New logo

“Damn near irrelevant”

Republican Greg Ballard, the new “accidental mayor” of Indianapolis, has just appointed Randall Tobias as head of the city’s airport authority. You may recall that Tobias, Bush’s hand-picked “abstinence czar” who oversaw a nine billion dollar budget, hurriedly resigned last year when he was outed as a client of the notorious D.C. Madam’s escort services. Before that he had been an Indianapolis icon, as CEO of Eli Lilly, a company which more or less owns Central Indiana lock stock and barrel.

There’s another Eli Lilly/Bush-crony dickhead running around Indiana these days, that’s the state’s governor, Mitch Daniels. Don’t even get me started on him. He’s the one overseeing a hemorrhage of jobs out of Indiana and selling off state assets like the Indiana Toll Road to private investors so he can appear to have balanced the budget. This is the same budget director for Bush who estimated the Iraq War would cost less than $100 million. Sheesh, these whack-jobs do stick together, don’t they?

“Damn near irrelevant to the position” is how Ballard characterized Tobias’ entanglement with the escort service, the Indianapolis Star reported. I like the “damn near” part of that assessment a lot. It shows Ballard has an open mind. He’s quick to forgive and forget, and probably just wants someone who can “get the job done.”

I’d say Ballard himself was damn near irrelevant if he hadn’t accidentally become the mayor of my old hometown.

~

Seven layer salad, red velvet cake and puppy chow

The sociologist in me has always loved the fad recipes that sweep through American culture. I remember fondly the days of red velvet cake, and kind of gag when I think the day may come I find myself eating another serving of seven layer salad.

Down here in the rural reaches of Southernmost Illinois we’re fortunate to belong to an electric co-op. That frees us in a New Deal sort of way from corporate utility behemoths like Ameren, and as a result our rates stay low. But my favorite benefit is that each month the co-op sends out a comfy 50s-style magazine, Illinois Country Living, and reading it brings out my inner farmer.

Eventually, I get around to the recipe section, because the offerings, a barometer of what a certain part of America is eating, are also an indication of how America sees itself. It seems only women are allowed to submit these recipes, as if real men don’t cook. Usually, they’re fatty and sweet, and they use a lot of refined and processed foods (1 can Campbell’s™ Mushroom soup, 8 ounces Velveeta™ Cheese...).

This month, as I thumbed through the recipes, I came across one endearingly called, “puppy chow”—a crunchy chocolate-peanut butter thing made out of Crispix™ cereal and Skippy™ peanut butter and Toll House™ morsels. I laughed out loud, and decided I had to make it. The next day I bought a box of Crispix™ and that night mixed in the melted chocolate and peanut butter and then tossed it all in a paper bag filled with powdered sugar.

When the puppy chow was ready, I ate about a dozen pieces and quickly lost interest. It’s no substitute for those organic pecan cookies or even a genuine bowl of ice cream. The dogs can have what’s left of the puppy chow. At two chunks each per night, it’ll last a long time. And besides, they’re already familiar with the form factor.
~

Guns or butter?

Long morally bankrupt, the US is now falling into a tailspin of financial turmoil. How could it not? Reality has finally reared its head. Truisms are called that for a reason. You can’t have guns and butter.

This from James Howard Kuntsler, whose blog, “Clusterfuck Nation” has recently caught my eye:

The United States is so broke, its people at every level from the Federal Reserve on down don't know whether to shit or go blind. The homeowners cringing in the media rooms of their 5000-square-foot personal family resorts don't know how long they can stay put microwaving pepperoni hot pockets with the default clock ticking. The mortgage "servicers" don't know how they will persuade interested parties like, say, the Illinois State Cafeteria Workers' Pension Fund (holder of X-amount of mortgage-backed securities underwritten by, say, Merrill Lynch or Deutsche Bank) to foreclose on properties scattered everywhere from Key West to Bainbridge Island -- or if there is actually any legal mechanism known to man that would make it possible to "work out" the sliced-and-diced collateral. The millions of maxed-out credit card holders and the issuers of their plastic are stuck together paddling a leaky tub in a sea of troubles every bit as wide, deep, and polluted as the one the mortgage junkies and their enablers are sinking in.

~

mikal is definitely not in philly

When I first began blogging, I had just moved from Indianapolis to a loft in Center City Philadelphia, so I used my locale as part of my blog’s name. Silly me. Why didn’t it occur to me, after having lived all over the U.S. that my chances of staying in Philly indefinitely were slim-to-none?

Three years ago we moved once again, this time to Carbondale, Illinois, and it was kind of a big adjustment to no longer be doing the big city thing. Yet I never got around to changing the name of the blog, because I had lots of posts and the comments indicated a handful of interested readers. I didn’t want to risk losing them. (In case you didn’t come here from there, you can read them here.

But posting to “mikalinphilly” seemed inauthentic somehow. So one of my New Year’s resolutions was to put it to rest. Welcome to infocloud. Anyway, this new title more accurately reflects the scattered and unpredictable nature of the things I write about.

~