I can’t imagine the production company involved will allow it to stay up for long, so move on this quick. Bill Maher’s “Religulous,” all up ons The Youtube. It’s in 10 sections, each of about 10 minutes apiece. Very thought-provoking, although you do have to tolerate a remarkable amount of blowhardiness from Bill.
How do you stop a Polish army on horseback? Turn off the carousel.
Since we’re moving in a few days, and things have been crazy hectic around the house, we’ve been remiss in properly entertaining our children. We need every spare moment to pack, clean, and/or paint something, so more often than not we plop Charles in front of the TV with a sippy cup of milk. It’s “television as babysitter,” something I detest. We try and find time to play and read, but it’s become very secondary. So on Monday, we determined that dangit, we’ll do something fun.
The Wilmington Polish Festival has been going on for over fifty years. It benefits St. Hedwig’s Parish, a local Catholic church of some note; I’d enjoy sharing some of its history with you, but unfortunately the parish website is silent on the subject. I can report the following: the church has been there for the entirety of my existence, and I’ve never been inside it. Since they’ve had the festival for 52 years, I assume the church is at least that old.
How can you tell a Polish neighborhood? By the toilet paper hung out to dry.
We had gone last year with Charles, and had a pretty good time; he rode a few rides, we ate some fair food. I would have liked to have gotten actual Polish grub, but the line into the food tent was like a Soviet bakery. This year we hoped would be better, by going on the first day of the festival, as soon as it opened (5 pm).
No such luck.
Sarah drove up from New Castle with the kids, and I headed down from the office. We met there around 5 by a ticket booth, which was closed. The line into the food tent already stretched a hundred feet, and it wasn’t clear if they had started serving anything yet; the lady at the information desk reported that things were a little crazy on the first day, the volunteers weren’t organized yet. They would start the rides as soon as things got in order.
Why couldn’t the Polack change a light bulb? All he had was a twenty-dollar bill.
My parents met up with us around 5:30, and the ticket booth still wasn’t open. We got in an “alternate” food line that according to the annoying tween girls in line “behind” us (by the time we got into the tent they had somehow butted in line in front of my wife, although to be fair, my wife is a wonderful person, but has no sense for how to stand in a line such that people realize you’re actually in the line and don’t get in front of you) was for “Polish seafood,” which was an unfamiliar cuisine to me. I have a well-known rule about beer: if there’s a beer on tap that I haven’t tried, I have to try it. The same rule applies to food: I gotta try everything once.
Once we got inside, we realized that each tent was serving the same thing. This was not well advertised, however, so one line was just 75 feet shorter. Fine by me. We also realized that “Polish” seafood is identical to American seafood: crabcakes, shrimp, and a breaded whitefish. We all got Kielbasa plates at astronomical prices and sat down to eat.
At the Greek festival, which we’ve been to for the last few years, lines aren’t a problem. There’s only one line, at the gyro tent, because that seems to be the only Greek food Americans like, although why they come to the Greek festival to stand in line for one when every deli in Wilmington produces a quality gyro I don’t understand. We always get stuffed grape leaves and souvlaki and my favorite, the lamb sandwich. (It’s like a cheesesteak, but with lamb, on pita. Succulent.) Most of these items are served at different stations, so you may have to make a couple stops, but you never stand in line for more than a few minutes. The Polish festival does food in the style of Communism: one central location, and a lot of waiting.
Did you hear about the Polish man that locked his keys in his car? He had to use a coat hanger to get his family out.
While we were finishing up miniscule pieces of Polish sausage, Charles ate two micrograms of chicken fingers and noticed the rides had been activated, so he was off. Sarah charged after him, and purchased a wristband that allowed him free access to whatever he wanted. My parents and I hung back with Josephine and the stroller so we could finish our beers, and my father, the kindest and gentlest man I know, shared with me a hilarious Polack joke that I will not recount here because it is in ridiculously bad taste.
We wandered off to find Charles and HW, holding Josephine in my arms because she was a little hungry, a lot tired, and a bit overstimulated by noise and lights. When we found them, Charles was having the time of his life, riding the carousel, a moonbounce, a train, some jeeps. There was a motorcycle ride, but it went up in the air and he panicked a little bit at that. Eventually, he discovered a large obstacle-course thing, featuring a ball pit and a small angled climbing wall, and went through that something like 4,000 times while the rest of us retrieved corn dogs.
I love a good corn dog. Let me tell you: these were not good corn dogs. They tasted like they’d been fried in vinegar. I suspect the milk in the batter had gone bad, and wondered if I’d spend the evening on the pot. I ate it, though. Don’t let anyone ever tell you that I waste food.
A bar customer asked the bartender if he wanted to hear a Polack joke. The bartender pointed to a large man at the end of the bar and said, “He’s Polish.” Then the bartender pointed to a burly policeman near the door and repeated, “He’s Polish.” The bartender finished, “Now think about whether you want to tell that joke, because I’m Polish, too.” The customer replied, “I guess I won’t tell that joke after all. I’d have to explain it three times.”
After a while, we were starting to flag, and Josephine was getting downright irritated at the lack of a breast in her mouth, so we skedaddled. Here’s the final report: go to the Polish Festival. It’s running through Friday, although rain may put a damper on the festivating. Be prepared to stand in line and pay too much for too little food, but then also be prepared to watch your kids tear around like maniacs on a bunch of rides at ridiculous prices. It’s a nice middle-ground between the Greek Festival, which doesn’t really offer much in the way of rides or games, and the Italian Festival, which now charges an entrance fee and therefore can suck it.
I always knew tea parties were classy affairs. Exhibit A:
Mmmmm…that’s good racism! I’m particularly amused by this comment:
Why are white people so angry? Calm down white people!
I tried to play like I’d post on vacation, but gave up in favor of heavy drinking. Now that I’m back, you can enjoy some pictures taken on my vacation.
Cats are messed up animals. Pete, for example, has developed a somewhat fatherly relationship with Josephine. Occasionally, when she’s being fed or resting in her bouncy seat, Pete will come by and gently lick her head, or rub against her.
She, of course, loves him. When he saunters by she can’t keep her eyes off him. It’s rather amusing. I have been told that cats tend to bond with humans of the opposite gender, but my anecdotal experience hasn’t borne that out. The cats at my parents house always prefer my father. (I guess he smells like a boss cat. Who knows.) At our house, Pete usually likes to sleep with me (until I start tossing and turning), and Poly’s always been Mommy’s girl. (JD and The Cheat didn’t seem to care.)
The best part about Fatherly Pete is that if Josephine is upstairs, and is crying, and we don’t go up to get her right away, Pete will sit at the bottom of the steps and stare at us, as if to say, “What the hell! She’s crying! You gonna do something about it? Jerks.”
Poly, of course, has responded to the appearance of another child by being annoyingly ingratiating. There’s been a lot of dragging of slippers and little plush toys all over the house, and a lot of loud midnight meowing, as if to say “Hey! Look at me! I’m still here! Look, I brought you a present!” until finally we kick her out so she doesn’t wake the baby.
The Cheat is now an outdoor kitty, since I couldn’t teach her not to pee in the basement. Sometimes she seems to be handling it well, and sometimes I find her huddled behind the air conditioning unit with a wild look in her eyes. She does at least have a cute collar now.
Would you rather have government bureaucrats or big business bureaucrats making decisions about your healthcare insurance eligibility? I know which one Sophie’s Mom would prefer.
Just as our Blue Cross plan was set to start, we received a notice from them stating that they considered Sophie to have a pre-existing pulmonary problem (due to the amount of doctor’s visits for pneumonia), and that while they would cover her in general, they wouldn’t cover any pulmonary/respiratory issues until she had gone two years without needing medication or problems…
All of a sudden, Sophie was without coverage for pulmonary problems. This was absolutely terrifying. What if she got sick?! What if she needed to be hospitalized?! We spent the next couple of months researching every insurance company that we could, begging them to take Sophie. Nope, it wasn’t going to happen.
And then our biggest fear came true: Sophie got very, very sick. And I’m ashamed to say that although we knew that she was incredibly ill, we actually considered keeping her home from the doctor’s office, as we knew that this would be yet another strike against her getting insurance. Luckily we pulled our heads out of our asses and took her to the doctor anyway, and it’s good that we did, because Sophie was so critically ill that she was sent straight from the doctor’s office to ICU. She was so sick that we couldn’t even wait for an ambulance; they helped me throw our limp, blue daughter into our car, and I drove like hell to get her to the hospital next door.
Let me state that very clearly one more time: we almost didn’t take our baby girl, who was in severe respiratory distress, to the doctor because we knew that it would hurt her chances of getting insurance.
Even as we speak, a supremely competent fellow named Joe is installing Verizon FiOS in our new house. (Well, new to us. The house was built before my great-great-grandparents were born.) My excitement is ExxxxTRREEEEEEM. I’ve wanted to try FiOS for a while, since a package including basic TV, internet, and phone is the same price as my comcast package. So I’m basically going to save the equivalent of a phone bill every month, which is not insignificant. I’ll also not have to deal with Comcast, who do not offer ESPN Classic as part of their digital package, an oversight for which I’ve been waiting years to punish them.
Moving continues apace; we’ve been hauling boxes and bags of anything that fits into our cars, and I donated my motorcycle to a buddy who hauled a bunch of furniture up for us. Hopefully we’ll actually be able to start actually sleeping here in a few weeks, after we rent a massive truck to haul our beds and other furniture.
Like I said: excitement. EXXXXxxxXtreeee3AM excitement.
Here’s a nifty graph about support for gay marriage:
I’d love to see a few graphs like this over time to see how feelings have changed. Still, Ryan Sager points out:
Just how big is the gay marriage age gap? Between the under-30 crowd and the over-65 crowd: 35 percentage points.
Or, try this on for size, at the state level: If people over 65 in each state made the laws, 0 states would have gay marriage; if people under 30 made the laws, 38 states would have gay marriage.
Good ol’ Barney Frank:
My question is, why aren’t more politicians reacting this way? They keep trying to have civil conversations with people who are clearly there to disrupt debate, and they try to actually engage them. I used to think that the PR hit they’d take from having these people thrown out would be bad, but let’s face it the only people who would care are on Fox News, and they’re not going to support a “leftist” agenda anyway. In fact, a savvy politician like Barney Frank might make their heads explode.
I work for an insurance company, so perhaps my perspective is colored a bit by that, but here’s my question: why are private enterprises allowed to offer insurance? Shouldn’t this be a government function alone?
Stay with me. The problem with the current healthcare insurance situation translates to all types of insurance, if you think about it. Insurance companies make money in two ways:
In the case of a healthcare insurance organization, it achieves its greatest profit by letting people get sick and die without treatment. If you get sick, and are denied a claim, you could try and switch to a different insurance company; vote with your feet, as the saying goes. Except now that you’re already sick, the new insurance company says you have a pre-existing condition and denies you insurance, or worse yet accepts your premiums and denies your claim.
I’ll say it again: insurance companies achieve their greatest profits by letting people die.
In the case of a public plan, though, that wouldn’t be a problem. The government doesn’t care about turning a profit. Politicians will complain if the plan loses too much money, but in the end if a program is popular no politician will vote to remove it. (See also: Medicare, which is the sort of “socialized medicine” that right-wing politicians hate, but which they’ll never get rid of because seniors like to vote.) So there’s no incentive to deny your claim because you already had cancer when you signed up, or because you accidentally mispelt your PCP’s name on the paperwork. They may haggle with providers over rates, and you may have a deductible, but they’ll approve almost anything.
Oddly enough, I think it’s even more egregious that no one offers anything like this in the area of auto insurance. I can’t think of a state that doesn’t require you to have auto insurance in order to drive, but do any offer a public insurance option? (I honestly don’t know, and am too lazy to look it up. (I am not a very good journalist.) Delaware does not, to the best of my knowledge. Seems like the kind of thing California or Massachusetts would do, though.)
I guess putting all insurance in government hands would put insurance companies out of business, but, frankly, screw ’em.
