I saw this headline that said "Obama tells huge Dem crowd he'll fix Washington." Please tell me he meant Washington Street in Waukegan. I can't tell you how many hours of my life have been spent stuck at red lights on Washington when there is no other traffic on the road.
The Swami feels your pain. As many observers have noted over the years but the city still has yet to grasp, the traffic lights on Washington Street are dysfunctional -- especially the ones in the downtown area, where they seemed designed to keep drivers from going more than one block at a time, day and night.
Perhaps worst of all is the evil little signal at St. Therese Boulevard, which will stop you dead in your tracks just for giggles.
But is there hope on the horizon? Word is, the Lake County Division of Transportation is spending $4 million on "interconnection of traffic signals" from Sheridan Road to Teske Boulevard. But take note: the project started this summer and is "currently waiting for delivery of traffic signal poles in September."
The Swami foresees that the project will be crippled by a sudden and critical nationwide shortage of traffic signal poles sometime in the next few weeks. We all know Washington could never be fixed that easily.
This week's news headlines today, only from the crystal ball of The Swami:
... a bruised, soiled and ragged but resolute Mark Curran will emerge from "The Hole" at Lake County Jail, his eyes squinting at the light of day, and defiantly declare that he is innocent and will now return to life among free men ...
... Barack Obama and his former fierce rival, Joe Biden, will spend the week trying to remind America that it was George H.W. Bush and not Jimmy Carter who said Ronald Reagan was engaging in "voodoo economics" ...
... meanwhile, with the Democratic National Convention dominating late-summer television, John McCain will sneak out to see "Disaster Movie" with Mitt Romney ...
... noting all the glowing media attention given to Madonna on the occasion of her 50th birthday, a pop singer by the name of Michael Jackson will leave a voice mail with the receptionist at "Entertainment Tonight" and point out that he, also, is turning 50 this week ...
... breaking the tension from more than two weeks of model behavior, a relieved Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau will go on a 12-hour binge of fire-hosing random crowds and beating university students with spiked clubs ...
... and both the Chicago White Sox and the Chicago Cubs will reach Labor Day weekend in first place, setting up a final month of pleasure, pain and the impossible becoming more and more possible.
This week's news headlines today, only from the crystal ball of The Swami:
... a bruised, soiled and ragged but resolute Mark Curran will emerge from "The Hole" at Lake County Jail, his eyes squinting at the light of day, and defiantly declare that he is innocent and will now return to life among free men ...
... Barack Obama and his former fierce rival, Joe Biden, will spend the week trying to remind America that it was George H.W. Bush and not Jimmy Carter who said Ronald Reagan was engaging in "voodoo economics" ...
... meanwhile, with the Democratic National Convention dominating late-summer television, John McCain will sneak out to see "Disaster Movie" with Mitt Romeny ...
... noting all the glowing media attention given to Madonna on the occasion of her 50th birthday, a pop singer by the name of Michael Jackson will leave a voice mail with the receptionist at "Entertainment Tonight" and point out that he, also, is turning 50 this week ...
... breaking the tension from more than two weeks of model behavior, a relieved Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau will go on a 12-hour binge of fire-hosing random crowds and beating university students with spiked clubs ...
... and both the Chicago White Sox and the Chicago Cubs will reach Labor Day weekend in first place, setting up a final month of pleasure, pain and the impossible becoming more and more possible.
Now that the Beijing Olympics are over, what do you really think of Chicago's chances to host the summer games in 2016? Should I start lining up for tickets now, or should I plan on flying down to Rio? Or Tokyo? Or Madrid? Local minds want to know.
Mike L. Fellps
Dear Michael:
Yes, it will be but a short year from October when we shall learn who will host the Games of the XXXI Olympiad ... unless one has a crystal ball, in which case we can knock that out right now and either put the champagne on ice or start the grieving process.
But maybe we don't even need to peer into the future. Let's just look at the facts -- removed from the running for various reasons in the recent past were some fairly big wheels: Buenos Aires; Delhi, India; Dubai (that would be in the United Arab Emirates); and Rome (the one in Italy, not Illinois or Indiana).
More recently eliminated by the almighty International Olympic Committee were Baku (in Azerbaijan, which was always very hard for Tom Brokaw to pronounce); Doha (in Qatar, whatever that is); and Prague (in the Czech Republic, known by your parents as Czechoslovakia and your great-grandparents as the Austro-Hungarian Empire).
That leaves us with, as you mentioned, Madrid, Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro and our very own Chicago. Many millions will be spent and arms twisted in the coming year by the finalists, making the U.S. presidential campaigns look like a township election by comparison. But these things are elemental:
Madrid is only 300 miles from Barcelona, which hosted the Summer Games in 1992, Tokyo already played host in 1964, and Rio ... well, it is true that the games have never been in South America, but come on -- it's Rio.
Chicago, no doubt, has an inch-thick file of incriminating photographs just itching to see the light of day. When push comes to shove, that will make all the difference.
Time to put your money where your "crystal ball" is. A couple of months ago, you said you'd predict who the next president would be once "all the players are in place" on both tickets. So take a shot right now -- who will Barack Obama and John McCain pick for their running mates?
The Gambler
Dear Kenny:
Back in that June 3 blog, The Swami also opined that Obama and Clinton was "a 'when' not 'if' proposition if ever there was one." That forecast appears to be going to hell as of this moment, with Obama using the word "he" and not "she" Tuesday night when referring to his as-yet-unannounced choice. Hillary Clinton's supporters and detractors have described her in many ways, but they have never said she is a he.
And John McCain? Remember back in the heat of the primary season, when everyone figured his veep choice would be either the game-show-host handsome Mitt Romney or the Red-State-friendly Mike Huckabee? Funny how times change over a single summer. When is the last time you even heard the words "Romney" or "Huckabee"?
So there we have an idea of who will not be unveiled by the presumptive presidential candidates -- but your challenge is for The Swami to foresee who will be. Let us gaze into the crystal ball ... hmmm ... very cloudy ... hard to see ...
For McCain, the crystal ball is showing someone square-jawed and dark-haired and not 72 years old ... could it be Tom Ridge? The road to the White House might run through Pennsylvania.
And Obama? No surprise here, but the crystal ball is seeing someone white and male ... and that White House road might also run through Virginia and/or Indiana ...
A buddy of mine told me that some college presidents want to lower the drinking age to 18 so there won't be as much binge-drinking on campus. Please tell me exactly when and where this will happen, because I'm a 17-year-old high school senior, and if there's a college out there that will let me drink next year, I want to send out an application.
Billy Sunday Jr.
Dear Billy:
You must be referring to Monday's news flash that presidents from "about 100 of the best-known U.S. universities" are calling for "an informed and dispassionate debate" about lowering the de facto federal drinking age from 21 to 18.
The debate has been heard before, and, at the risk of simplifying a complex issue by breaking it down into two basic arguments (an American pastime, by the way), here are those two arguments:
1) Lowering the drinking age to 18 would cut down on binge drinking because young adults, consuming alcohol legally in public settings rather than getting wasted in dark corners before anyone notices, would learn their own boundaries and limitations in the same way as any adult with legal access to alcohol ....
... and ...
2) Lowering the drinking age to 18 would expand both the roster of functional alcoholics stumbling through society and the armada of drunk drivers slaughtering themselves and others on the nation's roadways.
The Swami is not here to pass moral judgment on this or any such firestorm, but gazing into the crystal ball can instruct us on if and when the United States of America, former home of the Eighteenth Amendment and current home to beer commercials every five minutes during a football game, will allow 18-year-olds to not only vote and not only swear an oath to the military but also purchase and consume alcohol ...
... hmmmm ... it's coming in rather clearly now ...
Your answer: 21 will remain the magic number. And everyone under 18 will still openly go to a house party and tap a keg provided by someone with either a fake I.D. or an older brother -- America's preferred method of developing boundaries.
This week's news headlines today, only from the crystal ball of The Swami:
... Madonna's belated 50th birthday celebration will include shopping for a new comforter set at Kohl's, indulging in a Turtle Mocha at Caribou Coffee, eating a quiet dinner with family members at Olive Garden and then falling asleep to a "Law & Order" rerun ...
... poor box-office will follow the negative reviews for "Star Wars: The Clone Wars," a double dose of bad news that will thrill the cottage industry of dorks who live to trash George Lucas ...
... and bitchy sports columnists from coast to coast will launch a backlash of criticism against Michael Phelps after he fails to medal as a last-minute entry in rhythmic gymnastics.
I've been glued to my television in recent days catching every bit of Olympics coverage I can. I'm just a teenager, so I can't speak from too much experience, but it seems this year's games are full of controversy and politics. Have things always been like this? Aren't the Olympics supposed to be about sports? And what do we have to look forward to if Chicago lands the games in 2016?
And politics? You mean the Chinese dissidents who have mysteriously disappeared? You mean the whole Georgia/Russia thing casting a cloud over the athletes from those nations? What politics?
My young friend, this is the Olympic Games. They have survived everything from Adolph Hitler as a host to Israeli athletes being slaughtered to a mad bomber striking on American soil. All of this is just the proverbial sound and fury.
Yes, indeed, the games will go on. Just as they will in Chicago, eight short years from now.
I have you beat when it comes to seeing all that there is to see, thanks to the wonders of the Internet. There's a site that allows me to enter my ZIP Code and see all the gas prices in my neighborhood ranked from cheapest to most expensive, so put that in your crystal ball and smoke it.
W.W. Webb
Dear World Wide:
The Swami is familiar with this Web site of which you write. On Monday, for example, if you wrote "60087" in the ZIP Code box, you would have been presented with 30 gas stations listed in the Waukegan-Gurnee-Wadsworth metropolitan area, and you would have seen that the lowest price for regular unleaded was $3.859 per gallon at the Murphy's at Fountain Square of Waukegan, while the award for the highest was the Shell on Grand Avenue and Interstate 94 in Gurnee at $4.009 per gallon. Fancy stuff.
But the devil, as always, is in the details.
Reading the fine print, we see that this survey of gas stations is taken "every night (from) over 90,000 gas stations across the nation. Please note that gas prices in your area may change more frequently than we can obtain them."
Ah, yes. Even the almighty Internet is at the mercy of the ever-changing price of gasoline, which can change from hour to hour (especially in the age of electronic signage). Let's say you see a price on-line at 10 a.m. that was actually fielded the night before. You then run out to your favorite Citgo and find that 10 cents have been added since oil-futures trading began on Wall Street, or because Tropical Storm Hogarth is brewing off the coast of Louisiana.
In other words, leave these things to The Swami. You want to know how much it will cost to fill your tank from day to day? Let us peer into the crystal ball ... hmmm ... the actual retail price is ... still more than you want it to be.
Tomorrow's news, via the crystal ball of The Swami: Customers at U.S. gas stations required to pre-pay, provide zip code, deposit driver's license, submit hair and blood samples, and chain grandmother to front counter before pumping.
Tomorrow's news, via the crystal ball of The Swami: "The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor" is the best of summer films about mummies and/or dragon emperors.
Tomorrow's news, via the crystal ball of The Swami: A beaming Brett Favre pulls into the drive-thru at a bank in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and makes a deposit that sets the computer system on fire.
