"Wendy (Snyder) left me alone ..."

I've done several blog posts about Chicago radio personalities getting fired, retiring, and/or passing away, but none have attracted the blogterest (i.e., several hundred Google referrals and other types of SiteMeter hit stats over the last 5 days) as Wendy Snyder's unceremonious dismissal from the Steve Dahl show (scroll downward or site-search for original post and follow-ups) on WCKG FM 105.9. (Sorry, Bobby Skafish ... the masses have spoken with their relative silence in your regard.)

So, in honor of that, here's this. I would have posted the Descendents version instead, but it's not on YouTube, sadly.



The Beach Boys - Wendy (Live on Ed Sullivan 1964)

Meanwhile, in other radio news, I saw today in Feder's column or some other column that still-unemployed Garry Meier has apparently lost the jury trial brought by his former manager for alleged non-payment of fees. As a fake manager, myself, I consider this a win for the good guys.

Sunday Roland Kirk Blogging

Roland Kirk - Lover Man

In a little restaurant in Amersfoort, Holland, Roland Kirk was recorded with the Swiss trio of pianist George Gruntz in 1959 [sic?] by the KRO broadcasting company

Which science fiction writer am I?

I am: Kurt Vonnegut For years, this unique creator of absurd and haunting tales denied that he had anything to do with science fiction.

Which science fiction writer are you?

Friday Ian Dury Blogging

Ian Dury & The Blockheads - Clevor Trever ( Live 1978 )

This whole damn show is on YouTube. You should watch it, or gradually stay tuned here, because I'll probably post more.

But in case you are innarested in another view of Ian from another event, here's this.



Ian Dury and The Blockheads - Billericay Dickie ( Live )

Gravity City Chicago: Item 3

Today's thaw (it got up into the mid low upper high low mid 40s today, with variable variables, barometric hydrometers, and isobars with big brandy snifters used as tip jars) seems to be causing that perennial winter phenomenon: the midwestern urban avalanche.

Sears Tower monitored; falling ice reported

Mayor Daley was reported as saying, "That's just silly! Silly silly silly! OUCH!!!" before suggesting to the U.S. Olympic Committee that ice dodging would make a fine new sport for the 2016 games.

Later, Alderman Joe Moore's office released a statement expressing relief that no chunks of ice fell on any fattened geese. Skinny geese are on their own.

Fuck you, Google, fuck you to hell!

In meta-news of the blog, Google has forced me to migrate to the new Blogger setup, which pisses me off. The appearance has changed somewhat, and I hate it. It looks like ass. Feh. Welp, I guess you get what you pay for blah blah blah (I fucking hate that expression, but I said it myself before some other asswipe sez it to me). Bah. I guess this fucker needs a re-design anyway, especially now that so many Wendy Snyder fans have come onto the scene this week. Makes me feel like I should fluff up the throw pillows ... if I had any ... and uhh ... dust something. However that's done. By the way, on the topic of "Snyde," who knew she had fans in Iceland? Well, she does, according to my SiteMeter stats. Ice fucking land! The land of Ice! And Bjork! Also fans in D.C., California, and various other non-Chicago locales. My traffic for the last few days has more than tripled over the usual trickle of Latin palindrome curious, meeces to pieces haters, and seekers of teh urethra pr0n. Which kinda makes me wish Wendy Snyder could get fired every week.

"Nobody here but us—ACK!!!"

Promising news from the Orient. Maybe this boy can kill upstairs neighbors' parrots too. (Although the creature has been quiet today. As has the pet bird. Get it? Hah!)

Anyway, in connection with methodology here, I believe that the dog that scared the boy was scared by a cat, which was scared by a mouse, which was scared by an old lady who scared a spider, which wriggled and jiggled and squiggled inside her. Perhaps she'll die, as well.

Boy's screaming kills chickens

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Hundreds of chickens have been found dead in eastern China—and a court has ruled that the cause of death was the screaming of a four-year-old boy who in turn had been scared by a barking dog.

According to a local newspaper, the bizarre sequence events began when the boy arrived at a village home in the eastern province of Jiangsu in the summer with his father who was delivering bottles of gas.

A villager was quoted as saying the little boy bent over the hen house window, screaming for a long time, after being scared by the dog.

"One neighbour told police that he had heard the boy's crying that afternoon and another villager confirmed the boy screaming by the hen house window," the newspaper said.

A court ruled the boy's screaming was "the only unexpected abnormal sound" and that the 443 chickens trampled each other to death in fear.

The boy's father was ordered to pay around £117 in compensation to the owner of the chickens.

Mr. Jinks! It was Mr. Jinks! Great god almighty, it was Mr. Jinks!

Look, peoples, let's get this crystal clear. The line "I hate meeces to pieces!" was uttered by -- in fact, was the catchphrase of -- the cartoon cat Mr. Jinks, from the Hanna-Barbera show, "Pixie and Dixie." He's the one who hated meeces to pieces, and often said so. Many, many times those scampy meeces, er, mices, er, mice, Pixie and his gay lover, Dixie, would thwart the hapless and hungry cat, Mr. Jinks, who was not so much evil as, just as nature made him, a cat, yes, a predator, with a natural predilection toward attacking with the aim of eating mice, which, when such efforts were met with monotonous and wacky sound-effected failure, would anger said Mr. Jinks to a quite comical degree, indeed. Although he was magically gifted with humanoid speech, you see, his command of irregular plurals was, to say the least, deficient, and, in fact, was clearly below even that of a small child, who would presumably be more inclined to make the very logical mistake of referring to more than one mouse as "mouses." Not Mr. Jinks, though. No. For some twisted reason -- perhaps malnutrition, perhaps confusion at finding himself thrust into the cruel world in a semi-anthropomorphic condition -- Mr. Jinks pluralized "mouse" as "meeces." Hence, on those occasions when Pixie and Dixie -- that is, those rare occasions when Pixie and Dixie were not fellating each other in their fruity little hidey hole behind the sheetrock of some unseen human person's house -- so enraged Mr. Jinks to a degree causing him to lose his ordinary catly composure and aloofitude that he would roar his displeasure to the nonexistent and uncaring gods, Mr. Jinks would grieve the grievance of the feline damned, via the repeated oath:

"I hate meeces to pieces!!!"

Now, in a world less warped and chaotic, perhaps he would have instead expressed himself with something more like "I hate mice like slipping on ice!" or, granting the cartoon scribes a modicum of comic license, "I hate mouses, those louses!" But would that compel such a torrent of Googlishly curious? I think not.

Nonetheless. The persistent misguidedness of seekers of "I hate meeces to pieces" knowledge perplexes me. I mean, I regard myself as a teacher, and repetition of lessons to the dull and dim is part of my lot, which I accept. But for Christ's sake. See, there's this thing called Wikipedia, and it has a lot of info. You'd be amazed. It even has info on who said I hate meeces to pieces, by gum.

Now please keep visiting my blog. Thank you.

P.S., I hate meeces to pieces.

I, for one, embrace Opie and Anthony as my new masters and overlords

Wow. I barely insult Opie and Anthony -- the best things going in talk radio, dammit, and there's plenty o' gay porn to prove it! -- and all of blogger goes down for the evening. Yep, there's your cause, fellow blog-nerds. It had nothing to do with excessive traffic consisting of irate reaction to the alleged State of teh Union Address (which, I'm told, happened tonight, not that I'd know -- I was watching yet another documentary on Discovery about idiots dying, literally, to climb K2, as yet another means of making myself feel smart by staying in my 60-degree-fahrenheit apartment and drinking beer). Nope, blogger went down because I pissed off the massive legion of O&A fans. My mistake. I'll never do it again. However, the collective punishment assessed against all of humanity is that comments to this "shit opinion" repository are now moderated. Damn, it's an uncivilized world we live in.

Synder? Fired 'er. Hire Nigher for Meier?

According to Robert Feder's column today in the Sun-Times, sidekick Wendy Snyder has finally been fired from the Steve Dahl afternoon drive-time-a-ganza on WCKG, after having been seemingly on thin ice for the last year or two. Frankly, I think Dahl was just tired of having someone in the studio with (albeit only slightly) bigger breasts than his. Although WCKG's cashflow problems could account for it as well. Its only advertisers seem to be mortgage refinance schemers and scary-sounding child control courses. Or else they're just freeing up cash for Garry Meier to take over the morning slot from Opie & Anthony, who, I'll venture to proclaim, will never succeed in Chicago. There, I just started a rumor.

POSTSCRIPT: Good gravy, I had no idea Wendy Snyder was so popular. The Google referrals for "Wendy searches" are outstripping "O&A searches" by a large margin -- and it's a good thing, too, because I'd much rather see Wendy strip than O&A. But seriously, I've always liked Wendy Snyder as a radio personage and hope she gets re-employed soon. And not back at the Brookfield Zoo.

The Spanish background lyrics to "Should I Stay Or Should I Go," isolated

esta indecision me molesta
si no me quieres, dejame
digame que tengo ser
¿sabes que ropas me queda?
me lo tienes que decir
¿me debo ir o quedarme?

¿me entra frio por los ojos?
¿me entra frio por los ojos?
si me voy va a haber peligro
si me quedo es doble
me tienes que decir
me entra frio por los ojos

¿me entra frio por los ojos?
si me voy va a haber peligro
si me quedo es doble
me tienes que decir

white face, black shirt / white socks, black shoes / black hair, white strat / bled white, died black

Ian Dury & The Blockheads - Sweet Gene Vincent ( Live 1978 )

blue gene baby

skinny white sailor, the chances were slender
the beauties were brief
shall I mourn your decline with some thunderbird wine
and a black handkerchief?
I miss your sad Virginia whisper
I miss the voice that called my heart

sweet gene vincent
young and old and gone
sweet gene vincent

who, who, who slapped john?

white face, black shirt
white socks, black shoes
black hair, white strat
bled white, died black

sweet gene vincent
let the blue cats roll tonight
at the sock hop ball in the union hall
where the bop is their delight

here come duck-tailed Danny dragging Uncanny Annie
she's the one with the flying feet
you can break the peace daddy sickle grease
the beat is reet complete
and you jump back honey in the dungerees
tight sweater and a pony tail
will you guess her age when she comes back stage?
the hoodlums bite their nails

black gloves, white frost
black crepe, white lead
white sheet, black knight
jet black, dead white

sweet gene vincent
there's one in every town
and the devil drives 'till the hearse arrives
and you lay that pistol down

sweet gene vincent
there's nowhere left to hide
with lazy skin and ash-tray eyes
a perforated pride

so farewell mademoiselle, knicker-bocker hotel
farewell to money owed
but when your leg still hurts and you need more shirts
you got to get back on the road

Today in Political Blogging Today: My Impression of the Democratic Party

"Drink this glass of piss, it's tastier than a shit burrito."

Spurts Prugnusticatiun

I don't want to come right out and say who I think will be in the Super Bowl, but I will go ahead and predict that both teams will come from places that begin with the word "New."

To save Mr. Insert Namehere a couple seconds: "Yeah, good thing you didn't come right out and predict that."

By the way, have you ever noticed that most prognosticators have names with the letter "K" in them? Kreskin. Skilling. Warwick. Hm.

I heard the bat crack my name ... wait, that doesn't quite work: Today in Anticipation of Baseball Today

My upstairs neighbor is a lunatic and I hate her. She is constantly vacuuming up there, probably to clean up her goddamn gigantic pet macaw's shit, because I think it roams around loose. Squawking and screaming. I don't think it can talk, but it seems to be able to do a pretty damn good impression of Yoko Ono.

I don't remember hearing so much hubbub upstairs with other people, but with her, I can hear her talking baby talk to that thing all the time, and yapping on the phone, and listening to frickin WXRT. And I won't get into the ceiling-fan-shaking sound effects that resulted the last time a "special friend" visited.

But, as people like to tell me, That's Urban Life, Buddy! That's The Big City For You!

Welp, starting in March I can get revenge, because the Spring Training baseball games will start up on the radio, and I can play them real loud while I am washing dishes, so I can hear the radio over the noise of the faucet, like I do almost every day from April through October -- which I have to imagine might be pretty annoying to an upstairs neighbor, maybe.

Anyway, I know that it's NFL playoff season and the Bears are the belle of the ball right now, but we're almost midway through January, so it's only a little over a month until pitchers report for spring training. The Bears are going to be finished by next Sunday anyway. After that, it's all baseball, baby. Total monopoly on futility and pointlessness for the next six months. Until the Bears begin training camp in Bourbonnais in late July. Those are the sports nerd solstices: "Pitchers Report" and ... uhh ... I forget who shows up first for football training camp. Anyway, that's presumably an important date for some people, the beginning of football training camp. I wouldn't really know.

I Saw a Man, Something Fell on His Wife -- They Call This Toddlin' Town Gravity City: Report #2

I'm not sure if this is technically a "stuff falls off of other stuff" item, but it's close enough. The Tribaroony reports today:

A piece of metal believed to have fallen from an airplane either taking off or landing at Midway Airport crashed through the roof of a nearby Southwest Side home early this morning, a city official said.

Robert Anton Wilson: 23 Skidoo

Well, there goes another piece of my nerdish childhood -- co-author of whacked-out drug-fueled cartoon-sex-infused "fairy tale for paranoids" The Illuminatus! Trilogy (and a lot of other stuff), Robert Anton Wilson has died after a lengthy illness. (According to a post on RAW's blog.)

Welp, Kerry Thornley's been dead for a while. Greg Hill's been dead for a while. Robert Shea's been dead for a while. Timothy Leary's been dead (and outside looking in) for a while. Not many people left from that crazy crowd anymore. Paul Krassner, take care of yourself. You might win the tontine yet.

Fnord.


MEANWHILE ...

Another prominent figure from my misspent yoof, LSD discoverer Albert Hofmann, turned 101 years old today. Yay!



MEANWHILE ...

Another prominent figure from my misspent yoof, LSD discoverer Albert Hofmann, turned 101 years old today. Yay!

Sorry ... that was a little flashback. I told you my yoof was misspent.

First-Rate Pottery: YouTube Veddeo Corner

(spoken)
Morning Reg, meat and two veg? He done him with a ten-pound sledge, he done himself a favour Crash!

Forty-year old housewife Mrs Elizabeth Walk of Lambeth Walk
Had a husband who was jubblified with only half a stalk
So she had a Milk of Magnesia and curry powder sandwich, half a pound of uncut pork
Took an overdose of Omo, this made the neighbours talk

(spoken)
Could have been watching Frankie Vaughn on the telly and giving herself a scratch

(Chorus)
This is what we find (x 4)
A sense of humour is required, amongst the bacon rind

(spoken)
Hello Brian, wash and iron? Try it on, it's only nylon

Single batchelor with little dog Tony Green of Turnham Green
Said 'who's a clever boy then girl, now you know whom I mean'
For the mongrel laid a cable in the sandpit of the playground of the park where they had been
And with a bit of tissue, he wiped its bumhole clean

(spoken)
A bit of claggy on the waggy

(Chorus)
This is what we find (x4)
They must have had a funny time, on the Golden Hind

(spoken, reverb)
O vanitas vanitatum, which of us is happy in his life
Which of us has our desire, or having it, is gratified

(spoken)
Hello Mrs Wood, this boy looks familiar, they used to call him Robin Hood.
Now he's Robin fucking shit cunt

Home improvement expert Harold Hill of Harold Hill
Of Do-It-Yourself dexterity, and double glazing skill
Came home to find another gentleman's kippers in the grill
So he sanded off his winkle with his Black and Decker drill

(Chorus)
This is what we find (x4)
The hope that springs eternal, springs right up your behind!
This is what we find (repeat to fade)

Ian Dury and The Blockheads - This Is What We Find (Live 1978)

The Return of Fifteenth-Rate Pottery, and a Few Complaints

Here's another one from the same period:

I'm a sad lad
And a tad mad

It's pottery because it's true. And timeless, seemingly.

In other news, over the past few days, all previous Google-referral records for this blog have been smashed into greazy little quivering blobs by the string "we enter the circle at night and are consumed by fire," and variants thereof. Apparently some serious students of Latin palindromy have let themselves loose on the WWW (pronounced "wuh wuh wuh"). Although they ain't so serious as to be capable of finding actual information on the subject, apparently. Which is just as well, I guess. If people knew how to go to Wikipedia first for their trivial bullshit, my hit count would go from dismal to crestfallen.

By the way, the title of the They Might Be Giants song "I Palindrome I" is, of course, not a palindrome at all, although that is probably among the least of that band's offenses against society. I swear on a stack of Thomas Jefferson's religious books (and George Jefferson's dry cleaning receipts) that if I have to endure that goddamn Dunkin Donuts commercial with the obnoxious TMBG "Perhaps FrItalian" song in it one more fucking time, I'm going to kick both Johns right square in the nuts. Especially Linnell. No, wait, especially Flansburgh. No, wait ... ESPECIALLY both of em.

Also, it's been well-noted elsewhere on the web, but I think it merits reiteration: John Krueger Menstrualcramp must go straight to hell right now and begin serving his eternal fiery penance for that excrutiating Chevy truck commercial they play during every single break during every single football game.

Another person who should go to hell is me, for failing to get a TiVo® yet, already. Dammit.

Fifteenth-Rate Pottery

Here's a lil number I wrote back around 1989:

Just a pinch, a half a bowl-full ...
Is that all? he queried, doleful.

Please don't feed the site; the site feeds you

For those of youse who use RSS reader thingamajonks and would prefer to add this site to the excitement rather than try to remember not to forget to visit manually, the url for the CBRAT site feed is as follows: http://colicky.blogspot.com/atom.xml

The feed capability been operative for a while, but I guess I never publicized it. Now I have. It also strikes me that the sidebar needs updating. However, I ate half a pound of whole wheat spaghetti carbonara last night in a gluttonous frenzy, so ... I have no idea what the connection is between these things.

Hey hey hey, it's a telecommuting day! I'm in my sweatpants and slippers, drinking coffee, and I luvv it!

Alternative Answer: "YOUR TWO CLOSE"

Seen on the signboard outside Chappell Elementary School at Leavitt and Foster during this evening's commute:

IF YOU CAN READ THIS
THANKA TEACHER

And thanka butcher if you know whatsa henweigh.

"We have objections in our trousers"

The Sun-Times "Web Connect" page has cracked the case on rock and rolling lawyers (or law and yering rockers) in this not-really-lurid expose, in which it was apparent that most guitar-slinging attornies in Chicago are yer "disorder preserving," thin blue line worshipping, lock 'em up and throw away the key prosecutor types.

Except for friend of the blog Dan K., that is:

"Playing live for people is like winning a jury trial. It's just the best feeling," said Dan Kiss, a Cook County assistant public defender and bass player for Soft Targets. "There's a lot less pressure, too. No one goes to prison if you play a bad show."

Oh, sometimes they do, Dan, if you play it right. (Just ask blog mascot, Dez "Pogo Papillon" Dez Monde, aka Number 314159.)

Dan goes on to say:

"The people in my office who don't get it think the proper way to express yourself for a mass audience is to write a blog. And they don't understand why you'd want to be around smoke and alcohol," he said.

Mm. I have to admit that I don't quite understand what these way uncool office people are going on about, because the smoke 'n' booze factor around this blog's headquarters (not to mention hindquarters) tends to be pretty hefty most of the time. So there seems to be an inherent contradiction there. But if by "mass audience" they mean "roughly 12 to 20 people a day, about a quarter of whom were looking for the answer to the musical question 'what cartoon character said i hate meeces to pieces?' " ... OK. This is definitely the best way to express yourself in that manner.

POSTSCRIPT: The Soft Targets website is over hyah. Keen.