Completely Unnecessary

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.

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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.

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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.

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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]

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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…

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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]

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Nope. It is March goddamn 21st over there.

[Photo by Bahareh]

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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!

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Somehow my reaction to John Stroger’s death is only to hate Daley more:

“He was an inspiration to all of us in politics,” Daley said. “He really believed government could make changes. His greatest legacy is building Cook County Hospital. When people told him that public hospitals had ended many years ago, he firmly believed people needed good, quality health care.”

Um, I believe we call that ‘Stroger Hospital.’ He cared so much about the people that he named it after himself.

The mayor also had this to say:

“After I lost the election, he supported Harold Washington,” Mayor Daley said. “There’s nothing wrong with that. That isn’t loyalty. Maybe he believed in someone. That isn’t disloyalty. It’s like after a game you shake someone’s hand.”

Um, I know we have to ask this a lot, but what in the hell are you talking about?

Meanwhile, Todd compared his father to Job, which is funny since overpaid and nepotist ‘jobs’ were what his father was all about.

This is, perhaps, unkind, and I do have sympathy for the grieving family as I would any family who lost a loved one. The number of people that sent me this news, however, belies somewhat the glowing obits run by both the Tribune and especially the Sun Times.

There is no doubt that Stroger broke a lot of barriers; he was the first African-American committeeman, a position of great power in the city. But that power went to his head, as well as the heads of the group that surrounded him. And, importantly, the group that still surrounds his son. Whatever one thinks about Stroger, he was at least a consummate politician. It’s a shame his de facto last act was to set the stage for that which currently occupies his chair.

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Chicago’s early voting has begun!

In its commitment to the phrase, ‘vote early, vote often,’ Chicago has opened 51 early voting locations around the city. If you’re already registered, you can vote at any of the locations listed here. If you’re early voting, you do not have to vote in your own ward (though you must on election day).

The locations are open from 9-5, Monday thru Saturday. They’re also open on Martin Luther King Day, which is totally a good way to spend 10 minutes on your holiday!

Early voting lasts until January 31st. If you miss it, you can vote the usual (read: boring!) way on February 5th (polls stay open til 7pm). If you vote on election day, you must vote at the location listed on your voter card (which I totally just got in the mail before I left, so don’t pretend like you don’t know where it is).

If you need to check to see if you’re registered, find out where your (election day) polling place is, or to see who’s on the ballots, click here.

Illinois has a declaratory ballot, so you have to pick which party’s primary ballot you would like. It does not have to be your party. Perhaps you’re like my dad and cross parties to vote for the weakest opposition candidate (check tonight’s Michigan results to see if that worked for DailyKos). Dubious at best, but who wouldn’t love a Obama/Keyes rematch, this time for President?

As Obama is almost certain to take Illinois by a large percentage, lefty Dems might want to take this opportunity to check out the Green Party. They’re running a field of candidates and are one of your choices for a primary ballot.

Final note: if you aren’t already registered, you can’t vote in the primary. Heart wrenching, I know, but it’s your own damn fault for being so lax in your civic duty. You can still register for the general election in November.

Patriotism moment - America requires very little of you a citizen, and gets more craptacular each year because its citizens don’t participate. It’s 30 minutes of your time every 2-4 years. Get on it.

That being said, I’m not voting in the primary because early voting opened the day after I left and I messed up my absentee procedure by going to Asia! What a hypocrite I am! All the more reason why you should show me up. I know at least several people who would be happy to rub this in my face for years. If that what it takes to participate in your democracy, I am willing to be your holier-than-thou punching bag.

Links:
Early Voting Locations
Voter Information

h/t to Gate, from whom I cheerfully stole the links and the inspiration.

ps: please do not ‘vote often’ - that is voter fraud, no matter how favorably we look upon it in IL.
pps: please do not vote for Alan Keyes - he is a bigot.
ppps: no, go ahead and vote for Keyes. I have no idea if he’s on the ballot, but that would be amazing.

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