Category: General

The night before a trip is always filled with stress and excitement for me. But as I prepare to return home to bury and bid farewell to another grandparent, I am also filled with lamentations. It’s only been about 6 months since the last time I did this, and that was quite a heart wrenching affair on so many levels. Funerals are not about the dead, they’re about the living and how those of us left behind get on with life and our relationships with each other. As I witness my parents losing their parents, I cannot help but dread the time when I myself must perform the grim and final duties that all children owe to their parents. Still I will not let that weigh me down. These things are all a natural part of life, and while the emotions of pain and anguish are not comfortable, they are just another necessary pigment in the great portrait of life. So tomorrow I look forward to what new paintings God has in store for me, I’m sure my grandmother has an even better view of the picture now. Guess, I’d better behave myself.

Okay, I saw the Chicago Sun-Times headline for this this morning, so I took a look on the web. In a nutshell, I think this is really only interesting because it involves young attractive women behaving badly, and there are pictures! So expect to see this all over the news. Yes, hazing, taken to extremes, is a bad thing, but if we start punishing young people for every little thing I don’t think we’re going to get the independent, mature, and creative people that our society needs to thrive. As it stands, I don’t think American culture in the U.S. has enough shared rituals. As a result we get scattered and sometimes abusive rites of passage like hazing in fraternities and athletics.

Click here to see the pictures for yourself on badjocks.com, rated PG, IMHO.

My dad, whom I sometimes consider to be an older version of me, is visiting us this weekend! I was worried yesterday about the timing of his arrival, but it all worked out. So we were able to take him along to World Language Fair at the kids’ school last night. Whenever my relatives or inlaws visit, I always like to give them a slice of our life, which I’m sure is not the norm by any stretch. Now if only the weather would cooperate…

Last night I saw The Ten Commandments: The Musical performed by The Chicago Gay Men’s Chorus. First let me say that it was a bit disconcerting at first to see Moses parodied given that I grew up watching Charleton Heston playing Moses in the epic movie every Easter season on TV. But I also grew up watching Monty Python’s Flying Circus poke fun at all things holy as well, so this discomfort was very short lived and I found myself laughing at a very witty show. I was at the show because my wife works with Jonathan Verge who played Dathan and nearly stole the show with his great stage presence and expressive performances.

So I enjoyed the show, but I also enjoyed a chance to see and mingle with people that are far too often villified in U.S. society, namely Gays and Lesbians who made up (judging by the pairs at least) a good portion of the audience. I could see for myself that they’re just ordinary people like me and we were all out to have a good time. Yeah, this should be obvious, but if that is so, then why do we have so much trouble with it? As for the cast, they were a rainbow of size, shapes and colors. Aside from Jon, my favorite performers were George B. Smart as Moses, Jeremy Hilborn as The Burning Bush, and Will White as Nefretiri. The Plague Balladeers were good too. Some of the show’s humor does depend on the fact that many of the performers are gay, which I felt was signal to the audience that it was okay to acknowledge the fact that most of the performers were gay. I think this was as liberating for the audience as for the performers themselves!

The weather here in Chicago has been pretty lousy for spring weather. Nevertheless, there are signs that the tourists are beginning to return. The return of the tourists usually coincides with the return of interesting new fashions to upper Michigan avenue and of course my favorite Borders bookstore. Yesterday during my usual shopping of the manga, I saw a young woman in a very attractive red plaid skirt with thick soled black shoes. Her stockings/tights were also red with an interesting pattern. It all went very nicely together in a sort of combination the gothic lolita and schoolgirl looks. She was probably a college student or highschooler on spring break.

Red seems to be an early favorite, as the day before I saw another young woman in a short skirt with bright red stockings that went alllllll the wayyyy up! This combo also had goth inspired elements, and she had a matching male companion to boot, no red on him but similar gothic looks.

After leaving the Borders I saw a tall young man with red hair, probably natural from his pale complexion, with matching red Converse style sneakers suitably worn. I don’t think it was an accident that the sneakers were red.

I’m reminded of all of this this morning, because my lovely WillowBrow is wearing a very nice black suit jacket with thin red pinstripes that I helped her pick out a few years back. This is still one of my favorite jackets on her. Sadly she never wears the matching skirt, which shows off her legs very nicely, because she says the slit is too high. Sigh…

Walking the streets of downtown Chicago, one sight that has become more and more common is that of little Asian girls with white families. In most cases, it was safe to assume that they were a part of the wave of Korean and Chinese adoptions by American families that have taken off over the last few years. It takes a really big heart to adopt any child, and bigger I would say to adopt outside of your ethnic group. But I always wondered how these little girls would face the identity issues of growing up white, but being obviously Asian. Today’s New York Times has an article, Adopted in China, that addresses some of these questions that’s a really interesting read. I printed it out and passed it along to my oldest daughter, who being black and Chinese must confront some of the same issues.

One thing I am convinced of is that on the whole, these adoptions are a good thing. For the girls this is easy to see, but also for the parents and for the U.S.. As the parents of girls who are obviously not white, living in areas where the level of diversity is low and attitudes may be, let’s say, less enlightened, they have to face the problems of race in America head on. Being a parent is one of life’s most transforming experiences and there is no one you will fight for harder than your own kids. For these families in the suburbs, race is no longer something they left behind in the city, it’s the real thing. And I have no doubt that these families are going to be a force to reckon with in the fight for justice and equality.

Another Monday has rolled around, so what better thing to kick off the new week than a little piece about PSP porn…ugh not exactly. I was looking at the web logs over the weekend and noticed a bunch of searches for PSP porn. Of course, people searching for porn or pr0n on the internet is nothing new, but it did get me thinking about movies on the PSP so I checked Sony’s list of movies available in the UMD format and from that put up a new site, PSPStuffnJunk. This may not satisfy people looking for PSP porn movies, but it might make it a little easier to find a few titles on the internet. This first list features movies that mostly feature what one might call “babes in action”. It really isn’t finished yet, and later I’ll add some other genres. Enjoy! Here’s that link again, PSPStuffnJunk.

BTW, this totally begs the question of whether UMD really has any future in light of the increasing size of memory sticks and greater availability of downloadable movies and television shows.

I saw someone’s dream today. It was a ’57 Chevy parked on the street. It was in terrible shape with faded paint, rust, and a shattered windshield. I wondered why anyone would keep it around? It wasn’t abandoned because I think I’ve seen it parked in other places from time to time. So I concluded that someone still held out the hope of restoring it. That rusting hulk was probably a placeholder for someone’s dream. I wonder what rusting hulks are placeholders for my dreams.

Just another morning full of thoughts as I approached work today, suddenly brightened up by the sight of an attractive black woman with nice legs and really high spikes. As I got closer, I also noticed that she was very short and began to wonder if shorter women tended to wear higher spiked heels. Since I don’t generally like to get too close to people, I adjusted my course to give her plenty of room. A good thing too, because she started wobbling back and forth right into my path. My first guess was that she was either drunk or high, then I noticed the cell phone seemingly glued to the right side of her head. She was so engaged in conversation that I’m not really sure she even saw me there as we nearly collided, but it did give me a chance to see that she had a pretty face as well! 🙂

So I guess today’s lesson is, high spikes and cell phones don’t mix!

Sickdays always sneak up on me in the morning. I woke up from a strange dream that involved an unannounced tour of Whitney Houston’s and Bobby Brown’s house feeling totally out of it. Most of the time, I just need another half day of sleep to get over these things, but I really hate the feeling of weakness and helplessness. Days off are nice, but sickdays generally are teh suck. Strangely, I had the feeling at the end that it could all be summed up in a bowl of ramen. What that means in words, I haven’t the faintest clue.

After a weekend’s dusting of cold wet March snow, according to the prevailing hemlines, spring is coming back to Chicago. The first sign was a short-skirted, high-healed woman who was nearly hit by traffic crossing Congress. She was a bit too into her coffee and not enough into the traffic signals. Well, at least it gave me a legitimate reason to honk my horn.

The second sign came, after I dropped my wife off, in the form of a tall blonde woman with a black skirt that went right up to her butt. Nothing casual or accidental about that. The forecast is for warming temperatures the rest of the week, but I can see that the hemlines are already rising. w00T! Spring is coming! I should find something short for WillowBrow. 😉

Just a quick shout out to my lovely wife Grace who has written on Celebrating Diversity at Home on the Celebrate! Chicago Christian Woman webzine. Yes, we really do have a bit of a mini United Nations at home and we all drink water together! You go grrrrrrl!!!!

Silly Rabbit! Blogging’s not for a living! Cnet is reporting that full-time blogger Jason Kottke has given up his attempt to make a living blogging. Full-time and blog simply do not go together. Blogging is more often than not that thing that goes on at work while you’re supposed to be, well, working! Nevertheless, as an empiricist by training and nature, I admire the guy for trying.

As for me, I blog purely for the fun of it, and if it leads to world domination, well so be it.