Groin-Grabbingly Transcendent

Chicago-folk: Anyone or anytwo want to join me for the Lindsay Mac show tonight at uncommon ground (Devon) at 8? Folk-rock'n cello played like a guitar + super singin' and songwritin', occasionally channeling Ani, etc. Also, great dinner stuff and desserts. Carey has *BAND PRACTICE*. Grr.

If you post a post to LJ, and your LJ world has disappeared and/or put you on their "mom-safe posts only" filter due to your incipient creepiness (or for just having not posted for awhile), does it make a sound?

Work too late, stay up too late, get to work too late, work too late, repeat. Bleh.

I probably sing in public places more than I should, and nothing impressive. I quit it when people actually come into proximity, at least. Mostly.

Given the shape of the world today, I feel like the only permament solution to ballooning unemployment in the United States is to dissolve the massive agribusinesses and replace them with the return to a model of agriculture on the scale of one farm feeds 5 to 10 families. Otherwise, what are all of us Americans *for*, now that we produce nothing (including human knowledge and understanding) that someone can't produce cheaper?

Here are some other things Americans might be good for intead of growing food:

1. Early childhood teacher/care provider
2. Physician (and similar/allied health care providers)
3. Tradesperson (Carpenter, electrician, plumber, painter, roofer, etc.)
4. Civil infrastructure engineer/builder/repairer/operator
5. Mechanic/machinist

Most everything else, it seems, can (and therefore must) be done for us virtually by someone with a much lower standard of living. Ultimately, of course, most of us will have something like that standard of living, which is either the coming of the Boot Stamping The Face Of Humanity Forever, or the beginning of the revolution against the accumulation and exploitation of theoretical wealth.

From today's Chicago Tribune, page A8:



The article on the left is a nice big, positive piece about the Pride parade, through which I was lucky enough to ride yesterday on a double-decker bus co-sponsored by my company.

The article on the right is (I presume) the "equal time" piece about a new Illinois GOP gubernatorial candidate, because, lest we forget, the Trib will be a tool of the right until they eventually shut down and just start Tweeting to people, or whatever.

Secret Message: If you don't like this stuff on the left, you may want to consider this guy on the right...

Finally bought a reasonably priced KVM switch today and hooked my home desktop's monitor, keyboard, and trackball mouse up to the extra work laptop docking station that's been locked in a drawer in my cube the last 5 years or so. So, now I have a sorta worky-type place where I can actually work at home. Still need that new desk and chair, tho.

***

After a disappointing Neil Innes show at the Abbey Pub that was *supposed* to be a happy celebration of Carey's being done with comps, we deported up to Evanston for a late dinner at Dave's Italian Kitchen. Carey and I like to read the Reader Matches to each other over dinners at Dave's, and we used to find a fair number of nerdy, interesting-sounding girls to imagine we might lure into our spiderweb of deceit. Lately, though, we mostly find material to feed our need to scorn. Today's best ad in that vein was an "I Saw You" based on this encounter at our very own "beloved" Mayfest last weekend (paraphrased, slightly):

"I saw you with some friends at Mayfest. You asked me how the pretzels were. I said they were good, and you said, 'They look good.' You were wearing a red shirt and had brown hair. I was with three friends, and I wore a blue cardigan with a gray sweater."

And that was it. I wonder if this was seriously the prettiest girl this guy had *ever seen*, or if he just *always* posts these ads based on this sort of random, casual encounter. I suppose many great relationships have been launched over a shared "good" appraisal of carnival fare.

The other thing I noticed in the Matches this week was how many women *and* men expressed a suprisingly earnest desire "not to play games." This confused me. For one thing, games are a fun social activity and a low-intensity opportunity to talk for awhile -- perfect for people getting to know one another. So I asked Carey what she could make of this comment, and she said it had to do with people saying they will call, and then not calling, and that sort of thing. And this made me think that it usually takes two people to play that sort of game, doesn't it? And is anybody really looking for someone who does? This seems as superfluous as the common trope that a person is looking for a partner who "is intelligent and funny" -- as though there's a significant number of Matchers who consider themselves "dull and dim-witted," and who will self-select out of the pool based on this requirement.

Feh. They'll all get what they deserve. If they're lucky.

I got sidetracked from useful things and instead pulled a bunch of pix off my cell phone. Now they can waste *your* time, too!

I'm not sure I was built to withstand these seismic shifts in dewpoint. Tuesday morning, the NWS reported that water literally would not precipitate from air in the liquid phase (dewpoint = 26 degrees F). Tonight, at bedtime, a glass of Tab with a single ice cube evinced perspiration (dewpoint = 67 degrees F).

I wish I could just go indoors... to the comfort of Chromalox.

European Union fines Intel $1.44 billion for monopoly abuse

They *always* take the cool car and make me be the *shoe*.

Going on hour 13 with this client team's benefits documentation. For this population, the author notes, "cleaned up spacing and grammer from Jon's document above."

I guess she didn't say anything about *spelling*, so points for honesty?

I paid some guy on the internet $14 for, like, 97 percent of all the episodes of You Can't Do That On Television ever made, very low-fi, on 3 DVD-Rs. They came today. Initial reaction: Christine McGlade was *cute* as an actual teenager playing a teenager in 1981, a fact that was mostly lost on me at age 6.

(Note to Carleton Productions/Viacom -- Buckle down and release YCDTOTV as a mega-DVD set already and I'd pay *you*, too.)

Dangit -- I've been grousing for years about people who say "a myriad of X," and only now I learn that the noun form is perfectly acceptable and etymologically sound, as "myriad" derives from the greek word for "10,000." I hate when I'm duped by the evil society of false grammarians!

Well shoot, guess I should just subscribe to WBEZ or something:

Listeners weigh in on a very special story on whale farming in Illinois

"Two of the whales are plainly singing the same note. That may be clever, but it is not barbershop."

Listen to this WBEZ story about what it takes to get a passing grade at Robeson High School in Chicago and tell me it doesn't make you feel physically ill, too. Of course, if you gave me all the money and total power over this place, how would I get these kids to come to class and magically jump 3 or 4 grade levels? No clue.

"If ever you do challenge me to a duel, your safest bet will be battle axes in a very dark cellar."

-Not Cary Elwes, not Kevin Kline, but Patrick McGoohan as Number 12, an agent of The Village who plays Number 6's doppelganger, from The Prisoner, ep. 4, Schizoid Man

"They say there are two things you don't ever want to do as a public official, and that's to own a hospital or a golf course."

-Jay Jaxon, mayor of Eufaula, Alabama, in Washington, D.C. for an annual mayor's conference, prefacing his remarks on NPR's "Morning Edition" about how it would be great if there were enough stimulus funding to rebuild his community's public (formerly privatized, formerly public) hospital

I've been enjoying the new higher meter parking rates from the new overlord of parking in Chicago, Chicago Parking Meters, LLC, but I wondered: Do we now have private meter maids? Do they have books of parking tickets? Will they run a "Judge Judy"-type fake court where they get to decide if they screwed up writing you a ticket?

Luckily, all the details are online, sorta, in an OCRed PDF of the parking meter lease agreement from the City Council. If you're looking to kill time and you like legal documents, it makes for fascinating reading. Here's what I learned:

( Yep - the company that leased the meters can write you parking tickets. )

( But they can't just sit there and write you one ticket after another... )

( And the city doesn't owe them anything extra if you beat the ticket in "court," which the city still runs. )

( They're going to be jacking up the meter rates really high, but you won't have to carry rolls of quarters -- just plastic. )

( And they have to repave two parking lots right near our apartment! Yay! )

Another for the rail/transit hater crowd, from this Yahoo/AP piece on the federal budget:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090311/ap_on_go_co/congress_spending

"Generous above-inflation increases are spread throughout, including a $2.4 billion, 13 percent increase for the Agriculture Department and a 10 percent increase for the money-losing Amtrak passenger rail system." (emphasis added)

How is it fair or relevant to offhandedly single out Amtrak as "money-losing" here? Taking into account the massive subsidies the airlines receive in the form of air traffic control and airport infrastructure, or the even-larger subsidies of motor traffic through road construction funding, every major mode of transportation loses money. Amtrak's losses, by comparison, amount to a drop in the bucket; meanwhile, no other form of transportation provides the same incremental environmental and traffic-saving benefits as Amtrak does with so little additional spending.

Not that it should come as a huge shock, I guess, but Yelp is probably messing with reviews to reward (or punish) businesses that advertise, or which sponsor Yelp events.

I always imagined the appellation "Phillips-head," as in the screw and driver, was a corruption from Philips, the Dutch conglomerate. I was wrong. Henry F. Phillips, from right here (well, *there* <points left>...) in Oregon, U.S.A., is largely responsible for your always having the wrong screwdriver at hand.

Note also that the Phillips-head screw was actually designed so your driver head slips out when the screw is hung up, apparently to prevent damage to automated screw driving equipment. Clearly, this man had an all-inclusive deal with Satan.

From the "punctuation matters" department -- a colleague finished off our IM session as follows (verbatim):

"no thanks for the follow up!"

And this is someone who's *writing* stuff for us.

The Sunday Trib pays for itself many times over in exclusive coupons and exciting offers. For example:

( SUPER GROWING FLOWERING SHADE TREE ZOOMS ANOTHER FOOT HIGHER EVERY TIME YOU WATER IT! )

Yes, the "Royal Paulownia" is "one of the most incredible sights in all of nature," especially when it "smothers (ed: !) itself in massive bouquets of breathtaking lavender-blue blooms...like an entire flower garden growing in the sky. (ed: emphasis added, but just barely)"

I give this anonymous, likely long-deceased author credit for correctly using "its" and "it's" in rapid succession, and I take credit away for the use of "umbrella" as a transitive verb, and for failure to put a period inside quotation marks. (Perhaps the author was a(n involuntary) British expat?) Mostly, though, I note that the U.S. National Park Service considers this thing a noxious weed in the context of the United States, though others (many of whom would also like to sell you one, or something made from it) think it's keen. It would seem that supplies aren't "still extremely limited," in any case.

Turning to haute cuisine, the Campbell Soup Company would like to inspire you to "Create Something Delicious" with this new product:

( ...which is definitely *not* just Cream of Mushroom Soup in a fancy non-recyclable aseptic brick package. )

May I suggest that one might try this new "cooking sauce" in a casserôle with chunks of pan-seared ahi, grated artisanal Pecorino Romano, organic baby peas, breadcrumbs of crusty, homemade sourdough, and whole-wheat farfalle noodles? C'est superbe! And, to complete the feast, serve alongside these enticing côtelettes du quelquechose:

( ONE (1) HORMEL ALWAYS TENDER (R) product )