Liveblogging the State of the Union

Ha, just kidding. I have it on in the background just so I’m not the last to know when the Kenyan Muslim liberal take-over is announced. But I was working on the quilt instead.

I received the older Methodist hymnal in the mail. None of the songs have titles and “O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing” is not the opening hymn. I can only assume John and Charles Wesley came back from the dead and laid the smack-down on that nonsense.

But here’s the interesting thing. I know “Old 92” was popular with old people–“Amazing Grace.” But the hymnal in which “Amazing Grace” was 92 came out in 66. And I was hearing people say that in the 70s.

I guess it just goes to show that traditions well up quickly and then feel like they’ve always been there.

Aw, damn, I was a little moved by Obama talking about gay people in the military. Just when I’m like “blah blah blah blah blah” he says something that makes me go, “Oh, right, things are different.”

I hope he can genuinely do something for the Dream Act kids. Otherwise, that seems cruel to bring it up.

I also hope I live long enough to hear a State of the Union Address close with a rousing rendition of “We are the Champions.”

The Deer, An Update

I think Mrs. W. was pissed at me for not letting her go over and smell the deer up close. I’m all “You have a great nose. You can smell from right here.” But what do I know about how things smell? Maybe even dogs want to get right up in it, examine how a dead heart smells different than a dead nose which must smell different than a dead hind end. Maybe there’s a poetry in it I’m missing out on, I don’t know.

But she was mad at me.

Briefly.

That’s the nice thing about dogs. Intense but fleeting emotions.

Also, I think whatever killed the deer ate its innards out, so the musings on a dead heart are probably not applicable. I hope we’ll see buzzards on it yet, but no sign today. And tomorrow it snows, so who knows when we’ll get by it again?

I Feel Vindicated about Taco Bell!

I never had actual Mexican food until I was in grad school. I grew up in the rural Midwest, which was predominately white in some places and exclusively white in others and, even though our parents would diligently take us to ChiChi’s, I believed “Mexican food” was what you got at Taco Bell and I knew Taco Bell sucked and so, thank you, no. I’ll have a hamburger.

Plus, we never lived any place with a Taco Bell, so it was like you had to drive some distance to eat this shitty food.

Things are different now, even in Illinois. My parents’ favorite Chinese restaurant is run and owned by a couple of Chinese families in a very small town in central Illinois and, when my dad took me there, we were the only non-Hispanic people in the joint. Hurray for change.

And thank god I finally learned that Taco Bell was nothing like actual Mexican food.

Anyway, because Alabama is suing Taco Bell for false advertising, we learn that they don’t actually put meat in their foods, but what they call a “taco meat filling,” which is only 36% meat, which, interestingly enough, is not even enough meat to qualify as “taco meat filling” under the law in Alabama.

Yum. Glad I don’t eat there.