City in a garden 1

Chicago without XRT would be...

2:00 Arcade Fire "Keep The Car Running"
2:04 Talking Heads "Burning Down The House"
2:07 Melissa Etheridge "Imagine That"
2:10 Crosby, Stills & Nash "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes"
2:17 They Might Be Giants "Climbing The Walls"
2:26 Marvin Gaye "Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)"
2:30 David Gray "Babylon (live)"
2:41 Mark Knopfler "Punish the Monkey"
2:45 Goo Goo Dolls "Name"
2:51 My Morning Jacket "Off The Record"
2:57 Tom Petty "Won't Back Down"
3:00 The Cure "Why Can't I Be You?"

...one step closer to the future.

Corner Store

I'm just popping down to the corner store. Need anything?
85th & Burley, Chicago IL

New Products Review

Inside this beaten bottle, under this nicked and rotting cap, is preserved the gloriously dodgy "Put it een Wine." The Jamaican woman told me she drinks one every day. The Jamaican men said it will help me "get my buck on."

Like me, you are probably interested in what is inside this glass of ill-repute. But not interested enough to open it and drink some. Here are the eengredients:

Find yours wherever ugly, frightening FDA-free Roots Drinks are sold with a wink.

Art.

"spoke"

A meditation on faith, not exactly for the E79FF07. File under Oswald Wang.

End Less Summer

O wall of heat, blast of purely sensual, carry this message across the murmuring villages -
O bad news, its bitter certainty between the teeth, a swan song come to call -
O end of Summer, and her echoes of ends gone by, how do I measure this proof of life in fading light?
O Tessa, tumbled in torn and turning waters, chasing the last in churning repose.

The strolling glowworms of the ending embers
The heart of the valley in so dense a mist
The springs of heaven & her illusion of give -
The answer is again and again and again.

When, with the turn of a wind, long shadows are nailed to our quickening footsteps,
Tongues are tightened and the branches sway: "Speak low," and "Whisper not."
A wave breaks on lowly shores, and it is gathering time.
In the sweet spiralled smoke of encampments' remains
what we have found? Or: what are we not missing?

She thought about the boy.

An especially wan installment of The Timbertoes.
Highlights for Children, February 2002.

internet cafe

This is one of those Third-World internet cafés you've read about. In the front of the store by the registers, near the winter coats, next to the partially-stacked boxes of undershirts, behind the pallet of disassembled what? Also, no "cafe." The spirit of Zayre is alive and well at Kmart store #9360, Forest Park, Illinois. August 29, 2007.

In case of emergency

In case of emergency, break glass. If this had been an actual emergency, you would have been instructed to go to your basement and run around in your footie pajamas and scream. Or air raid shelter. Or Underoos, if it's the warm season. You would have been instructed.

In case of emergency, break glass. Break hearts, break dance, break out. In case of emergency, melt the ice caps and move to higher ground. If this in itself is an emergency, invent a time machine, go backwards in time, and do everything right. If this creates a space-time continuum emergency, you've really mucked it up now. Come back forward in time and see me after class. In case of emergency, clap erasers for an hour. "Will this help?" I suppose you know better, Mr. Thundercats-On-His-Underwear-Time-Traveller? When you have all this cleaned up, go forward in your little machine and tell me if it helped. I won't be there. In 100 years it will be no concern of mine.

The broadcasters in your area, in voluntary cooperation with the Board of Directors who own them all, have established that email is effectively used in case of emergency as proof that we did try to contact you. See here's proof, what do you mean you didn't get it, or deleted it, or were outside on the beach having a life? Anyway, we sent it. You would have been instructed. Hey, what's all this broken glass?

In case of emergency, write something down in the middle of the night and try to decipher it in the morning. "We are [something] ratsbag-angel 7-into..." oh for heaven's sake. In case of emergency, call someone you know and speculate. Filter and calibrate blame. In case of emergency, drink. Water, silly. It's good for you and keeps indefinitely. It's really refreshing. In case of emergency, press zero to speak to a representative. Para Español, oprima el numero dos. "No es el defecto de representante." In case of emergency, sweep up all this glass. There. Feel better? That's better.

A face to meet the faces...

Various street art: Springfield, IL; Grand & State, Chicago; Hyde Park, Chicago.

Country Single

This is my favorite personal ad from Country Singles newspaper, available for $1 at the Beloit Wisconsin Welcome Center, or on the internet at Country Singles.

No longer a Virgin

Virgin Megastore closes July 14, 2007.
Overheard at their 35%-off closing sale: "I could get this stuff cheaper at Wal-Mart."

Three parargraphs about politics, and money.

We know of a recent high school graduate who is working as a part-time research assistant for Chicago Public Schools. His supervisor recently told him, "You know, when school starts, you can work full time." He explains that this won't be possible, he is going to college in the fall. She tells him, "That's OK, we'll just make you full time anyway."

The supervisor later tells him there's someone he just has to meet. So he goes to lunch with a big-time Chicago political operative. The operative suggests he should go to work on Clinton's campaign, we'll send you to Iowa, etc. Though not especially fond of Clinton, the recent graduate is interested in politics, he will probably do this. The operative gives him $50 to take a cab the two blocks back to work.

Senior advisers to President Bush have recommended that the president veto Senate legislation to increase funding for children's health insurance. The plan, which expires September 30, subsidizes health care for children and adults who have too much money for Medicaid and too little for insurance on their own. The legislation calls for a 61-cent increase in the federal tax on a pack of cigarettes.

This news just in:

Dishes Indigenous to Pyongyang
Pyongyang, June 27 (KCNA) --
There are many famous folk dishes indigenous to Pyongyang.
Pyongyang cold noodle, Pyongyang boiled rice in hot soup, soup of mullet of Taedong River and green gram pancake are typical of them.
Pyongyang cold noodle is tastier than buckwheat noodles in other areas.
The glossy brass vessels for noodle, kimchi, and minced meat, egg and others on it tempt the appetite.
Foreigners who tasted the Pyongyang cold noodle at the Okryu Restaurant are unsparing of their praises.
The mullet soup seasoned with black pepper is good for health.
Pyongyang boiled rice in hot soup garnished with chicken, mushroom and others is an essential folk holiday food.
Green gram pancake mixed with sliced vegetables and hog-fat has a special taste.
The indigenous dishes of Pyongyang thick in national flavor are the pride of Korea.

from the DPRK News website: http://www.kcna.co.jp/index-e.htm

These are pictures of food, also.

Banish human toil forever:

from "Americade," by the National Association of Manufacturers, 1955.

Furniture Avenue

Whenever I drive past Harlem and Altgeld, I make it a point to dangerously slow down outside Furniture Avenue, where I am certainly guaranteed to be joyfully repulsed. You'll find them just down the street from Harlem Furniture, Milwaukee Furniture, Dinette World and across the street from Best Furniture Outlet, none of whom quite approach the essence of an aesthetic I like to call Oksana Baiul. If you like what you see, you'd better hurry, because it says in the window they are having a Sale Sale.







Chicago, Illinois: May 7, 2007.

Springtime Is Here! 7

Chicago, Illinois: April 26, 2007

Trump Unmasked!

Oh.