Picture of the Day (and a bunch of other bullshit)

(That last post was pretty good -- I thought about taking a break. But no -- I'm back to provide electric prose to electric prose addicts.)

I'd love to find another blog like mine. Is some guy -- or girl -- sitting around in Birmingham Alabama doing what I'm doing?

Most of my friends' blogs have died unceremonious deaths. I don't have many friends left who blog consistently. It ain't easy.

Nania blogs consistently. She's still in the honeymoon phase with her blog, but she could be different because she knows she's a writer and expressing herself seems to come naturally. (Although I think she prefers writing fiction.)

Dirk is inconsistent, but you'll get the occasional gem like this to sum up a rant about being annoyed by airport security,

I wish I had the time and money to travel by train and ocean liner.

Pretty much sums up exactly what Dirk and I stand for.

And John's movie review blog is updated consistently, but I'm not as into movies as those guys.

Here are a few quick tangents from John's blog (Reel Nerds):

I saw a preview for Catfish over the weekend. It looked interesting, and I was kind of curious to see the outcome of the big cliffhanger they hyped up, but not curious enough to remember that I had been kind of curious about it. (I completely forgot about it.) But then last night I read the Reel Nerds preview of Catfish and got curious about it again, but didn't want to actually sit through the entire movie, so I just googled "Catfish spoiler" and read about what happens.

I also saw a preview for Life As We Know It over the weekend and thought about the men who are going to get dragged to go see it. And I appreciated Cindy for never trying to drag me to stuff like that. (Not to say that I'm immune to stuff like that -- I enjoyed One Fine Day and Knotting Hill (in the comfort of my home)) (And speaking of Hugh Grant, I know this is an extremely old topic, but what the hell was that guy doing trying to buy sex on the street? That's just funny to me. (Seriously, it's making me laugh out loud right now.) Not so much that he'd hire a prostitute, but just that a rich celebrity like Hugh Grant would just roll down the street, pull up next to the sluttiest looking woman he saw and offer her money for a blowjob.) (I'll tell you what: That's on his people. I don't even blame Hugh Grant. It's just like Tiger Woods. That is 100% on his people. If a guy like Hugh Grant wants to purchase fellatio, he should have a manager or a fixer to whom he can make a phone call and be directed to a reliable madame. Unless of course, Hugh Grant is not into the sex act itself as much as he's into the idea of picking up random slutty women on the street and purchasing dick suckings for trivial amounts of money. In that case, I guess it is what it is.)

(I remember getting a kick out of Juice referring to getting his dick sucked as getting "slobbed." Which was short for "slobbering on your knob." That still makes me laugh. I've never thought of the woman as actually slobbering, and I've never referred to my dick as my knob. (I only refer to it as, "my dick" and "my big dick"))

(And sometimes I'll refer to my balls as "the future")

(Just kidding about referring to it as "my big dick", but I kind of wish I wasn't --- not so much about having a big dick, but just referring to it as "my big dick")

(And I'm not kidding about "the future")

But anyway, back towards my original point: The movie reviewers for Reel Nerds are fairly highbrow and proudly pretentious. So it was also funny to think about one of their learned and proudly pretentious film buffs -- in this case Allen Grindley II -- sitting through Life As We Know It.

I love the line Grindley uses to start the third paragraph of his review,

I was somewhat surprised to learn that this film is not as terrible as I expected it to be.

The entire paragraph is great. Here, I'll just give you the whole thing:

I was somewhat surprised to learn that this film is not as terrible as I expected it to be. It has a handful of chuckles and a few really sweet moments. The leads play their part to the best of the story's abilities, and considering I normally can't stand Heigl or Duhamel that is as close to a complement as I'm going to give. The fatal sin that this film is guilty of committing is its absolutely painful predictability. Once the setup has been established the film essentially turns into a massive montage segment where these two use a series of trial and error methods of child rearing techniques that come complete with plenty of the stereotypical poop and puke jokes.

That's just good writing.

...


Riding public transportation everyday gives me sample of what people are reading (and what mobile devices people are using.) (and by "people" I mean, young professionals who live on the north side of Chicago.)

I never ask anyone for an opinion on what they're reading on public transportation because I don't like bothering people during their commute. Yesterday I even fought the urge to interrupt a guy who was starting Blink -- even though I desperately wanted to do him a favor and say, "Listen, I've never said a word to anyone about a book during their commute in my life, but trust me on this: read only Chapters 1 and 6, and then put this book down. Or, don't listen to me and read the whole thing, and then at least you'll know I was being honest with you, and you'll know to trust the next asshole who says something like this to you."

(but I wasn't sure about the chapter numbers)

(and I really liked the thesis in that book, it just seemed like it could have been summed up in a quarter of the space)


My favorite story about reading on public transportation came from Johnnie O, who once saw a guy on the train reading the big John Adams biography. But when Johnnie took a closer look, he noticed that the guy had put the John Adams hardcover jacket over a Harry Potter book.

So that gets me closer to what was supposed to be the point of this post:

Here is a list of the three books I've seen most often read by commuters on Chicago public transportation between Lakeview and the Loop this decade (excluding 2004-2006):

3. Harry Potter -- What was the John Adams guy worried about? From 2002-2003, I don't think I went a single train ride without seeing someone reading Harry Potter. (Although, the #3 ranking is disproportionately high because there are seven Harry Potter books.) (I've never read one.)

And I hate people who recommend Harry Potter to me.

Fuck you. Do I look like the kind of asshole who wants to sit around and read about wizards and dragons and shit?

(Ok, I'm exaggerating. I won't knock Harry Potter until I've tried it.)


2. Eat Pray Love -- This ranking is even more remarkable given that I have never seen a man reading it.


1. The Breast -- Just kidding. But I actually read this, and it's pretty bad. (And that's coming from a guy who likes some of Roth's other stuff (especially the Kepesh series.))


1. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo -- I see this book in someone's hands at least twice a day. At least.

How popular is this book? When I type "the" into the search bar on Amazon.com, the first autofill suggestion is "The Office" and the second is "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo"

Cindy has read the first two. I read the first chapter of the first one and liked it, so I'll probably read it at some point.

When we went to Turks and Caicos for our honeymoon, we saw people reading it at the airport, on the plane, on the beach, and even the native girl working the convenient store outside our hotel was reading it.

Cindy was reading the sequel on the beach one day, and guess what the woman in the very next chair was reading?

...

YouTube is a good place to listen to music. I listened to Metal on Metal by Anvil today, and after the video ended, one of the related videos was a cover of the song by a band called Six Feet Under. Even if you don't like the song, just listen to the first 40 seconds of each version.

Anvil's Original Version of Metal on Metal

Six Feet Under's Version of Metal on Metal

...

I like politics, but I hate politics.

I saw at least 15 negative campaign ads during the Bears game Sunday night.

And not one positive ad.


And then I read a few scathing political op-ed's today.

If you only read the New York Times, you'd think that the Republican party is nothing more than a handful of billionaires and major corporations who secretly fund political organizations with the sole purpose of indoctrinating uneducated voters in order to decrease taxes and financial regulations so that rich people can preserve their wealth.

And if you only read the Wall Street Journal, you'd think that the Democratic party is nothing more than a handful of organized labor groups who secretly fund political organizations with the sole purpose of indoctrinating uneducated voters in order to raise taxes and disproportionately distribute the nation's wealth to the aforementioned labor groups.

...

Here's a short post on the Economist about a proposed "Taxpayer receipt" that would give everyone an itemized listing of what their federal tax dollars went towards.

I think it's a good idea -- it kind of reminds me of John Kass's idea to make people write a check for their tax payments at the end of the year rather than have taxes automatically deducted from each paycheck.

(I'm definitely not one of those anti-tax lunatics. I agree with the saying "Taxes are what we pay for civilized society", but I think that itemizing the expenses might encourage a little more responsibility)

Speaking of the Economist: I like going on their website once in a while and getting their take things. But it takes a certain kind of person have a subscription and read that thing cover to cover.

...

Ok I'm going to add to the title of this post