suckers and hoosiers and pukers, and the good, the bad, and the ugly

The story I heard about Hoosiers is that they were always getting into fights and at the end of the fight there would often be an ear lying on the floor and they’d ask, “Who’s ear?” The story I heard about Illinois is that there is some plant called the corn sucker and Illinois was named after that. But then I’ve heard a lot of other stories too. We Illinoisans generally prefer to be known as The Land of Lincoln (we are admired throughout the fifty for our consistent honesty), and Missourians, who live in The Puke State prefer to call it The Show Me State.

Wolverines, badgers, weasels, ferrets, et al, there is a whole menagerie of these furry predators that must people never see in their lives. When I was in Madison I saw a representation of a badger and it was an extremely ugly and fierce looking animal. Well that’s what people like. Nobody calls themselves The Chipmunks or The Sparrows.

I think a buckeye is a plant or a seed. What about a hawkeye, some other plant or the eye of the animal?

Before I get off the subject of states, people in Missouri, especially St Louis, call hillbillies Hoosiers. When they learn that Indianians call themselves Hoosiers, they are like, well, how about that?

Illinois was always swampy, not just in the Chicago area but all the way down. Well I think all the midwest is swampy from being caught between the hot breath of the gulf and the Calgary Clippers. Well just another reason that God (Who I don’t believe in) had a plan (that I also don’t believe in) that this was where humans should live in North America, plenty of water, nice and flat, no hurricanes, no earthquakes to speak of, just pesky little tornadoes, and those nice long winters to build our characters.

I think the bible does claim in several places that if you are nice to god, he will be nice to you, but then there is Abraham and that extreme practical joke, and god and satan sitting in their soft chairs with their brandy and cigars and making their gentleman’s bet about Job, and I have to think chuckling a bit when he raves about why this is happening to him. But then on the other hand sometimes it says something like that rain thing too.

There is always that theological debate about how if god is so just, how come all these terrible things happen to good people, and then those crafty priest types say, well that is god’s justice which we can’t understand, and I suppose the answer would be how come I can’t have my own justice that he doesn’t understand.

Well two different versions of god I suppose the bad god of the old testament and the good god of the good testament, and if you can squeeze the father and son and holy spirit into one I suppose there is room for the good and the bad, and then there must be an ugly in there too, like one of those subatomic particles, like the Higgs bosun that we know must be there, but have never detected.

One thing I have never understood is those believers whose spouse or children die, and then they become unbelievers. Did they think that all those other people around them who had terrible things happen to them, that they were all a bunch of sinners