Tecki to US Auto Industry: Drop Dead!

Whoa, whoa whoa. Don't get the wrong idea. I want to help out the autoworkers. Notice, I did not say "Detroit," just the auto industry.

I'm all for the federal government spending billions of dollars on stuff. After all, I'm a democrat. But throwing good money at three companies that have spent the last decade building cars and trucks no one wants? Eh.

Only the executives at GM, Ford and Chrysler couldn't see this coming. (Gas prices are low again! It's a golden age for SUVs!)

No. I have a better idea. Let the automakers go bankrupt. If they can get out of it on their own, great. They'll be all the stronger for it. That's how capitalism works. Otherwise, we have Toyota, Honda and BMW already building cars right here in the USA.

Use that $25 billion to put the laid off autoworkers back to work rebuilding Detroit. God knows that city needs it. Put them to work digging tunnels for a high-speed subway system, rebuilding city schools, repaving the streets and highways, creating new parks, building wind farms and solar power plants. Spend that money to tear down, renovate or replace all the rundown, abandoned buildings that scar much of Detroit. Hire thousands of the unemployed autoworkers to be new police officers, firefighters, teachers, nurses and EMTs.

As for all those soon-to-be empty factories: Have a firesale and let the foreign automakers -- you know, the ones who are actually making money -- buy them up dirt cheap on the condition that they reopen and put some American autoworkers back on the line. They won't need as many workers as before, of course, but those folks will already be taken care of.

That's how you spread the wealth.

Thanks for ruining autumn, Sarah Palin

So, am I really the only one who wasn't impressed by Sarah Palin last night? I know the VP candidate's traditional role is to attack the opposition, but she -- and the other speakers -- stirred up a fine steaming bowl of anger and hate.

I know I'm biased, but the message from the democratic convention was that we can work together to make this a better country, that all of us matter, that party isn't as important as country.

The message from the republicans was: RAAAAARRRHHHH!!!!!

And what was all that shit about how community organizers don't do anything? That's the problem with Republicans. They tell you government can't do anything, but when you try to help yourself, they call you a loser.

If being the governor of a state with 670,000 people for almost two years makes her qualified to be president (because, seriously, John McCain is not long for this world), then might I suggest a better running mate for McCain?

Pat McCrory has been mayor of Charlotte for the past 13 years. Charlotte has about as many people as the entire state of Alaska, so if Sarah Palin is qualified to be president, Pat McCrory could be emperor. He's a Republican with quite a bit of support from Democrats, and North Carolina is going to be close this year ...think about it, John. Please, for the love of god. There's still time.

But seriously, I'm signing up to get out the vote in a nearby swing state. According to the Obama Web site, I need to go to Michigan. Gee, I can cross another state off my list of places to visit, and save the world at the same time!

It won't be long before it starts snowing and we're stuck inside until May. All I wanted to do this fall is walk my dog, play bean bag toss, watch the Red Sox barely scrape into the Playoffs and drink some dark, dark beer.

I hate living in interesting times.

More bike-riding assholes in Chicago

I was crossing Lincoln at Paulina and Roscoe this afternoon when the woman walking in front of me was almost run over by a bike rider who decided to run the red light. If she had started walking one second sooner, he would have hit her.

I guess that whole sting operation when the cops were "clamping down" on bikers who don't follw the rules didn't pan out.

What the hell is a bank for, then?

Remember when you were a kid and you'd count up all those coins and place them carefully into those little paper rolls? Then you'd take them to the bank, and the smiling teller would take them and hand you real dollar bills?

Remember that?

I do, which is why I cleaned out our two coin mugs, the bowl by the front door and the car, counted out all those stinky coins, rolled them up and lugged the heavy sticks of money in my already heavy bag down to the Loop this morning. I figured it would be easier to just go during lunch than try to run down to the one in our neighborhood after work. Sure the line would be long at lunchtime, but it would be a piece of cake.

But it turns out that Bank of America, or at least the branches in the Loop, don't take coin rolls anymore. The teller looked at the rolls as if I had handed her an astrolabe or a scroll of parchment. After consulting with a guy who looked only slightly older than her, she explained, "We don't have the machine."

What machine? There wasn't a machine when I was 10 years old! This used to be a LaSalle branch, and apparently, Bank of America "took" their machine away. Will there be another machine? Who knows. But there isn't a branch in the entire Loop that can take a roll of coins and turn it into cash. Her solution: "You could take them to a TCF bank."

Yeah, but, uh ... I don't have an account with TCF! I have an account with BofA, the biggest bank in the world, as far as the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce is concerned, and you're telling me I can't get money in exchange for ... money!?

Honestly, most of our money is with a certain Internet bank. the only reason we even have this piddling account with a bricks-and-mortar bank is for exactly this kind of service. I can't just hand my laptop a handfull of coins and expect a 20 dollar bill in return. Apparently, I can't get that from a Bank of America teller either.

Happy Labor Day

In the South, Labor Day, like most holidays, is a day for professionals, bankers and government workers to cook out and go to the beach. Other people have to work, as is their lot in life.

But apparently not here in the unionized North. All the dry cleaners are closed (Ok, so we should have taken that stuff in last week, but K has places to be!), and most of the restaurants -- at least in our neighborhood.

I tried to take Kayla to the beach to revel in the sand and sunshine, but the traffic was so terrible that we had to turn back. I caught a glimpse of the lake off in the distance, just over the snaking lines of cars stuck in the road looking for a parking space.

People who drive Jeep Wranglers tend to be assholes, or so I've noticed. Maybe you too? Chicago's Finest had blocked off the main entrance to Montrose Beach and we're directing traffic onto Lakeshore toward another entrance. The Wrangler driver in front of me tried to argue with the cops, wasting a lot of time for the rest of us to get stuck in another line. The thing is, this the the Chicago PD. Wearing full uniforms and, for some reason, bulletproof vests (is the beach that dangerous?) in 90 degree weather. If they tell you to turn left, you turn left.

Kayla and I got stuck trying to find a space. Cars crawled along in all directions except out. People and bikers weaved their way between the cars. And there was no parking in sight. A few hearty folks apparently had parked somewhere far outside the park, becuase plenty of people walked in with all of their beach stuff from the other side of Lakeshore. It was kind of like going to Myrtle Beach on Memorial Day weekend, except not as well organized.

We turned around.

Where did all these people come from? Apparently, all the restaurants we tried to eat at this evening. I guess everyone takes the day off and goes straight to the beaches. We ended up eating what were supposed to veggie burgers, but what were really veggie sloppy joes at Orange. I think their brunch is ok, but there's a reason why they're never busy for dinner. If only they had called it a day too. Next year, pizza on the porch.

Ups and downs on the CTA, and the broader implications

Well, technically I left work 30 minutes early on Monday, but the commuting time was still almost exactly like on Friday, so there's at least a possibility that things have actually improved.

But then I got on the platform at Quincy today and saw a huge crowd on my side of the tracks. Never a good sign. A purple line train crawled in as I was making my way through the crowd to the end of the platform, and a lot of anxious brown line riders kept standing on their toes to see what was coming next.

Oddly enough, the brown line train arrived at more or less the same time it usually does, so I wasn't sure if the crowd was due to a delay or if there was a ballgame. Turns out, it was the delay.

We barely made it away from Quincy before we stopped again, watching the train in front of us stuck in the station ahead. Then again. And again. And again, until we finally made our way, slowly, haltingly around the Loop. Every few minutes our driver would announce his apologies, saying there was a problem at Tower 18 -- there is always a problem at Tower 18, the infamous junction at Lake and Wells that caused this commuter to be late for work more than a few time during the winter.

When we got to Clark & Lake, I could see the dozens of CTA workers directing traffic at the intersection and, for all I know, physically moving the switches themselves. As we grinded around the corner toward Merchandise Mart, I couldn't help but wonder if the transit workers in Beijing or Madrid have to get out and move switches by hand and direct train traffic themselves.

I felt the same way I do when I see crumbling concrete on the freeway, or a burst pipe flooding a major street. Not just here in Chicago, but in a lot of cities lately. As everything we built in the last 100 years or so falls quietly apart, is anyone else asking when we're going to start fixing it?

Bizarro CTA world where the trains run on time?

Consider this. A man leaves his job on a Friday afternoon at the same time he usually does, right down to the minute. He doesn't run to the train or walk any faster than he normally would. The train arrives at the station at its usual time, and he gets on.

By the time he gets home, he has a sudden realization. His trip, somehow, some way, took 10 minutes less than usual.

Not five or six. 10.

Could it be a mysterious reverse bermuda triangle has developed in the Loop, in which trains are not lost, but somehow sped through the bottlenecks? Was it just dumb luck? Or could it be, that after nearly a year of track work, construction and delays, the CTA has finally, bit by bit, begun to actually show some results?

We'll see Monday whether this is a permanent change or just a one-time mystery.

Best place to buy bean bag game (or, ahem, "cornhole") in Chicago?

Where do you chicagoans get all these wonderful toys?

K and I were smitten last summer when we saw all the folks out on their sidewalks playing this bean bag game with the unfortunate moniker. People in Charlotte don't do much except go to the mall, Baltimoreans are too mean to want to have fun -- the only place we've lived that had its own local sport was Asheville, but hackeysack was never really my thing.

But cornhole! What fun! (not that kind of fun, you east coasters).

Everyone in Chicago seems to have a set or a friend that does, but where the hell do you buy one -- or, more precisely, one that won't set you back $2,000 pesos. (Using pesos to price things makes things seem cheaper when you convert back to dollars, another nifty trick to survive the coming depression!)

If, and this is a big if, there are any people in Chicago who actually read this stupid blog of mine, do you have any suggestions?

Dunkin Donuts is a bunch of wussies

What the hell is this nonsense about Dunkin Donuts caving in to Michelle Malkin and her band of pitchfork-wielding right-wingers? Not that I love Rachel Ray and her hyperactive TV personality, but who in their right minds would actually believe:

1: That Rachel Ray supports terrorism
2: That a scarf is anything more than a fashion statement
3: That anyone takes Michelle Malkin seriously

Actually, that last one turned out to be true. What goes on in her warped little mind that makes her see a frickin' Dunks commercial and automatically think "Palestinian Sympathizer!" No one thinks like that. No one. And the fact she managed to get away with publicly accusing an innocent person of supporting terrorism and caused a major company to run away with their tails between their legs is just frightening.

What is Dunkin Donuts's response to all of this?

Thank you for sharing your comments. We always appreciate hearing from our customers. As of this past weekend, we are no longer using the online ad featuring Rachael Ray wearing a black-and-white silk scarf with a paisley design. Our decision was based solely on the fact that the possibility of misperception detracted from the intent of the ad, which was to promote iced coffee -- nothing more, nothing less.At Dunkin' Donuts, we value all our customers and are committed to making your experiences with us memorable and pleasant. Thank you, again, for making us aware of your concerns.

That says it right there: "a black-and-white silk scarf with a paisley design."

It's just a scarf. Just a scarf. Just. A. Scarf. Dunkin Donuts did nothing wrong. Rachel Ray did nothing wrong. Her stylist did nothing wrong. There was nothing wrong with the ad whatsoever. There was nothing to misperceive.

If Michelle Malkin and her ilk have such a fit over a scarf, we'd better make sure that nobody tells them that the Arabs invented coffee. The CEO of Dunkin will probably sacrifice his first born son to appease these jackasses.

Dunkin Donuts was afraid of a boycott for running the ad? We should boycott them for taking it down.

No Train

Today is the first workday without Paulina. The CTA has closed down our train station for a year to do rennovations that should have been done years ago. But, better late than never.

To put a metaphoric spin on things, it rained all day as we each walked farther to get to Addison. The CTA had plenty of workers out on the corners around Paulina to remind us all that the station was closed, in case the signs on the trains, the flyers they've been handing out all month and the big green fence with "Closed" signs all over it weren't enough. They even had the customer service reps from Addison out on the street -- or at least, that must be why nobody was at Addison to help K out when her U-Pass stopped working.

Unfortunately, no one told the Red Eye guy, so no celebrity gossip and quick local news bites while we all waited for the trains at Addison ... and waited to get through the new southbound bottleneck at Belmont and Fullerton.

The Addison station gives a glimpse into the clean, well-lit and spacious station we can look forward to in a year. And now we can watch as they slowly tear down and rebuild Paulina -- since we get to pass by it each day.

Mine eyes have seen the grime

last month I finally got contacts. This may seem rather vain and materialistic for me, but there is a greater purpose. We've read a lot about how people who want Lasik surgery should try out contacts first to see if you get dry eyes or other discomfort. You can always take out a contact, but surgery is forever.

This whole experiment almost ended as soon as it began. I crammed my left contact up under my eyelid somehow on the first day, then suffered through four days of headaches and blurry focus at work from all the reading I have to do there, finally taking out the contacts in the men's room at work on Friday. I went back to the eye doctor, and she gave me a different brand of contact, and suddenly, everything came together. I'm starting to wonder if maybe she made a mistake and just didn't want to say anything.

Unlike the last pair, it almost feels like I'm not wearing contacts. So now I can go about my day without many of the inconveniences of los lentes, but also without the blissful ignorance. For instance, do you know just how gross the shower stalls are in the men's locker room at the Lake View YMCA? Maybe you already knew, since you don't wear glasses, but I only just found out. At least we each get our own stall ...

But the good seems to outweigh the bad, so far. There's nothing to fog up when I pull my scarf over my nose in the cold, and rain and snow don't blind me when I walk to the train. I want to go to Six Flags now so I can ride a roller coaster without putting a death grip on my glasses.

Time Flies.

Remember when I used to update this blog pretty much every day? Yeah, that was back when I had a job where I mostly sat around at a computer all day waiting for something to happen. Those were the days. I had another job like that in January, but it only lasted a week. They figured out that it was cheaper to not pay me than to pay me to sit there surfing the web, waiting for them to give me something to do. At least I was all over that Heath Ledger thing when the news broke.

Anyway, back to work again, this time with no time for web surfing. I don't know how I'm going to keep up with this blog, let alone the news, online shopping or music downloads. But, working beats not having money, and being the only income-earner for the first time ever makes that more important now.

It's some what sobering to think of yourself as the breadwinner. Everything depends on you, and suddenly you don't mind so much when the boss comes up to your cubicle and, in that "I'm really trying to be nice, but seriously, you'd better" kind of way, asks if you can work late again tonight.

But, I like money. I only wish I'd realized this back in college. Maybe then I wouldn't have wasted my time wandering around the UNC Charlotte English department and taking tons of useless electives. I mean, History of Jazz was good fun, and I did got to Chapel Hill for the first time (before that mega mall in Durham killed Henderson St.), but has my knowledge of the roots of modern jazz helped me pay the bills, let alone buy an iPhone?

Shit, this post is already longer than all those "how to blog" articles tell you. And I haven't kept the subject simple and concise. What keywords brought you to this post? Charlotte? Money? Work? Phaw. I guess I'll never make a living at this.

Fine Chicago Traditions

We woke up early today, by which I mean we actually got up when the alarm went off instead of hitting snooze for an hour. What's the big deal?

Super Fat Tuesday! Mardi Gras Superr!

We slogged through the ice and oceans of cold water on the Chicago streets to reach our polling place in the library, where we were promptly ignored until K tried to approach what turned out to be the wrong part of the table. After getting yelled at by a guy who had nothing better to do on a workday than put on a sweater and sit behind a folding table, we registered ourselves.

In the world's most powerful democracy, we uncapped our markers and filled in the little arrows for our candidates. We then inserted our paper ballots into the paper shredder manned by a bored teenager trying to beef up his college applications with "volunteer experience."

Hours later, I sat in the Law School atrium watching election returns on a big screen, eating King Cake and drinking Corona while listening to Kanye West on my iPod and reading in the Atlantic about how the current administration has left one huge mess for whoever survives tonight and makes it alive into November.

Now we're home, sobering up and full of sugar, watching CNN en Espanol pontificate on the elections and listening to a very confused Latina trying to translate Mike Huckabee's folksy sayings into Spanish.

Truly a wonderful day, well worth waking up on time for.

PolarTecki

I know most of the posts lately, when I bother to post at all, have been about the weather in Chicago. Well, it's frickin cold here. What can I say? Depending on which Web site you trust, it is somewhere between 3 and 4 degrees here. The last time it was this cold in North Carolina was when mastodons roamed the Piedmont.

So what do you do when it's this cold during the day? You train the dog to use the toilet and lock yourself inside. If your dog refuses to cooperate, you bundle up and take her outside long enough to do her business, pick up the frostbitten fingers that broke off while you scooped up her you-know-what and get back inside.

We need to rethink our winter gear. We've already ordered some giant tube things that are supposed to keep our heads and necks warm, and I'm looking into some new gloves that might actually keep out the wind and cold, at least a little. Flannel-lined jeans sound like a good idea, but they look so goofy, I'm just not sure. Another day like this might soften my resolve.

Curb your Enthusiasm

Why is it that a small city like Concord, NC has a simple, easy-to-use recycling program accessible to just about every resident, but a big, sophisticated city like Chicago still expects me to toss my recycling in with the trash and hope God sorts it all out?

Spending a week in Corncob didn't just inspire me to muse about sidewalks. I also took out the recycling, in a pair of plastic tubs -- one blue, the other green. Compare that to my frustrating trips to the recycling center: the 7 Eleven which has graciously allowed the local recycling coalition to park three big rusting containers in their parking lot.

Since moving here, we have tried to continue to do the right thing, separating our trash from our plastic, glass, metal and paper. And we have crammed these things into the big containers, which are nearly always overflowing, even though we now also must separate our different types of paper into different containers.

Daley constantly touts Chicago's green credentials. We've got a green roof on top of City Hall, don't you know. Of course, you aren't allowed to go up there. But there are other green roofs in the city, too. And we just hosted a big green building conference.

All fine and good, but the mayor of Concord never claims to have a green city or even care that much about the environment, and they still have a better recycling program. If you don't live in one of the handful of wards with blue can recycling, you can either toss your recycling into blue bags that might, maybe, possibly be sorted out from the trash at a city facility -- or drive your newspapers, bottles and cans to the 7 Eleven where there's never enough room for it all.

Chicago produces plenty more garbage than Concord and ought to be better prepared to handle it all. No one here should be allowed to call Southerners hicks as long as places like Concord are more progressive on recycling.