It May Get Warm

What day is it? 4/30 Sure the Spin Doctors were talking time not date when they said 4:30, but that's what you get with free association. I have no idea what you'd get if you charged for it.

Earlier I was trying to find fountain pen ink and I was really hoping this search string would hold up for when I searched for pen ink at Staples. I think I've got a pretty associative mind, but how you get from pen ink to Pringles and Keebler snacks I'm not exactly sure. Yet dammit, of course when I checked that link just now it does in fact return actual pen inks. Perhaps the elves had temporarily hacked things. Perhaps I should have taken a screen cap. Perhaps it was a special moment for me and my outdated version of Chrome.

Still, you can find Pringles at Staples if you search that directly proving I'm not completely insane/didn't just imagine ink tube images as Pringle housings. And I'm inclined to agree that Pringles are a staple office supply. My brother once described them as ideal for a driving snack because they don't grease fingers like a standard potato chip. This is both disconcerting and correct, and a great reason to have them as an office snack. No need to get up and clean your hands. Of course, just be sure you've got skinny wrists or deft tube dexterity, else Pringle extraction or service can meet with a hiccup.

Of course, I also had to be sure Keebler goods were present, and they are. Incidentally, the top "also viewed" item for Pringle consumers is copy paper, but for the Keeblerers, its latex gloves. Those crazy elves...

Oh, and right, it was warm today, which was the impetus behind titling this entry such as it is, but given the oft unpredictable Chicago weather that May not be the case in the ensuing days. But the heat's a treat, so long as it's just the right amount, eh Goldilocks?

Bot or Not

I'm not talking about the silly old Svedka ad campaign that I've talked about at least once before, I'm talking about my most consistent blog readership: bots. For a while it was just lonely Googlebots that would step into my dark corner of the internet (sorry, no capital for you here almighty internet). And it would originate from the Mountain View HQ. But even Google branched out a bit, sending their bots from the fine Canadian city of Toronto (go Jays). Perhaps they know of my old affinity for that team.

But Google's got competition form the Bings and Facebooks, the ruling families of the Americas. Bing's been working to get relevant as a legitimate search engine since obvious placements in Gossip Girl. The thing is, they might be [relevant], but I'm another of those who synonymizes Google and search. There's Google, and there's google. So even though you're googling things on Google, there's a separation. Google knows all about everything I google because with search I'm not very frugal.

I hope the bots like what they find here. I doubt they do. After all, to crawl and index my meandering thoughts can't be very much fun for them. I was reading a book on publishing recently and it advised one to be structured in order to establish themself (can this be back in common usage? Yes, good, okay) as an authority on something. But see, my place is as the authority of these seemingly inane things with a smattering of the old actual soul getting in the way sometimes. Oof, it also advises regularly creating content so users have a reason to come back. USERS. "Hey, that guy's content sucks," says one. "I know," says the other, "and such small portions!"

As inhuman as blogging tends to be, I do bring in my own humanity sometimes. I don't generally like it, and I don't imagine the bots do. I'm one of those still trying to be publicly private. At least part of it's that I think something's less meaningful when you simply share it with everyone. And at least part of it's that I think that good ideas can come from anywhere, the anonymous factor. It's for the opposite reason that people go around misattributing quotes. We take the quote more seriously coming from someone we respect. But how'd we go about respecting them in the first place?

So even though blog is short for weblog, I always think of it as the B-log, as opposed to the A-log. Let's hope my A game is really better than my B game. Then someone might be more game to read it.



**The blogger plans to return to whimsical inanity to close out the month.

The Age of Reason

Well, that time that approaches some of us has approached me. I speak of the age known as thirty. You could call it an arbitrary milestone. I might. But either way, I now get to refer to everything as "shit I did in my twenties." I also get to say everything I do in the hours leading up to it is the last I do of that thing before I'm thirty. You can do this for every year. It could be annoying, or it could be fun. I might let you know how it plays out, but probably not.

At any rate, it's arriving very soon and I expect to hit it feeling only a day older than twenty-nine.

Ask

Right around the time I caught news of today's tragedy surrounding the Boston Marathon, The Smith's "Ask" was playing in my headphones. It's easy to look for signs, connections, and reasons in the wake of tragedy, and I couldn't ignore the lyrics:

If it's not love, then it's the bomb that will bring us together.

It's an innocent enough sounding line out of context, but even aside from right now I'd always thought a bit prophetic, a bit of historical reference that has too much truth, part of the poetry of Morrissey's often mopey lyrics (of which I happen to be a fan). But the unity and bringing together of people in the wake of tragedies like this is always met with the counterpunch of divisiveness. People get caught up with blame and conspiracy. It's Patriot's Day, Lexington and Concord, start of the American Revolution. This and much other potential symbolism was on my brain, I couldn't avoid it.

These are things you connect to the why of someone would ever do this. There are a lot of reasons, and reason is a hard word to use, because reason I tend to connote with logic and it's only in the logic of the perverse mind that there's reason to kill off innocent people. It's left a lot of people not feeling good about the state of humanity, that acts like this are committed, but as terrible as I find this (I happen too to be a runner, and to know people who were running, and to know people who reside and work in the city), the last thing I would like to see is quantification to measure this tragedy, because tragedy is immeasurable. It's your own connection to the events that form your opinion on it.

I'll just hope we come out of this without the wrong people being blamed, and without overzealous response. We don't need more literal physical security, just people that don't do shit like this. I liked it better when bombing a marathon meant simply that you were physically wiped out and ran like shit.

April Fuels

As I cook dinner, I often like to throw on some tunes and sometimes those tunes can include Miley Cyrus' "The Climb." I find it a pretty solid and enjoyable tune, and until I looked up the lyrics, [wo]man, I thought she was saying "there's always gonna be an uphill mountain" and I thought, "Silly Miley, it has to be uphill to be a mountain, otherwise it's a crater." But it was I who was silly, as she's only saying there's "always gonna to be another mountain." And yet, every time I hear it, I can't help but think the lyrics to be uphill mountain. I guess that's part of my climb.

None of that is even close to a joke, and neither is abstention. As I sit here drinking extremely watered down homemade espresso I have to wonder what it is that accounts for such an abstemious nature. Sure, going without heightens the experience and effect of the effects when indulgence is indulged but what is it that compels one to compulsion and compels another to dispel dependence?

Anyway, speaking of abstention, I abstained from posting this on April Fool's day, (by a whole week in fact as abstention met interruption) since the line between serious and joking is a line I favor so much there was no need to blur it even further with a day devoted to deception — but not in the evil, dastardly sense, just a good old-fashioned prank of sorts.

Things you shouldn't abstain from, whether visiting or residing in Chicago, include  Andersonville's Swedish Bakery and, while you're up there, Brimfield, which is probably the best arrayed/themed store I've seen in quite some time — might just give you Cabin Fever (note: I've never seen this movie and you will not meet a terrible demise by visiting this store). The unusual Woolly Mammoth doesn't suck either.

You know what does suck? Caribou closures. I'd say this seems odd when, for instance, they just put in a new one in the Wicker Park neighborhood I've called home for a few years now (technically I think their location is Bucktown, six corners of one, half a dozen of another) but it definitely happened for Peet's sake.

When a proprietor of a business of beans has the beans (the means) to purchase another proprietor of beans it means someone's going to get roasted. I always found Caribou employees about as friendly as you can get, so I'm sorry to see many of the Chicago Caribou hunted to extinction. While I Cariboo the decision, it'll be argued that business is business and the bean counters have to be accountable for their bean counters. For the folks at German conglomerate Joh. A. Benckiser, it's just one more coffee brand for them to Jimmy Choo on.

I Gotta Feeling

I'm a couple of days late here, and that's not a period joke, period.

So before Passover is completely passed over, I figure I should clear up any lingering questions concerning what the limited lyrics of The Black-Eyed Peas "I Gotta Feeling" were and are about. They're talking about Passover, yes, the celebration of a lot of things, including painting a mark with some sacrificial lamb blood on your door so the lord would posach (the original Hebrew word meaning "pass over") your house. The Jews didn't let the Egyptians in on this one, so that last of the ten plagues could be visited: slaying of the first-born. If that's not a reason to sit reclining, I'm not sure what is.

I mean really, not a lot of things give you the feeling that tonight's going to be a good night quite like when your first-born doesn't die, right? Even matzoh seems delicious in that scenario. You can't even be bitter about maror (not Mordor) and it's really just a load of horseradish. Hell, when you leave your door open, nobody robs you, the prophet Elijah comes to visit. And the dude drinks some wine. Rabbis rejoice because they have a whole bunch of stuff to bless, and printers get excited to put that K on everything, a branding dream. They put real cane sugar in Coca-Cola, something they should be abel to do year round.

So even though historical tragedy is being highlighted, it's the story of redemption, so rather than make matzoh do about nothing, I will passover any additional jokes about this holiday. Even if it's past the official date, don't forget about purim some out for your Jewish homies.

Commenstrual Cycle

Yes, it's true, sometimes my post titles are only present to workshop a particularly bad pun. But here I'm actually thinking of the toxic comment streams (is this guy suggesting periods are toxic?) that develop all over the internet. With increasing integration with Facebook accounts and thus less relative anonymity, it's amazing what things people don't steer clear of saying. I guess that would be good if, by and large, so much of this wasn't so incredibly negative. Or maybe people are closer to telling the truth, and we're closer to understanding just what might be wrong with a lot of society.

It depends where you go. In the world of the snarky Gawker media network, well, you get what you expect. But while I can be overwhelmed by the negativity at times, there is often lots of really good stuff in there too. Either way the comment section is often more interesting than the article itself from a social study standpoint and all sorts of folks offer all sorts of related interesting reading in an attempt to prove a point one way or the other. It's refreshing that this reading and research is going on even if a lot on the internet is under-researched and under-verified. I'm wondering when or if some kind of grand curation will take place that verifies standard news. Currently, if something seems remotely sensational I've got to go and check five or so other news sources to see if it's at all true.

I wrote all of that last weekend, before I started reading about the Steubenville rape case. And when you read about that and see the reactions from people on the internet, well it swings back to the worst in people. I'm fresh off reading about the mass killings in Eastern Europe during the 1930s and 40s, and the mass rape that went on as well. Given the psychological implications of the aftermath of crimes against the person in which the victim is left alive, rape is up there as one of the worst things you can do to a person, male or female. Since there is often outcry about torture, how about thinking of rape as a type of torture? All of the contentions that a person "asks" to be raped are amazing. Many will argue it doesn't have a place even as a joke, but to me anything contentious has a place in humour — like adding the 'u' to humor. Humor has a lot of value in drawing attention to uncomfortable truths. It's not the same as facing them head on, but baby steps. There's been a lot of discussion about the use of rape in jokes and as tends to be the case, it's not if you use it, but how.

The problem is when people are serious about the "asking for it" line, or don't understand what might be a joke. What about the semantic argument that once you ask to be raped, it's not rape because rape is specifically when sex occurs against the will or without the consent of one of the involved parties? Regrettable sex and rape: not the same thing.

A good way to look at it is the following. If you are a dude and you are hanging out with people you know and you get too drunk, wouldn't you expect them not to rape you? I'm not saying you shouldn't be accountable for your actions. On the contrary I'm saying precisely that you ARE accountable for your actions. We don't know the full details of this case I suppose, but let's say that hypothetically in my own life, I've seen women get drunk and throw up. And that hypothetically I've also seen men get drunk and throw up. Some of these people, hypothetically, are friends of mine. Some of these hypothetical friends have witnessed me, hypothetically, get ill from drinking. On some of these hypothetical occasions the people in question were unconscious. And on none of these hypothetical occasions did any of us rape the other. It's almost like there is this understanding that I won't rape them because they wouldn't want to be raped, and neither would I. If I, hypothetically, drink too much, I don't blame anyone but me. But if someone comes along and rapes me, that I put on their shoulders (or more relevant body part).

If you don't agree with me on this topic, you probably haven't read this far, but if somehow you have, please imagine a scenario where you pass out and someone sticks their dick in you. This scenario applies to females and males. Once again, this is all "hypothetical." Would you blame yourself? Because many rape victims do. They think they must have done something wrong. This part isn't hypothetical, it is what happens. They question their actions when really they should be questioning the people they surround themselves with.  Remember, it's hard for someone to say no if they can't speak because they're unconscious.

It's easy to blame victims of rape when so many of these victims already blame themselves. That's why it has to stop. The blame. And the rape.

That's a wrap[e] for now.