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.

i can't agree with his decision to stop at taco bell instead of somewhere good, but...

perhaps it's just my love for burritos, but i find this article oddly poignant:

Chase ends after suspect stops for 'last burrito'

May 14, 2009

Officials say a suspected drug dealer who led police on a 90 mph chase in northern Indiana was arrested after he stopped suddenly at a Taco Bell parking lot.

The reason? Jermaine Cooper told police he "knew he was going to jail for a while" and wanted to get one last burrito, Fort Wayne, Ind., police Sgt. Mark Walters said.

Cooper, 36, of Fort Wayne, was held without bail on four counts of dealing cocaine and other charges after the chase from Fort Wayne to nearby Decatur.

And he never got the burrito he craved.

AP

fight me, you fools!

if you dare...

http://party-fowl.mybrute.com

what would prof. sprout think?

now that's what i call herbology.

high level humor at the southside irish parade

i've been way busy lately, so i'm still trying to catch up with stuff that happened over the past month.

my cousin came to visit for the southside parade last month. we met up with some friends and had a pretty good time, in spite of the droves of drunken teenagers with shamefully horrible brogues and "fuck me, i'm irish!" t-shirts.

the weather was surprisingly warm and sunny for chicago in mid-march (i wasn't even wearing a coat), which was pretty nice... except that i was fairly sunburned from my trip to california, and the unusually clement weather exacerbated the situation.

we were waiting at a bathroom line when my cousin waved and said he had to tell me something. i asked what he wanted, and he kept telling me to come closer.

given our long, long history of inflicting physical/psychological discomfort on each other for entertainment, this should have been my first clue that something was wrong. unfortunately, it had been a long night/day and i went over anyway.

"what the hell is it?" i asked.

"i just wanted to tell you that now you're standing in puke," he said.

delightful.

after a brief hiatus...

ok, i'm back now. here's something that happened a few weeks ago:

i was at a party at my friend steve's apartment in wicker park, boozing it up with some bros.

we were down in his basement drinking and i saw an older lady, probably late 50's, wandering around the place. she had this weird hat that looked kind of like a beret and a massive canvas bag clutched tight to her chest. she looked for all the world like an older hippie who refused to age gracefully, vainly attempting to "hang" with the "kids."

after watching her for a bit, i realized i was only half-right; she most likely was an aging hippie, but she didn't seem to care much for hanging out. true to the enterprising entrepreneurship that made america great, she was circulating around the party selling homemade pumpkin muffins laced with (gasp) marijuana. it was like a real-life episode of "weeds."

she eventually made her way over to me, and said "you want one?"

i responded: "what do you have?"
old lady: (snorts) "what do you think?"
me: "i dunno, a bag."
old lady: "are you a cop?"
me: "what do you think?"
old lady: "they're drug muffins. five dollars each."
me: "i see..."

i casually pulled my coat aside and gave her quick glimpse of my shirt, which happened to have something that looked like a police star on the upper left part of my chest.

she was pretty old and she looked like she was about to have a heart attack when i did that, so i only strung her along for a few seconds. but it's nice when you can still make someone's eyes bug out with terror after so many years.