known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns
I know that I saw a fox yesterday, a literal fox traipsing through the snow covered grounds of Loyola University. I’ve never seen one in the city before but I know I saw that one. I don’t know if I remember my crayon colors correctly, but I’m pretty sure that it’s fur could be described as burnt ochre.
I don’t know what it means that I dreamt about finding a tiny rooster in my bed, only to have it attack me, except that it probably has something to do with my penis.
I know that the stretch of Western Avenue that smelled like the weed I smoked in high school, did so because a skunk had sprayed there. It’s been a couple years since I’ve seen a skunk in the city, but I know they exist.
Further down the street, an antiwar banner hangs from a set of dead and overgrown train tracks. I don’t know who placed it there, or how they got up there, but it doesn’t matter. After just a couple of days it’s tattered and mostly illegible and soon it will be gone. I don’t know what my friend Ephran expected to happen when he doused himself with fake blood at Holy Name Cathedral’s Easter Mass to protest the war ain Iraq, but I’m glad he did it. It was an idiotic act, that was done in a way that would guarantee a backlash, but by being crude and shocking and tailor-made for soundbites and streaming video, it brought out the fact that there was an antiwar movement more than the last four years of peaceful protests.
The Catholics deserve to get a little bit of bullshit now and then. For a people renowned for their ingrained feelings of guilt, I don’t see much of a crisis of faith around election time, where abortion policies gay panic trump the issue of the thousands of American, Iraqi, and Afghani lives being lost in our wars in the middle East.
I don’t know if I have the right to write about people, at least on the scale that I do, because it’s friends and family and neighbors that get caught up in waves of cynicism. I’m hitting too close to home, too close to my home. I just wish there was someone else to write about that isn’t me. Celebrities don’t really do anything for me and when I try to get political, I come up with the same generic, uneducated talking points as the rest of the left side of the internet. It’s just easy. There are always a couple politicians I can hate on and still be kosher. There’s always George and Jeb Bush, Scalia and Scalito, and Hillary Clinton.
If you haven’t been paying attention to the news, you might have missed it.
On multiple occasions, Hillary Clinton has told a vivid story of arriving in Bosnia twelve years ago, rushing across the tarmac ducked under sniper fire. Then, when a video surfaced, of her arriving in Bosnia, calm, smiling and greeting children, she said that her entire story was a "misstatement". I do the same thing, I backpedal, I retract. The only difference is, it’s my feelings that I’m taking back or holding back on, not the facts.
There’s a list of odd factoids and notable quotables on one of the ad sheets above the urinals at Black Beetle. One of them says "If you always tell the truth, you never have to remember anything" and every day it looks like a better policy.
There are few thingsI can confidently say I won’t regret (as I regret just about everything I say, once I look back on them), so I’ll just say the ome:
What Hillary Clinton said was a bold-faced lie, a calculated one, and by no means her first. By referring to it as a "misstep" she insulted everyone left willing to listen, a list of people that I hope doesn’t include you.
[Currently listening to Jay Reatard]
I don’t know what it means that I dreamt about finding a tiny rooster in my bed, only to have it attack me, except that it probably has something to do with my penis.
I know that the stretch of Western Avenue that smelled like the weed I smoked in high school, did so because a skunk had sprayed there. It’s been a couple years since I’ve seen a skunk in the city, but I know they exist.
Further down the street, an antiwar banner hangs from a set of dead and overgrown train tracks. I don’t know who placed it there, or how they got up there, but it doesn’t matter. After just a couple of days it’s tattered and mostly illegible and soon it will be gone. I don’t know what my friend Ephran expected to happen when he doused himself with fake blood at Holy Name Cathedral’s Easter Mass to protest the war ain Iraq, but I’m glad he did it. It was an idiotic act, that was done in a way that would guarantee a backlash, but by being crude and shocking and tailor-made for soundbites and streaming video, it brought out the fact that there was an antiwar movement more than the last four years of peaceful protests.
The Catholics deserve to get a little bit of bullshit now and then. For a people renowned for their ingrained feelings of guilt, I don’t see much of a crisis of faith around election time, where abortion policies gay panic trump the issue of the thousands of American, Iraqi, and Afghani lives being lost in our wars in the middle East.
I don’t know if I have the right to write about people, at least on the scale that I do, because it’s friends and family and neighbors that get caught up in waves of cynicism. I’m hitting too close to home, too close to my home. I just wish there was someone else to write about that isn’t me. Celebrities don’t really do anything for me and when I try to get political, I come up with the same generic, uneducated talking points as the rest of the left side of the internet. It’s just easy. There are always a couple politicians I can hate on and still be kosher. There’s always George and Jeb Bush, Scalia and Scalito, and Hillary Clinton.
If you haven’t been paying attention to the news, you might have missed it.
On multiple occasions, Hillary Clinton has told a vivid story of arriving in Bosnia twelve years ago, rushing across the tarmac ducked under sniper fire. Then, when a video surfaced, of her arriving in Bosnia, calm, smiling and greeting children, she said that her entire story was a "misstatement". I do the same thing, I backpedal, I retract. The only difference is, it’s my feelings that I’m taking back or holding back on, not the facts.
There’s a list of odd factoids and notable quotables on one of the ad sheets above the urinals at Black Beetle. One of them says "If you always tell the truth, you never have to remember anything" and every day it looks like a better policy.
There are few thingsI can confidently say I won’t regret (as I regret just about everything I say, once I look back on them), so I’ll just say the ome:
What Hillary Clinton said was a bold-faced lie, a calculated one, and by no means her first. By referring to it as a "misstep" she insulted everyone left willing to listen, a list of people that I hope doesn’t include you.
[Currently listening to Jay Reatard]
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