things to do in rogers park

[this is an unedited version of a piece that ran in last month's issue of The Machine Media, which can be found online at themachinemedia.com]

It's weird watching the neighborhood you grew up in change, especially when it's changing in a way that doesn't allow room for you to come back. I grew up in Rogers Park back when it was the type of shithole I could brag about. I could go to a roughneck part of the city and when I said I was from Rogers Park, it was okay that I was from the North Side. To some people Rogers Park was all Latin Kings and Blackstones and some poor baby falling out of a window every summer. To others it was hippie heaven, full of cafes full of bearded old kooks who want to tell you about orgies and Abby Hoffman. There was always some kind of détente, where the thugs would ease the hippies' collective white guilt, and the hippies would go to community meetings and fight the aldermen to keep the rents low enough for just about anyone to move in. To my old friend Mike, Rogers Park was the place where his Mom got arrested for selling crack. For Ivan, it was where his parents finally bought a house once they made their money. For my father, it was a place where I would grow up knowing blacks, whites, Hispanics and Asians. I always thought it was a nice place to live, even if I wasn't allowed outside on my own until I was twelve.

Rogers Park isn't really like that now, not anymore. Joe Moore wants to turn the whole place into condos, but hopefully he won't make it past this next election. About half of the old businesses down on Sheridan have been eaten up by banks and chains like Starbux and Chipotle, but not all of the change has been bad and, thankfully, not everything has changed about Rogers Park.

Here's a list of places you can go the next time you find yourself as far North and as far East as you can be without leaving the city.

Albion House – One of the city's first punk clubs was Oz, a gay bar on Greenleaf that had constant run-ins with the police during its short life, but it's been generations since that place came and left its mark. The Adelphi Theater and the Independent Video Alliance are both gone, and the Chicago Punk Shows Collective recently dissolved their relationships with No Exit Café and The Waiting Room. Like the kids from IVA and the Adelphi, they've moved their operations down South, so right now, the Albion House is the only spot in East Rogers where you can regularly catch quality punk and hardcore shows. From the outside, it doesn't look like a punk house, and that's why it works. The cats that live there know their neighbors and pay their bills. They treat everyone who comes in with respect, and because that respect is returned, they're willing to open their basement to local and touring bands such as Fourth Rotor, Sin Orden, Caustic Christ, Bludwulf, and Ohuzaru for cheap, all-ages, BYOB shows.

Alice & Friends – Vegan deserts are yummy.

Armadillo's Pillow – Old books are often cheap because they smell funny.

Bruno's Lounge – Bruno's is a dirty bar filled with creepy old men and savvy Loyola alcoholics. Unlike other neighborhood bars like The Oasis, the creeps aren't trying to fuck the Jesuits here; it's a bar for drunks who want nothing to do with the outside. If the bartender knows you, he's kinda nice, and if he doesn't, he's still pretty funny.

Deluxe Diner – It's been years since The Deluxe changed their menu from what they served when they were called Stacks & Steaks but people still complain about the fact that they don't have waffle fries anymore. The late-night service is usually pretty terrible because the next-closest 24 hour diner is the slightly-more-disgusting Standee's Snack'n Dine in Edgewater. I suggest the mozzarella sticks, they're absolutely disgusting.

Glenwood Mural – One of the best murals in the city runs along the West Side of Glenwood just South of Morse. It's about fifteen years old and starting to fade, but still the brightest, most colorful thing in the hood. A million sets of eyes, belonging to voodoo mutants, jazzbos, and reanimated cartoon skeletons, stare out at you from the wall as you walk down the cobblestone street.

Ennui – The Atomic Café, The Cocoabean, and Honest Don's have gone the way of the dinosaur. Get coffee here. Play board games. Fall in love.

Heartland Café – A great old hippy joint. The waitstaff is all beautiful women with dreadlocks and glasseyed men who may or may not be strung out as they take your order. Buffalo burgers aren't all they're cracked up to be, but their soggy sweet potato fries taste better than they should. There are a lot of obnoxious regulars who want to impress you, but they're harmless and amusing. Also, there's vegetarian food and booze.

Indian Boundary Park – Except for the playground at Loyola Beach, the parks in East Rogers all suck. They're so overrun with gangbangers that some time in the late 80s, the city decided that they would stop fixing them up and let the kids play in the alleys. That decision motivated the community to buildup Indian Boundary Park. The park exists on what was once the boundary between the city of Chicago and Pottawatomie Indian Land, which means that a lot of people died for the fun you're having. There's a fountain and a lagoon, which are both fun-slash-beautiful, a number of tennis courts which are pretty meh, and a small zoo which is equal parts depressing and awesome. What makes the park noteworthy is its playground, a village of wooden castles and houses full of swings and tubes and tunnels made of old tractor tires. This is the only place I have ever successfully played hide-and-seek as a grown man.

In One Ear – You may not hear the city's best poetry at the In One Ear, but you will hear the most earnest. Career poets tend to shun this place, making room for people who need get something off their chest and genuinely want to move you. Founded nearly 20 years ago at No Exit, it takes place every Wednesday night at the Heartland hosted by Pete Wolf and Shahbaz Shah.

The Jackhammer – This leather bar has recently started putting on shows with acts like The Reptoids and Flesh Tones Burlesque. Also, I've heard it's a good place to meet dudes for rough, anonymous sex.

J.B. Alberto's Pizza – You're stoned. Too stoned to move. It's three in the morning. J.B. Alberto's still delivers. They have cheese fries.

Lost Eras - This costume shop keeps shitty hours but it's still a costume shop.

Loyola Beach (and better secret beaches) – People who grew up in Chicago may remember how year-after-year, halfway through summer the beaches would fill up with dead fish. Morbid, five year old Eric lab Rat would carry them home by the pail-full. I remember the feel of their dried scales and their puckered sunken eyes. I don't remember why I would take the time to collect them. Either way, when the corpses started to overwhelm the little beach a few blocks away, my parents would take me to Loyola Beach. Loyola was, and is, the neighborhood's good beach, with its modern playground, its arts wall, and its sculptures, but it's not the best. North of Loyola are a number of small beaches, many of which the cops have a hard time patrolling. Some are isolated by fenced-in private beaches which serve to isolate them more. They are a perfect place to have an intimate evening in private or down forties with friends when there's nowhere else to go.

Midnight Basketball – 24 hours a day, all summer long at the courts just north of Loyola Beach.

Megamall – Yep. There's a Megamall in Rogers Park. It's on Clark Street and is just like the Logan Square Megamall except there aren't enough building code violations for the city to shut it down.

Mess Hall – Mess Hall is an experimental gallery space on Glenwood that tends to focus on political art and interactive events. In 2006 they hosted clothing swaps, brunchlucks and sewing workshops as well as shows like Fresh Cuts (an exhibition of hand-painted signs) and Contested Chicago (an installation documenting the ongoing gentrification of Pilsen). One ongoing series is Hardcore Histories, an open discussion about punk music and politics with topics ranging from "Vegetarianism and Veganism in Punk Rock" and "Herstory of Hardcore" to histories of Swedish and Canadian hardcore music, often ending in YouTube video screenings and Bring Your Own 7" listening parties.

Morse – Morse smells like pee.

Morseland – A bar. With food. You can regularly hear hip-hop acts like Small Change and Copperpot here.

No Exit Café – Unconventional theatre, genderfuck poetry slams, and political burlesque. I'm still kicking myself for missing the John Wayne Gacy play that ran a few months back.

Oasis – The "Hoasis" is a dreadful four am bar full of desperate skanks of all genders aggressively looking for love. Also pool.

Ras Dashen – This is a great first-date restaurant. It's also a great restaurant to go and watch people stumble through first dates, and a fairly good place to take your parents who've never had Ethiopian before. You eat family style on a plate made of spongy injera bread. I've heard it argued that Ethiopian Diamond is better, or has better food with less atmosphere, but I've never been to Ethiopian Diamond, and can only recommend Ras Dashen.

West Rogers Park – West Rogers Park is like a whole different world. Where East Rogers stands as one of Chicago's most diverse neighborhoods, West Rogers is one of its most segregated, with distinct borders between Indians, Pakistanis, Russians, Jews, and Koreans, and that's just Devon. I assure you, I'm leaving some out. Personally, I'd recommend the stretch of Indian restaurants between Western and Rockwell, but I never go to the good ones. My fat ass likes buffets too much.

Waldorf School– If you have children, and you want them to grow up to be confident, sensitive, artistic people who get laid all the time and believe that there is a little bit of magic inherent in their own personal existence, send them to Waldorf. If, however, you prefer that your children grow up able to hold down a job that sustains them, avoid Waldorf like the plague. Waldorf kids dream too much, and are too smart to stop dreaming to do bullshit work. I wish my parents could have afforded to send me to Waldorf as a kid, because every grown-up Waldorf kid I've met has been delightful.

Warren Park –Warren Park houses one of Chicago's only outdoor skate parks, and has ice skating in the winter.

WLUW – Three summers ago, some cops knocked on the door of the old Adelphi movie house and told the kids who lived there that they had been tipped off to a radio signal being broadcast from the building and that if it wasn't terminated, they would have to arrest them. I'm pretty sure that the cops don't have jurisdiction over pirate radio, and that the FCC would have to have intervened themselves, but it was the end of Red Line Radio either way, leaving WLUW (88.7 fm) as Roger Park's only radio station. A common misconception is that WLUW is Loyola's student radio station. Actually, WLUW has a deal with Loyola that they can broadcast from the school's campus but must provide their own funds. Technically, Loyola is a community station, which means that with a little training, anyone in the community can have their own show on WLUW. Currently the station has two punk shows (Underground Communiqué and Reality Radio), a World music show hosted by The Chicago Reader's Peter Margasak, and a bevy of other shows including (shameless, unprofessional plug here) my show, Two Slaps Radio, which focuses on the roots and derivatives of Funk and Soul music, airing Tuesday Mornings from 2 to 4 am.

[currently listening to "Dreams Interrupted" by the Glaxo Babies]

the top 5 snowstorms of the last 7 years

So a week ago, I thought that I loved the snow, that the snow was magical, that thirty degrees was as warm as I needed the world to be to stay content. A week ago, I was a fool. The snow clouds my mind like it clouds my windows. Now that it's all gone and my bike has been returned to me, I don't think I'll ever need it again. It makes me stay inside too much, and write too much bad poetry.

Here's something that was relevant one and three weeks ago today, but not now, and hopefully not again, ever:


Leaving the radio station at four in the morning, I find that the whole ground is covered in snow. The footsteps of the DJ who's come to replace me have already been disappeared and it's still coming down strong. The streets were empty, and even the birds and rabbits who'd stayed in to tough it out this winter had gone into hiding.

It was my own personal snowstorm. No one would get to see it as I was seeing it. In a few hours, the salt trucks would come and the morning rush would force people to trek across the field of and transform it into low octane sludge. The whole surface of the city will have shifted by the time I reached the car.

Under the streetlamp halogen, the snow glittered like glass when it's crushed into powder, like Lisa Frank's vision of a snowstorm, like a landscape painted on tinfoil.

I've always liked the snow, much to the bemusement of everyone I've ever said this too.Here's a list of my top five favorite snowstorms.

5. Sex. We'd been testing the waters for weeks with flirty text messages and emails, so even though the snow was piling up on the interstate and there was no good reason to be out, I was not to be deterred. I picked ________ up from a poker game. There was no slickness to it. I don't play poker and everyone knew what was going on, but tact wasn't much of an issue. We raced down the street for a fervent one night stand and twice the car spun out into the oncoming traffic lane. It was alright though. The street was empty, save for one lone cop, who looked at us, facing the wrong direction, and waved us on.

4. Love. It was back when I lived in Wicker Park. Erin and I had left a show at the A-Zone, back when they were doing a lot of vegan dinners and film festivals. We were too drunk to wait for the Blue Line, so we stumbled down Milwaulkee. Everything was quiet until we got to the six corners, of course, where it was lit up and noisy again. That intersection is quiet for a total of one hour a day The wolfman was howling and people were streaming in and out of Flash Taco, but by the time we got to the park it was all quiet. As we walked through the trees and the playground, the snow fell quietly, like a scene from a movie.

3. Childlike glee. The pressures of the world were building up and I was starting to feel detached so I went to the party with the highest concentration of friends, even though it was in Wrigleyville. It was your traditional drinking-and-dancing themed party, but someone had moved the keg into the middle of the dance floor so that no one could really do either. Brandon was on the same wavelength, and already pocketing shit from the bathroom, and was ready to leave. Jeff, Margaret and her roommate joined us as we raced back to the friendly confines of Humbolt Park, where we climbed onto Jeremy's roof and started a snowball fight. People on the street cursed us in Spanish and tried to tag us with bottles, but we just fell over laughing, with clawed, cold hands and frostbit, drunken cheeks. Maybe because we'd come from such a pathetic scene earlier, but it was here that we really felt like we were the only people in the city alive.

2. That weird part of a relationship early on where you feel pangs that may very well be the first signs of love, but since no one is willing to say it, the feeling is manifested through decadent sex. As we left the Village North we were greeted by a half foot of snow that wasn't there when we started. We still had stars in our eyes from the movie, and we were ready to whip the night into something perfect. We decided that we needed pie, so ______ and I piled into her car and skidded towards Baker's Square. There may not be anything on this Earth less sexy than the thought of two chubby people ripping each other's clothes off and incorporating a full cake of French Silk into sex on a creaky twin bed, but as one of those chubby people, I can't think of a better way to spend a snowy evening. The chocolate cakes onto the hair and skin, and hardens quicker than you'd like, leaving you looking more like a scat freak than someone who's just fucked their way through a food fight, but there was something about the grossness that made it all the better. It was stupid. We laughed about it, and it took the pressure off of the word that was dancing around in our heads.

1. Magick. It was my first year away from home, and I was spending more time at Brianna and Liz's than I was at my own house. I was supposed to be getting ready for a trip I would take in the morning, my annual trip to spend Hannukah with relatives in Florida, but there was a blizzard outside and I didn't want to leave. We had found an old VHS of Brianna's, movies taped off the television when she was a child. We watched Hook and Willy Wonka, complete with nostalgaic commercials and bumpers for WGN, knowing full well that we were the music makers and we were the dreamers, and the only reason I left was because the next movie on the tape was Willow, and if I saw a full minute, I would stay for the whole thing and I still hadn't packed. I walked to Lawrence, where the bus runs 24 hours between the Blue Line and the Red Line, shivering in front of the Blockbuster Video that Tom and I used top go to when we were stoned. The bus never came though, after ten, twenty, and thirty minutes, but a car did.

"Heyyyy. Get in! I'm going all the way to Sheridan."

The driver was old, older than you might expect to see someone driving at this hour. He was Korean, and he seemed harmless so I got in. A few blocks later he starts telling me about the car. It's borrowed; he totalled his a week ago. It was just nice to be out of the snow for a minute.

I took the train to my parents' home and borrowed their car. It was that perfect hour where I got to have the snowstorm and Lake Shore Drive all to myself. These rides are my favorite. Lake Shore Drive at night may be the most beautiful way to see the city, and when it's snowing, you can't help but to be awed. I went to the dorm and threw as much as I could into a suitcase, and rode back with the skyline in the rearview, nodding to Kid A or whatever I was listening to ad nauseum at the time, smiling and feeling happy to myself that I was alive and able to experience it. I don't get a lot of nights like those, even when it's snowing.


[some names have been omitted because I'm a gentleman. If you would like to have your name omitted, you may want to consider having sex with me]

west side anecdotes

1. overheard on the way to the bike shop, at north and central, hilarious and sad

Woman1: You better come around the corner and pick up yo' goddamn baby, she standin in the doorway cryin.
Woman2: She gonna keep standin' and cryin', I'm tryin' to order some.. goddamn food.

2. as my bike broke down on the way to Sarah's, at roosevelt and menard, my hero

Big ups to the anonymous dude on the way to McDonalds who offered to help. You weren't able to fix shit, but you did help brush away the rain cloud over my head, and I thank you for it.

If you're reading this, you'll be happy to know that I ghetto rigged the chain back on long enough to replace the links, using the laws of PHYSICS!

A metaphor for life: I love my trike but I swear every time someone fixes it, two

not just for bored housewives and dramatic suicides anymore...

it's the bathtub!

I just had another one of those super-luxury alone-time experiences

a shampoo bubblebath
with the jets on, and a fruit punch mint hookah
(yeah. I'm an old woman. I don't care)

it was a celebration to mark the transition from depressive to manic

it started the other day when I chopped off most of my hair
(which is something I do when I need to get rid of bad vibes)

the reflexion in the nargila, though distorted by the convex
showed someone I kinda like:

receding hairline, big gut, strong jaw, personally meaningful tattoos
I recommend it

---

HOMEMADE SANTERIA

I'm going to hold a ceremony sometime next week
to finish exorcising the demons of 2007

it will be the Jewish Passover, and the last week of Catholic lent,
the plan is to bike down to the Underpass Virgin Mary
drink mushroom tea, and burn something meaningful

I would like to have a minyan (ten people)
but any holy number will do (three, seven, nine, thirteen)

it has the potential for catharsis, but I'm shooting for maximum joy and possible enlightenment
if you'd like to participate,
please bring

a heart full of love
a small, personal item that you can burn inside a dollarstore votive
and a joke (I like jokes)

please refrain from bringing or consuming
an outward air of cynicism
synthetic drugs, alcohol, or meat

shoot me a line if you're down



[currently listening to "Hyena" by Siouxie and the Banshees]

four year olds who know that they're cute

Jake: Yeah, we don't know what the theme of her fifth birthday will be.
ELR: I remember mine... the theme was we're in the backyard and we have a pinata and I'm gonna cry when I don't get what I want.
Maiya: We had a pinata at for the Superbowl.
Jake: Yeah, it was a William Refridgerator Perry pinata.
Maiya: But it broke.
Jake: Why did it break, Maiya?
Maiya: Because...we had one.

So what exactly is a 'group interview', you ask?

A group interview is the little indignity you suffer, after deciding to apply at a single-digit-dollar-an-hour retail store, but before they tell you that they won't even consider you until after you've had a drug test




[Currently listening to "Rehab" by Amy Winehouse]

This week in pop music

1. Saturday was the ten year anniversary of the first time I smoked pot. I don't talk to the girls anymore; when they dropped out, they dropped out hard. Mental institutions. Heroin. They've both recovered and moved back to the Northwest side, but remain unrequited crushes. I still see Dan though. He's one of the people who offered to fix my resume, and I went to a show of his on Mondays.

Sometime this weekend will be the third anniversary of the party where I met Sarah. I wonder what the last few years would've been like if either of the first two parties I'd been to that night hadn't sucked.

Yesterday was the fourth anniversary of the last time I got arrested, at the first protest against the Iraq war. That night was so amazing. I sat in the jail cell, muddy, cracking jokes, a little buzzy off the Xanax someone gave me in the paddywagon and every few minutes one of the prisoners who walked by on the way to their cell would be someone I knew: a poet, a friend from school, a dj from the Wizard. It felt like we were doing something important, chanting the same chants people were chanting during Vietnam even though we'd grown up rolling our eyes at the sound of the word like Pavlovian cynics.

We took over the expressway. Ramon lost a shoe. I got the shit kicked out of me on CNN, the whole time hamming it up and yelling I am a nonviolent protester! I am not resisting arrest!

Sure you're not, asshole. Fuck you!

Ken had his day in court today for trying to keep the CIA out of NEIU, and Tristyn gets arrested on a monthly basis. I've voted against the people that voted for the war; I've spoken out against it, on the stage, on the streets, in blogs and petitions and on the radio, but I don't feel like I've done enough, even though I don't think that what Ken and Tristyn are doing is effective.

One of the jokes I told, with my face against the bars, so the prisoners against the wall could hear, as they waited to get their zipcuffs removed:

Q: How many protestors does it take to change a light bulb?
A: None. Protestors don't change a god damn thing.

2. I unbuttoned my shirt pocket to see what the piece of paper was inside. It turned out not to be a piece of paper, but a condom promoting a TBS show called My Boys (tagline: I'm not interested in your mind). Since when do I carry around condoms in buttoned shirt pockets (especially promotional ones)?

3. I think of million dollar ideas when I'm waiting for the bus on warm nights.

3a. As I watched the taxicabs drive by, each time wondering if it would be easier to just take one than wait for the bus, I noticed that about half of them had advertisements. That's when I thought of....

Taxicab Radio

I want to start a company that makes prerecorded radio shows to play in taxis.

There's a weird law that most people don't know about, that says that if you have a store, or a restaurant, or something like that, a public place of business, if it's over a certain size you can't play cds or tapes or anything from your private music collection. It has something to do with FCC licenses. One way that smaller stores get around this is by playing the radio. Commercial radio stations are exempt because they pay their own licensing fees; noncommercial stations exempt themselves from the fees by playing a required percentage of community programming. The downside to this is that sometimes your customers will be listening to commercials and public service announcements. As a HUGE chain, Starbucks gets around this by selling Starbucks-friendly music, and playing it in store. This is good for them because it streamlines the experienvce of shopping at any one of their stores. Companies that are inbetween sizes can buy restaurant tapes (that's probably not what they're called and they probably aren't tapes anymore). Restaurant tapes hold maybe six hours of music, and are played over and over, so that even though the staff knows they repeat, the customers won't. There are all sorts of tapes, designed to affect people different ways. One restaurant's tape might encourage people to stay a long time and build up a large bill, another's might play music with a quick tempo that encourages people to eat and leave quickly.

You know how some videogames have soundtracks? One of the joys of Grand Theft Auto is that there are fake radio stations you can listen to in the cars, of a number of different genres. You can listen to hip hop, country, classic rock, alternative rock, dance and talk and each station will sound like you're listening to a really good hour of a real radio station, with (over the top) fake DJs and ads.

I'm thinking of a cross between a restaurant tape, and a whole array of realistic stations with impeccable taste. The only difference would be that the ads would be real and the DJs would be bland and minimal. Most patrons wouldn't realize they aren't listening to the radio, and they wouldn't care. If they were paying attention to the songs they'd be more inclined to like them but it wouldn't matter because either way, Sbarro or Intel or whomever could be guaranteed that they' would be subliminally getting the ad.

Check it out:

Costs:
Money to pay the cab drivers to use the tapes.
Money to get people to contact both cab drivers and prospective advertisers.
Money to make the tapes.
Money to license popular music.

Returns
Money from advertisers who want in on the deal.
Payola from record labels who want their artists hyped.

Possible Problem and Solution
No way of knowing whether the driver is playing the music or whether the tapes are being heard. Use some sort of Nielsen Box device that plays proprietary tapes/disks and broadcasts a signal back to computers at the office (this would be another cost to consider). Poll drivers with a bonus if they can show receipts for the amount of time peolpe were in the cabb and, as an incentive to companies, charge less than the cost of a radio ad in a choice city, with an option of a discounted rate for placing ads in the tapes nationwide.

It's so pervasive and obnoxious it just might make someone rich.

3b. This one took less thought, on a shorter busride, but I could really use a

Waterproof Laptop

I don't know about the rest of the world but I would have a much healthier mind if I was able to do the majority of my computering from the bathtub.

An easy way to do this would be to put a regular laptop in a clear bag but leave it open always, but that's not enough to let you use everything. We would need to hsve things like the internet, cd/dvd drives, USB hubs, and possible waterproof headphones connected wirelessly to an airtight machine with a fairly long range.The keyboard and mouse would consist of a touchscreen.

The only downside is, I can't think of how to power up the machine.

There are no wateproof laptops on the market as of right now. But a quick google search tells me that Japan's CF-Y5 laptop, which is slated to hit America's shores this year, uses a special drainage system to make it more water resistant. The future is now.

4. Despite warning myself not to, I've gone back on diet pills, this time through the legit-ish counseling of a shady doctor. They seem to be working, although I feel a bit different in social situations. Have patience with me if I start acting like a jerk or a flake, but tell me as soon as you realize it.

5. Despite two layers of fake name, my boss found my myspace page after I published an article on one of my assignments, so I have to keep worky-blogs friends-only, at least until I land something new.

There's this cute Polish girl who works at the front desk of the temp agency where I work. Everyone at the last gig was calling her a bitch but she'd always been nice to me. Then I wrote an article where I made an offhand remark about cranky Poles who looked like they'd never learned to set their VCRs. Now she's real cold to me (if only she knew I was being bigoted against old people, and not her motherland).

Piwo!

6. I don't know who I can call after midnight anymore, that will actually be awake. I need to stop hanging out with lameoid mid-twentysomethings. Where is it that nineteen-to-twenty-one year olds go to, that I can meet them at, and how much is does ot cost?

7. I'm either overpunctuating this blog, or finally beating commas into submission. Take that, commas!

8. Whenever someone asks me what type of girl I'm into, I tell them that I really like nerds and I really like sluts, and if they are a nerdy slut, all the better. I hope Sarah takes no offense at either characterization. I'm not sure if she's a nerd, slut, or both, but I really like her.

9. The job application for Urban Outfitters has a lot of questions about what I'm reading and listening too. I was trying to tweak my consumer habits so that (a) it looked like I had consumer habits and (b) I was alternately lamer and cooler than I really am. Is TV on the Radio too lame? Is Spank Rock still too underground? What other bands do I know of that real people know of? The store was playing Lily Allen... wasn't that last year? I threw in the Buzzcocks, for a wild card classic pick. I figure it would go over better than Lizzy Mercier Descloux or Liliput. Is that pandering? I just want cheap jeans.

10. Currently listening to: White noise and thunder.

like many of you, i have a bathroom. lets bond over shared experience.

ELR: Have either of you ever gone to the bathroom and looked down and been absolutely horrified, and then realized a few minutes earlier you poured some leftover clam chowder into the tub a few minutes earlier.

Cupcake: No. Have you ever gone to the bathroom and looked down and your shit looks just kie Alf?

xX0Xx: You guys are both fuckin gross.






[currently reading "Moonchildren" by Michael Weller]

How The City of Chicago Will Fuck Your Vote Up and it Still Won't Matter

[an edited version of this piece appeared on gapersblock.com]

Congratulations on your assignment to serve as a judge of election at the February 27, 2007 Municipal General Election. This letter will serve as your notice to attend a mandatory training class. You will receive an extra $50 for attending this class...In order to familiarize new judges with the voting equipment and procedures, it is crucial that each new judge of election is trained prior to the election.

"Pardon me, Ma'am. I'm here for the off-track betting."
"That's moved to Jackson, Sir. We're doing election judge training."
"So it ain't here no more?"
"No sir. If you want, you can take the elevator back down."
"Naw. I think I'll linger."

Like one out of every five people I am likely to smell today, this man reeks of bad wine. He's probably cold, so we let him wander around for a few minutes, before leaving on his own. Working in the landmark Page Brothers building, adjacent to the iconic Chicago Theater on State Street, is surprisingly depressing. The few years the building spent as an Off Track Betting parlor really took their toll on the place. The carpet is green and stained. It is that sickly shade of green that always seems to associate itself with gambling and heartbreak. There's a matching green faux-marble trim traveling the length of the room that looks neither like the plastic it's made of or the marble it's supposed to resemble. Big windows open up to the State and Lake el station, and the constant flow of people coming and going really makes you feel like you're stuck.

This is the end of my journey learning the ins and outs of Illinois' new voting machines, in which I've traveled across the city training election judges. At Polonia Banquet Hall in Bridgeport, I dealt with cranky old Poles who looked like they never learned to set their VCRs. On a basketball court at Truman College, I worked with halfway house rejects and a surprising number of off-kilter goths who prefer not to hold down regular jobs. At Columbus Park's lovely Refectory at Jackson and Central, I worked with driven, well-dressed activist types determined to run their local elections without any outside funny business. And now Downtown, I've got an average mix of the elderly and impoverished, neither exceptionally old nor exceptionally poor. It kinda feels like a recap of everything I've seen thus far.

It's a misnomer to call just one of the voting machines electronic. In reality, one machine uses a touchscreen and another, the so-called paper ballot, uses an optical scanner. In the last election, judges generally tried to steer voters away from the touchscreen. Officially, this is because only one person at a time can use the machine. A common misperception is that thee touch screens have been added to ease the transition from paper to electronic ballots, which seems inevitable, but in reality each precinct has one touchscreen machine because that is the minimum required by the Help America Vote Act of 2002. Unofficially, however, a lot of judges in the last election refused to set up, or allow access to these machines, out of fear that they would fuck up royally. Hopefully, none of these judges were my students.

If you want to use the touchscreen, you'll have to ask your election judge for it specifically. They will then activate a card with a chip on the back that you will insert into the machine. You are given the option to vote in English, Spanish, or Chinese. If you are unable to read any of these languages, you are allowed to have a translator present with you. To vote for a candidate, touch the box next to the candidate's name. To change your vote, touch the box again. It is impossible to overvote on this machine. There are no hole-punches, no chads, and thus no fear of leaving them pregnant or dangled. There is a zoom function for the visually impaired, an audio program for the blind, a stylus for those whose fingers are too plump to touch just one box at a time, and a sip-and-puff straw setup for those who lack personal mobility. To write in a candidate, choose the bottom box and a mock-up computer keypad will pop up. If you do not spell the candidate's name as it generally appears, it is up to the judges' discretion whether or not to accept this vote. When you are finished with a page, press 'Next'. After the last page, you will arrive at the review screen. All offices left blank will show up in red. All offices voted on will appear in black. To return to any of the offices, touch the screen. To continue, press 'Next'. A printed record of your votes will cycle through the printer. This is an official ballot, and your last chance for review. It is also a verifiable paper trail. If you press 'Make Changes', it will void the ballot and take you back to the review screen. If you press 'Cast Ballot', it will do just that.

The new machines, manufactured by Sequoia, are perfect for Chicago politics. Just using them, you can tell that Sequoia was the lowest bidder. After a few weeks, the card activator starts getting weird error messages and stops reading the results from the ballot scanner, the lid stops closing on the touchscreen, the machines reset out of sync with one another, and the printers start to jam. At the same time, none of the machines have fucked up in a way where you can't tell they are fucking up, and even though they may not get the job done quickly, they'll get it done right (eventually). This is a big deal, especially when stacked up against their biggest competitor.

Last month, Ross Kincaid had some keys cut, based on a picture on Diebold's website. He then successfully used these keys to open up each of Diebold's voting machines. The results of this are available on Ross' website SploitCast. Realizing the possibility for mischief, Sequoia decided not to use the kind of keys that can be cut at the local Five and Dime. More importantly, Sequoia has announced that their computers don't use a commercially available operating system (as opposed to Diebold's machines, which use a Microsoft OS). This is not entirely true, though. While Sequoia's machines use a proprietary operating system, they still rely heavily on Microsoft-based components. A few years ago, just before the 2004 presidential election, some important pieces of code were found available on an ftp site. The theory was that this code could be exploited and a virus could be installed on one of Sequoia's touch screen machines, that could take control of the vote compiler. Sequoia's defense is that such a breach would be easily noticed, as the tabulated votes would be so out of sync with the machine's paper record. To successfully rig an election, hackers would have to attack dozens, if not hundreds of voting machines so subtly that no one would notice that they were hacked. Remember in the movie Office Space, the analogy that Ron Livingston's character made, about stealing a single penny from a billion Take-A-Penny, Leave-A-Penny trays to become a millionaire? It would be something like that, and I'm not talking about ousting a president or a mayor here, just an alderman. As it stands, electronic voting accounts for well under five per cent of the votes that will be cast in this election. Thus, there is no reason to fear that the Daley regime will corrupt the machine to steer the election in their favor. The stakes are too high, the work is too hard, and the returns, per precinct, would be too slim. Similarly, Da Mare doesn't have to lose any sleep worrying that leftist hacktivists will rig the election for a big upset.

Even though it's unlikely that the machines will be tampered with, chances are something is gonna fuck up. Just like the political structure of the Windy City, Sequoia's voting machines are deeply flawed, shoddily made, and completely susceptible to human error. At the same time, they are made with so many failsafes that even an army of idiots couldn't fuck them up enough to hurt the election, the same way that decades of City Hall corruption hasn't stopped the city from running smoothly, if slowly. The roads get salted, the garbage gets picked up and the votes get counted. Each machine has a paper record of not just the successful, but the unsuccessful ballots so nothing gets left unaccounted for. The paper ballots are backed up by digital files and the digital ballots are backed up by paper. The files are saved onto a cartridge and a memory stick, respectively. At the end of the day, these files are consolidated and the results are transmitted to election central. If consolidation fails, then the cartridge and thumbstick are manually uploaded, and if one or both of them have somehow been erased, then there's still the paper ballot to check against.

"For $52 million, I expect to have better results here than in Baghdad."

The day after the last election, Tony Peraica raised a big stink about corruption delaying the results of his contested race with Todd Stroger for Cook County Board President. The fact of the matter was that the results did come late, not because of corruption but because less than 60 per cent of the votes initially transmitted. There are a number of reasons for this. The simplest is that a lot of polling places are housed in old schools and churches, with thick walls of made of lead and concrete and that the signal just can't escape. The answer that is probably most embarassing to Sequoia is that the machines don't work well. As I've said before, it only takes a few weeks worth of use before the machines start to act as if they've got gremlins or poltergeists working inside them. The answer that's most embarrassing to the city is that the judges are incompetent.

Looking out at my class feels like looking out into the world Lou Dobbs must see every morning, just before he starts hate mongering: there are giggling groups of pregnant teens, platinum grilled gentlemen with thugged-out pictures of Gumby and The Pillsbury Doughboy on their hoodies, and every variety of wino, crackhead, geriatric, and English-as-a-not-even-close-to-second language citizen, and the people that aren't some sort of ghetto caricature are all cranky old fogies who seem to be mad at the world for changing. I'm probably being a little too hard on the judges, but it's confirmation bias. When I regularly expect to work with shitty judges, and I regularly get shitty judges, then maybe I start to overlook the rest, the ones who see their job as important and help my day go by smoother. As I said, the majority of the judges I train are very old or very poor. That doesn't make them bad judges, that's just the general demographics.

So why are the demographics what they are? And why do I have so much to complain about? Election judges are paid $100 to work on election day from five in the morning until at least seven at night, usually later. That's fourteen hours, seven-twelfths of a day. These people are only given $7.14 per hour, about 75 cents over minimum wage, per hour to deal with every single asshole in a neighborhood, if they aren't kept overtime. At that rate, it's really hard to find honest, qualified people to get the job done. So why doesn't the city raise the pay? It probably won't surprise you to learn that it's more complicated than that. The amount that judges are paid is not decided at the city or county level, but by the state, and most of the state doesn't have the same problems as Chicago. So if our election judges got paid more, so would every election judge, meaning the state would be throwing millions of dollars into Niles, Galena, and Zion to fix problems they don't have. Outside of that, there are a lot of election judges, over ten thousand in Chicago alone, accounting for well over a million dollars an election. It's not an easy buck, and even if you had every civic minded person in the city (people like the judges I worked with on the West Side, who really truly believe in making the election run smoothly), you're still going to have empty slots and all you're gonna get to fill them is people who have nothing better to do. On election morning, you're still going to be recruiting at bus stations and homeless shelters, just like the city is going to do on Tuesday.

P.S. If you can get out and vote tomorrow, and put in a vote against Daley, Colon, or Moore, please do. At least if you vote against Joe Moore, it might do some good...and you can see this blog come to life!




[currently watching "Wicked City"]

"someone stop the chickens, cuz they make too much noise" (the dream journal is back)

This is a reference to a song that I'm only kind of sure exists. I think someone yells it at the end of a song about insanity that my Dad used to have on one of his mixtapes. Maybe it was Todd Rundgren or something. It was espoused in a dream of mine by a wigged-out art teacher/janitor (*I think that's symbolism, that the art teacher is also the trashman, so let's make a note of it it).

The ride back from Milwaulkee took too long in the blizzard so my parents couldn't drop me off at my house. I wasn't willing to take the train back from theirs at midnight in search of fun that may or may not exist, so I set up camp here. For the last month I've been working these hours that have kept me from reaching lucidity, and I've been increasingly more frazzled with each day, taking solace in the fact that it's only a month. Well the month's up on Monday and I've figured out what I need to do in order to sleep and think. So I have, for two days in a row. With a big empty Sunday sprawled out in front of me, I figured I could play a brain experiment. I loaded up a bunch of mutant disco (you know, that shit that we used to call no wave?), some Aorta, some Mott the Hoople, and some weirdo funk on a loop and slept in a room adjacent to it. I was going to break my brain into thinking weird when it woke up.

I'm not sure how it happened, but in my dream I ended up acting in a musical at my old high school. Arvo was in it too, and where I felt trapped, he was thriving (*is this more symbolism? Friendship jealousy?). It was a terrible production that took itself far too seriously and had me playing a conniving, Iago-type (from Aladdin-of course, not Othello) who just happened to be a lisping hair-dresser, or pretending to be, posing as some sort of handmaid to the female lead on some fiendish assignment. The voice I was doing for the play sounded like a cross between Smeagle the Gollum from the Lord of the Rings movies and John Leguizamo as a sloth in Ice Age, which begs the question of how many shitty goddamn movies can one dream remind me I've seen?

As I became dissatisfied with the production, I realized that I was losing my grasp on the lines. There were no scripts anywhere in the building so I tried to hide from the production.

-There was a side-story in the dream. My cousin Ryan, who is kind of trapped in his situation in Florida, was trying to meet up with me and my sister but kept running into trouble. He finally made it there for opening night. (*This part of the dream happened because I was asking about him earlier today but I think that my brain was trying to tell me something about the duality of our situations and how I wasn't being self-reliant enough)

One day, when everyone was gone. I got up on stage and tried to get my lines out, grimacing in pain from the apparent hole in my brain. It was at this point that the art teacher/janitor walked up. He was wearing blue overalls and looked like he'd been pretty burnt-out on acid in the 60s. He had long, blonde hair in a ponytail and wore dirty, blue overalls. "Oh, I remember you. You always liked to practice, even if no one wanted you here." He rambled a bit about the play and how overwhelming work was and then, under his breath, "someone stop the chickens cuz they make too much noise."

I laughed and he was surprised I got the reference. "Oh, you like Quiet Riot?" The band name didn't seem right, but I nodded because I really did like whoever played that song.

When remembering my lines was obviously not going to work, I decided to hide and sleep. I found a dark room but they found me, the people who cared about the play and their goons. Two heavyset black men grabbed me and closed the door begind them. I think they planned to rape me, to get me into line. I bit one and jabbed another with a pen, before escaping through the wings and the actors and the costumers and Orianna as stage director, and Arvo as whatever he was doing, to the woman in charge. It would probably be helpful if I remembered what happened as I talked to this God//Director/Woman/Puppetmaster character but I don't. The two men that chased me had caught up and my eyes opened.

I had broke my brain. The packed away treadmill in the corner of the room looked like a guy in a hoodie with a gun. The nighttable with the broken tv and remote, even though I recognized it as a nighttable with a broken tv and remote control, looked like a big square-headed monster man gesturing at me with another gun. I knew I could only make them go away by turning on the light, but turning on the light would mean a dash from the covers to the lightswitch, and until I made them go away, they could still get me, right?

With the lights on, the men were gone, but I didn't trust the machines, and now sitting at the computer, listening to Baby Huey and A Perfect Ratio, I keep looking over my shoulder. It's the darkness behind me. I turn on the TV to silence it, but the sound is arresting. It opens with a scream, and then a bunch of blurred Girls Gone Wild sex, followed by a surrealistic end of our broadcasting day when I change the channel to Adult Swim, and an ad for Zoobooks. Everything makes sense, it is all consistent with what should beon cable television at 5 in the morning but its more than I can handle.

My first thought, upon waking from my dream, was I need to get my trike fixed this week! It's something I was planning already but now I know it's important, it reminds me of a dream I had five years ago, where I jumped out of bed and yelled, involuntarily, that I need to lay off the drugs for a while. I don't know what would have happened, just that I'm sure that the advice, direct from my subconscious, is what kept me alive for another half decade.

Anecdote: At one point in the dream I was looking through the book of cassettes that made of the plays soundtracks. Some of them were old Disney tapes (I am a little surprised that, a decade after I taped over the last of the Disney tapes my Mom had left from the Daycare Center, I still remember exactly what they looked like and what made them different from other cassettes). Others were operas and marches with swastikas and luftwaffes on them (because every good musical has Nazis) and a bunch of blank tape reordings of the cast, and random sounds that were needed at different points of the play. Sitting across the table from Arvo, I joked that it was surprising how similar the soundtrack to a high school musical might resemble your own musical collection. The question still remains though... cassettes?

[currently listening to Pigbag]

state of the lab rat. 1st quarter 07

Shit's gone crazy for the 07. I left for Egypt in mid-December with Sarah, and nothing's been the same since. Egypt was an interesting place. You might go to Europe or Mexico or some place and see signs in English and think the whole world is like that. I always figured that I could go anywhere, at least any big city and get by alright with my native tongue but it wasn't like that in Cairo. For a country that makes most of its money from tourism, Egypt could give two shits whether you or not you get Arabic.

I always thought I had a tough constitution from living in cities my whole life but the pollution really got to me. The whole trip we were taking taxis. They were these old Japanese Daimatsu-brand cars that looked like they were held together with rubber bands and twine, but they were dirt cheap (our most expensive ride, from one city to another, cost about ten dollars American) and were easier than public transportation, which was confusing and full of dudes had no reservations about trying to get a finger up Sarah's ass through her jeans.

Sarah had a few things going against her. She was lily white, wearing a septum ring, and had long (gorgeous) hair. There's a weird thing about women's hair in Egypt. Sarah dresses pretty modestly, especially as a visitor in a sexually reressive Moslem country, but on the street men looked at her like a whore. Sometimes the men stared so hard at her that I could feel it. Sometimes it wasn't staring but lewd (-seeming) comments, catcalls, and kissy noises, and when left unchecked in a crowded enough area that they could get away with it, they'd get grabby. A group of boys stacked in threes ride up on a moped yelling at us. I tell Sarah she should flash some leg or some cleavage and see if she can give one of them the most awkward erection of his life, but we never really stirred the pot. The thing is, a lot of local girls dress like sluts. They may not be showing a lot of skin, but there'll be these curvy jawdropper women thundering down the street in skintight clothes, and no one would bat an eye because their head is covered with a hijjab. It's a clunky analogy but it's kinda like a stripper wearing a crucifix. The hijjab has become such a symbol of piety that there's no reason to look beyond it. That's actually a way shitty analogy, and maybe it's more akin to a single girl wearing a wedding ring when she doesn't want to get picked up. It cuts through whatever might be construed as a mixed message. It says, in no uncertain terms, back the fuck off.

Exchange rates worked to our advantage, but there was a complex series of prices for anything that wasn't written down. For example, cab rides. Say you're staying at a hostel on Talaat Harb (in the neighborhood of the same name) and you want to go to the American University Dorms in Zemelek (where Sarah's sister lives). If you're a tourist and you don't know what's up, you're paying 30 pounds (6 bucks) and thinking it's a steal. If you're an outsider who speaks Arabic, however, you're begrudgingly paying 8 pounds ($1.50, give or take). The driver's holding a grudge because he only picked your white ass up for the fat tourist cash. You're holding a grudge because you know the locals are getting in cheaper. Then there's the Arab price. I pulled this off once or twice when I didn't have Sarah around to blow my cover. If we kept things businesslike with no small talk or bullshittery, I knew wnough Arabic to get around. They could tell I wasn't local with my long hair and mutton chops but figured I was still friendly, maybe I was from Jordan or Morocco, maybe I was an Arab from Spain (I got that a lot for some reason) and I paid three pounds (75 cents). I was surprised at how nitpicky we got over sums of money that meant nothing back home.

There's a lot more to the trip. Eating pigeon. Fighting with Sarah. Christmas in the Libyan desert. Kosheri and mystery meat from street carts. Going inside the great pyramid and marveling at the sphinx's butt (it has a tail!). People who live on highway medians. Hand crank tricycles and cemetary flea markets. Dealing with myself when I have no reason to continue being me as I know myself. Hopefully I'll write about it someday but this isn't how, and when isn't now.

I came back with next to no money, happy to find a few checks waiting for me. New Years wasn't great, but wasn't terrible. I had one trip ahead of me and I'd be moving out soon after. The house on Homer reeked of the ammonia scent of cat piss. I was at Red Lobster with Autumn when Tania called. Our negotiations with the landlord had broken down. We pulled a cut and run and a few days later I was at utumn's, exhausted and leaving for Israel.

I left with Rachel and Kyle on a trip with fortysome other local Jews our age. It was like propaganda summercamp. We climbed mountains, rode buses, mangled prayers and ate shawerma and hommos. At night we drank and relished in sexual tension. Rachel and I suffered the conflicting pressures of staying true to our girlfriends back home, and that tendency that people have to fall for someone or grasp at someone when they're sequestered in a group away from home. We passed the time by trading sexual war stories and objectifying every woman that happened to cross our path. Dudes too, but less so.

It was weird to be back in the Middle East, in an area that was sometimes so lush and so metropolitan, and to be there with Jews, who wouldn't ask us to stop and explain ourselves when we made a reference to Hebrew School, and wouldn't ask us to stop and explain ourselves wgen we made a reference to something specific to the Windy City. Even if a lot of our comrades were Northshore transplants whose frame of reference wouldn't include much of ny Chicago, whether it be WZRD, Chic a Go-Go, or the Rat Patrol. At least I didn't have to explain my exlanations when something like that came up.

The trip was one-sided. We were secular Jews, mostly, and we experienced Jewish Israel and secular Israel. Christian Israel rarely came up and neither did Palestinean Israel, or Palestinean Palestine, depending on how you look at it.

We rode camels, one of which bit Rachel, and had a dance party in a kibbutz bomb shelter, which I feel is a uniquely Israeli experience. Fog machine smoke wafted in like gas from a Birkenau shower, I was morbid enough to mention. We told bad jokes. The Aristocrats. Jesus fucking the camel when his Mom walks in. That one that ends "Fuck you clown!" We watched the Bears win in a Danish Hotel off the Dead Sea after hiking Masada and salting our wounds, and we went home.

For me it was a home I'd yet to sleep in; I'm not sure I'd broken in my new room yet but it would come soon enough. By the time I got there, all but one of the kittens have been given away, and Bela soon after.

I secured a job for the next month, and watched the Bears lose the Superbowl. It was my second Superbowl where the women outnumbered the men, and it was slightly less engaging than the Super Mario 3 tournament that ensued after. My Dad was there, but still recovering from a reaction to the medicine he took for the aftermath of a surgery he endured for an injury he sustained playing and coaching the Strom team in the Turkey Bowl, which has been going on since he was a teenager. It was his first real injury in nearly forty years of the game. He had a penicillin drip in his arm and some blood dripping from his dick and needless to say he was in good spirits but not much of a party mood. The snow came and I tried to write about it, and as it melted it became instantly apparent just how shoddy our apartment really is. Autumn told our landlord that a sixth of her bedroom was a sheet of melted snow, frozen over, and he told her to fuck off. We're suing him through the tenants rights association and soon enough Autumn and I'll be living in my eighth apartment in six years.

I've got a cavity in my mouth and a rash on my leg. I bought some new shirts and a hoodie. My job ends next week and I'm underemployed again. I got depressed but I predicted it before hand and took measures against it so I wasn't able to wallow in it.

All in all, i'm looking forward.



[currently listening to Hold Your Colour" by Pendulum]

another piece from another comic book story

[This is an excerpt from a story I'm writing that acts as a dissertation on the history of mutant pornagraphy and its effects on society. It is a good example of the type of writing I do when I've sequestered in the Holy Land]

While my research is not entirely comprehensive, it is one of the most thorough readings of the subject. The material available, much like the incidence of genetic anomaly, grows exponentially with each decade, starting with the Thirties. Some have theorized that it was our abrupt entrance into the atomic age that sparked this growth, and that the baby boom of the forties and fifties, followed by the civil rights and sexual liberation movements that cemented it so that now, mutants, which were practically unheard of a century ago, are an accepted part of society. This is just conjecture, of course, but I personally think that there may be some merit to it.

Anecdotally, I've heard some say that the fabled isle of Atlantis produced a radioactive ore, that in the end sunk the great nation but only after giving rise to the cyclopses, shapeshifters and strongmen of Olympus. There is absolutely no proof to this claim but I've always felt it an interesting concept, in a Chariots of the Gods way, that so many of our stories, stories that provided the basis of religion and history, could have been the result of a couple of freak genes.

There is one old tale that may or may not be true. It is one of the first written stories, and one of the first stories printed on movable type, and in both cases it was already a very old story, perhaps the oldest written account of a shapeshifter. There are so many versions of the story that there is no way to tell which region or culture it originated from.

In Europe, the story usually involves a powerful man from the East, a Moslem holy man, a Sumerian king, a Magi wizard, et cetera, riding four horses into town with an old satchel slung over his shoulder.

He demands an audience with the king, offering a gift to prove his allegiance. With piqued interest the King accepts him, whereupon he removes a brick of clay from his satchel, telling the king that he will breath into the clay actual life, and that the king may choose three forms for that life to inhabit, and here the details diverge like branches of an old tree, and like the wizard's gift, I will give you three versions of the story.

In one account, an early Spanish king is met by the king of the Arabs, and though incredulous of the offer, and hoping really just to kill his visitor as soon as his tricks were brought out and revealed, asked for three wives. The first was to be as delicate and exotic as the oriental women of the Far East, the second would possess the voluptuous strength of a woman from the thick heart of the African subcontinent, and the third was to be as fair and as beautiful as his own perfect daughter. To insure himself against any high trickery, he stipulated that the three women must be of vastly different heights but share the same size foot.

The Arab stroked his beard majestically and laid out the clay and with a single utterance of Unshallah, closed his eyes and snapped his fingers. From within the cube, two hands stretched out and tugged at the block's sides and corners, forming it into the body of a beautiful woman with thin eyes and long black hair, no more than four feet tall with long toes that stretched as if to escape the length of her feet. Another snap and she was a towering, dreadlocked Afrikaan, swaying to and fro on too small feet that forced her to stumble into a curtsy before another snap rendered her the new Queen of Spain: pale ivory skin, eyes the color of Spring, brown freckles that gathered around her cheeks and elbows, perfect feet and curly hair that just touched her shoulders but when pulled, showed to be the same lengths as the coifs of the other two women. The king had his three treasures and Spain had opened up trade with the Moslms.

When the Celt met with the Sumer, his requests were slightly different. Again incredulous, he grinned as he made his requests. He wanted of the block of clay, a strong-backed woman he could fuck all night, for a strong-calved horse he could ride into battle, and for a snarling dragon, a monstrous winged lizard with glowing eyes, to protect his kingdom as he slept.

Apparently, one got more use than the others, and on its few appearances, the dragon was so terrifying that the king never once had to ride his horse into battle and, not caring for the Persian sport of polo, spent most of his days fucking his strong backed woman as his wife ruled the kingdom. The story never says what the Sumer got in return.

The final version of this story happens much later and concerns the Russian Tsar Ivan IV Vasilyevich, better know as Ivan Grozny or Ivan the Terrible. To tell it, however, I must first digress, as I warn you now I will do many times from this point on.

Most scientific journals categorize shapeshifters in two specific camps. They're not the most appropriate terms to use but they are the most common; they are simply fortunate and unfortunate. A fortunate shapeshifter is fortunate because their mutation is near undetectable. Not only can they look as normal as you or me, they can choose to look much better, which for decades now has led to supermodels fending off paparazzi hoping to catch a "natural" photograph and questions of is she or isn't she. A fortunate shapeshifter can change their shape for as long as they choose, as often as they'd like. You may have learned in school that if someone were to be able to control all the muscles in their face, that they would be able to look like anyone. It's like that but on a molecular level. It's a voluntary reflex, like blinking or giving a thumbs up.

While an unfortunate shapeshifter can do all of this, it is not as easy. The whole tenure of a shift is done with complete knowledge of every atom, every molecule stretching to some unnatural length or shape. Imagine holding your arm out and bending it at a forty-five degree angle while holding a small book. While it can be easy for a few minutes, it does not take long for the act to become excruciating.

In the third version of our story, Ivan Grozny is greeted by a mysterious stranger shortly after the death of his first wife, Anastasia Romanova, and receives an unfortunate shapeshifter named Illyana who, while quite becoming as her first, second, and third incarnations as blonde, brunette, and redhead and even a handsome brick of clay, was quite homely in her natural form, with ratty hair that would change color of its own accord, dumpy breasts, and jaundiced skin that was badly pocked. Though she was nearly always suffering physically, it was preferable to the life she would lead as a peasant. Though her husband was brutal and paranoid, and had taken more than a few lives with his own hands as the country's first Tsar, he was kind to her and showed her genuine tenderness.

While history is full of stories of crooked or vengeful wives of kings cuckolding their husbands while they were away on matters of state, Illyana was faithful to her master and when he was away, she would simply lock the door, draw a bath, return her sore body to its natural state, soak, apply aloe, and enjoy a chance to cry from her own eyes. Unfortunately for this unfortunate, despite her piety Illyanna must face the same fate as these other famous women of history when Ivan returns early, agitated, and ready to jump into bed. She had neglected to lock the door and failed to hear him arrive and he surprised her there in the tub, and she, in turn, surprised him.

She quickly tugged her muscles into a familiar shape, that of the redhead whom the king liked the most, and even though she sat in the tub her makeup was exquisite and her hair a work of art. Ivan, enraged spat out, "Liar!" She tried to explain herself, nd to bribe him, promising to be a million different girls for him, all infinitely faithful. She pledged her very real love and devotion, but the knowledge that she could change at will, that she was not some enchanted hag who was truly given three forms with which to serve him, only enraged him further.

"Liar!" he shouted, more vehemently than the first time. "Whether what you say is true or not doesn't matter because if you can be anyone, then you can be a spy and I'd rather not spend my whole life looking over my shoulder wondering if the girl I'm fucking was the dignitary who's just implored me to sign a peace treaty or the bird on my windowsill or the bojar that poisoned my wife. You must be put to-" and because good soldiers don't tend to explain themselves during battle, Ivan Vasilyevich never said the word death. He just drew his blade and plunged it into her.

If you haven't studied shapeshifters before, you might not know that shapeshifting is something of a natural defense mechanism, and nearly all shapeshifters die of old age. If a shapeshifter's arm is cut off, they grow a new one like a starfish. If a shapeshifter is being eaten by a lion, then they may make sharp spines grow out of their leg or abdomen or head so as to render the part unchewable, and if a shapeshifter is stabbed, there are any number of things they may do to protect themselves. For example, they may tighten the wound around the blade so as to stop its progress and keep it from being retrieved, and at the same time shift over any endangered internal organs or encase them in thick fat or muscle.

When Illyanna let her master, Ivan Vasilyevich, the first Tsar f Russia, stab her she did none of these things. When she accepted his blade, she had resigned herself to this fate, and done it out of love.

Still, Ivan was never quite sure that he could believe that Illyanna had died really, or anything that he'd ever seen with his own eyes, and it had driven him quite mad. It's unknown exactly how many peopledied because of his paranoid rages, or who it was that finally got close enough to poison him. A few years after he murdered Illyanna, Ivan the Terrible died in the middle of a chess game with his top advisor. Ivan's first son, born to his long-dead first wife, became the second Tsar of Russia, and the Romanovs would hold their place at the top for the next two hundred years.

"Arthur Miller and Henry Miller, apparently not the same person///"

or "There is a certain point in time that is neither day nor night where the horizon has not yet peaked and the Black Eyed Peas song 'Lets Get Retarded' may very well lead to catharsis"

I park the car in the same space i pulled out of, and lock the doors manually. It's like a million little perfect crimes.

A minute earlier and the streets are filled with barristas; in the rearview, my eyes are runny eggs with chestnut yolk. Christmas lights still line the street, but none of them are illuminated.

A minute earlier, I am buckling a seat belt and focusing my eyes. I rev the engine and finger the presets. David Byrne is singing "Burning Down the House".

Hold tight wait till the partys over
Hold tight we're in for nasty weather
There has got to be a way

I decide to write myself a letter...

Dear Eric,
I want you to remember this,
You're flat broke and borrowing money, you owe slightly more than you're owed and it's catching up to you. You have more shit than you have room for, and you can't even provide a decent place for your pet rat to sleep. You don't have any sort of job that makes sense, and you aren't happy with your art.

I want you to remember this now and the next time you're down. I want you to remember this next week when you're getting up at 5 to make it to work on time. I want you to remember this when you're old and pathetic and sold out and slow.

You spent the night of Wednesday, January 25, and the morning of Thursday, January 26, 2007 hanging out and doing drugs with people that you love. You played in a living room fort and ate homemade birthday cake like a child. You listened to bad techno and Nina Simone and watched a film about Anais Nin, and at the end of the night, a nude girl who (except for the tattoo) looked like the picture perfect image of what your mind sees when it thinks of faeries whispered into your ear that "you are the prettiest straight boy" before fluttering out of the room. Your crappy life is full of beautiful nights like these.

You race the sun home and win. You eat popcorn chicken and read Ginsberg in the tub. You chase toothpaste with cola, running in circles. You pull Autumn's laptop out from under Christian, sleeping on the couch, noting that both names are just regular words, and make the sentence sound so much like metaphor you almost believe it. You retitle yourself, in the way of a self-made God and until sleep, you are

Air Excess

[currently listening to "Tales of the Forgotten Melodies" by Wax Tailor]

Top Somethings of Something

Some of the magazines that let me write for them asked me to submit end of the year best-of lists. I love lists!

Here's my Top 5 records of 2006, courtesy of Chicago Innerview...

Looking back over 2006, I couldn't remember anything but Gnarls Barkley and Justin Timberlake. To figure out what my favorite albums were, I have just browsed through over 2000 albums on the web and I can tell you this...2006 wasn't a good year for records. It wasn't that there wasn't good or challenging music being made, either. Outkast put out a great album, but it didn't have that usual Outkast feel of being the freshests, weirdest, best thing in the world. Bands like CSS and Art Brut proved onceagain that there is always room in this world for stupid punk you can dance to. Noise weirdos Wolf Eyes, Acid Mothers Temple, and Warhammer 48k all put out records that were as listenable as they were dense, and while mainstream hip hop started dabbling in electro, the underground embraced it full bore with new records by K-the-I???, Radioinactive, Lady Sovereign, and Spank Rock. But none of those albums made a very lasting impression, so in a double-blind test I checked my Last.fm page against this year'snew releases to see what I've been listening to.

Without a doubt, my favorite album was Pick a Bigger Weapon by The Coup, wherein Boots Riley andPam the Funkstress make Marxism sound as sexy, dangerous and necessary as hip hop was before it became big business. On A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing, Josephine Foster departs from freak-folk for an album of 19th century German compositions that's both haunting and beautiful. Carla Bozulich continues to grow with her Evangelista, which is full of morose country hymns and weird art thrash that is as hard and delicate as her voice. Kronos Quartet ended the year with a moody collaboration with Mogwai and Pop Will Eat Itself's Clint Mansell for the soundtrack to Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain. The most mileage I've gotten from vinyl this year came from the split 7" between Chicago's Carpet of Sexy and It's a Trap, where both bands serve up noise you can get crunk to.

It was a year where artists thought smaller. In the shadow of big festivals, the summer was full of pot lucks and backyard traveler jams, and in the wake of 2005, where dozens of spaces were shut down or priced out of existence, people found out how accomodating this city could be by setting up their own festivals in old man bars and ice cream shops. It was a good year to see a band, but a shitty year to buy an album.

--and these two came from Newcity's end of the year issue...

Top Five Festival Shows at Places Where You Don't Usually See Shows
1. Southkore Fest with Los Crudos, Juventud Crasa, Bastard Sons of the Apocalypse, No Slogan, Tropietzo and Condenada at The Black Hole (video arcade)
2. The Noise District 6/6/6 with the Bang Bang Circus, Black Bear Combo, Genderfuck Burlesque, blood wrestling and Satanic Marriage at the Beach House (house)
3. Mauled by Tigers Fest with Screamin Cyn-Cyn & the Pons and Totally Michael at Ronny's (bar)
4. Trans-Sexual Express with Waterbabies, He Not In, TK Raptor and Velcro Lewis at the Tastee Freez (ice cream shop)
5. Pitchfork Fest with Diplo, Aesop Rock, Spank Rock, Os Mutantes, Flosstradamus and Tarantula at Union Park (park)

Top 5 Reasons I've Heard for Coming Back to Chicago
1. "That fresh air was starting to make me soft."
2. "New York City really doesn't care as much about the live music scene as they say they do."
3. "I'm just here for the trial, then I'm gone again."
4. "So I was out there milking a goat when I started thinking, 'What the fuck happened to me?'"
5. "After a few months in Iraq, you can really appreciate a Chicago-style hotdog."

"hit it and quit it" or "the years keep getting shorter on me"

It's less fun to wake up fresh when everyone around you is hung over. I spent the day deep frying things, playing with Bukowski, and watching Mean Girls. It's been a good year, even though it hasn't felt like one. I knocked a good eight things off the list I made of things I've never done to work on this summer. I still don't know what I'm trying to do with this life, and all of my goals for the future are sexual, which doesn't seem very mentally healthy, but maybe that's enough of a motivation to keep me from giving up on the rest of it.

New Years. Plural.

2007 - Commie Jam in a mismatched suit. Sunny, Rachel and Rob's house in Logan. Jerking and floating through a disconnect. Russian champagne and vegan cupcakes. Card games and banjo. A clown calls me on the suit; he's the only one. He's trying to pick up on Sarah. It's our third New Years' together, which is more than I've shared with anyone that isn't blood. We drop by the Brain, and crash a condo. Kylie Minogue Britney Spears iPod dance party is as exciting as it gets, but it's pleasant. Never had that before.

2006 - Party at Marion's house. Everyone is well dressed. Why is there a line at the Budweiser keg with Guinness on tap? White people are stupid. Red Bulls and Vodkas, Makers and diets, jello shots and I think I ended up smoking some pot. Old friends like Charles Wiley, Devon and Christian Duckworth, Tom Yates. New peeps like Eligio and Gaetano, most of the Berwyn Bordello crew. Took a cab to the wrong place and left my new camera inside. I shouldn't own things that don't fit in my pockets. Drunker than either of us realized, Sarah had to babysit.Total devastation in a cab. Near breakdown. But a beautiful day after.

2005 - Kyle is incapable of recommending good parties. Out with the yuppies and in with the bike kids. Arrive at the same time as Critical Mass. Twelve of us, twelve of them and at least as many on the way in close cell contact. Ira's pissed but we have full fridge privelages. First New Year's with Sarah. First New Year's with Erin and her boyfriend. Pete Wolf gets obnoxious when he has his own bottle of Jameson. He's in a rowdy mood but loves us all. Crash the after party, everyone is cautious of the drunk guy with the mohawk. After after at the Elks. Meet the neighbors, and sleep soundly.

2004 - Berwyn Bordello invades a smaller party. Takes it over. Roll around in the snow, hook up with Nikole and flash my dick at everyone I know.

2003 - Single on New Years. Still in love with Erin, who's at a rave with her boyfriend. Head out with the people I don't know I'm about to live with. At Natalia's I make out with everyone. Everyone. Shouldn't have left but followed the tide. Zip around the city in a stupor.

2002 - How many drugs can me and Erin do? Ecstacy, coke, adderall, vicodin, pot, whiskey, and miller lite. Dennis' loft and Dan Lieber's parents. Kevin Heath, Shahbaz, Curran, Naia and Tobz. Shahbaz is the only one I still talk to. First good new years I can remember.

2001 - Ted Hearne's place. All the girls I like are fucking each other on couches. My best friend won't talk to me and I don't know why. I'm drunk and I feel alone. Write on some drunk people, take some pictures, wish I was dead. Wander off in the cold. Hide and cry.

2000 - My parents have got me on lock. They're afraid of violence, riots in the street. Y2k. Me, Tom Yates, Kevin Heath, and Joey Mitchell chug Jaggermeister and eat pizza. I'm the only one that won't join the military in the next two years. None of them have been shot though. I'm happy about that

1999 - Babysitting in Miami. Play on a trampoline. Answer a seven year old's questions about love. Shoot off fireworks.

1998 - 1993 - New Years in Boca Raton. Watch the Mtv Top 100 video countdown. Shayna tries to keep Mom from having her one drink of the year (Kahlua). Every time I go upstairs I burst into tears.

1992 - Get home from Florida on New Years Eve at about ten. I pretend I want to stay up for the ball dropping but I really just want to play the TINY TOON ADVENTURES Nintendo game that Bubbe bought me that morning.

1991 - How the fuck should I know?

1990 - As far bak as I can remember. My first new decade. I can't believe it isn't the 80s anymore. In ten years it'll be the future. Bubbe tells me that in the thirties, when their teahers told them they would live to see the new milennium, no one believed it. I spend most of the night on Pop Pop's lap. I'm amazed to see all the adults awake, and partying at this hour and not have to sneak around to do it. The countdown was magical. Everyone in the room chanting together and smiling and looking all full of hope. Wow.

[currently watching "Basquiat"]

Stereotypes

I've heard it called "Brown Town" by Indians and Pakistanis, and "Curry Town" by those what ain't. Whatever it's called. It smells fucking awful right now. Not exactly sure why but I assume it has something to do with the wetness, thawing, and weird exotic spiciness of the neighborhood.

Sarah thinks that I make up terms for things in Chicago that already have names. I don't think I do. Here's a list of things I've heard of that would look cool on some kind of hand-drawn colloquial map. Too many of them have to do with Wicker Park.

The Armpit: See also: The Crotch

The Crotch: Brian Other claims that he invented this term years ago for the North/Damen/Milwaulkee intersection, but I'd never actually heard it used until it was listed in The Vice Guide to Chicago last Summer.

Elote Island: Refers to the small park on the triangular "island" created by the intersections of Ashland, Milwaulkee, and Division, frequented year-round by foodcart vendors.

The Hipster Highway: In contrast to it's busy neighbor Western Avenue, Oakley provides a leisurely bike route from between the North and South Sides, and a very convenient route from Bucktown/Wicker/West Town to Pilsen/Bridgeport.

K-Town: There are actually three neighborhoods that layclaim to the term K-Town. Two of them use it to refer to the large cluster of streets whose names begin with the letter K (Keeler, Kostner, Kolmar, et cetera) just West of Pulaski. While this is practically the official name for a part of North Lawndale, there are a number of kids in Jefferson Park who've never heard of North Lawndale who think K-Town is theirs. For some reason there is no L-Town (that I've heard of) in Chicago, even though the streets immediately after K town all have names that start with the letter L. It also refers to Koreatown, a large strip of Lincoln Avenue populated by Korean bars, restaurants, and temples.

Liquor Park: I'm not sure if this name stems from the neighborhood's boozy bohemia that existed while I was in high school, or from the seedyglossy tourist strip it became by te time I lived there.

RoPo: An abbreviation for East Rogers Park. An abbreviation that I hate. An abbreviation that makes my brain hurt when I catch myself using it. Same thing with PostModernism

Viagra Triangle: This is another term I'd never heard before the Vice book but i must admit it's pretty perfect. There's a long triangle along Rush street that points to Division populated almost entirely by expensive restaurants and nightclubs that's very popular with tourists, particularly businessmen looking to get laid while they're in town.

That's all right now. List any you can tink of. I get a kick out of em.

someone in a dream last night asked me who I was trying to be

I told her I appreciated the question but I still gave her a smartass answer. "Well, Bruce Springsteen with the hair of course."

It makes vague sense, to me at least.

I wish I'd answered it honestly, though, so that I might know now. But in the dream it probably wasn't even me, just a composite of feelings and things I've absorbed from movies and TV shows and other dreams over the last week. I was someplace different, and dressed differently then everyone there. But I was dressed differently than I do here, anyway. I was wearing shorts and an army jacket. Not really my general street attire.

This has been one of those weeks where I have to believe that everything happens for a reason because if it doesn't than most of it just sucks.

The other night I dropped dead. Asleep. Out of nowhere. I must have needed to sleep. My dreams were prophetic that night. Personally. I don't want to talk about them but I think that they saved me from some trouble, so I probably needed to drop dead asleep. I guess I should stop teasing _____ about how much faith she puts in her horoscope.

I need to have a roommate again. The house goes to shit without one. I need someone who'll get mad at me. I surveyed the situation this morning.

Tricycle in the living room. Coathanger in the bathtub. Unopened can of cat food in the bowl of dry food. Mysterious fishing lure still in my room.

I slept in my bed last night. It had been a while. I slept in my clothes with a space heater on. I woke up real hot and stinky. I was stinky because I was hot, but I also looked real fucking sexy. For me at least. Hot and stinky. Same thing every morning. Why do I always have to choose?

I've lived with stinky people before. Just one, really, but he was way stinky and I've been terrified of turning into that. Whenever there's even the remotest chance I'll get laid I'll opt for less sexy, better smell, which is probably stupid cuz Sarah would still probly fuck me if I smelled like a cow.

Last night I went to a show. I bought beer and got more change back then I spent but the girl realized it before I did. As I gave her back a five all my cards spilled out of my wallet and into the trash. It was the needle and the haystack but with bank cards and cans of Old Style. I rescued everything but my bus card, which slipped into the void. Out another five bucks. On most days it wouldn't be so devastating but last night it was. It was so much, I couldn't even enjoy the avant garde science fiction play that was happening in front of me. (that was worded pretty sarcastically but I really do enjoy that kind of stuff)

I've seen ___ a couple times this weekend. It's been awhile. The last time I saw her for any real amount of time was a couple years ago at a party at her parents' house. I left my goggles there, and then she ran away and came back and was committed for a bit. We never found my goggles though. I really need a new pair, I don't ever see them at stores, even goth stores, so where do all the goths get them? If I was to have a hanukkah list, at the top would be goggles. I'm not really that good at exchanging gifts and I don't expect them from anyone but if I hit the Lotto I would be spending like a motherfucker so if anyone reading this hits the Lotto this week, here's my Hanukkah list:

Goggles - goth
Goggles - raver
Goggles - steampunk (like someone would wear flying a biplane and shit)

Jeans - Mens 34, Womens 12 I think. Tight around everything, especially the legs. A little short in length because I'm a little short in height and a little shorter than that because I want to show off my boots.

Comics - Whole series of Frank Miller's Dark Knight, Frank Miller's Sin City, and Dave Sim's Cerebus. Actually, I'd be pretty happy to borrow these if you have them.

Earings - Guages 2 and 0.

Belts - Colorful belts with cool buckles with AK 47s and Nintendo controllers and Swastikas and shit.

Tattoos.
Scarves.
Jim Jarmusch movies.

Or maybe you could send a bunch of books to the SHAC 7 or Mumia Abu Jamal or any of the millions of other prisoners stuck in a corrupt justice system who don't get good press. Midwest Books to Prisoners.

That's it. If you win the Lotto. Except for that last one. Everyone should do that. Otherwise just be around and say nice things and tell me if I look stupid and get me into trouble every now and then.

[currently watching "Dark City"]