Airport Kisses

This is the sweetest thing. I almost started crying.

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/dolgin/8airportkisses.html

Twister!

If you watch or read any kind of news, you will hear that a tornado hit downtown Iowa City last night.

www.cnn.com

It missed our apartment by about two blocks. The Chezik Honda dealership on the corner of Highway 6 and Mormon Trek is a mess. Cars are flipped over, the building is ripped apart. Downtown is a disaster. I could only suppress my curiosity until 6 a.m. this morning when I drove downtown to look around. The ped mall is strewn with trash and a lot of buildings are missing roofs. Most of the stoplights fell down.

As your official Iowa blogger, I have images for you.

I took these bottom two images along Riverside Drive.

The photo with the CLOSED sign shows what's left of the old Dairy Queen on Riverside.

Iowa-tastic

I like to provide tid-bits of interesting Iowa news.
For your enjoyment: Fairfield Ledger story

Famous Cheese

Blue cheese is, essentially, moldy cheese. In America, the best blue mold happens to grow in Newton, Iowa, where Maytag Dairy Farms has been turning out Maytag Blue Cheese since Duke Ellington's "Daydream" was a hit on the radio.

In 1941, the first wheels of Maytag Blue aged in underground caves. Cheesemakers produced the cheese by hand, stirring big vats of curds and testing the curd firmness with their fingers.
Little has changed, except now the cheesemakers wear hairnets.

I got to wear a hairnet myself when I toured the cheese factory to write an article about it for my master's project. You gotta love a master's program where there's no thesis and instead you can write quaint stories about cheesemaking in small town Iowa. Ahhh, graduate school.

Surprisingly, to me at least, not many Iowans know about Maytag Blue Cheese. Come on people! It's been in Oprah's magazine. It's been on the Emeril show. Maybe Iowan's don't even know about O magazine and Emeril. Don't you people get cable? I've decided Iowan's don't watch enough TV. It's one of our few outlets to civilization--we need to up the tube-time!

Workers still cut and wrap all the cheese by hand. The work rooms looked like something out of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. All the workers in white coats and hairnets would move quickly, not saying a word. The cheesemakers stirred big stainless steel vats of goo. I kept watching for Oompa Loompas.

If you've had blue cheese salad dressing you have no idea what actual blue cheese tastes like. That's what I discovered when I tasted a hunk of the huge wheel I felt I had to buy to reciprocate for them being so nice and letting me see the curds and whey in the vats. For the first couple of chews it was delicious--cheesy and tangy and creamy. But after swallowing I was left with an aftertaste of cement basement floor. That's mold for you.

Trouble in River City

I am such a pansy.

Really, I am. I've never smoked weed. I've never blacked out from drinking too much. I've never worn shirts cut too low to be decent. I am, overall, a master of self-control. I like my life clean, simple and healthy. I am too sane for my own good.

I've always wanted to do what was right. In elementary school the teachers instilled a holy fear of drugs into me, and I vowed to "just say no" when the moment came. They assured me the moment would come. I pictured myself in a parking lot surrounded by kids with long hair. One greasy hoodlum would hold a joint in my face and antagonize me, but I would walk away with my nose in the air. Alas, that moment never came. In small-town Iowa, no one ever offered me drugs. Sure, people took them. But my friends didn't, and no one would have been stupid enough to offer me drugs anyway. They knew I was too straight.

I went to college in clean-thinking, God-fearing Pella, Iowa. No one offered me drugs there, either. I knew people who did them, even saw them doing them, but no one solicited my participation. I would have said no, but it's still nice to be asked.

Spring is near. My yearly case of spring-fever is starting early, and I want to rebel. Along with most people, I sometimes want to do something out of character. I want to dance on tabletops. I want to get a tattoo. I don't want to do drugs--my holy fear of them is still intact. But I want to do something. I smoked a cigarette for the first time a couple days ago. Well, not really smoked--I didn't inhale. I'm still a clean and healthy pansy at heart.

Wheels Go Round and Round

Yesterday it finally hit me that I'm graduating in two months and have no job. This fact didn't hit me as a wave of pure panic, just as a fact that hadn't yet occurred to me. I think I should be more nervous about it, but I'm pretty serene. I don't know why. I think about how I've freaked out so many times in the past and it's always turned out fine, so why worry this time? Something will turn up. I am not merely a leaf being blown in the wind.

That said, I did take some time yesterday to think about what I should do when they kick me out of the University of Iowa. I thought about it on the bus, where I do most of my good thinking. The bus is fun. I can watch people, and the same people usually get off and on, so I can watch them over time. I know when the lady who smells funny is going to get on, so I try not to sit near where she will sit.

While thinking on the bus, I decided that if I can't get a job, I might move to Des Moines and try to be a freelancer for a year. I would of course be trying to get a job at the same time. And I could work some crap job too, I suppose. I don't want to live anywhere smaller than Des Moines, for now at least. If you want things to happen, you have to go where things are happening. Not that all that much happens in Des Moines, but it's the whole big fish small pond idea.

Not that I'm a big fish. But I could be a lot bigger fish in Des Moines than I could in Chicago. My sister wants to own Des Moines. She wants to go into commercial real estate and fight her way to the top. I want to go into journalism and fight my way to the top. Maybe we can own Des Moines together. Or at least rent a two bedroom for a year.

That's what I thought on the bus.

Narnia Rap

This is really old news, but it's still crazy-funny. If you haven't yet seen it, check out the Narnia Rap.

Sweet Lips

Celebrate Valentine's Day by reading this article on the history of the kiss.

XOXO!

One of the best stories I know

Disclaimer: I can never do justice to this story, but I will try anyway.

My sophomore year was the most exciting year of high school because it was the year of the Cat Killings. You might have heard about it--it was on the national news and Dateline and crap like that. Four senior hooligans--you know the type--got liquored up, broke into a local animal shelter and bludgeoned about twenty cats with baseball bats. It was not pretty. Uproar followed and animal rights activists and television crews invaded our town. However, the Cat Killers got off pretty easy in the end, and I'm not sure what happened to them in the long run. They are probably working at K-Marts or selling cars. The only Cat Killer's name I can remember is Lamansky, because it pertains to this story.

As I recall, the Cat Killings happened in the summer, and that fall we had this new English teacher named Mr. Volmecke (VOL-meck-y). He was straight out of college and used to wrestle and was in fact a wrestling coach at our high school. This is the only time I have heard of an English teacher doubling as a wrestling coach. He had black hair and big shoulders and thought he was Cab Calloway. He was always saying, "That guy was one cool cat," and other jive talk that sounded ridiculous. Needless to say, I didn't like him and mocked him at every opportunity. I mean, this was the guy teaching us Julius Caesar.

He didn't like me either but I don't blame him. He could sense my loathing. But don't blame me because I was just a smart-ass sixteen-year-old who had my own problems. I had skinny legs.

So it's homecoming. There's a big pep rally on Friday afternoon in the gym that we're all forced to attend. Mr. Volmecke has been asked to speak and is doing so, insanely. He's in full jive-talk mode, saying the football team was going to be riffin' on those yard-dogs and whatnot. He waved his arms and his eyes burned with hysteria. The crowd was into it and yelling and stamping. Volmecke screamed, "And I want you guys to cheer like crazy when Lamansky takes some cat's head off!"

Silence.

People sat down, slowly. Volmecke, unaware of the Cat Killings, had used his hep-talk to describe a player, another student named Lamansky, not the Cat Killer, making a great tackle. It was an unfortunate choice of words because hardly anyone had had Volmecke in class and most people thought he was indeed referring to the notorious Cat Killer. Gradually, titters of laughter burst out around the gym, and Volmekce got off quick. He only stayed at our school that one year. But people still tell the story of the Cat Killers and how Mr. Volmecke put his foot in his mouth in the most glorious fashion.

If you want to know that I didn't make this up, click here.

Some days I feel like the only thing I'm good at is looking cute.

Some days I feel like I suck at almost everything. My career goals seem the insane dreams of a megalomaniac. My interpersonal skills seem so lame I wonder how I managed to survive so long. My writing stinks. My cooking is terrible. Even my speaking voice seems low and scratchy.

I feel like one of those bimbos on Jay-Walking who is only good at looking cute. Maybe the energy I expend on clothes selection and hair is inversely proportional to how talented I can be in other areas. Something to think about. This whole scenario is of course based on the assumption that I do look cute. If you think otherwise, please don't let me know. If it's really the only thing I'm good at I'd hate to have that last shred snatched out from under me.

Wishing it were Summer

I wish it were summer in Iowa. I wish my fingers would burn when they touch the steering wheel of my car. I wish the heat would hit me like a wall when I step outside. I wish for warm hazy evenings when the sky is purple and pink at 9 p.m. and lightning bugs blink in the fields. I miss summer smells of mown grass and grilling burgers. I miss tank tops and my hair in a permanent ponytail. I wish for hot asphalt that shimmers and mornings so bright the grass looks electric.

Alert: Girl Talk. Don't Read if You Are Embarrassed by the Word Bra

The older I get the more I realize how problematic it is to judge other peoples' actions. We never know when we might be placed in a situation where hard choices have to be made. I bring this up because I've found myself thinking about doing something I never dreamed possible: getting a boob job.

I've always said I thought it was disgusting and unnatural and I'd never do anything like that. I acted as though people who got them were shallow and and ridiculous. How strange it is to find yourself considering something you once laughed at. Truth be told, I won't get one. I don't have that kind of cash. But I find myself wondering what I would do if I had buckets of money at my disposal.

You see, I am flat as a pancake. This fact strongly asserted itself in ballet class where we all wear leotards and and no bras. People say things like a flat chest bother you less as you get older, but I think it actually bothers me more. Maybe I've finally accepted that they won't grow any more on their own.

It's not really a major problem, and it only bothers me occasionally. Keira Knightley is flat, and she's accepted as a bombshell. They painted on her cleavage in Pirates of the Carribean, I was very happy to learn.

Still, I find myself imagining what life would be like if I had an, ahem, alteration. It doesn't seem too bad. And unless you are flat-chested yourself, you shouldn't say boob jobs are always disgusting. You never know who you might be insulting.