Vote for Teo

Some of you may recall that I am willing to be the Mayor of Chicago, with the stipulation that I will have exactly three elements to my platform and promise to do nothing else.

To review, I will:

1) Put air conditioning in every single public school (there are currently, I think, no public schools with A/C)

2) Split up the annual Air and Water Show, which is traditionally held entirely on the north side, to one day on the north side, and one day on the south side. Time to start shoving people to the south side so that some money gets put into those neighborhoods. North side doesn't need shit. We've got plenty of flower pots up here already. Send 5oo,ooo people to watch the planes from the south side, and watch how many corner shops thrive by selling water alone to the fans of the show.

And the reason for this post...

3) Provide incentives to the big box stores to open on the south and west side. I've been saying this for about five years since it came into my head, and I've been glad to see it start to happen. But now, this. This is important. The mayor and others are AGAINST the proposal. I am for it. The proposal would force the stores to pay a living wage plus benefits. The contingent against the bill (that is pending) says that the stores will leave town. First, baloney, and second, it is the mayor's job to make sure that the bill passes AND the retailers stay. Do what you have to do. Give 'em a tax break. Give 'em a subsidy. Whatever tricks you have up your sleeve, use them. Keep the stores and give your contsituents a chance to live a life. Make it happen. Can't afford not to. That the stores stay is vital. That they pay their employees a decent wage is imperative. Find a way to make both happen. I am of the opinion that this is very much a life or death issue.

A Fine Day, An Excellent Schedule

A great summer day, Teo style*:

7:15: Wake up. Way better than 6:30. More interesting than 8:00. It sets up many possibilities for the day.
8:00 - 11:00: Sitting at the best coffee shop that exists on the planet. Had a bagel and awesome coffee. After a couple hours, a refill plus a cranberry-lemon muffin that redefines a great breakfast. Three good hours of essay writing. Banged out four of them and organized several others.
11:00 - 12:00: Home for reconoitering, correspondence, and water.
12:00 - 1:15: A bike ride to Navy Pier and back. A little more than 15 miles. 90 degrees. High wind. Awesome. Been getting lots of exercise as I am apparently in training for the September/October brutality that will disallow anything remotely similar to healthy physical activity (not great sleep and inconsistent eating is a'comin). Exercising every day and eating very reasonably these days. Feeling good. Lots of water after the ride.
2:00 - 4:30: Sitting at home in the A/C, new cup of coffee, back to work on more internship research and writing. Feeling in control on this stuff at this moment (remind me of this when I am losing my mind in the near future).
4:30 - 6:00: Not working. Eating. Communicating with people outside of my apartment. Interaction with human beings. This is positive.
6:00 - 10:00: Cubs game on in the background while more computer work is being done. The Cubs are so bad that they are a new type of entertainment, and it is easy to work while that comedy is on the TV at low volume.
10:00 - 11:00: Comedy Central, dontchaknow. A can't miss these days.

So that's not all that exciting for the rest of you, but for dear ol' Teo, it hits the spot. Productivity, exercise, rest, coffee, not on a deadline in sight today, feeling in control...all is good.

Tomorrow: Going to Knoxville to waterski with LB. I recall having a very bad boogie board experience with Kevlar Pinata in 1992 or 1993, and I'm not sure I've attempted anything similar since then. I think I'm still sore from getting thrown around a lake in upstate New York that weekend. Hopefully I don't dislocate my ribcage this weekend.


* It must be recognized that I am currently incapable of having a great day that is not somewhat productive. Maybe at some point in the future (later in the week? 2025? sometime between now and then?) I will be able to enjoy a day off without doing something productive, but a day with nothing productive is actually detrimental to my current state of perpetual anxiety. In order to stave off uncomfortable anxiety, I must take care of a little bit (or a lot of bit) of internship stuff every day. So. This great day is in the context of doing something so that I can perpetually process my anxiety and not become overwhelmed later on. Sigh.

Dysfunctions

Great Read

Thoughts on Writing

I've been in a morass of internship applications, each day writing a handful of 500 word essays extoling the virtues of specific sites and why I would match with them and why they should love me. The essays require research, care, concentration, and attention. As mentioned here before, the competition for matching at a site is pretty ridiculously huge, and this is an enormous task. So, the essays matter.

Some things that I have learned, both recently and in the past, about writing:

- WORDS ARE NOT PRECIOUS. Editing helps. Editing improves writing. If you think your 560 word essay is gold, and that it cannot be improved...but if you are not given a choice in the matter...once you get it down to 500 words, the essay is better, 100% of the time. 100%. (I'm not speaking about works of fiction. I'm talking about essays with pre-given word counts.) So, no matter how painful cutting those last 20 words are, the final version will still be better than the previous version.

- WORDS ARE PRECIOUS. When writing multiple essays, and frequently utilizing the "Save As" function as a method of starting from a template and then creating new documents, one must remember to actually freaking do it before making changes to the original template and saving the document via the Ctrl-S reflex. If you haven't told your computer to back up the files, once you delete a paragraph and hit Ctrl-S, well, you're flat out fucked. Like me.

- IT'S ALL OKAY, YOU CAN RECOVER. This is a hard one to remember while slamming papers on your desk because you fucked up a brilliant paragraph that you are sure could not be replicated by even the greatest literary giants in history. There is truth that when you are in the groove of a good essay that the groove itself is special, and the words that flowed so freely are to be treasured, and you know, SAVED. But. If you wrote the words the first time, you can write them again. They may not be the same words in the same order with the same rhythm and such. But they are your words, they are in you, and remember, rule #1 says that words are not precious. It is the author that is precious, and words can be replicated, even if they look different. The fact that something may not feel as perfect as the first spark of creative flow...TO ME...does not mean that the end result, being read by a snooty academic in a high tower lighting flames to the 200 essays he will read will know any different. That snooty fuck wouldn't be able to tell a re-written version of a mistakenly deleted masterpiece any more than any one else will. The only one who knows will be me, and the four of you that will read this.

And the fact that I will wake up in 20 years and still pine for the missing brilliant paragraph on my need and desire to get research experience from a snooty fuck even though really the paragraph was a lie has no bearing on my actual ability to rewrite a good paragraph.

I will now go ride my bike.

Two Things, Unrelated

1) Anyone else having trouble reading the blog? We seem to have lost everything. Don't know why. I mean, it's all gone. Nothing done on this end, but it seems zapped anyway. Maybe it's something on my computer that's not loading? Someone else let me know if it's all zapped to smithereens.

2) I just read that Spielberg was 34 when he made Raiders, which is a reason to either get going right away on some sort of magnus opus movie project or to stay in bed for days and days. One or the other. Not sure which.

Sum sum summertime

Figured out how to write enough for a book. Transcribe 17 conversations of 45 minutes each. You get exactly:

226 pages (single spaced)
94,826 words
394,903 characters without spaces
487,357 characters with spaces
2,900 paragraphs
and
10,325 lines

Not saying it would be a good or interesting book, but it would be LONG enough.

Meow.

There is just so much to say about this, I don't know where to start. For me, the pictures are the best part.

I do know that I want to buy one for Teo. I also know that "hypoallergenic cat" would make a great name for a band.

No, You Can't Hit That Note...

Seems as though I should make you all aware that Graceland was just a whole bunch of fun this past weekend, and if you have seen Spinal Tap, you will understand the perfection of this audio clip sung in the Meditation Garden over Elvis' grave. I sang this version throughout the day. It is possible that not everyone else thought it was quite as amusing as I did, because they hadn't all seen Tap. But one person did. And the joke worked for DAYS. Well, at least for the two of us.

I should also tell you that watching minor league baseball in the middle of Tennessee on a Saturday night is one of the better things you can do with your time. The West Tennessee Diamond Jaxx beat the Chattanooga Lookouts 9-0, and I loved every last second of it. It was Dale Jr. Commemorative Pin night, so I got that, and it was 9 bucks to sit on the dugout, and Ribbie the Mascot does a kickass Vanilla Ice dance that made me laugh out loud for 20 minutes, and I ate ice cream out of a small plastic batting helmet, and on the way out of the park, Sara Lee was there giving out LOAVES OF BREAD to everyone who had come to the game. We all went home with a loaf of bread. Four loaves of bread to go, please!

Go beat that if you can.

Man of Steel

I'm not much for going to the movies. After I drop the 8 to 9 bucks per ticket, I sit in a not entirely comfortable theater while others talk on the phone and watch a movie that may or may not be worth my time and money. Personally, I'm more inclined to wait three or four months and rent the DVD of the movie so that I can watch it in the comfort of my own home and not feel so badly about wasting my time and money if the movie stinks.

Still, I went to the movies on Friday night with a friend of mine and saw Superman Returns. If you're not familiar with the premise of the movie, the basic idea is that Superman returns to earth after a 5 year hiatus, during which he went back to the remains of his home planet (or something like that). Lois Lane, who was emotionally abandoned by the man of steel for five years, has now taken up with another man and has a 5 year old (!) son. All of that is sort-of standard fare superhero movie stuff, I guess. But here's where it gets goofy:

1. Lois Lane has won the Pulitzer Prize for her editorial "Why the World Doesn't Need Superman", which she wrote after he left earth. Did she write it five years ago? Or did she just write it last week? Don't you get the Pulitzer within a year or so of the published article? Maybe I missed those details.

2. The actor playing Superman is, in real life, something like 27 years old and looks it. The woman playing Lois Lane is actually 23 and looks it. So I'm watching this movie - with the 23 year old Pulitzer winner - and can't get past the fact that the main characters would have last interacted as Superman and Lois Lane when they were 22 and 18, respectively. They just look like kids and keep telling us that there's all this history - history that goes back years - between them.

3. Kryptonite is, as everyone knows, Superman's undoing. He turns into a regular guy - or maybe is weaker than that? - when he's around it. But then, when it's not convenient to the story, he's apparently pretty strong around the stuff. Like, for instance, he can lift a giant mountain of it all of a sudden.

4. There are these crystals that do crazy things when they hit water, like mega pop rocks. The first one that hits the water just about destroys Metropolis. Then six more do at a later time and not quite so much seems to happen as a result because it is no longer convenient to the story to have them do so. Very confusing.

Don't get me wrong - I understand that the movie is about a guy who flies around in a cape and is from outer space and all that, so it doesn't pay to get too literal. But for crying out loud, there has to be some element of internal consistency. Like, for instance, if you refer to the Pulitzer Prize, then you should make sure that the Prize in the movie is something like the Prize in real life. Or, if your actors are supposed to be adults with a long history together, they need to not look like they just got out of high school. And if kryptonite is truly Superman's undoing, then can't it consistently be his undoing?

The good side of it all is that I had a good time hanging out with my friend because he's a cool guy and that was good. But Superman, like Sebastian Bach, is no longer a cool guy.

Sebastian Bach, redux

Those of you not up to speed on the Sebastian Bach discussion will need to go back a few posts to get the background.

I believe that I had stated in an earlier post that Sebastian Bach is cool. Having just sat through an hour of "VH1: Supergroup" - something I shall not do again - I can say with great certainty that Sebastian Bach is, in fact, not cool. Truth be told, he is about as far from cool as any individual I've ever seen. When you make Ted Nugent look reasonable and sane, you've really outdone yourself.

So I'm changing my vote on Sebastian Bach from cool to uncool. And I feel pretty confident about that.

Things I Can Not Do

Woodworking
Handstands
Auto repair
Play the harp
Throw a 90mph fastball
Recover the hours of my life that were wasted in traffic
Scuba dive
Get excited about the World Cup
Drink gin
Speak Portugese
Stand for election to the British House of Commons
Play defensive end for the Detroit Lions
Convincingly play jazz
Fly a helicopter
Broker negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority
Accurately predict the outcome of major sporting events
Sit through another movie with Steve Zahn in it