Morris just became a little more civilized


We now have a coffeeshop that is open on Sundays!

My plans to see Morris become a happier place are advancing. I have a list.

  • Coffeeshop with longer hours open every day

  • A regional airport

  • Henry Kissinger chokes on his own blood and dies

  • A good bagel place

  • A deep water seaport to the Pacific Ocean

  • For the entire Trump family and their cronies to be arrested and convicted for corruption and fraud, and to spend the rest of their lives in jail or in poverty, whichever makes them more miserable

  • World Peace

See? I’m not asking much.

Comments

  1. Azkyroth, B*Cos[F(u)]==Y says

    I suggest “the ability to buy a bagel with cheese on it after 10 AM” as an addendum.

  2. blf says

    I suppose this means it’s possible the States might join the community of civilised places, albeit there are still obstacles:

    ● Armed policegoons, shooting excessively.
    ● Armed publicloons, shooting excessively.
    ● Visiting a coffee shop whilst black is a reason to be arrested.
    ● Not having the foggiest idea how to make tea.
    ● Using the wrong spelling. And wrong units of measurement.
    ● Hair furor.

    On the other hand, there wasn’t a butter shortage (end of) last year…

  3. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    No Caribou Coffee here in Lake County, IL. Star$ are spring up all over the place though. Most folks make do with McD’s or Dunkin’ Donuts.

  4. says

    OK, we won’t automatically lock up minors who haven’t committed any crimes. The rest? Redistribution of wealth at the very least!

  5. says

    #8: I think we’ll have to build a long fjord running through the border between north and south Dakota, so I think the answer to that one is yes.

  6. anbheal says

    Aim high, my friend. See the bagel, be the bagel. A rich redolent cup of coffee and wonderful fresh soft Upper West Side onion bagel with a generous Philly schmear ought to be, in a perfect world, obtainable in the same shop. Somewhere besides 102nd and Broadway.

  7. albz says

    Is that civilzation? Having people work on sundays so that a rich professor can sip his coffe while he’s enjoying his Sunday?

  8. birgerjohansson says

    Maybe you can use nukes from project plowshare to build a canal for ocean-going ships to Morris?
    -Develop viable cryopreservation technology. Freeze Henry Kissinger until we have age-reversal tech. *Now* you can sentence him to life without parole.
    Do the same with George Schultz, secretary of state during Reagan. He kept the Khmer Rouge supported and covered for D’oubisson, a mass murderer in El Salvador. Specifically, Schultz covered for him after the abduction, rape and murder of four American nuns. Documents show he flat-out lied.
    (Also, please do not hold Sweden responsible for Swedish American kooks that think the world is 6000 years old. And who regard The Handmaid’s Tale as a polutical road map. )

  9. birgerjohansson says

    The people working on Sundays should be
    1: very well paid, or
    2: Trumpist convicts, found guilty of a shitload of crimes they thought did not matter.

  10. birgerjohansson says

    Your northern neighbour has just been demonized by The Donald. I see trouble brewing along the lines of the first South Park film.

  11. colinday says

    @blf
    #3

    We can spell “Yorktown” just fine, although we should convert to metric.

  12. slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) says

    re Nerd@4:
    “make do” with Dunkins? this New Englander says you know not of which you speak, harrumph. Dunkins coffee seems to have some ‘secret blend’, to make it virtually addictive, which no other coffee matches.
    McD’s is second, and Star$ is “last resort”, around here.
    Seems odd how Star$ are proliferating even in NE. Boston has many sites of DD and Star$ as neighbors. odd.

    my. apologies,
    disclaimer: all the coffee comments are my significant-other’s attitudes, not mine.
    I’m simply shooting the breeze, not trying to present a point, observation only.

    re OP:
    I truly am *shocked* that you are not being inundated by Star$ like the rest of the nation.

  13. andyo says

    Be careful what you wish for with coffee shops and such. We are just getting our first tastes of gentrification in my old-ish, ugly-ish (but quiet and safe-ish), small, 20-minute-from-LA, city. POC are leaving and we’re getting squeezed every year now. Got like 2 new Starbucks in a 2 block radius in the past couple years, and some “trendy” gym. Oh well.

  14. says

    A deep water seaport to the Pacific Ocean

    I’m sure that Trumpet Bum could find an excuse to nuke a line across Middle America.

  15. microraptor says

    Why is working on Sunday so much worse than working any other day of the week?

  16. Onamission5 says

    microraptor @22:

    The only reasons I can think of are that people who want to attend Sunday religious services can’t, and that working weekends often means people with friends, kids, or partners who get weekends off of work don’t get to spend much time with their loved ones.

    Beyond that, it’s not like working Sunday means one doesn’t get other days off (hopefully). Sometimes I preferred it since it meant that places which would ordinarily be closed on my days off were open, like the bank, and if my kid took a school field trip I might actually be able to chaperone.

  17. EigenSprocketUK says

    It’d be nice for Donald Trump and John Baron both to receive a life-sentence each. To be served consecutively, of course.

  18. raven says

    A deep water seaport to the Pacific Ocean

    That is a lot more feasible than it superficially appears to be.
    That whole midwest area was once an inland sea connecting to both the Atlantic and the Arctic ocean.
    That is why the midwest is a great location to collect marine fossils like ammonites and mosasaurs.

    The Western Interior Seaway (also called the Cretaceous Seaway, the Niobraran Sea, the North American Inland Sea, and the Western Interior Sea) was a large inland sea that existed during the mid- to late Cretaceous period as well as the very early Paleogene, splitting the continent of North America into two landmasses, …
    Western Interior Seaway – Wikipedia
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Interior_Seaway

    It’s been filled in by sedimentation but a lot of digging north or south and you will eventually still hit either ocean.
    It would be even easier to follow either the Mississippi valley or the Red river and McKenzie river valleys. The rivers have done a lot of the digging.

    Morris is at 1,132 feet. Either north or south, it is almost all downhill to the ocean.

  19. DonDueed says

    Back in the stone ages (i.e. when I was in high school) my family lived in Iowa. The humor columnist for the Des Moines Register had a running gag about making that city a seaport. His solution: dredge out the median of I-90 to the Mississippi.

  20. garysturgess says

    PZ@10: As an added bonus that will give the Norwegian Blues (beautiful plumage) something to pine for. ;)

  21. rayceeya says

    All seems pretty reasonable except for that bagel place. Good luck with that, Even here in Portland, OR we have a hard time keeping those around. Not we don’t have them, they just don’t seem to last very long.

    Same goes with bento. Can’t keep them either.

  22. Azkyroth, B*Cos[F(u)]==Y says

    PZ is rich?

    I assume this is in reference to:

    Is that civilzation? Having people work on sundays so that a rich professor can sip his coffe while he’s enjoying his Sunday?

    Of course not. But what does that have to do with anything?

    Playing “gotcha” feels almost as good as actual activism and it’s so much easier.

    Who cares if it’s not even substantively accurate?

  23. Rich Woods says

    @colinday #18:

    We can spell “Yorktown” just fine, although we should convert to metric.

    Given that the number of regular French troops at Yorktown outnumbered the American regulars, you are long overdue for converting to metric.

  24. blf says

    We can spell “Yorktown” just fine, although we should convert to metric.

    I seriously doubt that spelling / pronunciation is even close to the original word(s?) for the area.

    (At the time of the European invasion, the First Nations people in the area were apparently part of the Powhatan confederacy (possibly the Kiskiack ?), and very probably spoke one of the Algonquian languages. What they called the area I haven’t been able to confirm…)

  25. mikehuben says

    We should be so lucky here in Amazonian Ecuador. We do not serve coffee right, even though we are a coffee producing region. Either coffee is in water or heated milk; you cannot get it in water and add cold milk or cream. There is no half-and-half; I brought mini-moos from the US once. You cannot buy a cup of coffee to go anywhere. Most places give you a cup of hot water or milk and expect you to add your own instant Nescafe.

    For bad bagels, you have to drive 4 hours to Quito or make your own. And don’t get me started on the bakery breads, where you cannot find anything crusty or with enough gluten to have the right elasticity.

    Ah, the problems of living in a tropical paradise with endless fruit and prices 1/3 to 1/10 those in the US.

  26. Larry says

    OK, we won’t automatically lock up minors who haven’t committed any crimes.

    If it’s OK forTrump’s SS division, otherwise known as ICE, to lock up minors who’ve committed no crime except having poor, non-white parents, I have no problems applying it to Baron.

  27. What a Maroon, living up to the 'nym says

    Azkyroth@31,

    Yep, that’s what I was referring to. Of course wealth is relative, and relative to the 7 billion or so humans alive today, PZ is rich. On the other hand, by US standards, a biology professor in a small, public liberal arts college is at best comfortably middle class, unless they’ve got another stream of income somewhere (and I don’t think the ads on FTB rate).

  28. komarov says

    Re: Lofty (#21):

    I’m sure that Trumpet Bum could find an excuse to nuke a line across Middle America.

    A moat to keep out immigrants, perhaps. Well, okay, maybe those horrible illegals then start sailing up the channel and make port in Minnesota but there are two sides to every ill-conceived notion mega-project by a self-aggrandising idiot great leader.

    Re: Larry (#35):

    If it’s OK forTrump’s SS division, otherwise known as ICE, to lock up minors who’ve committed no crime except having poor, non-white parents, I have no problems applying it to Baron

    Oh? What’s he done to deserve the same deplorable treatment? Pick the wrong family? Somehow I doubt that judging people by the company they keep is entirely applicable to minors.

  29. numerobis says

    Sounds almost as civilized as Iqaluit. We got a cafe just a couple months ago, and after a month they got things enough under control to open 7 days a week.

    We’ve had an airport a “long” time (it’s the reason for the town).

    The deep water port is a few years out.

    But we’ve got another couple asks: reconciliation and the end of the shocking inequalities in the society.