I write the songs that make only a tiny part of the world sing

In the pantheon of stupid ideas Rockford has come up with to justify itself to the rest of the world, I think I've found the greatest achievement. But first let's take a moment to remember a couple of the best...
There is the timeless Symbol welcoming drivers - and warding off evil spirits - along Illinois 251. I've always thought the giant red sculpture looks like a cross between a garish Christmas present bow and a medieval weapon.
There's my personal favorite, a tourism bureau advertising blitz from the 1990s. The tagline was "Rockford: A different kind of greatness." Huh?
But this one is the best by far. Apparently, the 'ole Chamber of Commerce once took it upon themselves to put together a collection of amateur songwriters' ditties on Rockford. Pure awful. Among the lyrics: "Catch a smile on the Whitman Street bridge."
Please, please, please visit this link and listen. I just can't do it justice here.

How we really chose presidents

Today's N.Y. Times op-ed page has a great graphic comparing the height and weight of presidential candidates.
Taller guys beat shorter guys by a 2-to-1 margin and heavier guys prevailed over lightweights with equal dominance. But I took the N.Y. Times analysis one step further and combined the two measures. In the 28 elections since 1896, the winner was either heavier or taller than the loser in all but three cases, thus proving beyond all doubt that Americans want the bigger guy when deciding who should run the free world. The most recent exception was Bush v. Gore; Al Gore is an inch taller W, but we all know he actually won the election, so there's an exception that proves the rule.
Harry Truman, a man of average stature, beat Thomas Dewey, who stood a full three inches over him. Likewise, Teddy Roosevelt was two inches shorter than Alton Parker when he won in 1904. But both men had reputations for their outsized personalities, so again, I say they're exceptions that prove the rule.
Where do these statistics leave our current candidates? Obama is 6' 1½" and 180 pounds. John McCain is 5' 7" and 165 pounds. There hasn't been a president as short as McCain in a hundred years. The closest weight was Calvin Coolidge, who was only four pounds heavier, but he was still three inches taller than McCain. Turn-of-the-century president William McKinley was 5' 7", which was the last time such a short man was president. And, well, he was shot to death in office.
Every president in the television age has been at least 6 feet tall (Well, Nixon was 5' 11½").
Who will win in November? You decide.

Running away with your mind

The parking lot for law students is more than a quarter mile walk from the law school. But the path is through a forest and over a gulch that has a long wooden bridge over it. It's rather scenic during the day, but at night it's a bit spooky. Of course, as a 6' 2" male, I'm not really worried I'll be mugged or assaulted, but that doesn't prevent my mind from getting imaginative when it's dark.

Last night I shut down the law library, so I had to walk out to my car at midnight. About three students from another part of campus were walking along a path that crossed mine before I entered the woods. I didn't know them so we just passed each other without a greeting. As I walked into the dark forest, my mind started its usual wandering. I told myself, "I don't believe in spooks, I don't believe in spooks." Then rational thought took over and reminded me that there was nothing to be afraid of. I crossed the bridge.

One of the threesome screamed. My back of my neck got cold. Then my rational mind took over again: I'm sure one of them was just fooling around, I thought. After all, who would take on three people? The attacker wouldn't be able to prevail against them all. Unless it was a huge blood-lusting monster with fangs and mouth tentacles and an insatiable hunger for human flesh.

If so, I thought, there's nothing I can do because I'll be mauled and eaten within minutes. So I walked to my car and drove home.

I know that guy!

I'm not a golfer and I never have been interested much in golf. In fact, I still think it's a hoity-toity sport for old, rich white guys. And if I ever become an old, rich white guy, I'm still not learning how to play golf.
But this year I've probably paid more attention to the PGA Tour than ever before. I watched Tiger Woods face-off with Rocco Mediate at the U.S. Open. But now pro Kenny Perry is on a tear, which is awesome because he's the only pro I've ever met.
Last year I tagged along with a sports reporter to the Rockford Pro-Am, the longest-running standalone amateur event in the PGA, because he needed help taking video during the day. Kenny Perry comes nearly every year. But this year was special: I was standing among a crowd at one of the tees when an errant golf ball whistled overhead and struck something soft with a thud. That something was Kenny's chest.
Later on, we interviewed Kenny about it -- he had an icepack strapped on under his shirt. I got his autograph and gave it to a friend of mine who loves golf. But the best part was the injured Perry hit a hole in one that day.

Lightning strike

Whoa! Nicholas and I were just driving to the store in a thunderstorm and we saw a lightning strike blow up a transformer - from about half a block away!
Ok, that was pretty cool.

Asking for directions

I was walking across the street this afternoon when a battered blue minivan pulled up next to me to ask for directions. In the passenger seat was Latino man with a buzz cut and unshaven whiskers. He asked me for "dohj street" in broken English and pointed to a street address scrawled on the back of a folded yellow paper.
I've lived in Rockford nearly all my life and I've never heard of a Dodge Street. A quick look on my Treo's Google Maps confirmed it -- there isn't such a street in Rockford. Then he showed me the rest of his chicken-scratch note:

1111 dodge st
duplex, iwoa
52003

Then I realized -- he was trying to get someplace in IOWA. Whoa. I told him he was in Illinois. He groaned. I asked, where are you coming from? Miami was the answer.
The minivan was full: half a dozen Spanish-speaking adults on the seats and their gear crammed into the recesses. They chattered back and forth in their tongue, unintelligible to me. I assume they were migrant workers, coming up here to meet someone with nothing more than an address and a cursory grasp of the language. Later, I tried to imagine what it would be like to try and travel 1,500 miles in an unfamiliar country -- especially as a stranger.
To try and help out, I turned to Google Maps again and searched the address based on the ZIP, I came up with Dubuque, Iowa -- the town he wrote as "duplex," I'm sure.
Even though this caravan was about 90 miles away from his destination, I could at least help a little. They were only four blocks from East State Street, which is Business U.S. 20, so I sent them back that way and told them to take it west all the way. It goes straight through Dubuque.
They should have made it by now. I really hope they did.

Who is this guy?

This is just to damn bizarre not to post. Watch it without context:

Waste-land

I'm at Chipotle, eating dinner outside and a teenage or early 20s girl pulled in and parked her black Mercury Mountaineer next to me. She ran inside and left it running. By my watch, the gas-guzzling hogmobile ran for at least 7 minutes while she ordered a meal to go. Gas is about $4.10 a gallon around here. She didn't leave it running to keep it cool inside the cab; the windows were down and it was a pleasant spring night anyway.
Clearly, someone is not paying for her own gas.

Do not taunt Happy Fun ball

My colleague Melissa used to work in a bureau, a remote outpost deep in the bush of Boone County. Now she works in my office. Yesterday, she had this interchange with a reporter who's still out there in the bureau about an iPod alarm clock thingy that she left there. Jerry is another employee who works out there...

From: K
Sent: Thursday, May 22, 2008 11:35 AM
To: M
Subject: your clock

Hey, your alarm clock/radio goes off every day at 3:30 p.m. and we don't know how to stop it.

From: M
Sent: Thursday, May 22, 2008 11:36 AM
To: K
Subject: RE: your clock

ok, that's super-weird. just unplug it maybe??

From: K
Sent: Thursday, May 22, 2008 11:36 AM
To: M
Subject: RE: your clock

We did. But it kept going anyway. Then, Wednesday, it killed Jerry. Now the walls won't stop bleeding.