and this is the kind of stuff that you only hear about (at least I have, I don’t know about y’all), but don’t you wish you could actually see it in action: Lookit?

[via Jezebel, natch]

Four or five years after the blogging boom, the paper is now allowing its more popular beat writers to have blogs. And who are writers asking for advice? That would be ME. 


whoo boy

I have my own ideas, of course, but what do y’all think makes a good blog?

Well, nothing like finding out the desk (or a certain person on it) is talking smack about me.

I’d explain the context if I didn’t think it would bust out the person who told me anything was said, but I will say this: I may eat, breathe and shit the paper as my full-time gig, but technically I don’t work for it anymore. Therefore, I don’t have any sort of power to decide to scratch any story at my capricious whims. As such, if I’ve covered something that I don’t think merits space, I call the person in charge and run it by them; if they agree, I don’t file, and if they don’t, I pull something out of my ass.

Jerk-off.

Anyway.

I had hoped a mid-afternoon shower and once-over with the loofah would be enough to restore my will to live, but alas, it wasn’t. My last two days have been spent hauling Mother around to her first two tests, the endoscopy and, because the doctor discovered her duodenum is narrow, an Upper GI series this morning. The running-around alone would be enough to make someone crazy, but add to it the following things:

-- Mother calling me at ass o’clock Tuesday morning, yelling that we have to leave RIGHT NOW because they can get her in earlier (and not really believing her because of past histrionics);

-- having to run her errandssit with her because she’d been sedated and might be woozy all day (she wasn’t); and

-- smushing myself into two chairs trying to sleep while waiting THREE FUCKING HOURS for this test today as a crazy Asian old guy yelled at his son and a bunch of snotty little kids ran around screaming and being snotty;

and you would be as useless as I was today when I got home. Seriously, I conducted an interview and then just sat in front of my computer in a fog all afternoon because I’m so worn out. About the only thing good in all this is that switching Mother’s meds last week has kept her relatively calm. If she’d have been on Defcon Mother, someone would’ve been dead by now.

I threw “narrow duodenum” into the Google monster, and everything that came up first had to do with duodenal ulcers (of which I had one, like, 13 years ago, and it sucked). Seeing that Upper GIs are used to find ulcers, we may have a diagnostic winner. We’ll find out tomorrow morning.

when I drink two large cups of Dunkin’ Donuts hot chocolate and coffee mixed together (a concoction I never would’ve imagined would be so darn delicious, so thanks to my pal Ray for convincing me)? Aside from plying me with enough caffeine to keep me awake for the next three days, I can tell you what it DOESN’T do: Prevent me from setting my notebook on the roof of my car and then driving off.



Good thing I was paying extra-special attention today, or I’d have been screwed.

So, I got about four or five pounds of pork simmering in my new crock pot for dinner this evening, but I’m a little concerned that because the removable part is stoneware and not glass, we might not be eating until 9-ish or 10-ish. For whatever reason, it just doesn’t seem to be heating up like it should, even though I have it on high. (Of course, starting it way earlier than 5 p.m. probably would’ve countered that, but there was a DANCE! COMPETITION! to cover—you remember DANCE! COMPETITION! right, Cat?—and much to my surprise and good fortune, the teams didn’t suck to high heaven.) Good thing Girlie and Soph had a late dinnerlunch (and I finally dared to remove and sterilize the containers of corn and peaches buried in the back of the fridge since, oh, summer? Shhhhhhhhh!), because I just might be sending food home with them instead of eating heavy that late at night.

Exposure to something that whets the appetite, such as a picture of a mouthwatering dessert, can make a person more impulsive with unrelated purchases, finds a study from the February 2008 issue of the Journal of Consumer Research. For example, the researchers reveal in one experiment that the aroma of chocolate chip cookies can prompt women on a tight budget to splurge on a new item of clothing.

We’re not even a week into 2k8, and our pal Rudy is at it again:

By Jon Seidel
Post-Tribune staff writer

GARY—Getting into a fight with the wrong person was the leading cause of violent deaths for all of 2007 in Gary, but that was especially true in the latter half of the year.

Since July 1, Gary police have investigated 37 homicides. Of those, 18 were caused by a fight or altercation, according to Lake County Coroner’s statistics.

In all, 29 of the 71 homicides committed in 2007 were categorized the same way.

Mayor Rudy Clay, though, believes the increase in deaths last year was driven by a spike in domestic homicides.

Eleven people were killed after household arguments spilled over into violence last year. Six of those occurred after July 1, anchored by a brutal triple homicide in August.

That’s compared to a total of four domestic homicides in 2006.

“In Gary, Indiana, our homicides are not like, say, Chicago, thugs and drugs and gangs and young people killing each other in the schools,” Clay said. “That’s not the cause of it in Gary.”[Emphasis mine]

Chicago police officials couldn’t be reached for comment in response to Clay’s statements.

However, Chicago is on track to have its lowest homicide toll since 1965, when police reported 395 killings. The city had logged 435 slayings through Dec. 26. In the early part of the decade, police often reported more than 600 a year.

Chicago officials credit the improvement to their tough stance on gangs, guns and drugs.

“Those three ingredients, so to speak, are what we’re focused on,” police spokeswoman Monique Bond told The Associated Press. “That’s really what leads to random violence.”

Clay said he wants to enlist Indiana University Northwest early this year to conduct an in-depth analysis of homicides in 2007 to find out why the rate of violent killings jumped by nearly 40 percent.

“Tell us what’s really going on,” Clay said.

He said he is also hoping a new job resource program at City Hall will help calm some of the anger boiling over in the homes.

“We think if people in the community had more jobs, we think it will bring down the anger among people,” Clay said.

Families of the victims in 2007 tend to agree that anger is overwhelming people in the city. Much of it, they say, is frustration from not being able to find jobs.

According to the U.S. Census, 54 percent of Gary’s population is in the labor force, as opposed to the national average of 65 percent.

The percentage of families in Gary below the poverty level, according to the Census, is 27 percent, as opposed to the national average of 10 percent.

Marguerite Dyson, whose son Jermaine Dyson was shot and killed in the Aetna area last year, has decided to move away from Gary.

She said there are no employment opportunities for young people, especially those with criminal records who want to start a new life.

“If you have a record you can’t get a decent job,” Dyson said.

Renee Kellom, a relative of homicide victim Shadonna Cheatham, said too many people feel free to kill others in Gary.

Cheatham was shot in the head at her home in the 4400 block of West 24th Avenue on July 26. Dia K. Nelson has been charged with her murder, but remains at large.

“It shouldn’t be so easy to just kill somebody and walk away,” Kellom said.

a) why the Circuit City on 41 smells like BO?
b) why my downstairs neighbor won’t stop bleaching her own hair? Shit’s going to really start falling out at this point.

from scintillating and fun to absolute crap in the span of six, seven, maybe 10 minutes? For me, it’s picking up the phone when Mother calls for the second or third time and then reading this afterward: Lookit.

Jon articulates so, so well the minefield that is loving someone with chronic mental illness that that alone was enough to reduce me to tears. What he doesn’t cover, though, is the tremendous guilt that comes with needing that person to fulfill your needs as well. Not because he hasn’t felt it, because you can’t not feel like a total asshole for needing at least some of the time and be human. (You know, even if it’s just the whole “All the starving/war-ravaged/homeless/abused people in the world, and I’m fucked up over an unreturned gesture” kind of thing.) But Jon is with someone who recognizes that her illness can be all-consuming and therefore works just as hard as he does to give back. What do you do when the person can’t even fathom that you even have needs outside of food or money? Tell the person you need XYZ? You’ve already done that a thousand times. Set boundaries? You’ve tried that, too—it works until things are tolerable before it reverts back, usually worse than it was before. Cut the person off completely? You’ve done it with other people, achingly hard though it was. But with this person, others already beat you to it, so if you joined them, the person would be left with no one and, because they’re ill and can’t take care of themselves, their “hitting bottom” would in all likelihood be death.

What do you do? And how do you get through the day knowing full well that compromise such as Heather’s and Jon’s can happen because, as someone who’s sick yourself, you for the most part keep yourself from falling down the k-hole of self-absorption and despair for that very reason?

If you’re me, you shut down, becoming incredibly nasty toward someone who loves you and wincing every time the phone rings because you know that whatever she’s going to say is going to be ridiculous, but there’s also the remote possibility it won’t be, so you can’t completely ignore it even though you’d rather just hide under the bed. I suspect that’s not the best way to go, since the guilt is staggering.

I promise not to drink up all the Hennessy you got on your shelf.

Whoever put it in my head that I really wanted to have lots and lots of family needs to go screw themselves, because with all the planning and this person can’t be around that person so we have to have separate celebrations and FUUUUUUUUUCK THAAAAAAAAT. Jesus. And I don’t even have kids, so I can’t even imagine how much of a suckfest THAT is. Seriously, I’m about ready to scrape whatever pennies I have and just get the hell out of dodge.

In other business, yes, we were pounded hard with snow, and some asshole gave me some sort of upper respiratory crap, so I’m drowning in my own sputum. How you like me now?

People who not only bring their snotty little shits to any sort of production that isn’t a matinee, but TALK TO THEM during the whole production. In a NORMAL VOICE. Like tonight: Went to see my pal Anna’s kids in the Indiana Youth Ballet’s production of The Nutcracker, and this family with not one, but two kids under the age of 7 was sitting behind us. Well, the little girl who couldn’t have been more than 2 and was sitting directly behind ME kept shrieking “AAAAABBEEEEEE! AAAAAAABBEEEEEEE!” every damn time AAAAAAAABBEEEEEE was on stage, and the grandpa was encouraging the little shit with “Can you see Abby and Alli up there!??” the whole time, while the other kid kept whining to his mom “What’s going on NOW!??” and instead of telling the brat to shut the fuck up and watch the play, she explained it to him. And they weren’t whispering; in fact, each time the music rose to crescendo, the assholes took it as a cue to TALK LOUDER. And neither my turning around and glaring nor me asking Grandpa Fucktard, “Do you need me to move so you can see them!??” clued them into the fact that they were rude.

It was a great show otherwise.

Ok, it’s really late, and I’m still kinda drunk and freaked out at tonight’s turn of events, but guys? The title says it all, and I’m a little stunned at my cheekiness, but ... yeah. Wow. Yikes, even.

sometimes, the universe really does pull through and keeps one from diving off the ledge. Thank you, Universe!

that the guy I dumped for Shmollis was nicknamed “Zygote” by my friends and me. Dorky though he was, he didn’t particularly LOOK like a zygote, so no, I don’t remember how that came about.

So this Myspace thing has kind of taken off like a cancer for me, like it do—you know, getting all excited about having a shit-ton of “friends” and being all disappointed when someone doesn’t “friend” you back. My biggest disappointment? My junior prom date.

Backstory: Shmollis (not his real name, obviously, but if you look real hard, you can probably figure it out because you’re all smart like that) and I met when we were competing in Speech & Debate; he was a cute little (emphasis on “little,” since he was about 5’7 tops) ginger kid and I—well, I was dating this guy from yet another team who wrote me badly-spelled letters every single day and who was also really dorky looking. Shmollis and I clicked, and he asked me to go to prom. I ditched the other guy, Shmollis and I went, had a fantastic time and ended up going out for about half the summer, as much as you can call liking someone who lives an hour away “going out with” at 17. Had his class ring and the whole 9 yards.  Then, for reasons unclear to me at the time, he asked for his ring back. I of course was rather crushed, but we agreed to be “friends” (as you all nod knowingly).

I might’ve mentioned here a time or two that back in my younger days, I was never known for my tact; that little detail never became more apparent than when one day, I was at a card store and found a card that you send to people you haven’t heard from for awhile. I can’t remember the exact gist, but the punchline was three check-off boxes with answers—the third of which was “Go Fuck Yourself.” At 17, that’s freakin’ hilARIous, so I checked off No. 3 and sent it to him, knowing that he would think it was hilarious, too.

Yeah, I called that one wrong. He spent most of our senior year ignoring me at meets. I know, right?

Well, then a year goes by, and I’ve finished my freshman year at college. I was getting ready for work and the phone rings. I pick it up, and wow! It was Shmollis! I was stunned and happy to hear from him, so I did that nervous talking thing that people sometimes get and blathered on about this, that and the other. And at the end of the conversation, he says, “You haven’t changed a bit.” Huh? What’s that supposed to mean? I thought to myself, but I don’t remember acknowledging it in any way at the time. But never heard from him again.

Ten years later, 1999: I’m at the magazine for which I used to work, and googling people has become my latest obsession. I google our old friend Shmollis and find that he’s at college in state. I’m sure I was depressed at the time, so I send him what I thought was a friendly e-mail with the line, “You know, I never understood what you meant when you said I hadn’t changed until [whenever it was that it occurred to me that, I don’t know, maybe he felt I was self-centered], but now I do ...” blah blah blah, and to e-mail me back sometime. You know, because I’d gained some perspective or some shit. And he never did, but it was easy to pass that off as maybe I sent it to the wrong e-mail address, although with a name like Schmollis, it’s a little hard to get that wrong, even for me.

So now, it’s 2007, and for fun I look up our old pal Schmollis to see if he has a Myspace page. Sure enough, he does—after a stint in the military and graduating from school, he’s back living in his hometown. I debated—It’s been 20 years since we were in high school and since I showed him my ass in that card. Should I “friend” him, thinking that hey! it’s been 20 years, he’ll be amused at the blast from the past; or should I leave it alone because he’s still pissed. I threw caution to the wind. That was about a month ago. No Shmollis.

I mean, seriously, people! I went on a ROLLER COASTER for this guy during the day-after prom at Great America. The LEAST he can do is put me on one of his back pages as a friend.

My ... ahem ... PURCHASE from the weiner party is in, but instead of driving out to work to pick it up, one of MY BOSSES is bringing it to me when we have our hair done Tuesday. Isn’t that awful? We both were skeeved out when she made the suggestion, and yet I still wasn’t motivated to get my ass off the couch.

Heard from Mer a couple times this week—she’s having an excellent time in Iran and is down to her last $50. God help customs, because she does NOT take too kindly to the rules. But she loves the people over there and said she has plenty to share when she gets back. Hope she brought me back something cool.