a few pictures i've been meaning to upload

the aftermath of the pride parade from my friend's apartment.

i have no idea what this means, but it seems like some very poor phrasing in the lower right.

i think this place went out of business because it wasn't clear enough that they sold food.

bumper sticker archives, #1

i think bumper stickers are a rather fascinating form of self-expression. you have this tiny rectangle with just a few words to sum up a piece of what you're all about and broadcast for all the world to see.

a lot of them are boring (i.e. political affiliation, alma mater, trade union) or tasteless/stupid (i.e. "i do what the voices in my head tell me" or "my other ride is your mom") but i see some real gems from time to time in my neighborhood.

for example:



this truck belongs to a guy on my block. the "i <3 violence" sticker alone is absurd enough to qualify as noteworthy, but there's more to it. not only is the owner a chicago cop, he put a sticker proclaiming his love of violence direclty next to his fraternal order of police sticker.

if i were a cop in a city with as many ugly memories of police brutality as chicago, i probably wouldn't go out of my way to reinforce that perception. i dunno, maybe he just really likes ultimate fighting or something.

do any vegetables actually grow on trees?

if you follow political blogs at all, chances are you've come across this video:



yes, this lady looks very foolish... but as someone who had the misfortune of listening to hours of concerned citizen monologues during my journalism days, she's pretty standard in terms of rambling imbeciles at government meetings.

if you attend meetings at any city government/school board, you eventually WILL encounter someone as ignorant and poorly prepared and terrible at speaking as santa cruz lady. if you're particularly unlucky, that person will be a board member.

in fact, the santa cruz lady isn't even all that bad. she was boring and didn't make any sense, but you just tune that out when you realize it's not going anywhere.

far worse are the people leading quixotic crusades about local issues or against certain board members. i always found it really ironic that even if people had valid beef with the board, probably 95 percent of them doomed themselves just by stepping up to the microphone. adults who speak like inarticulate third-graders don't get taken seriously.

i remember this one guy who called himself "dr. drainage." giving dr. drainage my phone number was easily one the biggest mistakes of my journalism career.

every single week, he'd be at the city council meeting droning on and on about sewers and storm water and retention ponds and god knows what else. to be fair, he wasn't a standard "village meeting idiot" because he was actually quite bright- just abysmal at presenting his ideas.

i guess the reason i find this video so odd is santa cruz lady is basically just like sarah palin in terms of incoherency and ineptitude at presenting ideas, yet millions of people wanted palin to became our vice president. i think this is probably my favorite takedown yet of palin's gibberish speeches.

guerilla tactics at the movies

sunday was one of those sticky-humid days best spent in an air-conditioned room, so some friends and i went to see harry potter and the half-blood prince. wanton spendthrift that i am, i indulged in a $5 medium fountain drink to celebrate my first 2009 summer blockbuster movie experience. livin' large, baby!

the movie was way more badass than i expected and i was really enjoying it. i'm a very casual HP fan, so i didn't care about it diverting from the book's plot. frankly, i don't even remember the book very well.

apparently, people also complained there wasn't any explanation of what happened earlier in the series, which seems slightly ridiculous to me. harry potter is one of western civilization's most phenomenally successful and ubiquitous book/movie/video game/unintentional sex-toy series. if the hogwarts crew has been quidditching under your radar for the past decade and you finally decide to see what all the hubbub's about by going in cold to the sixth movie... well, you probably deserve to be lost.

unfortunately, my aforementioned diet coke splurge meant i had to get up in the middle of the movie. nothing kills the mood like using crowded theater bathroom. during my whole trip, i kept thinking about how bad real life sucks compared to movies and how i'd rather be blasting shit with magic.

real life continued to suck once i returned to my seat. some churl kept throwing chewed-up candy. it seemed like he was targeting the girls directly behind me but i was catching collateral damage. after the third time i was struck, i decided to pull some rambo shit and go on the offensive.

i grabbed a bag of discarded popcorn from a garbage can in the lobby, then reentered my theater through a different door and found a seat way in back where i could see everyone. as soon as that little fucker threw something, i'd be on him like an hawk. i was planning to whip the whole bag at his head once i found him. or, if he was someone who could possibly beat me up, i would just throw stuff at the back of his head from the cover of darkness in a bit of poetic justice.

unfortunately, i was robbed of sweet vengeance because i never actually caught anyone in the act of throwing anything. i'm pretty sure it was this one douchey suburbanite teenager. he definitely would have been the "whole bag at the back of the head" scenario.

when a man loves a machine...

R.I.P.
my computer
august, 2003 - july, 2009

take solace in knowing i never again shall subject you to the rigors of a maximum-size map game of civilization iv on high graphics settings. farewell, old friend, and let this ballad usher you into the unknown.