Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
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I really shouldn’t be seeing grand political metaphors in a Failbooking post, but I just can’t help seeing Obama’s emotive, metaphorical, fantasy-driven worldview in the first post and the real-world-grounded, non-leftist worldview in the second.
All the more since it turned out that chanting “Yes, we can,” wasn’t an actual plan for governance.
Last year, I read about an incident in a water park in the United Kingdom.
A father took his kids to the park so they could frolic in the cool and refreshing waves. When the children said they wanted to hurl themselves down the water slide, the proud father decided that this would be a perfect opportunity for some action photos of the apples of his eye.
He positioned himself at the end of the slide, camera at the ready, only to face a muttering and hostile crowd that apparently wanted to lynch him then and there!
The justification for the violence was that he must be a pedophile. After all, what other reason would a grown man have of snapping shots of young children in swimwear? The explanation that he was only photographing his own progeny were rejected out of hand. What else would child molesters say to escape just punishment when the righteous crowd gets their blood up?
Lucky for all concerned, the police were notified by someone in the mob. A police officer arriving at the scene averted any ugly actions.
Unfortunately, I cannot now find the online article to prove to my readers in the United States that such a ridiculous incident actually occurred. It seems unbelievable, that such a climate of suspicion and paranoia can actually exist in Old Blighty. I wouldn’t blame you one bit if you thought that I was simply writing as fact a bad comedy I once viewed on cable TV, or some uncomfortable dream I once had where everyone around me turned into bizarre and violent zombies.
But such an environment of hatred and prejudice is all too prevalent in Great Britain, and simply scanning the online news article from that country proves it to be so with appalling regularity.
Prompted by an Instapundit link to a THE BEST SPORTS CALENDAR EVER!!!!!!
… I now present “The Invention of Curling”
Scene: Scotland circa a long time ago.
Duncan: “Och, Angus tis winter! There’s nay work, nay hunt’en and nay fight’en. We’re bored.
Angus: “Oh, aye, we’re bored.”
Duncan: “We’ve got naught to amuse our persons with save a frozen pond, some smooth river boulders and our wimmen’s brooms.”
Angus: “Oh, aye, and we’re drunk.”
Duncan: “And we’re drunk.”
End scene.
Yes, like all winter sports, curling began as a drunken bet. (Come on, you can’t tell me that the luge, ski jumping or ice dancing were invented by sober, thoughtful people!)
Yet, now there is something relentlessly bourgeois about curling (and it’s not just because the players wear polyester slacks and sensible shoes). Curling is a sport of thought and patience. It is the sport of moderation. It’s the sport for people who get up in the morning, every morning and quietly go forth to make the world work.
I find it endlessly fascinating and I can watch it for hours. I was born in the wrong clime for I should have been a curler. I tried Texas style curling by shoving armadillos across the hot asphalt at discarded tires…
… but it’s not the same.
If you are interested in some wholesome family fun I highly recommend going to the IKC Dog Show at McCormick place in Chicago this weekend. Here is a link to the site.
The fun part about the show isn’t the judging or the events, it is the fact that you can walk around and see all of the dogs being groomed and prepped by their owners before the show. It isn’t every day that you see 5-10 of every type of dog breed imaginable in fine form. Here is a you tube video I made last year at the 2009 show (I had a song to it but they stripped it out so the video is silent; if I actually knew much of anything about dogs I could narrate it).
Cross posted at LITGM