Tuesday, September 08, 2009

Missing the one-armed monkey and other Labor Day fun

Yesterday, on a beautiful Labor Day afternoon, my friend Alan and I headed over to the Lincoln Park Zoo. I was most excited to once again see the one-armed monkey who still swings around with the greatest of ease. (He lost an arm because he reached for some food thrown by a dumb visitor and got his arm stuck in the fence, and then doctors had to amputate.)

The first stop was the big cats. For some reason, out of all the animals at the zoo, I find it most fascinating that tigers and lions live in the middle of a huge city like Chicago. As an obvious animal lover, sometimes I feel a little bad about zoos, but these lions seem to be living a pretty easy life.


Another favorite stop was the gorillas. This guy is huge:


And just for fun, here is the video of one of the rhinos. The reason I like this video is that if you listen closely you can hear Alan joking about how he could outrun this particular rhino--the other rhino in the zoo would be a challenge, but not this one.


But as he says, "Famous last words."

However . . . we did not see the one-armed monkey this time. We began to worry that he might have died, so we had to ask someone who worked there. We were very relieved to hear that the one-armed monkey had been transferred to another zoo, "so he could start a family."

Thank goodness.

2 Comments:

At 7:26 PM, Blogger P "N" K posited...

Biden looks so bored.

 
At 10:16 PM, Blogger P "N" K posited...

Well, some impressions.

First, I was totally unsurprised to see that Joe Wilson (the guy who shouted 'you lie' after Obama asserted no Ill-Immg. coverage) is from SC. First to secede, first to yell out. Crass, but I thought it was funny in a British House of Commons sort of way. Tony Blair was probably laughing somewhere.

Second, I was again impressed by how well Obama can work the teleprompter. As far as actual content it was a yawn. Same rhetoric. Of course, the point of the speech was to regain public support, and I don't think anyone is pretending otherwise, so he did what he had to do, so to speak.

Third, I remember your health care post from awhile ago and I agree that some serious issues should be ironed out regarding costs. That's the 'duh' part. But geez. This speech tonight went bullet point for bullet point, right down the list of partisan shots. Bush's tax cut. Bush's defecit spending. The fact that if I 'misrepresent' this plan I'm apparently getting called out by Obama's minions. Seriously? This doesn't really faze me because, frankly, I expect such viewpoints, but I'm not exactly sure that's the way towards moderate support.

Four, I realize Bush defecit spent to high heaven, but for Obama to say he can spend 900B on this thing w/o raising the deficit...I'm skeptical. Shocking, I know.

The thing that kind of bugs me most, though, is that I guess I have no problem with Obama fighting for this piece of legislation. I mean, I disagree in large part, and rather vehemently, but he believes in it and it's his main domestic plank and whatnot. But I'd love it if at some point he just cut the B.S. and said, 'listen, 10 years after this goes through guess what, the gov't. is going to run the health care system, and that's that.' To pretend otherwise is disingenous. I realize he's a politician and so he can't say such things, but I'd be interesting to hear.

 

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