things to come

"Where have YOU been?" is what you may be thinking, or what you may not be thinking, because nobody reads this blog....this blog that is but a speck of dust in a large multi-dimensioned blogiverse.

I have been listening to audiobooks, learning how to knit, playing Rock Band 2, and most recently, eating a baked potato topped with sour cream that right now resembles a half eaten slice of tres leches cake.

It is the last day of 2008 and good riddance indeed! Peace out to a year of school work and very little play, audi 5000 goes my day to day anxieties, now replaced by day to day comfort. fuzzy robes and bunny slippers is what my life is now. like the world is made of that really nice toilet paper.

In the future, this spot will be occupied by short stories, vignettes, anecdotes and whatchamicallits. Look forward to it!

Dude, where's my car?

Someone stole our padiddled, stinky feet smelling, no radio having 1995 Honda Civic last night. From right in front of the building. Wow.

On a tree-lined street full of Lexuses (lexi?) and Beamers, they took our rust-rotted, stick-shifting, stall-prone ride. With a padiddle! Jokes on them!

But also on us.

Pass the Rickrolls please

I can't believe I just got rickrolled by the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

I love Paste magazine. Their year-end round-up of the best the indie world has to offer mirrored the piles and piles of media accumulated in my living room to a tee. Their pick for album of the year was She&Him's delicate and instantly adorable self titled release. Big-eyed indie starlit Zooey Deschanel pairs up with guitar virtuoso M. Ward, combining their years of southern California radio-listening, excellent song writing abilities and unique voices to make 2008's best album. No robot voices, no collabos with big name producers, DJs or singers, no dramz -- just good ol' listening songs, for people who like to listen to music. I went to see them at Park West last July and was blown away by their stage presence...it was old timey and no-frills, and I sat on a stool against the wall and clapped my hands with others and felt like I was at a Carpenters show. Thats what its all about.



And then they did it again, Paste picked the best TV show ever for their fav of 08. Battlestar Galactica. And I've gone on about that series enough.

Battlestar Galactica Full Series Torrent Download

the key to getting hits on your blog is false advertising in blog titles. this is a test.

back at 1619 i hardly ever dreamt. which was a contrast from richmond hill's lucid era. i read books on astral projection. i did visualizations that were meant to bring on that body vibration, that mind-tone, that thing that would snap the elastic that ties you to the ethereal. it worked once. i looked at my hands. and then i moved and chicago gave me nothing but the infrequent visions of hollis, distorted, hazy and unjolting. but now, 1709 is like a dreamer's paradise, no search for the hands required..just fall asleep and let the past haunt your soul. not any past you have ever known, but instead a history of things that are real and very useful when watching jeopardy. i dont even need my hand-drawn star of asteroth beneath my pillow, the sciences are with me.

Girl at bar has clearly had enough of the double-Marty McFly serenade.

Another party, another Marty McFly.

Not Mitch Mitchell!

something i learned today, from lady on the train

In order for Captains to be effective, they must have either a hook hand, peg leg, distinguishable beard color, or be made of spiced rum.

Do You Believe In Gosh, the posthumous CD release of Mitch Hedberg's most recent work is hilarious, yet very very sad. Recorded at the Ontario Improv in 2005, by one James Franco (I dunno if this is actor James Franco, or some other one), it is the deepest and most honest of Hedberg's observations on how silly life is. He muses that Dr. Scholl wasted time getting his Phd because people would buy foot cushions from a Mr. Scholl. He imagines that the inside of a bottle of cleaning fluid is fucking clean.

S.A.D

I suffer from S.A.D. Ya know, winter blues. The colder and cloudier it gets, the worse off my anxiety is. I should probably get one of those special lights, but then the hypochondriac in me would worry about cancer from artificial rays.

Only one more month of school left to go. I'm already excited about some mid-winter leisure reading. Chapter after boring chapter of textbooks has me eyeing Amazon in a dangerous way. I plan on continuing my collection of fake knowledge and satirical non-fiction but I also have a new reading list of Chicago themed books.

Yesterday at Borders I got the new John Hodgman compendium of complete world knowledge, More Information Than You Require, a follow up to the hobo cult starting The Areas of My Expertise. On the busride home from Borders I began t he book, starting with the very informative but tiny type printed cover. Both the front and back cover, oozing with TMI. Fellow passengers gave me the same odd stares that I received when I read the first book on the bus. They must be wondering why I am staring at the cover of a book for so long instead of opening it. If only they could see the brilliance that is detailed in tiny print! I'm only on page three of the table of contents and already I am inundated with whosits and whatsits and lists and things of that nature.

During the same Borders trip I also got a book called Chicago: City On The Move. It's a gorgeous coffee table book chock full of black and white photos of the CTA's early days, street cars, trolleys, men digging blue clay by hand beneath the city. Now that I've taken B&W photography and learned how to develop film, I have much more appreciation for the tunnel dig pics of the '20s and '30s. But besides all the eye-candy, this book was also peppered with excerpts from books and newspaper articles that had to do with Chicago transportation. Already, one excerpt struck me as profound and puts into beautiful words an experience I've felt many many times.

"For hours each day Donald Ray rode them: the Howard, past Addison and Wrigley Field, then Belmont, then Fullerton, then the most exciting, the most dazzling part of the line: the descent into the underground tube just past the Armitage station. It was like a mouth consuming them all, changing light into shadow and darkness, the sound from a hum into an echoing thunder of vibration and noise. Once beneath the street, he would study the houses as they slowly drifted into the landscape; he was suddenly in the lead of a long, curling missile propelling itself through a hole under the earth, and only he was in control."

--- City Dogs by William Brashler

I have to get that book.

Yay!

My pictures and blog were featured on one of my favorite sites, Uptown Update! My work can be seen here and here.

Today In Dika History

Waiting for the train.

This cute ladybug sat next to me on the Red Line.


Uptown's newest lake. The Wilson Yard's unintended watering hole gets larger with each rain. Maybe by December we'll have an ice skating rink.

PC Vs. Mac

In the war of PC Vs. Mac, I feel like I'm the winner.

The "I'm a PC" ads did in fact, warm my heart a little, but that is just because people -- tons of people -- do use Microsoft computers even though they know they are "uncool" and "not necessarily dependable." Other words like "vulnerable to attack" and "clunky" also come to mind, but either way I'm going to use a PC and I dont see this changing anytime soon.

BUT I do find those Mac ads cute. Not so much Justin Long's whatever attitude, but more for the ever-wise John Hodgman's wit. And tweed is nice.

battle state Vs. battle state

Bernard Hopkins ripped Pavlik's head off according to everyone who saw the fight like I did. Phili B. Hop laid some smack down on Ohioan Pavlik, and either way, it was a very good fight. A handle of Captian Morgan was useful tonight, like a flashlight in the midst of a blackout.

Today, in Dika History

not cool

Today was unexpectedly not cool. I went to Media class to find a few students sitting in deep discussion, something about Mrs. Turner not coming in yesterday and today. As more students arrive and still no sign of Mrs. Turner or any English Dept. rep, half of the class leaves to the English dept. office on the sixth floor. 15 minutes later they return with this tall, hard-faced blond woman. She lets us know in a heavy Eastern European accent that Mrs. Turner was in the hospital, undergoing surgery for an organ transplant -- she does not know which organ -- and that it was likely she would not return for the rest of semester.

Without letting this thought sink in to any of us, who sat there dumbfounded, shocked, slack-jawed, she leaps into her history in "academia" and her background as a general know-it-all from Lithuania. She discloses that she is a English Comp professor. She then makes a class who has known each other for 9 weeks re-introduce themselves instead of bothering to look at our syllabus or textbook. In some odd way to get to know us, she launched into a political rant; calling Mccain a zombie, a disgrace, stating that she hopes we all voted Democrat, called Sarah Palin a few names...and even though I agree with her on many of those things, I found it very inappropriate. She didnt even know us, or our views. Her attack on McCain sent one girl, who we know to be born of wealth and a life-long Gold Coaster with parents with a long history of military service, running out of the room with tears in her eyes. She came to class expecting us to catch up on Chapter 4: The Internet, but instead had her beliefs picked apart by an English teacher we only just met today.

The teacher's next assult on us was her disregard for our lesson plan. She scowled at the essay list Mrs. Turner wrote for us, and told us that our act of discussing media together as a class was no longer called for. According to the new teacher, "feelings come second to research and I am not concerned with how you feel about media." This is a mistake. I learned more about media in this class than I ever expected and that was from the experiences of my other classmates and Mrs. Turner..talking about which newspapers we read and why, which shows we watch and why, what magazines mean to us and why and all along tieing it in with our reading.

The new teacher wants us to change what was planned as reflective essays to hardcore research papers. We all already took English 102. We took this class to learn about Mass Communications and Media, not about how to write a bibliography. We need a Media teacher, not someone who tells us she will make up her own projects that have nothing to do with the work we have done so far. This is not what we signed up for.

I miss Mrs. Turner.

Ouch

I'm a little less wise today.

Two weeks ago my upper right wisdom tooth broke. Today they extracted it while I was fully awake and my good-time shot had already started to wear off. All four wisdom teeth have been giving me migraines since they all erupted back in 2005, and now I am one less. I hope this helps with the headaches and my nightly teeth grinding. The last two weeks I have been a mess, with that jagged sharp wisdom tooth scraping on the inside of my cheek. Already I feel less pressure in my head. I do though, have a huge gaping hole in my gums that is now stuffed with gauze. No smoking, no drinking, no straws for 36 hours was the advice of my dentist. Yes 36 hours, not 48...not even a whole two days. This sounds do-able.

I wasn't even supposed to get a tooth pulled today. Just a crown. A sweet, golden crown. I may be less wise but I'm worth a little more now that I'm partially made of gold. It feels so smooth like a real tooth and I'm getting excited to show it to people at Cheese&Wine this weekend.

Round 2

Debates. Town Hall setting is cool. McCain walked right up to the audience had his finger inches away from a question asker's face. It was kinda creepy and very Saul Tigh. He's doing it again! Getting all up in people's grills. He also keeps going over the one minute discussion time that both candidates agreed on.

In my opinion Obama is kicking ass. One question asked was: out of social security, energy and healthcare, where do they rank in importance? McCain's answer was a fumbled jumble of "oh we can work on all of them...sure..they are important...bla bla bla" which was such a dismissive answer. He didnt explain how, and still went over time. Obama's response was what the question poser was needing..a real answer, which stated that on top of his list is energy independence, and even invoked the name of JFK, akinning his 10 year plan to be free of foreign oil with JFK's plan to go to the moon.

It's a strange thing to be from the West Indies. Even weirder to be from the only English speaking country in South America. Most people assume that I'm Indian, which to an extent, is true. But I'm not. Sure, I can fix your computer and I know my way around a hospital, but my parents aren't strict and I eat beef and I dont speak a drop of hindi accept for maybe my name, and even that I can't pronounce correctly, according to real Indian people. Sometimes people think I know Spanish, which happens mostly in grocery stores.

When filling out forms, I always have to check 'other' when they ask my race. This seems ridiculous to me. I find the choices very limiting. Well, I'm not Asian, Hispanic or Caucasian, Or African American and I'm pretty sure I'm not a Pacific Islander. 'Other' for 15 years of standardized tests. Maybe I am Asian.

The British and Dutch sugar trade changed the lives of thousands of Indians, Africans and Chinese. Replanted on tropic soil, these people settled on the other side of the world and have stayed there for 200 years, losing many of their past traditions. They are no longer Indian, African or Chinese. They are Guyanese. We listen to Buju Banton and drink Red Stripes. We use British slang and eat Edam cheese. We are different from our ancestors in the Mother Lands. We are not quite what people think we are. Especially if that island accent is long gone.

The only people who seem to know what I am are Indian people. I guess I dont give off that Desi vibe. And according to some cab drivers, I would look Pakistani, but only if I were taller.

I've tried to research what part of India my great grand uncle was from, before he stole my great-grandmother, still a baby at the time, and set foot on the good ship Hesperus, whose captain promised him land and all the sugar he could handle. Uttar Pradesh is all I can trace back to, and that is a gigantically large region.

Three parties in a row! Friday night was my personal Prosecco fest at Fish Monger Chris' and yesterday was the most successful Cheese party ever. Not only was every cheese delicious, but I made an apple pie and a variety of dips that were all winners. Also I have enough left over beer to last me a week. Today is Smokin' Sundays at Brisket MacAfee's and I couldnt be more excited about an animal's ribcage.

My pet spider finally awoke from her week-long coma to create the most perfect web I have ever seen. One of these days she will probably start writing messages like "Fine Pig."

my nightmares coming true

Volitility

I am super glad that we make our money on pork belly options. People know that Mat is a trader but they forget or don't understand which kind he is. Suddenly we are getting phone calls and concerned looks from friends. "You guys doing alright...ya know...with the market?" It would take too long to go into how we are not affected by this whole mess, so we just nod and smile and go back to our champagne and caviar.

its nearly impossible to write term papers when grown men are playing nintendo (not even super nintendo) in your livingroom.

this week in insanity

The LHC broke. Had to expect a HUGE machine to have a few kinks in it at first. Investments Banks got pwned. We are considering holding onto our sturdier cardboard boxes.

Battlestar Galactica has proven to be a hard habit to kick. We dug up more episodes, we consumed them and now almost all of my bandwidth is being sacrificed on procuring us some more. I finally saw the "final five" and I am not shocked at all.

This The Primetime Emmies is on now and this 5 host thing is kind of awkward.

According to quite a few sources, Microsoft will admit on Friday what a mistake the Seinfeld ad campaign was. The 300 million dollar marketing ploy to make Windows and Bill Gates seem young and quirky was an epic fail, on a grand scale. Not only did the ads not make any sense, but they made Bill Gates seem somewhat creepy and self-indulgent, and the ads pulled off the same effect for Seinfeld (but we already knew he was creepy and self-indulgent) I know you should expect this behavior from one of the richest men in the world, but its not exactly something you want to use to get young yuppies to put down their Macs and buy your products.

Phase 2 of the ad campaign will be Seinfeld free. I think the new phase has something to do with insulting people into thinking they are lame for not using Windows Vista. They don't need to insult me, I am on XP, Service Pack 3, running on a Dell XPS 1730. No Mac has this kind of raw power, but Microsoft does need to step its game up. Not spend $300 mil on strange ads.

What the Frack

This may be a coincidence,






September 18, 2008

but this happened EXACTLY where my dream occurred. Broken window, along the train station, on Ashland. Weird Weird Weird.

FROM STNG WIRE REPORTS

Police are investigating the death of a man whose body was found Wednesday on a Bucktown rooftop, where he was possibly electrocuted while breaking into a vacant North Side warehouse.

The man, who remained unidentified early Thursday, was found dead on the roof at the 2000 block of North Ashland Avenue, according to the Cook County Medical Examiner's office. Pronouncement information was not available.

Police responded to reports of an unresponsive man on a rooftop at 6:34 p.m., police News Affairs Officer John Mirabelli said.

A postal worker riding a nearby Metra train into Chicago saw the man on the 1 ½ story warehouse Monday and Wednesday and called police after seeing the man a second time, Shakespeare District police said.

Authorities are investigation the possibility the body -- a white man in his mid-30s -- was electrocuted while trying to break into the building, possibly to steal copper wire. Burglary tools, such as wire cutters, and “pry bars” were found near the body. There were also signs of forced entry, Shakespeare District police said.

No signs of violence were found on the man’s body and foul play is not suspected. There was no indication anyone else was involved, and the man apparently did not have identification on him, police said.

An autopsy is planned for later Thursday.

Grand Central Area detectives are investigating.

Burger King commercials are in another dimension altogether. I wish I could run into a reverse-pickpocket instead of the traditional kind like I usually do. But I still would not want to ever run into the King on the street. That is the most oddly off-putting character ever. Quite possibly worse than Guy Smiley, who's pill-shaped head cracks open at the center to reveal a creepy game show host grin. Guy Smiley used to give me nightmares.

Speaking of nightmares I had a really bad one last night. I was running north on Ashland in a really exaggerated way. Almost like a moon walk, but not MJ's, but more like Neil Armstrong's. I was running trying to find a corner store. I get passed the tracks at Clybourn and cross the street and head south on Ashland again, remembering that there is a 7-11 on Cortland. I'm running and I see from the corner of my eye a path winding up behind the train tracks. For some reason I climb up the path, which is difficult as it was laid with large white gravel, the incline is steep and I can feel the rocks rolling beneath my feet.

I get to the top and I am suddenly in a shabby old building, not like the ones behind the Clybourn station, but more like the ones behind the train yards in Richmond Hill. Every window a victim of a thrown stone. As I am climbing in I can sense someone is watching me from street level. Once I am inside the person is right behind me and I turn around to see an old train conductor. He looks like when Ringo was on Shining Time Station. But much older. Like decrepid. I try to get away out of another window, which has this weird teeter-totter thing that makes me think that if I'm not careful, I'll fall right off. Before I decide whether to climb on it or not, there is a little girl, also kind of decrepid looking, like a twin from The Shining. She was the train conductor's daughter and she was trying to get away and I grabbed her and we fell off the teeter-totter to the floor.

When I get to the floor I am no longer holding a dead looking little girl but I am holding my cat instead. I am at some weird pet party and Miel, with her hatred of other animals, needed to be restrained. I held her tight but she clawed her way to freedom and before I knew it she was clawing her way through some dog's face. Again. I run to get her but then I wake up. Weird weird weird.

other than the awful dreams, Battlestar Galactica is addictive and now that I am out of episodes something will have to fill the void. Pushing Daisies will shut my pie hole.

sick sick sick
my head is a balloon
my blood, sluggish
nyquil legs, jittery
fan on low is too high

ouch, new york.

this year was a hard one on my heart.

shea stadium...gone
yankee stadium...gone
astroland at coney island....gone

temporary crown

Today I discovered the AOL Radio comedy music station called "WTF." It's 30% weird al, 10% eric idle, 20% dr. demento, and 40% other stuff that I have never heard but am glad to hear now. I'm so sick of listening to music that I already know. I haven't branched out in so long. I never gave the Rutles another listen after I saw the movie until now. It translates well, years later, on an internet comedy music radio station.

EA's Spore, a game that has been leaking trailers since early 2004, is really living up to its hype. All those years in development with Maxis at the helm have paid off. Once using the working name Sims Everything, Spore is like 5 strategy games in one. If you've ever played any of Sid Meier's Civilization titles and wished it was more detailed and not turn-based, Spore has got you covered. If you ever played any of the wildly but inexplicably popular Viva Pinata franchise but thought that the "romance dance" was too drawn out, Spore makes cartoon courtship less creepy. More on Spore later. Below is my own freak of nature, the Dikas.

The LHC goes live tomorrow. Eeek! I'm so excited. I hope something really mind-blowing happens when these hadrons collide. Like perhaps the sudden appearance of a giant black hole beneath Geneva. Oh sure, in the aftermath we'll be all "What have we done?!" but for now I'm looking forward to something futuristic and world-changing.

The VMAs sucked.

Russell Brand was very unfunny, Britney did not deserve any awards and especially not three! Also, when was the last time a lot of the artists on the awards show actually did anything that anyone liked? I mean really, Pink...T.I...Kanye...what is this, 2005? Also, nothing "unplanned" happened. Everyone was so well behaved and stuck to the script accept for that poor excuse for a host who went on a tangent about our government. It's totally cool of an American does it, but when Brit starts complaining it irritates me. Also, who the fuck are Tokyo Hotel? I have never heard of them before. Worst. VMAs. Ever.

also

I like how they put that backdrop of an empty downtown Manhattan behind his glistening skull. Thanks for reminding people that the spot is still null of a fitting tribute. It's hollow like his promises. That speech sucked.

Fuck the Whales!

That is not my sentiment. But this Guliani is not only sounding like he wants to start a lynch mob, but he also doesn't give a shit about the wildlife. Guliani doesn't know shit about Alaska and Palin doesn't know shit about the rest of the country.

This is the most negative, boisterous, mud-slinging speech I have ever heard. What an old fart.

more cheesiness

Sheboygan Smoked Salmon

Mimolette Aged French Cheese (personal fave of Charles de Gaulle)

Chevre D'or

Petit Basque

Wine and Cheese 101

McCain is clearly in love with this woman. She reminds me of Karen on Will&Grace or a bit of Tina Fey, but I get the feeling she is catty. Maybe I'm drinking hateraid. If I was McCain's wife, I'd probably scratch this woman's eyes out. Perhaps thats what her naughty librarian glasses are for.

The wine and cheese party started out great last night. We drank champagne that was about $7 a sip and a cheese spread that represented a world of moldy goodness. Eventually people were arguing about socialism and taxes and health care and I felt like I was in media class. The cheese was delish.

this fern needs water

I will now use this blog exclusively. Two reasons: 1.) turns out that every time I make a post on Livejournal people use my comments section as an opportunity to flame one another. I make a really heartfelt (but drunken) post on Saturday night and by morning two friends of mine who have never met are calling each other an asshole or a cunt. And as for my plea for advice, nothing useful was given! 2.) I am required to blog weekly, according to my English 153 syllabus. So here we are!

According to a threatening and uninformative teaser for tonight's 10 o'clock news, research shows that incense is bad for your health. Well, that's just great. Another of my life's simple pleasures will give me cancer. No more Nag Champa for me, I guess. Rest assured, this household will still find a way to smell like hippies.

I miss the Olympics. And Generation Kill. TV is now back to these crappy reality shows and creepy Howie Mandel's overexcited contestants. What will we have on mute during our cheese and wine parties now??? Gods forbid we start taking about politics again. Oh wait, we have to.

This Bell's Lager of the Lakes and bag of Taro chips feels really well deserved after a grueling day of waiting on longs lines on the first day of school. There is a line for every bloody thing. I didn't even get my U-Pass because the queue was the length of the school itself.

I have approximately 350 pictures from this weekend to upload now. Wish me lots of RAM.

Half way there!

For the New Yorkers:

Reid and Soanya are two amazingly wonderful people and I hope you can come out and support them!

Visit their site for more information.

celebration

not cute

I don't even know who these people are, perhaps they crashed the wedding?

i see fake dead people

......wait for it...

What is up with the price of watermelon these days?!

Am I right or am I right? Skyrocketing faster than oil, are the worth of watermelon wedges at my nearest jewel. Two weeks ago I bought a wedge for $4.20 or so. A few days later, similar sized wedge is now $5.75. I return this week only to be horrified to see well above $7 marked on every juicy hunk. I understand that record rainfall has ruined the corn crop this year, but you would think that would do the opposite for watermelons. Purchasing melons is a crap-shoot to begin with. If you buy whole, you never know what it looks like inside...could be a grainy mess of mush or it could be utterly delish --- so I buy watermelon wedges with worries of e. coli contamination in the back of my mind.

I don't drive so gas prices never phase me, but its trickled down to my beloved fruit and as that guy who looks like Wilford Brimley in the medication commercial would say, "its starting to hurt my wallet!"

presidential scholar, bitches.