How do I find take-out menus in this town?

I was starving last Thursday. Famished. Problem was, I couldn't find any take-out menus online. I really wanted Chinese food. Some sweet and sour chicken sounded delicious. Maybe some pad thai. But I was striking out left and right.

I didn't want to order from the last place I got Chinese. It was some of the worst food I'd ever eaten. Lawrence.com had a recommendation for a place called Thai House, which sounded great. So I got on the restaurant's Web site and found some good dishes and called for delivery. After calling several times and getting a buzzing sound that sounded like a modem from 1997, I gave up and hopped in the car to go to the restaurant itself. I was pretty steamed at this point. My aggravation was multiplied by the lack of parking due to a Danzig concert at Liberty Hall. Didn't know he was still around.

I finally found parking and walked to the restaurant. It was closed forever. Argh.

When I lived in Chicago, there was a great site called GrubHub.com, which had menus from hundreds of restaurants in the city that delivered. It was brilliant. I could go online, find my desired cuisine, read the menu on GrubHub, call, order, eat, enjoy.

But even though there are ways to find restaurants here in Lawrence, I haven't found a single central location where I can look at menus and order all in one spot. If I had time, I would start my own little entity and invite area restaurants to submit their menus for a fee. Then I would rake in tons of money and order take-out food with said money. It would be glorious.

FEMA follies show dispect for reporters

Oh, FEMA. FEMA, FEMA, FEMA. You are not doing a heckuva job.

When the FEMA PR staff decided to put on a phony news conference last week, it highlighted the incompetence of this agency and its top officials. It also displayed the disdain with which this government looks at reporters. There are so many instances of government employees shunning the media and then putting their feet in their mouths, it's almost funny. Too bad it's real life.

Jon Friedman of MarketWatch said correctly that this instance shows how little the feds think of reporters. They think that anyone can be a journalist. Even if they're actually employees of the agency they're "covering."

That brings about the subject of citizen journalism. So many people are crowing about the genius of citizen journalism, but FEMA highlights the exact problem with it: zero credibility. Citizen journalists -- and I have dabbled in it before -- are people who are free to display their bias and generally don't act as watchdogs or responsible dissemination of news. Now, many will see the mainstream media fails at this, too. But the fact is that MSM has some sort of credibility built into the establishment.

When FEMA decides that its PR people (!) can be journalists as well as any trained reporter, they show the value of real news people and the absolute lack of credibility from so many people in this government.