Alex is in town and we spent a good chunk of last night discussing the upcoming Chicago mayoral election. Alex's question was, if Daley's administration is so corrupt, why is he such a shoo-in for re-election?

I guess I've gone native because 1)The question seemed strange to me-corruption? Yeah, so what's your point? and 2)I compared it to Clinton/Lewinsky where part of the country was outraged that he got blowjobs and lied about it and the rest of the country shrugged and ignored it. But it's one thing to cheat on your wife and another thing to oversee tons of graft, a crumbling mass-transit system and wretched public schools, to name three things off the top of my head.

The aldermen are up for election as well and this year, according to the LA Times, (and why do I have to go there to read the story rather than locally?) there are 4 guys on the ballot who were aldermen, got arrested and served jail time for political corruption and now are out of jail, running again.

Fun fact from the story: Chicago has more FBI corruption investigation units than any other city. We're number 1! We're number 1!

Okay, they closed down Lakeshore Drive because of the snow and sent us home from school. If not a snowpacalypse then perhaps a major snowfu.

Snow! Yes, to the apparent shock of everyone with a media job in Chicago, it snows here! Sometimes quite a lot! Or, as the Daily Southtown put it:

Snowmageddon has arrived!

Goodbye Anna Nicole. It seems to me you lived your life like a candle being urinated on by a drunken frat boy.

I hope things work out better for you in the next world. This one seemed pretty rough.

Find your own pose!

I suck at predicting the future. For instance, there was a period last spring where I went on and on to my dad and brother about how I thought Joe Biden really seemed plausible as a candidate for president. Although while on the presidential timeline, I'm going to say that McCain will exit the race because of his role in the S&L crisis of the late 80's, not because of Iraq or being insufficiently conservative for the wackos or whatever.

If you had told me a year ago that I would not only run for exercise but that I would be so eager to run on a Friday evening after a stressful week that I would brave 6 degrees Farenheit (before calculating the considerable wind) to do it, I would not believe that prediction. Nevertheless that is what I did yesterday.

I did stop on my way home from work at a yuppie but not dreadful Army Navy store for one of those ninja mask thingies. The clerk was not a dick when I kept calling it a "baklava" which I think is a prudent approach for someone selling a $30 piece of lycra.