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I bought locally grown Cippolini onions from Green Grocer on Grand Avenue, and caramelized them.
I’ve been told this blog lacks images - and it does!
Woeful but true! Here is a small attempt to rectify the situation.

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Now… I know post offices are BAD NEWS. In general, all around the world, they are havens of bureaucratic bungles and profoundly inefficient processes. They are, almost always THE PITS. And in Chicago, you get to multiply that by 10. THE PITS x 10. It’s actually pretty hilarious how bad they are. It’s like I’m [...]

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THE ECONOMIC CRISIS & YOU
Panel Discussion Tues Oct 28 6:30  pm
SAIC Columbus Bldg Auditorium
sponsored by the Student Activists and F Newsmagazine
Panelists Include:
Duke Reiter (SAIC President)
Sarah Peters (Prof. of Liberal Arts)
Robyn Coffey (BFA Student & Editor of F Newsmagazine)
Lia Rousset and Amber Ginsburg (MFA Students & collaborators in the
siteWARE project “Urbs in Horto”)
Nina Pagano, BFA Student
Join [...]

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Professor Michael Golec
“Don’t let me drive home, I get intoxicated by my own words … I crack myself up. Stay tuned for my blog: ‘Odd Linguistic Formations.’ Ha … that’s another good band name.”
Professor David Getsy
“We all have a tendency to encrust our sentences with the barnacles of everything that we’ve read.”

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If library-related anythings make your eyes close, click away, far away. Otherwise, if databases and inter-library loans get you all excited, here is my gripe for the day: Why is the Flaxman Library’s iShare server lways interminably slow, to the point of “timing-out” every 3rd time I try to order a book or renew my [...]

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There have been little paper flyers stuck up around Logan Square lately - a method of neighborhood activism that is quite interesting in it’s low-tech nature and subtlety (and probable lack of impact). I’m interested in these little covert neighborhood actions. This one is sponsored by Neighbors for Responsible Development, a group that is behind [...]

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This blog is appropriately titled This Photo Sucks, and it discusses all those bad photos you can find on the Internet. It might be a short, undeveloped little blog, but the idea has so much potential. I’m loving it.

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SAIC Free Radio Station Manager, Pippa Possible, has a weekly DJ gig.
It’s at the weirdest time, a Wednesday night, at The Continental on Chicago and California, from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m., but I reckon Wednesday night is just that weird that it might make for a great night out. I mean, Wednesday is like [...]

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Well, the Fall semester has commenced, and the best way to describe the looks on everyone’s faces is … it looks like everyone has been thwacked hard in the face with a soggy, old phone book. The best thing to do now is to get used to that crazy - i-have-a-million-things-to-do feeling, to assimilate this [...]

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On August 24 I fell off my bike, as one does when they are a novice at these sorts of things…
I tore out a rather large chunk of skin from my hand.
Here is a photo from August 25. Feral.
I then used these crazy sticky skin healing bandage things, apparently they’re called “Johnson & Johnson First [...]

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Here is a website that has been set up to help coordinate relief efforts for Gulf Coast residents affected by Hurricane Gustav.
Also, I just received this update from the non-profit group Common Ground about current conditions:
9/1 - 2:00 pm CST
Despite water sloshing over the west side of the Industrial Canal wall, the Corps of [...]

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On August 5 we ran a short post with links related to the late Brendan Scanlon (aka Solve), Chicago street artist who was murdered on June 14, 2008. I mentioned in the post that the shrine to Solve — on the side of a building at Grand Avenue at Milwaukee Avenue — had been torn [...]

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The United States might be staring down the seasonal gauntlet of a mighty freezing winter for 2008-2009, but it’s not TECHNICALLY the Farmers’ fault.
Or is it?
After all, there’s nothing wrong with shooting the messenger.
The Farmers’ Almanac has predicted a particularly chilly one coming right around the corner:
LEWISTON, Maine - People worried about the high cost [...]

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Two parents overheard on the 12th floor of the Sullivan Center:
Father: “…. It’s scary!”
Mother: “Well, Tom, at some point we just have to realize - they’re people too.

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Oh how the mighty have fallen.
After climbing up on my moral-highground-environmentalist-dead-keen-recycler-pedestal to write about recycling in Chicago (see one of my recycling articles here) and about the changes to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s recycling contractor (see that article here) … I now find myself committing a cardinal sin of anti-recycling badness.
You [...]

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Sigh. I just saw Michael Phelps break another World Record. It’s a bit like putting some toast in the toaster and KNOWING it will come out toasty. Except this piece of toast goes really fast and has funny ears.
But it got me thinking…
If every year - or every four years - a bunch of World [...]

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Photograph taken by John Deal, for Strange Maps http://strangemaps.wordpress.com

One of my all-time favorite blogs, Strange Maps, has recently run a post about TV set news background maps-of-the-world, and how truly awful they can be. I’m so enamored by this blog, and by this particularly delightful post, that I am doing the worst thing a blogger [...]

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A little story to remind us that public transport sucks in other cities too, not just in Chicago…
SYDNEY — 6 June. That was a Tuesday. Usually the moments set aside for paper correspondance happen on trains, but this time, it’s far too crowded to write. I will write this later, at breakfast on Wednesday, sitting [...]

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Strange times this lunchtime. I was waiting in line at Under 55 (that’s the underground food hall of 55 E. Monroe St, Chicago - which is a regular haunt for downtown 9 to 5-ers in the Loop, and occasionally an ill-fitting assortment of SAIC students buying sushi… ) in any case, I was waiting [...]

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Today the Chicago Tribune ran a story about how the Illinois General Assembly is going to consider a bill (HB 4520) that would mean that Illinois residents can be given a $25 fine for using a cell phone (texting or calling) while crossing a street. According to Rep Ken Dunkin, “it’s becoming more and more [...]

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A friend of mine who knows I am an urban-density uber-nerd recommended I check out this site: Walkscore.com, where you can type in a U.S. address and it will tell you how “walkable” that area is. I love this stuff. Obviously it’s not a perfect science, and if you’ve lived in an area long enough [...]

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Corner of Loomis and Lake, Chicago, July 2008.
I just thought it was a random cute sign, but of course, it’s associated with a restaurant/nightlife/venue review website. (A particularly badly designed one too.. ) Restaurant review websites are something of a plague on the internet, they’re almost up there with porn and Viagra advertising. Which is [...]

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Killer kangaroo attacks woman

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Jesse finds a dead cat and it makes her feel very important

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This is the only traffic report this blog will ever post, I promise.
I just saw a huge blue container fly off the back of a truck, onto the Kennedy Expressway, blocking 4 lanes of traffic.
This occurred about 30 minutes ago on the Kennedy Expressway Eastbound, under the Hubbard St bridge.

Unfortunately I didn’t have my camera [...]

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Portage Park Residents Rally for Pedestrians’ Rights
What: Portage Park residents will rally for pedestrians’ rights as part of a citywide effort to educate drivers on the rules of the road and pedestrian safety. Residents will carry “Stop for Pedestrians” signs, cross the street in a safe and organized fashion, and distribute information to drivers [...]

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I dug this out from the rubble of 2006 and thought I’d give it an airing:
Voiceworks lead [sic.] me to Express Media; and Express Media lead [sic.] me to feel like the star of an 80s British television show with fantastically bad special effects. - Tom Doig
I was positively mortified – cranky-granny-style – to discover [...]

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Who are these beeps for? What is the purpose of it? Do the beeps mean, “I have a cock, isn’t that amazing?” It’s about as amazing as the fact that I’m a person walking down the street, which, lets face it, is pretty extraordinary.

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I’ve vacationed, quit work, married rich, done sleeping pills, tried meditation, took up smoking, quit smoking, got religion, did feng shui, you name it.

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I like my cities dense and motley, like a dense, gooey pudding in an eight inch-wide dish, not rolled flat like a 17 inch pizza. I want layers of zoning, with multiple ingredients and spices, and cheap enough permits so that small business owners can sell cake and wine and flowers without breaking the law, or having to pay hideous amounts to council.

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