Counting Cars in Skokie

Seen last month at the corner of Dempster and McCormack Blvd in Skokie -- two people ensconced in portable lounge chairs on opposite corners of the intersection, accompanied by a supervisor.

Asked what they were doing, one replied, "counting cars."

He said they were doing it for a firm which held a contract with the Village of Skokie.

Understandably, municipal traffic engineering departments like to have periodic updates on traffic volume at various locales. But what ever happened to those hose-like cables that stretched across several lanes to automatically count the cars?

Neighboring Lincolnwood uses them. They've been in use since the 1960s.

Too high-tech for Skokie I guess.

Or is this a way to spend Obama make-work stimulus money?

What's next? Paying people with stimulus money to rake the leaves in the Cook County Forest Preserves?

(Thanks to Charlie and Lynn Morgan of Madison, WI, who were visiting the McCormack Blvd.sculpture park that day, for forwarding the photo)

Adolf Hitler's Health Food Diet (And You Vill Not Smoke)

William L. Shirer was a Chicago-born journalist, who cut his teeth as a foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune (back when it was a serious journalistic entity) and became a pioneering radio reporter for CBS News.

He worked out of Berlin for most of the time frame 1934 to 1940, and as such had a bird's eye view of the rise of the National Socialists in Germany and their machinations that brought the world to war. He chronicled this expertly in his 1941 book, Berlin Diary and later in his award-winning classic, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

On November 5, 1939, Shirer's bosses at CBS in New York asked him to chronicle a day in the life of Adolf Hitler.

Here is an excerpt from the Berlin Diary (p.242) on the Fuhrer's healthy lifestyle regimen:

"He rises early, eats his first breakfast at 7 am. This consists usually of either a glass of milk or fruit juice, and two or three rolls, on which he liberally spreads marmalade.

"Like most Germans, he eats a second breakfast, this one at 9am. It's like the first except that he also eats a little fruit...

"Hitler eats a simple lunch. Usually a vegetable stew or a vegetable omelet. He is, of course, a vegetarian, teetotaler and non-smoker. A one-percent beer, brewed especially for him, is served at this meal, or sometimes a drink made out of kraut called "Herve," flavored with a little Mosel wine."

So there you have it -- the perfect recipe for health and longevity. Sparse eating, vegetarianism, teetotalling and abstention from smoking (he was vehemently opposed to smoking and would not allow it in his presence.)

This from the man who was the 3rd greatest mass murderer in the history of the planet (surpassed only by Communists Mao-Tse-Tung and Josef Stalin.)

His healthy habits remind me a lot of those fanatics today who are trying to ban smoking everywhere and force restaurants to ban salt and snatch the nachos and pizza from the hands of Chicago schoolchildren so they will be forced to eat carrot sticks and other rabbit food.

No wonder they call them "health Nazis."

Nobody Told Me There'd Be Days Like These

September 16th 2010 in Chicago. Cold wind from the North, grey, overcast, gloomy.

Summer's definitely gone. What filthy, typically Chicago weather.

Nobody told me there'd be days like these.

"Always something happenin'
and nothing going on."

Chase & First Commercial Banks Give Freebies to Rogers Park Muslims

In light of the proposed Koran burning in Florida, an interfaith group of clerics held a news conference yesterday to warn of a growing "Islamophobia" among the U.S. population.

But that can hardly be thought to be the case in West Rogers Park, where two Western Avenue banks actually lend their facilities to nearby mosques.

The managers the Chase branch at 7015 N. Western Ave. and the First Commercial branch at 7050 N. Western Avenue, have granted free use of their parking lots to the nearby Bosnian Islamic Cultural Center and the Sharia Board of America.

Banks are customarily among the most risk averse of businesses when it comes to controversy.

So tacitly, the managers of these outlets, one Adolfo Sesma at Chase and one Javeria Atcha at First Commercial, seem to be asserting that there is no risk of "Islamophobic" backlash from their West Rogers Park customers.

Interestingly, when a Lutheran Evangelical Church and a Gay United Church of Christ congregation inhabited the same building now used by the Sharia Board of America, the same offer of free parking wasn't proferred.

So not only is West Rogers Park, in the view of Chase Bank and First Commercial Bank not "Islamophobic."

Led by the enlightened multiculturalists, Sesma and Atcha, it's positively "Islamophiliac."

Mexicans Protest US Cartoonist's Caricature of Their Flag

The Government of Mexico filed a verbal protest with the U.S. after a syndicated US political cartoonist drew a parody of their national flag.

Cartoonist Daryl Cagle portrayed the eagle in the center of the Mexican emblem as something of a ruptured duck, reflective of that 3rd World nation's decrepit economy and out-of-control drug crime. (pictured above)

You can read about the controversy in greater depth here.

Oddly, I don't recall the Mexican government or Mexican-American spokesmen uttering a peep when illegal alien malcontents from their country perpetrated far greater violence on the United States' national banner, as pictured below.

Free Booze in Wrigleyville and Hookers in Edgewater

I know this is beginning to sound like a broken record, but yesterday was yuppie moving-out day in Wrigleyville and as predictably as the Chicago bone-chilling winters, I scored some free booze.

I was also propositioned by a hooker.

The day started out pleasantly enough. I went to the Thorndale Avenue beach to further tone up my tan to the point where I can now reliably report that I am the darkest Germanic white man in the Western world. Future House Speaker, Boehner's got nothing on me.

The water was delectably cool and surprisingly clean for Lake Michigan.

At around 3pm, I got on my Nixon-era, British Raleigh 10 speed and headed South to Wrigleyville in search of the free booze that the yuppie moving out crowd invariably discard.

And sure enough I found it. This time it was an entire case of wine. Different brands and vintages -- 12 bottles all told. I particularly enjoyed the Chardonnay and a cloyingly sweet Chilean wine in a skinny -- kind of trendy -- clear bottle.

Then,with this marvelous find firmly in tow, I headed back North up Broadway Ave.

I alit my bike around Argyle to have a smoke and was approached by a young lady who proceeded to ask me if I wanted "a date."


I was going to ask her what kind of event she had in mind. A prom? A tea dance, perhaps?

But before I could ask, she pointedly recommended that she would be happy to perform a certain fellationous act upon my person in exchange for the grand total of -- I am not making this up -- five bucks.

If there was ever need for proof that we are in a full blown (no pun intended)Obama depression, there it is. That hopey-changey thing didn't seem to be working out too well for her, but given her complexion, she was almost certainly an Obama enthusiast 18 months ago.

Anyway, I politely declined, remounted my bike (but not the hooker) and headed home for an evening of reading Alexander Dumas and swilling some very good (and very free) wine.

Just another day in the City of Big Shoulders.