Last night I went swimming with Jordan and Jacob, my two youngest boys, and we played a silly game called “Chocolate Cake”.

You tell a story, and eventually you say the phrase “chocolate cake”, and then everybody has to jump into the pool. Last one in is the loser. They learned it in swim class at that same pool, and they love it.

For the three of us, I think the game is mainly an excuse to have a big giggle-fest, because we try to work in phrases like “chocolate steak”, “chocolate lake”, etc. This might sound lame to you, but for an audience of 8- and 10-year-old boys, it’s Pure Comedy Gold.

Usually I just do the story-telling part, but this time, I hauled my heft out of the water and played a couple of times. I even managed to win once. Pwned!

The stories go on and on and on … and on … and they are ridiculous. Stupid and silly and funny. We all make each other laugh a lot. One time I questioned whether Jordan said “cake” or “kake”. Hey, you never know.

And then when the “chocolate cake” kicks in, somebody wins and somebody loses, but we don’t care. Much. The end is actually anti-climactic, because we’re having fun with it during the game. An audience of 8- and 10-year-old boys can do that.

These are the kind of memories I don’t have enough of, and that I crave for myself as I grow old. My oldest son James is 21 now, and it bugs me that I can’t really picture him in my mind as an 8-year-old, or re-imagine what his voice sounded like back then. I don’t know why it matters—this imagined ability that maybe nobody else has—but it seems important to me, somehow, in a way that even I do not understand.

I guess the “art therapy rehab” didn’t work so great.

Two of the four leaders allegedly behind the al Qaeda plot to blow up a Northwest Airlines passenger jet over Detroit were released by the U.S. from the Guantanamo prison in November, 2007, according to American officials and Department of Defense documents. [...] American officials agreed to send the two terrorists from Guantanamo to Saudi Arabia where they entered into an “art therapy rehabilitation program” and were set free, according to U.S. and Saudi officials.

Huh.

Let me get this straight. You’re telling me that releasing terrorist, enemy-combatant scumbags from military prison has consequences?

And that finger paints didn’t pacify their American-murdering ways?

Wow. I need a second here. Holy crap! This could be a problem.

I was under the impression that these fine fellows would retire to a life of leisure and philanthropy. I mean, what else am I to think when so many smart people were telling us that we were depriving these gentlemen of their rights?

And now we find out that they received the much-ballyhooed art therapy and still went back to trying to commit mass murder?

I just don’t know what to believe any more.

It’s almost enough to make me think the idea to release them in the first place was dangerous and naive, and even stupid, not to mention “objectively pro-terrorist”, to borrow a line from George Orwell.

Maybe we should give them a wad of cash when we release them. And a car. Maybe a blank passport, too. There must be something we can do to help them, and make them like us!

Tonight the Chicago Bears play the Minnesota Vikings at home for the chance to have a better record than … the Oakland Raiders!

True fact. The Raiders have won 5 games, including away games at Denver and Pittsburgh, and home wins over Cincinnati and Philly . The Bears did beat Pittsburgh, but got drilled by the Bengals and dominated by the Eagles.

This year has been, I think, the biggest train-wreck we’ve seen here on a football field since Northwestern infamously lost all those games in a row in the early 80s.

There were expectations going into this year. Hopelessly incorrect ones, but expectations none-the-less. We’d been deluded into believing that the basic structure of a winning team was in place, and all we needed was an upgrade at QB and it would all fall into place: division titles, playoff success, maybe even a ring.

HA! What were we smoking?

Because this team is just not good by any measure. Most of the players are old, slow, inexperienced, and/or clueless. Not all, but most. These bad players are coached by an almost uniformly bad staff. The player personnel front office people hired all of them, so, what can you say about them except “they are bad too”? And the ownership entrusted the ship to this laughingstock, so they must not know what they’re doing, either.

There is talk of firing head coach Lovie Smith. While he so richly deserves it, that won’t fix problems with evaluating, drafting, and signing talent. So go ahead and fire GM Jerry Angelo, too, just for the idiotic sin of failing to address the offensive line in any meaningful way for seven consecutive drafts. Fine with me. But that doesn’t fix problems with ownership and front-office clowns that decided hiring him was a good idea.

Organizations that win usually do so in part because they not only have good players, but good coaches, GMs, and owners, too. It isn’t just a coincidence that all that comes together. And even though the Bears have a long history of being cheap, Papa Bear George Halas managed to have some good teams anyway, didn’t he? Then the old man died in 1983, and his Yale-MBA-football-illiterate grandson Michael McCaskey became the primary decision-maker. This has worked out, pretty much, just as one might expect. The one Super Bowl they did win in 1985 was due to the excellent player evaluation talents of GM Jim Finks, and the coaching genius of the Mike ditka/Buddy Ryan two-headed monster.

Just for comparison, let’s review Don Pierson’s position-by-position list of What went wrong for Chicago Bears in 2009? On offense alone, seven positions underperformed: QB, HB, TE, WR, LT, LG, RT. On defense, six more underperformed. So overall, 13 of the 22 were woefully inadequate.

So, here we are. This teams stinks, and can’t rebuild an offensive and defensive line in one off-season, not to mention the required upgrades at receiver, linebacker, fullback, and safety. And even if it was possible to do that in one off-season, they still couldn’t do it, because they suck at evaluating players, remember? Because the McCaskey family only hires people who suck at evaluating players.

But the Bears will probably just do the easy thing and lay all blame at the feet of Lovie Smith, hire some new guy, and tell us it will all be different now. Sure it will.

I’m just glad the Blackhawks are back, so I don’t have to pretend to care about this awful football team right now. Because they suck grapefruits through a garden hose.

See BookTV’s incredible list of best books of 2009, including links to tons of similar lists on other sites.

One reason that I love BookTV: they focus on non-fiction in three two of my favorite subject areas: history and economics. The third focus is politics, which can be interesting when it centers on policy and the results of same, or when written by humorous people like P.J. O’Rourke or Mark Twain. Otherwise … not so much.

Cecil Adams writes fondly about the hobby shops of yore:

Model airplanes figured prominently, but you could also find battleships, submarines, missiles, tanks, artillery, and other warlike gear, plus a smattering of sports cars, trucks, and similar objects of boyish fascination. … Each kit had numerous parts, many of them tiny, which were to be assembled in accordance with detailed numbered instructions, a process that could take days. It’s fair to say a good deal of extraneous detail was omitted by the more impatient participants, because the fate of the typical military model was to be blown up with firecrackers or filled with lighter fluid and thrown off the porch. I however was more punctilious about it, believing this to be in the national interest. To this day, were a crisis to arise, I’m sure you could find lots of ex-ten-year-olds capable of assembling a Nike Ajax antiaircraft missile, but if they’re anything like my brother they’ll slobber glue on the warhead and mount the thrusters cockeyed on the launch rail, to say nothing of omitting the decals. Should the Iranian air force come with nukes, therefore, be sure you stick with me.

Later he mentions passing the torch to his sons:

Years later a hobby shop opened up near my house. I took the little researchers there a few times to purchase B-17s and such, till one day a sign announced a going-out-of-business sale — everything half or more off, including a formidable inventory of trains. Here was an opportunity. The kids demanded their own locomotives, showing an impressive eye for quality, and naturally I felt the need to purchase a couple additional items just to fill things out. Before I knew it I had spent, well, a lot. We took it all home and set it up in the basement, and for quite a while thereafter had an extravagant display, with a tangle of switches and crossovers and multiple circling trains worthy of Casey Jones on drugs. Eventually it had to make way for a Ping Pong table, so we packed the trains away. Maybe someday I’ll take them out again, maybe I won’t — the essential goal had been accomplished. Some will deride this as a sign of eternal adolescence, but to me it merely shows a dream deferred isn’t necessarily a dream denied.

I loved hobby shops as a kid. We had one in Evanston, at Central and Green Bay Road, just a block from where we lived. They raced slot cars. I was about six years old, and I can vividly remember to this day walking in there on a Saturday morning and being mesmerized by the HUGE track they had set up. Of course, everything seems huge when you’re six, but that is part of the wonder of that age.

When I got a little older, I used to build models, too. Planes, tanks, ships. I remember distinctly building the Bismark battleship. It took quite a few days, if I remember correctly, but it was so cool when it was done.

I see there is a place called Oakridge Hobbies and Toys in Downers Grove, not all that far from here. They’ve even got slot cars and a track. I’ll have to check that out, and maybe I can get my kids interested, too.

Outside, unwashed morons protest and police respond with pepper spray and beat-downs.

Inside, slimy rent-seekers attempt extortion against rich countries using global warming as a proxy.

All this fuss over an increase of a few PPM of CO2 in our atmosphere? Just imagine the ruckus if something important was going on!

At least the morons and hippies protesting the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago had a real war to ignite their fires. Gotta give ‘em that.

Ed Driscoll has written an excellent post with links galore about Tom Wolfe, cultural decline, and reality TV: Guido Beach Meets The Great Relearning.

Also, rock ‘n roll and dumb hippies. What’s not to like?

Cultural conservatives always get grief for making observations like this. But that doesn’t mean they’re always wrong. In fact, I’m pretty sure they’re usually right.

Where are today’s heroes?

Oh, they are out there, but we just don’t hear that much about them. Six Congressional Medals of Honor have been awarded for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but few people know their names, or care. Few people today even know that the Medal of Honor is the highest honor there is.

But Audie Murphy became a national hero after WWII because of his Medal of Honor. Of course, it’s easy to see why:

Second Lieutenant Audie L. Murphy, 01692509, 15th Infantry, Army of the United States, on 26 January 1945, near Holtzwihr, France, commanded Company B, which was attacked by six tanks and waves of infantry. Lieutenant Murphy ordered his men to withdraw to a prepared position in a woods while he remained forward at his command post and continued to give fire directions to the artillery by telephone. Behind him to his right one of our tank destroyers received a direct hit and began to burn. Its crew withdrew to the woods. Lieutenant Murphy continued to direct artillery fire which killed large numbers of the advancing enemy infantry. With the enemy tanks abreast of his position, Lieutenant Murphy climbed on the burning tank destroyer which was in danger of blowing up any instant and employed its .50 caliber machine gun against the enemy. He was alone and exposed to the German fire from three sides, but his deadly fire killed dozens of Germans and caused their infantry attack to waver. The enemy tanks, losing infantry support, began to fall back. For an hour the Germans tried every available weapon to eliminate Lieutenant Murphy, but he continued to hold his position and wiped out a squad which was trying to creep up unnoticed on his right flank. Germans reached as close as 10 yards only to be mowed down by his fire. He received a leg wound but ignored it and continued the single-handed fight until his ammunition was exhausted. He then made his way to his company, refused medical attention, and organized the company in a counterattack which forced the Germans to withdraw. His directing of artillery fire wiped out many of the enemy; he personally killed or wounded about 50. Lieutenant Murphy’s indomitable courage and his refusal to give an inch of ground saved his company from possible encirclement and destruction and enabled it to hold the woods which had been the enemy’s objective.

via Audie Murphy’s Medal of Honor

Frankly, EVERY Medal of Honor recipient deserves the kind of adulation that Audie Murphy received. Not because these guys want attention, but because we as a society owe it to ourselves to honor people who fight for us. And when we don’t pay that debt, we all lose.

Inspired by this excellent post at Threedonia: On Heroes

A nice mix of Christmas movies tonight at 7:00:

• Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (CBS-2) – Seasonal favorite, old reliable
• It’s a Wonderful Life (NBC-5) – Christmas-time classic
• The Polar Express (ABC-7) – Excellent family movie, good Christmas message
• Fargo (WGN-9) – ????

Starting in January 2010, Chicagoans who ride commuter trains will finally be able to buy Metra tickets by credit card.

Why so late? Wrong question. The only reason they’re doing it at all is because “legislation was introduced last spring requiring them to accept plastic”.

This is what generally happens when government has a monopoly on a service or product. The convenience of the customer ceases to matter, because, hey, tough crap pal! Try that other train service. Oh, right, there isn’t one.

We’ll leave similarities between this and any pending federal legislation as an exercise for the reader.