Utterly Useless Knowledge

I really do love the vastness of the internet some days.  

It was called the rest home by most in town, but it certainly wasn't the type of place that the elderly go to shuffle up & down hallway corridors aimlessly, or lay in bed waiting out their last days on earth. The group home was in a century-old hotel, just east of Main on 3rd St. For me, it was across the street from Granny's house, across from the Leader Office and directly behind Randy's Tastee Sweet. It was named Nishna Cottage, and it was home for a collection of ex-junkies, the mentally disabled, and other various adults with mental and physical disabilities that, to an impressionable youth, appeared to have been forgotten about by family, if they had any left that would still claim them. The structure itself had served as a hotel in the late 19th early 20th century. It was on the payroll as a state institution, loosely affiliated wit the Glenwood State Hospital & School, a fifteen minute drive west of town. The residents, from what I could tell, were free t...

It rarely ever ends without tears.

It's one thing to get a (not so) gentle nudge around 11:15 PM from my wife, who's encouraging me to roll over onto my side and not sleep on my back due to the inevitable louder-than-normal one-man chorus of snoring. It's quite another to hear the soft click of a hotel door at 1:15 AM, when your buddy decides that the best option is to gather his things and leave the room, leaving behind the echoing growls of a slightly overweight human bear, heavily sedated from an 11-hour slow-to-medium beer consumption pace in Wrigleyville after a day-night double-header, and attempt to get his own room with peace and tranquility at $150-a-night, only to be up & on the road by 5:30 AM. Gotta tell you. It was an attention-getter. I wonder how many more HYPHEN -riddled sentences I can jam into this post. I know I've been an above-average snore producer for quite a while now. I would assume that it's from a combination of genetics (my parents are Steve & Edie of snoring...

Incredible rock show put on by the Foo Fighters in Council Bluffs, of all places, on Monday night, 5.22.11, highlighted by their amazing 3-hour set, which included this version of a personal favorite, a clip from Carslisle, England earlier this month.

A very rare combination of all of the essential ingredients needed for incredibly explosive, tornadic storms came together for one afternoon yesterday across the deep south, triggering what will be considered one of, if not THE worst tornado outbreak in recorded history. While not confirmed yet, one particular storm sustained a mesocyclone/circulation/tornado continuously for almost 200 miles, from eastern Mississippi, across the state of Alabama, into northern Georgia, before the storm dissipated entirely, finally, southern North Carolina. This was the fateful storm/tornado that ravaged Tuscaloosa, AL, and went on another 50+ miles, tearing through the north side of Birmingham. It would go on to do more damage as it crossed northeast Alabama, and into northwest Georgia. The majority of the known fatalities from yesterday’s outbreak are from this one supercell thunderstorm. Truly amazing I don’t think this video was taken by a trained spotter or storm chaser, but needless to say...