Oh, I Think So

When I was in high school, someone put out a book of quotations by Mao Tse-Tung called, "Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung."  It was a best seller.  Someone else put out a book of things said by President Lyndon Baines Johnson called, "Quotations from Chairman LBJ."  (Full disclosure:  I bought this book and liked reading it.)  Of course it was a parody of Mao's book but they were real-life quotes and cliches of President Johnson. And now we have Trumpy.  In yesterday's New York Times, Frank Bruni's column talked about how Trumpy needed a thesaurus and a therapist but not in that order.  I hold that if he doesn't think he's in need of improvement, a therapist is a waste of time and money because you have to want to see you have a problem and do the emotional work to get better and Trumpy thinks he's the sanest man on the planet.  If he had a thesaurus, he'd probably pick the wrong word from the list of offerings and things would be ...

Hyde Park, corner of 53rd and Dorchester, Chicago, IL Barack Obama fell in love with Michelle Obama when he first met her at the law firm where she was an attorney and he was a Harvard law student, working as a summer associate at the same firm. This marks the spot of their first kiss.  They're still together and he still adores her.  It must go the other way, too, because they're just a lovely, cute, smart couple and it's so amusing that ice cream made their first kiss all the more memorable. Hyde Park is worth a visit!  There are nice shops, the University of Chicago, and, over on 57th west of Dorchester, there is Medici, a restaurant that's been around forever and is still very good and very affordable.  The Museum of Science and Industry is over there, too, but unless you're an 8 year old, I suggest you give it a skip, in spite of an entire jet airplane being hung in the lobby and many, many electric trains racing about with their complex landscapes and ...

The question had not been found.  The book had not been started.  I pointed it out. The philosophical question:  "Who let the dogs out?" There is no answer to that but when I was walking to the door of their home, couple of the neighbor dogs were barking at me like I was going to commit the crime of walking by their house.  Frankly, I would have let them out if it would have shut their yaps.  Otherwise, there is no answer, is there?

When I get an email from the library that the books I ordered are in, I usually go to fetch them at the Harold Washington Library downtown on Saturday or Sunday.  I used to go to the library then to Macy's where I'd walk through the main floor, look at handbags, then take the El train home.  I rarely shop at Macy's and I no longer buy handbags at department stores, so I basically go downtown, get the books, and return to the street for the bus.  Often I will get the same driver I had going downtown.  I go to the first floor, get my books, and then perform a ritual that I've come to adore.  If my sister has books for pickup, I will leave her a note.  Once I left her a rubber stamp imprint of Harriet Tubman on a notecard.  (A friend from Texas had acquired a Harriet Tubman stamp to put over the face of Andrew Jackson on the 20-dollar bill.  (It's civil disobedience, friends.  Ms. Tubman should be on the 20 but Donald "Yeah a racist" Trumpy mana...

There are seven people in my department and when we were summarily sent away from the offices of the client where we worked happily, we were given the choice of working from home or from the main local office.  Everyone excitedly went home even though they gave them 45 pages of rules they had to follow except for two of us who returned to the old office where we used to work. The hours lately have gotten longer and longer and the two of us still work in the office.  My associate is especially dedicated and works long hours without complaint.  "Let's just go home on time," I sometimes say.  "Sure and when we get in tomorrow it will be twice as bad," he says.  He is, of course, correct so we try to catch up and get ahead of it and get all our work done for that day. Staying so late is a pain and years ago we each pretty much stopped making plans after work with friends or family.  It is what it is, we figure.  My associate has a train schedule and...

The dipping sauce The Udon noodles and the hardboiled egg, ready to go Ladies and gentleman, here we have the dip.  Tsukumen.  The noodles are thicker than ramen noodles and the hardboiled egg and the noodles come in one bowl and the dipping broth and the pork and the slice of seaweed come in another.  The noodles find their way into the dipping sauce via chopsticks and the broth comes to your mouth via the spoon.  This is my favorite dip from Rokurinsha which is in Yaesu Mall, adjacent to Tokyo Station, a place where I almost always get lost.  There is also a location in Tokyo Skytree and, frankly, when I saw it when I was went to the top of Tokyo Skytree, I could not resist it. One of the good things about Rokurinsha in the Yaesu Mall is the morning dip.  I got there at 7:30am and I still had to wait.  There was just one person ahead of me so it was about a 30 second wait.  The regular lunch or dinner size of tsukumen -- pronounced "S...

So, in a nutshell:  Tokyo is hot, hot, hot in the summer.  English seems to have been replaced by Mandarin as the second language of choice but, as it was in Osaka, I made myself understood.  Japanese baseball is much more fun than American baseball.  Public transportation is a wonderful thing.  Tokyo is also a vast city, high and wide and distant.  Those charming drawn-by-hand maps that they give you at a hotel or at a store are rarely going to get you anywhere you need to go but become great souvenirs as you sit and look at them afterward and recall how you never found shit from it.  Sumos on bicycles are adorable and some of them are not as big as you'd imagine.  Put them in western clothes and they look like very built men with very good posture.  There are no weight classes in Sumo and the biggest, heaviest Sumo compete against people like Enho who is 5'6" and weighs 216 lbs (or 168cm tall and 98 kg in weight in metric). I went to the ...