Illinoir

From cnn.com:

A Special Forces helicopter crashed in the southern Iraqi “no-fly” zone Wednesday before the attack began, a Pentagon official said. No one on board was injured, and all were evacuated, CNN has learned. A coalition airstrike later destroyed the damage.

“A coalition airstrike later destroyed the damage.”
Does that mean they fixed the helicopter? Seems to be the position of Bush & the military that you can fix everything with a bomb or two. I’m about to go launch an airstrike against my broken television….

So it’s not the beginning of the war. Here I’d gotten out my CNN watching gear (CNN beer hat, pillows, blankets, “Wolf Blitzer is #1” novelty foam finger, etc.) and prepared myself to settle in for a 3 day festival of lights… and it turns out, it was like those first few tracer rounds they shoot off on the Fourth of July when everyone ooooohs and claps and then realizes that was just a teaser.

I have to readjust myself to the wait again.

It feels like it’s six in the morning. The CNN people look like they’ve been up all night already. Yeesh.

It’d take too much for me to type in all the angry thoughts in my head after reading about Bush’s address and whatnot, so let’s go with the funny ones instead:

Bush giving Saddam 48 hours to leave Iraq makes me think of a great spin-off of the television show, “24”

“On March 17th, 2003, George W. Bush gave me and my sons 48 hours to leave our country. My name is Saddam Hussein. This is the longest two days of my life.”

Each episode would center around one hour of Saddam’s preparations to leave. Hour 37 is fantastic — you get to watch him pack. Oh wait:

“Saddam Hussein and son reject Bush’s call to leave Iraq” — Well, of course they did. I’d reject Bush’s call to leave my apartment. But seriously, Saddam and Son is one of my all-time favorite T.V. shows. It’s a freakin’ classic.

Round 8 PM, the music came on real loud upstairs. After fuming for a while, blasting back with a little NIN, I realized I was bored with all my entertainment options. Headed up to Blockbuster to return Changing Lanes which was decent, bizarre and reminiscent of Sam Jackson’s role in Die Hard With a Vengeance (the man who’s just getting fucked with all day long) and then just kept driving up Chicago Avenue. Pulled into the Norris Center parking lot and just sat all the way in the east end, listening to the Blackhawks game. Tired of that and decided to do an old school Sheridan Road tour. Took it a little bit farther than usual, following Sheridan as much as possible (it gets frickin hard the further north you go.) So I’m thinking, no problems as long as I know what direction I’m heading, I can always manage to make it back. At some point, up in Waukegan, I got turned around a bit and I start to feel the twinges of panic at the edge of my mind. It was funny, feeling it poke in, fighting it back, not worrying about being lost.

Finally, I just said to myself, “I’m going to hit one of three things: Wisconsin, 94, or Chicago.” And so, I stopped worrying. Eventually, I hit Green Bay Rd, which took me back to Grand Avenue, which took me to 41, which sped me on home.

It felt revelational, though. Just resigning myself to the fact that things would work out, that in the absence of a gas station and an embarrassed request for directions, I trusted enough in geography and the non-situationalness (what?) of the situation….. To be as such in every day life. Well, that’s the goal.

Some notes:

• the Blackhawks won, 4-0. great game. 3 power play goals. sully continues to be hot-hot-hot.
• I passed, at some point, a ton of cops lining the street. At least 5 cruisers, several “unmarked” cars, a few SUV’s…. It looked like a real, how you say, operation going on.
• driving after playing tons of GTA Vice City can be a dangerous thing. the desire to hit the e-brake, skid out, not care about hitting things. also amusing to be looking at cars and saying, “That’s a Sabre, that’s a Banshee, that’s a Sentinel….” also, somewhat (okay, very) pathetic.
• I absolutely love driving around with nowhere to go while there’s a good game on. Reminded me of a similar trip late at night, listening to most 7 innings of a rain-delayed Cubs game. It was past 11 PM and Pat and Ron were still broadcasting this game and it was just fantastic to be up late with them….

Got home and the apartment was silent(ish) except for upstairs guy’s moronic laughter. I still haven’t met them and it’s just bizarre. Though, I never met Miss Hubbell, formally. Every time I said hi to her, she was super cold too. In fact, of the 5 other units in the building, I’ve only had conversations with the occupants of 2 others, and I haven’t even met all the occupants of one of those units. Guess, though, it’s the same with everywhere I’ve lived. 722 Clark, I only knew the guy across the hall (and if I ever heard his girlfriend moan in sexual pleasure again, I’d be able to identify her, filthy minx) and on Winthrop, I only knew the next-door folks, and that was cuz he was the handyman (janitor? maintenance dude? whatever.) Over on Winchester, got to know the totally psychotic guy across the hall a little bit. This was the guy who ran an extension cord from the outlet in the hall into his apartment and only ever entered or left via the back door (and so I’d run into him while I was outside having a smoke.) Wacked.

That’s truly enough for now, I’ve gotta say.

There are two ways to look at it: you could either say that I’m getting my daily milk by mixing it with chocolate syrup and vodka … or you could say I’m getting my daily vodka by mixing it with chocolate syrup and milk.

Either way, it’s damn delicious.

actually feeling really stupid, looking back on it all. ohhhh fuggggggggggg!

it was just fiction you bastards!

I love buying “For Dummies” books. It’s like going up to the cash register and declaring I’m a total moron. “Hello, I’m an idiot. Please sell me this book. Books are for eating, right?”

In other news:

• typing this on the brand new Microsoft Multimedia Keyboard
• It is the “special edition” keyboard, which means that, as Dave put it, “Pablo at Flextronics in Guadalajara fed a black dye block into the machine as opposed to a blue one.” Worth the extra $10? Well, since they didn’t have normal (“unnatural” — that is, not split in half) ones that were $10 cheaper, yes. Plus, as an unemployed man, I need all the self-confidence I can get and nothing gives you self-confidence like a jet-black keyboard.
• I tried to register the product and the link and whatnot from the software package took me to completely dead pages. Booyah, Microsoft!
• It’s got more buttons on it than I do. Let’s see if I use them….
• That Dummies book is a ColdFusion for Dummies book. Let’s get learning!
• I just looked at a list of some of the Dummies books — they include Arizona for Dummies and Baseball for Dummies. Amazing.
• More great Microsoft deals from Dave. I’m not going to tell you how much Office XP Pro and Kung Fu Chaos cost me, but I’ll tell you this much: it’s el cheapo. Of course, now that I read the review of the game, I wonder if I should have followed my instincts and told him to hold onto it…. Nah, what the hell does IGN know anyway?
• Noisy neighbor front: they’re not so bad, it seems. Though their schedules are sketchy and hard to pin down, and they let the kid run around a little bit too much (it’d drive me nuts if I was up there with em and not directly below her feet too…) it’s… Well, it’s had its ups and downs. Not like they’re bringing anything to the table though. So, I tightened all my windows in their frames (the latch, or failing that, stuffing Kleenex in the cracks) so that the windows won’t rattle when they romp about (added bonus: windows not rattling when someone does the super-bass thing in the alley…) [How did I ever deal with living in a dorm in college? Living under someone before? Has my noise sensitivity increased as time has passed? Let’s hope I can learn to live…..Or give the guys at Acoustical Solutions a call….]

That’s it for now. Yeah. It’s snowing like a mofo out there. Be careful.

I dream that I am running
that I still know you
or that I am you
and all this from a photo
of someone that’s not you
who doesn’t recall you
except from one angle.
And I say your name out loud
for the first time in what must be ages.

Hey. I’m back, and I’m better than ever. Amazing new feeling of having to *gasp* censor myself, for fear of…for fear of — oh I don’t even know. The amazing thing is that I don’t even know how much of the small percentage of the truth that I know that I can actually tell you. So what I can tell you about is the following:

1. Chocolate martinis
2. Stainless steel George Foreman grills
3. a lack of knowing what to do with myself
4. complete and total exhaustion
5. Dongitty dongitty dongitty doodle doodle.