i would’ve taken getting shot last night.
And of course it happened on the west side where there are no cabs!
See? It’s not just about yuppified convenience. It’s about life or death!
that’s not exactly what i think about when i think “the west side”. that’s less than a mile from my house.
In my own personal geography, anything west of Ashland is the west side.
i think of anything west of central park drive, maybe kedzie, as the west side. but if you say “the west side” to me the mental image i get is the corner of pulaski & jackson, which is one of the scariest fucking neighborhoods i’ve ever been in.
My very poorly calibrated internal compass goes super wonky once I hit about Western.
Speaking of the west side, fucking Orange Line derailed today: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/12/19/national/main2281320.shtml
I think we should start a serious letter writing campaign to all our elected officials. There has been a major CTA delay every goddamn day for the last couple weeks.
Pulaski and Jackson... is that North Lawndale?
And of course it happened on the west side where there are no cabs!
See? It’s not just about yuppified convenience. It’s about life or death!
roffles
yeah, i guess that would be lawndale. it goes from kedzie to cicero, and 22nd st to the ike i think?
re: cta, kreusi has to go. between the brown line station closings fiasco, the (literal) DAILY MAJOR DELAYS, and the fact that more than 30% of the tracks in use are in designated “slow zones” because they are in such a state of disrepair that they’re unsafe at normal speeds someone needs to be held responsible for this.
Hasn’t the state underfunded maintainence projects? I’m woefully uninformed about the specifics of their budget woes. Seems like both sides probably share the blame.
underfunded based on kruesi’s expectations. the state says cta lacks fiscal responsibility. truth is probably somewhere in the middle. but all the same, the brown line and blue line projects are funded with federal money so there’s no way the brown line stations should have been shuttered. ESPECIALLY after saying for two years leading up to the project that they wouldn’t be closing stations. you think that would have been an influence in your decision to say, open a business or move into a new residence if you knew that the el station closest to you was going to be closed? dude has to go.
Kr went to Beans and Bagels (next to the Montrose stop) yesterday to get her usual bagel with roasted-red-pepper hummus, and they said that they’re no longer offering the hummus: apparently their business has plummeted since the station closed and they’ve had to cut back on some of their offerings. I just hope they keep the fresh-squeezed orange juice. :(
See? CTA mismanagement has a devastating impact on people’s lives!
I want to start a letter-writing campaign to get the operator of the ~8:40 Blue Line run to shut his yap for a change. Dude just talks and talks and talks. Isn’t that what all the robot announcements are for, and do we really need to be scolded into “using all available doors” at every stop?
i had to wait almost a half hour for an outbound blue line yesterday. i was on the western/congress platform at 7:21 and the next one came at 7:48. since the advent of the “service improvement to the west side” morning rush trains are supposed to run every 6–8 minutes. obviously that’s not happening. the most frustrating aspect is that there is no communication with the riders about the reason for the delay either. i’ve heard more announcements about delays to the redline while waiting on the platform than for the blue line. the last time i heard an announcement regarding the blue line was about 2 or 3 months ago when a car jumped the jersey barrier on the ike and wound up on the tracks.
CTA mismanagement has a devastating impact on people’s lives!
Certainly.
However, it must be said that I have been getting to work on time and even early for several days. The train has been moving for the entire route, sometimes even relatively quickly. I am convinced it’s all a coincidence, and I will be an hour late any day now.
this morning when we pulled up to forest park we sat for 4 minutes with the first SIX CARS at the platform and the last two still not there. we were waiting for “signals ahead”. it was great to watch my bus pull away even though i was at the station.
Wait... you know what? I am totally misremembering. I got to work early Monday because I took a cab. I got to the platform, it was so crowded you could barely stand, and there wasn’t a train in sight in any direction. So I said fuck it and hailed a cab on Broadway.
So basically forget everything I said in the previous post. The CTA is a constant nightmare.
Not for me.
the most frustrating aspect is that there is no communication with the riders about the reason for the delay either.
THIS is what the operators should be talking about, not “this is Damen coming in to Damen bound for Downtown and Forest Park PLEASE use all available doors coming in coming in” etc.
xpost: Yeah, I really have to say I have few complaints as of late, but I realize it’s probably luck.
I was just innocently looking at pix on flickr when I tried “Winter Cats” and ended up not being able to turn away from a monitor full of destroyed feet—blood, toes, inside of feet...ARGHGHGHH!H!!!! YUCKYPANTS!!!!!
AURGUTHGLAJSKLDJFKSLA
Anyway, I’m in a great mood today, aside from knowing the kinds of images that will show up in my nightmares tonight.
what do winter cats have to do with mutilated feet?
My co-worker Laura just told me that the guy in the cubicle next to her, an old curmudgeonly dude in his 60s, has been surreptitiously looking at hentai all day.
I have no clue, Kenan. It’s someone’s emergency room pix. THANKS FOR SHARING, DUDE!
Great. Now I have to go google hentai.
OMG that might not be a good idea. At least GIS-wise...
Yeah, hentai = anime p0rn
That would have been classic if she had, though. Maybe next time she could look up bukkake.
and what’s that?
I think I need a vacation.
I looked it up, but just read about it on wiki.
Where would you go, Jordan?
i’m not jordan but i would go to an island somewhere, preferably in the south pacific, and disappear.
America del Sur!
Okay. But I want to clean my apartment too.
I would go hiking in Yosemite.
I would have sex with all this white girls.
I just walked around the office with two pieces of pointy foamcore in my hands saying, “I... am... a... stabbing... robot...”
I think I may have had too much chocolate.
You don’t have to wait for vacation, you know.
i’ve been blowing my nose so much the past week that it hurts to touch my nose.
Ughhhhh I hate that
2x
’Cause it’s not like you get to stop blowing it at that point.
Puffs Plus!
’Cause it’s not like you get to stop blowing it at that point.
OTM.
xpost- i know, they stopped carrying puffs at the store here and have instead switched to something akin to .25 grit sandpaper.
let’s line up by kleenex brand and softness
so long chicago, don’t take any wooden nickels.
Bbbbut all the wooden nickels I’ve ever been offered were redeemable for free drinks at the bar where they were offered to me.
Grrrr.
There’s nothing like having a REAL, IMPORTANT GOAL or TASK to get you to do things like mop the floor, organize your closet, spackle and sand nail holes and re-hang the toilet paper holder, all of which I just did.
And put up lights in 2 closets and changed the light bulb in my stairwell.
(BTW, Courtney is a lurker on this ILX.)
ADVICE PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD.
I am just trying to move around some files on my computer, from my desktop to a new folder or from one folder to another, etc. The computer will not let me drag between locations and when I try to cut and paste is says, “Cannot move [filename]: Source and destination file names are the same,” which is not at all fucking true. Help!
Went away, ate a sandwich, read, and came back and the files moved around just fine. During this episode I also could not move any items around on the desktop, and I made sure it that the setting was not “align to grid” or anything like that.
You know what else?? At 6 this morning I was startled out of my sleep by the sound of my dustbuster running in the bathroom (where it hangs on the wall, unused since the week I returned from NO). It was hanging there, running, but with the switch set to “OFF.” I left it on the base but flicked the switch to the “ON” position, and back to “OFF” and I haven’t heard from it since. Kind of weird, huh?
Also: Windows does that shit from time to time. I’m using a beta of Vista right now, and it gets REAL squirrelly about once every two weeks. And then it stops whatever shenanigans suddenly and runs like a dream. No explaining it. I bet the people who wrote the damn thing couldn’t explain it without a week of debugging time. At least with Vista, it sends automatic updates to Microsoft whenever it crashes, so I like to imagine that someone somewhere IS spending a week finding a solution to my problem. Leave me with my illusions, ok?
My good good good good friend 3rica is back in town this week only! (And one day next week when I bring her back from the U.P.) We just had drinks, hence my enthusiasm in posting. We decided about the only good thing about this Xmas is the reunions with friends from far away.
Also: Kenan, I don’t know if you remember me talking about this (we were both pretty drunk) but we now have a file server running Ubuntu in our living room, and it’s had its fair share of shenanigans too. Computers are stoopid.
I don’t dick with ubuntu anywhere near as much as I has planned to. I use a Mac at work every day, so I don’t miss having a “good” OS. I just use this computer as an internet terminal and constantly-running torrent server. And occasionally, I do work on it, but never heavy lifting.
GUESS WHO IS DONE WITH HER BIG PAPER? ME. ME IS DONE WITH HER BIG PAPER.
That’s the end of this semester. ONE MORE SEMESTER AND THEN ME IS DONE WITH HER BIG LAW SCHOOL.
xpost to self: which is probably a good argument FOR using ubuntu more, now that I think of it.
JENNY! YOU ARE A MOVER AND A SHAKER!
M@tt’s Ubuntu machine = torrent server, “tivo”, movie/music center, possible web server... The torrent program has a slick web interface, it’s fucking great.
xxxpost: My congratulations, again!
Oh god I just uploaded it to the uploading place. I told Drunk Dan Martin on IM a minute ago that I feel like I’m giving a baby up for adoption. A 35 page baby with 150 footnotes that I totally hate.
Stupid fucking baby.
Kick the baby.
Oh god I just uploaded it to the uploading place.
Going to school in the 21st century must be crazy!
“Kick the baby” just made me laugh uncontrollably. It’s clearly bed time. But I don’t have any more homework to do! I want to stay up all night and NOT DO HOMEWORK! I’ll be fine at work tomorrow; Jeff’s parents gave me a Starbucks gift card for Christmas.
xpost—It totally is!!! When I was an undergrad back in the day I had a motherfucking typewriter, the kind with the little screen where you’d type one line at a time and then press enter and it would type it on the page. We had computer labs but only one really rich kid in my dorm had a laptop. We all got email my senior year but I couldn’t figure out how to work it because it was Pine or some shit. Now I am in classes that have affiliated discussion boards. For discussing.
adoption is a loving option
But abortion is so much more fun.
There you go again, making Ann Coulter all happy.
:)
I fell asleep on the train today. That’s a sign that I should be in bed. But I’m NOT! Because I have a half day tomorrow, and then office xmas party. And then Thursday, another half day, and then a special marketing department party. And then Friday will be blah, and probably a short day or a nothing day for everyone. My week is effectively over.
Greek food makes my pee smell funny. Like asparagus, but not. It’s more like nutmeg.
Maybe it’s just CHRISTMAS PEE. My kidneys have the spirit.
I watched two episodes of House tonight — the last two eps of last season, which I had not seen, because it’s been a while since I’ve even owned a TV. (I do now. Pawn shops are good things.) How can they get away with showing that much gore on network TV? I mean really. It’s bad enough that they show surgery, but a dude’s eye popping out of his head? In graphic detail? Fucking EWW. And the scene where House intentionally kills a dude (it’s a hallucination) by driving a robotic bone saw deep into him all the way up his torso from his belly button to his neck? Causing puffy guts to puff out of his hugely open body cavity? Holy hell. Don’t show me that. It feels like fetishistic violence to me, way worse than someone being shot (though the episode had a lot of that, too), and way more potentially scarring to our precious children than, say, graphic fucking. So how is this on network television? I don’t want to sound like an old crank, it’s a real question. Does NO violence get censored anymore?
and way more potentially scarring to our precious children than, say, graphic fucking
You know, I take this back. I think either way, children will learn early on that the human body is a strange, fragile, temporal, animal thing. But I wish they’d balance it. Hey, kids! It’s not all blood and guts! Some of it’s semen and mucus, too! Yin and yang.
I have to edit myself again. Both of those things are filled with yang, and not a lot of yin.
Raw yang.
How’s everybody doin’?
I’m eating a packet of cream of wheat at my desk. For some reason, these little packets always end up more like a small ball of cream of wheat than a bowl of the stuff. It’s still good and warm though.
Way to go, Jenny!!!
Cute!
aw.
but yay jenny for finishing your paper!
i dreamt i was in some sort of very dry post-apocalyptic world, hanging out in a bar. and they wouldn’t serve me anything, which made me mad.
I dreamt that I fell asleep on a school cafeteria table and it was the most comfortable sleep of my life.
Where can I download a free, easy music download program for my work computer? I want something similar to poisoned, but for windows. FIND IT! TELL ME!
I’m listening to Take On Me from the ILM 80s top hits.
I just highlited my entire To Do list. I’m sure I’ll get everything done that much faster now. ha ha
Sarah, what is Poisoned?
WOO BOY not in a good mood this morning.
Packaged up presents for the inlaws (most of them) and faced with the possibility of going to the post office, gave up and went to UPS store. In and out in 10 min, no lines. The post office made me wait 40 min to pick up a package that they refused to try to redeliver to my house.
Now I am going to listen to Alice Cooper and Tom Petty and clean the house and eat cookies. F this mess.
Tom and Alice: Together At Last for Christmas
Bob and Carole and Tom and Alice: Fogies for the Holidays
Tom and Alice: Homely Dudes of Rock Sing The Hell out of Holiday Classix
There you go.
Also, I have an idea for the next Chicago thread;
Chicago: The few. The proud. The egg donors.
Re: egg donorship
Have you noticed that the price went up? It used to be five grand, now it’s seven. Have you also noticed that the numeral 7 is in bold type on those ads on the train? Have you noticed the smug look on the face of the blond girl on the left who’s clearly thinking, “Yeah. I waited to be an egg donor and got two gees more than you did, hasty bitches.”
Amanda, You are awesome. Also, WHAT KIND OF COOKIES??
John, Poisoned is a music/file sharing program for the mac. You were probably joking though. This is one of those things you know about and I don’t.
No, I’ve never heard of it.
I’m also the guy who is still more or less in the dark about torrents, bit or otherwise, and who has to rely on your boyfriend to help me transfer cassettes to mp3, so this shouldn’t be too surprising.
Cherry-almond butter cookies with a chocolate chip on top. They’re alright, but I think went a little overboard on the almond paste.
I’ve never heard of Poisoned either.
In other news, I had to fail three students this term! Three! One of them was caught by surprise and tried to challenge me but I confronted him with his work and he (miraculously) realized that someone who completes less than 60% of the work for the class should probably not receive a passing grade. Oh well. Sorry, kid.
Today I get to:
a) fact-check biographies on Shakira, Albert Pujols, and maybe Tony Shalhoub,
b) hobnob with work-friends at a potluck that will include my co-worker Laura’s delicious southwestern tempeh, and then
c) get drunk on Glogg.
BEST DAY OF WORK EVER
In about an hour: bowling and beer.
i forgot i need to buy a gift for my 6 month old nephew/godson. anyone have any suggestions? please let me know as i need to go to a meeting in 15 minutes and will need to purchase said gift from amazon IMMEDIATELY after getting out of the meeting.
thanks kids.
You can’t go wrong with a well-placed Dr. Seuss book, always my fall-back kid gift.
i don’t think the kid can read.
In about an hour: bowling and beer.
BOWLING?? OK you win.
sassy caterpillar mobile with suction arm
But someone can read to the kid, right?
A subcontractor just brought in wine and spa gift certificates to three of my coworkers. It’s upsetting. This happened last year too. These coworkers get all the good crap, even though I work just as hard behind the scenes. I know it’s dumb because the subcontractors work one on one with my coworkers out in the field, not me, and they can’t just buy everyone presents, but it’s still irksome. It’s especially annoying when they come in the front door and announce to me they are here to give presents to my coworkers, who I then need to buzz on the phone with the great news. BAH HUMBUG! WHERE IS MY SPA CERTIFICATE?
End of rant.
Get your nephew a monkey.
I’d just like to restate I got a fucking LUGGAGE TAG from work for xmas. And $100 worth of books.
Fuck a font tag