Well, this past week, I've been in one of the less exciting places I've been so far, Sandwiched somewhere between Wichita, Kansas and Elizabethtown, Kentucky, the Greater Milwaukee area in mid-February is not one of those places that just screams "Visit me!!"
On the other hand, the weather has been distinctly mid-April-like, and unlike North East Ohio, the sun is apparent in the sky more than almost three times a year.
So, you ask, what does this have to do with Peace in the Middle East? Well, I'm glad you asked.
As part of my job, I don't get what you would call a home cooked meal very often. In fact, I don't get a home cooked meal at home all that often, even when I am actually at home, but that's another story.
It would be easy to go to Burger King or McDonald's or Taco Bell, but since the company allows for better quality meals, I do try to find better quality restaurants and pubs. Occasionally, I even get something healthy.
Not so this past Wednesday.
There is a bar and grill outside Milwaukee that, I believe, holds the key to world peace. It's called The Saloon on Calhoun With Bacon.
Yes, that's right: Bacon.
Told you so.
You can get EVERYTHING with bacon. There's so much bacon on the menu that it's hard to find a menu item without bacon. Want Proof?
Dessert is Brownie Bites. Wrapped in Bacon.
And for Happy Hour, they put out baskets of free bacon. Which is less Happy Hour and more Ec-Freaking-Static Hour, in my book.
It's like a Monty Python sketch, except with Bacon instead of Spam: I'll have the bacon, bacon, bacon, bacon, bacon, bacon, baked beans and bacon.
Heaven on Earth, I tell you!
And again I hear you cry: "What does all this have to do with Peace in the Middle East?
Well, I'll tell you: Sitting in that place, I realized I was in what was possibly the least likely spot for a terrorist attack. The factions in the Middle East are many and diverse, but the one thins that is almost universal among them is a strong, religious aversion to meat products derived from our porcine friends. No ham. No pork roast. No Italian Sausage. No Bratwurst. And Worst of All: No Bacon.
It would be enough to make a solitary person crazy, but when you get a whole group together, the crazy expands exponentially. This is not the way to run a region.
What I propose is this: We get the leaders of all these factions together in a room. A really, really big room. Once they're there, lock the door and drop baskets of bacon on them. Nothing else. They are going to have to get hungry sooner or later, and short of actually turning cannibal and eating each other (which might happen: It's admittedly a possible flaw in the plan), all they will have is sweet, delicious bacon.
Once they realize what they are missing. all that will need to be done is to take away all the bacon, with the promise of as much as they can eat, provided they stop killing each other. I can personally attest that the taste of bacon is more than enough to keep a man from, say, strangling a back-talking, smart-mouthed teenage daughter, which is, as we all know, the most powerfully aggravating form of evil known.
I think this plan has a shot to work. It's at least as workable as Obama's Iran deal, and a good deal less costly.
Off-topic Bonus: I took advantage of the nice weather on Saturday to do some sightseeing, following some church-related activities in Glenview, IL, which is a suburb of Chicago.
I have a fear of heights, so naturally I took the opportunity to drive into downtown Chicago and go a quarter mile up and look down at the street:
I think I wet myself a little.
This is the South Side of Chicago, a.k.a. the Baddest Part of Town:
On the other side of the building, we can see the North Side of Chicago, a.k.a. the Not-Quite-So-Bad-As-the -Baddest-Part-of-Town Part of Town:
I was amazed that, upon returning to my car, I had not only done something touristy, and bought a pretty good Italian beef sandwich, but I had, get this, NOT BEEN SHOT!
I did see this one guy: Tall, lanky white guy. Youngish. All crazy-eyed and stuff. Walking around in circles, pounding on street signs and ranting and raving. He was yelling at everyone about how they looked like they were ISIS.
It was a bit freaky, but again: I didn't get shot, so Win for me!
I also stopped on the way out of town to see the place where Dreams Go To Die: Wrigley Field.
I know, I know, the Cubs won the Series last year, but 107 straight years of the dreams of Cubs fans being shot to heck ended by crushing the dreams of 68 straight seasons of Indians fans. <sob> #GoTribe
So, that, in a nutshell, is both my plan for Peace in the Middle East, and the story of how I didn't get shot in Chicago.
And, in closing, here's an awesome picture of some cats:
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