Chicago: home of the President of the United fucking States

yeah but pass it to me first lol

hey dudes, b3n f0ng is back in town this coming weekend so the pra1r1e sp1es (sans gbx) and the sp3ctacles are playing a show at ronny's on saturday. i have received special permission to skip out on the first night my inlaws will be in town to go to the show.

I spent Saturday night with T0m@s and company, drinking shot after shot of Malolrt. BLEECHCCCH.

haha malort is awesome

I made crab dip last night and I'm going to eat it for LUNCH!!!!

wash it down with a crab juice

I'm washing it down with Lake Michigan.

It's got what it takes, so tell me why can't this be lunch?

Haha.

Oh, hey, Happy Jonestown anniversary everyone.

Kenan why does your link change my stylesheet?

This documentary on Jonestown is pretty riveting.

thanks for that... there are docs on jonestown by cnn, msnbc, and possibly qvc out now, but I haven't found one that I could watch more than five minutes of. The tone was always "NEXT ON 48 HOURS" or some such. God I hate cable news.

HI CHACAGINS

HI DERE ABBIE GIRL

LET ME BE THE ONE TO ILLIN-WAH

Guys is your history full of ze safety French fur trappers?

Oh don't get me started. Actually, to be a tad grandiose, the history of Chicago is the history of capitalism.

Migrant workers, assembly lines, labor unions, violent protests, then skyscrapers, unchecked growth, pornographic political corruption, organized crime, more violent protests... I'm skimming a bit. But there's a whole lot there.

Oh! And race. Race is huge here.

Okay I do not care about anything but the fur trappers, I am thinking bcz Illinois is French-ish looking but it is not named after Trees like every French fur trapper outpost in Idaho, 'Dubois,' Les Boise' aka Boise as it is now known.

Dubois being pronounced Do-Boys, NB, leading to many hiLARIOUS pedophilia jokes.

RACE for the cure.

Hey guys does anyone else find breast cancer awareness month kind of annoying? Esp. if you might have breasts?

I for one never ever for ever a second stop being aware of breasts. If that counts.

http://www.neatorama.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/f1e6da37548b07da_awesomelawyer2.jpg

John - Jenny and I were just talking about that documentary. We might watch it on Thanksgiving.

An ex of mine is a thyroid cancer survivor and she used to get really pissed about the amount of breast cancer awareness stuff out there. According to her it was all due to men's interest in titties, which I can see.

I don't know about Illinois but Wisconsin and Michigan are chock full of fur trader-related stories, place names, etc.

According to her it was all due to men's interest in titties, which I can see.
this cracked me up, because i have been teaching restrictive/nonrestrictive clauses to my students and this sentence's meaning would change substantially if you used "that" instead of "which"

also i have no idea why we are suddenly talking about fur trappers and breast cancer, but i'm sure it makes sense to someone

also i have no idea why we are suddenly talking about fur trappers and breast cancer, but i'm sure it makes sense to someone

abbott brought it up!

When I was in 4th grade, my dad signed me up for trapping classes.

Man all the dogfighting stories in the Trib lately are making me sad.

My xmas present from work:

Chicago: City on the Make - N. Algren
One More Time: The Best of Mike Royko
The Encyclopedia of Chicago - Grossman, Keating, & Reiff
Slouching Towards Kalamazoo - P. De Vries

Thanks work, sorry we're splitting up!

Wow. Heavy on the local.

I went to college with a Pete DeVries. I've occasionally wondered if he was related to the writer.

I went local because I've wanted to read the Algren book for a while and never got around to picking up a copy, Royko because I've never ready anything by him at all so it seemed like a good place to start, the encyclopedia because I like big reference books like that, and the De Vries because... well, I needed something to get the total up to the $100 limit and it sounded interesting.

There are so many books to choose from, but a lot of them are incredibly esoteric. I considered getting a book about native Alaskan skin sewing techniques as a present for 3rica, but it was outside the realm of ISBNs that we can apply our gift allotment to.

Oh. You chose those books. I thought people were just giving them to you.

What is everyone else reading? I would like some recommendations. I want to read Brave New World.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, and The Tortilla Curtain.

OK! I will finally read Oscar Wao!

Oh. I forgot I have that book that L*bby gave me - Three Cups of Tea.

Breast cancer awareness month bothers me for the same reason it bothers Dan's friend.

Also I don't like consumerism as activism. And why does everything have to be pink?

i was just in hyde park the other day near obamas house and got creeped by mad cop cars

I bought Oscar Wao the other day and will read it as soon as I'm caught up on the last couple of New Yorkers.

oscar wao is good

i am reading anathem, the new neal stephenson. it is good but very long and i am kind of struggling to get through the last 200 pages or so after rushing through most of it. oddly this is the same thing that happened the last time i read one of his books. he needs to write something shorter

i have the white tiger lined up to read next, then 2666 to read during xmas break from school

Every single time Katie says "Oscar Wao" to me I think she's saying Oscar Wilde. Well, at least the first time she says it each day.

What is 2666? My dad mentioned it to me last night on the phone.

I guess I could look it up.

it's the "new" (ie newly translated) epic by roberto bolano, the author of the savage detectives and others

the translation of the savage detectives was a big deal when it came out a year or so ago - it's very good

Every single time Katie says "Oscar Wao" to me I think she's saying Oscar Wilde

it means oscar wilde (wild), though