All's swell that ends swell.

Health by Coercion - Where Does It All End?!

So, OK, fine, I have this doctor's appointment, to which I am strolling - or ambling - with all due leisure, when what do I run (so to speak) across but this sign posted in the hospital parking lot, causing me considerable consternation since I must note that while I am all for …

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Sometimes a Chimp is Just a Chimp

I've made a fine fool of myself today. This dawned on me - finally - as I sat at the laundromat.

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How to Be Bad

I was slightly rotten today. Slightly. After filling my tank at the Marathon on Coventry and Mayfield around 12:30 this afternoon, I got into my car and wrote the mileage down on the receipt as is my habit. A car that had pulled in honked.

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Nice Pair: Pear Polenta Salad (a How To Cook Like Me installment)

I never used to care for salad in the winter, but this improvised meal, necessitated by being housebound and stuck with ingredients I already had, and a pear too old to enjoy as is, turned out to be a happy marriage of salad and comfort food. Here we go:

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The Music of the Day

Barack Hussein Obama became president today, not with his oath of office, but a few minutes earlier, at noon, to the silky bows and tender vibrato of violinist Itzhak Perlman and cellist Yo-yo Ma, two musical icons, joined by young talents Gabriela Montero on piano and Met Oper …

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The Road to Hell is Paved With Jello - Story of a Blind Date.

When Marla sashayed up in her - his? - spaghetti strap top and Everlast trunks, I wondered how consequential it would be that I had left my house not packing cell. And she - he? - was driving.

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Locavoracious - On a Season of Eating Local Produce

It's been weeks since I've eaten an avocado, I realized one day. Long a favorite of mine, whether in guacamole, or added to a salad with grapefruit as a tart foil, it fell off my menu this summer -as did the grapefruit. What happened? What happened is I decided to eat local.

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Campaign as Bikini Bottom

I'll admit, I read the moniker Snow Job Square Glasses in the NYT. Then I started doing what I do from time to time - cheesy alterations. I believe parody is fair use.

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New Group: Race Relations: Memoir

I was inspired today not so much by Newbroom's seed about White Privilege, but by the discussion he and I shared via email this evening concerning the ensuing thread.

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Trickle Down Bankruptcy

With the equivalent of a 9-11 disaster hitting Wall Street, why isn't our sitting president saying anything to the American people to calm their fears and to explain the government takeovers of these financial institutions?

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Obama health plan is better option

No disagreement here: Both the McCain and Obama campaigns say nearly one in six Americans lacks health insurance. McCain puts the number of uninsured at 47 million; Obama uses 46 million and says this includes "over 8 million children."

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Voter Suppression/Voter Fraud Clearinghouse

I've seen a spate of recent articles about GOP attempts to suppress voter turnout. In order to bring attention to this issue I decided to create a place to gather as much information as we can.

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Back to School - and Back to Buying USA

Am I provincial, old-fashioned, unrealistic, flaky, or just out of touch to think it matters that I buy American? Or that it's even possible? I put my ideals to the test when I went back to school shopping for my teenager.

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The Next New Yorker Cover

Well, frankly, if you ask me - you didn't? Do I care? - David Remnick @!$%#ed up royally on this one, and I only say @!$%#ed up in deference to Tina Brown who deftly turned language and usage at the New Yorker from prescriptive to descriptive (to what good end might be endlessly  …

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City Fresh - Produce in the 'Hood

This week I participated for the first time in City Fresh, a project of the New Agrarian Center and the Ohio State University Cooperative Extension that seeks to bring more local fresh produce to the city center here in Cleveland, benefitting both city dwellers and nearby urban a …

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Why my Israel posts are different - and better for you.

OK, fine, whatever, so I said I would stay out of meta posts for a week - but I didn't say I wouldn't write one. I'm so tricky! Anyway i wanted to say a thing or two about how discussions of the Middle East look here on the vine.

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Two Heads Are Better Than One - Why Cabbage Belongs in your Kitchen

Think locally, act alphabetically - that's how today's column comes to be about cabbage, though there is probably some Kabbalistic explanation as to why I started with B for beets.

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Beet Broth Beats Blahs - or Why Bother with Borsht

I've had the flu -real, live, yucky, bone-achy, hacking-cough, sleepy, headachy, feverish, stuck-at-home, took-tamiflu, flu, for over a week now.

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Don't Do This To Me!

Don't do this to me. Do what? Pick my comment apart sentence by sentence.

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A Joycean Dilemma is Blooming on the 'Vine.

I logged on still in my pyjamas, slippered but sockless, entwined envined, not deveined, as my tentacles stretched for - for what? for contact. fellowcitizen, breathless greeting, we are free, you and I reader, and when you ask, i answer, (where are my socks?) and yet. . .

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They're Magically Disgusting!

In a move described grimly as a cereal killing, General Mills has outraged concerned parent groups with it's launch of new Lucky Charms "Booger Bits."

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Wowie Amazing Mars/Moon Conjunction Tonight Only!

I tried to photograph tonights amazing sight of Mars a seeming hairbreadth's away from tonights full moon. The threadlike squiggle in my blurry photo is Mars, to give you an idea of how close. Look up! You may never see something like this again!

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Viagra and The German War Effort: The Goose Step Connection

Not many people know that the prototype for Viagra was developed in wartime Germany. "Where would the Nazis have been without the geometric precision of their parades?" ponders historian Helmut Biggerstaff. "This topical medicament, labeled Wiagra, was sold in health food stores.

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Giftswap - "Obvious & Dubious"

Those were the words, in an elegant hand, that opened the holiday greeting accompanying my giftswap, which gently announced its arrival during my afternoon nap in a shudder of the screen door and receding footsteps.

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About urbane gorilla

Articles Posted: 55
Links Seeded: 402
Member Since: 8/2006

Seventh Inning Adventist. If I ruled the world, everything would grind to a halt for weekday afternoon baseball.

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