Language Peeve Cor(o)ner

When did "yeah" and "no" start to mean the same thing? As in, "Yeah, no, I agree," and "No, yeah, that's right." They're just rhythmic space fillers used in spastic and pointless small-talk .... Why don't people just grunt to fill space, instead of using words? E.g., "Ugh, phththphhh, I got your back, homey," or "Moop, twonk, my brain is a vacuum."

I think the "yeah no" phenomenon might be a symptom of some serious brain damage caused by trying to keep up with 16 layers of irony in every goddamn "Gen X"-and-recenter conversation. As in, "Yes I agree ... and maybe you thought I disagreed, but, no, in fact I agree, so, I say yes ... and maybe you think I'm kidding -- but no ... I really mean yes with the earnestness of a hundred yellow suns ... well, no, maybe not THAT much ... but yes anyway, to the ultimate topic of conversation -- and, no, I don't remember what that topic was" etc., except sped up to a frickin millisecond.

Chicago Myths Busted #1 -- Wrinkly Fold

I've noticed that a large number of people around the country have bought into many myths about the city of Chicago -- for example, that it's especially windy. It's not definitively known what inspired the whole "Windy City" nickname bullshit ("bullshit" being my stock term for anything I have been tired of for multiple decades), but it isn't anywhere near the windiest city in the United States. If you want to know which one is ... well, if you're using Firefox, there's a little search box in the upper right corner of the browser.

But I digress. Let's move on to the first (and, the way things with this blog usually go, probably the last) installment of a new blog feature: "Chicago Myths Busted."

Today's myth: Busted: Wrigley Field Is Not a Shithole.

OK, maybe I should phrase that more delicately. How about, Busted: Wrigley Field Is a Shrine to Baseball.

You hear it all the time -- it's a beautiful setting for baseball; it's full of history; it's a shriiiiiiiine. Nope. All wrong.

OK, it is a shrine. Wrigley Field -- or, as I like to call it, Wrinkly Fold -- is a shrine to piss. Pee, urine, micturition, whatever you wanna call it. It's the piss capital of America. Piss that smells like stale beer, and stale beer that smells like piss. Visitors to Wrinkly Fold learn quickly -- don't try to walk too fast on the ramps, because piss-drenched concrete is slippery. And having an ass soaked with the collective piss of many strangers might make you fit right in at Wrinkly, but it ain't very comfortable.

It's a beautiful setting for baseball? There are so many sub-myths tied up in that sentence that I don't know where to begin. First of all, I can agree with the statement, if "beautiful" is taken to mean "crumbling, rusting, cramped, and dank." Ever sit far back in the grandstand, in the deepest, darkest coal mine of a dungeon in all of United States-based franchised played-for-money baseball? Behind a column? Yeah, nothing says "beautiful setting for baseball" like sitting in one of Wrinkly's many, many, many, many, many "obstructed view" seats.

And history? Good grief. Sure, it's been open for a long time, so I guess there's history to the place. History of abject failure. Yeah, you can bring your kids there and say, "That's right, kids -- this is the place where Steve Ontiveros and Mick Kelleher played. Badly." I'm sure they'll pause from their PSP game for about 0.000000001 second to drink that in.

I won't even get into how miserable an experience it is to get to the place if you're an out-of-towner (no parking, way off the major highways, etc.) because I don't like to encourage out-of-towners to come here. Stay where you are, subhumanurbanites!

There are so many bad things to say about Wrinkly Fold that I'm running out of energy before I've extinguished even a fraction of them. Such as, the clubhouse conditions being so compact, antiquated, and generally crappy that I'm convinced the Cubs players forced to headquarter there will always be just plain too depressed to win many games. That would be evened out by the fact that the visitors' clubhouse is reported to be even worse (and is reputed to be, by far, the worst visitors' clubhouse anywhere, including Fallujah), but the Cubs have to spend 81 games a year there, which has gotta wear you down pretty bad.

Throw the limited number of night games (due to the yuppie schmucks dominating the vastly overrated, hellish, grotesquely Brueghelian surrounding neighborhood) into the mix, and you are well along the way to answering the question of why the Cubs will never, ever, ever, ever × infinity get to (let alone win) the World Series.

That answer -- they play in Wrinkly Fold.

(Related Myth: Cubs Fans Are the Greatest Fans in Baseball, or Are Even Remotely Tolerable. Busted! So totally, totally busted. More busted than Jayne Mansfield and Candy Samples combined. I don't have the time or energy today to fully debunk this one, but it's pretty self-evident. The most obvious proof of the mythitude of this myth being -- dey loves dem some Wrigley Field more than they love the Cubs. Because anyone who cares about that miserable, wretched, pathetic team at all would demand that whoever buys them next year build a real stadium, and turn Wrinkly into condos, a dog park, a bank, a housewares store, a federal penitentiary ... anything. Anything but the shittiest, pissiest, pukiest excuse for a ballpark in the known universe.)

POSTSCRIPT: Maybe this is old news (see Rick Morrissey's recent Tribune column on this very subject) and anybody who gives a shit has cried themselves out already. Or ... maybe I'm going to get some hostile commentary on this post. Which I guess I have asked for. Please! Hostile commentary! Want some!

Maybe in advance of that, I should clarify a couple things (which won't affect the hostility, I hope). First, I used to be a Cubs fan ... until the cumulative effect of 1984, 1989, and 2003 finished me off for good. Second, I used to enjoy going to Wrigley Field, until ... well, I still enjoy it. But then I have a high tolerance for rust, rubble, piss, discomfort, ignorance, and extremely horrific baseball. That may look like a smartass remark, but I really do. Doesn't make the rust, rubble, piss, discomfort, ignorance -- and especially the extremely horrific baseball -- go away.

All in all, it's my (two-part) position, and I'm sticking with it (both parts of it), that (1) Wrigley is very overrated (the dump wasn't exalted in the 1970s, I can tell you -- it was a cruel joke) and that (2) the Cubs are (gonna continue to be) going nowhere fast until they move.

Anyway, flame away. Chances are that if you even attempt to make a reasonable point, I'll agree with you. (Because I'm a semi-fictional character and don't really have any integrity to defend.) Hell, maybe I'll even reverse positions entirely. Myth Un-busted! Wrigley Field a hell of an enjoyable place to spend an afternoon! I mean, if I score any free or discount tix this season (god knows I can't afford to pay face value), I'll probably take that viewpoint ... temporarily. If I get enough Old Style in me, at least.

Late Late Friday Mingus Blogging

Charles Mingus - Flowers For A Lady (1974)


If you feel any good at all right now, play this, and you'll feel even better. It is really good.

Friday Food Bloggingggg

Baked tilapia fillet on a bed of fresh polenta (pureed sweet corn + butter) and topped with tomato & zucchini salsa. Steamed broccoli surrounding, duh. Kind of a mess of color, eh? Tasty, though.

There's still time to fit in a last-second flashback

Today is Bicycle Day -- anniversary of the first intentional LSD trip, taken by Albert Hofmann in 1943.

Yup.

No guff.

If I'm lyin', I'm buyin'. Hell, I'll buy anyway. Just point me in the direction of the nearest parking lot of a Grateful Dead show. Or whatever unreasonable facsimile thereof that is available.

I'm not dropping any acid ... those days of my misspent youth are long, long past. But I would enjoy watching YOUR little mind melt. Heh heh.

Remember, grasshopper, the secret of a happy LSD experience is "set and setting."

Here's how that goes. You dropped acid, and then you set, and now you're setting. When you wake up tomorrow with sore joints and a tight jaw, and probably suffering from mild to moderate depression resulting from Vitamin B deficiency (I made that side effect up, but it sounds plausible, doesn't it?), you will have set. If you take two tabs, we might find room for the present pluperfect tense, subjunctive mood.

OK. I was considering writing about some of my own personal experiences with Dr. Hofmann's problem child, but today was a print deadline day at my actual job, and ... you know how that excuse goes.

Maybe later tonight, I'll catch a second wind. I have a pretty good story about why sex and LSD don't go together as well as one might hope. There's a teaser for youse.

Possible Public Service Announcement

OK ... to the occasional certain Google queriers out there ... and you know who you are ... now, I am not a doctor, nor a nutritionist, but I'm going to go out on a limb and advise that you are probably better off NOT feeding edamame to your baby. At the very least, your baby can cultivate a taste for raw, young soybeans later in life, and will certainly feel no less privileged for the waiting. And maybe, in the meantime, not choke to death, or grow grotesque premature tits, or whatever other horrible I can make up off the top of my head.

Edamame + baby = No, is my position on the matter.

The Colickiest of Colicky Babies has spoke.

Day One of the Post-Parrot Era

Cause for celebration here at CBRAT Central. The upstairs neighbor with the T. Rex-sized screaming macaw (and a crazy greek chorus of other unknown birds) was asked to leave by building management for having pets not allowed by the lease, and she moved out yesterday, taking the creatures with her. So I can scratch one irritant off the mile-long list.

Further proof that I've got too much time on my hands

I have just spent a few anxious minutes taking inventory of the contents of my freezer, mostly to check for things that have been in there for bordering on too long, because my life is so minimalistically empty that I have to manufacture problems like when to eat up the leftover beef stew and split pea soup from mid-to-late January (and -- way up at Difficulty Level "Very High" -- the couple of single-serving-size Ziploc® containers of chicken noodle soup I made and put away in case of colds I never got this winter -- my "Emergency Preparedness" chicken soup, in other words), all of which have about two decent weeks of freezer life in them before irreversible deterioration will have passed the threshold of unreasonableness.

That is, unless you go by my parents' definition of freezer life, which is forever. But I try not to let things go much beyond three months. I think mom and dad just throw stuff away when it converts into a solid block of undifferentiated ice crystal, like some kind of food fossil. Or not. They probably never throw anything out, like Debbie Reynolds in the Albert Brooks movie, "Mother."

Don't underestimate the challenge, though. Because it will get warmer, someday -- and probably it'll shoot up all of a sudden into the upper 80s. And split pea soup does not go well at all with hot weather. Then what? Huh? Then what? That stuff ain't gonna keep till autumn!

Like I said, I've got too much time on my hands. In the words of Mr. Tommy Shaw from Styx.

Maybe in the next post I'll tackle the pitfalls and heartbreaks of the crisper drawer.

Goodbye Blue Monday

Squirt Preparation H® here

I don't really have anything substantive to add to the massive amount of obituary material on Kurt Vonnegut burgeoning webally today, but I wanted to post something. So, in lieu of a bunch of words gushing about how much I dug him and how big an influence he had on my dark sense of humor and secular humanist viewpoint and all that, here's something graphical from the first book of his that I read, a long time ago -- Breakfast of Champions -- still one of my favorites. Yup, that's right. It's a drawing of an asshole. I don't know if it's appropriate to the occasion or not, but I have never stopped cracking up when I think about this drawing, and I thank him for that gift. Which doesn't really parse ... thanking a dead humanist. But what the heck?

Three by Redbone

Hm, the corner street light is out at the moment. That's good, because I'm not dodging the shafts of glare bursting thru the blinds while I pointless up some blog. Although I suppose it's not so good for security. Oh well.

But I digress. The point of this post is to impose a few veddeos by the first rock band I remember being aware of -- Redbone. Not Leon ... the Native Merkin R&B group.

Why Redbone? Well, my mother, Ma Moss, is kind of ... I dunno how to put it ... an Indian freak. I guess you could call her an amateur Native American Studies scholar, of sorts ... but I think the truth is that she's besmitten by some kind of fetish. But let's not go there.

Anyway, from an early age ... I think you could call it "birth" ... I was indoctrinated into some twisted sort of suburban wannabe American Indian Movement ethos. And, to tie it up quickly, Redbone was part of that. Cuz Ma Moss had all their rekkids, and the likes of the following made sure that a young Stronger Than Dirt was pissed off about Wounded Knee before he even knew what it was:



Redbone - Wounded Knee

Redbone also had a strong Cajun identity. They had a pretty solid hit (charting higher in the UK but getting some attention over here) with this original number, which brought a little New Orleans swamp sound to the potlatch (although this was not on their album named "Potlatch," but now I'm tripping over my own metaphors):

>

Redbone - Witch Queen of New Orleans

The Redbone song I remember best is one of the first pop songs I can recall hearing on the radio and having around the house on LP when it was a hit. This one has been covered by a couple of artists in more recent years, and Cyndi Lauper quoted its chorus in a 1994 remake of "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun." It's probably their least "Indian" tune. And it was all over WLS and WCFL all the time for a while. From 1974:



Redbone - Come and Get Your Love

This Just In: Baseball Players Are Wussies

As you may have noticed, I like baseball. It reminds me of summer vacations and all that nice childhoody kinda crap. But the early weeks of the season always suck, because spring doesn't start in Chicago until ... never. And most Aprils I somehow find myself attending a game or two at Wrigley Field (er, "SMonkey Field" ... see below) -- which is, science tells us, the coldest place on earth. I have frozen my hiney off at a lot of ballgames, including a World Series game in Pittsburgh in 1979 at the second coldest place on earth, the now-non-extant Three Rivers Stadium. It's painful to endure winter weather for an outdoor summer sport.

But this is just ridiculous:

Friday's scheduled game between the White Sox and the Minnesota Twins has been postponed due to the extremely cold temperatures and winds in the weather forecast.

Aww ... widdle miwwionaiwes might get chiwwy and fweeze dem's widdle pee-pees.

OK, maybe management just figures nobody will show up and they'll lose a ton of money on lost beer sales and parking fees. Or maybe they just realized that the Sox have no pitching this season. It stands to reason -- although they'll never admit it. It wouldn't do to say, "Tonight's game postponed due to the high probability of severe sucking by the home team." This kind of candor could only lead to the inevitable late-September announcement, "Game canceled due to lack of interest."

Not that the Sox don't have any strengths in '07. Hell, they might win 8 or 10 games just from A.J. Pierzynski pretending to get hit by pitches.

"Stronger Than Dirt"

Jay and the Techniques

Hey Hey, Holy Mackerel ... The Investment Oppatoonity of a Lifetime!

Now it can be told. One O Ball and myself, Stronger Than Dirt Pete Moss, have just won ownership of the Chicago Cubs in an eBay auction. Now we only have to come up with the money. I can toss in 400 bucks, and Otis has a collection of Dogfish Head bottlecaps and a DVD-R boot of the "Bill Zebub Collection" (Link NSFW). So ... who wants to invest? We're going to rename the ballpark "SMonkey® Field" and hire some strippers. Hell, whether or not we manage to buy the Cubs, we'll probably do that.

Leave a comment with an email address and I'll send instructions on how to "invest" through our SMonkeyPal® account.

Two down ... 160 to go

Apparently the White Sox have overmisinterpreted the MLB rule that sez pitchers can blow into their hands on cold days, and have just decided to blow generally.

Bah ... I'm just disappointed that I almost had a real good "Gravity City" item today, but it didn't ... quite ... happen:

A "wind wall" dangled atop U.S. Cellular Field this morning after a weld broke loose in high winds, prompting police to close three blocks of West 35th Street to traffic near the ballpark.

But the damage wasn't expected to interfere with this afternoon's scheduled game between the White Sox and Cleveland Indians.

Yeah, good thing that game wasn't interfered with.

This blog needs more bloggers

Cuz I got nothing at the moment. No energy, no inspiration, and especially no energy. Lately, after spending all day staring at a flickering screen and pecking away at a keyboard for a living, the idea of doing so some more for "fun" with any rigor or enthusiasm is feeling a little beyond me. Last year, I tried to give The Dez a password and license to blog, but he wisely declined. Or mercifully declined, depending on one's point of view. Or both. (I vote for both. I always vote for both, because I'm a "yes, whipped cream AND ice cream on my apple pie AND punkin pie, please" kind of guy. In other words, I'm fat.) Maybe I'll have to create a fake blogger profile in his name and start fictionalizing some Dez posts ... that'll show him.

This is why I can't have nice things ...

... Because my friends make them buttfuck each other when I'm out of the room.



"Why, Mister Punk Cyclops Troll! You're ... you're beautiful ... from behind! Ook! Ook!"

I Wanna See You Kiss Him

It's getting warmer, and this is, after all, White Sox Nation over by here, so I've been hearing and loving and singing along with this song on the radio a lot this week -- good ole "Na Na Hey Hey (Kiss Him Goodbye)," by Steam.

Holy cow ... this will be the 30th season since the White Sox started playing that song, and I remember that summer well, 1977. That was the year I attended my first Sox game, at the late, lamented old Comiskey Park.

This song still rocks, and still makes me ready for summer, but this video ... is just hilarious. I somehow never pictured Steam as comprising a bunch of fat white dudes who all look like Mike "Meathead" Stivic.

Show Some Respect for the Humble Index

I've been indexing for the last two days, and boy are my brains tired. Remaining vague as always about my gig, I'll just reveal that the task has fallen on me to whip up an index for a new book I've been editing for the last few months. I've indexed many books over the last several years (including one on a freelance basis for an acquaintance who I won't name drop, except to hint that he used to, until recently, blog a very, very wordy "dangeral" blog of some notoriety), and it's a task I find relatively interesting and satisfying ... but if you've never done it, lemme tell you, it's harder than it sounds. In fact, I'm too mentally tired to blab at length about how challenging indexing can be, so maybe you'll be kind enough to suspend disbelief at the assertion that putting terms, names, and concepts in alphabetical order so that people can find things they need to find is, despite the simplicity of the concept, not a cake walk.

It can be fun, though (if you're a nerd). Not only is it a little like putting together a big word puzzle, it also provides the chance to make one's own creative mark on the book. An index is, in a way, a retelling of the narrative. Years ago, it even occurred to me that it might be a cool idea to write fiction in the form of an index. Then I read Pale Fire ... and I discovered, to some chagrin of my own, that Nabokov had already done it, and, of course, vastly more skillfully and entertainingly than I could ever hope to do. The index to Pale Fire, in fact, is one of my very favorite pieces of fiction. But then I guess I'm biased. Biased in favor of indexes, man.

Nowadays, with so much information in electronic form, and the internets and search engines and everything, old-fashioned thumb indexes don't get a lot of regard. But they're still useful -- particularly when you don't know exactly what you're looking for, and what sub-topics might be of interest. You can find things via an index that you didn't even know you were looking for. I love doing research on-line, but I still stand behind the index, dammit. The index remains sound.

So, yeah, the humble index. Next time you're thumbing through one, please show a little respect for it and the poor underpaid drone who made it. It didn't get there on its own.

Meier Hired

This just in ... Garry Meier has signed on for the 8 to 11 a.m. shift on WCKG. The mighty mighty Opie & Anthony will be on from 5 to 8. No further details on the whereabouts of Wendy Snyder are known by this blog.

By the way, I have to wonder about all you people who visit here asking the googical question "Why was Wendy fired?" -- Did you listen to the Dahl show at all over the last couple of years? It's not like things were going well for her there. I like Wendy, and I've listened to Dahl for about [mumble mumble] years, even though I often wonder why ... but the better question would be, why did she last so long? She wasn't allowed to contribute much and didn't have much of a role other than tolerating Dahl's insults and pretending his jokes were funny. Although she is apparently missed -- and one friend of the blog recently opined that Dahl's show is "kind of a sausage fest" without her.

Anyway, it's radio. People are fired all the time.

OK, I'm tired of milking this topic. But Wendy Snyder fans are welcome to continue visiting.

I'm looking forward to checking out Meier's show, I guess, although I usually want to listen to music when I'm fighting traffic on the way to work in the morning. It will be interesting to see if he can finally shake the "second banana" rep. And by interesting, I mean most likely dull and lame. Like I said, it's radio. People are dull and lame all the time. People helping people. Traffic and weather together on the downbeat.

UPDATE: OK, here's why I listen to Dahl's show -- frequent call-ins by White Sox radio dude, Ed Farmer. The following account is stolen blatantly from Dahl's website's "show log," but doesn't do the story justice. Farmio rulez.

5:24 Ed had a run in with some guy in the security line. The guy told him he was in the wrong line. There were two lines so Ed went into the shorter one, crazy him. Then he hears some guy saying "hey you, the line starts back here"

5:25 There were two lines and Ed pointed that out to him. Then the guy came up to make sure Ed heard him.

5:26 Ed told the guy he was under the misconception that he was afraid of him. The guy grabbed Ed's right arm so he turned it down towards his thumb and told him he was going to be wearing his butt on his head on the way home.

5:27 The security guys weren't even watching so they didn't notice what was happening. Then the guy said something over his shoulder and Ed told he didn't want to hear any more and that he fights dirty.

Today in Great Chicago Sports Names Today: Autumn Champion

As you know, the start of professional major league men's baseball season is just around the corner. And just around that corner is the start of professional fast-pitch women's softball. On May 29th, the NPF's Chicago Bandits face the Rockford Thunder on opening night. We ... uh, I ... here at CBRAT are am, as we I tend to get about such stuff, quite excited.

Returning to the Bandits this season is ace flamethrowing pitcher Jennie Finch -- you know her, you love her, you just don't want to find yourself in the batter's box facing her. For their part, the Rockford Thunder have added Olympic gold-medalist and all-around superstar Cat Osterman to their roster, so things should be interesting.

New to the Bandits team this season is the early front-runner for "Best Chicago Sports Team Member Name" for 2007 -- sorry, Rocky Cherry, you bane bumped down to 2nd place (although you still should get an ice cream flavor named after you).

Yeah, I'm referring to outfielder Autumn Champion. Her name sounds kind of like a character in a Thomas Pynchon novel, but, nope, she's a softball player:

The Bandits have acquired 2006 All NPF Team selection, Autumn Champion from the folded Arizona Heat. This two year veteran brings both consistancy and speed to the lineup. She led the Heat in batting average with a redhot .403 and stolen bases with 18. In 72 at bats, Champion had 11 runs, 29 hits, nine RBI, one double, one triple and four walks.

Champion played her college ball for the University of Arizona Wildcats. She was a two time NFCA first team All-American selection. She also earned Pac-10 All-Academic honors and was named to the ESPN the Magazine Academic All-District VIII team.

I can't find information on the Bandits' website about the broadcast schedule for this season, but I watched several Bandits games on Comcast Sports Net last summer, and I am definitely a fan. If you haven't yet followed this sport, give it a chance. And tell them Stronger Than Dirt sent you.

A Plea

Hey, my plea for information about Duane Dow last summer was actually quite successful, in terms of getting some information from "out there," so why not try another pop-cultural plea?

Anyway, what I'm wondering is, when is the movie "The Life of Reilly" going to be available on DVD? Or get shown (again?) in Chicago? Because I have wanted to see this movie for several months. The trailer is OK, but the clips on the promotional website are really worth watching.

And, thanks to the magic of that crazy thing YouTube, here's the first 10 (ish) minutes of the picture -- Charles Nelson Reilly's monologue of his life. It's like Spalding Gray meets ... Charles Nelson Fucking Reilly. This is a must see motion picture.

Today's Where Wendy Is Bulletin Today

Robert Feder reports:

Wendy Snyder is filling in this week as traffic reporter for Don Wade and Roma's morning show on WLS. She most recently held the same job for Steve Dahl's afternoon show on WCKG.

Oh yeah, by the way, the same Feder column says that Garry Meier may be picked up soon by WCKG for a late-morning talk show slot ... so the rumor attempted to be started by this blog several weeks ago wasn't so far off base after all.

Cole Stoma Notebooks #2 -- "Good News @ Last"

I've been going through a few boxes of old stuff tonight, and I turned up some masters from a zine project in 2000 that I never finished and forgot all about -- a project titled Good News @ Last. As the cover indicates, it was intended to be "Ouzipian product no. 1," because I was heavily into the Oulipo at the time, and I wanted to concoct a new branch of it for zines. ("The Workshop of Potential Zines," get it? I think the "ouzipo" name hasn't been used by anyone yet still, but one Google search isn't definitive ... yet that's all I'm doing. So back to the narrative.)

The premise was -- as I dimly recall -- that I had written four related but different short stories, and via some geometrical mishegoss I can't quite refresh my recollection of just from these 2D master pages, the zine was to be stapled in the center and trimmed in a way that allowed for pages to be turned in various combinations, so that the four stories would be combined into ... I dunno from math. A bunch of variations.

For example, here's page one of story one (they're all very short pages ... very short stories):

Before long, he said to me, "I'm off to get cigarettes, you'll probably never see me again." To that I spat, "If so, it will be too soon!"

Page one of story two goes as follows:

Before much time passed, I asked him for a cigarette. He said, "I am excluded from the function of cigarettes; realize that, to take them through me, I am probably never to be seen again." To that I said, "So you're refusing to give me one?"

Page one, story three:

Before much longer, he said to me, "I'm an excluded function around cigarettes." He was pouting. "So don't buy any, I said."

And page one, story four:

Before a very long time, he said to me that "one" is excluded from the function of "I." I lit a cigarette and scratched my lower jaw. "Therefore you will probably never see me again."

The sickest arty farty conceit was that you needed to read all four to get clues as to what the fuck was going on in any of them, which made it one story. And because you could read it in various orders, you would find out certain details in random sequence, which would affect your realization of the story in varying ways. Also, it's about a lawyer who goes insane and befriends a dog who can write, who then witness a horrible crime and go even insaner. You can begin to sense the deep trench I had dug myself into, pulling-this-off-wise, I think.

I gave up on it because I was having trouble with the mechanical details. And I got lazy. Also, the stories weren't all that great. There were a few good lines, but some of the jokes were blatantly stolen from well-known sources, and ... ecch. I hit the wall in terms of trying to write fiction that year and have never really written any since. This is actually possibly the last fiction I tried to render.

Anyway, I do kinda like the following excerpt, which is notated in pencil on the edge of the paper as page "1-5" -- the fifth page of the first story:

There were thirty-seven thousand, three hundred forty-four 1966 Dodge Chargers sold, only 468 with the 426 Hemi engine. And only one of those contained a dog who could write. It was navy blue with a black leather interior. The front passenger seat was covered with white hairs. On the dash was scattered four or five post-it notes scrawled with ballpoint pen, "Brush me," Give me a brushing," "Please, the brush," etc.

Dying to know what happens next? On page 1-6, this paragraph (typeface: Gill Sans) convenes:

We hadn't spoken for some moments when, in the parking garage, the dog asked me a question. "You can drive a stick, right?" I nodded. He scratched at his hindquarter for a second and handed me a set of keys. "Good. Then we'll take my ride."

I guess the dog can talk, now, too. See how easy it is to fuck up when you're playing out of your league?

I Can't Complain, But Sometimes I Still Do

Joe Walsh is my (Stronger Than Dirt Pete Moss's) official fake uncle. Not one of the dour, hostile uncles; one of the fun uncles. I dunno how to describe him any more succinctly than that.



Joe Walsh - Life's Been Good

I remember the first time I heard this song on the radio -- which was the first time I heard it anywhere. I was riding in my dad's Pontiac in Gurnee in the late '70s, heading home from Gungler's Drug Store or some other small-town quaint independent business that no longer exists. I thought it kicked ass, rocked, and was hilarious. My dad thought the words were funny. One of many fond memories of pop-culture connection moments with my parents, who were, in retrospect, not all that uncool.

Maybe in the near future I'll do a post about how I took my mom's Redbone (not Leon; the band Redbone) albums in for show and tell in kindergarten. That went over okay. Although my dad's Rusty Warren albums would have killed.

Oh yeah, by the way, this is my favorite Joe Walsh song. (This placed here so I can watch it later when I masturbatorially read my own blog.)



James Gang - Walk Away

And as a chaser, here's this. Attention, serious Joe Walsh nerds, this live version contains the Bolero chunk forced off of the "James Gang Rides Again" album version by the thugs working for Ravel's estate. (Actually, it cuts in at that part of the song, with the first part missing, but you can't always get flawless.)



Joe Walsh's Barnstorm - The Bomber

Et tu, Jimmus Peterikus?

Beware -- It's The Ides of March!

Ray Liotta reminds me of my inevitable lack of athletic ability!

No, not this Ray Liotta. This Ray Liotta, pitcher for the Winston-Salem Warthogs, minor league affiliate of the Chicago White Sox.

(CBRAT Debaffler: The post title is a clever reference to this semi-notorious web meme from a few years ago.)

Reasons to be Colicky, Part Million and Three

So the weather gets nice, and I come down with a head cold. I blame the goddamn germ-ridden airplane and/or hotel crowd from last week. Traveling is, for so many reasons, completely and totally evil. I should have been born a tree. But then I'd probably have really horrible allergies. And birds living in me. I hate birds.

Head colds suck, but I guess they're not all bad. In the the half glass empty column: Coughing, aches, chills, congestion, nose bleediness. On the other hand, in the half glass full column: Feeling vaguely like I'm on a low-grade psychedelic drug all the time.

The full glass full viewpoint (and by "full glass full," I mean "full glass empty"): This cold will probably end within a couple of days, just in time for the weather to get cold and snowy again (damn you, Tom Skilling).

Cough cough cough. Cough cough.

Etc.

Template-Related Update: I hate this hated the new color scheme like meeces to pieces. I'm going So I went (more or less, with some tweaks) back to the unreadable white-on-black burgoo as soon as I garner garnered the energy. James Garner Garnered. Insert answering machine joke here, a la The Rockford Files.

And if you find the unreadability of the blog itself too much to deal with, I suggest reading the site in some kind of RSS viewy setup. Google Reader is not bad. I don't, by the way, recommend "My Yahoo" for this purpose or for any other, because it sucks hairy testicleeze. It rarely updates correctly, things disappear all the time for no reason, it's unnecessarily challenging to edit, etc. etc. etc. Not a problem on your end? OK, so use it then. Hunky dory.

Oh yeah, by the way -- cough cough. Cough cough cough cough cough. Cough.

Template-Related Update #2 (March 15): As of now, I've reverted completely to the old template, and perhaps I've learned a lesson from the last week of frustrating non-productive tinkering. But I wouldn't bet on it.

Black on White Silver?

OK, template changes are finally underway. The first change is for readability's sake. More adjustments lazily to come. Unfortunately, I kind of hate all the available templates (or at least a few elements of them, and there aren't enough options for changing certain things to please the unpleaseable me), so to get this really right I'll have to wade into the html swamp ... which I'm not in the mood for today. I really should be outside, anyway, instead of watching the Cubs game and futzing around with this mishegoss. But now my OCD is kicking in ... and I really want to figure out how to do away with the goddamn "all caps" title, dammit. Geh.

UPDATE: We're getting there. Got the title left-aligned the way I prefer, and the post headings in sans-serif. Not so sure about the heading & link colors yet. Isn't blog layout editing fascinating? Gotta be right up there with ... baseball spring training.

UPDATE 2 (Sunday March 11): Still tinkering. And watching another spring training game on the cable, this time of the White Sox variety.

Speaking of the White Sox, the magic baseball computer over at Baseball Prospectus sez the Sox will go 72 and 90 this year. I hate to succumb to negativity (yeah, right), but I think that's probably a pretty accurate Kreskination. I think maybe they'll win a few more than that, if they re-aquire Aaron Rowand for center field, but not many. They'll finish in third or fourth place this year -- bank on it. Oh, and Ozzie Guillen will be fired on the day after the season ends.

By the way, the main reason for the baseball nerd-puter's dire prognostication: Too many Sox players on the "wrong side" of 30. Oof. That hurts. Pretty soon, I'll be on the wrong side of the next decade after that. At least when I turned 34, there was the song "Slit Skirts" to orient my experience ... the only song I can think of that applies here is the godawful Jimmy Buffett song (redundant, I know, and also it sez the same thing twice), "A Pirate Looks at 40."

That's got to put me in a pretty high percentile as far as geezerness of bloggers goes. Which reminds me -- I was recently told by a friend that I am too old to be a "slacker" anymore, even though I haven't really changed at all (other than actually holding down a job for almost the last 12 years in a row and stuff along those lines) ... so I guess I'm just a bum. Are you happy, dad? Your prophesy came true! And, as we all know, "the bums lost." Lost what, we're not sure. All I know is that my doctor has promised that pretty soon I'm going to get that "thorough" exam, so I'd better lay into some CCR ahead of time, get the jump on it.

Wow, that was a crazy digression. Hangovers and time changes always fuck with my concentration.

This Blog Post Did Not Take Place

Damn, things do happen while I'm gone. Just read that Jean Baudrillard died.

And We're Back

Yes, the entire staff of CBRAT has succesfully returned from the big unnamed conference in Washington, D.C., where we got to wear a "PRESS" badge and eat some free food and attend a bunch of panel discussions about stuff, including a couple with some semi-famous people who I won't shout out here cuz I'm into the vagueness thing right now.

It wasn't a bad trip, but there's no place like home, Wiz. Sure, I have to provide my own turn-down service (which comes naturally to me -- I just tell myself "no" straight out -- no leading myself on with "maybes" or go-nowhere pity dates -- because I just don't like myself "that way" -- get it? "turn-down"? ha ha ha).

It's beyond time to try to get some substantial posts together and maybe garner some non-Wendy-Snyder-related interest in the blog (a tall order, I know), but tonight I think I'm just going to relax, drink some beer, and enjoy not being on the road. Cuz I am Tireder Than Dirt at the moment. Plus, I have a lot of blog reading to catch up on, let alone writing.

My childhood hero Henry Reed once said that he didn't understand why people think traveling is so tiring, because you're just sitting down the whole time. Well, Henry didn't have to schlepp to the remote economy lot at O'Hare, which I think is actually located in the Quad Cities (Bettendorf, to be specific). So, pffttthhhppp. (That's a sleepy sort of raspberry noise there.)

And Chicago has warmed up in my absence. Which is a huge relief. D.C. had a little snow "storm" the other day ... it's hugely amusing to watch a big city paralyzed by one inch of flakes when you can watch it from the comfort of your expensive hotel room. If I weren't so lazy, I'd make a "flakes" joke about D.C., cuz so many come to mind, but ... lazy. So lazy.

OK. That's enough for now. Moss out.

Fear and Colic on the Loose -- Road Tripping Time Again

In my capacity as a person with my job, I'll be attending an unnamed legal conference in an unnamed nation's crapital for most of next week -- as a member of the press, yes, the [adjective] and [other adjective] legal industry trade press type thing -- so there won't be any blog posts posted to this blog until probably Friday evening, at the earliest. Not that I've been posting much of blogsequence lately anyway. Maybe something will happen at the law-talkery shindig that will be bloggable. But probably not. Work and CBRAT don't mix ... and alluding very vaguely to law and publishing is as close as I am willing to get to that colloidal burgoo. Anyway, for those select but very important few who worry that I am dead when I am not heard from electronically for a few days -- fear not. I am merely eating room service and bitching about poor channel selection on the hotel cable.

Last Chance To See

... this YouTube video while reading a version of the English translation in the sidebar, to the right. Because pretty damn soon -- maybe even tomorrow, if I'm on the ball -- the sidebar material currently consisting of the New Zealand All-Blacks rugby team's pre-game war chant is going to be re-replaced with CBRAT's own adulterated lyrically altered version of the White Sox theme song ... "Thunderstruck" ... No no no -- "(Let's Go) Go-Go White Sox!" Yeah ... so ... that's something to look forward to.



HAKA KA MATE

Saturday YouTube Throwaway Posting Post

This song has been going thru my head in one form or another at least once a day for the last several months, dammit.



Neil Young - Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere

This one, too.




Bob Dylan - Everything Is Broken

Things I love (and by love I mean hate), part 9,412,983

Yeah, I always love clicking about 80 times to get to my inbox in the web mail interface -- any web mail interface. Who opens their mail and wants to go to some saved folder instead of their inbox first? Hey, autistic programmers of the world -- give me the inbox immediately, you stupidity-crusted nerds!

In other news, I hate all technology, and all non-technology. Leave the damn bush babies alone, you insane spear-wielding chimpanzees! All of the "higher" primates suck -- even the bonobos. They have hideous genitals and are mean to their orphans. Yeah -- you never hear about the "mean to orphans" part, just the all-day sexing. Even though from the footage I've seen, it's not exactly inspiring sex. I think a 14-yr-old boy could last longer than a bonobo.

Yes. Things I hate. Apes, and lousy user interfaces. Which is redundant, because I have never met a user interface I liked. Nor a user.

Today in TV Show Review Blogging Today

Man vs. Wild, Discovery Network

In short, it's Jackass, crazy limey special forces style:

"Here Aye yam, alone [except for the camera crew], on a glass-eeyer in Alasker, and Aye'm going to die if I cahn't find food and shelter soon ... Uh oh, here comes a polar bear ... I had better pee on me own head ... it's an old British commando technique ... cor, yeah, that's a right solid stream, eh? ...

"In 1922, a hiker in these parts named Brad Fidgepoddilaparbadoobadoo peed on his own head and froze to death in a solid block of yellow ice. So Aye've got to keep moving.

"Ay've surveyed me position, and eaten some raw disgusting animals alive, and peed on me head again, and given the wally a right shake for good measure, so I will survive the night in me improvised shelter made of me own eyelashes and blocks of frozen pee chiseled off me forehead with me own feces, honed razor sharp by repeatedly scraping against me own frozen sphincter.

"Tomorrow, I must find civilization, or die. One thing I know from my training is to follow the KFC signs, which from my vantage on top of this vedddy dangerous but picturesque iceberg -- and which I am totally alone upon despite the fact that I am now being photographed from 300 feet in the air by a circling helicopter full of paramedics and tea -- are only a day's hike away. For two fings invariably go togevver, civilization, and KFC. And now a word from our sponsor ..."

If you can't beat them ... next time try a chilled copper bowl with a little cream of tartar

Shoot me ... it's a food blog post. This is what I made for dinner tonight. Baked "bubble and squeak" -- a savory cake-like mixture of mashed potatoes and hashed brussels sprouts with sauteed onions and carrots, garlic, ham, and swiss cheese given the treatment for 25 minutes at 375 degrees. Half of it is now in my tummy.

Recommended wine: Black cherry Fresca, 2007.

Musical accompaniment: Loudon Wainwright III, "Living Alone":

You sit at a desk and you squirm in a chair
You stretch out on a couch, you could fall asleep there
But you lie in your bed and you try not to think
You put on your bathrobe and you stand at the sink
And then you look into the mirror and you unplug the phone
You re-read the letter, you're living alone.

You clear out a closet and you listen to a clock
You wipe off a table and you pick up a sock
And then you put up your feet and you stand on your head
You hate what you did and you regret what you said
And then you gaze at a spapshot and wait for the tone
You talk to yourself, yeah, you're living alone.

You were always alone, but you just didn't know it
You tried living with someone but then you had to blow it
And if there's one thing you learned after living with her
Is that you're not the man now that you never were.

So you turn up the heat and you fight off a cold
You thumb through the Bible as you sit there on hold
But you're your own boss you can do as you please
Open a window and let in a breeze
You sit down to dinner, yeah, you cooked your own
You light a candle, you're living alone.

You think about her and how did it end
Your cleaning lady has become your very best friend
You're back in your hometown, you're living in fear
They wonder where has he been and why is he here
You're watching the reruns of the Twilight Zone
Your life in a nutshell, you're living alone.

You were always alone, but you just didn't see it
You tried to be someone different but you just couldn't be it
And if there's one thing you learned after all of it
Is that you're usually fired before you can quit.

What you need is a dog, some goldfish or a cat
A boa constrictor and a laboratory rat
The end is at hand now and you have the means
A roll of toilet paper and the right magazines
Your parents are dead now and your kids are full grown
You're 53 now, you're 53 now, you're 53 now
You're living alone.

2007 Baseball Preview #1Cubs' Field Boss, Lou Piniella: Labor Hero

Here's the first in an intended series of posts related to the upcoming MLB season, and specifically Chicago's two teams. I'm not going to clutter things up with the same old speculative crap about Marks Prior and Buehrle, Derrek Lee, Kerry Wood, Jermaine Dye, or even Ozzie Guillen, because every other one of the 80 million baseball blogs out there are doing a damn good regurgatative job of that. I'm going to try to come up with some unusual stuff and see if I can get any long-tail hits out of it. Or not.

Anyway, the first one is, in a roundabout way, about the Cubs. Here it is.

In my last post, I referenced Jim Bouton's book, Ball Four, and my own post inspired my own self to start reading it again. Early in the book is a passage that relates niftily to the upcoming '07 season, about new Cubs manager Lou Piniella.

The book begins just before the start of the 1969 season, with Bouton at age 30 and in decline as a sore-armed former fire-thrower about to join the short-lived Seattle Pilots (who became the Milwaukee Brewers in 1970) in an attempt to revive his flagging career. Also joining the Pilots that Spring -- a young Lou Piniella.

In chapter 2, Bouton describes reporting for training camp on February 26, six days late, due to a brief players' strike. He talks about how, when the strike was called, he had intended to live up to his contract and report on time, because his position on the team was insecure, but then:

What made me change my mind was a phone call I made to Lou Piniella, a twenty-six-year-old rookie who'd been in the Baltimore and Cleveland organizations.

Since the Pilots were not a team yet we had no player representative, so the three or four Pilots at the meeting at the Biltmore [in New York, with players' representative Marvin Miller, where the strike was called] were asked to call four or five teammates each to tell them what happened. I reached Lou in Florida and he said that his impulse was to report, that he was scared it would count against him if he didn't, that he was just a rookie looking to make the big leagues and didn't want anybody to get angry at him. But also that he'd thought it over carefully and decided he should support the other players and the strike. So he was not reporting.

That impressed the hell out of me. Here's a kid with a lot more at stake than I, a kid risking a once-in-a-lifetime shot. And suddenly I felt a moral obligation to the players. I decided not to go down.

Jim Bouton's Vintage Base Ball Federation

Eventually I'll put this link into the seldom-utilized sidebar, when I update the "National Pastime" section for the long-awaited (by me) resumption of MLB action, but for now, here's a regular-type post. Check-outable is this:

http://www.vintagebbf.com/

VBBF MISSION STATEMENT

To spread the charms and values of vintage base ball, and accelerate the formation of vintage clubs and leagues around the world, by codifying the rules and equipment of the game's 19th century roots, and organizing competitions that include an annual, six-team Vintage Base Ball World Series tournament.

The Vintage Base Ball Federation was co-founded by one of my favorite dudes, Jim Bouton. Jim Bouton, for those of you who don't know, is the author of the best baseball book possible in the known universe, Ball Four, which, I have it on good authority, is a fun read even for non-baseball fans. He has been a vigorous advocate for several years for good, old-fashioned baseball and the yards in which it is played. Plus, he's extremely funny.

Jim Bouton's homepage is at: http://www.jimbouton.com/.

Le Chiffre est mort

Now what I am I going to use as an excuse to continue refusing to donate money to my alma mater (juris doctorally speaking)? I guess I still have a couple fallbacks, such as the fact that I pay taxes, dammit, and I'll be paying for law school for another 20 friggin years.

Let's see. That's three years of law school, one summer ruined by studying for the bar exam, nine months of practicing law, and twelve and a half years of being a writer/editor. And a 30 year payment plan. Sure, deciding to go law school instead of grad school to study southeast Asian politics worked out great. Actually, that course of action probably would have had more than its share of disasters, as well. Although I would have studied southeast Asian politics at NIU, whose mascot is a huskie dog named Victor E. Oh well, road not taken, etc. etc., and so forth.

In meta news of the blog, in one week, we'll reach the one-year anniversary of the commencement of Stronger Than Dirt Pete Moss as an honored symbol of pointless blog nonsense. (Not a mascot! Honored symbol! Honored symbol! Honored symbol!) In other words, CBRAT turns one year old. Maybe I'll update the template in celebration of that occasion. Or not. Probably not.

POSTSCRIPT: I haven't seen the new "Casino Royale" flick yet, but I'm 100 percent sure that this version will remain my favorite, no matter what. Does the new one have Peter Sellers? No? Forget it, then.

And Now a Word from Cole Stoma

It's time to introduce a long-running character to this blog ... a long-running character, I mean, in such print blogs as That Long Newspaper Spoon and such failed (-to-be-finished-being-written) novels as Cole Stoma. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, now presenting his first contribution of his non-semi-famous way of doing whatever it is he does, ladies and gentlemen, here is Cole Stoma:

My life is completely fucking stupid. In my life, in this phase of it, my idea of a good time is to cook some really good scalloped potatoes, with good cheddar and some cayenne pepper sprinkled over the top, and then to eat it in front of the TV with a nice bottle of beer and watch a Jacques Pepin cooking show. That is what passes for a good time in my stupid life. It’s like I’m some kind of old maid, but I’m a dude.

Thank you, Cole Stoma. We look forward to your future submissions of abject failure, you straw man of fictional loserdom. Or not.

Waiting in the wings: John Kitchener, Helen Hiwatter, Don Fazool, and Parsley Garnish.

Refused entry to the theater, but in a facetious manner: Noam Crosby, Feng Shui, and The Swami, Davis, Jr.

"What about the what? Oh ... yeah ... shit ... good point ... I guess I'm wrong ..."

I wonder why there aren't any "first drafts" extant by classical bigwigs, like Plato. Like, how many dialogues did Plato write where he painted himself into a corner and the antagonist voice in the dialogue ended up beating Plato in the argument? It had to happen sometimes ... I mean, haven't you ever thought you were onto something and then thought about it for a while and realized you were wrong? Unless Plato just switched up the characters based on the roll of the dice, he must have tossed out some dialogues.

(excerpt from my upcoming book, "Standup Comedy for University of Chicago Students, as told by Dr. Milton Rosenberg, Ph.D.")

Unsolicited semi-personal factamazoid post, issue number one

CDs currently on my CD changer (literally on it, as in sitting on top of it): Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Charles Mingus, Eric Dolphy, John Coltrane, Sun Ra. When did I become a goddamn jazzbo?

I have entered the bizarro world

Wow, I just realized I ordered a pizza before getting drunk.

(We also would have accepted the same sentence, except replacing "ordered a pizza" with "blogged a blog.")

OK! Pizza's here! Time to rectumfry the non-drunk portion of the evening.

Preznit's Day Weeeeeeekend, hell yeah!

Meh: Credit Where It's Dued

Today Slate has an article about various meaningless interjection words, which I didn't actually read, except for what it has to say about the word "meh."

What it doesn't say about "meh" -- and what I'm going to get into the record right now -- is that I honestly believe the term was, if not coined outright, at least firstly or nearly firstly popularized by my good friend, Mr. Insert Namehere, aka, Foojang, who started using "meh" as a stand-in for pretty much any situation calling for a resigned expression of mild "je ne sais quois"-nitude, at least as early as the early-to-mid mid-1980s -- much, much earlier than the episode of The Simpsons that is credited with meh-ing the term to Internet meh-pularity. Take note, linquists. Uh, I mean, linguists. Linquists sounds like a family of Swedes. So take note, linguists. Or not.

Meh.

Gravity City: Rambling Angry Digression Edition

I almost missed this "stuff falling off of other stuff" item from the other day, but thanks to Steve Rhodes's must-read "The [Day of the Week] Papers" column at my favorite Chicago-oriented website, The Beachwood Reporter, I didn't miss this David Roeder columnar item in the Sun-Times ... although, as the source text itself questions, is it really a "stuff falling off of other stuff" item or something a bit more Chicagoly shady?

Scaffolding popped up last week around the Farwell Building, 664 N. Michigan. It is there to keep pedestrians from being hit by falling facade pieces, said Dave Bayless, spokesman for the owner, the Terra Museum of American Art.

You might remember the Farwell, a 1927 building that got an unexpected reprieve last month when the city landmarks commission said developers couldn't hollow it out to make it part of a condo project. The decision threw the project by Prism Development Co. into confusion. Without the Farwell part, Prism would have to drastically alter its plans next door for condos it is marketing under the Ritz-Carlton name.

If you know the way the game is played in Chicago, you might side with Michael Moran, vice president of the group Preservation Chicago, and call this a "scaffolding scam." Moran wrote: "This is a typical ploy to get a building demolished. 'See, it's decrepit,' owners claim. 'I even had to put scaffolding around it. Now don't you see why I have to demolish it?' "

By the way, why don't they just change the name of this town to Chicondo? Before much longer, this town will be nothing but. Although I suppose I should save my "Chicago has been ruined" colicky posting for some other time. But, long story short, Chicago has been ruined. It sucks. I mean, it has always sucked in many ways (it's 1 fucking degree Fahrenheit outside, and it has been that way for about 18 thousand days in a row -- just to name one sucky characteristic of this location), but in the last several years, the good things about Chicago have gotten scarcer and scarcer. Unless, that is, you like extreme blandness, cheaply constructed overpriced housing, and cutesy post-post-PoMo "urban tchotchke" shops ... lots of "urban tchotchke" shops (because everyone needs a sculpture of a labradoodle made out of baling wire and rusty antique 7-Up bottle caps, not to mention a six-piece set of hand-blown cocktail glasses in various colors to match every type of adulterated pukishly-flavored "martini" you love to drink so much ... green for apple, black for chocolate, orange for St. Joseph's Children's Aspirin, etc.) -- in which case you probably love it. And you are probably a 23-year-old investment banker from rural Wisiowindiasotachigoura who thinks Wrigley Field is a kickass place to score (i.e., drunkenly scream at) chicks (female version: you think a martini is permitted to contain any liquor other than gin or vodka and vermouth -- which is such a misguided viewpoint that I would need a whole separate blog to address it) and, dude, you got soooooo drunk at Barleycorn last weekend, dude, and you think Simon's Tavern is a "dive bar" and .... well, I wish you well, if by "well," you mean, "would go away forever." If you're not a person like that, and you're thinking about moving here, don't bother. It's over. Seriously. Chicago is over. It's not a "pretty soon" or "in the near future" thing -- it's past tense. History. The end has taken place. If the suburbs didn't suck harder than all that has ever sucked, simultaneously and in unison, with the fervor of the universe's champion sucking enthusiast ... gahhh ... again, let's post on that topic some other time, when I feel like working myself up into a frusternated pissed-offness. Which I prefer not to do now (editor's note: too late), cuz we gots a three-day weekend coming up -- woo! Preznit's Day off this year! Bartender! Rambling digressions all around, on me!

Chicago Wrestling Promoter Bob Luce Dead at 79

I'm not much for pro wrestling these days, other than the occasional relapse into reminding myself of why it's no longer entertaining, but I enjoyed it a lot back in the 1970s when, way up in the northern boonies, I would jiggle the fine-tuner to bring in fuzzy black and white UHF broadcasts of whoever the current behemothal fake-fighting apes were at the time, and laugh my pre-adolescent head off.

And, of course, I, Stronger Than Dirt Pete Moss, got my start in the world as a fake wrestling manager, so my heart will always be a little bit in the grappling game ... or, whatever you call it.

I don't think I've ever heard the name Bob Luce before reading his obit today (thanks to One O. Brawl for the tip), but I think his passing deserves a mention. I don't recall being aware of him as a personality, but I dug his work.

He brought noted grapplers such as Andre the Giant, Dick the Bruiser, Buddy Rogers, Gorgeous George and Verne Gagne to Chicago, showcased them in appearances, including his weekly local TV show leading up to his events, and introduced them with elaborate music as they entered the arena.

I'm also reminded by the obituary of how cool the old International Amphitheater used to be. Mang, Chicago was Chicago then. Along with the old Stadium, the Amphitheater was about as City of Big Ugly Acne-Crusted Hair-Capped Shoulders as you could get. Here is what Luce said about his preferred venue:

"If wrestling has an odor, as some suggest, it is not readily detectable in this arena that also caters to livestock shows and political conventions."

Indeed. Rest in wonderful mayhem, Mr. Luce.

You know yer a nerd when you think about pro baseball as a game played by general managers rather than players

I don't think the Cubs or the White Sox are going to get anywhere near post-season play this year, but I do think it's going to be a season that's fun to watch. For me, the interesting contest will be between Cubs GM Jim "Never Saw a Buffet He Didn't Like" Williams and Sox GM Ken "I Brought You a World Champsionship, Isn't It Time to Stop Calling Me Kenny?" Williams, and their divergent spending philosophies.

To sum it up very briefly, Williams has gone the cheap route for '07, whereas Hendry has been spending like a neocon at an imperialism party. I would like to come up with a better metaphor than that, but in the meantime, that's what's going in the draft version.

Anyway, I think it's kind of ironic that the Cubs have been so free-spending lately, because perhaps more than any other team in Major League Baseball, they can count on putting 3 million asses in seats (or their fully paid no-show ghosts, at least -- since attendance is measured these days by ticket sales, and not, you know, attendance) regardless of which clump of bums they put out on the field. I mean, I'd be willing to play second base for them this year, for the league minimum of $327,000 (hell, I'd even give them an under-the-table cut rate deal for, say, $100 grand), and I do not think it would affect their bottom line one bit. And I'm a really bad second baseman. I mean, I'm pushing 40, and way past my peak ... which was, I think, when I was 8. And I wasn't very good then, even though I was close to leading the little league at drawing walks from 3rd grade pitching.

But I digress.

The specific reason for today's "nobody cares" baseball post is that I have to believe that Ken Williams is laughing his fine ass off right now. The sports sections in Chicago's daily papers (OK, their websites) today were plastered with the news that Cubs ace starting pitcher Carlos Zambrano has decided he wants him some of that moolah the Trib Co. has been showering on the likes of Alfonso Soriano like ... uh ... a urolagnia specialist at a FloMax convention ($126 million over 7 years). The Tribune quoted Zambo as saying he wants a contract extension inked before opening day, and he wants a big one:

"I'm ready to sign, and I would do my job anyway with the Cubs this year," Zambrano said. "Whatever happens, I don't want to know [anything] about a contract during the season. I want to sign with the Cubs before the season starts. If they don't sign me, sorry, but I must go. That's what Carlos Zambrano thinks."

...

"[Cubs general manager] Jim [Hendry] spent a lot of money. I hope he has more for 'Big Z.'"

Gotta love the self-referential third-person usage there.

This is exactly the type of thing Ken Williams said he wanted to avoid when he traded Freddy Garcia for a few prospects. A few days in advance of that trade, here's what Williams said about current major league salary levels:

"I'm worried about the industry, and the industry affects everything that the White Sox will be able to do," said Williams in a recent interview. "You simply, if you are practicing any fiscal sanity whatsoever ... I'm just disgusted."

So whose approach is going to work out better, Hendry's or Williams's? Or will they both fail? And how will we know? The Cubs are likely to draw a ton of fans no matter what, but it remains to be seen whether the Sox can continue the box office success they enjoyed last year in the aftermath of the '05 championship season.

Anyway, I'm not an economist, Captain, just a humble baseball fan, so it beats the hell outta me. The White Sox might do better than the Cubs in terms of wins and losses this year, or they might be getting themselves on track for another World Series run by '10.

And the Cubs -- hey, with this bold strategy, they could win it all. Who knows? New field manager Lou Piniella sez it's time.

HAH!!!! I crack myself up sometimes.

My Asperger's symptoms are not going away anytime soon

In this one, I believe Ian Dury kinda anticipates Jon Langford and the Waco Brothers somewhat. It's jaunty.



Ian Dury and the Blockheads - Dance of the Crackpots

Equinoxical Harbinger 2: Palehose Seven!

Yes, in the words of Larry Sanders, "It's fleezing! It's fleezing!" but we all know that it's a transient condition. A few weeks from now, we'll barely remember. Plus, a few weeks from now ... yeah, here's the part where I pimp the White Sox yet again, for no profit and virtually no reward of any kind.

Sure, there's not really much to do in regard to baseball right now, even if you're a geek. The big trades and free agent signings are pretty much over. The Cubs and Sox both raised the prices of their tickets, which soon will go on sale and sell out to mysterious, shadowy, and evil ticket brokerages (at least one of which, in the case of the Cubs, is owned by the team's parent corp. itself) in short order, and once again, I'll be lucky to go to two or three games this year. So, aside from whining about how the local teams are going to finish somewhere between third place and the basement yet again (sorry, Kenny, I'm not buying this revamped bullpen just yet), but you still can't attend many games (especially the Cubs, who I now hate, largely because I live three L stops from Wrigley Field and I work at home on Fridays, and I cannot spend Friday afternoons getting drunk in the bleachers due to the goddamn contradictions of capitalism) ... well, it's a bit of a lull at the moment.

Was a lull, that is. Because now there's this: Carl Skanberg's Palehose 7, a comical strip in the vein of last year's excellent Palehose 6. Already, three installments are up. Go, go go! Obscure cartoon humor awaits you!

NatLamp? Yumpin' yiminy, I t'ought yew wuz dead! or Read This Blog or We'll Shoot This Dog

Nobody watches the YouTube videos here, but I thought this one was semi-noteworthy anyway. It's a fairly predictable mashup of 24 and Aqua Teen Hunger Force, a little satire on the Boston Mooninite Lite-Brite scandal from last week. What I thought was semi-noteworthy was that it's allegedly produced by National Lampoon ... which I wasn't sure even existed anymore, despite the generally awful website. I still remember when they used to be funny. It's still just a memory, alas.

Wag the Dog?

Anna Nicole Smith's untimely death (just 27 days younger than STDPM) is knocking crazy astronette Lisa Marie Nowak out of the headlines. Nobody wins from this double tragedy. Except maybe Bobby Trendy.

Too Cold To Blog

Sorry, but the heating is just inadequate in this joint, and it's very drafty in the computer vicinity. This weather is driving me the rest of the short distance to crazy. Got a batch of cheesy scalloped potatoes in the oven now (be careful with the scalloped potatoes -- they call them scalloped, but they're really potatoes) and after I eat them, I'm hunkering under a big blanket and camping out in front of the warm glow of the television for the "Naked Trucker and T-Bones" show. Until May.

Nostalgia for the Early Mashup Era

We were so naive in 2001, weren't we? We could still be surprised then. We weren't yet jaded and callused by the death of western culture.

Yeah, OK, I don't know about any of that, but the best song that came out in 2001 was a fairly rudimentary mashup, by today's standards, of The Strokes and Christina Aguilera by Freelance Hellraiser. Yeah, you got yer RIAAs and yer Kleptones and yer Danger Meeces in more recent times, but "A Stroke of Genius" still hits on all cylinders.



Freelance Hellraiser - A Stroke of Genius

Groundhog, feh ... I gotta harbinger for yez right here, buddy

I can sense the end of winter approaching. White Sox pitchers and catchers report for Spring Training in two weeks. Position players show up five days later. Approximately one minute hence, Ozzie Guillen offends the media for the first time in '07.* Let's play ball!

Yeah, yeah, I know ... Chicago has its collective head up its ample ass right now over the trademark-protected "Big Game" allegedly taking place this weekend, and the upcoming obscene yet ponderous spectacle is all anyone is talking -- or, more accurately, being talked at -- about. So, in the spirit of ... uh, that ... here's my prediction: The score of the aforementioned "Juego Grande" will be 27 to 12.

* Not counting his mangled pronunciation in an interview the other day of "Urlacher," which was just freakin' hilarious.

"Like a butter lamb born into a world of hot knives" -- The Cole Stoma Notebooks, part one

Long ago, in a time before broadband, I used to lounge on the couch a lot at night with these obsolete analog things we called "notebooks" and write stuff down in a really inefficient and painful process we called "longhand." Then, after I filled up a bunch of pages with mostly crossed-out chicken scratches, I would select out 300 to 1000 words or so that didn't make me want to puke, and make a "zine" out of it ... which is sort of an antique kind of blog thing, in a way, only printed on paper and reproduced on the work photocopier at lunchtime. (Some of the titles of those defunct samizdat publications are in the banner up top.)

I recently stumbled on a pile of these notebooks in my disused "dining room" (scare quotes employed because I have never eaten a meal in there; it's pretty much a storage room, aka, place to throw junk when I don't want to look at it so much anymore), and the first impression I got while flipping through them was, "Wow, I used to smoke some really good weed in the '90s."

Maybe too good. Toward the end, chronologically, of these notebooks, I was clearly spending a lot less time fleshing anything out, because they devolve from full pages of text to pages filled mostly with goofy little cartoon faces and vague, jotted notes that I apparently intended to make into a story someday, which day never came. For no particular reason at all, here are a few, vintage 1999 or thereabouts:

~~~~ cupola --- stoned artist -- 3 white housewives ---- "I'm fucking him" -- fucking him now? or future? -- both

Steve Allen confronted by a talking cat ~~~~~ hypnosis, telepathy, pickled herring, Bergman movies

Take me to your desires.

Onion-assed man
-slammed in door
-makes dogs cry

I was not long thereafter consulted in my capacities as a solicitor by an aggrieved man with an ass for an onion. "My soup is ruined," he wailed. "A total loss!"

Warning: Service Interruption Imminent

OK, I'm fed up with Blogger and I'm looking for a new place to engage in this pointless toy bloggery, or else I'm just calling it quits entirely. The new setup is garbage ... error this, error that, glitches, constant difficulties in posting, can't view the blog, blah blah blah. If there's anything I don't need, it's more headaches for no good reason.

This is today's thing, and the reason why I can't look at anyone's blogger blog at the moment (so this post comes to you courtesy of Rene Descartes, I guess):

We're sorry, but we were unable to complete your request.

When reporting this error to Blogger Support or on the Blogger Help Group, please:

* Describe what you were doing when you got this error.
* Provide the following error code and additional information.

bX-vjhbsj

Sure, put the code on the "Blogger Help Group," if it makes you feel better. I've never seen anyone from the assholes in Mountain View (i.e., anyone from Google) provide any answers or even make any appearance at all in that forum. So it's more of a "Helpless Blogger Emotional Support Group" than anything else, where you can go to say "Me too -- same problem here" while you waste yet more time fretting over your point-free nerd activity.

I need a better hobby. I'd take up knitting, but apparently it's obligatory to blog about it, so never mind that.

UPDATE: Service interruption downgraded to "empty threat watch," which means that conditions are right for empty threats to develop. If you see an empty threat on this blog, please take refuge in the nearest comments section.

"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.