November 2007 Archives

If you're like The Hound, sniffing out Christmas presents for your significant other gets harder every year. But, with the holiday shopping season ready to shift into high gear, the perfect gift --- a blue barrel --- is nearby.

The following must mean the apocalypse is nearer than we think: At this point in the National Football League It is the first time since 1984 that the National Football League has teams with 11-0 and 0-11 records. Everybody knows what happened in 1984, right? Ronald Reagan was re-elected in a landslide.

The Hound knows Waukegan's a rough place, but a couple of travelers found even the library is a tough room.

Perhaps The Hound is off his feed, but a congresswoman teaching a bunch of freshmen and sophomores sure seems like a waste of time. Isn't that what consumer education teachers are for?

Usually, The Hound doesn't have good things to say about TV people. You know the ones. The talking heads, the pretty faces, the ones that take themselves really seriously in a medium more tuned to entertainment than information. John Drury wasn't like that.

As The Hound was preparing his Thanksgiving feast he happened upon some commie pinkoes contending that this all-American holiday is nothing more than a selfish time to celebrate our affluence and thank ourselves for the success we've gained.

Is The Hound the only one not astounded that Barry Bonds has been charged with federal perjury and obstruction of justice charges for allegedly knowing about performance-enhancing steroids?

Like Shakespeare's Lady MacBeth, perhaps former Bolingbrook police office Drew Peterson, a suspect in in his wife's disappearance and in an ex-wife's death, "doth protest too much."

Think the Pakistani putsch by President Pervez Musharraf doesn't effect you? Not according to the Lake County Bar Association which is concerned over the closing of courts in Pakistan, and the mass arrest of lawyers and judges for speaking out against the military regime.

Most Lake Countians think there's only three radio stations based here. Of course, there's WKRS on the AM dial, WXLC and low-power WRLR on the FM dial. However, some of you might not know about WWDV in Zion.

Drew Peterson, the now ex-cop considered a suspect in the mysterious death of his third wife and the disappearance of his fourth, will be getting a $72,000-a-year pension. Not a bad deal for patrolling the mean streets of Bolingbrook.

In these shaky economic times, a 6 percent pay hike, retroactive, for this year and 4 percent increases the next two years are pretty good salary bumps, especially when most worker bees are getting 2 to 3 percent --- if they're lucky --- this year and next.

The Hound is always intrigued by the numerous ways people try to part hard-working folks from their hard-earned cash. The most-recent case is that of Reuben Collier, the erstwhile insurance agent/broker in Waukegan who police say wrote around 100 bogus policies.

The Hound was somewhat of a prankster in days of old, but he never panicked a school like what two geeks did on Halloween. And for that, the geeks have been charged.

If you haven't thanked a veteran yet, you've still got most of today to find one. Yes, it is Veterans Day, and that is Veterans without the apostrophe because it is not a day that "belongs" to veterans. It is a day for honoring all veterans.

A lot of folks are getting their tie-dyed T-shirts in a knot over a proposal to spend about a million of taxpayer dollars for a museum commemorating the 1969 Woodstock Music and Arts Festival. Most of them happen to be politicians.

Too bad Hollywood's writers are on strike for better compensation when it comes to "new media" ventures because Lake County has had a rash of stories recently which just cry out for film treatment.

The Hound leads a fairly boring existence, but not that meager to take a tour of a garbage dump on a fall Saturday. Especially one that nearby residents swear is stinking up their neighborhood.

If you travel across the Cheddar Curtain enough times, you will see the huge Mars Cheese Castle sign, beckoning like some siren of yore to stop in at the cheese store/deli off Interstate 94 for Wisconsin's most-favorite product or some delicious cheese bread.

Some years ago, The Hound labeled movies on the Lifetime cabler "Women in Jeop", mainly because most of them featured women who were in jeopardy in one form or another, mainly from creepy, controlling husbands and boyfriends. Although the channel has moved on, many of the featured films were and are based on true stories.

A year from now we will know who the nation's next president will be. That is if voters wake up from the coma Democratic and Republican presidential hopefuls have put the electorate.

If you're reading this you got up this morning and you glanced at your clock. It should be an hour behind. That's what happens when we go back into Central Standard Time from Daylight Saving Time.

It's been a week since the death of 16 horses following the crash in Wadsworth of the double-decker trailer carrying Belgian draft horses from Indiana ostensibly to an auction in Minnesota. It looks like the 43 survivors extricated from the wreckage will be spared whatever fate they were headed for at the time of the accident.

Well, here we go again. Mass transit officials say Metra and Pace commuters should brace themselves for the latest "doomsday" coming Sunday if the Legislature doesn't do something today to fund regional transportation. Let's see, they had time to do so in the spring and summer and September. What makes them sure they can get 'er done now?

The state's annual school report cards are out. You can check out the elementary school results or the high school ratings and guess what? The poor schools have the lowest rankings and the rich schools have the highest rankings. Stop the presses!