Chipotle Mexican Grill - a very brief review

 

Ick.

Expensive Ick.

16 January 2024. A follow-up:

A week or so after posting this I was finally able to contact Chipotle. The designated spokesperson babbled the usual bland apologies and offered Chipotle coupons as compensation. I said I would prefer a refund (I kept the receipt that indicated serving and pricing errors) but that coupons from them would not do since I will never again put anything from Chipotle in my mouth.  I asked for coupons I could redeem at a cleaner and more honest restaurant chain. As Hamlet said as he died, "the rest is silence."

A Burning Bush That Wasn't - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

A Burning Bush That Wasn’t

 

“Vadam, et videbo visionem hanc magnum, quare non comburatur rubus”

 

-Exodus III

 

I was not herding Jethro’s flocks on Horeb

But merely walking for pleasure along the road

And like Moses I saw a burning light

And turned aside to see what it might be

 

There with my stick I pushed aside a bush

And beheld, sparkling in the morning sun

Flung into place by some man’s mighty arm

And not decayed or dimmed by weather or time

 

A beer can

Decolonize This Place - a perhaps intemperate screed

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Decolonize This Place

 

“Colony” is a value-neutral expression but this useful denotation has been force-fitted with a negative connotation which serves no purpose except the shallowest sort of propaganda.

 

Hong Kong, for instance, was until this century a British Crown Colony in which freedom of speech, movement, and economic activity were guaranteed. Now it is part of Communist China in which the only thing guaranteed is brutal oppression.

 

The label is not important; the reality of freedom is. We are a republic, but then so are North Korea, Haiti, and Viet-Nam. Canada, God’s second-favorite nation, is a dominion within the British Commonwealth, and they seem to get on just fine.

 

Still, facts are not allowed to influence the lemmings who chant slogans that begin with that intellectual thesis statement, “Hey! Hey! Ho! Ho!”

 

A ‘way cool thing now is to claim that everything and every concept is colonized and now must be decolonized in order to be restored to some sort of pre-lapsarian golden age that never was. “Decolonize this place” is now extended to art, music, literature, and for all we know beagles and flashlight batteries.

 

Well, I propose a decolonization of this nation. We have a national flag. The red, white, green, and black of the mythological state of Palestine isn’t it.

 

Decolonize this place.

 

When we see thousands of idle, uninformed, and apparently unemployable oafs marching and menacing in this country’s streets under a polluted sea of Palestinian flags we are reminded of the Ku Klux Klanner-bananers and the Nazi-nasties who in the 1920s and 1930s strutted and bellowed in our streets waving their hateful rags, shouting their hateful ideologies, and demanding our submission. A lot of Americans bought into that doo-doo too.

 

Why do we now see more Palestinian – which is in effect a camouflage for Hamas – flags in our streets than our own?

 

How is it that so many people now regard our republic as a colony of Hamas, and demand that we colonials obey the dictates of a foreign power that hates all of us?

 

Decolonize this place. Not with violence or those stupid bullhorns, but with a quiet, stern refusal to indulge Hamas. Don’t accept any arguments about a false equivalence. There is no equivalence between an ideology of genocide,, murder, hostage-taking, lying as an art form, torture, and a one-world empire [Hamas’s Genocidal Intentions Were Never a Secret - The Atlantic], and our concepts of dignity and equality (though we could be better at living those concepts).

 

Decolonize this place.

 

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The Romance of the Boeing 707 - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

The Romance of the Boeing 707

 

Out on Runway Number 9

Big 707 set to go

 

-Gordon Lightfoot

 

Old Ginsberg wrote that the typewriter was holy

An airport of words for coming and going

On a runway of ribbon, platen, and keys

McKuen might have said it’s a safe place to land

 

But then came the Boeing 707

Dear Gordon Lightfoot’s silver wings on high

It flew our words and us all over the world

And became for us holy in its own way

 

The 707 – there was nothing finer

But the last one I saw was a roadside diner

HAMAS Appears to Have Taken Control of Our Nation

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

HAMAS Appears to Have Taken Control of Our Nation

 

Video showed a Palestinian flag raised on the statue of the Marquis de Lafayette near the White House, with "Free Palestine" spray painted on his pedestal. A Palestinian keffiyeh, popularized by the Palestinian Liberation Organization, was put on the head of one of the figures at the foot of the pedestal.

 

-Brady Knox, Washington Examiner

 

Columbia University Closes Campus Ahead of Israel-Hamas War Protests - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

 

Pro-Palestinian protesters shut down main entrance to Union Station in Washington, D.C. | Watch (msn.com)

 

The people say: ‘Shut it down for Palestine’ – International Action Center (iacenter.org)

 

NYPD beefing up patrols as Jewish schools worry over ‘day of Jihad’ (nypost.com)

 

Hamas’ Terror Also Holds a Warning for the US - The Washington Post

 

California Democratic convention in Sacramento shut down by cease-fire protest disruptions (msn.com)

 

Bad Medicine - Tablet Magazine

 

A Snapshot of Support for Palestinians Across America - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

 

Pro-Palestine protesters shut down Bay Bridge (ktvu.com)

 

Protest blocks Israeli cargo ship at Port of Oakland in support for Palestinians amid violence in Gaza - ABC7 San Francisco (abc7news.com)

 

Pro-Palestine protesters shut down OSU trustees meeting, demand divestment from Israel (msn.com)

 

SHUT IT DOWN Nov 9th Day of Rage: Terror-Tied Islamic and Leftist Destroyers Terrorize Communities, Target Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics - Geller Report

 

Pro-Palestinian group posts NYC map with locations, sparks fears of attacks (msn.com)

 

Chants ‘calling for the murder of Jews’ were shouted at me during Cooper Union protest, student recalls (foxnews.com)

 

Full List of Democrats Who Refused To Condemn Hamas Supporters (newsweek.com)

 

Pro-Palestinian protesters drag burning Israeli flag down NYC street as they warn supporters days are 'numbered' (nypost.com)

 

Jewish NYC high schoolers verbally attacked by woman on DC train after National Mall rally: ‘F–k all you guys’ (msn.com)

 

Jewish teacher hides in Queens high school as students riot (nypost.com)

 

Cornell student accused of threatening to kill Jewish students will remain behind bars | CNN

 

Israeli business owner in Florida speaks after several Jewish establishments tagged with antisemitic graffiti (fox35orlando.com)

 

Antisemitic incidents on college campuses spur federal investigation (usatoday.com)

 

Jewish communities threatened by acts of antisemitic vandalism across the US. | CNN

 

Campus Reform the #1 Source for College News

 

Pro-Palestinian Protesters Occupy New York Times Lobby In Demonstration – Deadline

 

Grand Central Terminal shut down due to pro-Palestinian protests (nydailynews.com)

 

7K pro-Palestinian protesters take over Brooklyn Bridge, call for elimination of Jewish state: 'By any means' (nypost.com)

 

Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade arrests: 34 people arrested after pro-Palestinian demonstrators interrupted parade, NYPD says | CNN

 

Pro-Palestinian protestors block Port of Tacoma military ship | Crosscut

 

https://www.bing.com/search?q=palestinian+disruptions+of+america&qs=n&sp=-1&lq=0&pq=palestinian+disruptions+of+amer&sc=11-31&sk=&cvid=A41FE5C2F4374955B9BA0D1649506991&ghsh=0&ghacc=0&ghpl=&FPIG=24A5D720EB0C48F18D38923D216D8256&first=11&FORM=PERE

 

Pro-Palestinian Protesters Shut Down 3rd & Fairfax, March Through The Grove – Deadline

 

Hamas terror organization charter targets Christians and US service organizations (msn.com)

 

Hamas Ally CAIR Has Been Operating With Impunity Inside America for 30 Years | | news-journal.com

 

Pro-Palestinian protesters rally on Mag Mile to draw attention to Israel-Hamas war - Chicago Sun-Times (suntimes.com)

 

‘Bombs are dropping, why are you shopping?’ Black Friday traditions interrupted by anti-Israel protests (bizpacreview.com)

 

Hamas’s Genocidal Intentions Were Never a Secret - The Atlantic

 

-30-

 

 

The November Update Made a Mess of my Apple Watch

On the morning of 25 November I downloaded the latest Apple security update. I don't know about security, but the update made a mess of my settings without asking me if I wanted anything changed. Further, despite all the directions from Apple and other sources, I cannot change the settings back and I cannot delete the update. 

When this, my first and last Apple Watch, fades away I'm going to crush it into its components and retrieve my decades-old $10 Wal-Mart Timex from a desk drawer where it still ticks.

First, Catch Your Cookbook

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

First, Catch Your Cookbook

 

Christmas was close at hand, in all his bluff and hearty honesty; it was the season of hospitality, merriment, and open-heartedness…

 

-Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers

 

Having never seen a copy of Mrs. Beeton’s famous cookery book I don’t know if her recipe for rabbit begins with “First, catch your rabbit.” If it isn’t true it ought to be, for it is fine example of both English logic (rare) and English whimsy (a defining trait). The expression is often used as a cautionary warning, similar to our American “Don’t count your chickens until they’re hatched.”

 

The arc from Thanksgiving to Christmas is when the thoughtful cook will seek out MeeMaw’s cookbook to verify seasonal specialties: Waldorf salad, corn casserole, turkey fried or baked or broiled, ham fried or baked or boiled, and those old traditional dishes special to each family.

 

Cookbooks are otherwise seldom consulted in our electrical times, for the cook can quickly seek out a recipe on the Orwellian telescreen / Tolkien Palantir. However, opening an old family cookbook in anticipation of the holidays is a way of inviting all the ancestors back home for a moment in time. The crumbling pages are the ones that the cook’s mother and grandmother and great-grandmother read, maybe by the light of a coal-oil lamp on a dark winter day long ago.

 

On the margins are many penciled notes and corrections. You can almost hear some ancestor muttering, “Harrumph! What does that editor in New York know about real cornbread!”

 

A slip of paper falls out – in Mama’s elegant penmanship is a recipe she copied out from her own mother’s telling. Another piece of paper might be a yellowing clipping from a newspaper, a rationing recipe with a scrap of war news on the other side.

 

Older cookbooks might be bound in leather, like a Bible, and the connections are real, for both allude to bread and life and stories. The pages of both books are pages of the histories of families. In them you can, for a moment, be a little child again, barely as high as the stove stop, helping (not very well!) your grandmother with baking your favorite cookies. Do you remember? Do you see and smell the joys of her warm kitchen again? Is Grandpa still sitting at the table rustling the pages of The Houston Post and muttering about the prices of cattle feed?

 

Some of the best memories are in that old family cookbook. With Thanksgiving and Christmas coming soon, it’s time to refresh them. This is a season when memories of a drive-through just won’t do.

 

-30-