Chicago Sit: December 2006

The Philosopher's Diet by Richard Watson

"None of the world's leaders today could do it. It would take a world revolution to change the system.
'Should you try to do something about it? Yes. This is a revolution I think we should all support. If anything is immoral, surely not trying to change a system of food production and distribution in which you are overfed while millions of others are starving is immoral. You can stop supporting the extravagance of the processed-food industries. You can eat less meat or even become vegetarian. (I don't want to get off on this tangent, but commercial beef, pork, lamb, and poultry are so full of steroids, hormones, and antibiotics that even some meat producers say we should think twice about eating them.)
'I have a colleague who used to say that his contribution to world civilization was in setting an example by living well. You can set an example by eating less meat and less food overall.
'Don't expect instant results. You've got to learn to control your own fat before you can change the world. I am being quite serious. Roughage is a sobering topic.
'Let's begin with water..." (excerpt page 38)

Bran Muffins:
1c bran
1/2c whole wheat flour
1/2c barley,rye, or buckwheat flour
1/2t baking soda
1/2 t baking powder

1 egg
2T oil or butter
1c milk or yogurt or buttermilk

mix till all is wet, bake @ 425F for 25 min. add dried fruit or banana. 150 calories each.

The Children Of Men

Mix of action and future fiction. A surprising amount of violence with a main character who never holds a gun...he hardly even has shoes on for most of the movie. This isn't to say that he is the toughest man who dodges bullets and bends metal, he mostly limps around on cut feet, cries and opens car doors.

I wanted to see this movie after the first 10 seconds of preview. A future where humans are no longer able to reproduce; this is what I imagine happening in the nearing apocalypse, I of course like to imagine something worse where we are only able to have weak and ugly babies who are deformed by our unnatural lifestyle of canned food, petroleum and dirty air. Our babies will be so fucked they won't be able to live in the normal way they'll have to have something prosthetic like gills or fake legs. The kids will also HATE us, and probably kill everyone older than them. But enough about me. The Children of Men seemed like just the kind of movie I'd love with the kind of exhilaration and joie de vivre only the apocalypse can bring. My mom saw the preview with me and afterwards whispered "no thank you" to the screen.

Plot: Maybe the year 2027, everything is rather familar. There are big tvs in public places of urban centers, things are dirty, people drink coffee, and smoke cigarettes with more filter than tobacco. A series of calamities have passed over us. Horrible plagues killed all children, horrible things happened in other countries (including NY, which was probably destroyed). England seems to be one of the only places that is still semi-functioning so they are flooded with refugees, sometimes lovingly referred to as 'fugees' (like the band). It is a lot like nazi germany in that the military rounds people up, puts them in cages and ships them off to concentration camps. The entrance to the camps are a lot like Abu Ghraib with people being electrocuted with black bags over their head. Inside the camps it looks like the streets of Iraq with ground war fare.

The government secretly sponsors terrorist bombings. People are so disillusioned they have lots of tattoos and facial piercings. A group of well pierced yuppies turned revolutionaries call themselves the Fishes. The worst of them being a young man with blond dreadlocks who becomes more and more despicable as the movie progresses.

I wondered if I should be offended by the one pregnant woman being a young black girl. Is this simply a stereotype about black women being really fertile? She turns out to be alright because she says things like 'fuck' a lot and makes jokes that scare the shit out of people (which is the best kind of humor). What is rather offensive is that her hair is relaxed and in a really nice perm. Heaven forbid she have natural hair after the apocalypse.

Reasons the movie is good:
1. Scenes of violence that are very obviously similar to what is going on now (abu ghraib and iraq)
2. slightly future istic cars.
3. it makes one want to get knocked up for the good of man kind
4. no one is good, even the refugees are racist (one old lady in a cage is complaining in german that she has to be next to a 'schwatz')
5. clive owen is so attractive I would jump into hell or a tv screen to be blown up next to him if had the slightest chance of touching his extremely dirty, sweaty, and stubble covered face.

picture stolen from my sister's blog. The caption:
'gangster life 4eva'.

This is the serious way of life in Western NY...almost in Canada.

I cheated on my hair cutter and got a horrible hair cut. So I went back to Isaac. His chair and cut place was in the corner of a really big Home Depot. This is the 5th time I've visited him and the flirting was clear but had gone no where. So he decided to do something. "Okay, we're going to fix this, we'll play 'equal touches'. "

I sat like a rock in the chair, almost breaking the chairs' arm rest I held it so tight.
My hair was filled with soap and I had a big water resistant cowl around me to hide the ultzer forming in my stomach.

Both of his hands were on my soapy scalp and he was standing right in front of me intensely staring at me as we were about to play the romantic game of 'equal touches'.

I touched his elbow.

Then we hugged. I was still covered in soap and hair cutting blanket but heck we had finally consummated our love, we had hugged. Then we relaxed and talked to wandering customers in Home Depot.

We were in the wood section. Six HUGE white snakes were looking at new flooring. They looked like snakes, but they were African Immigrants working under the table for a hospital re-doing their floor, putting in wood. We chatted with the snakes about various things until 3 am, they laughed because they weren't working.

Then I woke up and told my sister my dream she didn't care and got annoyed during the day as she got to hear it repeated 4 times (one time for each person in my family).

I think I haven't been writing in my blog because I tell everyone in my family everything so I don't have any secrets to write about that I haven't already told 3 times.

fool in hunting hat

Healthy home Life

My Dad likes to collect cars. Jeeps. Planet killing cuties
that were designed to be narrow and used in Vietnam jungles
for soldier purposes. He has finally decided to sell his golden
CJ-5 with the fierce Eagle decal on the hood. (He wants to get
a motorcycle in its stead). I decided to help the old man navigate
the internet and sell his antique wheels. While conducting research
I found all these cool Jeep clubs, where they go out in the desert and
roam around being as tough as old age and poor design will allow.

Footwear

with the new job I find myself thinking about new things....like buying shoes. How will I command respect in the office, school yard, and bike shop? For some reason I think my shoes should make all of this possible, help me create good and lasting relationships, and generally make me more popular.

Here are the choices:: you can vote:

1. The Aberdale, by macbeth.
$39, vegan, so hip, so casual
-I'd have to wear blazers with them
so as to be taken seriously

2. The Eliot, by macbeth
$45, vegan, less noticeable
not chucks, black is black

3. the Hannah,
$50, vegan, sensible,
girly, signify my
embrace of administrator's
lifestyle.

4. the heritage, by Earthshoes
$100, my back would be aligned,
they'd last the rest of my life, and
signify my complete lack of or
defiance of the concept of beauty
or even attractiveness.

*thanks to the internet for ruining my life, this is what I do, cuddled with my lap top in bed before I go to sleep at night.

Secret New Job and Nana's Guilt

I called Nana on the second night of Hanukkah (sure it was a little late...but hey there are 8 days for all holiday procrastinators). She sounded normal and then she laid it on: "I heard you have a new job." She didn't say it in a congratulating tone...I didn't understand that something was amiss until, " guess who told me?" My parents? No, my mom's parents.

The problem is I obviously like my mom's family more than my dads. It is holiday time so I'm required to moan about familial relations. Nana got a Christmas card (I guess we should call it 'holiday card' because we're mixed religions) from Grandad telling her how proud he was of their shared grandkids...me getting a job with the city etc. For the record she is the only grandparent I call but it obviously isn't enough. Then she really laid it on..."you're going to your grandparents for Christmas I hear. I know that you really like visiting your grandparents, you always like being with them."

Guilt. I'm making a special trip not to see her? Maybe because she is Jewish she feels sad because she can't really compete with the fun of Christmas? Or is it simply that I am bad and neglecting her.

Then she told me that my cousin just had another baby...I never met the first (which means I haven't seen my cousin in 2 years). oops. looks like neglect on my part, that is what I get for not going home for 2 days during Thanksgiving. May I point out that last time I was near the south I visited her...and slept on the floor of her nursing home at the foot of her bed and had 2 nurses wake me up by accidentally stepping on me.

Before I am accused of being a bad granddaughter or friend or cousin or relation or bad anything I guess I should tell YOU before you get a holiday card in the mail from my grandparents telling family gossip about me: I got a new job! I'm assisting the running the AfterSchoolMatters Bike Building program for highschoolers...Awesome!

Listen to an interview with a evangelical in Madison. The fine reporting of Hastings, persistently asking the tough questions; trying to better understand the world and the art we love.

Translations

(...)
It is true that my long mastery
divided up the dreams
and without my knowing there arose
walls, separations, endlessly.

Then I went to the coast.

I saw the beginnings of the ship,
I touched it, smooth as the sacred fish---
it quivered like the harp of God,
the woodwork was clean,
it had the scent of honey.
And when it did not come back,
the ship did not come back,
while I returned to the wood
with the ax naked like a star.

(...)
*a loose translation and exert from Pablo Neruda's The Builder

Double Invite

Dietrich came up with this idea in order to dissolve the 'cloud of disillusionment' I've been drown in. The performance will be in the same space we were supposed to perform The Secretaries. It is a small dance studio in the top of an old warehouse which will probably be abandoned Saturday night except for us.

Bold diving into
bulls
whose dumb horns
remain sharp
in your direction.

They chase
you
cornering faster
quickly gaining and
eventually stapling you down
to a ticky tack floor.

--nathan beyerlein

Antony & Cleopatra (shakespeare)

A: The present pleasure,
By revolution low'ring, does become
The opposite of itself: she's good, being gone;
The hand could pluck her back that shoved her on.
I must from this enchanting queen break off:
Ten thousand harms, more than the ills I know,
My idleness doth hatch. Ho now, Enobarbus!

E: What's your pleasure, sir?

To capture the essence of MySpace

It isn't just that I like every accessory on his body...it is that he captured such a rare essence. Watch the video.

Vulcan haircut+Jane Austin

I finally got the Vulcan haircut I have always wanted and have been too afraid to ask for. This is why I love Isaac. I didn't even have to ask. He just looked at my face in the mirror and gave it to me.

Should I follow his bold move with one of my own? Ask him to marry me, perhaps? Maybe he would think I only like him for his good eye and quick hands. He wishes he had a dollar for everytime a client asked him to get hitched.

I imagine going to parties and introducing ourselves. "And how did you and your charming husband meet?" "Oh, it is an enchanting story," I'd preface, "he's my haircutter."

I just finished Pride and Prejudice (I burned through it in a couple of hours). It may have influenced my thoughts a little too much in the marrying direction.

Here is a sample of one of the racier bits of Jane Austin's master piece:
"He appeared very surprised, but, recovering quickly, approached and spoke to Elizabeth, if not calmly, at least with perfect politeness. Astonished and confused, she received his greetings with embarrassment. Soon he could find no more to say, and left her to return to the house."

Tesla

A Winter Bike

Today ice and snow pummeled Chicago with a couple inches. With this first snow fall the biggest issue at hand is: the WINTER BIKE.

Should we get rusty mountain bikes to ride in this crap? Do we need goggles? and balaclavas?
God, let's hope not.

If you ride a bike all winter will it be RUINED? If it is a sturdy bike, the kind that won't get stolen at the Wicker Park El stop there is a good chance it will be fine.

A Winter Bike should be something heavy and dependable...not some futuristic light weight frame. It should be heavy, with thicker tires, and a frame/handle bars that don't force you to bend over a lot, thus freeing you to look up and spot hazards (glaciers) on the road.

I am not saying we should all ride mountain bikes in the snow. To the contrary I think it is a bad idea to ride with a really thick tread which will catch a lot of snow and be very slick with all the inserted ice.
Winter Bikes Should Have:
1. PAINT on the FRAME (small step in the crusade against rust...fucking expert advice here)
*you probably already have paint on your frame so skip to #2

2.FENDERS if you don't want to turn up soaked like you rolled in the muddy road after biking to work or a party you should have fenders on your bike.

Types of Fenders:
cute tail
the kind that clips on the seat post, a flap that usually points up and is adjustable
most commonly seen on hot, light weight bikes when it rains because they can clip it on and off, for those concerned with keeping the bike light weight, attractive in the few accessories (they probably don't have a kickstand or a derailleur), and low in price. If you use this your bike will get completely dirty when you ride, and you'll have to clean all salt, sand and mud off on a regular basis. Your ass may be dry, but the bike is destroyed.

full coverage
these actually come over your wheel and protect your bike AND your ass.
I have been shamed into getting these because whenever I walk into my bike shop they make "jokes" about me needing to take a class on how to clean a bike...ass holes...but it is true. I ride my bike in all kinds of weather and all the crap ends up on my cranks and chain and derailleur and inside my head tube. I have seen really cheap full coverage fenders that get bent and are annoying because they constantly have to be adjusted and want to rub against your tires.

Make fenders a good investment by buying nice ones from your local bike shop.

With what little research I have done I think fenders run from $20-$50. Take your bike into the shop so you get the right size for your bike. While you are there let the staff install them...I hear they are really hard to put on properly, the small fee will be worth it.

As a reward for being so practical and reading the less than attractive notes on biking through sludge here is a little bike porn/fashion. My obsession with human mustaches has been transferred in bikes to a handlebar fetish: