Finished with school, finished with a crazy work deadline, back to my life.

From an article in today's NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE about Christopher Walken:

His bizarro word rhythm and gleeful disregard for punctuation makes even his most banal utterances sound dramatic. At the grocery store, he stared at a plump tomato and then put it back. ''I DON'T. Buy the tomatoes with. The stems. On them. They don't. Degrade. They go. Down the sink. And into the WATER. Then. They get lodged in the throats of little. OTTERS.''

It's been a long time since I've indulged in the guilty, guilty pleasure of listening to LOVELINE with Adam Carolla and Dr. Drew but I have it on now as I wait for my frozen Trader Joes taquitos to heat up in the oven.

Nelly Furtado is the guest and a caller asked her how she felt about being embraced by the hip hop community.

She explained that she grew up in Victoria, B.C., and, that while it was a very white town, they DID pick up radio stations from Seattle.

Okay, I was in Seattle from 90 through about half of 96 and I'm here to say, if Seattle radio was the alternative-to-whiteness, the hip-hop center that she was working with...well bless her heart.

I'm listening to the latest round of hearings in D.C.

It's a little bit disconcerting to hear people talking about "JAG Officers".

You can imagine what this makes me think of every single time.

What up cuz?
What up dogster?

(making my way through the morning papers here...)

John Tierney, writing in NYT:

How, (some conservatives having 2nd thoughts about Iraq) wonder, did so many conservatives, who normally don't trust their government to run a public school down the street, come to believe that federal bureaucrats could transform an entire nation in the alien culture of the Middle East?

From a NYTimes article headlined "Christian Cool and the New Generation Gap"

The actor Stephen Baldwin, a born-again Christian, has just
directed a DVD called "Livin' It," pairing extreme sports
with faith testimony, from which he hopes to spin skate
Bibles, clothing, CD's and Bible-study guides, all tied to
a nonprofit youth ministry.

"This could be the first get-down rock 'n' roll, cool
Christian brand," he said. "I've been to conferences with
youth pastors, and they all said, 'Dude, we've been waiting
for something that's cool and edgy and Christian.' ''

I hardly know where to begin.

Checked out this particular Baldwin's filmography at this fan site and considering that he's been in LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN, HALF-BAKED, THREESOME and THE USUAL SUSPECTS I'm not sure whether Mr. Baldwin is especially alt. in his Christianity or just in need of a job.

Here's the site for the Livin' It dvd which annoyingly has lots of words in blue that aren't hypertext links, they're just in a blue font. But the force behind the dvd (other than He Himself, presumably) is Luis Palau and the Luis Palau evangelical organization who has a homepage here. It looks like an ordinary, evangelical organization except for all the pictures of skateboarders across the top of the page. Luis just got back from China where they were psyched to hear about Christ, same thing is true for India, click here for a sermon, etc. A link takes you to "Ministries" and, from there, "Skate Ministry" which notes:

To reach the “core sports” (skateboarding, BMX, etc.) subculture that so influences today’s young people, LPEA builds a 9,000-square-foot skate park for each of our evangelistic festivals.

At LPEA skate parks, professional skateboarders demonstrate their skills and a skate evangelist gives a hard-hitting Gospel presentations each day.

Chicago Firefighters have been getting a lot of bad press lately.

They maintain a chat room and b.board to discuss issues that are of interest to them.

Earlier this year one topic of interest was the best way to disguise racial slurs when chatting on departmental radios.

Now they are discussing the Fire Department's director of media and public affairs, Molly Sullivan

From today's CHICAGO SUN TIMES:

Director of media and public affairs Molly Sullivan was referred to as a "big-chested babe" and a "hotty" in anonymous postings denounced as offensive by both Sullivan and City Hall.

''Does any of you chiefs have any naked pix of her? I think she should go work at the strip club. Man, I'd be there every day," one posting said.

On Thursday, 22-year veteran fire engineer Richard Anderson removed the postings from the Web site he operates because ''I figured, maybe, it's offensive to women.''

But he inadvertently compounded the insult by saying Sullivan should have been flattered. ''Somebody thinks she's beautiful. Isn't that a compliment? She's got a nice-looking body. She's a hotty. That means someone thinks she's attractive. Don't you think so?''

Calling the sexist postings much ado about nothing, Anderson said, ''What, is there no news in town? Can't you get nothing on the mayor?''

Okay, this is kind of silly but since I can't do anything about the big issues, here's a small issue.

Rumsfeld has been quoted saying that he isn't going to address "The torture word"

Shouldn't it be "the T word"?

This is a little like saying "we won't be using the fuck word on the airwaves"

In 13 hours or so I'm having lunch with my boss, whom I adore. She thinks it's a late "Happy Administrative Professionals Day" lunch. But it's the lunch when I tell her that I've signed up for daytime classes this fall semester. I'm hopeful that I can work for her part time, maybe even get a raise out of the deal. But I'm scared, scared, scared with all this money talk.

My brother asked me some questions about the commuter newspapers that made their debut in Chicago last year and I've been looking online for stories to back up my own observations. I looked in the Columbia Journalism Review and came across a great story about Adrian Nicole LeBlanc who wrote RANDOM FAMILY. Her family was working class, one reason she connected so closely with the subjects of her book. She took a long time to write the book. How long? Well she got a $20,000 advance on the book:

From the time LeBlanc received her book contract from Houghton Mifflin and paid her agent to the time the book was delivered to Scribner, the money from her advance broke down to $36 a week.

Note to self: Be Brave.

Scrolling through THE COMPLETE BUSHISMS on Slate. Here's one from back in the day:

"The students at Yale came from all different backgrounds and all parts of the country. Within months, I knew many of them."—From A Charge To Keep, by George W. Bush, published November 1999

Hello all y'all.

It's Saturday evening, close to 9 p.m. and I'm listening to Dave Frischberg on the local public radio station. I went for a long-ass bike ride today, part of that was I stopped by Stanley's on my way heading back home.

The logo of Stanley's Fresh Produce is an old Tony Soprano-looking guy smoking a pipe and flying an airplane fashioned out of a watermelon. They are on Elston Avenue...to put this in perspective, Morton Salt is on Elston avenue as is The Blommer Chocolate Factory. Head up a bit, to the intersection of Elston, Fullerton and Damen and there is the Vienna Sausage (i.e. Hot Dog) factory with its, god help us, factory outlet store.

Chicago, hog butcher and general factory type hoo ha to the world is in evidence, even today, along Elston Avenue.

Let me tell you, when it's May and sunny at 5:45 p.m. and you can roll past on your bike past the intersection of Milwaukee, Des Plaines and Kinzie where it smells like a big pan of brownies because that's where the Bronner Chocolate factory is...mmm mmm I would never trade Chicago for anything.

Anyway Elston has all sorts of industrial stuff not to mention lots of quasi industrial stuff (i.e. "Black Tie Hors Douvres!")

so can I just say here, that I know that "Hors Douvres" isn't quite right. Spelling, I mean

I've plugged it into Merriam Webster and my alternatives are:

Horsepowers
Horsehairs
Horseradish
Horsewhippers (horsewhippers???)
Whoremasters (that's what I'm talking about)

but nobody is suggesting the word for "appetizers"

anyway, black tie "appetizers" are available along Elston Avenue along with the only Target within Chicago's city limits.

I have heaps of organic produce, a whole messenger bag-full for $20. Stanley's is down the road from Whole Foods which is commonly called "Whole Paycheck" and Stanley's boasts of their low prices.

For a while a few years ago I tried getting a bag of organic produce from a local market...you would pay a flat fee (I think it was $20) per week and you got a big bag full of whatever was in season. It was like buying a subscription to a bunch of produce...it forced me to think outside my normal routine and eat different stuff. But it meant a two-hour round trip to the store 1x a week and I had a lot of food that began to mold by Wednesday (okay, I appreciate that there aren't any preservatives but damn, you are telling me that I pick up a bag on Saturday and I have to eat ALL that by Tuesday? Uh uh.)

So now I have organic apples (two kinds) organic pears (bartlett) organic asparagus, collards and both cherry and grape tomatoes. Which is not to shabby, I think.

I'm cooking brown rice now which I will then spread out on a parchment-ed baking sheet to cool and then freeze in individual baggies. And baking (baking!) beans in a covered casserole. Chickpeas that I can baggie-up and keep in my freezer. Next is baked oatmeal so that I can eat wedges of baked oatmeal, topped with apple sauce from Trader Joe's.

How wanky is it to talk about my food on my blog? Well it could be worse. I could be talking about my hip-hop class on Fridays.

Such a good bike ride. Got a phone call from Alex...that's a good thing about Cell Phones; why NOT take a phone call in the south loop and chat for a bit there on Canal Street, across from the Northern Trust headquarters. The Post Office is nearby, the one mentioned in radio traffic reports i.e. "40 minutes on the southbound to the post office" and indeed it takes up an impressive amount of real estate.

How in the world did the post office work before zip codes? Zip codes are recent, under 40 years old (and Amen to whatever unsung person came up with naming them "Zip" rather than "priority" or whatever. But before Zip codes...were there special lifers who could sit in front of mail bins and sort all of California, say? All the Santas, all the Santa Barbaras separate from all the Santa Claras. I know that at one time trains full of cargo would cross the country and sorters would ride the rails, tossing mail into specialized canvas sacks for eventual delivery. Just think of California, what it must have meant for the Post Office to have specialized in those who knew all the "Santa"s apart from on another.

It's tough for me to remember the world before bar-codes. I sure as hell can't imagine a world before zip codes.

Sorry to be so Hall Of Mirrors about all of this but Wonkette has an excerpt from the Whitehouse Interactive site
The Whitehouse has a "letter to the White House"

Q: Tom from Camano Island, WA:
How could this Country who is supposed to represent all that is right in the World allow the treatment of prisoners to happen as reported in our newspapers today? Swift and sure action must be taken to correct this situation (if true).

A: Dr. Condoleezza Rice, National Security Advisor:
. . . Those pictures were awful because America -- American men and women in uniform, active and reserve, are serving in Iraq at great sacrifice. People are losing their lives. We came there to help to liberate the people of Iraq. We came there to build schools, and to build clinics, and we want very much that the images of Americans should be the images of helping the Iraqi people.

and now Wonkette weighing in

You hear that? Someone screwed up and released the wrong images. It's like during the civil rights movement. The protesters kept emphasizing the lynchings and the angry mobs; they never showed photos of the terrific restrooms and water fountains the white folks so thoughtfully provided. You can see how people got the wrong idea.