Completely Unnecessary

These stories are a couple of days old at this point, but I couldn’t stop gritting my teeth long enough to post about them.

Cook County Democrats - led by their torpid President Todd Stroger - struck down a bill to repeal the 1% tax that gives Chicago the highest sales tax in the US.

All the Republicans voted to repeal the tax, joined by - we can all do this together right? - Chicago Democrats Forrest Claypool and Mike Quigley.

Stroger and co. accused Tony Peracia (R), who proposed the repeal and was Stroger’s 2006 opponent, of political machinations to help his campaign for State’s Attorney in November.

And Stroger knows corruption when he sees it! His 2006 campaign just got fined $27,000 for incomplete and missing reports on contributions of more than $500.

But there are likely to be more fines since they didn’t follow the rules in other ways, as well. Here’s a quote that makes me laugh:

Stroger spokesman Eugene Mullins also said he was working to better reflect that a $441,000 certificate of deposit obtained by the 8th Ward Democratic Organization fund, of which Mullins is treasurer, was used as collateral for a $500,000 loan that Stroger’s campaign received shortly before the 2006 election.

One commenter on one of the stories noted that a $27,000 one-time tax would probably be requested some time soon. I say, one time! Better make it permanent. I mean, the 8th Ward only has so much money…

As much as I loathe and disagree with nearly every decision President Bush has made, at least his Administration went in with a plan. All Stroger plans to do is absorb taxpayers money and hand out jobs to cronies. Give me grand (horrible) plans any day over sponge-like, fatuous greed.

Links:
Cook County Board rejects sales tax increase repeal [Chicago Tribune]
Cook County does it again [Chicago Tribune]
Todd Stroger campaign hit with nearly $27,000 state fine [Chicago Tribune]

Vaguely Related

• The Stroger is Dead; Long Live the Stroger
• Stroger at the City Club of Chicago

Or not me.

Chris sends me a link to this video today, with instructions to watch the Chicago section at 2:25:

I’ve watched the girl in the center like a hundred times now. That’s fucking got to be you.

Chris’ filthy mouth aside, he’s almost right. The girl, standing a little bit in front of the crowd making an ostentatious fool of herself ought to be me.

But it’s not.

An edited version of our conversation says more about how my friends view me (and how I view myself) than just about anything else:

Me: That’s not me - though I grant that her spastic movements might lead you to think that.

Chris: It’s a combination of things. The glasses and hair are reminiscent of yours, as is the “I’m being funny right now” facial expression. And the black tank top/cropped pants combo seems like a plausible outfit for you. I feel like if you were to replace whoever that is, the difference in grainy internet footage would be pretty much indistinguishable.

Me: Yeah, it’s really the mouth-open facial gesture during the ’sexy bit’ that makes it seem like me. If she’s from Chicago maybe it’s just something they taught us in public school.

Between this and the girl from Iowa, I’m not as unique and precious a flower as I’ve always assumed.

Though I am disappointed that Chris thinks I would wear those shoes.

(Btw: To Matt, the creator of the film - why such short shrift to Melbourne? We get half a second of Fed Square at 0:56 and that’s it!)

Vaguely Related

• Small World
• Wind (and a little bit of media studies!)

And as soon as I wrote that nonsense below I thought of some other nonsense to write about.

Until you live somewhere else, you never really hear your own accent. When you live really somewhere else, you recognise it instantly. I do full-body takes when I hear Midwestern accents on the streets of Melbourne.

It’s especially funny when you hear it in things with which you’re previously familiar. When I watch The West Wing these days, I like Bradley Whitford (Josh) all the more for his dulcet lower-Wisconsin tones.

What prompted this post was listening to my favorite band of all time, the Smoking Popes. Listening to ‘Sandra’ I heard (also) Josh sing:

I know what’s going on…

But, like a good (suburban) Chicago boy, he didn’t say ‘on’. He said ‘aaahn’ - just the way I say it (though minus the suburban bit).

If you ever want to hear my accent, just get me to say the following sentence:

Oh my god! Mom, stop making me talk about my goddamn Chicago accent!

And get me drunk first; I’m a Northsider, but that shit comes out.

Vaguely Related

• Damn
• Wind (and a little bit of media studies!)

First it was cougars. Cougars (well, a cougar) five blocks from my house.

Now it’s an armed standoff a mere three blocks away. And by standoff, I mean a guy in his house for 2.5 hours before surrendering peacefully to police.

Someone go protect my mother before Kalashnikov-wielding pandas descend on the family home.

Actually, someone protect the pandas. She will not take kindly to someone coming in and messing up her dining room table, no sir.

I’m not even allowed to set my water bottle on it; imagine the mess with pandas!

ps - Make sure to check out the Tribune’s helpful ‘Area of Threat’ map. Though, arguably, one could just zoom in on the coach house where a single individual was holed up rather than calling it an ‘area.’ Hilariously, the url it reads ‘lakeview-threat-map.’ Love it.

Vaguely Related

• I Wasn’t Home, Cougar. No Hugs…
• Wind (and a little bit of media studies!)

I haven’t even read this article, but I think it’s worth noting that the NYT doesn’t even bother citing the city when talking about ‘the South Side’.

If you’re talking about politics and a ’side,’ Chicago seems implied.

Sigh, I talked about tacos at dinner tonight. I’d kill for some al pastor. Or a veggie burrito from El Pacifico.

When I long for Mexican, I strive to remember how good the seafood is here.

Vaguely Related

• The Ties That Convene
• The Endorsement You’ve Been Waiting For*

They both like water.

As if I haven’t had far more specious links between things I wanted to talk about. These two are both animals and, as previously stated, enjoy a dip.

First up! Time to look at the colossal squid found last year!!! [Ed. note - people totally jones for squid. Not a day goes by that someone doesn't come by my blog looking for large squids.]

Paul Brewer from the museum said there were some fears the huge animal would collapse when it finally thawed, because it lack of a backbone.

To try to unfreeze the specimen successfully, it will be removed from its freezer and placed in a specially-designed tank filled with salty water.

Because salt water freezes at a lower temperature than fresh water, it is hoped the squid can be kept at or below zero degrees celsius while the fresh water block of ice surrounding it is melted.

It is expected the thawing process will begin the night before scientists want to examine the animal, but the defrosting could take three to four days to complete.

This AAP writer is clearly missing the excitement of day; the audacious boringness of this prose is completely inappropriate. Curse the writer that does not appreciate the squid beat.

(Actually, the entire story reads like, “Um, I am just writing down what they told me because I don’t know the first thing about squid defrosting’).

Secondly, poor Knut! He really likes people and he cries because he’s too big to play with and no one likes him because he’s not a baby anymore.

And his handler doesn’t want to hug him anymore because he’s enormous and potentially deadly in his love.

He needs to learn a party trick like Mike, the polar bear at Lincoln Park Zoo when I was growing up. He used to bounce off the walls. It was charming at the time, though now I realize it was a repetitive coping behavior caused by crushing boredom.

A different LPZ polar bear seems to have kids on the menu. Maybe Knut should try rage… He is a teen, after all.

I went looking for a cougar update, but got bored with the Trib’s foolish website. It’s at the Field Museum and various people are poking at it. The story I read the other day only had two authors and not nearly enough breathless wonder for my cougar-article-tastes.

Links:
Scientists finally get close squiz at colossal squid [The Age]
Grown Knut ‘cries out’ [Chicago Tribune]

Vaguely Related

• Threat Vortex Moving Closer to My Mother
• I Wasn’t Home, Cougar. No Hugs…

They’re, like, actually celebrating it. This is the headline currently running on the Trib’s website:

In celebration of “4/20,” here’s a dime bag’s worth of marijuana facts.

Given the paper’s traditional conservative bent, I was expecting something along the lines of, ‘Pot will turn you into a useless hippie, hippie.’

I certainly did not expect a reasonably attractive graphic containing anecdotes about Louisa May Alcott stories. Or this:

6. Marijuana interferes with short-term memory so users forget what they just said or did. Marijuana interferes with short-term memory so users forget what they just said or did.

This is kind of screwing with my conceptions of the Tribune, but it does explain the cougar captions…

Vaguely Related

• I Wasn’t Home, Cougar. No Hugs…
• Wind (and a little bit of media studies!)

Chicago police killed a cougar in my neighborhood Monday.

I was reading along, scrolling down to see where on the northside the animal had been found. Little did I expect to see:

The animal was shot by police shortly before 6 p.m. Monday in the 3400 block of North Hoyne Avenue, police said.

That’s five blocks from my house!

My guess is that the cougar was en route to my mother’s for hugs from me, but didn’t realize that I don’t home until July. Poor bunny.

What did my loquacious mayor have to say about the incident?

“Now, I just want to tell you, if the cougar attacked a child, they’d sue the city because the police officer didn’t do their job,” Daley said”I didn’t see a neighbor run out and grab it and say, ‘Oh I love you’ and bring it in the house.”

I repeat, I don’t come home until July.

And, boy, it must have been a slow news day at the Tribune. The front page is currently rocking a photo of police covering the dead animal with a cloth. The story is an absurd 1,050 words long, and has two reporters on the byline, as well as third contributor. Which I guess you need to write that much cougar copy.

Dear lord. You’d think it was the story about the coyote walking into a West Loop sandwich shop and climbing in the drinks fridge. (Which happened right near my old work, actually. Animals love me.)

Update: There is also the most amazing/absurd photo gallery of the cougar’s crime scene. 2,4,6 are the best - the captions are incredible. And 14 would get a big tick in the ‘images of metacoverage’ box on my research coding schedule.

Link:
Cougar killed on North Side may have wandered from Black Hills [Chicago Tribune]

Vaguely Related

• Chicago Tribune Celebrates 4/20
• Wind (and a little bit of media studies!)

Nope. It is March goddamn 21st over there.

[Photo by Bahareh]

Vaguely Related

• Wind (and a little bit of media studies!)
• Weird Day

Which brings me to the point I was making two days ago - welcome to my brain.

People keep asking me if I’m moving back to Chicago after my Melbourne sojourn (which, if you pronounce it the aussie way, kind of rhymes!). The answer is most likely ‘no,’ as Chicago is not the hotbed of national politics and media that we’d like to think.

The question that usually follows is: well, are you going to stay in Australia? The answer to that is probably also ‘no,’ but I wish it was ‘yes’ for at least one very important reason: walking.

I hate what living in Chicago does to me. After just six weeks visiting home, I felt unsafe walking home after the films the other night. One of the great things about living in Melbourne is that I can walk home at 1am by myself without concern. And yet I found myself looking around and constantly glancing over my shoulder. I wondered if the guy in black on Victoria Parade was just just drunk or if he kept stopping because he meant me harm. I crossed the road.

Look, it’s wise to be a savvy city girl no matter where you are, and it’s also wise to look over your shoulder when you’re walking alone late at night. But I hate the resurgent sense of threat that comes from visiting the States. After a year of living in Melb, I looked to see if anyone was there, not to see if I should be scared. It might not make sense, but those are two different things.

I appreciate the lack of feeling of risk I have walking alone here. I would everywhere were as safe.

ps - Also my bike is fixed, which just makes me speedier anyway. I have ten gears again!

Vaguely Related

• Wind (and a little bit of media studies!)
• Small World