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September 30, 2005
cold snap
Yes, last week it WAS like 82 degrees. This is Chicago and we like our extremes: flipflops one day, polar fleece the next (or, in the case of C., flip flops one day, flip flops the next day, and the next, and the next...rain, snow, whatever, every day is a flip flop day); whites on one block, mexicans on the next four blocks as a buffer for the blacks on the block after the mexican blocks; hotdogs with pickles; rampant cronyism and corruption that results in a surprsingly well run city; pickles on hot dogs; and last but not least LOTS of public transportation that only serves 5% of the city!
I've said it before and I'll say it again: fall is my favorite season. It's sad that it only lasts like 3 weeks here. Summer, a few falls days, more summer, a few more fall days, more summer, one fall day, indian summer, two more fall days, winter, winter, winter and then summer again (there is no spring). I'm curious to see how well, if at all, the streets around where I live are plowed. I knew if I was moving to the ghetto I'd have to buy a 4WD car. If Hyde Park is indication we won't get plowed at all. Eh, that's a dirty joke waiting to happen.
Posted by me at 09:16 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
September 24, 2005
newsbreak
there's an art "gallery" across the street from me (guy runs it out of his apartment, so I hesitate to call it a "gallery" since he SLEEPS THERE, but that's what he adverstises it as (i know this because i am a google stalker)) and a couple is sitting on the stoop. the man is around my age. he is wearing a white sox cap with the old school sox logo (trucker, of course) and brown sandals with white socks.
brown sandals with white sox.
good god.
i'm about to venture out. it's around 72 degrees, so i fully expect to see a couple of hipsters in wool ski caps, because wool ski caps are countercultural. on the non-countercultural tip last afternoon when i was leaving work i saw a tourist walk out of the palmer house hilton wearing polar fleece. it was approximately 68 degrees out. he'd better have had a good excuse, like he was a native of antartica and had just arrived in the tropical climes of autumn chicago.
Posted by me at 02:58 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
wind tunnel
I went to the gym last night, came home, showered, and didn't brush my hair (and obviously didn't go out after. on a friday night. i am embracing my married lameness). so anyway i totally look like medusa this morning, it's kind of cool.
i know the daily show already did this during a hurricane a few months ago, but WHY GOD WHY does every fucking weatherman on earth have to get in a fucking wind tunnel and show us what 145 mph winds do to his face? we get it, ok? it makes your skin ripple and you can stand up. 145 mph winds are strong. now stop it. i know the wind tunnel business will suffer without your patronage, but that's the way life goes. what with the CNN weather guy in the wind tunnel last night, and the woman anchoring CNN on Wednesday night looking like she was going to orgasm right there on national tv while reporting simultaneously on the Jet Blue landing gear emergency, the hurricane Rita related evacuations AND tornadoes in Minnesota, I'm thinking of turning to Fox News where I won't get the news but I will get some good laughs.
so today C. and I are taking Pedro to the vet and then going mattress shopping for the guest room so we have some place for our guests to sleep when they come to visit the lesborific animal menagerie that is our home. Unlike some people I know I think we'll forgo the thousand dollar plus tempurpedic. I think we're going to take our double bed and move it into the guest room and buy a new queen bed for our bedroom. With pillow top. Ok so maybe we will be hitting the thousand dollar mark. (And not to knock someone's purchase of an expensive mattress. After all, I spent $3,000 on a TV).
Posted by me at 08:34 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
September 15, 2005
Pedro Jesus Sebastian
Meet Pedro. He will smother your face with love.
To tanarate and T2: laugh now, but I'm the one who will be laughing when I am driven out of my home by cats and guinea pigs and have to sleep on your couch. Please prepare a place for me. FYI, I prefer firm pillows, and I like blue towels. And you must call me "monkey" so I feel at home.
Posted by me at 09:11 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
September 10, 2005
breaking news
my cable (including internet) stopped working on thursday. we made a comcast appointment for saturday (today) from 8am to 10am. two guys showed up at 8:55 am and --
THEY FIXED MY CABLE. IN HALF AN HOUR.
Oh, and they were friendly and not morons.
I know, I'm shocked too.
Posted by me at 11:12 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
September 01, 2005
the meek
Meeks should have stayed in his car. Period. Flame away. Oh wait, no one reads this. But I repeat: HEY JACKASS, YOU SHOULD HAVE STAYED IN YOUR CAR. I usually give the benefit of the doubt to all sorts of "oh that was racism" claims, but this is bullshit and I'm tired of seeing this moron on the nightly news. If you'd stayed in your car this wouldn't have happened you self-satisfied jerk.
there.
speaking of racism, would the mobilization of relief efforts have occurred more quickly and efficiently if tens of thousands of lower to middle class white people had been stuck in a flooding city, or does the magnitude of the flooding and other damage mean that relief couldn't get to the gulf area any faster than it has been, regardless of what color the people are? discuss. obviously more than poor black people were victims (of property damage at least) of the hurricane, but the vast majority of those people could afford to get out before it hit and aren't sitting down there in risk of drowning or starving to death. but the people who were left--and you could tell this from the beginning when the news footage of the lines of people waiting to get into the superdome before the hurricane hit--were overwhelmingly both poor and black. so if people who are used to summer vacations at the shore and chauffering Madison and Tyler to weekend soccer games in the family's suv (with leather seats) were stuck by the thousands in the superdome or on rooftops, how quickly would relief be mobilized then? counterargument: perhaps people with money wouldn't loot (if they did, it would be orderly and they would only take food and water and not plasma tvs--why take a tv when you can just buy one later when there is actually electricity?), thus the relief effort wouldn't be interrupted by lawlessness.
anyway, it makes me angry that we are in iraq fighting an unwinable war while americans are dying. who knew i was such a patriot? american troops should be helping americans right now.
Ted Koppel is currently ripping the director of FEMA a new one on Nightline. This fucker has the audacity to say that these people bear some responsibility because they didn't get out when they were ordered to. Does anyone have any information I don't have? Because as far as I've heard, over the weekend before the hurricane hit no busses were lined up to take people without cars or people who couldn't afford hotels out of state out of New Orleans. You can blame this on New Orleans or Louisiana, but really it was FEMA who should have been lining up busses for a mandatory evacuation of a city facing a direct hit by a category 5 hurricane.
I am so angry I don't know if I'll be able to sleep. I actually had trouble working today because I couldn't stop thinking about Bush only knocking a few days off his vacation and Congress not bothering to come back any earlier than Friday and the fact that all these huge corporations around the U.S. are only donating a $1 million or $500,000. The UN is offering us aid and advice and the fucking leaders of the free world can't help their own citizens.
ps: T2, I do dread my job LESS and I make the same amount of money but pay less taxes, so it's totally worth it.
Posted by me at 10:41 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack