30 December, 2005

"eurobabes with gaping wide a-holes"

... is probably the best subject line for a spam email ever. There it lies, glistening like a corn-studded turd in my Junk Mail folder; verily, a jewel in the rough, the mighty tiger roaring loudest in the dense, malaria-infested jungle.

(I hear Cialis is good for treating Malaria.)

Who actually buys any of this shit?

On an unrelated note, the following reminds me somewhat of... well, me.




I've seen these beautiful de-motivational posters in various spots, but I'd never yet seen this one. Kudos to the creator.

26 December, 2005

Kwanzaa

Oh my. I've gone and done a silly thing.

This weekend, in ignorance, I was attempting to defend Kwanzaa to one or more of my relatives, who claimed it was made-up bullshit. I maintained that it must be some kind of import, some sort of re-invigoration of old traditions. I promised to look it up and verify my claims.

I just looked Kwanzaa up. It was invented in 1966 by Ron Karenga, convicted felon, Marxist, college professor, and more. I should probably do more research before I stick my foot in it, but it seems clear:

Kwanzaa is a made-up, bullshit holiday.

Wikipedia states: "Kwanzaa was founded by black nationalist Ron Karenga, and first celebrated from December 26, 1966 to January 1, 1967. Karenga calls Kwanzaa the African American branch of "first fruits" celebrations of classical African cultures. Karenga has since further developed his vision and hosts the "Official Kwanzaa Web Site"

A little further
research: "On December 24, 1971, the New York Times ran one of the first of many articles on a new holiday designed to foster unity among African Americans. The holiday, called Kwanzaa, was applauded by a certain sixteen-year-old minister who explained that the feast would perform the valuable service of "de-whitizing" Christmas. The minister was a nobody at the time but he would later go on to become perhaps the premier race-baiter of the twentieth century. His name was Al Sharpton and he would later spawn the Tawana Brawley hoax and then incite anti-Jewish tensions in a 1995 incident that ended with the arson deaths of seven people.

Great minds think alike. The inventor of the holiday was one of the few black "leaders" in America even worse than Sharpton. But there was no mention in the Times article of this man or of the fact that at that very moment he was sitting in a California prison. And there was no mention of the curious fact that this purported benefactor of the black people had founded an organization that in its short history tortured and murdered blacks in ways of which the Ku Klux Klan could only fantasize."

Without a doubt, I have a lot of reading to do. I'm struck by several questions at the outset, though. Isn't fabricating a holiday for a historically ostracized, outcast segment of society simply divisive? Rather than empower, doesn't such a tactic further the divide between people? Can anyone really take seriously a holiday that was created, rather than shrouded in the fog of tradition? I'd love to know what anyone else thinks. This is one of those topics that will fascinate me for months now - just what I didn't need as I try to start studying for the bar again.

23 December, 2005

A Little Sweetness Down In My Soul

Slogging thorough my iTunes lately, I’ve had the luxury of comparing versions of songs as interpreted by various artists. One interpretress stands out.

Sometimes, when guests are chez moi, I play certain songs. I’m thinking now of those songs that arouse the reaction “is that a man?” When Nina sings, it is not a question of gender. Nina sings to all of us.*

She may have been consumed by visions of racism in every nook and cranny she could see, but Nina Simone is indisputably an icon, both of interpretation and composition. Her vision of “racist” US culture as a stultifying damper on her abundant, unbridled, unclassifiable creativity led her to sojourn in Europe, eventually settling in France**, though her only “hit” was due to a Chanel ad campaign.

If you get a chance, compare and contrast the songs recorded by better known artists with those in Simone’s catalogue. If you know me, and have the misfortune of being sequestered with me, you may not have the choice.

Apocryphally, she called her music “black classical music.” It is easy to see why. Dylan, Carmichael, Gershwin, The Bee Gees (The Bee Friggin’ Gees), Aretha Franklin, Jazz, Blues, Spiritual, Classical; no matter - Nina mastered them all. Often, she’d combine them all. A cd/dvd I recently purchased displayed her infusing a Bach fugue into a “pop” song on the Ed Sullivan Show.

Find it, play it, love it.

Everybody knows about Mississippi, Goddamn.

Goddamn, indeed.

*Oh, how cheesy - yet true - is this? Help me, dear reader, to word this better.
** Evidently ignoring the “benevolent” racism prevalent in that country, which accords a kind of quasi god-like status to anyone of artistic merit, while retaining sayings and customs that would make the classic pabulum spewing PC liberal explode in rage.

22 December, 2005

I'm thoroughly enjoying the Reader's Fiction Issue (not yet online; check Dec. 23). Section One is always full of stories I want to read, but here, refreshingly, it's not journalism. Check it out if you can.

More on Marshall Field's

I didn't mean for my post yesterday to be about Marshall Fields, but found another reason why perhaps the name and entity should be preserved:

"
Through its 153 year history, Marshall Field's has changed the way we build, the way we socialize, and, of course, the way we shop. Its flagship store--the first and most famous of its kind--is a world-famous attraction and paved the way for department stores worldwide: Wanamaker's in Philadelphia, Filene's of Boston, Macy's of New York, and Selfridge's in London, to name just a few. Marshall Field's track record of innovation over its century-and-a-half of existence is impossible to ignore. Beginning with its rise from a local merchant to a major power following the Great Chicago Fire the 1870s, from opening the first full-line branch department store ever in 1929, and continuing through the groundbreaking 2003 renovation (culminating in another first: a Vertical fashion show) of its flagship store on State Street."

The Things I do For Food

I have a dumb short story to share with you. While I was living in Paris, I had the wonderful opportunity to tutor a wonderful family in English for a few hundred francs and dinner. I told them I wrote from time to time; they were justifiably incredulous. I said, let’s make a deal: gimme an extra dinner, I write a story with what’s-her-face (names changed to protect the innocent) as the main character. I did, I ate, here it is.

Of course, as any good teacher, I then used the damn thing as a tutorial tool. What a pompous ass.

In the spirit of wholesome good nostalgia, I have only edited what I pencilled in the manuscript (ah, the days of manual writing).

===========

The Battle of the Snooze

Paris, 20 December, 1997

The Princess E. lived on the sixth floor of an apartment building in the seventh arrondissement in Paris. One non-descript morning of a non-descript November in a non-descript year, she woke up thinking in English.

In truth, she tried her hardest to resist waking up. Well, no, she tried to wake up, but she just didn’t want to. She hit the snooze button repeated, but nine minutes later the alarm would scream, “Get up! Work to do!” It wasn’t until after the first six or seven snoozes that she began to decide that it was odd that her alarm should scream. On the ninth scream, 81 minutes after she had planned to wake up, she realized that in its screaming the alarm clock spoke English. She hit snooze once more, and arranged herself in an uncomfortable position, ready to catch the clock in mid-scream, to see if it really spoke to her.

But she fell asleep. This time, as if in revenge, the alarm did not scream after nine minutes. This time, she dreamed. In English.

She dreamt of Chicago. She was riding in a Mercedes Benz convertible on Lake Shore Drive. The top was down and all of the thirty or so people in the car were wearing sun glasses. There was music playing on the extraordinary stereo, a song that seemed to be ever song she had ever heard in every style of music she could imagine having experienced. The music was loud, so loud that it bounced off the high-rise buildings along the lake and shot out across the water. It was so loud that it would certainly have burst her eardrums if she weren’t dreaming. She was holding her ears, like everyone else in the car, but that was because of the extreme cold, not the music. She suddenly noticed the snow. It was summer, though! When the car passed beaches, she had envied everyone reveling in Chicago’s great strip of fake nature. Suddenly, even as she was thinking about the warm sand and plastic debris of urban beaches in summer, the snow cleared and winter left. Yes, it was hot now. And summer. Of course it was summer! She had never been to Chicago in winter. As she said ‘winter’ to herself, the snow and cold air came back. She looked up at the great ugly high-rise apartment building they were passing at that moment, with its yellow brick that probably looked warm in the lakefront summer light. Now it looked salty and cold. Salty? No, that was the asphalt in front of her, in front of the car, cracked and white with cold and road-salt, steaming hot. She looked up at the building again, and was blinded by the light of the sun which seemed to come from everywhere. The building had passed, and summer was back. She quickly formed a hypothesis, and pictured herself explaining it in a room full of well-fed men stuffed into stained shirts and ties: “In Chicago, along Lake Shore Drive, it’s always winter in the shadow of a high-rise.” The music was awful now, representing the worst of all the music she had once loved and listened to an untimely death. But she couldn’t convince anyone to change the station or turn the radio off. They all loved it. They. Who were these people, anyway? She didn’t know this many people in Chicago. Or, more precisely, she didn’t know this many people in Chicago well enough to be riding in a car with loud music with... Half of the people in the car didn’t seem like car-riding, loud-music-listening, sunglass-wearing-type people anyway. And how did so many people fit into such a small car, anyway?

Lake Shore Drive had never seemed so long before. The Hancock Tower loomed in the distance, as it had for what seemed like the last half-hour. Was this dream trying to become a nightmare? She looked over to the lake, thinking it may calm her, and noticed that it was divided into patches of storm and calm. She was suddenly in front of the assemblage again: “In the wintry shadow of a Chicago lakeshore high-rise, the water looks stormy and wave-torn.” Wave-torn? Poetry had always been a dream to her. In the calm patches of the lake she envied the sailboats and swimmers. In one of the wave-torn patches, in which those tearing waves seemed to grow as high as the buildings on her right, she saw a long sleek speedboat crack itself in half trying to jump waves. As the sportily-dressed passengers flew through the air, she remembered it was only a dream. No one else in the car had noticed the incident, so she paid no attention to the screams. The car suddenly took an exit, and she though she would now finally discover the object of their trip, but after many twists and turns the car ended up back on Lake Shore Drive. She thought to ask the driver where they were going, but it was then she realized that everyone in the car but she was driving. She decided to sit back and enjoy the music, which was all right now, but this idiot next to her on the other side of the car was babbling on and on, and she couldn’t hear a thing, not even him. She was too polite to tell him to shut the hell up, so she tried to listen to what he was saying. But it was too hard. She was too tired, and getting carsick. She was once more in front of the assemblage, but she had nothing to say. She saw herself there, up there all alone in front of several bunches of people, with nothing to say. She stammered to herself for a few moments, then heard laughter. But it wasn’t the hideous men in the audience who were laughing, it was the people in the car. She looked at the crowd in the car, and they looked back at her. They were laughing, and she wasn’t. She tried to figure out what they were laughing at. It wasn’t the music, and they weren’t looking beyond her at something happening on the beach.... was it something about her, something she wearing? Had a bird shit on her clothes? Clothes! She wasn’t wearing any! She twisted and turned, trying to avoid the indiscreet eyes of the people in the car and along the bed, but she only succeeded in severely messing up the sheets.

She opened her eyes. There was bad music coming from her clock radio, and her mother, the Queen D., stood in the doorway laughing at the tangle of sheets, pillows, and princess. It was 2:30 on a Sunday afternoon. Nothing to do today.

21 December, 2005

Redux

So... serendipity gives me the [wireless] signal strength to look at what I've posted here, and edit where [perhaps] appropriate. Way back when, in the throes of literary ecstasy, I posted a lil sumpin' about Jude Law (that delicious hairy beast) and Stephen Fry (that most inouï* of authors) (apologies to both) that I must now redact. Done. Click on yon link.

* Sorry. I just couldn't think of a good English equivalent, and I haven't a dictionary handy. Further revision: any suggestions?

History, the Past, and Remembrance of Things

[I totally, utterly screwed this up, and got lost in the writing. It did not turn out at all as I had planned. I need to rewrite and re-post. But feel free to gambol through the rubble, as it stands.]

Thumbing through my tattered copy of the most recent issue of my favorite magazine, The Atlantic I came across a poem:

=====

Small House Torn Down to Build a Larger

by X.J. Kennedy

Because it squatted on a piece of land
Whose cash price overtook and dwarfed its own,
Its owner couldn't stand to let it stand,
But sold it to be stripped to vein and bone.
A mottled bathroom sink where hair was brushed
Until its drain grew maddeningly slow,
The toilet tank so difficult to flush,
That closet floor on which the cat would go,
Are rubble now. Acerbic histories
That ended in divorce, the hopeful past,
Sprawl with extracted nails and toppled trees,
Too little in the living room to last.
======

This piece brought to mind any given demolition-in-progress I've witnessed in the past. I stand on the sidewalk, looking through a rented chain-link fence at a half demolished building and seeing bathroom fixtures, paint or wallpaper on walls, dangling wires, sometimes even left-behind furniture, all the jetsam of lives live within rooms being taken apart. The piles of still-intact brick, the tangle of wire and metal, all of it speaks to me in a silly sentimental voice, begging to be used again, to be brought back to life. I was overjoyed to see recently in the Reader that an emerging trend salvages old bricks from tear-downs to use in new projects.

Chicago is changing rapidly. Gentrification is sweeping the neighborhoods of Urbs in Horto like cancerous wildfire. In many instances, it isn’t a bad thing; my new neighborhood, Logan Square, was by many accounts nearly uninhabitable a few years ago. Now, though still a little rough around some edges, it is a very pleasant place to commute home to. When I mention I live there, most people can bring up something about it they know and love: a restaurant, Lula Café, that Ira Glass has creamed about in the Reader’s restaurant reviews; a bike shop that’s supposedly bitchin’; some band/music group they know that lives and performs in and around the ‘Square (walking to the subway in the morning, it seems the streams of people heading toward the deep blue are all indie rockers heading out to their day jobs).

Not every neighborhood is a seeming success like Logan Square. Not even yuppies can afford Lincoln Park anymore – instead of moving in with Vince Vaughn, Jennifer Anniston is rumored to be looking at places in Lake Fucking Forest (oh my god, I just wrote about fairly recent pop-culture). Lakeview is so choked with moneyed gays driving huge cars they can’t park that normal gays who want to live in the Ghayhetto have to trek all the way up to Edgewater. Apparently, Ukrainian Village is losing its soul and its sunlight to six-story decorative cinder-block condo row houses. And be honest: who hasn’t wanted to go on a killing spree in Wicker Park/Bucktown? (Even the supposedly adorable Josh Hartnett couldn’t drag me to see a movie with the name “Wicker Park,” which stands for Squealing White Yuppie Kids (anyone under 28)). I’m told I should explore Pilsen before it completely loses its soul… I do love me some Mexican food! I won’t even talk about River North, my former high-rise home. The mere words bring echoes of the clomp-clomp of over-moneyed, under-polished girls trying to walk in shoes that could literally kill them, while their Praduccicrombie zombie metrosexual boyfriends spout cigar smoke at diners seated on the sidewalk, forcing you to tiptoe along the curb to avoid the gaggle of tourists from Nebraska moving in a slow clump while pointing at the Weber Grill, not noticing the taxi full of…

Hmm. Sorry.

The imminent demise of Marshall Fields got me thinking. How useful is wholesale preservation? What good is saving any old building, really? Why should we care about traditions? What's in a name? I’m sure the Macy’s at State and Washington (shudder! Macy’s! Oh, how velveeta! Gone the classy green, gone [probably] too the wonderful dining options, to be replaced with linoleum velveeta Macy’s sameness) will still do holiday displays in its windows at this time of year. I’m sure they won’t destroy the stunning interior and exterior details – in fact I’m pretty sure the bastards can’t even touch it. But it will be a Macy’s, for christ’s sake. I don’t shop very often at all, and am certainly no fan of department stores, but sometimes on my lunch I enjoy wandering around the floors at Field’s, imagining what it must be like to have even a penny of disposable income. I remember as a wee bairn going to the old L.S. Ayres store in downtown Indianapolis to romp in Santaland. It was a big, old, traditional, locally legendary department store. The downtown flagship closed over 10 years ago, and the name will soon be folded into the bland Macy’s omelette.

So I wonder: Does any of this matter? People are busy enough, they’ll find other things to do than sit on Santa’s lap at Ayres or meet for dinner in the Walnut room at Field’s. Maybe it will become a tradition to try on fake sports t-shirts at Old Navy, or go shopping for cold remedies at Walgreens on December 21. What is the point of traditions, and why do I sometimes get so nostalgic and sentimental for even the ugly, the banal, and mundane?

[Sigh.]


Existential Kitchen

As a young tyke, just out of high school, a friend of the family gave me a glorious summer job. I was to surf the then still-new net, trying to help the university come up with ideas for their website. So while I certainly monitored the homepages of several peer institutions, I also spent considerable time dorking around with things that then interested me. I eventually came across the Jean-Paul Sartre cookbook, and printed out a copy. I had the foresight to stuff it between the pages of a book, and last night, lo these many years later, it fluttered again into my lap.

A quick googling shows that it can be found at
http://www-berkeley.ansys.com/wayne/sartre-cookbook.html and at http://pvspade.com/Sartre/cookbook.html, among other places.

=======
The Jean-Paul Sartre Cookbook
by Marty Smith, Portland OR
forwarded by Alastair Sutherland (kaidan@ix.netcom.com)

from Free Agent March 1987 (a Portland Oregon alternative newspaper), Republished in the Utne Reader Nov./Dec. 1993

We have been lucky to discover several previously lost diaries of French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre stuck in between the cushions of our office sofa. These diaries reveal a young Sartre obsessed not with the void, but with food. Apparently Sartre, before discovering philosophy, had hoped to write "a cookbook that will put to rest all notions of flavor forever." The diaries are excerpted here for your perusal.

October 3
Spoke with Camus today about my cookbook. Though he has never actually eaten, he gave me much encouragement. I rushed home immediately to begin work. How excited I am! I have begun my formula for a Denver omelet.

October 4
Still working on the omelet. There have been stumbling blocks. I keep creating omelets one after another, like soldiers marching into the sea, but each one seems empty, hollow, like stone. I want to create an omelet that expresses the meaninglessness of existence, and instead they taste like cheese. I look at them on the plate, but they do not look back. Tried eating them with the lights off. It did not help. Malraux suggested paprika.

October 6
I have realized that the traditional omelet form (eggs and cheese) is bourgeois. Today I tried making one out of cigarette, some coffee, and four tiny stones. I fed it to Malraux, who puked. I am encouraged, but my journey is still long.

October 10
I find myself trying ever more radical interpretations of traditional dishes, in an effort to somehow express the void I feel so acutely. Today I tried this recipe:

Tuna Casserole
Ingredients: 1 large casserole dish
Place the casserole dish in a cold oven. Place a chair facing the oven and sit in it forever. Think about how hungry you are.

When night falls, do not turn on the light.

While a void is expressed in this recipe, I am struck by its inapplicability to the bourgeois lifestyle. How can the eater recognize that the food denied him is a tuna casserole and not some other dish? I am becoming more and more frustrated.

October 25
I have been forced to abandon the project of producing an entire cookbook. Rather, I now seek a single recipe which will, by itself, embody the plight of man in a world ruled by an unfeeling God, as well as providing the eater with at least one ingredient from each of the four basic food groups. To this end, I purchased six hundred pounds of foodstuffs from the corner grocery and locked myself in the kitchen, refusing to admit anyone. After several weeks of work, I produced a recipe calling for two eggs, half a cup of flour, four tons of beef, and a leek. While this is a start, I am afraid I still have much work ahead.

November 15
Today I made a Black Forest cake out of five pounds of cherries and a live beaver, challenging the very definition of the word cake. I was very pleased. Malraux said he admired it greatly, but could not stay for dessert. Still, I feel that this may be my most profound achievement yet, and have resolved to enter it in the Betty Crocker Bake-Off.

November 30
Today was the day of the Bake-Off. Alas, things did not go as I had hoped. During the judging, the beaver became agitated and bit Betty Crocker on the wrist. The beaver's powerful jaws are capable of felling blue spruce in less than ten minutes and proved, needless to say, more than a match for the tender limbs of America's favorite homemaker. I only got third place. Moreover, I am now the subject of a rather nasty lawsuit.

December 1
I have been gaining twenty-five pounds a week for two months, and I am now experiencing light tides. It is stupid to be so fat. My pain and ultimate solitude are still as authentic as they were when I was thin, but seem to impress girls far less. From now on, I will live on cigarettes and black coffee.
=============

And then, I ran across an expanded version at
http://www.hellskitchen.com/sartre.htm. Below I’ve included any dates not appearing above, as well as the Black Forest Cake, which appears on November 26 rather than 15. One can readily see why the below do not appear in most versions of this, but I love the idea of bug-eyed Sartre running around with fried eggs on his eyes. [Any spelling/grammar mistakes are not my own, of course.]

=======
October 7
Today I again modified my omelet recipe. While my previous attempts had expressed my own bitterness, they communicated only illness to the eater. In an attempt to reach the bourgeoisie, I taped two fried eggs over my eyes and walked the streets of Paris for an hour. I ran into Camus at the Select. He called me a "pathetic dork" and told me to "go home and wash my face." Angered, I poured a bowl of bouillabaisse into his lap. He became enraged and, seizing a straw wrapped in paper, tore off one end of the wrapper and blew through the straw propelling the wrapper into my eye. "Ow! You dick!" I cried. I leaped up, cursing and holding my eye, and fled.

October 12
My eye has become inflamed. I hate Camus.

November 15
I feel that I may be very close to a great breakthrough. I had been creating meal after meal, but none seemed to express the futility of existence any better than would ordering a pizza. I left the house this morning in a most depressed state, and wandered aimlessly through the streets. Suddenly, it was as if the heavens had opened. My brain was electrified with an influx of new ideas. "Juice, toast, milk," I muttered aloud. I realized with a start that I was one ingredient away from creating the nutritious breakfast. Loathsome, true, but filled with existential authenticity. I rushed home to begin work anew.

November 18
Today I tried yet another variation: Juice, toast, milk and Chee-tos. Again, a dismal failure. I have tried everything. Juice, toast, milk and whiskey, juice, toast, milk and chicken fat, juice, toast, milk and someone else's spit. Nothing helps. I am in agony. Juice, toast, milk, they race about my fevered brain like fire, like an unholy trinity of cruel denial. And the fourth ingredient! What could it be? It eludes me like the lost chord, the Holy Grail. I must see the completion of my task, but I have no more money to spend on food. Perhaps man is not meant to know.

November 21
Camus came into the restaurant today. He did not know I was in the kitchen, and before I sent out his meal I loogied in his soup. Sic semper tyrannis.

November 23
Ran into some opposition at the restaurant. Some of the patrons complained that my breakfast special (a page out of Remembrance of Things Past and a blowtorch with which to set it on fire) did not satisfy their hunger. As if their hunger was of any consequence! "But we're starving," they say. So what? They're going to die eventually anyway. They make me want to puke. I have quit the job. It is stupid for Jean-Paul Sartre to sling hash. I have enough money to continue my work for a little while.

November 24
Last night I had a dream. In it, I am standing, alone, on a beach. A great storm is raging all about me. It begins to rain. Night falls. I am struck by how small and insignificant I am, how the entire race of Man is but a speck in the eye of God, and I am but a speck of humanity. Suddenly, a red Cadillac convertible pulls up beside me. In it are these two beautiful girls named Jojo and Wendy. I get in and the take me to their mansion in Hollywood and give me a pound of cocaine and make mad, passionate love to me for the rest of my life.

November 26
Today I made a Black Forest cake out of five pounds of cherries and a live beaver, challenging the very definition of the word "cake." I was very pleased. Malraux said he admired it greatly, but could not stay for dessert. Still, I feel that this may be my most profound achievement yet, and have resolved to enter it in the Betty Crocker Bake-Off.


20 December, 2005

Cult of Personality?

I can't wait for the commentary on this one.

I remember remarking to a friend recently that he was part of some "objectivist" "cult of Ayn Rand." So funny that I should stumble upon the following today: "Ayn Rand was a truculent, domineering cult-leader, whose objectivist pseudo-philosophy attempts to ensnare adolescents with heroic fiction about righteous capitalists."

Curiosity piqued, I eventually stubbed my finger on http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard23.html and let out a hearty chortle after skimming it. I don't know anything about the site or whether it's a hoax, or what, but I found it hilarious.

I think I'll continue my googling in this vein when I find the time.

19 December, 2005

Jingle Hell

I missed a spot shaving today. It almost follows the outline of my jawbone, just beneath my earlobe. It's an innocuous, incognito kind of place, in the shadow of the ear, and my facial hair is, in general, so lightly colored that it usually isn't visible without close inspection. I may not even have noticed the untrimmed patch if I hadn't been absentmindedly running my fingers near my chin as I talked with my good friend Gazoo about... stuff.

These little things - mis-be-shaving, forgetting to apply anti-perspirant on a rather drippy day - are annoying. What is more annoying at this time of year is what I can only call the holiday crush. It is the weight of expectations I place on myself to try to make those I know and love happy with some small token of appreciation for their friendship, love, etc...

If you’re one of those who likes to spout off endlessly about the crass commercialism of the season, or the oppressively religious overtones, or how you don’t believe in any of the “spirit,” well, please just shut up. I’ve heard it all, and I don’t think you’re cool ‘cause you don’t believe in Xmas, and I don’t think you’re a dolt if you think the baby Jesus in the manger thingy was extra cute this year. We’re talking about my problems here, people, so just shut up. Thanks.

I'm not into the materialistic spirit of the Jingle Hell season, and I have severely limited means. Nonetheless, I endlessly want to show that I am not a heartless, unthinking heathen. A very intelligent, dear friend here in the office is making (chocolate) truffles as her holiday gift. Why don’t I get great ideas like that? I’m pretty good at making pasta; no matter how much I’d appreciate receiving such victuals, wet noodles do not equal a good gift. So, I’ve hit upon my gift this year: I will be very gracious – as I always am – in accepting any gifts that should come my way. When you give to me this season, your joy will be the warm smile and look of profound love you see on my face in return.


14 December, 2005

A Suckle of Honey

I wanted to share this snippet from Stephen Fry's The Hippopotamus, without interjecting my own commentary. The "speaker" is the narrator, ficticious poet and curmudgeon Ted Wallace.


===================

Quote:

Nature, it seemed to me, was sure to right Clara's defects in time without Davey's mystical interference. Look at American girls. At the age of fourteen they look as if they're recovering from a traffic accident: their mouths are caged with wire, their legs and backs strain in corrective stockings and splints, their skin is lumpy from acne, their upper lips fuzz with down, their sad little bras are stuffed with Kleenex and their eyes slither indeoendantly in all directions but forwards. Yet by the time they reach eighteen they have become almost too beautiful to bear, with teeth like indigestion tablets, eyes to dive into, skin you want to lick all over, fresh boobs and postures new. No armpit hair, however, which I believe to be a calamitous error. Have you ever let honey-suckle live up to its name? ever drained its honey? When you take the flower and pull the stamen through, a delicate drop of nectar swells up at its head. A bead of sweat bulging at the tip of a woman's axillary hair is as beautiful. Your true conoisseur of women delights in the great meaty reek of the female essence, not the sterile lemon top-notes of deodorants and creams. The French understand this, about the only thing they do understand - apart from French, of course. Think of those giddy Baudelairean amants burying their heads in comedy actresses' sweat soaked how-dare-yous. Haaa...

12 December, 2005

Grammar

I've never been much of a true student. If something interests me, I absorb it like a sponge; if not, I tend to half-heartedly notice it, then move forgetfully on.

I am very lucky that Grammar and I get along. Grammar is a good friend of mine, and I know him fairly intimately, but he does have some secrets. I could easily learn them, if only I took the time to read his journal. It seems, however, that I prefer to simply go with the flow, and learn more and more about Grammar as time goes by.

One horrid memory I have is from my undergraduate years, the sepia-toned halcyon days of DePaulia. I must have been a sophomore, in one of my French classes with the nonpareil Dr. B, and we were doing exquisite corpses (you know, "Le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau," etc) on a strip of paper printed with sentence parts, so that our nonsense would be at least somewhat grammatically functional in our limited lilting halting French. It came my turn, and I was to supply a preposition. I had no idea what a preposition was, even though I was never chastised for slapping them at the end of sentences. I placed a word, inwardly sheepish, outwardly bold, and passed the dead strip on. When the professeuse read the corpse aloud, she paused where my word was and scolded the class. Scanning the assembled, making eye contact with each of us, she examined our souls. I don’t think she or anyone else could tell that it was I who had ruined the game, and turned our absurd surreal text into gibberishy mush, so this is my apology to all involved, all these years later. At that time, I felt like Grammar had cancelled our dinner plans, telling me that he was sick, and then later finding out from a mutual friend that Grammar had in fact gone out with someone else that night, some glamorous new trick, surely nowhere near as amusing as I. I hope that that someone gave Grammar a very nasty but non-life-threatening STD. But then, Grammar never learns.

All this drivel reminds me of a Winston Churchill quote, supposedly in reply to someone who tried to correct something he had written: "This is the kind of impertinence up with which I shall not put."


Ugly Monday

I thought a little inapporpriate humor would be appropriate for another ucktastic Monday. The email subject when this was sent to me was "Dating Rituals."


Though not a woman, I will admit and attest to the Irish side.

=============


WHITE WOMEN
First date: You get to kiss her good night.
Second date: You get to grope all over and make out.
Third date: You get to have sex but only in the missionary position.

IRISH WOMEN
First Date: You both get blind drunk and have sex.
Second Date: You both get blind drunk and have sex.
20th Anniversary: You both get blind drunk and have sex.

ITALIAN WOMEN
First Date: You take her to a play and an expensive restaurant.
Second Date: You meet her parents and her Mom makes spaghetti & meatballs.
Third Date: You have sex, she wants to marry you & insists on a 3-karat ring.
5th Anniversary: You already have 5 kids together & hate the thought of having sex.
6th Anniversary: You find yourself a girlfriend.

JEWISH WOMEN
First Date: You get dynamite head.
Second Date: You get more great head.
Third Date: You tell her you'll marry her and you never get head again.

CHINESE WOMEN
First date: You get to buy her an expensive dinner but nothing happens.
Second date: You buy her an even more expensive dinner. Nothing happens again.
Third date: You don't even get to the third date and you already realized nothing is going to happen.

INDIAN WOMEN
First date: Meet her parents.
Second date: Set the date of the wedding.
Third date: Wedding night.

BLACK WOMEN
First Date: You get to buy her a real expensive dinner.
Second Date: You get to buy her and her girlfriends a real expensive dinner.
Third Date: You get to pay her rent.
Tenth Date: She's pregnant by someone other than you.

MEXICAN WOMEN
First Date: You buy her an expensive dinner, get drunk on Tequila, and have sex in the back of her car.
Second Date: She's pregnant.
Third Date: She moves in. One week later: her mother, father, his girlfriend, her two sisters, her brother, all of their kids, her grandma, her father's girlfriend's mother, her two cousins, her sister's boyfriend and his three kids move in and you live on rice and beans for the rest of
your life in your home that used to be nice, but now looks like a shack along the Rio Grande.

The "point"?

DON'T YOU JUST LOVE IRISH WOMEN?


They ALL want cake

This cake is amazing, as anyone who's indulged will attest. The beautiful southern girl who made it omits the walnuts and marshmallows. I guess I would too, because it is divine when she whips it up, as she did for my birfday two years ago.


====================

Coca-Cola Cake (aka 'numanums')

Grease and flour 13x9x2 pan

The Cake: Bring 1 stick of butter, 1/2 cup Wesson Oil, 3 tbsp cocoa and 1 cup coca-cola to a boil. Pour over 2 cups sugar and 2 cups flour, mixed well, while boiling hot. Mix well and add ½ cup buttermilk, 1 tsp. vanilla, ½ tsp soda, and 2 eggs. Fold in 1 and 1/2 cups miniature marshmallows. They will rise to the top of the batter so spread them evenly over batter after putting in pan to bake. Bake at 350 degrees for 45-50 minutes.
Ovens vary so check your temp.

The Icing: Bring ½ cup butter, 3 tbsp cocoa, 6 tbsp coca cola to a boil. While boiling hot add 1 box powered sugar, 1 tsp vanilla and 1 cup chopped pecans. Immediately pour icing over cake while hot, just out of the oven. Do not cut until cool. It will stay moist for 2 weeks if kept in covered container.


11 December, 2005

This is how football should be played

A little sunny frivolity for a sunny Sunday:

For those of you who do not watch football, and do not know much about football, perhaps - god forbid - do not care about football, I submit for your viewing pleasure The Indianapolis Colts. I remember as a young tyke when the Colts first moved to the city of my birth. They were awful, mediocre, and briefly near-brilliant for about 15 years, and now finally they are near-perfect. Whether they finally bring home a Super Bowl or not, this is the best team I've ever seen, and it gives me a lot of pleasure to watch them.

09 December, 2005

Question

How wonderful is it to see someone you love when you're not expecting it?

08 December, 2005

Pirámide del Alimento

The screen in the elevator tells me that the USDA, "alarmed at the high rate of obesity among hispanics," has translated the Food Pyramid. This will surely cure what ails 'em. We can see the miracles the Pyramid has worked for the anglophone population.

Where WERE you last night?

For some reason, this joke email I received today reminded me of something that happened last night (none of your damn business). Of course, the obvious question is, "Why didn't the spouse call to say so?" That, it seems, would be the socially acceptable and courteous thing to do. It's a slight chuckler, nonetheless.

===================

On Friendship between Women:

A Woman did not come home one night. The next day she told her husband that she had slept at a friend's house. The man called his wife's 10 best friends. None of them knew about it.

On Friendship between Men:

A man did not come home one night. The next day he told his wife that he had slept over at a friend's house. The woman called her husband's 10 best friends. Eight of them confirmed that he had slept over, and two claimed that he was still there.

07 December, 2005

Here's why the Holidays suck, for some

I am being harassed. Here at the office, many of the support staff are fond of fund drives, and will pass the hat at the drop of a hat. My colleagues and I, on a somewhat sparse hourly wage, groaning under incredibly massive student loan debt, have absolutely nothing to give. I wish I could help out in some of the causes, but I quite simply cannot. I am sick of being assailed with these pleas. It is easy to ignore the professional homeless, but officemates are another matter.

The holidays are the worst. Everyone in every crevice, nook, and cranny of every sub-department of every bureau of every whatever is holding a fund-raiser, a bake-sale, a used book sale, and this year, sponsoring some folks from a shelter. I was able to buy a fairly promising novel and a pleasing cupcake, but I won't be able to buy size 33 jeans for an 11 year old. For that I apologize. With luck, I'll do better next year.

Zero Degree(s)

I had a feeling that this cold spell is a record-breaker, and something I heard on Chicago Public Radio confirmed it this morning. I went to the extreme, last night, of taking my air conditioners out of the windows. It took so much effort - and sweat - to install them that I resisted as long as I could. When I moved into the place I honestly did not see how it could ever get cool, let alone cold as it was the last few nights. This summer I missed the central a/c I had downtown, and now - unbelieveably - I miss the effects of modern insulation and double-paned windows.

So frozen I can't even write!

06 December, 2005

Grainy Photographs of Things I Can't Remember

Today, trying to get organized before plunging headlong and painfully into study mode, I came across yet another forgotten and unfinished chunk of writing on one of the hard drives scattered about chez moi. It appears to be from February of last year. I honestly do not recall writing this, though the fact that drinking is mentioned makes me think I may have been tipsy at the keys again. What boggles is how it appears edited: Though I rarely misspell egregiously, this fairly polished to be a forgotten chunk. I hope maybe I'll remember where I was headed, since I got a chuckle out of a few of the ideas herein...

===================================
“I was at a Laundromat somewhere near North and Clybourn doing only doing sheets and towels,” declared the disheveled unknown stranger seated at the bar next to me. “That day, it was gray, of course, as gray is a suitable backdrop to most fantastic stories – like a fog machine in an overblown musical. Rain seemed imminent, but never fell. It was a bit cool, with a bit of moist wind. A perfectly nearly miserable day, perfect for the laundry. Today I had gone with a book and actually sat in one of the orange chairs with faded strands of fiberglass showing. As I usually do, I thought of how many asses it would take to polish a brand new fiberglass chair to the point where the “fiber” shows through the “glass.” I never actually stay by the machine while it swishes or buffets my clothing. My mind tells me I have better things to do, and I come back in the alleged time it takes for the operation to complete and find my threads piled either on the goopy, unctuous detergent residue atop the washer or lolling in lint on the table beside the dryer. But yes, this time I sat with my book, determined to be vigilant.

“At first, I did not read. Staring at the spin cycle, I was too absorbed in the vortex of humanity caught in my peripheral vision. A fat man, replete with bags of many kinds, just like the bags on his body, sorting tent-like garments. A thin old woman with short graying hair and enormous clear-plastic framed glasses that shielded half of her face. An argumentative yuppie couple, he in a rather attractive suit that clearly made him unhappy, she in an odd combination of knits and leather that she thought gave her an aura of power. I couldn’t help but notice that her boots were salt-stained, though it hadn’t snowed all year.

“So what with the book attention and the sitting by the machine shtick, this was a break in Joseph Everyman Schmoe’s normal weekly routine. I eventually slipped between the pages of the book, and was absorbed by comforting wordy scenarios. With each passing syllable, the population of the establishment decreased. When the time came, I shuffled slightly sodden fabrics from one machine to the next, then contributed to the exposure of ass-sanded fibers. With roughly five minutes left on the soothingly cacophonous dry cycle, I noticed a newcomer.

“Now, lemme digress a little. I’m a reserved guy. I don’t talk unless I have to. One of the tendencies that irks me the most in the programming commonly called human nature is the guy who just balls out talks to any stranger he meets. I was taught since I was tiny that you just don’t talk to strangers, unless you got something to gain. What is it about this unknown guy that makes him so… odious? So odious to me? I… even attractive persons to whom I’m attracted by some primal instinct… they scare me to death. Well, not so much to death as speechless.”

Speaking of speechless, I had been spellbound by the speaker’s eloquent soliloquy up until he asked leave of me to digress. He was courteous enough to ask leave, but left without consent. But I digress; he whom I’d taken to be a disheveled grad student had slipped to conversational amoeba, or rather some mass of aerobic bacteria. He was sucking the life out of my evening.

“I really got no reason to talk to strangers,” he continued, heedless of my silent and motionless protests to end. “The nicest gesture a stranger can offer is silence.”

“Now, ruth be told (I think he meant truth, Ruth’s drunken distant cousin), I suppose the gentleman in question was not a total stranger, as I had seen him in this particular establishment often. A little quirk of my mind tempts me to conjecture that he exists only in that establishment. I’d be harpreddess (hard pressed?) to refute such a conjecture not for the story he told, that I’m telling to you.” And the story that I am telling you, dear reader.

“So, I’m lulled by the silence of the laundrmat, punctuated… eh, the near silence that is, by the humclick of the machine…”

“The humclick?” I asked, grasping at desperate straws for lack of any other foothold in this alcoholic conversational wasteland.

“Yeah,” he said, “the dryer makes a hum as it goes, and something clicks now and then. The clack of plastic buttons on tin, I guess…”

“Clack of plastic? Aren’t buttons made of vulcanized rubber?”

“Stop sideclacking me!” he pleaded. “It’s a transcendental experience, being in the zone, with Kerouac’s words rushing over you, syncopated by the beat and zip of buttons on steel buffeted by hot air. The best quarters I ever dropped on amusement.”

I had tried to read Kerouac once. I could certainly see the part about words rushing, but his arrangement of words on paper held no allure for me. Neither did the sound of a dryer at work. Either my interlocutor was psychic, or I made some grunt of disapproval, because he said defensively “You know, Fabercrombie & Aitch had some pretty slick catalogs where his books were featured as fashion accessories.”

I couldn’t deny the weight of this averment, so I half nodded, half drank. I’m sure I looked like a pigeon in Daley plaza darting its neck out as it walks, strutting for crumbs. Moments passed in silence. He finished his drink and wobbled to his feet off his stool, and I rejoiced, as I had seen him pay and tip the bartender with cash. I thought he must be on his way. Instead, he flagged the bartender, demanded a refill, and intimated that he’d be right back. I watched him sway toward the back of the bar, presumably to piss, and fingering my still (unfortunately) nearly full pint glass, thought about leaving.

But alas, dear reader, I am a cheapskate. In social settings, if someone departs with even a teaspoon of drink left in their glass, I lament the sorry state of mankind. Such manna of mankind left to evaporate goes against the tenets of my religion of consumption. The bartender approached, saying “another diet and bourbon for ‘Mr. Chatty’” and placed a glass of murky bubbly liquid [where] atop a fresh receipt.

“Do you know this guy?” I ask.

“What guy?” the bartender says, suppressing a gag, as he sniffed the rag he’d used to wipe the bar and serving areas.

“The guy you called ‘Mr. Chatty,’” I said.

“Oh, he’s here, and talking, telling the same story all the time. Three, four nights a week.”

I considered staying in place and hastening the trips from counter to mouth, though on this Wednesday night there were other stools available. Despite several hearty heart-burning gulps, I still had more than half of my eighth beer to drink. I decided to shuffle off to a stool by the floor to ceiling windows where I could watch the Chicago police get harassed by drunken passerby, and do their best to fight back.

My amusement was quashed when I felt Mr. Chatty’s voice assault my oblivious back. I involuntarily turned around, and saw him wiping apparently dry hands on his corduroys. “You moved!” he said. “Let me just get Mr. BourbyLite and I’ll be back.”

He did as threatened, and as though no time had elapsed, he said. “so I’m swaying to the words and the dryer’s beat, and this muh…”

“Muh?” I asked.

“Yeah, muh. Like mutherfucker.” Pause, sip, gulp. “This muh does his business with the washer, then sits right down next to me on a five seat bank of individual orange fiberglass chairs. He let out a deep, idiotic, mouth-breather sigh...

Wine, Honey, and Virgins

I've had no time to do anything today, with the work computer on the skizz, but I would like to share this link:

http://gazoooftruth.blogspot.com/2005/12/river-of-honey-river-of-wine-and-72.html

If you don't read The Gazoo of Truth, you ought. It will inform you, and perhaps get your opinion juices flowing, if they haven't been dehydrated by the salt of pop culture. I mean, hey, the guy's appetite for politics IS a bit disturbing, but no one could ever tell him to "get a hobby!"

05 December, 2005

Fragment of a non-existent diary


It was, in fact, a wonderful weekend. I am in many ways completely exhausted, in a very good way.

I love to have people over, and to feed them and ply them with drink. I'd much rather do this than "go out" any day, and as most people flip over idea of free food, it is not difficult to draw a bit of a crowd.

So after our gourmet burgers I decided to make Creme Brulee, a little treat I've had much success with in the past. For whatever reason I had a lot of heavy cream in the fridge that threatened to expire in a week or so. As to the other necessaries, I had a dark foreboding feeling that somehow all was not complete in my pantry, but a quick and cursory glance over the old recipe gave me the courage to forge ahead. Then I had the darndest time finding the superfine sugar to mix with the egg yolks. I faintly remembered putting it into one of my neglected - and frankly awful... stay away from Bed Bath and Beyond - ceramic containers. Must have been that medium sized one... so 3/4 of a cup of that, and put the vanilla in the lightly boiling cream, then beat together cream and yolk, set aside to cool before dividing the mix into 6 ramekins placed in a bain marie...

At this point I realized I didn't have the proper pan. So there, on the counter, in the way of everyone and everything, the bowl sat, brimming with a fragrant mixture of egg yolk, cream, vanilla, and "sugar." Should I freeze it? Really no room in the forest of frozen veggies. I delayed decision, and eventually my phone rang. It was the second call I'd received that day that someone with whom I'd not spoken in months. Lilly convinced me to go ahead and make the damn things, proper pan be damned. So I did. I improvised and used that $1.99 foil pan that I had gotten to make those rather delish breaded pork chops for LuLo. Arrange ramekins, pour in boiling water, cover with foil, into oven at 325 for 20 minutes. Mmm, what a lovely smell. Take out of oven, remove foil, dump water, dust custards with brown sugar. Oh hells bells! I remember throwing out what had become a brick of brown sugar when I moved. No matter, let's use cane sugar. Into the broiling broiler, and my how it bubbles! what a lovely smell! ah, take it out cool it down. After 10 minutes, I discreetly open the fridge to taste a test run. With guilty pleasure I crack the brown and bubbly crust - success with cane sugar! - and scoop my usual heap, and slide it into my mouth...

YUCK!

Salty creme brulee?

That is the dumbest thing I have ever done in my life. May it never be equaled, surpassed, or repeated!

02 December, 2005

Next on the WB: a very special episode of "Traffic Court!"

Ever since I failed one of the [statistically] easiest bar exams in these United Lovely States, I have been denied the privilege and sheer pleasure of prosecuting the mopes in the City of Chicago’s unparalleled, inimitable, nonpareil, and often just Wiggedy Wack TRAFFIC COURT [in the Circuit Court of Cook County, First Municipal District, Hon. [that’s apparently questionable, according to unsubstantiated rumor, rumor I uncharacteristically can't even remember the gist of, and did not investigate] Walter Williams, Chief Presiding Judge].

For those uninitiated, it seems that Chicago has the largest and busiest traffic court in the country (world?). The only reason for this must be because Chicago likes big things; because I’m no aficionado, I haven’t researched what other jurisdictions do. I am prone to imagine that the few more populous centers in America the Bountiful have chosen to establish branch courts, rather than a central stalinist* monolith (welcome to Chicago politics).

What do you get when you mix seven courtrooms, seven – on a good day at least 1 competent – judges, about 14 cranky kvetchy clerks of all shapes, sizes and humors, hundreds (thousands?) of defendants? Why, you get 35 daily episodes of high-powered (hah!), high stakes (double hah!), rollicking (more like it) courtroom hilarity. This creation should be in reruns for decades to come, but alas, it is more of a soap opera, with no time to pause and reflect. I kick myself now for not writing a journal of my experiences in these trenches. Luckily, a lovely co-worker and sometime companion at Cardozo’s Basement Boozery has some vivid notes on her blog, [link removed to protect the innocent, until the innocent have had a chance to approve].

In terrible taste and wicked bad form, I’ve pasted them below, and I will add commentary. Since everyone loves lush blogscapes, I will retain her font, and comment in my customary courier.

=====================

6/13/05

The receptionist in my office seems to get a real kick out of asking me, in a patronizing voice, whether my feet are hurting. She’s just about begging me to retort that unlike her, I don’t sit on my ass all day. Well today I was wearing these shoes which were decently comfortable. I walked over to court and my crankiness subsided a little after an iced latte but I still felt like being by myself for a bit at lunch so I headed to McDonalds. While I was sitting (sitting!) there eating a cobb salad MY HEEL BROKE COMPLETELY OFF. In order to deal with this catastrophe, I had to limp very slowly to the Marshall Field’s shoe department, only after an unsuccessful search for an alleged Naturalizer store on Randolph. I guess I should be glad that a) it didn’t break off in court for all the vulture-like CPD Officers to witness and b) I have über-long lunches.

I was definitely feeling sorry for myself by the time I left work and decided that I’d get some mangos while I waited to transfer to the notoriously unreliable Division St. bus. Predictably, I had time to both purchase and eat the mangos while sitting on a bench waiting. There are several round benches situated under trees near the bus stop and since there were pigeons galore begging for my mangos, I checked to make sure I wasn’t sitting under a branch where pigeons could perch and then shit.

I finally disembarked on Leavitt and escaped the Weirdo Convention on the bus. I was feeling happy and relieved to be almost home and was cheerfully saying “good afternoon” to my neighbors when A BIRD SHAT DIRECTLY ON MY HEAD. I guess I can be glad it was my head and not my suit because my head is less expensive to clean?

Ok, so this isn’t strictly about Traffic Court. But an office character does appear (she is lovable in many ways – especially if one is not female – though she is gruff) and I think everyone, yes anyone would enjoy a good bird-shit story.

6/23/05

Meanwhile, at work, we are all having tons of fun. Here are some of the highlights of this week:

1. A defendant with a relatively simple case involving registration on a tow truck insisted at trial that he had not been the person in the tow truck to whom the officer gave a ticket. Instead, he had arrived on the scene in his BMW. The officer testified that indeed there was a BMW involved but that the defendant’s girlfriend had arrived in it. This prompted the defendant to call his wife as a witness, who said she could not possibly have driven the BMW because she is a nursing student who spends all day in the suburbs at school. Uh oh. As one might have anticipated, the officer then gleefully testified that the wife in court was not the girlfriend he saw driving the BMW!

2. One defendant had a defense to his seatbelt ticket that consisted mostly of testimony about how he was pulling into a “chicken place” at the time he was stopped. What chicken place? If this fact is so important, why aren’t you naming the chicken place? And wouldn’t that be basically Popeye’s or KFC? This isn’t Tallahassee.

3. Overheard cross-examination:
Prosecutor: Were your front windows tinted?
Defendant: No.
Prosecutor: Were they clear?
Defendant: No.
Prosecutor: Okay so they were a shade?
Defendant: Yes.
Prosecutor: They were a shade of tint.
Defendant: No!
Prosecutor: Were they like my glasses?
Defendant: No.
Prosecutor: So they were not clear?
Defendant: No, they were clear.

4. We all found a Dairy Queen right around the corner from our courtrooms and had an ice cream party in the hall outside of court yesterday. We were really loud and living it up right there amongst the defendants, who were waiting miserably. There was a lot of laughing and shenanigans and some suggestion of keeping Coronas and limes in coolers under our desks for the future, and we’re figuring we’ll soon get a memo barring ice cream during court due to the excessive silliness it causes.

The DQ I found in one of the many labyrinthine tunnels of the Loop “pedway”, but sadly never visited. The Corona Lime Cooler is a brilliant idea; if defense attorneys and coppers can stink of booze (and worse, dear child, oh so much worse) then why could your lowly $12/hr traffic prosecutor not kick back now and then with a bottle of sunshine?

And yes, back-and-forths like Signor Tintoretto above instigated happen so often at trial down there that they actually cease to amuse. Tragic, but true.

8/2/05

4. The grotesque appearance of our traffic court Arch Enemy Defense Attorney. More to come on this man later. I would post a picture but that is no doubt a blog no-no. Email me and I will send you your own personal Arch Enemy JPEG, although I don’t think the photo is detailed enough for you make out his sparse hair plugs.

You’d really have to read the whole entry to sink the eyetooth into the meat of this one. I’ll refrain from lambasting today, since the gent recently had massive heart problems – though I hear he’s back at his old tricks after a stay in hospital. Oh, hell, even that was probably just a stunt: He just tried to prove he actually had a heart.

Ah, Memories.

============

*I composed this piece of crap in Word, which insisted on automatically capitalizing Stalinist. I don’t accord Papa Joe that much respect, no matter how impressive his mustache.


Wanderlust

At the Division street stop on the subway this morning, the most awful feeling suddenly seized me. It was a combination of the book I was re-reading, the chime that goes with that smug recorded bastard admonishing, "doors closing," and memories of the high-low "bong, bong" of my claustrique* NYC morning commute. Perhaps the smell of vomit, cold air, and garlic breath played a part. The awful feeling: a deep longing to smell jet fuel, drink coffee 'till the heart burns, and listen patiently, contentedly, with aching ass, for the beep that signals I'm now free to move about the cabin.

These past few days I've been missing my wandering adventurous past. Firmly rooted by (comparative) poverty, I have the its-that-time-of-year agains. For visceral, inexplicable reasons, there are certain places I need to visit frequently (Paris, New York, New Orleans); the longer I'm away, the more brutish I become, and the more I feel the whoosh of air from Death's train in the subway station of life. I can't conceive of any opportunity for pilgrimage in a moveable window of 6 months - each day, until I am [more] gainfully employed, the 6 months is shifted, and has been 6 months for 7 months now. Maybe if I edit (redact) my travelogherrias and memoirettes, and post them here, I can calm down a bit.

Lingering again over at livejournal, I tumbled across a Joseph Brodsky chunk, and fell instantly in lust with it. It does not help this spiritual indigestion. I've slopped it onto the epage below.

Maybe its time for a roadtrip to... hmm... Detroit.

=======================

May 24, 1980

I have braved, for want of wild beasts, steel cages,
carved my term and nickname on bunks and rafters,
lived by the sea, flashed aces in an oasis,
dined with the-devil-knows-whom, in tails, on truffles.
From the height of a glacier I beheld half a world, the earthly
width. Twice have drowned, thrice let knives rake my nitty-gritty.
Quit the country the bore and nursed me.
Those who forgot me would make a city.
I have waded the steppes that saw yelling Huns in saddles,
worn the clothes nowadays back in fashion in every quarter,
planted rye, tarred the roofs of pigsties and stables,
guzzled everything save dry water.
I've admitted the sentries' third eye into my wet and foul
dreams. Munched the bread of exile; it's stale and warty.
Granted my lungs all sounds except the howl;
switched to a whisper. Now I am forty.
What should I say about my life? That it's long and abhors transparence.
Broken eggs make me grieve; the omelette, though, makes me vomit.
Yet until brown clay has been rammed down my larynx,
only gratitude will be gushing from it.

1980, translated by the author. (To protect the innocent , this is also at
http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~safonov/brodsky/may_24_1980.html)

=================
* Yes, I invented yet another silly stupid word. I didn't want the idea of phobia to enter the image, and I was too on-a-roll [read: too fucking lazy] to search my head for the mot juste. Half-hearted apologies.

01 December, 2005

We shall, indeed, rock you.

I sent the following chunkette as an email to several of my near and dear on October 28. It strikes me now as the kind of effluence that ought be tacked up on this tacky tacking board.

Let me take you back and set the scene: A week before, the White Sox had won the World Series, and delirium rather reigned 'round here, here and there. This was pooped out of my fingers as ticker tape rained.

================


As I sit in my office now, and hear Queen's "We Are the Champions" wafting up from the streets below, I am reminded of this morning's commute. Slogging through the gridlocked parade-happy molasses canyon of LaSalle street today, I thought of how incongruous it is that the ultimate Queen, faggy fairy Freddy Mercury's music has been co-opted by all of sports. It's stirring to see our butch south side brethren swaying to campy rock ballads.

We will, we will rock you, indeed.

Na na na na, hey hey hey,

Goodbye.

December! Vomit! Time Flies! Year Over!

As the Chicago City Council prepares to ban foie gras and cigarette smoke (though it appears the liver will be off the table before the tabakky), the following passage from The Hippopotamus (by my latest littish obsession, the aforementioned Fry) seems apt, and expresses my sediments exactly. So, from the mouth of ficticious poet and curmudgeon Ted Wallace:

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You can’t imagine, if you’re younger than me, which statistically speaking you are bound to be, what it is like to be born into the booze and smokes generation. It’s one thing for a man to find, as he ages, that the generations below him are trashier, more promiscuous, less disciplined and a whole continent more pig-ignorant and shit-stupid than his own – every generation makes that discovery – but to sense all around you a creeping puritanism, to see noses wrinkle as you stumble by, to absorb the sympathetic disgust of the pink-lunged, clean-livered, clear-eyed young, to be made to feel as if you have missed a bus no one ever told you about that’s going to a place you’ve never heard of, that can come a bit hard. All those pi, priggish Malvolios going about the place with “do you mind, some of us have got exams tomorrow, actually” expressions on their pale prefectorial little faces. Vomworthy.

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