some notes from yesterday and beyond:
next time i am bored on a tuesday, somebody remind me that there is a bar in wicker park with $2 newcastles on tuesday.
i’m examining the contents of a cigar box i found in cleveland. for some reason it has a Hubert Davis Panini NBA sticker on the label.
Things in this box:
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1. Business card for Dennis J. Kucinich, United States Congress, Ohio. If anybody wants to call DJ, (202) 225-5871. Dennis Kucinich is the only one of the nine democratic candidates for president who has made fun of my clothing.
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2. Slighting malfunctioning tuning whistle. ?
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3. Brass knuckles. 2000 yen. Only problem with these is that the knuckle of my middle finger is just too big to fit in. if anybody wants my brass knuckles, let the bidding start at, adjusting for inflation, historical importance, 9000 yen.
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4. National Latin Examination silver medal or something. I think I got a 39 out of 40. Which would explain why this isn’t gold.
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5. A wooden stamp with my name in kanji on it. From Japan (duh). Awesome. Wish I had some ink? Also, as a side note, the Japanese graphic designer from the 12th century or whatever who decided that lots of lumpy dragon-dogs with frowny-faces were a good idea: YES.
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6. “1992 Pasta Discoveries Award Olive Garden Italian Restaurant” commemorative coin in protective case. On the obverse there is a cheeseball image of famous wop Christopher Columbus and a boat with the motto “Vision, Destiny, Adventure” (and pasta). It’s not clear to me why i won this, although I do remember that it involved getting a free meal at the olive garden.
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7. Quarter-sized pins featuring the following people or things: a tintyped Ice Cube in a neon-pink-and-black Oakland A’s hat. Run from Run-DMC. Public Enemy, with Chuck D notably not pictured. “Japan Police.” The crown jewel: Bell Biv DeVoe.
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8. A bunch of nicorette, one loose advil tablet, a crazy thai tie-tack, a quarter from Bermuda, several 1 yen coins, a weird polaroid of my head on David’s painting of Napoleon crossing the Alps, a broke butane lighter, one guitar pick (i’ve never had a guitar), more nicorette, 500 yen coin (that’s like $5 i think), and a keychain-calculator with a plastic Buddha glued to the front.
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1. What the fuck is with people who insist on going from car to car on CTA trains? I would say there is someone who does this on half of all trains i have been on. The question: Why? Is there something I don’t know, like there’s a random free-sandwiches-and-money-car on some CTA trains but only the first ten people in line get the sandwiches and money? Or are these people just morons? The quick and dirty answer is that sometimes they are panhandlers and going from car to car. And I understand that there will be ambient skeevery on the train, which will entail the occasional guy who can’t sit down shit. But even little old ladies do it from time to time. Why? My theory is that it’s because there’s a sign that specifically says not to do it, so people do it to spite the sign. Yeah, it’s a great theory, took me all day to come up with. Jerk.
2. i run hot and cold with listening to headphones when i walk because Cold: i think it disconnects from the world to an annoying/semi-dangerous extent. But then Hot: being disconnected from the world has good music and also crazy fuckers cannot bother you on trains/while walking/etc. i have been using the headphones for the last few months and generally ignoring people. i was walking in the loop today and i passed a guy who was trying to get the attention of people around him and had failed five or six times since i could see him. so i took off my headphones.
guy (to all): “library? library? library? library?”
me: “just that way on this side of the street” (helpful pointing).
guy: “so it’s about a block and a half.”
me: “(thinking) more like two blocks, (thinking) it’s at (thinking) state (thinking) and (pause) van buren-ish.”
guy (visibly annoyed, already walking away): “yeah great i got it.”
The moral of the story: I talk too slow.
In honor of the long-overdue arrival of mad cow disease in america, i have eaten steak tacos for lunch two days running. i see no reason to stop doing this. If you see me dragging myself down the street on my front legs and mooing in a belligerent fashion, please do not sell my meat for consumption, especially my brain. and if you see me mooing in an agreeable or even slightly diffident manner, continue as planned, i guess. but i will fight you. I am delaying the inevitable onset of mad cow in 30 years by eating 900% of my daily vitamin C in cough drop form. Let’s see if I can’t last 35 years, hm?
Dear Mr Negativity,
Whats up duder we never talk. I see that you are trying to poison my soul again. please stop. also stop controlling the cat’s mind. also, please make soulseek work again so that i can not die from boredom. also, i had steak tacos for lunch. i have thought about it and decided that tomato/lettuce is preferable to the onion/cilantro topping. also, i ate the entire bowl of salsa. i am going to cook pretzel chicken for dinner at some point soon so youre more than welcome to come by and enjoy it with me, i have beer, and 2% milk.
dear P,
i fixed soulseek. i put a pockets menu in your cubicle to tempt your weak mind. i will visit you, in your shitty-dippin-stick-induced agonie, from the wartorn 37th century and i will deliver. also, please stop using the words ’scum,’ ‘weenie man,’ and ‘machosensous’ in your internal monologue. ‘machosensous’ has clearly been pinched from wizznutzz.com. please if you are going to be an insufferable wenis please be original about it. also, i have nothing to do with your goddamn cat. also, your tv is too small.
mr. n
Notes:
This is good. Very good. Great even.
Movies with carnival ball-toss scenes: The Natural, Darkman, In America. Also, some movie with Elvis where Elvis decks a guy who, for some unclear reason, is hellbent on proving his manhood by soaking some girl in the dunk tank over and over again. Shoot me if i forgot any.
People I had forgotten about: Midre Cummings, Bill Pulsipher. Many other talented baseball prospects. The Pulsipher/Paul Wilson/Isringhausen troika was the beginning of some new Mets hegemony/reign of terror that blessedly was never realized. I found my old baseball cards, which date from a period in time at which I am fairly certain I could name every single starting position player and most every pitching staff in the major leagues along with top minor leaguers for a few teams. according to the core sample, this was 1994-1996ish. the problem with basing baseball fandom on card-collecting is that you will inevitably wind up with the impression that every player in the minor leagues, excepting your occassional Jeff Manto(e)s, is the next 1994 AL r.o.y. Bob the Hammer Hamelin. Seriously, was Rich Baude ever going to be good? What about Matt Mieske? Everybody loves Brooks Kieschnick the pinch-hitting relief pitcher but what about Brooks Kieschnick the can’t-miss OF prospect for the Cubs? No love. No love at all. I will have more to say about my box of baseball cards and what it means for this our American way of life as we face the challenges of the 21st through 23rd centuries. I have to go now.
i cant type much or correct erros befause the cat is laying on to of my forearms and siniiiikign her claws into my flesh methodically owowowowowo. oh fuck this hurs.thisis part of an aggressive program designed by wiry cat to make me pay for leaving her alone for three days and then coming back only to immediately go to work. wiry cat, you are too smarttt fo ryour own ogood.
so the cavs played the magic today and i watched part of the first half before going to my aunt’s house. why do we care? the magic were wearing throwback jerseys. 1989-90 throwbacks. and you loved it. as someone who fetishized throwback jerseys before they were called throwbacks, i am flabbergasted in here. i don;t know who they’re officially giving the credit to with throwbacks being mainstreamed. A lot of articles point to Big Boi and his ’70s Braves gear as the seminal instance, circa pre-Stankonia press docs. weird. now that everybody in the country dresses like Big Boi used to dress, does this mean that people will be piomping in ugly plaid suits and illfitting tuxedos. I sure hope so. It’s probably for the best that no one has coopted the way Andre 3000 used to dress (WWI doughboy outfits, shiny flourescent pirate shirts).
anyway, what I wanted to say is: the popularity of throwbacks is about the only instance of spontaenous and total cultural protonic reversal towards good taste in the history of history. that was my main point. i was trying to think of something interesting to say. i probably failed. with that in mind a list of things i am doing or have done in the past two days or will do tomorrow:
1. wearing blue plaid pajama pants. if anybody thought i was going to change the world you can probably tear up your ticket. probably. i don’t think i’ve ever been embarrassed to be seen with myself before.
2. wearing moccasins I found in my closet, looking at old Browns football cards i found with moccasins (RIP Eric Turner)
3. conducted a brilliant amateur chemistry experiment. 1.5 bottles wine plus three cups coffee plus the fact that the coffee was half baileys plus boring drive across the southern rim of the cleveland megalopolis equals sleeping with your clothes on. and i loved it. before that there was an attempt by family members to disprove the longstanding and beloved theses that, #54645-B BOARD GAMES ARE RETARDED and #44134. NO, REALLY, THEY ARE: I KILL YOU. the hate flows freely in me (yes!) and i don’t think my teenage cousins meant any harm. and what i really mean by all this, and you can go fuck yourself, board game assfuckface, is that i am pissed off because i lost. i had to hum (recognizably) “these boots are made for walking” (TRY IT AND FAIL THEN DIE) while others got “back in black.” (EASIEST HUMMING-RECOGNIZING THING EVER)
4. ate the white meat chicken mcnuggets at a rest stop in indiana in the middle of the night. i do not know why i did this. they tasted exactly like the old mcnuggets. also, McDonald’s hot mustard sauce is a strong indication of soul death. if you see it, i kill.
5. i try not to be the kind of sniveling weenie man scumbag who recommends things and places and activities for other people to try. so I won’t!
6. went/will go again to the record store. AM I BORING YOU.
I’m still driving to Cleveland after work tonight but I felt like I should share this edutainment with readers. The Indians are sitting on the gay Japanese Jackie Robinson, as far as I can tell. Also, the Cubs signed Todd Walker. Who is not gay or Japanese. And thus not as interesting as the edutainment.
In re: “Verizon Guy: Saved”
Has anybody else seen that really annoying commerical for Total? If not, allow me to educate: Smarmy hotel bellhop/waiter is delivering bowls of cereal to various hotel guests, who have chosen three non-Total brands of cereal. And of course, as in every commercial for Total since 1984, they have to eat 9000 bowls of their cereal in order to get as much iron or something stupid as you get in one bowl of Total. Then they all get flustered, decided that they do not want to eat 50 bowls of cereal, and call the shithead bellhop and ask for Total. And instead of agreeing to this request and increasing market share for his cereal overlords, he says “the kitchen’s just closed.” What a dick.
They’re hungry! Give them cereal. One, he should be giving them the cereal. They were merely ignorant of Total and now they want to be like him. Two, why would the kitchen need to be open to bring them cereal? Three, why is he such a dick? What I take away from this ad is that Total’s plan for getting me to switch to their cereal is to refuse to let me eat anything else and starve in their hotel/torture palace until I sign over my life to them. Also, nobody says “The kitchen’s just closed. ” At least not in AMERICKA. We say “the kitchen is closed.” Fucking pigs. Learn to respect this country before you open your scumbag mouth trying to sell me cereal.
Due to my decision to sleep for eleven hours and wake up at 2 pm (I have work in an hour) I can’t spend that much time right now worrying about how I slept for eleven hours. Nor can I spend as much time as I’d like discussing the Lord of the Rings which I saw last night. I will say this: The wizard beckoned to the magical tiny man to get on the boat with the elves so they could be on the last ship to sail from the elf harbor to the magical lands where no one dies and evby lives happily ever after. That’s the ending? I watched a nine hour movie for that? I’m not that much of a hater but I do have some complaints, which in the tradition of this news outlet, will be alluded to and then I will forget to come back later and bitch about them. maybe it’s for the best. I’ve done some informal canvassing for my gray-collar league of hate and I like the feedback.
FAQ 1.0
1. Will you hate yuppie-hating hipsters?
Yes.
2. Doesn’t that just make you a yuppie-hating, yuppie-hating-hipster-hating hipster?
I am a sports journalist.
3. Why did the magical giant eagles WAIT until after the flying brontosauruses ridden by guys with no face killed the one guy and generally wrecked everybody’s shit to come and kill them? Were they stuck in traffic or something? And also, the army of magical green dead people? How can they kill you?
I don’t know, use your imagination or something.
We are all fucked now.
#1 reason why I should not be given access to the AP wire: I spend at least 30 minutes reading stories like “Pope beatifies last Austro-hungarian emperor” and “Rockies, Burnitz agree to terms, Jay Payton quietly pees self in protest” before I even think about doing any work.
A note on the ineluctable advance of prosumerism:
Well it’s not exactly about prosumerism (the combination of producer and consumer, with a dash of Sumerian and some Prot thrown in for flavor) but it is abotu things that happen at the grocery store, which is expected to be the site of the aforementioned and still ineluctable prosumer revolution: I am a good guy. I care about the environment and cows and farmers and shit. I tried to buy vegetarian cage-free eggs that one time, and I like to buy organic (insert item) here and there. But I can’t buy them very often because organic food costs $3 more than the name brand because it’s organic. The organic skim milk is $4 for a half gallon and Dean’s is $3 for a full gallon. Shouldn’t the organic milk be less? There’s LESS shit in there right? if I wasn’t paying for the additives and the poison and tiny bits of glass in my ketchup, what was I paying for? How much does it cost to NOT feed a cow irradiated zoo sewage or whatever it is that organic farmers don’t do?
I am a goddamn bleeding heart. I eat yogurt. I hate George Bush. I drink skim milk, I take public transportation even when i have access to a car, I turn lights off when I leave a room, I prefer Apples, I wear glasses, I almost bought a $33 tree in the memorial Joe Strummer forest before I realized I’m not dumb, I’m just liberal. I am also not a yuppie. In fact, I am defiantly poor and, even if i wasn’t, I’d still be cheap and proud. (analysts predict I would in fact not be cheap and in fact be profligate if i wasn’t so poor but fuck them). I’m starting a new model army/book club dedicated to destroying yuppie culture and replacing it with a different, more inclusive, more hate-filled gray collar reign of terror. is anybody with me or should i just get over the whole organic milk thing?
News and notes from the edge of Walgreens-brand dayquil-induced paranoia:
1. The Pope gave the new Mel Gibson movie two snaps. I hope they can work that into the trailer/one-sheets. Although anybody who has heard the David Cross record knows that the Pope speaks mostly in farting noises.
2. Red Sox team prez Larry Lucchino used the word “intransigence” in describing the MLBPA’s action in tripping up the Rodriguez for Milkman-from-Song-of-Solomon trade. Later on Bob DuPuy said “It’s unfortunate that the players’ association felt it necessary to take a legal position which prevented the player and at least two teams from effectuating an agreement that they felt was beneficial.” Effectuating? Is that even a fucking word? If not, let’s all make sure it stays that way.
3. The Athletics have done some retarded shit this off-season. They resigned Ricardo Rincon then dealt two (likely worthless) prospects to the Yankees for Chris Hammond, who will fill the crucial back-up lefty specialist role for them out of the bullpen. Meanwhile, they do not have a starting catcher (I still love you Adam Melhuse) and their everyday batting order will feature Jermaine Dye (BA: .172), Mark Kotsay (7 HRs and 38 RBI in 128 games), and Bobby Kielty, the big bat at .244/13 homers. Those three are also their STARTING OUTFIELD. I guess Eric “I cannot possibly, based on my haircut, not be a dickhead” Byrnes and Billy “I am black despite being white and from New Mexico” McMillon are in the mix too but ask yourself: do you seek the Grail for his glory, or for yours? On the plus side, the A’s were involved in a hilarious trade, in which a kraut-rock band was sent to Florida for Reggie Noble.
4. Saddam Hussein’s attempt to become the new Nolty (as authoritatively documented by Kyle) was short-circuited by the weird sleazeballs who decided that it would be a good idea to shave him and give him a flu checkup while the Girls Gone Wild cinematographer rolled tape.
5. I ate two Clif Bars for dinner and I am ashamed of myself. However, there is the possible mitigation that I will gain the ability to see through time because I DRANK A GALLON OF ORANGE JUICE.
6. The Cubs signed Kent Mercker, who threw the crappiest no-hitter ever not thrown by Bud Smith, and got Michael Barrett (who the A’s acquired for a player to be named and traded for a player to be named, which leaves them with… the abstract concept of Pat Listach). These are the kind of moves that get you from five outs away to 500.
7. Pirates of the Caribbean: Not that good on a 9″ TV.
8. The Talented Mr. Ripley: kind of awesome, for a while, esp. during the middle-class revenge-fantasy/totally-gay-related psychosis section. But the decision to chalk it all up to regular, medium-intensity-gay-related-psychosis murderlust was a letdown and produced an increasingly hard-to-care-about last hour of the movie. And I would have preferred that Cate Blanchett died instead of the well-mannered gay composer dude (who was also in Pirates of the Caribbean as the weenie-man who gets his bid for the blindingly hot Keira Knightley steeeezed by Legolas). Everybody raise a glass to that guy, he’s on a roll.
9. Is anybody else freaked out by the Nike online ad campaigns for LeBron James’ shoes? They’re everywhere from my Yahoo mail to the front of ESPN.com. The TV spot with Bernie Mac proclaiming LBJ the basketball savior and then 25 dudes start flying around the church and doing No-Limit-gorilla-styley dunks off the pipe organ is kind of awesome, if you can get past the affront to Larry Bird (I can) and/or actual Jesus and/or Isaac Hayes (although I guess that was Black Moses). So what I meant was that ad is incredibly awesome. But the online ads are freaking me out. Not the little one that’s just a picture of the shoe (which is sort of ugly). It’s the big one with LeBron on a throne with lions flanking him. Lions, yeah, yeah, we get it, King of the Jungle, king of basketball, King James, great. Very clever. But I don’t like the subtle visual references to Mobuto Sese Seko. The ad is a leopard-print fez and nerd glasses away from being an full-on homage to the not-that-long-gone bloodthirsty megalomaniac dictator of the former Zaire. What the fuck does that to have do with sneakers? I don’t see Vlade Divac dressed up like Josef Tito in Marlboro ads, or Zarko Cabarkarpa dressed up like Vigo the Carpathian in a Dutch Boy commerical (because he OWNS THE PAINT) (rim shot).
10. Since I had nothing to do all morning, I read all of Pitchfork’s Top 50 singles of the year. I have beef/science to distribute but right now I’m moving to a different computer at work, so it’ll have to wait.
Time I went to bed: 1:30ish a.m.
Time I woke up: 4 a.m.
# of Asian poultry diseases breaking my shit: 1
I’m going to go watch tv now.
