Chicago: That thing you shook hands with four days ago just had babies in the bathroom.

So the man on the Broadway bus told two gay Francophones.

I don't understand

Crazy man talking. About the thing the Frenchies shook hands with having had babies in the bathroom.

Two gay Francophones get on a bus...

this is a disturbing title

Thank you!

The crazy guy was my (and Jenny's) favorite genre of crazy - he looked pretty normal (clean clothes, blazer w/ patches, longish but clean grey hair) but was insane in his chow mein. He also asked that if demons were visible to anyone else on the bus, that they please cast the demons out.

I may have seen this fellow before. I've definitely come across an otherwise unremarkable, professor-esque guy on the 36 who, on closer attention, turned out to be pretty looped. Was this person writing in a journal at all?

No. He was just a'talkin'.

He also said "dead gray, that's the color of the gay flag" and informed a homo who was talking on a Bluetooth that he was going to be dead gray with the dead snakes.

Homo on a Bluetooth
I know, I know
It's really serious

Dead gray is my favorite color
I felt so symbolic yesterday
If I had a gay flag
I would pick up the dead gray snakes and play.

My love is in league with the freeway

i think i'm going to see two "rockumentaries" tonight, one about a canadian heavy metal band and one about sonic youth.

is the first one "anvil"?

That's pretty good Jenny.

yes. i was going to add "n/a i will let you know how it goes, because i know how you love a good rockumentary".

cool. what is the sonic youth one?

it's this:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102601823
Interesting story of how ants know other ants are dead.

that is interesting. the story that jenny posted about solitary confinement was pretty crazy too.

the sonic youth doc looks hmmm, will be interested to hear if it's more about sonic youth or more about the teenagers

I'm spreading the word that I'm phoneless. I hope to have a new phone (and probably new number) by Tuesday of next week. Until then I'm dead to all of you.

So fucking frustrating b/c I'm 81 days from being free of Sprint.

Oh - did you guys know that this week we should be seeing an increase in our pay due to the stimulus plan?

Yeah that solitary confinement story! I am reading A Tale of Two Cities (also Amanthem lolsob but I'm almost done and the post-300 pages of monks discussing time travel has given way to some action so I am confident I will finish it this weekend if not tomorrow) and the book opens with a daughter collecting her father who is totally broken after almost 20 years in terrible, solitary prison conditions in pre-revolution France. His behavior is very much like the behavior of people held in solitary confinement described in the article. So it's like, we've known this has some fucked up effects for at least 150 years, and yet... we just don't care.

yeah i read that story last week. it's fucked up.

Kr was telling me about it, but I'm behind on my NYers.

The as of yet unrealized impact of the following is what scares me:

The United States now has five per cent of the world’s population, twenty-five per cent of its prisoners, and probably the vast majority of prisoners who are in long-term solitary confinement.

It wasn’t always like this. The wide-scale use of isolation is, almost exclusively, a phenomenon of the past twenty years.

wait wtf story are you guys talking about? the new yorker? ants?
link pls
i wanna read about solitary confinement

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/30/090330fa_fact_gawande?currentPage=all

thank you kindly

Jordan was committing the unpardonable sin, as set forth in the Gospel of Jesse, of responding to a Facebook post on ILX instead of Facebook.

hey dudes, we're in tomorrow evening. we're staying in little village for the first three days. any hangage opportunities should be directed to teenagequiet @ g-male

rad and thanks for all yr collective help

I am going to this thing tomorrow night that is $10 for open bar/pizza from 6-9. Anyone interested, let me know.

Jesse, you do not like Mastodon.

n/a did you ever decide to get a ticket to Mastodon?

Yeah I walked over to metro and bought a ticket last week

thanks for that nyer solitary article, yall. shit makes my blood ~boil~

I have a new phone and a new phone number. I am happy about the new phone, but not about the new number.

Back to what Jenny said about what Jordan said about what Jenny said about the ants and the confinement: why does there seem to be a rash of people responding out of context? Is this punishment for my own non sequitirs?

So that newsletter thing? The president of my stupid union decided she didn't like my article, the edits I made to her article, or the sanity I brought to her font choices and just reverted it back to its original, hideous state. Here is an example of her writing that she wanted so desperately to preserve:

As you can see, we need to change from being apathetic to energetic in standing up for rights and benefits that we have not only negotiated for, but for what we have worked hard to achieve; And don’t want to lose.

And we're also back to Courier/Comic Sans.

My response was, "You should realize that people notice and comment on these errors, but if you don't care, I'm not going to worry about it." I'd worry about retaliation if I thought she was smart enough to sneak up on me.

I also wouldn't be so mean about it but she can't ask me to stay late to do something for her and then decide that it hurts her feelings to have somebody fix her grammar errors. Fuck you, lady. I never liked her anyway. She's dumber n' hell and crooked to boot.

The whole reason I ever went to steward training is because she spelled Obama as "O'Bama" and I thought that there should be SOMEBODY in this organization who could write her way out of a wet paper bag. Stupid stupid a-hole.

I recommend staying in bed except for a trip to the Jewel for chicken noodle soup and vodka.

i recommend putting a boot up her ass cuz that's the american way

Stir up a pitcher of chicken vodka noodles, get ripped, put on your Fleuvogs, then do as Neck said.

nIck

I've learned that people pay a LOT of money for really terrible PR people. Jo@n W. H@rris' PR person included. I could be making so much more money. Jenny, let's go into business. Example:

Through her hard work and desire to see art gain prominence in everyday lives, every person who wishes to broaden their horizons has had a greater 0pportunity to do so, and sh3 has worked to emphasize Chicago's importance as a cultural center on a national and international scale, as evidenced through her tireless efforts to found the H@rris Theater for Music and Dance.

also

W-----n was introduced to C@@ more than 20 years ago when B3a L3vi, who worked with the late 3ssee Kupcin3t to found the school, recruited him with Sh3ll3y Zuck3r to position the maiden voyage of the Lake Michigan cruiser Odyssey as a fundraiser.

That's very difficult to parse.

No chicken vodka noodles yet; Maybe lunch. I did call in sick and make pancakes, however. It was the only way.

(Note: I had already planned to take a sick day and I'm still working from home for a couple hours so, yeah.)

I almost bought a can of Max Tundra's homemade kosher chicken soup last night, but I blanched when he told me it was $15. "But it comes with mp3s of two albums!" he said. "I already have them," I explained. "Do you have a t-shirt?" he asked, eagerly. "Umm, I'm just gonna sign up for your e-mail list." I felt like a schmuck. Also: he is very short.

i enjoyed his dance styles

$15 soup? Who does this guy think he is? Paul Newman?

snizzap

That is such entry level Amanda knowledge that I am surprised that jaymc.xls failed here.

I think I might like The Wicker Man. I should put it on my Netflix queue.

xp Wait, are you suggesting that I should've known it was The Wicker Man merely by the fact that Amanda was talking about it? She could've been talking about Troll 2 for all I know.

xp - But the Nick Cage version, though, since it's totally awesome.

Yes, that's what I meant, but you have an excellent point re: Troll 2 and so I concede.

I read that as Nick Cave and immediately began to imagine a musical version scored by the man himself. Starring Nick Cage, of course. In a bearsuit.

Nicholas Cages punches a lot of women in The Wicker Man remake.

you guys, i am going to admit the extent of my fanhood:

i can't think of a single other movie that i have
* original soundtrack
* songs that inspired the original soundtrack
* the book
* two different versions of the movie in a collectable wooden box
* traveled across the ocean to another country to visit places where the movie was filmed, including
a) stayed in the hotel where they shot the bar scenes (aka the green man aka the ellangowan hotel)
b) drove to a remote cliff to see remains of the feet of the wicker man that they burned up in the movie
c) took a wee chip of wood from the feet and stored it in a box as a memento (don't tell anyone, it's less than an inch long, no one will miss it)
* taught myself how to play songs from the soundtrack on the recorder

oh! and on the way back from scotland, the airplane played the remake and we laaaaaughed and laughed.

hi dere!
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/145/350647809_16bfd957ab.jpg

much has been said of the strumpets of yore

The closest I can come to that level of fandom is that I lived in CO for two years and always meant to go to Estes Park to see the hotel from The Shining.

you sold grilled cheese sandwiches at dead shows -- that has to count for something

also there's more, but that's what i'm willing to post on the internet

:-/

i don't know if the wicker man is a horror movie, really, it's more of just like a fucked-up movie

p.s. i am not a virgin (TMI) but that naked singing lady freaked me out

xxp o_O

amanda you got naked and sang a pagan song in your hotel room didn't you

:(

listen my life is small and sad and i have to give it purpose somehow
so don't judge me

it's ok, i celebrated my fandom of 'real genius' by filling a house with popcorn and popping it with a giant space laser

btw i wasn't on a tour or anything (shameful!) -- the airplane playing the movie was pure coincidence. we just planned the vacation to be able to see these sights.

Amanda, I ain't judgin'! I was thinking specifically about movies, but my Battlestar Galactica fandom is preeeeety intense. I would totally go to Vancouver to see filming locations.

Also I swear I never liked the Grateful Dead that much. I just needed a job and a ride back to the east coast.

even if you did, that would be ok.

i guess i can't relate because i'm too cool to have strong feelings about things, sorry dudes

i am working on what is possibly the most incoherent research paper ever written

sadly, it's time to come back to reality and attend a faculty meeting.

I had v. v. strong feelings about Phish. But for real not so much about the Dead.

I have to write my first school paper in years. I have started it and it shows signs of being necessarily boring.

I mean, it's only 2 pages, and the topic is What I Learned from an article called "Managing Oneself" which is about how to be successful at in business and life determining your strenths and learning styles in order to create your own fate.

if you think that's dull, my research paper is about retention factors in distance education and academic libraries' role in alleviating said factors

it's supposed to be 2,000 to 2,500 words ... i currently have 2,600 words with no introduction, no conclusion, no bibliography, and no real narrative or central idea

Yeh, I guess there are different kinds of dull. Yours is going to be dull but substantive. Mine's just going to be perfunctory. I mean, I did learn something, but I'm going to have to reach to find an angle.

you guys it was like the wild west in the faculty meeting
good lord

Lots of tumbelweeds and a Morricone soundtrack?

Sorry, I've actually become kind of obsessed with tumbleweeds lately.

Dear L3v3l 0ptical:

I'll see you in a week.

Yours,
Dan

I visited my mom last fall the week after she had driven to New Mexico and back on her own, and she had a gigantic tumbleweed in the back seat of her car, for posterity.

I've never seen a tumbleweed in real life. When I drove through Texas in college we managed to avoid seeing even one! I read an article about how they can pile up against houses and be general pains in the ass, since then I've been compelled to YouTube videos of them rolling around.

Jon, that's kind of weird.

I would think there are much, much weirder things to google YouTube videos of.

btw jenny i just started watching battlestar galactica and i think i like it

Such as

Nom. LOL.

(credit to Jennifer Sturgis)

outside there were tumbleweeds, but inside the saloon it was nothing but shoot-em-up and deadly fistfights. after the meeting i actually said the following out loud, "if that's the kind of shit that goes down in the (redacted) department, people better bacdafucup offa (my department)...DANG"

don't know if anyone in the acad. affairs office heard, but hope not

ILX disappeared like the island on Lost

GALACTICA

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3290/2912492528_08c074cd5c_o.jpg

I have an idea for a thread title.

Chicago: Malort Cocktail.

ah malort