Chicago police shot a cougar on the North Side on Monday afternoon. I guess the cougar didn"t feel like running anymore and stood its ground, leaving the policemen no other choice than to kill the 150-pound cat.

That"s not the story you expect to wake up and read in the morning paper. I have to admit it"s made me thankful that I only have to deal with raccoons and the occasional rabbits. Of course, with the appearance of cougars in northern Illinois, maybe I won"t have to worry about the small critters any more.

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Dec. 23 is fast approaching. That means Festivus is upon us.

Of course, this is the unholiday. It is derived from a 1997 Seinfeld episode in which George Costanza"s dad, Frank, introduces the holiday he invented as a sort of protest against the commercialization of Christmas. The symbol of the holiday is an unadorned and lusterless aluminum pole, currently available from Milwaukee fabricator The Wagner Companies.

The two major traditions associated with this day are the feats of strength and the airing of grievances.

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I just got back into town from visiting a metal fabricating shop that will be highlighted in The FABRICATOR in early 2008. It"s the type of company that makes me feel good about manufacturing in the U.S. You wouldn"t mind working for the management team or spending an eight-hour shift in this facility. It"s fabricating at its best.

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It's Halloween, and to celebrate I thought I'd Google "Halloween metal," just to see what results the phrase would conjure up. I entered the words in quotation marks to try and limit the number of results. Among the 85,900 links returned were sites that featured metal Halloween decorations, such as www.mysimon.com; YouTube videos of "This Is Halloween," from the movie "The Nightmare Before Christmas;"; and many links to heavy-metal-music-related content.

Then my mind took a detour (as it often does), and I began wondering how the term heavy metal became the label for a type of music. In case you're interested, keep reading.

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So I"m watching an episode of Feasting on Asphalt on The Food Network about a week ago. The show documents chef/scientist Alton Brown and his motorcycle crew"s cruise up the Mississippi River in search of authentic roadside grub.

After feasting on all sorts of fried food in south Louisiana, the Mississippi Delta, Memphis, Tenn., and southern Illinois, the team rolled into Muscatine, Iowa, for lunch at the Clamshell Diner. While the people and pie were a treat, Brown really was interested in the building itself. The diner, which had been salvaged from a scrapyard, was a Little Chef model, serial number 2,111, from the Valentine
Manufacturing Co..

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