Sweet Miss Giving’s Cookie

Posted on 15/10/2011 by Grumpa Joe

I disagree with comments flashing around Facebook that 1% of Monsters consume 99% of cookies.

Grandma Peggy and I planned a beautiful evening out. We have theater subscriptions for Steppenwolf and had to reschedule our date from Wednesday to Thursday a week later. We did that because our theater date coincided with the funeral of a dear friend. Needless to say, the weather a week earlier was heavenly, warm and dry. The friends we usually go with reported the play was excellent and that we shouldn’t miss it.

The plan was to leave the house at four-thirty for the seven-thirty performance. We would valet park, dine at Gianni’s, and saunter across Halstead Street to Steppenwolf. We did leave at four-thirty. That was it for the plan. From that point on things went awry.

At forty-first street all traffic on the Dan Ryan stopped. Normally, we do not hit heavy traffic until the entrance to the last express lanes at twenty-second street. Traffic delays from twenty-second are more normal than the one we sat in Thursday.  It rained this time, and the line of semi-trucks looked like a railroad train from fortieth to the Loop.

The electronic sign at thirty-ninth said it would be twenty-seven minutes to Circle. (Chicago Circle Campus of the University of Illinois). Circle is at Roosevelt Road (twelfth street from thirty-ninth is twenty-seven blocks or roughly three and a half miles). Thirty minutes later, at twenty-second street, another electronic sign flashed “thirty minutes to Circle.” That didn’t sound so good.

Peggy and I had a wonderful conversation along the way as I watched the mpg indicator on the Death Star drop from 24.5 mpg to 22.5 mpg. We moved very slowly, so slowly that the speedometer needle never left the peg. I thought this jam would be the ideal scenario for the all-electric car. When you don’t move, it doesn’t matter if the electric can only travel forty miles on a charge. Although two and a half hours with head lights on would drain the battery too.

We finally, passed Madison Street, the geographic bisector of town. Traffic began to move north out of the loop at a light warping speed of ten miles per hour.

We pulled into the Steppenwolf parking lot a seven o’clock. Both of us made a mad dash to the rest room for relief. Once the pressure was off our mind the stomach growls kicked in.  We headed for the snack bar, where I spotted the cookies. Not just any cookie, these were Sweet Miss Giving’s Chocolate Chunk Cookies. I took two off the rack and waited in line to pay. “That’ll be six dollars please.”

Whoa, six bucks for two cookies! It didn’t matter I became the monster and Peggy was the monsterette.

I have to blog about this cookie, I told myself. I stuffed the empty package in my pocket.

The play was as great as our friends told us. I’ll write about it later. We left feeling pretty good about ourselves for having stayed awake for the entire performance, and we actually understood what was going on. Steppenwolf does, at times, present some weird stuff.

Our drive home took a sweet forty-eight minutes.

The following morning I read the label on the cookie package. No wonder these things were so good, one cookie is two servings for a total of five-hundred calories, but Sweet Miss Giving’s cookie made up for missing dinner at Trattoria Gianni’s, and the ridiculous two and a half hour drive.

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Atlas Shrugged-Directive 10-289

Posted on 17/06/2011 by Grumpa Joe

A few weeks ago I heard friends talking about a movie called Atlas Shrugged.  My Facebook friends commented about how the liberal Hollywood establishment panned the film. That is all it took to raise my ears. Anything that gets a liberal mad is fuel for my soul.

I procrastinated for days before I finally asked a friend to go see the film. My buddy Al immediately turned me down because he had read a review by Michael Medved who panned it.

I said,  “Thanks, I’ll save my money and read the book instead.”

The Frankfort library did not have the book on the shelf so I ordered it through the South Suburban Library System.

A week later, Atlas Shrugged arrived and I picked it up. Immediately, I knew why the movie is a dud. The book is two inches thick. I didn’t even know what it is about, and I could tell that no single two-hour movie can do the job of telling the story without omitting huge sections. This story can be a series similar to Dallas or Dynasty, but not a single movie.

It took me three weeks to read the story. I am not a fast reader, but the story held my interest and I could not put it down. Several times, my eyes grew weary and I fought off sleep.

The story Atlas Shrugged is definitely not a liberal favorite. The plot revolves around a socialist United States government that has hypnotized the people into believing that all industrialists are evil profiteers. Profit is evil in the possession of the profiteer. Profit is “greed” in the hands of the businessman, and belongs to the people. It must be diverted to “social good.”

Ayn Rand, the author, devised an amazingly complicated and entertaining plot and describes an advanced socialist progressive society well. Those governing want control of the minds of the people. Not because the governing wants to use men’s ideas beneficially, but rather so the people would not use ideas against the governing.

Government is comprised of a group of good old boys who all believe in the same principles of providing for social good. Their efforts become disastrous.  Only those who believed in themselves, and were in business to make a profit, actually provided goods and services that contributed to the social good. The “looters,” were just that, “looters” they contributed absolutely zero to the social good.  The more they looted, the more they needed to loot.

Miss Rand first published this book in nineteen fifty-seven, but I recognized elements of 2011 throughout. She used words like “greed,” to describe evil business. “Social good” was a euphemism for ”income redistribution,” and the government lived for taking control of, and regulating everything.

The story moves along at a fast pace, and except for a single chapter near the end, was totally entertaining. Ayn Rand tends to use too many words to describe her characters; I would have done the same story in one-third the pages. but I am not a writer.

I have inserted a page from the story describing how the actions of government made the economy crash further and further. Each time, the government reaction was more control. Each time the economy lost ground. The social good became poverty for the people. Their final action was called Directive Number 10-289, a list of wage and work controls that turned every one into a slave. Directive 10-289 became the straw that broke the camel’s back.

A single character named John Galt, an inventor, physicist, and businessman is captured and held hostage. He is literally their last chance to save the world. They need him to resurrect the business and industry to get the economy rolling again. Galt’s first recommendation is to cut taxes and to roll back regulations.

“No, no” responds the leader, “we can’t do that.”

Sorry folks, but Mr. Williams, the so-called leader, sounds like Barack Obama. He wants someone to save the economy for him without giving up an inch of his turf.

Atlas Shrugged may be Barack Obama’s playbook for hope and change. If you want to know where you fit into the plot, read the story and decide if you still want Obama’s version of America.

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