my tax money going to help make this town more friendly to bicyclists.

Now, having said that, I found the article to be a bit disingenuous in spots. Take this passage for example:

Those same businesses are now flexing their collective muscles, teaming with traditional bicycle advocates in a major push to make Madison a model for two-wheeled transportation -- rivaling European cities like Copenhagen, Denmark, where fully 40 percent of trips are made via bicycle.

And this one as well:

For $20 million -- the cost of one interstate highway overpass -- Burke says he could create a world-class bikeway system in Madison that would boost the percentage of commuters from 3 percent to 20 percent.

Let's begin with the latter. Now, I don't know if the issue I have with this statement is due to the way Mike Ivey of TCT wrote it or whether it was what John Burke, the President of Trek Bicycles, said but what I get out of this is: you spend $20 million a certain way and - POOF! – you instantaneously have 20% of commuters on bikes. According to an article at bikeportland.org from last month, Portland (Oregon – an urban panacea for bikers in this country with a great bike infrastructure) only has 4% of its commuters on bicycles and hopes to hit that Burkean goal of 20% by the year 2030. Again, maybe the above was written poorly by Ivey but Burke is also quoted as saying, "Believe me, I've seen it happen all over the world; if you build it they will come." Maybe they will but it is worth noting in discussions that this won't happen overnight and without a lot more than $20 million.

Much is made of Copenhagen for having a large percentage of its population on bicycles (the article claims "40 percent of trips are made via bicycle") instead of driving and, as with the first passage I quoted, many people want Madison to become like its Danish counterpart. To reiterate, the problem with the article is that it promotes the overly simplistic equation of Madison + $20 million = Copenhagen. But there's more going on in Denmark than merely having a bike-friendly infrastructure.

Take, for example, the price of gas. In 2005, a gallon of gas was $5.93. Last July when gas prices were at record highs here in Madison, the worst it got was around $4.25/gallon. At the same time in Copenhagen, gas was over $9/gallon and it stayed that way even as gas here fell in price in the fall of '08. I can't find what a gallon of gas in Copenhagen costs today but this chart shows the price in other countries. Here in the States, we're averaging $2.71/gallon while it's $6.81 in Germany and a whopping $7.24 in The Netherlands so I'm thinking Denmark lies somewhere in the $6.50-$7.50 range. Gas is taxed heavily in European countries which leads to such high prices. And this certainly plays a role in determining how many people utilize a bicycle.

In addition to the price of gasoline, the price of other aspects of owning a car is also pretty steep. Check this out:

Fees and taxes for automobile purchase add 200 percent to the price of a new car. There are few parking spaces, and the ones that exist are very expensive.

Perhaps the most significant line from this article: "In addition to good planning, the local and national governments use a big stick when it comes to trying to keep people from relying on cars." (Emphasis mine.)

There is much more to the 40% claim about Copenhagen than "build it and they will come".

Concomitant to building bicycle lanes and putting out bike racks, European cities invest much more in public transportation than we do. The article doesn't address this issue but it's worth noting because Europeans understand that bicycles aren't the be-all-end-all answer to people's transportation needs.

None of this is to say that Madison shouldn't try to become more bike-friendly. I am happy to say that I helped The Dulcinea's youngest son learn how to ride this summer and he loves to head out on his two-wheeler and explore. It'd be great to have more bike paths and lanes for him as he gets older and takes his bike farther. (Plus I'd like to get me a new bicycle as well and I'd certainly use them.) However, there's more to getting people to leave their cars at home than simply adding bike lanes and racks. The city government will have to become more coercive. Taxes will have to be raised. In addition, Madison and developers will have to make parking more scarce and more expensive. And public transportation will need to be overhauled to be more convenient.

Madison can't do it alone. If the city takes what are perceived to be draconian steps to promote automobile independence, people will leave. If Madison started charging a 100% tax on cars but outlying communities didn't, you can bet that Fitchburg, Verona, etc. will see a bumper crop of new residents. Changes will have to be both local and national.

The Spoils of Furloughs

A local blogger named Tim Morrissey recently wrote a post regarding the furloughs being foisted on state employees in an effort to deal with Wisconsin's debt. As he notes, every state employee is getting furloughed regardless of how their position is funded.

But the folks at OSER (so I don’t have to type “Office of State Employment Relations” every time) have said these furloughs are intended to affect every state employee, whether they get their money from rich old white guys in Cardinal red sport jackets, or from Uncle Sugar himself in the form of grants.

So how do those grants work?

Let's say your job is paid for via federal grants. I've been told that most grant monies are doled out all at once. So the state gets the money, puts you on furlough, and then finds itself with 3% of the grant in its pocket. Does the state then return the money or does it get to keep it?

Doctor Who Begins Filming, Tom Baker's Voice Returns

Next year's series of Doctor Who has started shooting and the new Doctor's costume has been revealed:



He looks mighty dashing in tweed and bow tie. And he wears suspenders!

In other news, Tom Baker is returning to the fold.



Baker is doing a series of five Doctor Who audio dramas for the BBC called "Hornets' Nest". The first appears in September and will also mark the return of Captain Yates from the classic series.

"Goldman Sachs Are Scum"

Wowzers! This guy does not like Goldman Sachs. (h/t to Matt Taibbi.)

A/V Club Needs to Visit a Farm

I read Nathan Rabin's review of Food, Inc. today in the paper incarnation of The Onion and found this line to be funny:

"Kenner takes audiences deep into the ugly underbelly of American food production, from holding pens for chickens that reek of shit…"

Yeah, only farms that raise animals for evil corporations like Tyson smell like shit. The animals at small family farms shit roses, I guess.

The History of Gyros

While I'm on the subject of fast food, I see that the New York Times has an article about the history of the gyro. The description of the how it's made is not for the faint of heart.

Mad Dogs, Resurrected

Last week (or was that the week before?) I read on The Daily Page forums that The Dawg House on State Street had closed. Restaurants come and go but this ex-Chicagoan thought that they did a pretty good Italian beef which isn't easy to find in this town. Not long after the bad news, I read that Mad Dogs was reopening under new ownership. This meant I could get a beef during the week when the FIBS cart wasn't around or on the weekend. Well, today I availed myself of the opportunity and traipsed over to the newly-resurrected Mad Dogs for a bit of Chicago nostalgia.

The place looks much the same as did in its previous incarnation and clean. It was littered with several customers, all of whom were middle aged and keen on hot dogs. I placed my Italian beef order with the friendly guy behind the counter in my customary terms – hot and wet. If the prospect of beefy goodness wasn't enough, I either got my fries for free or my drink. The woman sitting by the counter was rather loud and boisterous so all I caught was the word "free". So far so good.

I grabbed a seat by the window and waited. When my lunch arrived, I was confronted with the good, the bad, and the ugly.

The Good: the beef was thinly sliced as it should be and, upon biting into the sandwich, I found that it was tender as well. The bread wasn't bursting at the seams, but I'll suffer.

The Bad: the sandwich came neither hot nor wet and had, for some ungodly reason, melted cheese on top which I assumed was provolone. I did get some gravy on the side with which I promptly attempted to drown the sandwich. In Mad Dog's defense, I did make the mistake of relating my order to the clerk verbally as opposed to via the little sheets sitting on the counter against one of the walls.

The Ugly: the gravy looked mighty good sitting in its little foam cup but tasted pretty bad. For one thing, it was cursed with an excess of oregano instead of having a nice balance of herbs and spices. But even the abundance of oregano couldn't disguise the saltiness of the gravy which was no doubt due to being made from prison base. This was Poppa Coronofoulos dreck laced with oregano.

The Rest: the fries were given a healthy dose of Lawry's Seasoning Salt or its generic equivalent. They were wedge cut which is not my preferred style but they did the trick. The sandwich was $3.99 according to the placard outside which, generally speaking, is more than reasonable for an Italian beef.

Conclusion: if you're downtown, need an Italian beef, and the FIBS cart is unavailable, stop by Mad Dogs and get a beef that's dry, without cheese, and with giardiniera.

"We don't know what to do with other worlds" - The BBC's Solaris

For the past few nights, I've been listening to the Solaris audio drama produced by BBC Radio. It comes as two 1-hour episodes and I'm nearly finished with it.

The production is great with the cast providing some wonderful voice acting. None of the cast members are familiar to me and perhaps this has helped since I hear their voices and have no preconceived notions about them, unlike seeing George Clooney as the story's protagonist Kris Kelvin in Steven Soderbergh's 2002 film version and thinking about ER's Dr. Doug Ross. Tim McMullan plays a suitably skittish Snow while Stuart Richman's Sartorius is perfectly overbearing. Aurally, the story is enhanced with understated music that nudges the listener rather than pushes them towards feeling one way or another. Some of the music reminds me of that from Blade Runner, especially the unicorn dream sequence. It is amazing what can be done with just a few piano notes. The way boots clank on metal gangplanks contrasts well with the near silent ambience of the ship to give an atmosphere of emptiness, of loneliness. Listeners are able to get a good sense of just how isolated the characters are.

As far as the story goes, the radio adaptation tacks a course between Stanislaw Lem's source novel and Soderbergh's movie based on it. (I leave out Tarkovsky's film here although I think it is a great movie because the book and the Soderbergh's film are at opposite ends of the spectrum, so to speak.) This was also the chosen method of the BBC when it adapted The Name of the Rose. That production leaned heavily toward the medieval Sherlock Holmes approach taken by Jean-Jacques Annaud for his 1986 film but also included some conversations about religion and the 13th century which were abandoned during the conversion for the big screen.

Similarly, the Beeb's Solaris places the emphasis on the relationship between Kelvin and the phantom incarnation of his dead wife, Rheya. This moves it towards Soderbergh's side which stands clearly in favor of Solaris as a love story. However, the radio drama incorporates generous doses of the science/sci-fi elements that form the thematic crux of Lem's novel, namely, the impossibility of understanding other life forms being a limit of science as a human endeavor. While it leaves the book's lengthy passages describing mankind's futile attempts at comprehending the Ocean out, it retains Snow's "we need mirrors" lecture to Kelvin. The Berton report is present, albeit in a severely truncated form. Kelvin is allowed to express his skepticism about Sartorius' experiment to communicate with the Ocean and there are long, pensive scenes where he just stares out at the Ocean.

The BBC have made a wonderful, atmospheric radio drama that manages to balance the inner world of a love story with the outer world. Highly recommended.

Mitchell & Webb and Lifestyle Nutritionists

"I want you to go in there and demand to look at her shit!"

Keeping the Beer Sabbath

This past Sunday The Dulcinea and I left Madison for parts west and south: Mt. Horeb & New Glarus.

Mt. Horeb hasn't changed much from previous visits. Unfortunately it was Sunday morning and most places were closed for the day or opening later. Neither Dick's Meats nor the restaurant/bakery cater-corner from it were open which meant ixnay on the lefse-scray. However, the Mustard Museum was accepting patrons. We walked out with a jar of raspberry-habenero mustard which is quite tasty. A sign in the window noted that the museum will be moving to Middleton in late October. Mt. Horeb's loss is my gain as I won't have to drive quite so far to get my exotic mustard fix.

Before leaving town and heading south, we stopped in at Sjolinds Chocolate House. There were many chocolate bars available including some nice-looking single source varieties adorned with photos of the Juan Valdezes of the cocoa world. We had some coffee along with some pastries. My sweet cravings were satiated with a very good banana-chocolate muffin.



From the Trollway we maundered through the hills to New Glarus and a stop at the fancy new brewery.



The New Glarus Brewing Company's new expansion was quite nice with its Swiss village/Wisconsin farm motif.



There was even a bit of running water at the entrance.



Tours at the brewery are self-guided and I guess you can get a set of headphones or download an MP3 or otherwise get an electronic audio copy of a tour guide's spiel. I know the basics of brewing so I didn't really need a guide.

The place is big. 75,000sq ft big. This expansion adds the capacity to brew 100,000 more barrels of beer on top of the 30,000 at the original brewery. Arguably this pushes New Glarus beyond microbrewery to minibrewery or some such classification. All of the beer brewed here is distributed in Wisconsin (well, most of it) which is a tribute to our state's drinkers and its much-maligned "culture of alcohol".

Before you get into the area with all the vats and such, you pass by the beer lab where top secret formulas ferment before your very eyes.



The main brewing area is quite a sight. No doubt many a homebrewer has walked through and found him- or herself quite jealous. Stainless steel vats litter the joint and are connected via what must be miles of pipes. And there are the beautiful copper kettles that host the boiling action. The place smelled of bananas, i.e. – esters, which made me wonder if the pipes above me were like pulsating veins of weiss beer.





Aside from tourists like us, the place was very mellow. I can only imagine that it would be a hive of activity on other days when there's wort to boil, fermentation tanks to be cleaned, beer to be bottled, etc. Brewmaster Dan Carey and Director of Quality Control Randy Thiel would probably be wandering around with clipboards and such in a frenzy. In addition to the large open areas filled with brew tanks, there were several smaller rooms with access restricted to brewers only. For instance, there was a Yeast Propagation room where I envision Dan Carey in one of those hazmat suits like you see in The Andromeda Strain hunched over a table full of friendly yeast spores. Another door led to what I assume to be ground zero for NG's ultra-tasty Black Wheat – the Weiss Beer Fermentation room.

Having seen the how, we were ready for samples. It was a hot, sunny day and I was disappointed that there was no Yokel on tap so I settled for a Dancing Man Wheat while The D opted for a Crack'd Wheat. NG's fine beers could be enjoyed in the tasting room or alfresco. The D and I chose the latter which offered a nice view of the surrounding countryside.







Before we left, we stopped that the Beer Depot, a large room with case after case of New Glarus nectar for sale. I bought a bottle of Golden Ale, which is available exclusively at the brewery and only in half liters. From there it was over to the Glarner Stube, which only has New Glarus beer on tap, for an afternooncap before heading home.

More Mitchell and Webb

La Fête de Marquette '09

This past weekend as the La Fête de Marquette festival. I could hear the music from my front porch and wondered to myself on Friday night exactly what Tab Benoit's cover of "My Bucket's Got a Hole In It" had to do with French culture. The Dulcinea and I met some friends there on Saturday evening and I remained impressed with the paucity of things French.

Miss Regan was there as well. In addition to hanging out inside the mini Eiffel Tower, she got her first lesson in darning socks from a woman who had brought a spinning wheel to the fest. Why anyone would want to lug one of those around the crowded festival grounds is beyond me. I guess knitting is an addiction which just has to be satisfied.





While a few bands played during our tenure in the beer tent, I managed to photograph only one - Watcha Clan. I got into them once they started augmenting the sequencers & synths with other instruments.





They keyboardist had a nice Rick Wakeman-esque outfit.



And the singer was a beauty who shook her booty.



I do have to give the fest credit for at least making wine available and having someone dressed as Father Marquette dragging a canoe around. Still, free of charge, are my suggestions for making La Fête de Marquette nominally French:

1) Have a French film night at the Wil-Mar Center before the festival. Renoir, Godard, Besson - anything French.

2) Make all event staff wear berets along with black & white striped shirts and have them act extremely rudely.

3) Play "Bastille Day" by Rush through the PA system in between band performances.

4) Have some people give French lessons. Even getting festival goers to say "Laissez Les Bon Temps Roulez" would be a start.

5) Storm the Bastille. The festival purposely coincides with Bastille Day so why not reenact that fateful day in 1789? Failing this, how about erecting a miniature Maginot Line so I and my fellow Krauts can plow right through it?

6) Dress someone up as Jean-Paul Marat and put them in a dunk tank.

7) Put a Nerf guillotine in the center of the grounds and charge for people to undergo mock beheadings using lots of fake blood. The Reign of Terror wasn't pretty, ya know.

8) Have men in drag or women who don't shave their armpits hold baguettes under their arms and try to run an obstacle course without dropping them.

9) Serve French food. I like Jamerica's jerk pork, Lao Laan-Xang's curries, and the People's Bakery's kabobs, but how about something French? Where was the brie and foie gras for hors d'oeuvres? Where was the Coq au vin?

Sarah Coyle, You Do Not Speak For Me

So, the Madison school district accidentally applied some Roundup to the grounds of the Marquette school and now one of my neighbors, Sarah Coyle, thinks she speaks for me.

I say "accidentally" because the school district's director of building services, Doug Pearson, knew that the Marquette neighborhood is infested with the likes of Coyle.

Pearson admits that he left Marquette/O'Keeffe site off of his treatment list because he knew it would create controversy in the neighborhood, but says his grounds supervisor mistakenly sprayed the area anyway.

Ms. Coyle was quoted as saying: "Because this decision was just not OK with anybody in the neighborhood or any of the parents or anybody who lives near the school."

Well let me tell you neighbor, I live 1 block from the school and the herbicide application was fine by me. Did you come to my door and ask my opinion? Please don't go around pretending that you speak for everyone.

Kittiwat Unarrom: The Demon Baker of Thailand

Mmmm...



When your staff of life needs to take a turn towards death, Kittiwat Unarrom is your man. The above are examples of what the man does with bread.

Kittiwat Unarrom has a master's degree in fine arts and creates bruised and battered heads, feet and other internal organs at a bread shop in Thailand.

He started using his skills and made sculptures out of bread. This came naturally to him because his family runs a bakery. The bread is made out of dough, raisins, cashews and chocolate. He just adds his own touch to the finished product.

Ashes to Ashes Gets Third Series

The Gene Genie shall return!

The BBC show Ashes to Ashes was given a third (and final) series.

Producers have revealed the climax of the next series will reveal who the character Gene Hunt really is.

Will he be a guardian angel or just a weird manifestation of Alex's Elektra complex?

New Doctor Who Trailer

A new trailer for next Doctor Who episode, "The Waters of Mars", is available.



Doctor Who returns in November.

Botanical

I now understand where impatiens get their name. While it took about four months, mine are finally blooming.





Concurrently, the flower of unknown origin my neighbor gave me is going through its second round.



The same neighbor also gave me some funky basil plants as well. Methinks they're Thai. The flowers on the top have an aroma which combines the more familiar sweet basil with plum.



Walking home after work I noticed a rabbit poking around where it shouldn't, namely, in my garden. I zipped over and chased it away only to discover that my raspberry bushes have yielded fruit.



The Dulcinea and I braved the mosquitoes to pick some and they turned out to be quite sweet'n'tasty.