surplus labor

Headline of the day: 2 charged in fight at Friends Cafe

2009-05-09T12:29:00.000-05:00

2 charged in fight at Friends Cafe
Tribune staff report
May 8, 2009

Two men were each charged with battery after allegedly fighting each other with knives and nunchaku in the parking lot of the Friends Cafe hookah bar in the 11000 block of Harlem Avenue.

More like White Sux!

2009-04-09T09:52:00.001-05:00

Explain this.

The Cubs' average ticket price of $47.75 ranks third in the majors, behind the Yankees (whose average ticket jumps to $72.97 from $41.40 with the new stadium) and the Red Sox ($48.80). The White Sox are fifth at $32.28.

Okay, the figure for the Yankees is obviously ridiculous, and no doubt it will fall substantially once they realize all those ultra-rich investment bankers whose luxury boxes were distorting the average price aren't, for some reason, showing up to the games as often as expected. But what I want to focus on is the White Sox. At Yankee Stadium, Fenway, and Wrigley, you get to see top-notch teams playing in incredible ballparks. Here on the South Side you get to see a mediocre team in arguably the worst stadium in baseball, which unlike the others is surrounded by a wasteland of parking lots.

Now I happen to agree with Obama on the following (and this exchange is still the best thing I've seen him say to date):

Obama, a Southsider, was asked by ESPN's Stuart Scott what would happen if both the Cubs and the White Sox made it to the World Series.

"I would be going," Obama said.

"Who would you root for?" Scott asked.

"Oh, that's easy," Obama replied. "White Sox.

"I'm not one of these fair weather fans," the junior senator from Illinois and presumptive presidential nominee of the Democratic Party explained. "You go to Wrigley Field, you have a beer, beautiful people up there. People aren't watching the game. It's not serious. White Sox, that's baseball. Southside."

And the longer I live on the South Side, the more my hatred of the White Sox fades. Plus, unlike the Yankees, Red Sox, and Cubs, the White Sox sell veggie dogs (altho they're pretty pathetic veggie dogs, unlike in, say, SF). Maybe if they tore down those parking lots and replaced them with bars and restaurants, the experience of going to Comiskey wouldn't be so alienating. But until then it's sad that the nearest ballpark is not only my least favorite to visit, but it's also among the most expensive in baseball.

Chinese vegetarian mystery

2009-03-23T10:49:00.002-05:00

How can we account for this? Philadelphia is half as big as Chicago, and not known for its vegetarianism. Yet Philadelphia has five - five! - all-vegetarian Chinese restaurants, and Chicago has none.

Su Xing 1508 Sansom St
Singapore Kosher Vegetarian 1006 Race St
Kingdom of Vegetarians 129 N 11th St
New Harmony 135 N 9th St
Cherry Street Vegetarian 1010 Cherry St

Chicago does have Yummy Yummy in Lakeview, a Chinese restaurant with both meat and fake meat American Chinese dishes, but here again Philadelphia beats us - it has two similar restaurants.

Charles Plaza 234-6 N 10th St
Golden Empress Garden 610 S 5th St

Granted, all of these restaurants are American Chinese, a pale imitation of the incredible fake meat restaurants in China. But this is an issue of respect. C'mon Chicago, get your act together.

Chicago streets 2: The obscure western reaches

2009-01-12T22:05:00.000-06:00

Every good Chicagoan knows exactly what this means: Halsted, Racine, Ashland, Damen, Western, Kedzie, and they can give you the number for each one. But after that things start to get a little fuzzy. Sure, a lot of people know that 4000 W is Pulaski, and 4800 W is Cicero, but most of us are hard pressed to name the rest.

For starters, 3600 W is Central Park - which is what Garfield Park, which it runs thru, used to be called. 6000 W is Austin, the western boundary of the neighborhood of the same name, which used to be a separate town that dominated Cicero Township until the other towns in the Township won an election to eject Austin (against its citizens' wishes) from Cicero and annex it to Chicago.

5600 W is Central, which is central to nothing at all. 6800 W is Oak Park, which keeps its name when it leaves Chicago and enters Oak Park. (What is it with cities around here naming their own streets after themselves?) 7200 W is Harlem, and I cannot explain why all the white folks living out there would have picked that particular name.

4400 W is Kostner, part of a mile of streets between Pulaski and Cicero that nearly all start with the letter K. This is the eleventh mile from the Indiana border, and K is the eleventh letter of the alphabet. The pattern continues with the twelfth mile named exclusively beginning with the letter L, which explains 5200 W, Laramie. The "M" mile breaks the pattern to retain Austin, but the "N" mile resumes it by starting with Narragansett (6400 W). Following that we have Oriole (7600 W) and Pacific (8000 W). The city stopped expanding just in time, ending the regular street grid at Cumberland (8400 W). Another mile further and they would have had to figure out a whole lot of "Q" names for streets.

Here's the full list in order:
4000 W Pulaski
4400 W Kostner
4800 W Cicero
5200 W Laramie
5600 W Central
6000 W Austin
6400 W Narragansett
6800 W Oak Park
7200 W Harlem
7600 W Oriole
8000 W Pacific
8400 W Cumberland

Chicago streets 1: The mystery of the South Side

2009-01-11T21:25:00.001-06:00

Everyone knows that Chicago streets are numbered and every eight blocks is a mile. (Incidentally, the system was introduced only in 1908, before which there was street numbering chaos.) On the North Side you just have to memorize the numbering - Division is 1200, Lawrence is 4800, etc. But on the South Side, all east-west streets are named after their number, with a couple exceptions like Roosevelt and Garfield. You would expect the main streets to fall on the fours since there's a main street every half-mile. But as anyone who's taken the Red or Green Lines knows, the main streets instead land on places like 47th, 63rd, 87th, 111th.

The problem is not that the South Side has forsaken the principle of a main street every half-mile. It's that South Side streets near the Loop were already numbered when the street numbering reform went thru in 1908, and they didn't match up exactly with the new system. Instead of renumbering those streets, they were left as is, while the newer parts of the South Side were integrated into the 800-to-a-mile system.

Roosevelt (1200 S) is actually one mile south of Madison (1 N/S), Cermak (2200 S) is two miles south, and 31st (3100 S) is three miles south. After that the regular system resumes, which is why the main streets then follow regularly: 39th, 43rd, 47th, 51st, 55th, etc.

Best of 2008

2009-01-10T20:15:00.000-06:00

1) Being in the same city as my girlfriend for a majority of the year.

2) Spending the summer reading Capital and Marxian theory.

3) Coming up with something like a dissertation topic, and taking satisfying grad classes.

4) Exploring Tokyo and Osaka, and Hiroshima, Nagoya, and Kobe. Kyoto was okay too.

5) Excursions to New York, San Francisco, Philly, DC.

6) Seeing incredible movies on the screen, many at historic theaters: There Will Be Blood, «色戒» (Lust, Caution), Броненосец «Потёмкин» (Battleship Potemkin), Touch of Evil, Vertigo, King Kong (1933), The Godfather.

7) Biking around Boston and environs.

8) Return to organizing.

9) Baseball! First trips to the original Yankee Stadium and Nationals Park (DC), return trips to two of the best newer parks, Citizens Bank Park (Philly) and AT&T Park (SF). Plus almost constant access to games on MLB's web service before leaving the country.

10) Living in Chicago again.

Whoa, Portuguese is messed up

2009-01-03T12:25:00.003-06:00

I thought I'd look up how to pronounce Rio de Janeiro since I've been saying it lately when talking about the 2016 Olympics candidate cities. But it turns out that Portuguese pronunciation (at least in Rio itself) is so bizarre that if I said it correctly no one would understand what I was talking about. IPA from Wikipedia: [ˈhiu dʒi ʒʌˈnejɾu] (the footnote has variant Brazilian pronunciations, some of which are closer to the Anglicization). So it's something like "hew ji zhaneru". You can hear it spoken here.

Best ride on the Dan Ryan Red Line ever

2008-12-16T21:19:00.000-06:00

I avoid the Dan Ryan Red Line and the Blue Line past Belmont (O'Hare branch) and Clinton (Forest Park branch) like the plague. Building the El in the median of the highway was the worst idea ever. It's bad enough that you have to wait for the train surrounded on all sides by highway traffic, and then have to ride the thing deprived of urban scenery. What's even worse is that the whole experience assaults you like a tire iron to the face with the horrible realization that car culture is ineradicable. (And if you have some sort of perverse affection for such an alienating experience, consider that this kind of public transit makes transit-oriented development almost impossible.)

But today was different. I took the Red Line from Garfield to Chinatown during rush hour, after the snowstorm had started. So waiting on the platform was not dominated by cars zooming past, but by a peaceful scene of falling snow and cars crawling along. The train ride was dominated by a satisfying schadenfreude, as the El roared past traffic that had been brought to a standstill by the snow. In Chinatown, I heard on the radio that the commute from the Loop to O'Hare was taking three hours. A perfect public transit experience.

How to not mangle Russian presidents' names

2008-11-04T00:40:00.000-06:00

Now that the secrets of Russian pronunciation have been revealed to me, here are some pointers on Russian presidents' names.

Борис Николаевич Ельцин / Boris Nikolaevich Yel'tsin: the Russian name Boris is not BORE-iss, it's bah-REESE, and the 'r' is rolled/trilled like the 'rr' in Spanish. Anglicization of the rest of the name is about right, except Russian 'i's are always pronounced like the 'ee' in 'see'.

Владимир Владимирович Путин / Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin: again, the Anglicized version of Vladimir has the stress wrong - it should be on the second syllable, not the first. The last name is roughly PU-teen.

Дмитрий Анатольевич Медведев / Dmitrii Anatol'evich Medvedev: Americans will want to say MED-vuh-dev, but it's actually more like mid-VYEH-dif.

Next time: Communists!

Sunday Parkways and fake meat Mexican food

2008-10-27T14:11:00.001-05:00

Sunday Parkways was really nice. Chicago is finally emulating cities across the hemisphere and started to set aside some time when a few of the city's roads are closed to traffic - so they can be opened to everyone else who is excluded the rest of the time. The first event, which I didn't make it to, was October 5 and ran thru Logan Square and Humboldt Park. Yesterday the route went thru Little Village and East Garfield Park. I was there around noon - turnout was respectable but not spectacular. Community organizations and the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation organized it, and they got a lot of kids from the neighborhoods involved, directing traffic and helping with the logistics. There were also more white folks moving thru East Garfield Park than there probably have been in the last forty years combined.

The route went thru both Douglas Park and Garfield Park, which are both really nice and, when you add in Grant Park, Burnham Park, Lincoln Park, Humboldt Park, Jackson Park, Washington Park, and Marquette Park, make a pretty strong case for Chicago having the best park system in the country. No word yet on whether Sunday Parkways will be continued and expanded, but it sure would be a nice addition to the city's recreation opportunities if they started it back up in the spring and made it permanent.

It gave me a good excuse to go up to the West Side - because of how far away it is from both the places I've lived in Chicago, I've really only biked around there twice before, and I've never been to Garfield Park before. There are some really cool buildings in the neighborhood, including the incredible Garfield Park Fieldhouse, inspired by the Spanish Revival architecture at the 1915 Panama-California Exposition in San Diego's Balboa Park. Too bad the area is still one of the most violent neighborhoods in the city.

Since I was going to Little Village, I looked online for a Mexican place that wouldn't have lard in the beans and stumbled across El Faro (3936 W 31st St), which has a full menu of fake meat vegetarian dishes. I had a torta veggie cubano, a taco de soya estilo carne asada, and a 20 oz Jarritos for $9 incl tip. This is quite a find, and definitely worth going back to.

Weird

2008-10-18T22:29:00.000-05:00

Until 2005, Obama lived in a condo half a block from my apartment.

Nuclear missiles in my back yard

2008-09-30T19:28:00.002-05:00

A couple minutes from my place, in Jackson Park and Promontory Point, the US Army used to maintain anti-aircraft radar towers and nuclear-tipped Nike missiles. WTF!

Remember the anti-Japan hysteria of the 1980s? The real conspiracy is not against American trade supremacy. It's against vegetarians

2008-06-26T00:40:00.001-05:00

I've been in 東京/Tokyo for about ten days now and everything's pretty good for the most part. Thanks to Ariel's sacrifice of tolerating an hour and half commute to her language classes, we're living in 新宿/Shinjuku, which has the busiest train station in the world, one of Tokyo's largest shopping districts, its main red light district, its metropolitan government, its largest concentration of skyscrapers, and its biggest gay and lesbian community. Fortunately we live on the edges of all the clamor while still within easy reach of trains and restaurants.

The restaurants, alas, are not worth much to a vegetarian. One important question I've been contemplating recently is how the Japanese maintain such iron discipline in their conspiracy against vegetarians. Consider:

We went to a Mexican restaurant that had no beans.
We went to a Thai restaurant that had no tofu.
Japanese restaurants fall into a handful of different categories - 寿司/sushi, 居酒屋/izakaya (bar food), 焼き鳥/yakitori (skewers), ラーメン/ramen, うどん/udon and そば/soba, とんかつ/tonkatsu (deep fried cutlets), 天ぷら/tenpura - each of which might have some vegetarian options but generally not enough to make a meal out of.
Dishes that could easily be made vegetarian, like noodles or tenpura, are invariably sabotaged by adding fish to the broth or sauce or sprinkling かつお節/bonito flakes on top.
Japanese curry, which I used to eat quite happily when I first lived in 中国/China, is always sabotaged by using a beef base.
Japan actually does have a tradition of meatless cooking adapted from the Chinese Buddhist tradition that makes China such a wonderful place to be a vegetarian. But 精進料理/shoujin ryouri, rather than a boon for vegetarians, is used to break our will: it's so expensive (around $100/person for a meal) that the one thing that could save us is beyond our grasp.

Okay, it's not really bad as all that. Italian food is pretty widespread, if by Italian food you mean mediocre spaghetti and pizza (none of which is vegan I'm sure). And far more important, the anti-vegetarian blockade has been fatally broken by the many good Indian places in Tokyo. Finally, if you have all day to do online research (which I do), you can find the handful of all-vegan restaurants produced by the best mini-fad in Tokyo since the electronic pet that dies if you don't press the feeding button.

In between looking for restaurants online, I'm reading Capital, volume 1, enjoying Tokyo's incredible transit system (including the new subway line a couple minutes from our place that opened three days before we got here), and making my way around to the sights.

Because the word "padre" should bring to mind militarism

2008-04-05T00:20:00.000-05:00

I love baseball, but I cringe before baseball's open allegiance to American militarism and nationalism. The national anthem before every game, the practice of singing "God Bless America" during the seventh-inning stretch that swept the majors after 9/11, various invocations of patriotism by announcers - it's all just sickening. But this brings it to a new level: the San Diego Padres featuring "the only Military Opening Night in all of Major League Baseball".

In an attempt to appeal to the many people in the San Diego area working at military installations, the Padres today wore desert camouflage uniforms. The effect was horrifying: it was as if the entire field was controlled by an occupying army. So I was pretty happy when the Dodgers blew the game open in the seventh inning.

Even tho the Padres are named after priests, maybe it's not so inappropriate that they would wear militarist uniforms. The padres were, after all, the first wave of Spanish colonialism throughout the American southwest, just as our boys wearing desert camo are the vanguard of American imperialism today.

If only Google cared about transit

2008-03-18T18:30:00.013-05:00

Google Maps is an incredible resource, but the way they treat transit is asinine. You have to zoom in far too close before subway stops even appear, and when they finally show up they float around in space, completely unconnected to the lines they run on. Since you're already zoomed in so far, it's impossible to see how the lines run unless you click on each stop and memorize which line(s) stop there. Only someone who knew the system well could make sense of something like these:

I don't know if adding subway lines and making transit systems show up on all the maps would actually encourage people to use transit, but I do know it would get rid of a real pain in my ass. I wrote to maps-transit-feedback@google.com (the only email address for feedback I could find at Google) and they said they'd pass it on to the relevant department. So if you want to make Google Maps more accessible for transit use, shoot off a quick email.

Garfield minus Garfield

2008-03-03T18:34:00.007-06:00

This is hilarious - the comic Garfield, with Garfield himself removed, is 1) much funnier and 2) occasionally transcendent.

This is the most powerful one:

Is Rogers Park the real murder capital?

2008-02-25T21:03:00.003-06:00

Here's what someone had to say about my old neighborhood in the Tribune today:

"You tell people about Rogers Park, and they sometimes think there are corpses on the street."

Does this strike anyone else as bizarre? Sure there's some tough guys hanging out on Morse, and up on Jarvis is a little rough, but I've never thought of Rogers Park as being particularly dangerous, plus there's more condos every time I head up there. Do you think he's talking about zombies?

Anyway, there's a new jazz club opening up in the old Morse Theatre this fall that's probably worth checking out.

Bringing jazz to Rogers Park: Will people follow?

Hidden meaning?

2008-01-22T09:29:00.000-06:00

Does anyone else see a disturbing resemblance between The New York Times's Oscars coverage ad

and diagrams of slave ships?

Happy Veterans of Imperialist Wars Day

2007-11-12T20:39:00.000-06:00

There should also be a holiday when we pay tribute to all the foreigners who had to die that America might control the trade routes/resources/international institutions.

When to fly

2007-09-12T13:12:00.000-05:00

September 11 is the best day of the year to fly. I flew from Midway to Logan yesterday at 9am, and the airports were deserted. My plane had maybe 25 people on it, total capacity around 150. No lines at check-in or security, boarding and deplaning were quick, everyone was happy.

It's fucking Napoleon!

2007-09-09T13:40:00.000-05:00

This is one of the greatest visual images ever produced by humans.

Revive the beard tax!

2007-09-05T17:07:00.000-05:00

In 1705 Tsar Pyotr I of Russia ("Peter the Great"), as part of his Westernizing reforms, decreed that all men except church clergy must shave their beards. However, if you wanted to keep your beard you just had to pay a tax, which was verified by the receipt of this coin:
Seems to me that a coin with a bizarre disembodied beard would alone be worth the cost of the tax. This policy would also be effective in cracking down on hipsters. I think the time for the beard tax has once again arrived.

Quote of the day

2007-06-09T09:46:00.001-05:00

Reading thru old copies of the Reader I never got to, I found this great quote from architecture critic and preservationist Lynn Becker, responding to people who leave comments on his blog like "The idea that a group of people can impose their will on the property rights of others' economic self-interest is a slap in the face to the modern business spirit."

When the market economy remains our one true religion, there's never a shortage of those who would destroy beauty with malice and replace it with shit for spite. (2006.11.24)

Recycling drop-off spots

2007-06-08T14:43:00.000-05:00

Chicago is inching toward a decent recycling program, and as part of that very slow process the city has opened a number of dropboxes that you can leave all your recyclables at. See the list here. This is good news since most of us live in apartments that are legally required to have recycling pickup, but which don't because the city doesn't enforce the law. I for one will be dropping off my last 9 months of bottles, cans, junk mail, and newspapers this weekend.

Best Chicago websites

2007-06-04T21:16:00.000-05:00

What do you think are the key websites for Chicagoans? Here's my nominations:

Chicago Reader. This is a no-brainer - decent articles (could be a lot better tho) and all the music, movie, and restaurant listings. Clout Street, the Reader's political blog, is also one of the best sources on city politics.

Chicago Menupages. Most of the restaurants in the city, all with online menus.

Beachwood Reporter. Digging thru all the fluff and crime reporting of mediocre papers like the Tribune to find out what's going on in your city - often to find that there isn't any decent local news in the first place - is a tiresome and disillusioning experience. The Beachwood Reporter pulls out the key articles and adds biting humor in a progressive critique of Chicago politics and media. Also featuring the Lou Piniella Alert Level.
Encyclopedia of Chicago History. Short articles on all the neighborhoods, personalities, and events of Chicago's past. Check out this historical map of the El, complete with all the lines - both operating and decommissioned - and when they opened.

Biking again

2007-05-30T21:57:00.000-05:00

In the last week I made two expeditions to the outskirts of the city. Tho they are administratively part of Chicago, they have more in common with Wilmette or Skokie than with the city proper, so I apologize for how boring my descriptions will be.

Southwest on Vincennes thru Hamilton Park, Gresham, Brainerd, and Beverly, west on 111th thru Morgan Park and Mount Greenwood. Last Friday I did the 25-mile round trip to Veggie Bite, the vegetarian so-called fast food place in Mount Greenwood in the city's far far southwest. I didn't get a very good feel for the neighborhoods biking on Vincennes, which is a diagonal multilane road. No bike lanes (it used to have them part of the way, but they've been removed), but pretty good for biking with the exception of a few dicey intersections. When I got to 111th and Hoyne in Morgan Park, I encountered something I've never seen before in Chicago: a legitimate hill. Beverly, Morgan Park, and Mount Greenwood are all very suburban and middle class. Mount Greenwood is lily white and feels a lot like northwest Chicago - not exactly a friendly place for an all-vegetarian restaurant. I liked Veggie Bite, but I'm not sure they should market themselves as a fast food place. I got the "cheese steak", which was good but bore no resemblance to the real thing and took awhile to make.

On the way home I took the marked "Vincennes alternative" route, which involved less traffic and gave me a much better look at residential parts of Beverly and Brainerd. Beverly has a lot of suprisingly large homes with big yards, something I've never seen in the city. Northern Beverly and Brainerd had more conventional bungalows, but the neighborhood was completely black. Just like middle class white folks, these homeowners seemed to be spending most of their time on lawn care.

Northwest to Chinatown, southwest on Archer thru McKinley Park, Brighton Park, and Garfield Ridge, south to Clearing, east and south to Ford City Mall, back to Hyde Park thru Englewood. Chris and I tried a new place in Chinatown, House of Fortune (2407 S Wentworth) - pretty good, but the menu wasn't too interesting and looked pretty bland past the Sichuan stuff we got. Archer is another multilane road that mostly cuts you off from the neighborhoods but is pretty good to bike on. McKinley Park is mostly Latino with some Poles, a mix which continues down Archer but whose balance switches by the time you're west of Midway. The surroundings are like going west on Touhy around Chris's parents' place - lots of bungalows and a feeling of being transported back to the '50s.

I went south on Narragansett (6400W) just to include another of Chicago's main roads on my checklist, then east on 65th thru Clearing, so called because the farms that once stood there were cleared for factories. Taking 65th was probably a mistake - the drivers on this 4-lane road seem to have never encountered a biker before and roared past me within a foot. The traffic was light tho - the real hell started when I turned south on Cicero. Cicero is more like the Dan Ryan here than a city road - 8-10 lanes filled with cars moving very fast. In humiliation, I took to the sidewalk. Starting around 71st the mall district starts. It's hard to convey thru mere words how alien a cyclist is in this environment. Parking lots, huge retailers, broken sidewalks, and people talking on their cellphones while driving right at you: along with some of my trips to the malls of the north suburbs, this ranked as one of my least pleasant bike adventures.

Ford City Mall, the site of a long-planned extension of the Orange Line, looks like crap on the outside. Inside it's actually quite nice, except it's a mall so you want to get out as soon as possible. I think is was the only white person in the entire place - lots of Latinos and blacks and a few Asians.

I took the Marquette bike lane thru Marquette Park, West Englewood, and Englewood back to Hyde Park, which would be a very nice ride if not for the psychological strain of being very white riding thru the most violent neighborhoods in the city. Good thing Daley fixed that whole race problem.

Baseball notes

2007-04-22T14:11:00.001-05:00

I've watched a lot of baseball these last few weeks, and I've found that about three-quarters of the commercials are either for cars or lawn care products. So would we even have televised baseball if the suburbs didn't exist?

* * *
The best change that could be made in baseball - other than fully socializing revenues among the teams as the first step toward converting the majors to parecon relations of production - would be to change the name of the Cleveland Indians. It's bad enough they're called the Indians, but they insist on retaining their racist caricature logo too. I think they should rename themselves the Spiders. The Cleveland Spiders played from 1887 to 1899 in the old American Association. Cy Young, one of the greatest pitchers to ever play the game, started his career with them and led them to the championship in 1895. Then the owners of the team bought the St Louis Browns and moved all the Spiders' good players there. The 1899 Spiders team was the worst in baseball history, finishing 20-134 and 84 games out of first place (!!!!). The attendance at games was so low (averaging 179 per game) that other teams refused to come to Cleveland, so the Spiders had to play their last 36 games on the road. They lost 35 of those. That was the last season the Spiders played. The team that would eventually be called the Indians started playing in 1901.

Avenge the betrayal of the Spiders! End the racist Indians! Revive the Cleveland Spiders!

Baseball '07

2007-04-14T15:46:00.001-05:00

Starting with the playoffs last year, I've been getting back into baseball. I was a huge baseball fan from age 10 till my freshman year of college, but after that I stopped following it. I'm pretty committed to getting back into the game, and baseball games have now replaced Law & Order as my means of avoiding work. Today I've already watched parts of three different games, and spent no time on the research paper that I told my professor would be done last week.

My team has always been the Yankees, which I know is out of keeping with my politics. But I have two solid defenses: I inherited it, since the Yankees were my dad's team, and it's not right to forsake your team just because you become politically conscious. And second, for the years and years I rooted for the Yankees, they couldn't win a thing - 1996, the last year I followed baseball, was also the first year the Yankees went back to the Series. So I'm no fair weather fan.

In the old days, aside from the Yankees there were a number of other teams I pulled for based mainly on whether I liked their team colors and logos - the Mariners, Astros, Angels, and Indians (I now find that last one difficult to explain; the Angels have unfortunately switched back to their atrocious old logo). I absolutely despised the White Sox for complex reasons. Growing up in Iowa, the Sox were the only American League team I could regularly watch on tv (the Yankees are also in the American League and at the time there was no interleague play), and their play-by-play man Ken Harrelson was intolerably partisan. Their big superstar, Frank Thomas, had the ugliest swing in the majors. That doesn't seem like much, but for something so arbitrary as sports loyalties it was enough.

Now I've revised who to secondarily support: those teams that play in good cities (i.e. those low on sprawl), especially those in small media markets who can't afford to throw their money around like the Yankees can. So the Mariners, A's, Tigers, Twins, Indians, Blue Jays, Mets, Phillies, Cubs, Brewers, Cardinals, Nationals, and Giants are in, while I have to resolutely oppose the Braves, Astros, Diamondbacks, Marlins, Devil Rays, Dodgers, Rangers, and Angels. (As a Yankees fan, of course I can't publicly provide any support for the Red Sox, but I will say that Boston is pretty good city.) Altho Chicago is probably my favorite city in the country, I still can't bring myself to root for the White Sox.

Capitalism giveth, and capitalism taketh away

2007-03-31T09:43:00.000-05:00

Filter, one of the few reasons to still go to Wicker Park, is being evicted from the Flat Iron Building. The hot dog place Swank Frank is also being booted. Why? So a new Bank of America branch can move in.

The Bolsheviks Hitler would love

2007-03-03T14:36:00.001-06:00

I was intrigued when a news article about a protest in Russia mentioned a National Bolshevik Party that has allied with the liberal opposition to Putin. I expected the NBP to be a splinter from the Communist Party, but it turns out that National Bolsheviks are Bolshevik the same way National Socialists are socialist - as their flag indicates.

Even better, NBP leader Eduard Limonov was a Soviet exile who "arrived in New York City in 1974 as an émigré and began writing novels. He fell in with the New York punk and avante-garde scene, acquiring an admiration for Lou Reed, as well as such American writers as Charles Bukowski." Later he moved to Paris and joined literary society there. Later still he "join[ed] a sniper patrol in Bosnia-Herzegovina during the Bosnian war" - in support of Serbia. He supported extreme nationalist Vladimir Zhironvsky before splitting with him. The NBP explained that "a Jew masquerading as a Russian nationalist is a sickness, a pathology." Finally, "Limonov has listed among his idols Joseph Stalin, Mikhail Bakunin, Julius Evola and Yukio Mishima."

The SS look is back in style among National Bolsheviks.

Shrines of the machine

2007-03-01T11:08:00.001-06:00

I don't read John Kass very often, but this column is great. On election day he went around to Daley strongholds on the Irish Catholic southwest side and asked Democratic machine workers where the shrines to their saints are. The "saints" are corrupt machine members who have resigned in disgrace, but who Daley continues to treat as if they were beatified. We get this classic exchange:

we walked up to the Daley machine captains, including one man who ate two slices of sausage pizza but didn't offer me any, and I asked them about the political shrines.

"Shrines?" said one. "You kidding? We don't got no shrines in this neighborhood."

How dare you pretend not to know! My back hurts, and I was hoping to buy a relic at the Shrine of Robert the Mute, and drink from his fountain, and so be healed.

"What?" asked the captain.

Robert the Mute. Robert Sorich [a top Daley aid and patronage boss, convicted in federal court last year].

"That's ignorant," said another Daley captain and friend of Sorich. "That's in poor taste. It's ignorant."

Never play with,scare and catch birds,crickets fish and cicada(unless business items)

2007-02-16T10:50:00.001-06:00

This is the best sign I saw in China, at a Shanghai park.

A Western holiday in Japan just wouldn't be complete without intensifying the gender inequality

2007-02-14T18:20:00.000-06:00

from wikipedia:
Thanks to a concentrated marketing effort, Valentine's Day has emerged in Japan and Korea as a day on which women, and less commonly men, give candy, chocolate or flowers to people they like. This has become an obligation for many women. Those who work in offices end up giving chocolates to all their male co-workers, sometimes at significant personal expense. This chocolate is known as giri-choko (義理チョコ), in Japan, from the words giri ("obligation") and choko, a common short version of chokorēto (チョコレート), meaning "chocolate". This contrasts with honmei-choko, which is given to a person someone loves or has a strong relationship with. Friends, especially girls, exchange chocolate that is referred to as tomo-choko (友チョコ); tomo means "friend" in Japanese.

By a further marketing effort, a reciprocal day called White Day has emerged. On March 14, men are expected to return the favour to those who gave them chocolates on Valentine's Day. Many men, however, give only to their girlfriends. Originally, the return gift was supposed to be white chocolate or marshmallows; hence "White Day". However, men have interpreted the name differently and lingerie has become a common gift.

左宗棠鸡的奇怪来源

2007-02-04T10:32:00.000-06:00

General Tso's chicken (also General Gau's, Tao's, Tsao's, Zhou's, Gao's, Chou's, Tzo's, To's, So's, Joe's, or Toso's) is named after 左宗棠/Zuo Zongtang, a famous Chinese general who crushed uprisings in 新疆/Xinjiang in the 1870s. (The difference in spelling is because "Tso" comes from the unacceptable Wade-Giles transliteration system.) General Tso's chicken is the most famous 湖南/Hunan dish outside China - except that it doesn't exist in Hunan. Here is the bizarre story of how General Tso's chicken was invented in 1950s 台北/Taibei and 1970s New York, how Henry Kissinger disseminated it to the world, and how latter-day Hunanese chefs are now adopting it as a "traditional" dish.

Wesley Crusher is on our side

2007-02-04T01:06:00.000-06:00

The actor who played the intolerable Wesley Crusher character from Star Trek TNG - Wil Wheaton in real life - these days blogs about geek stuff. Lately he's been pretty upset about two things: global warming deniers and - far more heatedly - the reaction of politicians and the media in Boston's Aqua Teen Hunger Force guerrilla marketing debacle.

Adorable Japanese warmongers

2007-01-13T14:47:00.000-06:00

This is taken from a roundtable discussion sponsored by 朝日グラフ/Asahi gurafu in 1932, shortly after 日本/Japan had invaded 东北/Northeast China/Manchuria and established a puppet regime there. The participants were fifth- and sixth-graders from 東京/Tōkyō. You should remember to visualize the kids in their cute Prussian school uniforms.

Interviewer: What is the Manchurian Incident all about?

Katō: The Chinese insulted us and our soldiers are fighting them in Manchuria to avenge it.

Interviewer: The League of Nations has been making quite a fuss recently. What do you think of the League?

Katō: It's a place where the cowards of the world get together to talk.

Interviewer: If you were Foreign Minister, what would you do?

Nakajima: The League of Nations is biased, so I wouldn't have anything to do with it.

Hotta: If I became Foreign Minister, anybody that kept repeating that kind of nonsense would get a real punch in the nose. (laughter)

Interviewer: Do you think there will be a war between Japan and America?

Fukuzawa: Yes, I think so. Americans are so arrogant. I'd like to show them a thing or two.

Katō: They act so big all the time, they need a good beating. I'd annihilate them.

Fukutomi: Oh, I'd like to try that too.

Interviewer: If Japan becomes more and more isolated, what would you do?

Several students: We'll keep trying, we'll keep going, we'll stick at it till we die. (A forceful chorus of voices)

Fukutomi: The end is when you're dead, isn't it? (She meant "I'll keep on to the end," and said it in a steady voice.)

Interviewer: What's most annoying these days?

Fukuzawa: [Foreign Minister] Shidehara's weak-kneed foreign policy.

Fukunaga: The cowardice of the cabinet.

Interviewer: How about the opposite? What has been most delightful?

Nakajima: Our great victory at Machansan.

Katō: It's great to see Japan winning one battle after another.

Fukunaga: I really liked it when Ambassador Yoshizawa told Chairman Briand that the League was stupid and that it should do just what Japan wants.

(quoted in Saburō Ienaga, The Pacific War, 1931-1945, 1968)

Requiem for Saddam Hussein

2007-01-11T10:50:00.000-06:00

(courtesy of Metallica)

Guilty as charged
But damn it, it ain't right
There is someone else controlling me

Death in the air
Strapped in the electric chair
This can't be happening to me

Who made you God to say
"I'll take your life from you!!"

Flash before my eyes
Now it's time to die
Burning in my brain
I can feel the flame

Wait for the sign
To flick the switch of death
It's the beginning of the end

Sweat, chilling cold
As I watch death unfold
Consciousness is my only friend

My fingers grip with fear
What am I doing here?

Flash before my eyes
Now it's time to die
Burning in my brain
I can feel the flame

Someone help me
Oh please God help me
They are trying to take it all away
I don't want to die

Someone help me
Oh please God help me
They are trying to take it all away
I don't want to die

Time moving slow
The minutes seem like hours
The final curtain call I see

How true is this?
Just get, it over with
If this is true, just let it be

Flash before my eyes
Now it's time to die
Burning in my brain
I can't feel the flame

Chicago tackleball fun facts

2006-12-03T22:40:00.000-06:00

1) The mighty Chicago Bears started their career as a tackleball team in the humble town of Decatur, where they were know as the Decatur Staleys after the A. E. Staley company, which organized the team. (Many of the early teams were company teams playing in minor cities - the Green Bay Packers is the only surviving example.)

2) The Staleys moved to Chicago in 1921 and started playing at Wrigley Field. The next year the team name was changed to Bears because of the link with the Cubs. The Bears didn't start playing at Soldier Field till 1971. In 2002 a large alien spacecraft landed on Soldier Field and has occupied it ever since. But the Bears have made do, and actually found the new arrangement more profitable.

3) What's the oldest professional team in tackleball? Why, the Arizona Cardinals of course. But when the Cardinals were founded in 1898 the suburban sprawl of Phoenix, where the Cardinals now reside, was just an environmentally irrational dream in the hearts of the town's 5000 residents. The Cardinals were originally called the Racine Normals after Normal Park which stood at our very own Racine Avenue, between 61st and 63rd. The Chicago Cardinals played at Comiskey Park for most of the years before 1960, when they moved to St Louis.

4) In 1901 the owner of the Normals bought used uniforms from the University of Chicago tackleball team, the Maroons. With their spiffy new (well, newly acquired) red uniforms, the team was soon known as the Cardinals.

Latin fun facts

2006-12-03T12:35:00.000-06:00

Following up discussion last night, and more importantly as a further means of procrastination, I offer the following:

1) In classical Latin (i.e. that written during the Roman empire), there were no lower-case letters.

2) In classical Latin there was no distinction between the consonant I ("y" as in "yes") and vowel I ("ee" as in "pee") or between the consonant V (the English "w") and the vowel V ("oo" as in "moo"). There was no consonant with the English "v" sound in classical Latin. The letters J (pronounced as the English consonant "y"), U, and W were added only in the Middle Ages, when lower case letters were also added.

3) The pronunciation of vowels, unlike the Anglicized pronunciation of Latin words, was consistent - O was always "o" as in "home", never "o" as in "hot".

4) The point of this is that BONO VOX should be pronounced "bo no wokes".

5) What about GAIVS IVLIVS CAESAR? The Anglicized "Caesar" shares not a single sound with the original pronunciation: English "seezer" vs. Latin "kaisar" ("a" and "r" as in Spanish or Italian rather than English).

6) Latin still in use today is church Latin, which was only standardized in the late Middle Ages and has significant differences in pronunciation compared with classical Latin.

7) The Latin used in The Passion of the Christ is church Latin rather than classical Latin, making the entire exercise anachronistic.

Love stories of the late Ming

2006-11-11T17:47:00.000-06:00

Who says grad school is no fun? At least once every 1000 pages or so we come across passages like this:

In [馮夢龍/Feng Menglong's 《情史》/Anatomy of love (first half of the 1600s)], a young man surnamed Sun is accused by a neighbor woman of seducing her daughter; the daughter is so mortified that she hangs herself. The mother, determined to punish Sun, ties him to the corpse and goes off to fetch the magistrate. Left alone with the corpse, Sun is overcome by her beauty and does indeed make love to her - whereupon she comes back to life! The magistrate unites them in marriage.

On the other hand, it may just be the history program that's like this. Ariel gets to read 17th century porn all day.

Happy Armistice Day!

2006-11-11T11:00:00.000-06:00

Let's take a moment to remember that imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism, that World War I was the inevitable result of contradictions among the capitalist powers, and that our past is also our future.

Happy Armistice Day!

한국 요리 My guide to Korean food

2006-10-15T14:06:00.000-05:00

Before going to 中国/China I never really ate Korean food, except of course the pibimbap at JK Sweets and going to the vegan Korean place Amitabul a few times. Then for a year and a half I lived in 东王庄/Dōngwángzhuāng and 五道口/Wǔdàokǒu, at the center of the Korean community in 北京/Běijīng, which represents the largest expat population in the city. So now that I've finally become familiar with the incredibly intense flavors and spiciness of Korean food, I've found that it's one of my favorites. The following rundown of vegetarian/vegan-friendly Korean dishes is based on standard menus found in Beijing, I'm assuming restaurants in the States have similar options.

Be careful! Almost all of these dishes could have meat added to them but are just fine without it. If there's any doubt, use the following:
저는 채식주의자입니다. 어패류도 먹지 않습니다.
(I'm a vegetarian and I don't eat seafood either.)

Egg is also a common ingredient.
계란도 먹지 않습니다.
(I also don't eat eggs.)

Transliteration and pronunciation: transliteration systems for Korean are a big mess, so you could run into one of the two transliterations I'm providing or some variation on them. The first transliteration follows the system the South Korean government (inconsistently) uses, and the second is McCune-Reischauer, which is standard in English-language scholarly works. If you have the Korean written down it should never be a problem. Pronunciation of Korean is pretty hard to master but you should be okay just sounding it out from the transliteration, except:
a is always as the o in hot,
o is always as the oa in boat,
u is always as the oo in fool,
ae and e are almost exactly the same, as the e in pet,
oe/ŏ is similar to the au in author,
when letters are doubled up (jj, dd, &c) it's the same sound pronounced more emphatically.

김치/gimchi/kimch'i
Americans are now pretty familiar with the most common gimchi, made with preserved bokchoy and chiles, but there are dozens of other kinds too, made of everything from daikon radish (called 깍두기, kkakdugi) to cucumber. Korean restaurants usually serve a couple kinds of gimchi as free side dishes. Gimchi varies in its flavor and how spicy it is, but as far as I'm concerned, the spicier the better.

비빔밥/pibimbap/bibimbap
Pibimbap is rice with various vegetables - usually carrots, spinach, bean sprouts, cucumbers - on top, with a fried egg and a spicy bean-based sauce, all mixed together after it's served. The best part about pibimbap is the sauce, called 고추장/gochujang/koch'ujang. It has a unique flavor and is gratifyingly hot. Vegans make sure to ask for no egg.

김밥/gimbap/kimbap
Gimbap are Korean sushi rolls. They're different from Japanese 寿司/sushi rolls in that they're usually bigger and have more than one ingredient in the middle. Instead of adding vinegar and sugar to the rice as in Japanese sushi rolls, gimbap has sesame oil added. Be careful that you're not getting fish cake or other meat in the rolls, since that's common, as is egg.

유부초밥/yubu chobap/yubu ch'obap
The Korean version of Japanese 稲荷寿司/inari zushi, an unusual form of sushi in which sushi rice is stuffed in a pocket made of sweet tofu skin. As far as I can tell yubu chobap isn't any different from inari zushi. Make sure they don't put bits of fish in it.

김치찌개/gimchi jjigae/kimch'i tchigae
Gimchi soup: bokchoy gimchi in a bright red broth, often with tofu. Gimchi jjigae is one of the more intensely spicy eating experiences I've ever had.

비빔냉면/pibim naengmyoen/bibim naengmyŏn
Mixed cold noodles. The flavor of good naengmyoen is incomparable. It's spicy, but the pleasure of the experience comes more from the incredibly intense taste. Vegans watch out for eggs.

물냉면/mul naengmyoen/mul naengmyŏn
Another kind of cold noodles, in cold soup with the same incredible flavors. Mul naengmyoen can be a little less intense because you can wash some of the spice off with the soup, but I wouldn't.

잡채/japchae/chapchae
Stir-fried noodles, using vegetables and glass noodles made from beans or potato. The flavors are duller than most of the other Korean foods I regularly eat, but it's still a good dish and can help balance the spicier ones.

떡볶이/ddoekbokki/ttŏkbokki
A common snack in Korea, you might find this on some restaurant menus. Thick rice noodles a couple inches long in a hot sauce with some vegetables and/or mushrooms.

김치전/gimchijoen/kimchijŏn or 김치바전/gimchibajoen/kimchibajŏn
A large bready pancake made with gimchi but not too hot. Satisfyingly greasy, and usually served with a tasty soy sauce-based sauce.

More of the South Side

2006-09-25T18:42:00.000-05:00

Jackson Park, the second largest park in Chicago, has trails, woods, a golf course, and the Museum of Science and Industry. Jackson Park is primarily interesting to me as the site of the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, which drew about 27 million people. The Exposition was a celebration of Chicago, America, progress, technology, and the Western imperialist project of bringing the whole world under its knowledge and control. It was a pioneering moment in the construction of consumer capitalism, and at the same time a symbolic rejection of the instability and social conflict caused by capitalism and urbanization. It was a magnificent feat of engineering and a model of state social control. It ended with the assassination of the mayor of Chicago, in the midst of the greatest depression the world had seen or would see until 1929, and its remaining physical structures were destroyed in the fires (both literal and figurative) of labor unrest, in the guise of the great Pullman strike. Is there any more perfect confluence of meaning in the experience of modernity?

The Robert Taylor Homes represent another experience of modernity, that of the black underclass. Taylor Homes, a 2-block wide, 2-mile long stretch of highrises along State between Pershing and 54th, was one of the worst housing projects in the country before being mostly demolished in the last 10 years, to be replaced someday with mixed-income units. Only one building still stands, the rest of the site is empty lots.

Douglas is a neighborhood along the lake bordered by Grand Boulevard and Oakland. I went there to see the tomb of Stephan Douglas and the 20-ft tall column with a statue of Douglas on top. Douglas's estate used to be there, and during the civil war it was turned into a huge POW camp whose squalid conditions killed many of the inmates by sickness. Here's some weird trivia: the explorer/imperialist Henry Morton Stanley, before his famous expeditions in Africa (including finding Dr Livingstone), fought for the Confederates, was imprisoned at Camp Douglas, then fought for the Union.

Illinois Institute of Technology. The campus was designed by Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe but to be honest I wasn't too impressed.

Back of the Yards is where most of the stockyard workers lived and also where Saul Alinsky did his early organizing. Not much to see, just freight container lots and rundown houses.

Englewood is one of the most violent neighborhoods in the city, and (of course) one of the poorest. So poor that the best thing that's happened to it recently is that a non-unionized grocery store opened - the first grocery store in 10 years. 1200 people applied for the 217 jobs. Not much to see, but Marquette's bike lanes make for a nice ride.

Kenwood, the neighborhood immediately north of Hyde Park. Lots of old mansions, it's a nice place just to look around. The architecture of Louis Farrakhan's place at Woodlawn and 49th is particularly interesting.

South Chicago Av to the East Side and on to the great state of Indiana. Yes, Chicago does have an East Side, it's south of 95th and east of the Calumet River on the lettered avenues near the Indiana border. No, Indiana is not a great state. It's a wasteland of highways, factories, gas stations, liquor stores, and a casino - at least that's what's in the tiny part I ventured into.

Actually the East Side trip is one of the better rides I've had in awhile. South Chicago Av runs diagonal between Marquette (67th) and 95th. It's sort of an economically depressed version of Elston, with good bike lanes, warehouses and stores, and not too much traffic. So it wasn't a very interesting stretch, but it's about as good as bike riding qua riding gets in Chicago off the Lakeshore Trail. A short way south of 95th is the Burnham Greenway, a pleasant ride off the streets that runs all the way to 123rd (a proposed extension would take it into the suburbs).

Calumet Park is nice, and gives a good view of the industrial shore of Indiana. I kind of like looking at industry, there's this feeling of something more real there than in the image-saturated world of surfaces that typifies consumer capitalism. Of course the feeling is probably no more objectively valid than the romanticization of "nature" that developed following industrialization, once people were removed from nature.

The bike route north paralleling the lake from Calumet Park to where the Lakeshore Trail picks up again at 71st is pretty relaxed, even tho bike lanes don't start again till 83rd and South Shore. Traffic is pretty sparse since on your right is some of what's left of Chicago's industrial facilities. The fact that all of Chicago's factories are concentrated in the poorest parts of the city is pretty good evidence that actually living with industry is different from how nostalgia might imagine it to be.

Initial South Side explorations

2006-09-14T00:46:00.000-05:00

In the last two weeks I've put over 100 miles on the new bike in various trips thru the South Side. In my two years in Rogers Park I got to know the North Side pretty well, but aside from a handful of trips to Chinatown and Hyde Park, I never went south. Since the South Side amounts to half the city of Chicago, I guess I actually did get my wish of going to grad school in a new city. Of course, this city is characterized by poverty and violence and, because Chicago is one of the country's most segregated cities, racial tension whenever I venture out of mostly-white Hyde Park.

But as I'm finding out first-hand, the South Side is anything but the undifferentiated wasteland of despair that popular caricatures would have it be. Hyde Park, of course, is the most obvious complication. Bordered on three sides (the fourth being the lake) by four of Chicago's five poorest neighborhoods, which are all almost completely black, Hyde Park is fairly integrated, stable, and well-off.

That's not to set up an invidious comparison between Hyde Park and its poorer neighbors, or to impute deserved success for HP and deserved failure for the black parts of town. I've been doing some reading on the South Side, but Hyde Park's relationship with (responsibility for?) the segregation and poverty of most of the rest of the South Side remain unclear to me.

Here's some other places I've been thru:

Lakeshore Trail north to the Loop and south to 73rd. The lakeshore parks on the South Side are definitely not as nice as those on the North Side, but they're still well-maintained and get a lot of use, and the bike trail is outstanding until 71st, when it turns into sidewalk but is still pretty usable.

Garfield Blvd (55th) west to Western. As part of my ongoing war of attrition with Comcast, I biked out to their South Side store, waited in line for 40 minutes, then picked up some stuff that, once I started installing the modem, I realized I didn't actually need. The highlights of this trip were seeing the Fireball Faith church (Garfield 2 blocks west of Racine), whose sign features a large red fireball, and finding out that Western is exactly the same at Garfield as it is 5-15 miles north: auto dealers, gas stations, strip malls, and fast food places. Ah Western, my bitter enemy. I've often wondered if we'll preserve Western after the revolution as a reminder of the dark times we will have turned our backs on.

South Shore (the neighborhood south of Jackson Park). I biked down to the closest Jewel in the vain hope that I could pay less than $5 for a tiny container of spices. On a different trip I saw Mosque Maryam (Mosque No. 2), headquarters of the Nation of Islam. South Shore is certainly not prospering, but it does seem to be doing better than some other neighborhoods. Thru tireless efforts, 5th ward alderman Leslie Hairston has gotten a Starbucks to open, and - now that the living wage ordinance is overturned - has a promise from Target to open a new store. I've been thinking a lot lately about an alternative model for economically depressed urban areas to follow, rather than mindlessly pursuing chain stores and consumerism - a path that in addition to being undesirable on its own terms could also end up in gentrification. Any suggestions? I haven't come up with anything good.

King Dr between South Loop and Garfield. Beautiful old mansions and some of the remaining housing projects in the gentrifying Bronzeville neighborhood, center of the historic black community in Chicago. Good bike lanes but an alarming number of condos going up.

Chinatown. A good place to eat a meal and buy groceries. I went to back to 老四川/Lao Sichuan (Szechwan?) for the first time since getting back to the States, and I can now confirm that it has the best Chinese food in Chicago. On the issue of groceries, I'm finding that one of the biggest drawbacks about the South Side is the lack of ethnic grocery stores. Even in rather remote Rogers Park, I had Devon (Indian), Argyle (Vietnamese, Chinese), Albany Park (Middle Eastern), Chicago Food Corp. (Korean), and many Mexican groceries all within 7 miles. Hyde Park's Co-op Market is great and very convenient for me, but is way more expensive than the ethnic groceries and has fewer specialty products.

Halsted from 51st to Diversey. Halsted is pretty bike-friendly, and one of the most interesting streets in the city. I started out with a visit to where the Union Stockyards once operated, between 47th and 39th, Halsted and Ashland (one square mile). Only a gate that marked where the animal pens started is left of the operation that once killed and processed 80 percent of the animals eaten in America. The innovations in animal "disassembly" made at the Stockyards paved the way for such key manifestations of modernity as the Fordist assembly line and the Nazi death camps. Seeing the site of the stockyards is, indeed, like visiting Auschwitz, except no sign of the machines of torture and death remains and neither popular memory nor the official markers of Chicago History care to describe or remember what happened there.

Further north Halsted runs thru Bridgeport, home of the Daley family and maybe the most enduring ethnic enclave in the city. Irish immigrants first settled there in the 1830s to build the canal connecting the Mississippi basin and the Great Lakes system, which began Chicago's transition from swampy backwater to great metropolis. Their descendants still live there, they still root for the White Sox (who were founded and first achieved success as the team of South Side Irish), and they still fear black folks (see here and here for violent examples). The black population of Bridgeport in 2000 was 1.2 percent, even tho Bridgeport is separated from nearly 100 percent black neighborhoods only by the Dan Ryan Expressway - which was built there with the conscious intention of keeping the neighborhood white. As I biked into the commercial strip of Bridgeport along Halsted, it felt like nothing so much as downtown Wilmette, the rich white suburb north of Chicago.

Halsted stays pretty consistently interesting north of Bridgeport. First you go thru Pilsen, the gentrifying heart of Mexican Chicago, then on to "University Village", a dystopian vision of what the city would look like if real estate developers and yuppies were starting from a blank canvas. University Village is built on the ashes of the Maxwell Street neighborhood, once the center of Jewish life in Chicago and later the birthplace of the Chicago blues. The unholy trinity of UIC, the Daley administration, and developers weren't interested in that history but they were interested in the potential property values, so they razed the old buildings and erected über-bourgie condos, townhouses, and consumption opportunities.

And it doesn't get much better continuing north thru Greektown (now nothing but some restaurants), passing close to Cabrini-Green, then into the dark heart of yuppiedom - Lincoln Park, Depaul, Lakeview. There's only a hint of redemption when you finally reach Boystown. So I guess thinking about it, Halsted is pretty dispiriting. But when you're on a bike riding in perfect fall weather, nothing seems dispiriting.

Slandered by CSI

2006-09-09T11:49:00.000-05:00

So I googled myself for the first time in ages today. Little did I know that last year I was featured as a character on CSI:

Grissom interviews the only witnesses they have – the patients themselves. ... Jake Werner is next. An anti-social with constant manic and psychotic breaks, Jake was convicted of multiple ritual murders involving satanic cults and the White Aryan Resistance. He's one of the most lucid patients there, but he prefers to rant about the staff's ethnicities than answer Grissom's questions.

The lightbulb revolution!!!!

2006-09-08T17:10:00.000-05:00

(I'm cross-posting this, even tho it fits better in raze the ladder, because it's news you can use and I know there are those who avoid the political blog.)

Here's a breathless article ostensibly doing boosterism for the ultra-efficient compact flourescent lightbulb, altho doing at least as much boosterism for Wal-Mart. Even so, it does a good job driving home how amazing these lightbulbs are. They not only save electricity, reducing greenhouse gases and pollution, they also last for 5-10 years (10-40 times longer than conventional lightbulbs), saving huge amounts of energy and resources currently expended on the production, packaging, distribution, and disposal of conventional lightbulbs. And because they're more energy efficient and last so much longer, they also save the consumer quite a bit of money in reduced electricity bills and lightbulb replacement costs (GE's new packaging promises $38 in saved energy).

The main problem is that the efficient lightbulbs cost a lot more than conventional ones up-front ($3-$4 vs 30-50¢) and most people aren't aware that they'll not only help the environment but also save money by buying them. The author of the article sees Wal-Mart as the Lenin of the lightbulb revolution, both lowering prices and educating consumers thru a promotional blitz.

The writer is wide-eyed and enthusaistic in the face of Wal-Mart's attempts to portray itself as environmentally responsible. He passes on this touching story:

"Last fall," says Kerby, "we had had two hurricanes"--Katrina and Rita--"we had oil production disrupted, we had millions of people displaced in the South, and at a Friday officer's meeting not long after Katrina, Lee Scott said, 'Our customers are hurting, our customers' dollar is not going as far as it could.' He challenged everyone in the room to find relevant rollbacks, to lower the price of living and make a difference for our customers." (Wal-Mart-ers really talk that way among themselves.)

I guess the reporter knew this because Wal-Mart executives told him so?

(Kerby, a vice president and divisional merchandise manager, is the same person who at another point refers offhandedly to "Our friend Oprah".)

The writer sees Wal-Mart's massive market power, its ability to decide the rise and fall of entire industries, as unproblematic - even beneficial, given Wal-Mart's efforts to protect the environment and "make a difference for their customers". Nor does he see anything wrong with the fact that Wal-Mart's patronage will give GE a stranglehold on the efficient lightbulb industry.

He also suffers from a bit too much enthusiasm about the potential of energy efficient lightbulbs. If every American family replaced a single convential bulb with an efficient one, he writes, the energy savings could power a city of 1.5 million people. So the potential really is huge, and Wal-Mart really could be a force for good - if we look at the issue in a highly circumscribed way. Yet to pretend that solving the environmental catastrophes that consumer capitalism is crafting for us will be as easy as changing your lightbulbs (and saving money in the process!) is a bit naive. We have to consume better, but what's more important is consuming less.

The wonders of cable

2006-08-20T11:02:00.000-05:00

I only watch cable once or twice a year, but I'm always amazed at what I see. Consider:

1) On TLC's Untold Stories of the ER, a reality show, a man comes into the ER with an ice pick stuck in his ear, thru his skull. It seems that there were demons in his head, so he took action. But incredibly he hasn't damaged his brain or any important blood vessels. So the doctor goes to pull it out - and the handle comes off. That program was followed by one called The Man Whose Arms Exploded, about a steroid-using bodybuilder whose arms got so big that, well, they didn't exactly explode, but it wasn't pretty. I remember when TLC did pretty staid science and history programming.

2) Last year MTV was playing the same 6 videos in rotation, but this year I haven't seen a single video. Apparently MTV only does reality shows now.

3) A shockingly reactionary commentator on one of the news channels who for unknown reasons insisted on referring to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as "President Tom".

4) I witnessed firsthand how the cable news channels moved with cat-like agility from covering the ceasefire in Lebanon to covering the JonBenet Ramsey story. At least they utilized standards of objectivity in the JonBenet coverage.

5) A commercial for a 9/11 commemorative coin. To properly appreciate this you have to imagine the saccharine voice of the reader and the slow pans on the coin. On the front of the coin is the World Trade Center, which folds out of the coin and stands perpendicular to it - "The World Trade Center rising once again from the ashes." The coin is silver-plated but the pop-up WTC is gold-plated. Both the gold and silver "are recovered from the heart of ground zero." On the back is a "proud eagle that proclaims "God bless america" and five stars "symbolizing the five years since 9/11." In fact, "this could be the most meaningful collectible you will ever own." At last, you can combine your rabid nationalism with your cloying sentimentalism in a symbol that represents all of middle America.

Adventures in the homeland

2006-08-15T15:41:00.000-05:00

I discovered the other day that no matter how lame of a town you're in, when you're riding around on a bike it doesn't seem so lame. I'm in Dubuque just now, and this is the first time I've ridden around here on a bike since I was a kid. The bike in question is a powder blue 3-speed women's cruiser - my mom's bike. Its rear break works on the peddles instead of the handle, which gives me a weird I'm-12-again feeling. At least I should be giving all the people who see me biking around a good laugh - Dubuquers aren't known for their openness to flexible gender roles.

So it's not the ideal bike, but it is a hell of a lot more comfortable than Sam's old mountain bike I used a couple times last week. The seat on that thing seems to have been designed with male impotence specifically in mind. Far better to be emasculated symbolically than physiologically.

I don't know what it is about Dubuque vegetarians, but they don't eat nearly enough tofu. It's unclear to me how they survive, since Dubuque cuisine consists almost exclusively of meat, potatoes, and boiled vegetables. Now, I only know two vegetarians who live in Dubuque - my mom and my cousin - but it certainly seems possible that they represent 100 percent of the total. So I'm continuing my pro-tofu campaign and beginning my I'm-a-poor-grad-student-who-can't-afford-to-eat-out-anymore campaign. So far tofu and refried black bean tacos have been a hit, as has baked tofu and vegetables with a lime sauce. But the real test comes this Saturday when I cook for both the vegetarians and their families.

Expedia sucks

2006-08-08T16:30:00.001-05:00

Pretty predictable, altho I didn't expect them to pull a marketing stunt with their "apology". The other thing is that one of members of the Expedia Customer Support Team is named Tempy(?).

From: Expedia Travel Support
To: [me]
Date: May 3, 2006 2:11 PM [3:11 AM Beijing time]

We are contacting you regarding your flight itinerary, because we are unable to process your request for an e-ticket due to technical difficulties beyond our control.

Fares can change quickly, and in an effort to protect the fare on your behalf, we have issued paper tickets for your itinerary. We will send your tickets via express delivery to your billing address at no additional charge to you. You should receive your tickets in 2-3 business days.

We regret that we are unable to process your electronic tickets and we apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

If you have further questions, feel free to reply to this e-mail or contact Expedia customer services at 1-800-397-3342 and reference case ID 25677568. You can also visit the Expedia.com "Customer Support" page for more customer service information.

Thank you for choosing Expedia.com.

Michele

From: [me]
To: Expedia Travel Services
Date: May 3, 2006 7:50 PM [8:50 AM Beijing time]

I'm not at my billing address, which is in the United States - I'm in China. That's why I bought a ticket from China to the US, not the other way around. I hope you haven't already sent the tickets so that you can send them to the right address and not cause me to spend even more money. Please do not send the paper tickets yet and wait so that we can arrange something satisfactory.

From: [me]
To: Expedia Travel Services
Date: Aug 7, 2006 9:04 PM

Dear Expedia,

Some time ago I purchased a ticket through your service from Beijing to Chicago. When I finalized the purchase, I was told that I would be issued an eticket. After I went to sleep I received the email below, informing me that the eticket could not be issued. You then issued paper tickets and mailed them to my billing address. Unfortunately my billing address in is Iowa, and I needed the ticket in Beijing.

By the time I woke up and sent an email asking you to hold the ticket, it had already been sent. Because you sent my ticket to Iowa, I was forced to have the ticket mailed to me in Beijing at a cost of $55.

I fly between China and the USA often and so I was pleased to find that Expedia's partnership with Elong gives me a convenient option for getting tickets. But this level of service - sending tickets for a Beijing flight to Iowa without checking first - is unacceptable. I would appreciate a refund to cover the $55 I had to spend to cover your error.

Thank you.

From: Expedia Travel Support
To: [me]
Date: Aug 8, 2006 2:47 AM

Thank you for contacting us with your comments about our services.

We regret any inconvenience you may have experienced in your travels and we want to reassure you that we are dedicated to providing quality service to all our customers.

However, we realize that there are times when things don't go perfectly. As a result, we wanted to give you a coupon for $25 toward your next purchase of an Expedia Special Rate hotel or Vacation Package.

You can find your coupon in the "My Account" section of Expedia.com. Here is how to redeem it:
[instructions, blah blah blah]

If you have further questions, feel free to reply to this e-mail or contact Expedia customer services at 1-800-397-3342 and reference case ID 27670158. You can also visit the Expedia.com "Customer Support" page for more customer service information.

Thank you for choosing Expedia.com.

Tempy
Expedia.com Customer Support Team

From: [me]
To: Expedia Travel Support
Date: Aug 8, 2006 4:13 PM

Because of the inconvenience you caused by sending a ticket leaving from Beijing to Iowa, you offered me "$25 toward your next purchase of an Expedia Special Rate hotel or Vacation Package". It's bad enough that $25 does not even cover half the $55 I had to spend to make up for Expedia's incompetence. But I have not nor do I intend to use Expedia's hotel or vacation package services. This is not simply inadequate, it's useless.

Perhaps this is a standard "apology" that you use to encourage people to start using your hotel and vacation package services? Well, it's insulting.

I have no need of your marketing strategies, and I will not be using Expedia again.

From: Expedia Travel Support
To: [me]
Date: Aug 8, 2006 4:21 PM

Dear Expedia Customer,

Thank you for contacting us about our services.

We regret that your experience with Expedia.com was not satisfying. Comments such as yours are read by numerous people within Expedia and help shape our policies and practices as we learn and grow.

It is never Expedia.com's intent to mislead or to inconvenience our clients, and we are sorry that you feel Expedia has done so. We respect your decision to discontinue using our services, however, we hope that you would reconsider and visit us in again at www.expedia.com.

If you have further questions regarding this issue, feel free to reply to this e-mail or contact Expedia customer services at 1-800-397-3342 and reference case ID 27670158. You can also visit the Expedia.com "Customer Support" page for more customer service information.

Thank you for choosing Expedia.com.

Melody
Expedia.com Customer Support Team

Back in the belly of the beast

2006-06-21T23:44:00.000-05:00

The journey back to the States went well enough considering how many things could have gone wrong.

1) I had two huge suitcases on the verge of disintegration because of low-quality standards of Chinese luggage, plus a big duffel bag and a briefcase, altogether two-thirds filled with heavy, heavy books (I brought a grand total of 62 books back with me) - but somehow none of the suitcases were over the weight limit and everything made it to Chicago intact.

2) They wouldn't let me bring both the briefcase and the duffel bag as carry-ons - but they didn't charge me for adding a third checked bag.

3) Expedia's incompetency left me without a reserved vegetarian meal - but United made me a good one anyway.

4) The girl sitting next to me was terrified of flying and spent the first 15 minutes before we took off telling her friend all the horror stories she knew of planes crashing into other planes and bombs going off in planes and even some fictional plane disasters from The X-Files, and when we were in flight she would violently jerk whenever there was the tiniest turbulence or the seatbelt light went on - but I've put my temporary flying discomfort behind me and it was more amusing and pitiable than annoying.

5) My meticulously prepared duffel bag carry-on was foiled when they made me check it, leaving me without any Chinese to read or my own music - but I still brought two dead gay French men to keep me company.

6) United's online music options are lame and loop about every hour, allowing me to hear specific Smashing Pumpkins or Offspring songs 4 or 5 times. There was no silver lining here. There's only so many times you need to hear "Come Out and Play" during a 13-hour flight.

7) I was "randomly" chosen to have all my bags searched at Customs - but they didn't confiscate any of my 200 or so pirated dvds. I think it's time to put that particular urban legend to rest.

I'd say this counts as 一路顺风.

Not with a bang but with a whimper

2006-06-17T17:23:00.000-05:00

Compared with the frenetic pace of Ariel's last few weeks in 中国/China, my last couple weeks have been pretty anticlimactic. Ariel and I went to the 首都博物馆/Capital Museum, 民族园/Ethnicities Park, 恭王府/Prince Gong's Palace, and the 植物园/Botanical Garden, walked around the campus of 清华大学/Qinghua University, saw a couple shows, went to restaurants all around the city, and even managed to watch important movies like Left Behind: World at War, all topped off with a mad rush to finish her packing and move my stuff to the new apartment.

Since then I've managed to leave the 五道口/Wudaokou area only three times (and then only barely), subsisting on the less-than-stellar food offerings around here, with pride of place going to Subway and 天厨妙香, the local vegetarian restaurant (3 times each). I've been doing a lot of things that are not China-specific, like studying and political reading, and having a lot of political arguments against liberals over things like whether education is the solution to all our problems and whether parecon is a "bunk" economic system. I have seen a couple shows, but those are less fun when you're by yourself.

Aside from the dispiriting interactions with liberals, the weather has also drained my vitality. The first week in the new place was some sort of weather dystopia - hot, humid, and polluted. It got better, now it's only hot, but pounding sun is enough to keep me indoors most of the time.

It's certainly not all bad to have a couple weeks to relax before beginning a 2 month process of shuttling between different people's houses, and the leisurely pace of getting packed up is nice too. But it's a weird way to leave China.

Football and tackleball

2006-06-10T19:40:00.000-05:00

To honor the beginning of World Cup competition, I hereby issue this call to all Americans:

In recognition of the fact that America is not the center of the world and should, from time to time, accept cultural imports,

In recognition of the fact that so-called American football has almost nothing to do with the feet (except when you fail to score a touchdown or when you kick off),

In recognition of the fact that the world's most popular sport does actually have a lot to do with the feet,

And in recognition of the fact that the rest of the world (apparently with the exception of Australia) is unified in what they mean when they say "football",

I call upon all Americans to call "soccer" by its internationally recognized name: football. And to call "American football" by a far more fitting name: tackleball.

The Asians have devised languages of great complexity in order to prevent Western man from penetrating their secrets

2006-06-05T15:28:00.000-05:00

I can only remember doing two things the summer after my freshman year in college, which I spent in idleness in Dubuque (oh the innocent days before I understood the concept of resume-building). I drove with Tom from Dubuque to LA and stopped at a lot of incredible national parks along the way, and I read Spanish-language newspapers online. The idea was that I'd get my Spanish abilities high enough to retake the placement test and test out of the language requirement. The plan nearly worked - instead of having to take 3 quarters of Spanish I only had to take one quarter, which I then put off for 3 years until I had no choice but to do it or not graduate.

Aside from that summer and that 10 weeks of Spanish class in 2000, I haven't studied Spanish at all in the last 10 years. Yet when I got interested in the Peruano elections and started reading articles in El Comercio, I could do it almost entirely without a dictionary. (Altho numbers proved a big problem: every time I saw "4" the only thing I could think of was "sì", and I actually had to say in my head, "uno, dos, tres - cuatro!")

In other words, after the equivalent of 2 years of college Spanish and 6 years of utter neglect, I can now read Spanish newspapers about as well as Chinese newspapers, after the equivalent of maybe 7 years of college Chinese.

Of course I can also talk and write in Chinese, whereas my abilities to communicate in Spanish are nonexistent. Still, it's kind of demoralizing. Those among you who only need to know another European language, count yourselves lucky!

Next step for me: learn Japanese.

Moving sucks

2006-06-03T12:10:00.000-05:00

It's three weeks before I leave 中国/China, but I've already managed two rounds of packing stress. First was the frantic last-minute helping Ariel get her stuff together, immediately followed by packing my own stuff and moving.

In China it's common to pay three months rent in advance. This advance payment was due for my apartment on June 1. On May 26 my roommates decided to tell me that I either had to pay all 3 months up front and risk losing three-fourths of that if we didn't find someone to take my room after I left, or I had to leave immediately.

To be fair, since I'm never at my place communication can be hard, and I perhaps unreasonably assumed that I could just pay the extra 3 weeks and they would deal with the rest. On the other hand, cell phones do exist and I told them a month ago that I'd be leaving June 21, so they had plenty of time to spring this on me. Ironically I paid for the room for 8 months, and the only time I really needed it was when I was kicked out of it.

Fortunately Justin's roommate left on June 1 and that room was open for a month, so this problem was easily solved. Don't know what I would have done otherwise. It's twice as expensive but nicer and more convenient to classes, so I consider myself lucky.

Yesterday being the first day I've been able to relax in awhile, and my first internet access in awhile, I went overboard with about 9 hours of reading news and blogging about the contradictions in the American economic elite. 汉语/Chinese class continues with ever more exciting lessons on Chinese holidays. I also tried going back to 한국어/Korean class, but they were too far ahead of me and the teacher wasn't very good, so I guess I'll pretend to myself that I'll do it on my own.

Now that I have access to a computer with foreign language capabilities, expect my exciting primer on Korean food soon!

The great travels are over

2006-04-24T15:53:00.000-05:00

In the last 3 months I've been to 東京/Tōkyō, 広島/Hiroshima, 京都/Kyōto, 大阪/Ōsaka, 广州/Guangzhou, 深圳/Shenzhen, 香港/Hongkong, 澳门/Macau, 厦门/Xiamen, 泉州/Quanzhou, 福州/Fuzhou, San Francisco, Oakland, Chicago, 昆明/Kunming, and half a dozen smaller cities and towns. All told I spent 7 weeks outside of 北京/Beijing, or about one half of that 3 months. Now I can get back to studying language, pre-reading for grad school, making a little money, and spending time with Ariel.

The trip to the States, financed mostly by UC Berkeley and the University of Chicago, was ostensibly to check out the schools and see which one I wanted to go to. But I was already strongly leaning toward U of C beforehand, so it was really more about getting a chance to meet the people I'd be working with and being sure it was the right decision. A nearly free trip to the Bay area, which I'd never visited before, and a chance to see friends and family in Chicago were pretty sweet side benefits.

My time at U of C left me confident that it was the right choice and went a long way toward overcoming the disappointment of getting rejected by all the East Coast schools. In terms of overall program - faculty, students, and resources - U of C is probably better for me than Harvard, Columbia, or NYU. But I was really looking forward to trying life in a new city, preferably the same one my girlfriend was going to be living in. Nothing to be done tho. I guess I can't complain too much about living in a great city like Chicago, getting paid to learn about history.

Now that I have more free time I'll try to finally start writing about all the traveling and doing more political blogging.

update from the SEZ

2006-02-27T19:34:00.000-06:00

This is a short update while I'm killing some time in 深圳/Shenzhen waiting for the bus to 厦门/Xiamen. First, I got into the graduate programs at Berkeley and University of Chicago. It's hard to describe how stressful was the week after Ariel heard from Columbia and before I heard from anyone. I didn't exactly prepare any back-up plans if I hadn't gotten accepted anywhere.

Still no word from Harvard, Columbia, or NYU. It's getting kind of late in the process for getting an acceptance from them, but all hope is not yet gone. In 2 weeks I'll know for sure, one way or the other. If they all reject me, it'll be pretty clear that the East Coast thinks it's too good for me.

I've spent the last week in 广州/Guangzhou, Shenzhen, 香港/Hongkong, and 澳门/Macau. These are some of the things I learned:
1) dim sum is not just for meat eaters;
2) the ferry back to Hongkong from Macau when the waves are bad is terrifying! (it's a good thing I wasn't drinking at casinos like most people there, or I would have joined half the people aboard in throwing up);
3) the "vegetarian" section for Shenzhen restaurants in that's Guangzhou is unreliable, unless it was just a misprint and they meant to put "fish torture" where they printed "vegetarian";
4) the two key products that form the basis of the street retail trade in Hongkong are watches and hash

And much more, but that'll have to wait for when I get back to 北京/Beijing.

Grad school admissions moment of truth

2006-02-08T13:24:00.000-06:00

Well I'm back from Japan and not doing much but driving myself crazy with anxiety over whether I'll get into grad school. I could hear any day...if I'm accepted. Otherwise I might have to wait another month for the rejection letters.

Eventually I'll blog extensively about Japan, but until I can set aside enough time from worrying, you'll just have to be satisfied with the photos. I put a lot of work into the captions so check that out.

Take expired drugs!

2006-01-18T17:46:00.000-06:00

Normally I scoff at News You Can Use, but this seems worthwhile passing along.

Suffering thru my second consecutive cold, I pulled out all the drugs I brought with me to China in 2004. To my dismay, they were all expired. That doesn't seem right, I thought, how could drugs expire?

A quick search on the internet turned up two kinds of results: 1) "Over the counter drugs and You" type lists on how to safely take drugs - all advising you to quickly throw away any expired drugs (no further explanation); 2) articles referring to a huge study the US military did on all its pharmaceuticals to see if they'd have to spend $100 million every year to replace expired drugs. The study found that the vast majority of drugs were safe and effective well past their expiration dates - up to 15 years afterward. (See this article from The Wall Street Journal.)

So now we know that pharmaceutical companies, in addition to defending the intellectual property system that kills thousands in poor countries by denying them access to drugs, also enjoys committing petty fraud against consumers in the rich world. As Francis Flaherty, the FDA pharmacist who did the study, put it, "Manufacturers put expiration dates on for marketing, rather than scientific, reasons. It's not profitable for them to have products on a shelf for 10 years. They want turnover."

Forever's gonna start tonight

2005-12-23T02:30:00.000-06:00

Tuesday was BOGO day at the local Subway franchise. For those of you who are ignorant of the English language, BOGO means "buy one get one [free]". It's a little more elegant in chinese: 买一赠一.

Now I'm no big fan of Subway. And the one thing that makes Subway good in the USA - giardiniera - is tragically unavailable in China. Moreover, there's another sub place in Beijing, which is non-chain, much cheaper, actually has good bread, and has cheap, good french fries too. (China-living compatriots, this place is a godsend, it's called 站点 (Tube Station) and it's across the street from 北京师范大学 near the 北太平庄 bus stop on 新街口外大街, just south of 三环路 and within walking distance straight north of 积水滩 subway stop.)

But Subway is on the bike ride to school, and 站点 is definitely not, so Subway has that going for it, especially on BOGO day.

So here I was sitting in Subway, reading the survey history of modern Japan by which I hope to become interested in Japanese history, when all of a sudden the background music starts playing "Total Eclipse of the Heart". As many of you know, "Total Eclipse of the Heart" is one of the best songs of all time, and probably the best song of the 1980s. (Can anyone think of any rivals? Possibly something off Slippery When Wet.) Good music is hard to come by in China, so this was a beautiful moment for me that I wanted to share with you all.

The only moment that might rival it was last summer when I was walking by Mr Pizza, which has speakers outside playing music. This nerdy-looking Chinese guy was walking toward me, singing along without a hint of self-consciousness, belting out, "Unbreak my heart! Say you'll love me again!" A good song too, tho it obviously falls short of "Total Eclipse of the Heart". But the guy singing along transformed what would have been quiet appreciation into a magical China moment that I'll never forget.

Big day today

2005-12-15T23:32:00.000-06:00

The East Asia Summit meets, the first regional grouping that has excluded the United States (tho American clients Japan, Australia, and New Zealand all made it in). Important elections in Bolivia, which could bring another left-wing leader to power in Latin America. Elections in Iraq too. And most of my remaining grad school applications are due.

冬天来了

2005-12-14T12:32:00.000-06:00

Winter started for real in Beijing ten days ago. That means terrible cold and strong winds off the Mongolian plains. I was just walking around for 10 minutes yesterday and my fingers went numb. Beijing winters, alas, have almost no snow. During the summer they fire mortars into the sky to seed the clouds and make it rain. I don't think they do that during winter to help out the poor American boys from the Midwest who miss the snow.

I now have a regular 20 minute bike commute from home to school in cold and wind. The onset of winter doesn't seem to have driven many Chinese people off the bike lanes, and half of them don't even wear anything on their head. My bike ride isn't so bad, really. The nice thing is that the cold makes you forget how your knees hurt from riding a bike that's too small into the wind, and dodging other bikers and cars helps you forget about the cold.

写字很好完

2005-11-04T21:06:00.000-06:00

I'm sitting here in my fairly-sweet apartment near Beijing's 北五环路/Fifth Ring Road - to give an idea of how far away that is from everything, the Sixth Ring Road is just a planner's dream. I'm eating 烧茄子 (eggplant in sweet brown sauce) and some Lay's stewed bean curd meat flavor potato chips (no actual meat) - you lose a lot foodwise when you come to China, but you also definitely gain some important things. I'm listening to The Smiths, reading people's blogs, and feeling leisured for the first time in about a month.

The main problem is applying to grad school, but I've at last finished a rough draft of the personal statement and sent off transcript requests today. Granted, I'm willfully ignoring half a dozen other things that really should have been taken care of by now, not to mention the great looming need to deal with a writing sample, but the time pressure feels slightly diminished. Applying to grad school isn't really a hardship, but it is a constant pain in the ass with task after task that must get done, accompanied by nagging anxiety on whether you'll actually get in.

In any case, China is treating me well, aside from the pollution-induced headaches. Sorry to fall mute to everyone, as the grad school stuff continues to diminish I'll try to keep in touch better.

Another victory against corporations

2005-09-27T22:22:00.000-05:00

Here's a story that can give us inspiration:

A small group of dedicated activists used their passion and righteousness to bring corporate giant Sony to terms and forced the record company to release the unjustly imprisoned album Extraordinary Machine by Fiona Apple. Using street protests and innovative demonstrations involving foam apples, the dedicated members of Free Fiona have finally triumphed and the album will be out October 4.

Well, actually there was some miscommunication and the album wasn't so much being withheld as it was victim to bickering between a spoiled music star and her recording company over how many more hundreds of thousands of dollars she'd have access to. But we've all learned a valuable lesson about the power of solidarity: as Fiona says, "It's good to know that if you organize you can make change, because that's certainly not what I was doing."

The unemployed expat in Beijing

2005-09-26T12:57:00.000-05:00

I decided to take a nap Saturday at 4pm, and woke up Sunday at 6am. Jet lag and this miserable cold I've had since I got here, "THEIR POWERS COMBINED...!" and all that.

Yesterday I paid far too much for mediocre Vietnamese food at one of those dimly-lit restaurants around 后海 whose main attraction is that they ooze pre-revolutionary Chinese decadence, which they accomplish primarily thru dim lighting. But when all the people you were taking classes with get jobs in the business sector and start making expat wages, this is your lot in life.

Meanwhile I've spent a lot of unpaid time on job stuff that may or may not produce anything, and a lot of time looking for apartments whose rent is unreasonably high just because they're in the English-language listings. This place I looked at yesterday had a bed that was essentially an extra-long fold-out card table. For 1500元! (Last year I paid 1200, itself inflated, at a place that was nicer and had an actual bed.)

But this is all so much grumbling and I'm actually happy to be back. Even tho Chicago has a lot more that I like (and is much easier on the lungs), being there feels like sitting still, here feels like moving forward.

3 things that let you know you're back in Beijing

2005-09-21T08:27:00.000-05:00

The sound of a saw in use is omnipresent;
you can see elementary school kids being drilled military-style out your window;
a thick blanket of pollution blots out the very sun.

Return to Red China

2005-09-21T08:05:00.000-05:00

Here's the numbers for the Chicago-Beijing trip:

Hours spent in flight: 16
Hours spent waiting at airports: 8
Number of times security people were assholes: 2/2
Cost of 740 ml bottle of water at O'Hare: $2.63
Cost of 596 ml bottle of water in Beijing store: $0.11
Cost of mediocre medium-sized burrito at LAX: $8.11
Cost of breakfast at the Beijing hotel that the American businessman I was sitting next to is staying at: 150 yuan (~$20)
Cost of a meal at a typical Chinese restaurant in Beijing: 10 yuan (~$1.50)
Number of books I took with me: 27

The contrast in water is particulary striking. It would have been one thing if O'Hare had its own counterpart to Midway's Midway Springs bottled water (the marketing brilliance of selling water ostensibly collected from the clean, all-natural surroundings of an airport is incredible). Then I would have been happy to pay the airport price. But instead I got this Vasa spring water with soothing bourgeois blues and teals on the label. The Beijing water on the other hand, already 20 times cheaper, also has Chinese hearthrob Wang Lihong on the label. Now that's value!

The beer you should drink to regain 1950s masculinity

2005-09-14T00:25:00.000-05:00

Check out these incredible commercials Errol Morris made for Miller High Life. Analysis is almost superfluous once you've seen them, but to entice your interest I'll just say that white male working-class masculinity is what each one is about. Also, if there were still any doubt, the connection between meat-eating and masculinity is hereby conclusively proven.

Public notice

2005-09-14T00:15:00.000-05:00

Due to emotional exhaustion, I'm imposing a moratorium on future acerbic editions. At least till a tv deal comes thru and I can get some sort of monetary recompense. Sorry to eveyone who had such a fun time.

Movies lately III (acerbic edition)

2005-09-13T01:48:00.000-05:00

Batman Begins (2005). This movie restores some dignity to the Batman genre after the disgrace of the post-Tim Burton movies. It's competent in all the ways you want Batman to be, from action to plot to atmosphere. It's also the first Batman movie to raise the issue of criminality as a social problem, rather than merely a matter of moral weakness or psychological deformity. But the film doesn't stop there, bringing a hard light to bear on amoral corporations, corrupt cops and judges, and genocidal ninja cults.

The possiblity of an interesting social critique is certainly undermined by the silly conspiracy elements of the plot, which among other things ascribe economic depression to the machinations of a secret cabal (jesus, even mainstream economists admit that depression is caused by capitalism). But maybe social critique is foreclosed from the start by the fundamental assumption behind Batman: that society can only be redeemed thru the heroic efforts of singular men and women (mainly one very rich man in particular, but also a handful of incorruptible public servants) against the grip of corruption and crime. In this drama everyone else is merely audience, understanding little and utterly incapable of themselves taking the stage. I'm pretty sure this model of social change hasn't actually produced much other than dictatorships of the proletariat and stories about the lamb of god.

The Notebook (2004). I guess it's sort of sociologically interesting that people still take seriously movies as stunningly ingenuous and painfully predictable as this one. It's not really any different from a communist propaganda film, with hardships to be endured, obstacles to be overcome, but ultimate triumph ensured - with swelling music to let us know when we should feel moved. We look at that communist stuff and laugh at it. The plots are uninteresting, the techniques of manipulation insulting, and the social uses of the movies despicable. Yet somehow love-propaganda films are different? Isn't cynicism the mark of our times? If people still believe in something, why couldn't it be, say, liberation or equality?

Bring It On (2000). I know the obvious reading of this movie has to do with race and class, how the disadvantaged can succeed thru hard work, but that our sympathy ultimately lies with the rich white people who are, deep down, good-hearted. But I choose to read it as a tragedy, the descent of two super-cool alternative kids (Eliza Dushku and Jesse Bradford) into lamedom. Unable to transcend their identities as white rich kids, the two are drawn into a vortex of inanity by Kirsten Dunst, who is not to be seen as a villain in this interpretation but rather a mere agent of fate bringing the Pantone siblings' tragic flaw to its inevitable conclusion. O, the pathos!

Movies lately II

2005-09-10T02:36:00.000-05:00

Konjanik (2003). Holy shit! Who would have thought a Croatian movie set in the Balkans of the 1740s could be so intense and penetrating? The plot is pretty standard Romeo and Juliet stuff, but the film takes things in a much more interesting direction than trite love and examines identity in the frontier between the Ottoman and Austrian empires and the republic of Venezia. Catholics, Orthodox Christians, and Muslims all proclaim their faiths loudly, but the way they act tells us something different. Identity becomes fluid under the influence of desire, political expediency, the search for livelihood, or merely trying to survive. Overrun with violence and backstabbing, the film's portrayal of interpersonal and intercommunal conflict rings remarkably true. At the center of this maelstrom is the tragic figure of the Venetian diplomat, who makes heroic if naive efforts to negotiate these incommensurable interests and identities, but ultimately must fail.

Lagaan (2001). Bollywood movie about defeating British imperialism by learning to play cricket. I know it was supposed to generate nationalistic pride, but I couldn't help thinking about how overwhelmingly the plot centers on accepting the imperialists' terms for fighting imperialism. And the top British guys sort of got let off the hook in favor of demonizing a relatively low-ranking officer. Also, how did the white woman learn Hindi in 2 days? That was a little disorienting. But I won't say it wasn't enjoyable.

Young Guns and Young Guns II (1988, 1990). All the hot young actors of the time. The music of Jon Bon Jovi. Emilio Estevez in his best role. Death and hilarity side by side. What more could you want? These movies have a special place in my childhood, but I think there's other stuff to like too. Young Guns is a bizarre, disjointed, and deeply nihilistic sprint thru Billy the Kid's murder/revenge spree. Young Guns II is slightly less weird and clearly has superior music, but maintains the subversive ethic of friendship-thru-murder. On first glance these two seem pretty conventional, but if you think about it for a minute what they're saying is pretty disturbing.

The Lost Boys (1987). Kiefer Sutherland is surprisingly effective as a vampire, especially in contrast with his urbane outlaw character in Young Guns. The movie supposedly takes place in the murder capital of America, but I'm pretty skeptical that a beachfront California town not afflicted by deindustrialization and white flight could take that prize.

The Outsiders (1983). Decent Coppola movie based on the S E Hinton novel. The pat ending is lame, but otherwise it's pretty watchable. The real question raised by the film is: would you rather sleep with Patrick Swayze or Rob Lowe?

Blackmail (1929). Boring early Hitchcock. Aside from one sweet single-take camera shot of 2 people walking up stairs, there's not much to recommend this one. On the other hand, you do learn the terrible consequences for women who exercise independence from their men. You might also learn how not to try and blackmail someone, as the guy who tries it here is totally incompetent.

He that lives upon hope will die fasting

2005-09-07T21:53:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I feel sad when I read the news, but bad shit is something I expect, I only really get surprised when people suddenly - and randomly - pick something messed up and get angry about it. Mostly everyone else expects it too, and knows there isn't much they can do, so they don't say anything either.

Reading about the 60s makes me sad in a completely different way. Because then people had hope, they were willing to try to do something about all the bad shit, they were willing to radically change their lives and envision a better world. Then they gave up. I get sad that they stopped hoping, and I get sad that we who came after them have never bothered to try it again.

Movies lately I

2005-09-05T02:33:00.000-05:00

The Brothers Grimm (2005). Don't bother with this one. We all like Terry Gilliam, we all remember fondly Brazil and thought 12 Monkeys was pretty cool, and the material here had a lot of promise, but whoever was making final decisions just couldn't decide on one direction. The movie keeps making us think it's going to go down a particular path, but then erratically changes its mind and starts down a different one. At the beginning there's a hint that we might get to experience the true horror of pre-sanitized/Disneyized fairy tales, but that's quickly abandoned. At certain points it looks like Gilliam's specialty of creating bizarre characters could come thru, but in the end none of them come together very well. Three-quarters of the way in, Gilliam (or someone) decides to suddenly make an embarassing half-hearted effort at giving the main characters psychological depth, but then seems to realize it's too little too late and quickly gives up. Finally the whole rambling mess ends in conventional style, never having grabbed our attention.

Broken Flowers (2005). I was pretty disappointed with Coffee and Cigarettes, so it's nice to see Jarmusch finally come out with an actual movie again. This one doesn't let you down. While I didn't find it nearly as enjoyable as Dead Man or Ghost Dog, its power to capture the feeling of our age makes it more intellectually satisfying. ("Feeling of our age" sounds kind of grandiloquent, but I think it's appropriate.) Jarmusch concentrates on Bill Murray, a rich man with no meaning in his life and little desire to pursue any, but also gives an important place to Jeffrey Wright, his working-class friend whose eager but naive engagement with life is so great that it actually pushes Bill Murray's character out of his stasis. The quest that follows is a study in subtle acting as every encounter explores the feelings that swirl around relationships long gone, intercut with the tedium of moving between events that we, perhaps against the evidence, take to be the substance of our lives. But the real payoff comes with the end, which is perfect to the movie, and which exactly portrays where we - as individuals and a society - stand today. And the soundtrack is pretty sweet too.

Election (1999). Apparently I'm the only person who still hadn't seen this movie. It's not only a hilarious black comedy, it's also the best portrayal of the American political system I've ever seen. But in a way it's ultimately conservative, since the only character willing to challenge the system itself, Tammy Metzler, merely manipulates events to pursue her own personal goals, and quickly forgets her "revolutionary" rhetoric (does it sound stupid analyzing comedy this way?). This makes perfect sense in the context of overall despair for radical change, and we can't really fault the movie for reflecting reality, but it would be really nice to see some hope out there somewhere.

Bottle Rocket (1996). Okay, enough of these pretentious reviews. Bottle Rocket is cute, funny, and harmless. I'll spare you the WSWS-style class analysis.

Prime Cut (1972). The main reason to see this movie is that Lee Marvin is such a badass! The plot had a lot of potential, way way more than it knew what to do with. Gene Hackman plays a Kansas City meat baron, who also trades in human flesh. Lee Marvin is a Chicago enforcer for an Irish gang sent to extract debts from Gene Hackman. I want to emphasize that the gang is Irish, because the movie nearly overwhelms you with names like O'Brien, Shaughnessy, Delaney, and features a family of about 6 redheads. Lee Marvin and his men even come in for a good amount of mick-baiting from Gene Hackman and his super-Aryan henchmen. Who knew the Irish still weren't white in the '70s? Anyway, the setup is perfect for questioning the distinction we make between exploiting animals and exploiting women, but instead the movie takes the easy way out and makes the good-hearted mob enforcer teach Gene Hackman an important lesson about human supremacy. Plus the climactic fight/shoot-out was pretty lackluster. Oh well, Lee Marvin is still awesome.

A philosophical enquiry into biking

2005-09-02T02:43:00.000-05:00

I've been doing a lot of bike riding lately, which is a great joy to me. All thanks to Jenny letting me use her sweet baby-blue-with-yellow-fenders bike. The obvious question is: does riding all over the city on a girls' bike challenge my masculinity? The answer is no, for two reasons: 1) living in China, where bikes are not gendered, has mostly eroded my need for a straight bar on the bike to reassure me that I'm not a woman; 2) it's such a sweet-looking bike!

One of the most pleasurable things in life is to sail past all the poor fools in their cars stuck in traffic. "How I am lost in admiration! How I laugh! How I rejoice! I'm full of exaltation then as I see so many great kings who by public report were accepted into heaven groaning in the deepest darkness!" There's some pretty obvious unhealthy slave morality stuff going on here. But the thing about slave morality is it's so satisfying. Who wants to give that up? And it's pretty hard to avoid ressentiment when drivers insist on almost killing you every time you go biking.

I did Critical Mass last week, which is definitely the most fun quasi-protest I've been in. What makes Critical Mass different from conventional protests includes: 1) no annoying speakers beforehand, 2) no hopelessly simplistic slogans that make you think about all the nuances that are missing, 3) you get to bike instead of walk, 4) no ISO or Spartacist contingents to make you realize how bad the left is doing, 5) you wave at onlookers and wish them happy Friday instead of shouting at them, 6) Critical Mass usually features a naked guy standing on a median holding his bike above him. Sure the lack of an explicitly anti-car message is a bit dissatisfying, but as we lay the groundwork for an anti-car coup d'etat we might as well have a good time.

Who knew Philly is so hip?

2005-08-16T17:41:00.000-05:00

From The New York Times:
Philadelphia Story: The Next Borough

I've always heard bad things about Philadelphia, but this article makes it sound like some cool stuff is going on too. But, since it's in The Times, some of the "cool" stuff the journalist digs up is actually nothing but rank yuppification. Anyone know anything about Philadelphia? Sounds like the music scene isn't bad. What about activism?

Book orgy

2005-08-15T02:04:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I went to the Seminary Co-op bookstore in Hyde Park, the best bookstore in Chicago and one of the best in the country. First good (English-language) bookstore I've been to in a year, and I got pretty excited. As Chris said, I looked like a much younger Jake set free in a candy store. Good bookstores bring a special joy, and being surrounded by all the history books made me look forward to joining the discussion with my own research (whenever that starts).

So, yes, I did drop $200 on books. But I regard that figure as relatively restrained given that I willed myself to not buy the $80 Korean-imported printing of Bruce Cumings's The Origins of the Korean War, vol. 2, which I've been lusting after for quite awhile now. I got 4 history books on China, using grad school applications as the excuse, 2 volumes of Proust's Recherche (having fallen under Ariel's baleful influence), and some Gramsci and Althusser since I've been under pressure from several sources to prove myself a real Marxist by reading them. Now I just have to get thru another 1000 pages of the Nazi Germany book and right into the new stuff.

The coming Scientology holocaust

2005-08-12T18:07:00.000-05:00

The other day I saw a picture in the newspaper of various celebrities at a Scientology charity event. One of them was Beck. Oh Beck, what have you done?

So listening to the new Beck cd, the natural thing to do was look up Scientology in Wikipedia. The results went far beyond any possible expectations in terms of both hilarity and terror.

As you're reading at first, you're just thinking, "Okay, another lame new-agey religion." But then you arrive at the story of Xenu. Apparently 75 million years ago, the galactic ruler Xenu faced a bad overpopulation problem (average population of the planets he ruled: 178 billion). So, in alliance with the psychiatrists (see below), he paralyzed billions of people and transported them to Teegeeack (today called Earth), stacked them around a bunch of volcanos, and blew them up with hydrogen bombs. Their immortal souls were then collected by Xenu and taken to a movie theater, where they were fucked up by watching a "three-D, super colossal motion picture". These souls are still with us, clinging to us normal people and messing up our lives. Which is why you should be a Scientologist, because they have (expensive) ways of dealing with these guys.

This is only the beginning of the Scientology wackiness, which also includes a deep hatred of psychiatrists, who were once involved in a conspiracy to create a world government and run it on behalf of the Soviet Union, and are also responsible for World War I, the rise of Hitler and Stalin, and 9/11, among other crimes.

But the world faces bigger problems than just psychiatrists. Scientologists give everyone a number on a "tone scale" that ranks emotions and behavior. Once you know the scale you can interact more productively with people, enhancing your personal life and business prospects, and enabling you to raise others on their scale. The scale goes as high as 40, but the average is (charitably) 2.8. Where you're at on this scale also determines how useful you are to society. Says L Ron Hubbard:

There are only two answers for the handling of people from 2.0 down on the Tone Scale, neither one of which has anything to do with reasoning with them or listening to their justification of their acts. The first is to raise them on the Tone Scale by unenturbulating some of their theta [ie soul] by any one of the three valid processes. The other is to dispose of them quietly and without sorrow.

Wtf?!?! Did he actually say that?! You should kill people below 2? Let's read on:

Not all the beauty nor the handsomeness nor artificial social value nor property can atone for the vicious damage such people do to sane men and women. The sudden and abrupt deletion of all individuals occupying the lower bands of the Tone Scale from the social order would result in an almost instant rise in the cultural tone and would interrupt the dwindling spiral into which any society may have entered.... A Venezualan dictator once decided to stop leprosy. He saw that most lepers in his country were also beggars. By the simple expedient of collecting and destroying all the beggars in Venezuala, an end was put to leprosy in that country.

Fucking hell man, who knew Scientology advocated mass murder? Suddenly the Tom Cruise-Katie Holmes romance doesn't seem so cute.

Argyle St and some hot Orson Welles action

2005-08-11T14:11:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I went to "Chinatown North", which is mostly Vietnamese, but confusingly the signs all have Chinese and Vietnamese on them, so it's best to just call it Argyle St. This was long overdue, especially acquiring Nagaraya peanuts, which was a staple food for me until I was cruelly thrown into the snack wasteland of Beijing. But, if you want to go down to Argyle and get a tasty vegetarian sandwich from Bale, DO NOT go around the corner and eat it on the sidewalk in front of an apartment building. Or the maintenance guy will condescendingly chew you out.

It was nice to see Chinese on the signs, even if it's all in laborious-to-read complex characters. It was also nice to buy all kinds of groceries for $14. But apparently you can only buy sesame oil in enormous metal tins that look like gasoline canisters. They sell the soy sauce of white people, Kikkoman, so why can't they have white-people-friendly-sized sesame oil?

Yesterday I also saw the only movie (to my knowledge) that features Orson Welles as the mastermind of the Holocaust. Apparently The Stranger was something Welles signed onto to prove that he could direct Hollywood schlock and get money for doing good work. So despite some sweet camera work - and a corpse sniffing dog - the movie was pretty disappointing.

Here's a question for everyone: is the young Orson Welles hot? I say yes, but there seems to be some underinformed opposition on the matter.

If I had a home this would be it

2005-08-08T00:53:00.000-05:00

The Iowa exile is at an end and I've finally returned to Chicago. I know I promised friends that my return would recall Lenin's triumphant return to Russia, but it turns out there's no train from Dubuque to Chicago so the sealed railway car provided by the Germans didn't work out.

I have learned one valuable lesson since getting here: cars should be rented from Enterprise and not Hertz. Altho from the degree of her boosterism, I fear that Kristina is actually a guerrilla marketer in the employ of Enterprise. Well at least we can be sure that cars should not be rented from Hertz. (That practical point made, I feel obligated to add that cars should not be rented at all, since private vehicles should not be allowed in cities. But this just bolsters the recent accusation that I'm one of the most ideological people my friends know.)

I now look forward to a month or so of life as an unemployed freeloader in one of the greatest cities in the world, with only my status as unemployed freeloader to worry about. I know many of my friends are kind of down on Chicago lately, but having survived Beijing*, southern California, and Iowa over the past year, I feel justified in feeling good about Chicago. My first girlfriend had this disturbingly intense love for southern California, and at the time I just thought it was silly. While it's obviously morally unacceptable to have even rudimentary positive feelings about southern California, I can sort of understand the sentiment now, and I'm glad to be back.

------------
* I don't want to imply that Beijing was intolerable, but it did lack a good many nice things that I missed. On the other hand, I have no problem implying that southern California and Iowa are intolerable.

Homosexual pervert Nazis!

2005-08-06T00:59:00.000-05:00

Speaking of books, one of the two I've been reading since getting back to the States is The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. The author is generally liberal-minded but on one issue he's solidly a man of his times (the book was published in 1959). Apparently "many of [the S.A.'s] top leaders, beginning with its chief, Roehm, were notorious homosexual perverts. Lieutenant Edmund Heines, who led the Munich S.A., was not only a homosexual but a convicted murderer. These two and dozens of others quarreled and feuded as only men of unnatural sexual inclinations, with their peculiar jealousies, can." (p. 120)

Dilemmas

2005-08-06T00:12:00.000-05:00

Being reunited with my books was one of the few things I was looking forward to about being in Iowa. But now I've picked out exactly 30 that I absolutely must bring with me to Chicago then China. Clearly this is not viable. But how can you choose between Inequality and Poverty in China in the Age of Globalization and The Peasant Family and Rural Development in the Yangzi Delta, 1350-1988? At least there's no way to go wrong.

What if Malcolm X was John the Baptist and Tupac was Jesus?

2005-08-05T03:35:00.000-05:00

Tonight I was watching MTV's Cribs and one of the guys showing off his house had, covering an entire wall, a painting of Malcolm X baptizing Tupac.

Malcolm X baptizing Tupac. In a river.

Take a few minutes and think about all the many many ways that this simultaneously makes no goddamn sense and is so appropriately over the top.

Based on his near incoherency in explaining the painting, the guy clearly had some trouble putting into language how he received the inspiration for it and what it meant to him. But he did manage to tell us the title: "What If".

What if indeed.

A visit to the homeland

2005-08-03T21:22:00.000-05:00

Much like the Suck-cut of Wayne's World fame, Iowa is sucking my will to live. It's not that Iowa is inherently bad (tho the food is, both morally and tastingly), it's that I am drained of purpose here. My days are structured by when I go online, when I watch tv, and when I eat junk food. Perhaps partly because of jet lag, but probably mainly because of my own degeneracy, I spend the hours 11pm-4am aimlessly watching tv. Important parts of my life - like finding a job, preparing grad school aps, writing about politics, and moving more than 5 meters at a time - are thrown aside, and I descend into a quasi-suburban hell.

On the plus side, I am now reacculturated to American life. A week in southern California brutally reintroduced me to car culture, and now I've been reacquainted with television. Whether good clean fun from Adult Swim, the lassitude-inducing experience of watching tv news, or simply watching the same 6 videos repeating endlessly on MTV, I know I'm home.

Speaking of which, based on field research this is MTV's current rotation:
1. Kanye West, the video about blood diamonds,
2. a video by one of five interchangeable pop punk bands, moving in the ruts of safe alternativeness established 15 years ago, but more upbeat,
3. one of six interchangeable gangstas-and-hip-hop-hos videos (interchangeable except that the 50 Cent video contains not just black hip hop hos, but white ones and Asian ones as well, each with their own section of the video, the Asians complete with Oriental fans),
4. either Jessica Simpson's slutty video or Pussycat Dolls,
5. one of two No Doubt videos, sometimes substituted with Gorillaz,
6. Coldplay. (repeat)

And by far the best video here is the Jessica Simpson one. It is hilarious! I can just imagine the production team, thinking "We have the whole bar girl w/stripper hip action sequence, followed by a dancing Hooters waitress sequence, but there's just something missing. Wait, that's it! A bikini car wash scene!"