There is a man with a snow-white beard wearing a bowtie rhapsodizing about cheesecakes within earshot of me. He is a man of action – not clear whether the action in this case is actually appropriating cheesecake and or beer for his own personal debasement or merely talking about the broad charms of the things in question. Our man is now repeatedly saying “yeah” in a guttural, somewhat threatening tone.
so, I pretty much figured everything out.
If the outside of Stourwater made a less favourable impression than when I had come there with the Walpole-Wilsons, improvements within were undeniable. Ten years before, the exuberance of the armour, tapestries, pictures, china, furniture, had been altogether too much for the austhere aesthetic ideals to which I then subscribed. Time had no doubt modified the uninstructed severity of my own early twenties. Less ascetic, intellectually speaking, more corrupt, perhaps, I could now recognise that individuals live in different ways.
hyde park crime gazette
:: a guy got stabbed for refusing to ante up in the alley behind kimbark plaza
:: a girl got robbed by 2 armed men in ski masks on 54th and greenwood
:: someone got jumped from behind by 5 (5!) people and kicked a bunch but then didn’t actually get robbed because someone saw this happening and started hooting and hollering and they ran away
:: a guy and a girl got robbed by gun-toting individual at 55th and dorchester at like 9 pm
my new plan is to move to the future and telecommute from the peaceful 31st century. at least in logan square people don’t shoot you unless they know you and have decided to discontinue the friendship, insofar as shooting at you expresses that decision. i have always enjoyed beating dead horses. if you put a billion-dollar research university with a similarly-rich college in it that attracts cash- (and otherwise-) -rich, indiscreet drunkards, then unleash those drunkards on the streets of an urban area that is like top-5 all-time dodgy, there is A) going to be some opportunistic personal crime B) there will also be some social inequity perpetrated C) nobody wins, least of all crime victims. i was tempted to say that i consider criminals their own victims, since it might seem like their only option, except that’s not true, they definitely always had the option of not committing the crime.
my beard of bees regarding hyde park crime is almost entirely driven by my ongoing love affair with fine foods my love of self, my wallet and cash being a very sensitive extension of that self. i am wildly paranoid, delusional, un-christian and various other less than charitable adjectives i don’t need to tick off. even though walking to work every day is neat, i’m getting tired of dodging dog crap, both figuratively and literally. carrying a fake wallet is comforting enough, especially late at night, if i go out to a movie or a bar, when i can prepare in advance to carry only some cash and my fake wallet. that way, if i get rolled, i can honestly say that i’ve given all i have, and the worst thing they can do to me is knock my teeth out, and i have dental insurance now. Has anyone else been robbed? Am I just not dealing with this well? And frankly, I’m not sure I didn’t get lucky getting robbed by a jittery kid and not a husband-and-wife Olympic stabbing team lying in wait behind Cedar’s of Lebanon.
You’d think that people would think about the police presence in Hyde Park, compared to every other part of Chicago, even Evanston, and realize that even though there are many huge, antibiotic-free brown eggs to steal here in HPK, you’re probably better off just going to humboldt park and robbing people as they come out of the empty bottle. but people who have already failed the computational logic test of obeying laws aren’t likely going to do better on the probabilites/odds math of “is this is a smart place to rob people?”. it’s not a particularly winsome sentiment, but it’s very honest: i feel like by virtue of living in an overpoliced, entitled community, i should at least expect to FEEL, if not be, safer. but i don’t. As usual, I get sick of being serious after about three paragraphs, but whatever. this is all going into the novel about christopher columbus and racial profiling. I threaten but I will deliver. I have 10 personal goals for the year 2006.
1) fiscal solvency 2) cleveland indians world series title 3) not getting robbed again 4) 104 books read 5) get a free ticket from MySouthwest (only four more flights to go) 6) maybe get a pet turtle or at least convince the cat to be more engaging 7) write at least one story 8,) get one of those little kid cell phones that only let you call three numbers 9) escape the tarpaper shack ghetto i was raised in and become a high-class hostess 10) dress up like peter gammons for halloween
only seven books left in A Dance to the Music of Time. I read pretty much all of book 5 yesterday, and initially my take was that this was the weakest book so far. The more I think about it though, the more Maclintick’s very, very unhappy tale resonates (sometimes, the bear gets you, is the lesson basically, but also sometimes the bear gets you ALL THE TIME). also, it’s really funny to have the narrator/psuedo-main character of a 3,000-page book get married and pretty just not ever describe or even mention his wife.
getting back to my old jam and toast of making lists, reasons why the indians are going to win the world series this year
1. i would personally enjoy it very much
2. that pretty much covers it
Ostiones – our oysters are shucked to order and served with tomatillo-habanero “miñoneta,” smoky chipotle-garlic salsa and fresh-cut limes; we always have a variety of hot sauces, should that appeal. Half dozen, $13.
* Pearl Point (Washington) – meaty, bright and “clean” flavor, long finish.
* Cold Creek (BC, Canada) – large, rack-grown briny oyster; herbaceous and clean.
* Today’s Special Selection – ask your server.
Mole de Olla – warming red-chile beef soup with roasted chayote, chochoyotes (corn masa dumplings) and herby epazote; topped off with crispy beef “mochomos.”
Pollito a la Yucateca – achiote-marinated Gunthorp rock hen in tangy Yucatecan tomato-habanero sauce with black bean-huitlacoche tortitas and wood-grilled green beans.
please take the following quotes as my opinion on A) iraq B) the super bowl C) you D) crisis of faith in academia
The mistake I made, he thought, going back in time, was not to have had plenty of seeds, a different packet of seeds for each pocket: pumpkin seeds, marrow seads, beans, carrot seeds, beetroot seeds, onion seeds, tomato seeds, spinach seeds. Seeds in my shoes too, and in the lining of my quote, in case of robbers along the way. Then my mistake was to plant all my seeds together in one patch. I should have planted them one at a time spread out over miles of veld in patches of soil no larger than my hand, and drawn a map and kept it with me at all times so that every night I could make a tour of the sites to water them. Because if there was one thing I discovered out in the country, it was that there is time enough for everything.
When you are in love with someone, their life, past, present and future, becomes in a curious way part of your life; and yet, at the same time, since two separate human entities in fact remain, you merely carry your own prejudices into another person’s imagined existence; not even into their ‘real’ existence, because only they themselves can estimate what their ‘real’ existence has been.
you can knock 1.5 more books off the planned 104 (Life and Times of Michael K and The Acceptance World).
Life and Times of Michael K: Probably a bit better than Disgrace, in terms of the raw material that Coetzee strings together. Maybe a bit worse, as far as the experience of reading is concerned. I should probably be more conversant in Kafka before attempting a second reading of this book. Much much better than Elizabeth Costello, past page 75 of which i can’t suggest you should investigate (not sure if that sentence is legible — don’t read Elizabeth Costello, is what i’m saying in the end)
Resonated with me:
:: A guy with a harelip who can’t be nursed by his mother
:: His dad is an orphanage
:: Trying to scatter your mom’s ashes on a farm someplace you’ve never been, so you resort to picking a random farm that vaguely meets the specifications (owner’s last name started with W-, there is a chicken run behind the house)
:: Living in a hole in the ground, sleeping during daylight, tending to pumpkins in the dark
i’m not hopeful of a chance to go over this book personally with JM Coetzee, but i have several theories i would like to air: one, Book Two, with the Kenilworth camp doctor taking over as narrator from the omniscient Coetzee of book one and three, is less about colonialism as it is about mediation. Like, the doctor is the author. Maybe Coetzee feels colonial, i don’t want to get into that crap with you slimy lawyers. I perjured myself already here. Felt compunction to leave some kind of digital/archival proof of my existence, besides the ships log i started keeping. Mostly it is just records of transactions. I’m going to buy the penguin-shaped humidifier with the super bowl squares money. This is how i want to be remembered.
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