I switched it up. Happy 2007.

January: I finished with my 6,798th resume.
February: KDub told Crystal to eat some meat.
March: Couches in Columbus/Chicago were great.
April: I slept on an air mattress in Chicago and made curtains. And got a job. Two jobs.
May: An apartment! Another job! Mrs. Zeitgeist Esq. was spotted ALL AROUND TOWN!
June: Tom Wolfe's The Vanfire of the Bonnities was great . . . in Ecuador.
July: Dave and Scolson visited. The Copa Mundial continued.
August; I started biking to work and subleased Jake's room to a middle-aged woman.
September: Maoxie entered the collective consciousness.
October: I learned how to cross-dress.
November: The Five Boroughs were blitzed through.
December: There were bad sweaters, ponchos, stomach bugs, etc. Wao! The end.

I trust your respective alcohol-or-otherwise-fueled Holiday excesses were everything for which you'd hoped and more. For me the weekend prior (celebrating with my dad's siblings and their families) included its share of booze, but this time around I spent an alarming number of sober hours trying (and succeeding, I think) to turn my 15-month-old cousin into a genius while his parents vomited/slept/felt nauseous in the guest bedroom.

It's Burt Bacharach time which means I might have to leave the house.

Cheers, Merry Christmas!

The CTA's Holiday Train found me racing across the platform at Belmont at just the right moment Wednesday night.

"The Chicago Transit Authority is getting into the holiday spirit with the 2006 version of its popular Holiday Train. Santa and his elves will ride the train passing out candy canes and season's greetings.

The spectacular train is an amazing sight - during the daytime and at night. The outside of the six-car train is adorned with oversized garland and seasonal images. Thousands of twinkling lights outline the shape of the train and windows, with even more lights running across the tops of the cars.

Interiors of the cars are decked out with thousands of multi-colored lights, red bows, garland, and red and green overhead lighting. The hand poles are wrapped to look like candy canes.

As the train pulls into each station, Santa waves to the boarding passengers from his sleigh on an open-air flatcar that carries his reindeer and decorated holiday trees." --transitchicago.com

The History of the 5 Boroughs below is in fact not my creation. I helped contribute only minorly to its nascence and, well, I feel that it shouldn't be at the top of my blog. That picture of H-Hud, though -- was wholly my doing, and the doing was wholly enjoyable. I'd make another one of those using the scanner at work and my cube-neighbor's sharpie in a red hot second. In fact, first thing tomorrow I just may.

Friday Dave came into town and we met up with cousin(s in law) to drive down and then up (around Lake Michigan) to Grand Rapids. Good times were had, despite the distinct lack of a Taco Bell/Pizza Hut Hybrid en route. Beyond the aesthetic of G.R.'s 28th street, the weekend was a good one of visiting with long-lost family, having conversations about aging rock stars, wine tasting, Blue Moon drinking, gift giving and Taboo playing.

Yesterday at dinner we decided that the best meal to serve with moonshine made from boiled-down ham hocks and collard greens (and also known as "potlicker," accd. to Dave) is definitely Velveeta suspended in clear gelatin. I will be sure to thoroughly document the feat of serving and consuming both when it transpires. Soon, I say -- soon.

Oyasumi.

The Bronx: Founded as Henry Hudson’s vacation home in 1524. Soon after, a portal to hell, open only between the months of April and October, was discovered in the southern half of the borough. This later became the site of Yankee Stadium. The Bronx was originally named the Land of the Bronques, ‘bronque’ meaning a Colonial-era form of street violence where the perpetrator would ride his horse by an intended victim, shooting multiples arrows aimed to merely scare, rather than hit, him. The borough was so named in 1525, when, after being bronqued for the third time since establishing his residence there, H-Hud memorably exclaimed “I’m tired-a all defe muthaf***in' bronquef.” Mid-17th-century hip hop artists changed the spelling to its current form.

Queens: Queens, discovered by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1614, was named after the Queens of England Elizabeth I and James II, who was, by all accounts, a bit of a poofter, or foppish dandy, if you will. Queens was originally called ‘the Land of the Two Airports’ by Native Americans, and it boasts both the world’s first airport and appearance of the taco. The airports were originally built by the UFOs, now preserved at the World’s Fair Site, which landed and settled in Queens sometime in the first millennium BC. Today Queens has the highest Latino population in the Western Hemisphere as well as the highest bodega per capita ratio on earth.

Staten Island: The most recent of the boroughs, Staten Island rose from the sea as the result of a volcanic eruption in 1687. Originally claimed by New Jersey, Staten Island seceded during Krazy Karl’s Konstitutional Krisis of 1787 and for a mere fortnight enjoyed the status as an independent nation. After 14 days of uninterrupted cannibalism, which arises periodically to this day on Staten Island, forces from Manhattan quickly conquered and annexed the island to New York. General Kommandant Karl Kliff McKarlson, commander of Staten Island’s army, was quoted as saying, after surrendering to Manhattan, “We really shouldn’t have built that ferry dock.” Under New York occupation, the inhabitants were made to wear pants and cut back on maulings, reforms which have so far only be mildly successful.

Brooklyn: Discovered in 1564 by the Dutch, who, after crossing the East River, set out into the wilderness and stumbled upon a previously unknown settlement of greasy men in track suits driving Chevy Camaros, the majority of whom were named Tony. The Dutch named the area Brooklyn, which is Middle Dutch for ‘land of the greasy ones’. The years of 1882 through 1897 witnessed the Great Pizza Wars between Brooklyn and Chicago. Brooklyn’s weaponry, being much lighter and more mobile than Chicago’s deep dish ordnance, proved superior, though the length of hostilities left Brooklyn severely weakened, and in 1898 was easily annexed without a fight by Manhattan.

Manhattan: Manhattan was first purchased from its Native American inhabitants for a sum of $24 in March 1512 by unscrupulous real estate agents. The agents then repainted the island and attempted to rent it back to the same Native Americans at a 10,000% mark up, plus first, last, security and 1.5 months broker’s fee. The Native Americans’ application was denied for bad credit.

This week's Zeitgeist: The Bad Sweater Party

Somewhat in honor of a dear friend with the vaguely unfortunate nickname Sweater, and more in honor of the birthday of a dear roommate with the newly bequeathed and much more fortunate nickname Torso, we threw a little bit of a Bad Sweater Party last night. The domestic leg of the evening featured sartorial feats along the lines of a) feline aparrel, b) puffy sleeves and c) railcar turtlenecks. The public leg of the evening -- the one requiring a seven-man taxi ride -- culminated with ridiculous dance floor antics and bleeding (in the best way possible) eardrums after soaking up some poundfulls of bass at Sonotheque. The whole experience was VERY enjoyable.

Also enjoyable: my company Christams party on Thursday evening. The event was held on the 56th floor of The Chase Building and featured glittering views of a cold, cold Chicago. I do believe that the evening was essentially everything, and perhaps more, that a company Christmas party should be. The gin flowed like honey and the pent-up corporate energy was released in flurries, nay blizzards, of conversation and relationship-forging. Good times indeed.

A distant yet potent Zeitgeist runner up: Dictional Stimulation. In addition to consulting the dictionary a bit more than usual as of late, I have also discovered and revisited (to distraction, really) the poetry of Carl Sandburg. My neck hairs quiver a little bit whenever I read Chicago. Ooh!

And. New self-imposed mandate: these days any time I am north of Foster, I will be sporting my new Southewest-inspired poncho. It's fabulous.

On Saturday, while blitzing home at 2 mph (thanks to RoBlag for an amazingly convoluted highway construction scheme) from Mitsuwa, Jake, Kim and I passed over a mysteriously-named street: Searl Street. Searl?! What could a word like that possibly reference, we wondered? Some Monday lunchtime googling led, perhaps falsely but certainly not uninterestingly, to a page detailing the Searl Effect as documented by disciples of Dr. John Searl. If nothing else, please explore at least these photos, and read the following excerpt:

"Prof. John Searl is the ONLY man in history to have built and flown an antigravity device called a LEVITY DISC.

The power source for this amazing disc can . . . be used to generate electricity with no apparent input from outside. Because of the obvious economical repercussions to the big money oil industries, this marvelous invention was squelched.

Prof. Searl has offered this wonderful boon to all mankind since 1946. The story of his hardships and persecution is a long one. Long after most men would have given in to the pressures of big business and corrupt government officials he has come back one last time to offer this inspired work to the world.

The Searl Effect Generator (SEG) is a magnetic prime mover that operates with no friction. The SEG generates electricity that is capable of supplying power to the home or industry. When used in an Inverse-G-Vehicle, the SEG generates a gravitational field around the craft which can be directed for flight.

If we the people of the world choose to use this marvelous technology, we could eliminate pollution from the internal combustion engine and the various methods of home and industrial heating. Anything that can be run electrically can be driven by an S.E.G. with virtually no pollution and no use of fuel as we know it." -The Searl Effect

Sure. That's great. So, then, where was Prof. Searl's wonderful boon this morning when I woke up to an electricity-less apartment? Lacking such a wonderful boon I was unable to dry my hair which led to me not showering which meant . . . Ew. I think I would rather have stayed home than felt scalpy¹ all day. Damn you and your empty promises, Searl.

The non-showering was made worse by the fact that yesterday evening was spent at the Roller Derby, a la fledgling Chicago area league the Chi Town Sirens. Both the party bus and the bout provided for some great times, but they also promoted the nesting in my hair of plentiful smoky/boozy aromas. Oh well. None of my photos really capture the derbygeist but if you stare long enough at the photo below then perhaps you can pretend to imagine. Please try.





























¹ I guess scalpy isn't a word. Well, it should be.