Chicago A

I had been drinking some the night that my train was due to leave; it was Spring Break and Lincoln was cold and quiet. I went home at one in the morning and ate leftover Dominoes for dinner. I had run out of groceries the day before and didin't feel like grocery shopping for two days worth of food; though I'm sure the cheap frozen processed shit I like to buy would have kept for the four days that I was gone. I showered, packed my briefcase with five sweaters, five pears of pants and underwear, toothpaste/brush, deodorant, astringent. I filled my backpack with Jane Smiley's "A Thousand Acres", a notebook, and the Sunday Times, and was out of my apartment at 2:45 for what was supposed to be a four a.m. train.

It was cold and damp and while not quite foggy the air was certainly hanging low. My van was the only sign of life on the drive to the Haymarket where sits the Amtrack "station".

Those who worry about federal tax dollars going down the drain for Amtrak should rest easy. It's hard to see where any money is actually being spent. Beyond the coasts, where large cities are packed in close to each other and maintaining the ludicrous ideal that the automobile is the horse of the modern knight is more of a headache than it's worth for many people, the Amtrak service is notoriously shitty. Cities like Salt Lake, Denver (Lincoln and Omaha) get only one train going east and one train going west per day, the California Zephyr, stopping in all of these places at odd inconvenient hours. If you take this as a sign that Amtrak money is going to waste instead of a sign that there is hardly any money involved to waste, well different minds work in different ways.

I arrived at the station and bought my ticket at three for a train I was now told would arrive at six, and then six thirty. I walked outside, realized that the nearest place to get coffee at this hour was eight blocks away, and stood dumbly for awhile, I was starting to feel quite drowsy but would have had to have been much more so to sleep on the narrow thin-padded chairs in the Amtrak waiting room. The thick air was carrying some kind of terrible smell from either the countryside to the west or the standing snowmelt in the Salt Creek floodplain. I eventually went back in and got a Mountain Dew from the vending machine, than I sat down with my Smiley book.

There was this hippy girl down the row from me, an honest to-God hippy girl with leisure hat and body-length walking stick with meaningless symbols carved onto it. She was talking to this long haired-fellow, Lincolnites may recognize him, shoulder-length hair with specks of gray and bifocals, portly, looks something like I might look like in ten years if I don't take care of myself/current trends continue. He was apparently an old pro at riding the train and was talking to the girl about the in's and outs of security, particularly how security guards usually didn't show up on the trains until at least the outer suburbs of Chicago and yeah that's where the people are and you have to protect the big cities but do we not count? I mean is that what you're saying? He told her that he was a power crystal connoisseur and that his biggest reason for travelling from place to place was to attend power crystal conventions.

And than we waited, a black man came in with his luggage in a garbage sack, and than we waited some more. The train came at 6:40 and I a group of five of us got on board and I sat in the seat behind the black guy.

God Bless the Children of Omaha

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Severed bunny head Christ, one of many Jesus/Easter Bunny combination














































and God bless you, World-Herald, for your complete obtuseness towards the absurd.

Am I Missing Something Here?

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MmY3MzNiNzVkZjUzYjQ1MzdiZTFjMTI1YjQxZDhmZjY=

My grandmother always cooks ham on Easter. (No mom I'm not coming home for Easter. Three months is not a remotely long time to go without seeing me. Why do you bring that up mom? The truth is that I wouldn't tell you if I was seeing someone nor would I tell you if I were engaged for that matter)

Anyways where was I? Ah yes, am I missing something here? Because my grandmother always cooks ham for Easter dinner, and I always thought that there was no universally recognized traditional Easter meat on the level of the Thanksgiving turkey. I knew that some people did have lamb for Easter but I never thought that this was any more significant than total strangers eating KFC on any given night.

My point is that I never associated lamb with Easter; never saw lamb meat as inherently Easterish. There may or may not be someone I know who considers a lamb meal to be central to their own Easter tradition; but if there is it has never come up in conversation, and if it came up in conversation I would wonder why they were bothering me with such trifle.

So here we have this woman complaining about a lamb-based meal in some mail order cooking catalog complaining about a lamb-based meal being described as a "spring dinner" instead of an "Easter dinner." Well.

If it were true that lamb was widely associated with the Christian holiday of Easter (and again, I could be wrong here, but I really don't think it is.) what then? Isn't Christianity in general, and Catholicism in particular, already fucked up enough without eating a literal sacrificial lamb to commemorate THE LAMB?

The fact of the matter is that early spring is the time for killing and cooking lambs in all cultures; I know that lamb is a centerpiece of the Sader, for example.

Has this woman not noticed that the major Christian holidays, just like the major holidays in most religions, just happens to coincide with the changing of the seasons?

Is this something that I'm not supposed to notice? Does it make me a bad person?

Never Forget!!!

Your Vodka and Cognac fueled hedonism shall always carry the bitter taste of the master's righteous indignation.

A Black Man Rocking Out to The Eagles

Was observed by this reporter on Thursday afternoon between 14 and 15th along Q Street in Lincoln Nebraska.

I don't know if he was listening to some classic rock station or if he had actually purchased an Eagles CD.

It's terribly sad all the same, because I sincerely believed that there were no black people who liked the Eagles, and had considered the Coen brothers to be creative geniuses chiefly for imagining such an impossible scenario.

Sally Kearns

My favorite part of her rant is when she says that homosexuals have "infiltrated" city councils. As an English major, I must point out that "infiltration" implies some manner of sneakiness or subterfuge, and unless the city councils of Pittsburgh or West Palm Beach have Republican majorities, I doubt very much that they are controlled by secret homosexuals.

Do "homosexual controlled" city councils all dress up in pink polyester shirts for their meetings and demand that good Christians serve them strawberry margaritas on their knees on pain of death? Are certain "chosen" children decked out like bear daddies and placed in elevated social positions amongst their peers?

"You know Eureka Springs, with the Passion play, someone told me their city council has been taken over by homosexuals."


"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPB7bTdz2xQ&feature=related"

Getting to Know You

Hi! We're Tilly and the Wall. We heard that there were still some people out there who didn't know we were from Omaha, so we decided to pose in the snow and look affected.