During my visit to Springfield last weekend, Kelly and I went to a historical reenactment on the outskirts of town. Every small city that can do so builds shrines to its homegrown celebrity, but Springfield takes worship of Abraham Lincoln to new levels of ridiculousness. Besides the museum with the ordinary tools used by Lincoln during his early twenties, the historical community had the actual buildings he slept in and worked in. Here's where Abraham Lincoln owned his first business! Here's where he first arrived in Springfield! Woo.

Clearly, Kelly and I need to build our own village and charge admission. Here's where Abraham Lincoln invented the Internet! Here's where Abraham Lincoln defeated Hitler! Here's where Abraham Lincoln produced Let It Be! Here's where Abraham Lincoln taught Copernicus! Here's where Abraham Lincoln built the first mecha!

Kelly, thank you for showing me a great time around town. Next time, you visit Sarasota and I'll show how much John Ringling is worshiped around here.


Six Replies to Abe, Honest

Amy Austin | October 16, 2007
Ha! Just last week, Stephen Colbert was touting Reagan in the time of Lincoln...

the Reagan commemorative coin

Maybe he had just visited Springfield, too.

Lori Lancaster | October 16, 2007
[hidden by author request]

Amy Austin | October 16, 2007
The darkest blonde I know. ;-)

Jackie Mason | October 17, 2007
[hidden by author request]

Lori Lancaster | October 17, 2007
[hidden by author request]

Kris Weberg | October 23, 2007
Try growing up there, Scott.


Logical Operator

The creator of Funeratic, Scott Hardie, blogs about running this site, losing weight, and other passions including his wife Kelly, his friends, movies, gaming, and Florida. Read more »

Tooth in Advertising

Every time I go to the local Carmike cinema and watch their pre-show reminders montage, I wind up thinking about dentists. First they show King Kong howling with those yellowish fangs – he needs a veterinary dentist. Then it's the pirates of the Caribbean; they have gold teeth so they need dentists too. Go »

Det är inte så farligt

Yesterday, Kelly and I joined friends who had free passes to shop at the new Ikea store in Tampa before it opens to the public. It was our my first time in one of those stores, and it was every bit the harrowing shopping marathon I'd heard it was. For a store that boasts so frequently about how efficient everything is, having you proceed through the store in one long winding line for four hours sure doesn't feel that way, but every store has ways of getting you to buy more than you came for and Ikea has come up with a unique one. Go »

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Yesterday was a good day: To celebrate my mother's 75th birthday, we took her out for a day around Sarasota doing things that appealed to her love of animals. After starting with a big breakfast, we went to a local attraction that we've all been meaning to see for years, the Big Cat Habitat that takes care of exotic animals that were born in captivity but abandoned by their owners. The lions and tigers and liger were the prime attraction, but they also had bears, monkeys, a chimpanzee, parrots, emu, turkeys, goats, koi, and even stranger animals like a kangaroo, kinkajou, and coati. Go »

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I don't know what Polaroids he has of whom, but somehow Tom Skilling has elevated himself to some kind of all-important weather-broadcasting god. When I grew up in Chicago, I watched him gradually get a bigger and bigger budget for his animated graphics, and gradually get a larger and larger timeframe to deliver his dull reports. By the time I left town, he had a whole 20 minutes of the hour-long midday newscast for the fucking weather, and boy did he find trivia to fill it: Average dew points across Cook County on this day in 1854, theta-e temperature predictions for every Cubs home game next season, you name it. Go »