Chicago -
By J.J. Tindall
Funeral for a Bastard Year
Four stockbrokers took residences in Italy. Four hundred nobodies lost everything.
– Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby
I know where the bodies are buried:
Lincoln Park before the zoo was there.
Pre-Fire the land with graves was filled.
I move to add our Annus Horribilis.
Posted on December 29, 2009
By The Beachwood Privacy Settings Affairs Desk
Collected from Facebook, including some of our own postings.
1. WARNING: Facebook can now automatically scan your brain through your monitor. To block this application, go to Kitchen –> Open:Cabinets –> Upper Right Drawer –> REMOVE box that says “Aluminum Foil.” Wrap foil around your head. Facebook kept this one quiet. Copy this into your status to warn your friends.
2. As of today, Facebook staff will be allowed to eat your children and pets. To turn this option off, go to Settings, then Privacy, then Meals. Click the top button to not feed the employees of Facebook anything. Copy this to your status to warn your friends!
Posted on December 28, 2009
By Tom Latourette
–
This year there’ll be no Christmas, this Christmas will not come
There’s a virus in the North Pole, it’s called H1/N1
Posted on December 22, 2009
By Scott Buckner
I am a major fan of Esquire magazine.I even have an actual subscription to it. But Esquire and Yahoo Personals have seen fit to publish “Dating Tips: 12 Things You Don’t Know About Women,” and I have to object.
Because, well, despite the best efforts of Brad Paisley, Esquire and Yahoo seem to think we men are still dragging our knuckles on the ground and have no clue when it comes to dating plain ordinary, non-famous women.
Articles like this are always popular because it seems half of us men wouldn’t know how to find our way to a woman’s brain even if it was MapQuested for us, and the other half wouldn’t know what to do once we got there. As it happens, Yahoo! and Esquire solicited the advice of some of the world’s most distractingly attractive female celebrities who would probably just sit there on a date with us wishing we’d stop staring at their tits and eat our salad already.
Let’s take a look.
Celebrity: Christina Applegate
Advice: “Call us back right away. That ‘three day’ business does not apply. We’re getting older, and we don’t have time to screw around. Wait too long and we’ll lose interest. Trust me on this one.”
Comment: This is true. Three days is far too long to call her back in the hope that she’ll put out, even when you both wind up somewhere drunk out of your minds.
*
Celebrity: Courteney Cox
Advice: “We pay closer attention to your hands than you think. It’s bad enough if you don’t have manly hands, but if your nails are longer than ours, forget it.”
Comment: Or maybe it just means he inhales – and can afford to – a whole lot of coke, which tends to attract a whole lot of women who don’t pay a whole lot of attention to a lot of other things. Otherwise, the rest of us shouldn’t get too worried about it. The day women start posting ads on Craisglist putting a premium on manly hands over whatever manly business you have between your legs is the day I believe David Arquette even has manly business between his legs.
Posted on December 18, 2009
By The Beachwood Meetup Affairs Desk
The newest Chicago meetups.
* Jury Duty Panels 9 and 45
* eCommerce Merchants – Chicago Chapter
* Javacrucians
* Chicago Team Canada Hockey Supporters, 2010 Olympics
Posted on December 17, 2009
By Pat Bataillon
Waiting for the brown line to the Loop. It is before 8 a.m. and cold. Wind chills are whipping but I, along with everyone on the platform, is trying to ignore them. We are all of two natures on a morning like this. Some of us stomp our feet because we believe Officer Jim Malone’s advice to a chilled Elliot Ness in The Untouchables. And some of us mumble obscenities into gloves and scarves. It is difficult to say which one, if either, make any considerable difference. The only guaranteed difference-maker is squeezing into that southbound train. The CTA keeps a toasty train in the winter months. It’s nice.
As the train appears a collective sigh of relief is audible on the platform. We will be comfortable soon, or so some of us think. BING-BONG, the doors open. The warm commuters exit to transfer to the Red Line and the cold commuters enter. The exchange is always somewhat chaotic. Typically, muffled threats of violence are overheard as the masses bump into one another. I’ve never seen a physical altercation erupt from one of these exchanges, but I would surely like to.
Posted on December 16, 2009
By Tim Steil
I swear to God the story you are about to hear is true, I would change my name if I had innocence to protect. If I could make this shit up I would be in LA with a 26-episode development deal right now.
My daughter likes chili, and with snowy days soon to come, I figured this would be a good time to make a big batch, freeze it up in little bags, and have it on hand for lunches etc. So I went down to the local Polish deli/produce center, and came back with some fresh ground pork, a few cans of beans and various tomato products, fresh poblano and jalapeno peppers, onions – everything you need for some righteous eats.
As the pork was getting nice and brown in a skillet, I got out my big stock pot and started putting in the beans, tomatoes, garlic and whatever. The garbage was a little full to begin with, so by the time it had six or seven empty cans in there it was time to swap it out for a new bag. I yanked it out, did the old mash it down, tied off the corners and stuck a new bag in thing. Unfortunately, one corner of the bag had ripped right at the top. No biggie, really, just had to be careful when I walked it out to the alley. Then I looked down, and saw a little red spot on the floor.
Posted on December 14, 2009
Dear Pentagon:
Marijuana is seldom the answer to a military issue. It is not cited as an element of strategy or tactics by luminaries such as Clausewitz, Sun Tzu, or Chuck Norris. Still, don’t dismiss marijuana out-of-hand.
Consider this week’s interview on All Things Considered with Gretchen Peters, author of Seeds of Terror: How Heroin is Bankrolling the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Peters explained that the Taliban earn money through crime, and in Afghanistan a prime example is heroin. Many Afghan farmers are forced to grow poppies due to a long drought and the destruction of irrigation systems.
Peters said U.S. commanders have told her there’s a real concern about troops getting poppy-derived drugs in Afghanistan. Soviet troops in Afghanistan, she noted, had a huge heroin problem. In the U.K and Canada, Peters said Muslim gangs are “getting involved in smuggling heroin that is coming from Afghanistan. And they’ve actually given interviews to the British press and they’re referring to it as a chemical jihad, making addicts of infidels in the West.”
Posted on December 11, 2009
By Jerome Haller
At six on a recent Monday morning, a woman bought two bags of goods and walked toward my post. We made eye contact. She asked me, “Do you like my hair?”
Such a question can lead to problems if the hair looks wretched. A yes may spur additional uncomfortable queries. A no means someone’s feelings get hurt.
And I really hated her ‘do. It was a frizzy, uncombed mess that resembled a fallen bowling pin.
Posted on December 10, 2009
By J.J. Tindall
Bad
“I do not want to be friends
or anything else.
I want a complete break
for good.
This whole thing has been bad
from the start.”
Posted on December 8, 2009
