dark matter indeed

{Warning: Spoilers ahead!}

I 'just' finished Dark Matter, Season 1 on Apple TV+* and I think it might be my strongest television recommendation possibly since Lost (!?).  I will say that this show is not for the faint of heart.  It's not scary, precisely, but the philosophical implications of this particular theory of multiverse are somewhat harrowing.  

The show (and evidently Blake Crouch's novel from which it was adapted) seems largely based upon^ my own personal theory of the multiverse, which was initially a bit surprising, but as the season progressed, made it comforting.  The wrinkle I hadn't anticipated (and what I found most disturbing about the show) was the extent to which navigation of the multiverse is dependent upon Mind.  

I'm not sure I find the science too compelling (a bit too human-centric {self-centric} for my taste), but for the sake of storytelling, the plot mechanic is inspired.  Jason Dessen (the protagonist, played by a very good Joel - Joel Edgerton) is a physicist in Chicago who has invented The Box, a giant version of a box several versions of him have invented that allows particles to exist in superposition (in this case existing within multiple iterations of the multiverse simultaneously).

The big Box allows not just a particle to exist in superposition but a whole thing - a person, say or even a couple of people - to enter the box and navigate through the multiverse.  The tricky bit is that the way that you determine which of the infinite realities you are going to emerge into when you once again open the box is based on your mind - not just your conscious thoughts, but your unconscious and subconscious state of mind when you open it (plus all of the same of those who you might be traveling with!).

Source: https://tinyurl.com/564drzcz

There's a bunch more plotty bits that happen that make for a really great season of television, but what struck me hardest was the moment when Jason emerges into a Chicago in a world that has been ravaged by plague.  He makes his way back to his house to find his wife, visibly ill, shocked to see him (because this world's him succumbed), and she is wrecked.  It's a very realistic glimpse into what a truly catastrophic outbreak might look like at the street level in America...

I'm most of the way through Plagues upon the Earth: Disease and the Course of Human History, a sweeping chronicle by Kyle Harper of how all of human history has been shaped by (or guided by) the micro-organisms that have made us sick.  Alternately it's a history of how human civilization has created and caused the uniquely massive variety of tiny little things designed to (and actively getting better at) kill us because we've gotten so good at existing... The book is really a constant questioning of which of those definitive interpretations is more true at any given time in human history, and emphasizes the degree to which our collective Thrownness operates not just on an individual level, but also at a biological level (and also at a cosmic level, naturally).

The version of you that you get to inhabit is inherently arbitrary, but certainly doesn't feel that way to us.  Choice - Action - Self... These are the things from which we build our narrative - our lives, right?  The idea that it is chance and circumstance where we find ourselves runs contrary to our modern American sensibility.  We work harder and harder to get further and further away from The Uncomfortable Truth** by filling our attention with screens and faiths and mantras, but the reason that the uncomfortable truth is truth... well, it's because it is, right?  

But I think it's easy to interpret The Uncomfortable Truth as something akin to Nietzschean nihilism, but the comfort (!!) of Humanism is its clear antidote.  We may not be much, us, here toiling away at living on this small out of the way planet - but our over-arching trend, tending toward progress for more of us - and constructing our grand Civilization, which endures and attempts and evolves - that is the thing that we're all here for.  What is a civilization but a narrative - a collection of all of the little narratives, most forgotten (heck, most of them were side quests to begin with!). 

So I suggest that you enjoy your story - if it's not exactly the version of it you were hoping for, rest easy in the knowledge that there very might well be another one where it's that, but you can soak up what you can here... maybe strive for a bit more of that other preferred one, but as Jason/Joel learns when he gets in the Box, you may like the look of another version, but you were made (or perhaps you made yourself) ready for this one right here, and no other.

Enjoy it (and by it, i also mean Dark Matter... it's really good).

 

* It seems to me that Apple TV+ produces nothing but bangers - like they just aren't interested in getting content out for the sake of content, but everything is really quality.  (That's not to say that I have seen all of it, nor that all if it is necessarily my thing, but I just went through a list of their productions, and everything on it that I've seen some or all of is really quite very good!).  In this era of lapsing quality in all things, that is really quite remarkable, but I'm going to put a pin in it for the moment, and move back to my starting point.

^ keen observers will note that Crouch's novel hails from 2016 whereas my own theory wasn't articulated fully on Roman Numeral J until early 2018.  

** I've been reading around a bit as well in the self-help and satirical self-help genres (it's often hard to tell those apart) in Mark Manson's Everything is F*cked: A Book About Hope, and The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck and reading Lead it Like Lasso earlier this year as well as a bit of Stephen Covey's 7 Habits.  Generally these are not my types of books - but I've been on a bit of kick on the concept of "Getting Comfortable with Being Uncomfortable" and working on a project, for now it's just a PowerPoint presentation, and I'm figuring out if it's enough to be even that, or maybe something more - a blog post, perchance a little book (!?)...

Our Trip to New England!

 Directions: Begin by filling in the form on this page with one of each word for the type of word requested.  Then, enter the word into the paragraphs below according to the number requested.  Read the paragraph aloud and ENJOY!!!

1. [a first name] __________________________________________________
2. [proper noun] ________________________________________________
3. [city] ________________________________________________________
4. [person of significance] _______________________________________
5. [past participle] _____________________________________________
6. [body of water] ______________________________________________
7. [family surname] ____________________________________________
8. [U.S. State] _________________________________________________
9. [type of baked good] ___________________________________________
10. [geographic feature] ____________________________________________
11. [city feature] ___________________________________________________
12. [landmark] _____________________________________________________
13. [a number] ___________________________
14. [weather phenomenon] _________________________________________
15. [famous author] ________________________________________________
16. [noun] _________________________________________________________
17. [sinful substance] ______________________________________________
18. [Title of an Important Person] _____________________________________
19. [Home Ec Term] _________________________________________________
20. [adjective] _______________________________________________________
21. [type of water body] _______________________________________________
22. [verb] ____________________________________________________________
23. [popular acronym] _________________________________________________
24. [wet foodstuff] _____________________________________________________

Our Trip to New England!

 

Ah, I remember it like it was 23 or so years ago...  

We three (Mom, Papa, and (1)__________) headed off on (2)_______________ Airlines to fly from Chicago to (3)_________________.  (This would eventually become my first of four trips {so far!} through Boston's Logan Airport - once in 2013 for a Haitian Studies conference at Harvard and later in 2015 and 2019 on Peter Mahler's dime to meet with Carmella Kletijian and (4)______________________________).

We collected our rental car (possibly my first time ever driving a (5)_______________ car!), and were off to drive north up the coast of the (6)______________________.  Our first landmark was passing Kennebunkport, Mass. where the (7)______________________ Family famously had their summer compound.

Further up the coast we stopped in Portland, (8)___________________ and tried their world famous lobster (9)__________________s.  I don't remember quite where we stayed that first night, but I think we continued up and around the Atlantic (10)__________________________.

Our first full day (or one of the days, I don't really remember the timeline), we visited Acadia National Park in Bar (11)______________________, Maine.  Driving into the park (I think), Don & Hope, having recently reached retirement age, bought lifetime passes to any (12)_____________________________ in the entire country, which they have gone on to use (13) ____________ times since that trip in 2001.  

Before leaving Acadia, we saw the famous (14)________________ Hole, and stopped at Bar Harbor Brewing Company before heading north to Bangor, home of famous author. (15)__________________________________.  I recall we stopped at a (16)____________________ shop in Bangor, asking about the whereabouts of Mr. King, but it was before we all had the internet in our pocket, and the book store owner said he liked to be left alone, so I think that's about all we did in Bangor.

We drove west, through New Hampshire (where we learned that the only place you can buy (17)_____________________ in New Hampshire is at designated State (**17**)__________________ stores!  Arriving in Vermont, we stopped at one of (18)________________ Jim Jefford's campaign offices, who in 2001 was the only Independent Senator serving in the US Senate, after he had left the Republican Party earlier that spring!  (Jeffords retired in 2007, and was replaced by Bernie Sanders, who has continued serving as an Independent from Vermont).

One of our nights (or our one night?!?!) in Montpelier, Vermont, we had dinner at NECI, The New England (19)_______________ Institute, and had what has to have been the (20)______________meal I had ever had up to that point!  Fine dining / haute cuisine - what a meal!

We drove west from there to Burlington, on the shores of (21)________________ Champlain, which at the time was (22)_____________-ing to become an additional Great Lake, so that school kids across the country would have to remember C.H.O.M.E.S. as a mnemonic for the Great Lakes, instead of the much easier (23)_____________________. (I'm pretty sure there's VHS footage somewhere in the Seeger House of Joel throwing some serious shade at Lake Champlain, where he's shooting footage of a big puddle, and calling it Lake Champlain... classic!).

We also drove into Canada, and to Montreal (which was not so many kilometers farther), where we ate the great Canadian cuisine, Poutine (french fries with (24)__________________ on it), and Joel drove the wrong way down a one way street.  Whooopsy-Daisy!

Sorry, this is all I really remember about our trip all those years ago... Half of my life ago just now.  I do remember that it was a lot more fun than I was expecting - seeing all the things we saw, and being with you both right when you'd retired and had such freedom to travel and see all the things you hadn't gotten around to yet!

 

 

first!

I've been a fan of the Chicago Bears football club since nearly as long as I can remember.  But not quite.  I remember very early in my life thinking that Franco Harris was the awesomest football player ever.  I also remember declaring at some point early on that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers were my team (I think because of the sweet creamsicle color featured on the magnetic helmet that generally sat in last place on the standings board on my wall.  I was actually wooed some years later by the same phenomenon when I briefly decided that the Florida Marlins would be my baseball team as I hadn't been much of a Brewers fan since the early 80s Ben Oglivie days).

I've come by most of my fandoms earnestly: the Bears were selected when I was very young because we got to go and see their training camp in the summers in Plattville, WI where my mom was completing graduate coursework between school years.  Their winning a Super Bowl in my formative years helped, but that bandwagon jumping has been paid off dearly for suffering through decades of painful disappointment and false hope.

Being a fan of the Chicago Bears is (what I long thought was) a uniquely painful experience.  It's not the perpetual basement dweller syndrome of someone like 20+ years of Brewer's baseball (until the playoff drought ended in 2008 in our first season as 10-pack ticketholders and actually once more becoming a Brewer's fan).  Rather, the pain of the Bears is that they consistently show promise and hope - brief spurts of success, only to come crashing back down and making you feel dumb for even getting engaged in it all again.  As I said, i thought this fan experience was unique to the Bears, until I found it again taking up a fan interest in my now favorite sports franchise: Nottingham Forest Football Club.  

A few years ago, I made a very conscious decision to 'get into' club football.  I've watched a lot of international soccer over the years (World Cup, Euro tournaments, US National Team qualifiers and tournaments), but beyond vaguely "choosing" the Chicago Fire as the closest MLS team who I've gone to see a couple of times at Soldier Field and Borussia Dortmund as the "local team" I chose when studying in Germany, I had no loyalties.                  

*   *   *

26 July 2020 - 11:07am CDT

As loyal readers and frequent checkers of this site will know (I see you when you all drop by!), I frequently 'post-date' the most recent post.  Whereby, I start to write a post, and set the date and time of publishing the post at the moment I started writing it, even if (as often happens) I don't finish the post until days (or sometimes even weeks) later.  My thinking with that is that I want to preserve the moment of the original idea, and generally when I finish the draft the post is still the newest on the site (because I don't write here that often).  On many occasions, I don't ever finish the post, and may years later publish and add a dated post script like this one.

The reason I needed to add one to this post is because, like the posts where several years have passed before I get to publishing them I have fundamentally changed between their writings and I no longer inhabit the same world I did when I started writing this post.  I started this post planning to write about fandom, elective, absorbed and inherited.  For the last couple years, my favorite team in all of sports has been Nottingham Forest F.C. 

The post was going to be about how I had selected a team who managed to supplant the lowly Bears as purveyors of heartbreak.  Best described, I think, by Nottingham native, Phil Juggins, who I met a couple of times back when NFFC were last in the Premier League when I visited Nottingham on my spring break from Uni Muenster.  As I dug in to the history of Forest, I found them to be a team that tended to break fans down with flashes of promise and success followed by epic failure.

And then it was Wednesday, and omfg, I've never felt so broken from a sports result.  The Double Doink was nothing compared to Wednesday.  Wednesday will be a historical moment... but it will pass, and will become a part of the groundwater of being a Forest supporter.  I'm sure I am not the only fan of NFFC and the Chicago Bears, but we few are loyal union members of the factories of sadness that are City Ground & Halas Hall.

But maybe next season will be our year...

Looking for the Joel Chicago / Wisco Sweep!

It's a mini-Lake Michigan Circle Tour sports eclipse with the Green Bay Packers playing tonight at Soldier Field in Chicago against the Bears, and the baby bears of Wrigley Field playing in Milwaukee against the Brewers.

I am likely fairly unusual in my rooting interest for this event, hoping the Brewers sweep the Cubs this weekend (to move into a tie {at least with them} for the Wild Card race) and the Bears dominate the Packers in an embarrassing entree for their new head coach, Not Mark McMurtry.

* 6:56pm *

Brewers are holding a 2-1 lead so far in the 3rd and i'll comment later as we go.  I predict the Brewers go 3-1 and the Bears win 27 - 10.

* 7:21pm *

Virginia McCaskey intros the 100th season - the Cubs have tied it up (grrrr), but i still think the Brewers will win 3 out of 4 (to clarify) and will hold the Bears to their score (though i want to up the win margin because of Aaron Rodgers' douchebag moustache - is #douchebagMoustache trending yet?)

* 7:35pm *

Arcia is at second with 1 out!  Packers have gone nowhere in these first 5 plays...

* 7:47pm *

Jackson walks a lead off man after Eddy Pineiro hits his first ever field goal!

Now there's a second on base and Jackson makes a BIG PITCH to get Khris Bryant...  And a first pitch gift against Rizzo...

* 8:38pm *

both enemy teams are on the threat...

hard to remember the last time...

It's NFL early Christmas today, with the floundering Green Bay Packers coming to Soldier Field to take on the FIRST-PLACE Chicago Bears.

Source: sportsmockery.com

It's a marquee, albeit noon, game - it's a rematch of Week 1, where the Bears owned the first half and then collapsed under an epic Aaron Rodgers comeback.  During the final few minutes of that game, shane and i were texting that the Bears were only going to get better, and this week nearer the end of the season would be a damn tough game for the Packers.  Now, Shane is a full-throated Packer fan who was in part being kind to a friend during an embarrassing defeat, but i think he had a glimmer of what might be in front of him as a Packer fan.

3+ months later and the landscape has changed quite a lot.  The Bears enter 6-point favorites, and even with that, the strangest thing about this game is that Bears fans, myself included, feel fairly confident that we are the much better team playing this game today.  It doesn't mean we can't lose, but it does mean we will probably win, and should all things being equal win convincingly.

The question then arises, how best to watch such an epic match-up.  There are a plethora of mostly Packer-slanted events across Milwaukee.  You could go to:

• The Cactus Club and see the cover band Green Day Packers
• You can happily watch the game at every bar in Milwaukee, to be sure, but here are some of the best spots...
• The exception might be the local best soccer bar, which on Sundays becomes the High-Bear-y Pub

But no, for me, and a game this big, i need to be in my home, on my couch - i may text the outside world on occasion, but the emotion of this game day is my own and my highs or lows that may be to come over the next few hours need to be my own.  I don't want to gloat (or be gloated upon).  Although i appreciate the collective fandom experience, and think it's an important part of modern life that we mostly miss out on and it makes us all the worse (so says one of my favorite books!).

Enjoy the game everyone... for once, i feel pretty good about it and i'll see you all in late January for discussion of any snark and commentary!

John Cusack - AIROAPG

I went last night to see Say Anything in a public venue with (i'm gonna say...) 1000 (300?, i'm really bad at estimating) people.  I've never been one to choose favorites, but the oeuvre of John Cusack's is something worth celebrating.  It doesn't mean that everything he's in or has made is amazing, or even great or even good...

JC said something interesting in the "A Conversation with John Cusack" following the screening.  Tiffany Ogle had the unenviable job of trying to provoke JC into conversation, which he didn't seem inclined to join.  Ogle was asking some fairly banal questions around favorite memories or behind the scene stories of film making.  JC said 2 things that were a bit interesting - that he liked "anything that had worked" and comparing successful film making to a batting average in baseball.

We live in such a quick to sneer culture (a good example was the balcony of the post-Say Anything crowd), and even though film making technologies are less expensive than ever, the risk-taking in film making is at an all-time low.  JC's point was, I think (he needed a lot of interpreting, as he didn't seem inclined to elaborate much at all), that many films made in earlier days would not be made in today's environment.  The larger point was essentially that bad movies - which is to say movies that fail to do something interesting - should be made and the makers and the actors ought not be blamed for doing something that doesn't pull it off.

The act of art-making ought to be a risky proposition.  If you're sure something is going to be a hit, it's probably not that interesting.  Putting something out in the world should be scary - are they going to like it, hate it, get it?

And so, herewith I bestow a new label to my blog - the first in quite a long time - #AIROAPG.  For the name, I owe a debt to Benjamin Katz.  In the comments of this post, will be a retrospective of the complete works of John Cusack.  I've seen many of them previously, of course, perhaps almost all of them, but a fresh viewing seems worthwhile.

FICFs

Last Wednesday afternoon i attended my first ever Cubs game at Wrigley Field. Having recently developed a keen hatred for the Cubs & Cubs fans (where before there was a deep, abulic indifference), i thought the event might be uncomfortable, awkward, or even dangerous (though, less so once i decided not to wear my shiny new Prince Fielder t-shirt).

They were playing the Houston Astros, in a rubber game on a beautiful Wednesday afternoon. We got to the stadium just before first pitch & grabbed snacks & beers on the way to our seats. I'd heard the food at Wrigley was simply abysmal and the "brat" i was served definitely backed that up. On the upside, they had Old Style available at about half of the concession stands.

We got to our seats, which were the cheapest we'd found on stubHub & were impressed to find we were very close to the field along the left field line (near the foul pole). Alfonso Soriano (literally "big jerk") was close by when the Cubs were in the field and he joked back & forth with the Bleacher Bums (at one point after Fonzo had misplayed a fly ball, they pointed to Right Fielder Fukudome's snazzy catch as an example of something he might try).

Our seat-neighbors were cordial for the most part, decidedly un-Chicagoan. Then the 3rd inning started. The Astros took a 4-1 lead, scoring the last 3 on a home run by Carlos Lee (el Caballo, literally "Carlos Lee"). Actually you can find the entire game, obsessively blogged by some guy listening to the radio broadcast. Down 4-1 the fans starting turning. They became the cynical, slightly jerky (but still harmless) Cub fans i've come to know...

At that point, Nathan & i decided to get out of the sun, stretch our legs, and see the stadium sites. We wandered back around the stadium and walked through some better infield sections. It's amazing how close to the action you feel at any of the lower deck sections at Wrigley. It's also astounding to think how long people have been walking these same sections - Wrigley is a really old (at least relatively) feeling place to see a sporting event (i suppose the Colosseum in Rome might put this into perspective, but still).

As we were headed back we were accosted by a guy trying to get us to sign up for credit cards (or checking accounts) in order to get a free t-shirt. Nathan quizzed the guy about damaging his credit score by running a credit check, but the guy assured us that as long as you don't do it all the time you had nothing to worry about... We (surprisingly) declined the offer, but as we were finishing up a conversation with him the Cubs hit a grand slam.

We continued back toward our seats, but it suddenly came to us that the reason our food might have sucked was due to the wrong type of food... In Milwaukee, you order a brat at the game, in Chicago, a Chicago style dog. We grabbed dogs & more beer (loading up with hot peppers & a frighteningly green relish) and headed back to our seats. While we were in our respective lines, the Cubs scored 4 more runs for an 8-run bottom of the 3rd. We got back in time to watch Theriot ground out to end the inning.

The fans in our section were in high spirits by the time we came back.

"Did we miss anything?" we asked.

"Nooo. Nothing, you didn't miss anything. Though, if the Astros start scoring again, you're going to have to leave again," They replied.

In fact, somehow, the fans, not just the game, were extremely enjoyable. At the end of the game, winning soundly, fans were in good spirits. DoucheBag Cubs fans & Drunk Bleacher Girls were cultivating meaningful relationships in the last couple of innings... Singing "Take Me Out To the Ballgame" at Wrigley was something special, even if it was Ron Santo singing... Then they sing some "go cubs go" song when they win...

Overall, i was actually somewhat disappointed by how accommodating & not-overly-douchey the Cubs fans were... And while everyone was laughinghavingagoodtime and singing their songs, i actually saw what might drive someone to being a Cubs fan. There's a good-timie-ness to it that is almost unavoidable. By the end of the game, i was even cheering for the Cubs and i'm a fucking Brewers fan.

I mean, i still hate the Cubs & hate Cubs fans when they come to Milwaukee, for sure, but Wrigley... actually kinda cool.
thanks, gilk, for getting me to wrigley, finally.

Shy Town

Brooke & i took the train into Chicago yesterday to pick up her car and take another load of stuff home from my room. I was only in town for a matter of hours, but soon realized it really didn't feel like home any longer (if it ever did). On the bus ride back to Hyde Park, i was personally affronted by someone talking louldly on a cell phone; walking around downtown was too crowded, busy and noisy for my small-town ears. My pacing is changed. In just a single week i've adapted back to life in southern Wisconsin, meandering walks through town, driving everywhere (for a minumum of 20 minutes), lazing around watching World Cup matches.

I hope i've not yet completely lost my sense of the big city as home, but it's surely waning. I love a good city, but i am a small-town sort of guy. I'm ok with that.

A review of Food

Quite the Tuesday. After getting home late from barring around last night, i slept a bit late this morning, then headed to campus, leaving Nathan & Lissa to find their way downtown to hook up with Tritle, which they did fairly successfully. I had a blueberry muffin & coffee at the Classics Café. The coffee was desperately needed & the muffin was ok, but a bit crumbly. I really shoudn't get muffins. I don't eat them very attractively, i'm afraid.

I headed downtown to meet up with everyone & got to the basement restaurant they had lunch in just as they were finishing. After stops at Millennium Park (which i now appreciate as a pretty sweet thing - previous visits have all been in foul weather & therefore tainted) and the Art Institute of Chicago, we hit the 'Park Grill' near Millennium Park for a Heinekin and some chips & salsa (my favorite food, hands down). The salsa tasted a bit barbecue-y to me & had a very thick consitency. Strange stuff.

After that we headed to U.S. Cellular Field for the White Sox Game. They won handily, in a quick game. We got in on some successfully scalped tickets & i had a brat w/ sauerkraut. It was pretty decent, but nothing too special. I had been told by several Chicagoans that U.S. Cellular Field has some of the best stadium food in the country, but i would say it doesn't hold a candle to Miller Park... Not even close. I had a Sam Adams & then discovered with my Pretzel purchase (again, no Miller Park pretzel) that they had a vendor with PBR on tap. Which makes this stadium ok in my book.

The game was fun. Lot's of homeruns & a 'loud guy' (guess which one of those people is 'loud guy') pretty close to us who yelled at Frank Thomas a lot. Once again, no actual images of the game, because Nate's camera has a crazy big memory card that fits nowhere, but here is some evidence we were at the game, and here's some more... of my watch, Lissa's soda, and me looking at the card the photographer handed me that says how to find my picture. (You can buy a Joel & Lissa at the White Sox game t-shirt - Nate was getting cash & food). Oh, speaking of photographic evidence... there was a couple in front of us, who, when the photographer came around asking if people wanted their pictures taken, to put on the website, they were like "No, we can't be shown to be here..." then laughed & were hiding from the photographer as he took other people's pictures. I think they were illicitly coupling. Cool.

Sweet mama

It's in. Unbelievably, but true, i've finished & handed in my thesis (photographic evidence should be forthcoming. Nathan took a picture to document my handing in the paper at Malynne's office, but he has some bizarro-size memory disk for his camera that doesn't fit in my computer.

But rest assured, our great zombie nightmare is over. At least no more will be bothering me tonight. Nathan & Melissa are in town - we crashed my precepts post-thesis party, then moved on to bigger & brighter things. It's so great to have some folks in town. I only got about 4 hours sleep last night & am so glad they were around to pull me up & out... Sorry i missed the good times in Hyde Park, my MAPH-feathered friends, but, well, you know. the HP is lame & there's nothing Nathan loves more than 'cool stuff'.

Ok... must catch up on some sleep (before delving into The Man Without Qualities)

It's a bird, it's a plane..."that's an omen."

Today, i was biking to my soccer game - sadly my last soccer game of the season, Sparkle Motion's over-achieving reign of mediocrity came to a crashing end today with a 2-0 playoff loss. As i approached the fields, through a parking lot, i was going over a speed bump when a bird dropped from the sky, dead not 10 feet in front of me. I looked around for a confused hunter, stalking the alleys of Chicago for pigeons, but saw no one. Then there arose what seemed to be a bird scuffle, in mid-air. A pigeon (looked related to the recently fallen dirty dove) was chasing a larger black bird around, squawking at him. So, i assume the black bird was the guilty party (unless the pigeons are equivalent to the Hyde Park police in bird world & every time a crime is committed they go around harrassing any nearby black birds).

Anyway, i took the fallen bird at my tires as a bad sign, but i'm hoping it was an omen pointing to our playoff loss, rather than my final 36 hours until the thesis is due. I think if it was supposed to be an omen for my thesis, the bird would have gotten back up after a couple moments & begun awkwardly, but persistently trying to eat up all the other birds in the world. Though, now that i think of it, i haven't seen a bird for a couple hours.

Zadie Zadie Bo-Bady

I went to a reading of Zadie Smith's this afternoon. She read from her newest novel On Beauty. The novel, which i haven't read, sounds hilarious. In fact, i haven't actually read anything of Smith's novels, White Teeth or Autographed Man. I have read a short story of hers called "I'm The Only One" in Speaking With The Angel, which i vaguely remember enjoying, but mostly because i remember enjoying most every story in that book. But i loaned it to Nathan shortly after accruing it & haven't seen it since, so i have trouble remembering which story exactly was hers.

Anyway... she read two short (very short) "bits" of her new novel about an academic party & a funeral (unrelated {her joke, not mine}), the book was hilarious & smart & well, just plain good. The reading itself was also superb. Her tone was clipped & Brit-y and she answered all manner of questions (standard 'where do you get your ideas' reading variety to UChicago 8 minute variety) gracefully and amusingly. I'm very excited to catch up on her stuff once they let me out of this place & just want to point everyone in her direction if you've not read her yet.

I find myself really missing 'for fun' reading... Although i read a lot of amazing things that are brilliant, that are fascinating, and often are terribly fun, it's never pure 'kick-back-whatever-i-want-reading'. Terribly disappointing. I haven't read the newest Harry Potter book, didn't get a chance to re-read The Da Vinci Code before it comes out this week. I do so miss it... But soon enough, soon enough.

c-c-c-clothes coming to k-k-k-kill me

Every morning, when i wake up and start thinking about leaving the house, i am confronted by my closet. I pick out a shirt or a pair of pants that i feel in the mood for and find something that seems to go right along with it. But i am starting to suspect that i may not be a very good dresser. This surprises me, because, though i often joke about myself being a bad dresser, i would say that if i were to make a list of people that i knew in descending order of style, i would have expected to find myself somewhere near the top of that list. But this is not so. In fact, if anything, i think the style comment i would warrant is something along the lines of "...and you dress really interestingly."

Today for instance, i felt like wearing a jacket. So, i looked over my current selection of 2 different (but not that different) jackets that aren't in the shop, decided i'd worn the brown one quite a lot recently & chose the green one. Threw on some jeans & went with my green shirt with the purple piping... This outfit generally works, i like it. While i was doing all this, picking clothes & whatnot, i was packing my bag & thought to myself, "don't forget to throw in your paper from last quarter because of your meeting with WJT Mitchell today & begging for a letter of recommendation." So, i'm thinking this thought at the same time as i'm putting on clothes and yet i don't make the connection that i will be wearing these very same, toolish (yet quasi-hip) clothes when i meet with him. Thankfully, i'm at a college and surrounded by endless numbers of people of all sorts of questionable styles, but who take whatever they're going with a lot farther than i do... But somehow they sell it better, i think.

I think a (very small) part of my problem is identifying a 'style' for myself. When i was working at the library, most days i wore the same thing, khakis or jeans & a casual-ish shirt. Simple. When i came home i collapsed in a pile of bookish mush & didn't at all care what i was wearing any longer. I had a finite number of 'approved outfits' that i could throw on in the event of 'going out in public' but because i didn't do that all that often, i didn't need too many of them.

These days, i'm out in a non-work-environment public all the time, and i haven't nearly enough pre-planned sets of clothes to last much longer than a week... Add to that, anything i wear when i go to school, i think of as a costume, as in a "Grad Student Costume", so when i wear these jackets (or my preppier collared shirt under sweater), it's because i am, in part at least, playing at grad student dress-up, somewhat mocking, somewhat envying & not really believing that anything i wear is in any way, 'real clothes'. And so, i walk around campus or Hyde Park dreading the moment when someone will call me out on my impostery. I would lamely point at someone in a similar costume to mine, but their resounding response is always, "Well of course they're* wearing that... They're a real grad student... You just would like to pretend to play one on tv."

Bad Umbrella Day

So, it's a swirly-winded, rainy day in Chicago. The walk home featured rain from all directions, and impassible puddles strategically placed to ensure soaked socks. All in all, it's a miserable day for walking home. To illustrate this (which i can't), two blocks south of my apartment i discovered the handle of an umbrella, with no actual umbrella attached (i imagine the cover section of an umbrella {a red one, i think} flying whimsimically through the treetops of Hyde Park, never again to deign to descend to earth...) and pictured the poor sot (sop?) holding just the handle as his umbrella top flies away. Sad rain stories all around.

My walk home featured several umbrella inversions, which, as it turns out isn't overly distressing for my newly purchased Walgreens umbrella. Evidently, my umbrella has an advanced technology that allows it to be inverted (converting it into a useful tool for water collection if stranded on a desert island), but easily changed back into an umbrella by closing and reopening it. Most umbrellas i've owned before this one seem to be permanently changed into a 'water collector' because the flimsy aluminum shafts are bent to hell by the wind.

Walking home also gave me an opportunity to show off my amazing leaping ability, from hopping over small puddles, to huge leaps off of curbs, to complex multiple jumps, kicking off of stoops & fences to avoid particularly long puddles. When i jump, i imagine myself floating gracefully over & landing eloquently (think Jackie Chan or Spiderman), but i'm sure the person behind me on the street sees Drunken Penguin or Club-Footed Gorilla... But i do enjoy it.

Omaha & Back

zombies, i guess

Since in at least a few places, this blog is referred to as "Joel's Zombie Blog" i feel like i should occasionally reflect on what zombies mean to me. Today, during my 'Little Red Schoolhouse' writing class Russell & I were reflecting on various liquors we enjoy & both decided we very rarely enjoy rum, but we were speaking more of the 'Rum & Coke' variety of cocktail, but i completely overlooked the Caribbean variety rum drinks... While Russell did mention the Mojito, the Mai Tai and the Zombie were left out of the equation... In retrospect (by which i mean after half a bottle of wine), i love Rum.
In other news, last night Lindsay, Russell, Adrian & I went out on the town, there's a full story out there, but - good times, good times. We played Trivial Pursuit : 90s Edition and among the real puzzlers Adrian & I paved our "victory" with was "How Many Times Did Eminem fail 9th Grade before he gave up and went on to become a rapping god?" (or something like that...ahem). Yeah. So. Good game.
So, zombies. Yeah, they're great. As i kinda mentioned yesterday, i feel like i really have a paper now... And it can basically be summed up with the sentence:
"Where did all these zombies come from and what are they trying to tell us...and i wonder why they're so hungry; but don't worry, it'll all be ok."
Seriously, that's what Eirik (my preceptor) & i decided my paper was about yesterday. Ridiculous, eh? Anyway. G'day all. Hope this little zombie reflection has been helpful to you all.

Random Momentary Elation (RME)

Once in a great while, a brief moment comes along in my life when suddenly everything seems alright... All my looming problems suddenly have solutions, the sun looks sunnier, my thesis has a thesis... Things seem great. Today this moment lasted from 4:36pm - 4:51, a longer period than such a feeling usually lasts for me, but i was biking home, waving at cursing motorists & smelling the fresh spring dumpsters of Hyde Park...

But now i'm home, and after delaying the Real for an hour with the first episode of Lost (thanks Eric & Bethany) i am rather back to feeling nervously content, happily trepidatious and not a little swoomy. But, this afternoon's RME is not utterly gone from my life, i still have the memory of it and the hope of another such moment soon... now, if i can just remember what the line after "Zombies are good to think with..." is.

Not Zappa

I just got back from seeing Project Object at Martyr's Bar... Damn good show, but one of those shows i go to where it just makes me feel guilty. The band plays Frank Zappa music (mostly from the Joe's Garage era) & is fronted by Ike Willis, who was one of the primary vocalists for several of Zappa's albums.

Every time i hear a Zappa song i've never heard before, i love it - literally, every time - & this happened several times tonight, but that's the problem... There's so much i don't know. Not unlike a few weeks ago, when Andy dragged me to the Ray Davies show at the Vic... I knew a few of the songs, but wished i'd known more, and felt bad not knowing more.

So, i set now a goal for myself, to get more into Zappa... not crazy into Zappa like some of the folk at this show, who seemed to notice every time a guitar soloist changed a single note from original LP recordings... but i really must listen more often to the rock legend & music visionary that was Frank Zappa.