Banadir Restaurant: Detail

Located in the heart of the Chicago neighborhood known as Near Where Amy Lives, Banadir Restaurant serves delicious Somali food to cabdrivers 24 hours a day, except during Ramadan. Flavorful rice, vegetables and fruit drink for one low price. Friendly people and friendly service.

But writing about delicious food is like a novel about a happy family. It is boring. The story I must tell is about the washroom, and it must be told in pictures.


Fig, 1: East view. No more or less yellow than the other views. I do confess I looked in the cabinets. Upper: the usual collection of long-ignored construction and cleaning tools. Lower: more unidentifiable tools, and glops of blackened paper towel in the corners. Note the botanical feature: a woman was in here once.


Fig. 2: South-east view. The toilet worked, and that's all I care to say.


Fig. 3: West view. It says, in marker on the wall: "Please do not step on the sink. AND Don't put (used) toilet paper in the sink. Thank you." Initially, the mind boggles, but actually it's a religious thing, so judge not.


Fig. 4: North view: This door is what you touch after you have washed your hands. This is in the best case scenario.

All this being said, the food was very good. What? What's the matter? You don't go to a restaurant for its restroom, do you? Well I know I don't.

IN July

Free Translation

I do not know because the history attracts but that the present, do neither I understand because one is claimed with the history, but in the end seems to be that passed every time was better! Do neither I know because all today they complain that one must pay to touch! I am going to count you a history more than crap that live the TRICICLOSCLOS in an of so many adventures at night and stay up late, loads and discharges of teams, a history more than losers, bah! Idiotic people as we that raises the flags of the rock so that its life make sense! !!!. We had a show in Branches, one of those so many shanty town hidden, we arrive at sunset with desires of rockear and to touch.

I saw the sign

At the Modern Wing, 071209

It's the Culture: as seen @ The Wit

from the wall of the employee room at The Wit:

Words to avoid @ The Wit
yeah
you(s) guys
you know
sure
mmhmm.-
I don't know.
no
my bad
friggin'
shoot
fudge
"you know..."

USE
yes
my pleasure
of course
MADAM / MISS
SIR
"I'd be happy to"
functionality
may
assist
thank you
absolutely
certainly
gladly
"I can do that for you"

Data Loss

Winter retrospective

The Sphinx 2

The sphinx has seen them come and go. The strong and the wrong, the wise and the wicked, the haughty and the lowly. She has seen elegant structures and torrents of chaos. Great swirling embers of power, and heart, and loss. She has stood both outside the gate and inside the gate, and found them to be the same place. The sphinx has endured the chattering sandstorms of the ages, and has remained unmoved. In her defense, it must be noted that she is made of 270 tons of stone. The sphinx is mostly sedentary.

The sphinx has lived through alphabets and minarets, prophets and parapets; she has emerged smoothened and wizened and so free of fear. She has eaten the choking dust of memory and been fed. She has seen breadths of time lap against impossibly distant shores and even still, she has not yet seen everything. Why is there always something new? What fresh momentum moves these crossing currents, turns these driving wheels, dances these many, many feet?

It's worth considering that the sphinx may not know. Her tears are long dried, baking daily in the punishing heat. For all her years, what has she accrued beyond survey? Her untold wrinkles are untelling. What has she seen but the sights? The world is set in motion, adrift but alight, and our human countless nows weigh nothing.

Our time is weightless but our actions have force. We can run circles around the sphinx, but we can also run forward. Run ecstatic, run through the gates, run in time as though time could never catch up. No, the sphinx does not know. She will never blink or lift a paw. We are the ones, the sands that blow, and breathe, and build.

This Is Marketing 3

Business card, lobby, Beggar's Pizza, Blue Island IL


Banner ad, some old train, Union IL


Food vendor, Washington Park, Chicago IL


Website, Neptune NJ


Billboard, Baltimore MD

2008 Business Forecast - University of Chicago Graduate School of Business

After Slow First Half, U.S. Economy Will Grow in 2008

"A continued surge in exports and modest gains in business investment will support 2 percent real GDP growth for 2008, with about a one-third risk of recession that will be particularly acute during the first half of the year, said Michael Mussa, senior fellow of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. 'This risk reflects the danger that a number of things could go wrong and slow the economy below its stall speed.'"

"Marvin Zonis, professor emeritus of business administration, predicted that Democrat Barack Obama, senior lecturer at the Law School, will defeat Republican Rudy Giuliani for the U.S. presidency in November."

"'The next two quarters will be painfully slow, between 0 and 1 percent growth in GDP,' Raghuram Rajan, Eric Gleacher Distinguished Service Professor of Finance said, 'But barring a low probability default by a major financial institution, trend growth should resume by the second or third quarter of next year.'"

from Chicago GSB Magazine, December 2007

This Is Marketing 2

Come with me on a journey for a high-res picture of an office desk. Don't worry, it's for work. Ooh, here's one!

Sexy - It looks like money! Must know more.
Here's a product explanation:

Aha. It's an "office desk." You know, 办公家具. Who sells such beauty? Salama-Worldwide-Business, need you ask? Their slogan?

Couldn't have said it better, if at all. Must know more!
About us:

Perverse! But righteous. And curious. What other products might such a company offer?
Ooh, a wine cabinet:

It seems America has some catching up to do in the wine storage department.
Here, I've saved the best for last. Mmm, steel sheet soft bed. And the product explanation: so very true.