Happiness is a multisensory expression.

“...Just dance, gonna be okay...”

News Feed : “on Washington Post Social Media” :: Fortune Cookies : “in bed”

The extension fairy left a quarter under my pillow.  (Q1)

The gyroscopic cycle between culture and counter will ultimately, like washing machine and dryer, end in nihilism.  Not all breaks are clean.

Wordplay is my trashtalk.

Ides of March suffers from telling a famillar story oversimply.  While unfamiliar with the Howard Dean-based source “Farragut North”, the Shakespearean parallels are intriguing enough, for their divergences.  Brutus does not suffer any nobility in betraying Caesar; Cassius no conspirator; Antony is stabbed not spared.  Instead of tragic collapse, Rome shuffles onward.  Like perhaps Gosford Park, the film will be nominated and forgotten within a year.

Racing for cures, matching fundraising, money culled from the taxed and extorted in order to fund efforts to provide further medical benefits to a hypochondriacally overinsured plutocratic elite, of a society which chooses to pour out wealth, ironically exhausting their gold in an attempt to transmute lead into it, all in order to chase the alchemy of immortality.  For the ultimate irony is that this society is so incompetent at economic evaluation that it fails at recognizing that it already has found a cure for cancer.  Yet instead of stopping smoking, people would rather opt to pay pounds of a foot-stompingly presumably cure rather than a fraction of known prevention.  Even when most sufferers will not even benefit from their suffering; they will have to repurchase a presumably discovered cure should it even be discovered.  Like the Northwest Passage, future historians will laugh at our folly.

And yet, maybe I am wrong.

You will be told if and when you are awkward; until then, put away your prism.

Okay.  I’m going to make a pact with you right now.  We both need to change our voicemails to not the automated one.  Because I’ve been meaning to do it forever, and I imagine you have been too.  And I just remembered, hearing yours, that it’s something I need to do.  So in the case that that’s your situation also, remember to change your voicemail. 

I’m going to miss not having this in my pocket. 

Why in English does it matter to distinguish between whether you’re coming or leaving.  You know?  There are languages that don’t do that.  Ciao, I think- oh maybe you just say that when you’re leaving.  Aloha you say both ways, shalom you say, you know, in greeting and in leaving.  Why, in English, is it so important whether you’re beginning a conversation or ending one?  Um.  Which leads me to wonder, since we both are good writers but can’t really, like, believe that in ourselves or the world, and we’re both good editors, which we kind of know- why don’t we ever write a book, together.  Just an idea.  Um.  We also have similar interests.  Um.  Anyway.  I am glad you didn’t pick up, because it means you’re asleep and I know you needed to sleep.  So I hope you are sleeping well and I will talk to you later.  Bye.

Prism is wrong, I think. More like, awkward-co​lored cellophane​.

Happy makeup palindrome day because we missed the real one on 11/02/2011.

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeehw

If I cared about twitter, I’d be using #notanonionarticle.

The hashtag is the idea that you could put the title at the end of the story.

“A ship is safe in its harbor, but that's not what ships are for."

Foulweather friends, guidance.

In one year, too late, I fear the country unravels rather than elegantly the Gordian knot.

Disappointed in Reuters.  For any quotation at all from Netanyahu in response would have been delicious.

Don’t make too much light of it.  (Can’t stand the blinding sight.)

The plural of triceratops is hexaceratops.

No iPad Touching.

Emotional extortion: skip the kneecap, go straight for the guilt and force it back until there's a crack.

A corresponding trope for archery away from being able to reimagine Robin Hood into current times.

Tie Tuesdays.

"Cool, where do you go?  There's a place on Waukeegan that's good."
I've just gathered mine from all over.  A couple leftovers my father didn't want, that kind of thing.
<mutual confusion>
We're not talking about the same thing, are we.
"Even watching you put on a tie, I assumed you were talking about Thai food."

Burning bright in dark places.  Next year will be better, if not worse.

Singled in the SI! And having been a while since undeservedly overlookeds:

"301 Dalmatians": What's black and white, and red all over.
"Titanic and Norah's Infinite Playlist": And the band played on.
"Cloverfield of Dreams": If you build it, he will come destroy the New York Yankees.
"Peter Pan's Labyrinth": How the Boys got Lost.
"Extremely Loud and Incredibly Closer": Four self-destructive lovers blame all of their problems on 9/11.
"Thank You for Smoking Kong": The biggest lie ever told.
"Pink Floyd--The Wall-E": A cute robot breaks down humanity's drug-induced hallucinations.

How much of Dad yelling at the cable customer support do you think is because he thinks the phone rep is responsible, and how much do you think is because it makes Dad feel better to yell?
 
Beaten to the punch.

“Some will win, some will lose...”

There are 162 games in a baseball season. 5 in a division championship, 7 for the league. 9 innings in a game, 3 outs in an inning.   Among all of which the ultimate outcome is weighted.

“...It goes on and on and on and on...”

Resilience is a virtue, that ability to hold on until fortunes, as quickly as they might have succumbed, are righted.

“...People / Living just to find emotion / Hiding somewhere in the night...”

Game 7, 7:05p.
Go Cards.

“...Don't stop believing...”

Xenophobes of the world, unite.  You have nothing to lose but your hackles.

“She has poor taste in men.”
But a healthy appetite.

There's a reason the Law of Attraction isn't the Law of Revulsion.  What six things can one do without.

“Knock, knock...”

Call maintenance, hold the line, roger the SOS, round up the posse, coordinate assistance, return to home field, be a friendly face, take alternate routes, support a partner, wellwish the unknown birthday girl.

When locked in, open your own door.

“...I feel like I’m knocking on heaven’s door...”

Slight gnocchi incident aside, a successful exploration into variations on the host/guest narrative.  Inside and outside, a little warmer.

Our problem is not where, but when.

Pot calling the kettle, kettle not calling back.

Basic users only have read-only access. However, a basic user can edit their status to superuser, and then because they are a superuser, they can save that edit.

There’s more than one way to follow a moral compass.

Ethical dilemmas are much easier later in the week.

Chicago’s subfreezing temperatures are an evolutionary adaptation for the city to cope with dreary chilly windy rain. Snow provides a relief from the wet that umbrellas can’t.

Milo : Clodius :: Tea Party : Occupy Wall Street ::: German WWI generals : French WWI generals :: Republican Party : Democratic Party

["SKETCH"]

I couldn’t say what his face looked like, the face which my peripheral vision identified he had; but my focus was towards his hands, at what they grasped, and then my brisk pace carried me past my instinctively brusque “no”, and I don’t look back. I didn’t look back in daylight hours prior, similarly ignoring the just-few-dollars asker or the for-a-slice-of-pizza pleader; before it was 9:45pm, much too early to be late, too late to be early, a Monday night on an Uptown block dimmed by streetlamps, neither alone nor accompanied. Drugs, I rationalized half a block away, half a block from the redline station, it had to be drugs; much much later- half an hour so, 4 redline stops so, within my own apartment so, writing down my reflections so- I added a 5% chance of prostitution.

My microsecond glance registered in his hands, in black binding, on white paper, lines on a dirty white pages, multiple angles of charcoal overlapping one another, each in a corner, shadowy figures which only resembled chaos. Whatever other intention they might have couldn’t be guessed without breaking stride; a fraction of a second was barely long enough to determine that the shapes were unfamiliar, leaving no time to consider their bearer, who with retrospect I assume had hair, wore clothes, had a race, had arms: but the only thing I could say for certain was that he had a voice and a vocabulary of at least 6 words.

“You wanna buy some art tonight?”

“How do cities understand...”

On the rooftop park 3 stories up Lake Point Tower, I sit at the dawn of dark ages, on earth in air along water.  In the Tribune Tower, in the Poetry Foundation I wander and read.

“...We drink our wine and wonder why we’re really here...”

A lot has changed in this hiatus. A lot hasn’t.

“...What’s the point of even asking...”

AIM, where I had dwelt so long is gone, long gone. For now, I use a blog crossposted to facebook. I do not presume an audience. I do not know what medium I am in; I do not know where I should be. Whatever aim I had when I started writing my away messages is gone, long gone.

“...We take the good and bad and make the best of it...”

Wherever I am, let me write: for that is how I grow.

“...All these buildings and mountains / Slowly they arise...”

My own Chicago Landmark Project: 12 Short Stays in 12 Chicago Locations


Jun 1: Lincoln Park 1BR, 2015 Clifton Ave, futon
Jun 2: North Central 2BR, 4224 Leavitt St, couch
Jun 3: Hyde Park 5BR, 5487 Hyde Park Blvd, board
Jun 4: Lakeview studio, 560 Diversey Pkwy, bed
Jun 5: Lincoln Park 1BR, 531 Deming Pl, couch
Jun 6: Avondale 4BR, 3754 School St, futon
Jun 7: Ravenswood 2BR, 1601 Berteau Ave, bed
Jun 8: Edgewater 1BR, 6029 Winthrop Ave, bed
Jun 9: Rogers Park 2BR, 7609 Eastlake Terr, air mattress
Jun 10: Lakeview 2BR, 1410 Henderson St, futon
Jun 11: Albany Park 2BR, 4240 Whipple St, couch
Jun 12: Ravenswood 2BR, 2736 Leland Ave, couch

“There ain’t gonna be no more begging and pleading…”

Praying it holds up better than the stitching on pants’ knee.
“…Falling in love is so hard on the knees…”

“There’s no way I’m turning back…”

Too much light is blinding.

“…Sticks and stones may break my bones / But whips and chains excite me…”

The umbrella costs the same regardless the weather.

“Murder for Two” plays with negative space, an accompaniment piece.

Sorry for waking you up, but I need someone to reassure me I don’t have Lyme Disease.
I get that all the time. It’s in your head.

Okcupid has too many boxes which I don’t fit into.

Will work for futon, or so I’ve heard.

Like herding cats.

Frustrd.


Don’t feel frustrd. Makes me concerned that you’re becoming a condiment.

Working from home, except not.

“Don’t go chasing waterfalls…”

Everything coming down.
Everyone comes down.

“…I think you're moving too fast…”

“Jump around / Jump around…”

The fledging unhopping on the street, thrust from nest too soon, vulnerable, lifted from below, and patiently aided to flutter off to the cobblestone side.

A butterfly flaps its wings and in STL people are happy.

For the first time in my life, I was embarrassed to be associated by my religion, to the point of wishing disassociation, lest I be labeled as I wasn’t. But rather than a futile gesture of passive non-association that relegates the extremes to speak for the entirety, let me speak out with satire.

An SI win, and thereby I am funnier than a double-Pulitzer prize winning humor columnist.

Spiral staircases, 4 bedrooms, wet bar, in-unit laundry, balcony porch:
Too big to fail.

“Can you help me unravel my latest mistake / I don’t love him / Winter just wasn’t my season…”

F:
+Rooftop porch
-El Proximity

“…We walk through the doors, so accusing their eyes / Like they have any right at all…”

M:
+Fireplace
-Character

“…Here in town you can tell he's been down for a while / But, my God, it's so beautiful…”

K:
+Lofty ambitions
-Leaky ceiling

“…'Cause you can't jump the track…”

I think I’m in love.

“…Breathe…”

We heard you like pushing shopping carts, so we put a shopping cart in your shopping cart, so you can push a shopping cart while you push your shopping cart down Barry.

You know what’s funny?
Cellos.
True. You know what else’s funny?
Reading about cellos? Sorry. What is it?
Gone now.

Free Cello, worth every penny.

“Oh you know how it is, wake up feeling…”

Sorry for not being here: rapture.

“…All you want to do is nothing on a day like today / But if you do that you'll be missing the world…”

It’s over now; I’ll show up soon.

“…Get up, get out, and get gone…”

The truest rejections are self-imposed.

Set off by commas.

“It's easy to compliment people who are similar, but difficult to complement them.”

One night I might know why
Into your eye
I stared and spread bare arms to fly
Away, saying goodbye.

Throwing sharp things at walls.

“I only called you back because you said I wouldn’t.”
Oh, I said that so that you’d call back.
“I hate you.”
I know. It’s great, this hate-love relationship.

130 plays in 2 days.

“Up, up, up, doom and gloom clouds gathering…”

The weather may be dismal and the space not ideal, but with enough cool people there’s still too much light.

“…I've got pots and pans all scattered 'round the bedroom…”

What’s the wurst that could happen.

Bridesmaids features the same flaw in protagonist and antagonist: the need for external control, with the inability to control internally.  The matrimonial setting is appropriate for the discovery that one cannot address one’s own flaw by oneself.

I paint the way I write: I draw a line on the page and it looks like something to me.

Imagination is third person present, second person past, or first person future.

If I got a tattoo it would be a snail, because I carry my home on my back. And I would get it on my back. And if anyone called it a tramp stamp I'd punch them in the face.
-Dorothy Parker

The year’s first night of summer weather, the year’s first Cardinals/Cubs game, and my first time in Wrigley Field, all celebrated with a 6-4 victory.

“Did they win?”
For some values of they.

Have you ever been trying to text a made up Greek word but your phone autocorrects it to sphygmomanometer?
Right when you called I was typing Jordan but got Korean and really wanted someone to share it with.

Can’t make this stuff up.

Thor’s script lacks enough dialogue to go around the 3 actors in the astrophysics plotline, but in turn there’s really only enough script for 2 of the superheroic, mythological, and scientific plotlines.  Perhaps appriopriate that it is my first 3D.

There is a mild sandwich crisis going on at coffeehouse: not enough counterspace for all of Jeff’s sandwiches.
“Who is Jeff and it seems like he knows how to eat!”
Jeff is a person who ordered a bunch of sandwiches at this coffeehouse but didn’t pick them up. He may not exist. Or he may represent our subconscious need for a spiritual guide figure. I expect a future conflict from prophets who reveal his true name is Geoff.

New Wave philosophy.

“All wars are justified, in the end. because the winner says so.”
That's only for wars that have winners, though.

What’s the point of arguing.

“You and I both know nothing destroys the credibility of an ostensibly intelligent argument than unintelligent writing.”
That, and piranhas. Piranhas just devour credibility.

Messing with a friend and with friends without Messing.

Got reverse burgled: someone came to my apartment and locked everything up.

A happy medium: neither over nor underdone.

“Murder on the Orient Express” offers catharsis through fiction for the Lindbergh kidnapping, the Crime of Agatha Christie’s Century.

A different century, a different crime: I had drafted a narrative of an airplane passenger found dead, stabbed by a boxcutter, within a cabin of suspects as diverse as America: people with nothing in common except that they lived through 9/11.

To kill Osama bin Laden in fiction is the height of presumption; the explanation, “well, Agatha Christie did it” is no better. But now I have a third reason to rewrite.

Apparently Chicago has an improv festival this weekend.  I think they made it up as they went along.

Anyone overly interested in watching the wedding, I suspect to have converted to Briticism simply to observe the 3-day weekend.

“Turtles seem to have two impulses only: 1) Eat and 2) Escape. This second urge is fierce; wherever they are placed somewhere, they instantly look for a way to leave that place and get somewhere else. That is what they do. That is pretty much all they do.”

The math works out.

“She backs away, turns around for a moment to consider the challenge: "Lessee, regroup. Okay, what are our assets? We are tough. We are determined. We are indestructible. A hypotenuse is always longer than the other two sides. Okay, we're going in."”

Two missionaries are captured by a savage tribe, and brought before the chieftess…

As much because it requires an extremely specific humor familiarity, as because it is tasteless, I’ve been sitting on a punchline without a suitable audience to share with. But after months of waiting until a decent opportunity, let patience bring validation.

“Very good. You brought it home. Yes, funny.”

So ready for the National Let's Celebrate Everything with Donuts Week to end.

Like a whirlwind through STL, and back, too soon.

The next funniest thing after Monty Python is an attempt at describing the killer bunny to a cakemaker.

Talk Like Someone Talking Like Shakespeare Day.

“You better talk in iambs all the time;
To talk in prose is copping out a bit.
I'm not suggesting ev'ry sentence rhyme,
Just get into the rhythm of that shit!
To say "forsooth" and "thee" and "thou" and "thine"
Takes little effort (where's the fun in that?)
This feast has so much more on which to dine!
So gorge yourself until your belly's fat.
But then, I might be taking this too far...
Most people can't distinguish verse from prose.
We'd wind up lonely losers in some bar
The laughingstock of groups of douche-y bros.
Besides, this sonnet's taking too much work;
I'm signing off before I go berserk.”

Spontaneous generations.

It’s your day, and you want me there. I’m so there.

Exodus.

“Open up your throat…”

With about 5 minutes of typing and backspacing behind it.

“…And let all of that time go…”

On all other nights I have found enjoyment in Seders amongst kin and kith.
Tonight, something different.

Knock on wood.

“If I were a professor, I would explain every concept with an analogy to professional hockey. I'd write a book called "Understanding Criminal Law in America Using a Canadian Sport".”
If I were a hockey coach, I would train my players by expounding on analogous case law.

The best defense is to not skate on thin ice.

First round, the communicable disease influenza.
Second round, prohibition hung out to dry.
Third, upotian urban planning as a replica of Midwestern sociability.
And the electricity-smelling platypus wins in the final.

Comfort station, indeed.

Nothing is certain but dirty laundry and taxes.

“Once upon a time there was light in my life…”

Absurdist composition mixed with depressed escapism mixed with lies told to the self, set against a backdrop of paranoia. The action splits between 3 spiraling plot threads, accelerating uncontrolled into a scripted singularity. “Heddatron” is just a play, but it knows it is just a play, and at the moment of self-awareness it awakens into something alive.

Saw, but need to return this weekend, so strong the desire to experience again.

“…Turn around, bright eyes…”

“Trying to keep you, trying to please you…”

The 90 second rule is equivalent to the 36 hour rule, both correlaries of the principle that 1 1/2 is long, enough.

(I hypothesize that there is something to the common factor 1 1/2. Perhaps as an approximation for an underlying mathematical constant of the golden mean, beyond and before which logic turns ugly.)

“…The change in my pocket wasn't enough…”

“And then I ask you over again / You only answer…”

Galway Bay 830pm: trivia questions composed by Jonathan and myself.

“…Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps…”

“From the table in the corner they could see a world reborn…”

Ice cream parlors filled with people and empty tables.

“…Empty chairs at empty tables…”

“The Warriors” tackles a tricky, delicate, sensitive subject: how to reconnect with the past middle school-era friendships fled from, and sets it against a backdrop of Jonesboro.

Submerging myself in 6 days’ depths.

I don't know why I'm trying so hard to place it. It's good on its own. Well done, song. You're a keeper. I hope you feel the same about me.

I have a crush on a coffeehouse.

“Black Watch” is an unsettling play to view; instead of a narrative, it presents history and news.

I’ll get you a cupcake tomorrow.
“haha Thank you! I may not be there tomorrow. But you do not need to get me a cupcake either way.”
Oh. I’ll give it to the person of your choice then.
“Okay, whoever is sitting at the stool closest to the door is my person of choice.”

Have your cake and eat it, the classic loophole.

Also I need to go buy a cupcake but my phone has barely charged if I suddenly disappear for a bit.
“#whitepeopleproblems”

For when picking random numbers to fill out a bracket isn’t enough, only a few phrases are needed to cluelessly bluff through a conversation about NCAA.

“College sports is a passing game.”
“A good big man is rare.”
“You can always have a Cinderella story.”

The temptation of reading “Heart of a Dog” as purely post-Russian Revolution political allegory may have been stifled too far in the opposite direction, but the story does seem more about general human educational and cultural development, a hybrid of Frankenstein, Animal Farm, and My Fair Lady. Communism fails for equally reapportioning positives while leaving the negatives unbalanced, matching the dichotomy of Philip’s positive and Ivan’s negative reinforcement. Childrearing, petowning, and bondage are collectively satirized as losses of liberty: only the beast admires the leash, with the price of loyalty $1.40. Individually cannot be squelched by bookburning an offending tome after it has been read; ideas are destroyed only by removing the soul, which is glandular, developing with maturation. The narration switches from 1st person to 3rd, with Sharik going from being so sympathetic that the reader initially isn’t sure his species, to a frighteningly foreign and increasingly absent 3rd person. Beauty is pliability, even transspecies; the out of control familiar is monstrous.

And if your galoshes are stolen in Act 1, there will be a flood in Act 3.