Sweet

Neko Case and Kelly Hogan on Letterman.

And don't even get me started about the screamy birds ...

If my new upstairs neighbor wrote a book called "How to Set Up Your New Apartment," it would consist entirely of the following:

Loudly throw all your shit onto the goddamn floor, over and over, for three fucking days.

I'd jump for joy but I'm afraid I'd break a hip

Hot on the smoldering heels of Tuesday's news reports of a study from U. of Michigan (previously blogged hyah) claiming that people get happier than they think or than anyone else thinks they do as they age, comes a story in today's Sun-Times, with the merry tidings that ages 38 to 55 (aka, "midlife") are, like, the best, and all that kinda stuff. Kick ass! I just got started! So far, I have to say it kinda doesn't live up to the advertising, but then I just learned the other day that I don't know whether (or when or why or how or ... who) I'm happy anyway, so you can't go by me. Seriously. Don't go by me. Keep your distance. I'm feeling reclusive. Definitely call first, or even better, email. Yes, I'm feeling reclusive, but also grateful that I'm only a little over half a year into the awesomest goddamn fantastic phase of my fucking marvelous life. Who's for beer? Fuck yeah!

Free Plugola (Plugilleh?) Post: Let Us All Plotz Together, or We Shall Surely Plotz Separately

Genius cartoonist Drew Friedman has a new book set for release in November, and this is the cover. I can't wait.

Edamame so fat, when the food service industry markets edamame around the country, it markets edamame AROUND the country

Enough of the goddamn edamamezes, I say to McDonalds and Applebee's and various other shitty food purveyors, dammit. The little green soybeans have really hit the middle west with a marketing impact from hell lately. They're everywhere. Apparently if it's a new menu item, it's gotta have em. They're putting them in salsa now! I am more or less indifferent to edamame qua eats, but I am definitely sick of hearing about em. Pretty soon I'll be seeing commercials for the Pizza Hut Edamame Lover's Pizza. Ooh! Edamame! Hell-thheeee! Decadently healthy, in fact! Health to die for! Why don't you kill me how you reeeeeeeally feeel? You and whose army?

Your feelings may tell you you're unhappy, but they're wrong! Old man!

http://www.med.umich.edu/opm/newspage/2006/happiness.htm

[Some crazy-ass study sez] both young people and older people think that young people are happier than older people — when in fact research has shown the opposite.

Am I happier now or was I happier then? Wrong! Survey says: Happier now! Regardless of what bullshit my stupid mood and affect spew! This is good news. I had no idea how goddamn much my life had improved with age and baldness.

OK ...

(EDITOR'S NOTE: I know I'm misreading and misconstruing the press release, but it helps my humorous premise to do so, so bear with me)

... so, according to this study, people are happier when they're older, but they don't know they are, and believe they must have been happier when they were younger? ........... uhh, something seems screwy here. You can be happy without knowing it?

I guess that makes sense. Otherwise, they wouldn't have written that song to go, "If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands," because it would be redundant if you automatically know it when you're happy. And "If you're happy, clap your hands" fucks up the whole meter and other music-theory shit.

My personal version of the song would go something like,

If you're happy and you don't know it, act depressed
If you're happy and you don't know it, act depressed
If you're happy and you don't know it, then it's damn sure hard to show it
If you're happy and you don't know it, act depressed

Second verse! Stupider than the first!

If you're happy and you don't know it, mope around
If you're happy and you don't know it, mope around
etc. etc. and so forth

Maybe I shouldn't have had that second pot of coffee. I wonder if a third one will help my blogging any. Stupid blog! Be less pointless!

Yawwwwnnnn ... Good morning? What's good about it?

The best thing about morning is its supreme sleep-through-ability.

We here at CBRAT are taking some much-desired if not needed time offa the day job (16 hours to be exact) this week, which so far has been spent mostly sleeping and drinking coffee (not at the same time -- yet). And by "we" I mean "me." Or, "I," depending on the grammar rules in your jurisdiction. (And by "are" I mean "am," etc. Do your own copyediting. Or copy editing. Or copy-editing. I can't even remember which one of those is right ... which goes to show how rusty I've gotten at that ... but I digress.)

I'm feeling a little remorseful about being so slothy, cuz I have some things I really need to get done. Well, they won't kill me if I fail to do them ... except for one or two that might. Such as, I was gonna bring my car in first thing this morning to have the brakes fixed, cuz they don't seem to be working right, but I got too lazy, so I'll have to do that tomorrow.

When I plan a day off, I make all sortsa "job jar" type plans for myself, as if I am a stereotypical comic strip housewife (e.g., Lois from "Hi and Lois") treating my own self as a stereotypical comic strip husband (as in, "You'll be around? Oh good, you can do blah, blah, blah, and blah around the house, and then you can go and buy blah, and fix blah, and blah. Then catch up on laundry. And vacuum the damn floors," etc.), but when the day off happens, the do-nothing urge takes over. And since there is no actual stereotypical comic strip housewife around here, with a stereotypical comic strip rolling pin or other pop-cultural implement of negative reinforcement, Mr. Screw It Why Bother wins about 17 out of 18 times over Mrs. Imaginary Get Up And Justify Your Miserable Existence.

Later tonight, when the imaginary "Lockhorns" self-interactional dual-auto-role-playing begins, followed by a drunken and harrowing solo interpretation of "Andy Capp" ... well, it won't be pretty, I'm sure.

I want more coffee.

Putting the Shun Back in

Recently exhumed from a medical waste dump outside Batavia, Illinois, is this: The only surviving video documentation of one of the early 1980s' ... bands, The Abortions, performing their ... song, "Sex Is No Substitute."

Enjoy ... ?

(Thanks to One O. Brawl for the videoismificationizing.)

For background info, see previous post on these knuckleheads here.

COMING SOON (OR NOT): Dez and the Sappy Tones' blood-rare cover version, "Sex With Your Substitute Is No Substitute For Sex With Your Regular Teacher (Am I Right Kids? Am I RIIIGHT? Anyone? Anyone?)." I, for one, can't wait.

Heineken? Fuck that shit! Pabst Blue Ribbon is what you'll drink tonight!

Oh boy. Oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy.

Crain's Shuhcawgo Bezzness reports that "Pabst Brewing to move HQ to Chicago area," thanks, the magazine says, to nearly $1 million in bribes incentives (tax credits) from Gov. Rod "Not the Face! Not the Face!" Blagojevich.

When told of the deal, Mayor Daley was quoted as exclaiming, "That's just swilly! Swilly, swilly, swilly, swilly! I mean, it's swill! No one can tell me that that isn't swilly! It's the epitome of swilliness! How swilly can you get? It's swilly, I tell ya. Swilll-lee! Ho ho ho! Suh-will!"

Curly Howard, Jackie Gleason, Rodney Dangerfield, and Phil Silvers then came back to life and crawled out of their graves for the sole, express purpose of filing suit against Daley for stealing all of their personalities, and wrecking them.

FIFA Foe Fum (and Fall)

All right, listen up, team (that's Colicky FC to you, buddy). The big show starts today. Everybody be sure to put on their World Cup. Because if the world takes a bad hop and hits you in the nutsack, it's going to really fucking hurt if you don't have some protection.

But seriously, folks, who you pulling for? I'm rooting for Côte d'Ivoire, which put its civil war on "pause" for the tournament. Or at least until it gets eliminated.

BONUS FOOTBALL FUN: In case you need a little something to get you into the soccer mood, here's a clip of The Fall's Mark E. Smith reading the daily UK football results.

Also, here's the video to The Fall's evil soccer hooliganism song, Theme From Sparta FC. Hot.

God with Go!

That's what I want! Screw this "go with god" shit! I want a god with Go! Oomph! Zazz!

I want a god with a spring in its step and a yes-we-can! attitude. I want a god with a tiger in its tank, except for the tiger's eye, which I want to be in its ... uhh ... eye.

I want a god that shows enthusiasm when I mount it.

Wait ... that last one was actually sort of a reference to a Chief Dan George line from the movie "Little Big Man" ... I'm not sure why that came to mind. It seems horribly wrong. But I ain't saying it ain't true!

666 backwards is 666

I was kind of hoping, today being 6-6-06 and all, that these Damned Souls (aka, Cubs fans) hideously writhing in bronzy agony on the base of the Harry Caray statue near Addison & Sheffield would come to life and raze Wrigley Field in a cataclysm of hellish justice ... but no luck.

How to fail at quitting smoking, the masochist's way

You won't kick the demon nicotine, but you will ensure maximum suffering if you follow my simple method.

Step one: Quit cold turkey. You'll be doing this many times, so it's a good idea to learn a couple tricks -- First trick: Always waste the maximum amount of cash by buying only single packs (preferably inside the Chicago city limits, where taxes on a pack of smokes are approximately $43,500.77), because each one is "the last one, ever." This accomplishes two things: you won't have a big supply sitting around that you feel obligated to smoke for reasons of frugality, and you will feel extra stupid every time you feed your habit, which will reinforce your desire to constantly torture yourself with the quitting process. Second trick: When you finish the pack, dump out your ashtrays as soon as possible (which will invariably make you gag with disgust at the stink and filth you've been imposing on your poor body, but that's normal). Dump them someplace that's hard or embarrassing to get into, such as your apartment building's dumpster. Because chances are good that in half an hour or so you will have an irrepressible urge to raid the trash for smokeable butts. And that's just pathetic.

Step two: While spending the next two or three days fending off drug-withdrawal-spawned suicidal impulses by yelling at everybody and nobody, breaking things, and sleeping 12 or 14 hours a day to escape the sheer hell that life on earth has become, comfort yourself with the knowledge that these physical and emotional symptoms are temporary. Yes, they go away relatively quickly. However, you can make them come back again by following step three.

Step three: As soon as your bronchial tubes clear up to the point where you no longer feel like you're being strangled to death by a tsunami made of roofing tar, and your emotional status is rehabilitated to the point where you almost feel like doing something other than dying alone, broken and dispirited, go to the bodega and buy a pack of cigs. But just one! It's your last pack ever, after all.

Return to step one, abandon all hope, continue to despise your weak self, repeat. Forever.

By the way, this has been yet another "step two" kind of weekend. Feh.

The Glass Lined Tanks of Old Latrobe can go screw themselves 33 times, tenderly, as a tribute to my premium hairy ass

I don't know if I'm suffering from an even greater case of the self-loathings than usual, but for some reason I decided to drink some Rolling Rock tonight, which is pretty close to the beer equivalent of a hairshirt. Not only does it taste like diluted skunk, the manufacturers seem to have forgotten to put any booze in it. I think there is more alcohol oozing out of my sebaceous glands right now, just from a lifetime of exposure, than there is in this shitty beer. That's right! I'd be better off drinking my own sebum than this asparagus piss! Well, the night is young. It could come to that.

Hey bladder, bladder, bladder

People often ask me -- as well they should -- why I waste so, so much damn time on baseball. There are a lot of reasons that I love the game, but perhaps the biggest single attraction to me is a two-part thing: (1) the fact that they play nearly every day for over six months (and in Chicago, we're lucky enough to have two teams, so that's .. well, 162 times uhh you do the math) and (2) I enjoy the broadcasters. Bouncing around spasmodically, as I do, between radio and TV, and between the Cubs and the Sox, day after day, from April through October, and being a hopeless mass-media nerd ... geh, well, you either get what I mean by now, or you don't.

I love the game a lot, but ultimately the game is kind of an excuse for the real party: the radio and TV shows. And often the best part of the broadcast shenaniganery -- especially in a city known for perennially horrible clubs -- has nothing to do with baseball, or sports, or anything other than goofy middle-aged men filling air time.

I was first hooked sometime in the late 1970s, when Harry Caray and Jimmy "I'm Not Crazy (Yes He Is)" Piersall were announcing White Sox games on WSNS-TV 44 during the pitiful but colorful Bill Veeck era. Harry was not yet the cuddly archetype of senile dementia he was during his long tenure at WGN for the Cubs. No, he was still bitter and angry about being fired by the Cardinals for sleeping with the wrong man's (aka the boss's) wife (and how much I would give to hear some clips of Harry touting Griesedieck beer on KMOX ... OK, I wouldn't pay money, but I'd enjoy hearing it). As a kid at the time, I thought of him as a guy who was like the kind of drunken uncle who might threaten to backhand you if you got smartassy, but he'd also sneak you a can of Bud when your parents weren't looking and teach you a few dirty jokes. And Jimmy Piersall was ... Jimmy Piersall. In. Sane. Koo. Koo. By the time Piersall was suspended for calling the players' wives "horny broads," I was hooked, indeed.

These days, I generally prefer the radio teams for both clubs, but tonight the Cubs TV play-by-play guy, Len Kasper, in his second year in the job, scored some big points with me.

In the top of the 14th inning of what turned out to be a Cubs victory over the Cardinals in St. Louis, Kasper nearly made me fall off the couch with a reference to one of my favorite subjects in any context: peeing.

"I just want to mention that this game is approaching the five-hour mark," he said, "and I have not yet left this booth to ... do ... you know what. And you know me: I drink half a bottle of water, and it's all over."

Bravo, Mr. Kasper. It's not like you said "Dusty Baker is an aficionado of squatting nude with a wide open mouth on the receiving end of day-long sessions of gay Japanese bukkake." But at least I no longer think you suck.

You know what I like? Naps.

I think I'll take one right now, in lieu of writing anything for the blog. Especially since I have nothing today.

White Sox Radio Drinking Game

Here's a fun one for you drunkards out there, and you know who you are -- Every time AM 670 ("The Score") play-by-play announcer Ed Farmer makes reference to his kidney transplant, that's one drink. And every time Ed makes a rambling patriotic statement, that's two. By 7th inning stretch, you won't be able to stand. Which is a good thing, from where I recline, cuz I prefer to stretch while lying down.

If you're keeping score for tonight's game, now underway, in the 2nd inning, Ed, during a digression about how he's dressed like Huey Lewis, said that he needs a new wardrobe, but does not need a new drug, because he has his autoimmune suppressors. So that's one drink.

And now, in the uhh I think 3rd inning (hard to keep track on radio), during a digression about actors-cum-politicians (heh), he threw out some praise for Ronald Reagan, opining that he did a lot of good things for this country. So that's two.

*Hic*

Play along, won't you?

POSTSCRIPT: Cubs fans, I would suggest taking a drink every time Ron Santo wails "AUUGGHHHH!!!" like a refugee from Charlie Brown's baseball team, but it would kill you.

Corporate Communications Corner

My suggestion for effective slide presentations is that the bullet points should be made of real bullets, and they should be pointed at whoever called the goddamn meeting.

Comix Corner: John P

There's a new (to me -- actually, it dates back to February) audio interview with the brilliant cartoonist John Porcellino available for download here ... his work has blown me away for almost 20 years now. I danced in and out of a pretty surprising collection of very talented and creative people floundering around DeKalb, Illinois, in the late 1980s (more on this to come in future posts, you can be sure), and John P is one of the few among the crowd who really has seemed to live up to his potential. And he just keeps going and going, thank goodness. The audio is pretty spotty (seems to be a recording of a phone interview) but I'll post the link in case any of the few regular readers who happen to know the guy from DeKalb days and elsewhere and elsewhen might be interested (Des? Steve? Glen? John, I already told you about it). Anyway, it's less than 7 minutes long, just a 6 meg file and change, so it's worth a shot if you're curious.

And John P has spruced up his website here. If you know him, and it's been a while since you've read King-Cat Comics, it's still happening, and it's still great. Be glad.

Hero and champion of self-publishing, ladies and gentlemen, let's hear it for John Porcellino.

It's summertime summertime sum sum summertime

Whew.

Now that I have completed the annual installation of the air conditioner in the living room window, let the evil hot season do its worst! I laugh derisively at heat and humidity! Or, rather, I cower from it indoors like a ... coward. But a comfortable one.

Now excuse me while I go stand in front of the cold wind for the rest of the afternoon.