Things I Saw and Didn't See on the Train in Chicago

Note: Later on the week (hopefully) I will explain the who, what, when, where, why, and how of our recent trip to Chicago. For now enjoy these tidbits from my travels around the city and on the CTA Train aka the Subway: a foreign form of transportation this Southern California girl has never used before having grown up in a car on a freeway.

Things I saw on the Subway:

A twenty-something year old girl in hunched in the corner of the train, dressed like a hipster, and swigging out of a bottle wrapped in a paper bag. Classy.

9,000 people jovially crammed into the train having just seen Bruce Springsteen perform at Wrigley Field.

A woman carrying a black, neon pink, yellow, and lime green serape.

Lots of women in ankle boots, low-slung messenger bags, and expertly-draped sweaters.

Girls in ballet flats, carrying shopping bags from mall brand stores, and looking fashionably despondent.

A dude with the same model of phone as me and I have dinosaur phone with minimum features so I was amused.

A runner who had participated in the Chicago Half Marathon and 5K run on Sunday.

A dude with a VHS tape from a branch of the Chicago Public Library.

People taking the train from the airport looking tired and annoyed at their fellow passengers.

A passenger reading a Haruki Murakami novel.

Things I didn't see on the Subway because I saw them somewhere else:

A bicyclist hit the back of a taxi that had stopped suddenly.

A frustrated motorist pick a fight with a limo driver who was stopped at the curb waiting for his fare: a group of frat-looking boys crossing the street just as the verbal altercation was wrapping up.

Two hitchhikers abusing their dog as they walked through downtown. They were amused that people were side-stepping widely around them. One of them laughed and said something about fear and all of us around getting quiet. I wanted to take their dog he was the only scared creature within a five foot radius.

Residents letting their young children dawdle behind them on busy downtown streets.

A person of indeterminate gender showering or dressing behind a frosted glass window in a third story apartment next to a bar we briefly visited. I wanted to ask the bartender if that person did that regularly. I would have liked to whisper to David what I was seeing but I didn't. Had I done that the whole table of boys I was with would have noticed I was being secretive. They would have erupted into a chorus of, "Wait, what!? Where?! Nooo. You're imagining things!" as they all would scramble out of their chairs to gawk at what I was talking about.

*This list will be updated as observations come back to me.

"Get Laid not Greyed!"

Chad and Alan ask for their balls back with help from Erika.

Last night I attended a book burning.

Now the book burning I went to was not initiated by the government. No one there was forced to burn their books it was all voluntary. It was held at a local bar and hosted by the trio from an afternoon radio show called The Alan Cox Show on WMMS. The same show that brought us Cleveland Ballin.'

We watched a handful of copies of the book 50 Shades of Grey burn in a metal trough. Basically, they burned nothing of value last night because the book, which is being called "mommyporn," is still being mass-produced. There is nothing rare about 50 Shades of Grey.

This was a publicity stunt. Some people burned their copies because the book is poorly written and some like Chad Zumock wanted to burn it for all the men in the world who have suffered because their wives and girlfriends are enthralled by E.L. James' stunted dialogue and fantasy world.  Chad yelled: "Pay attention to your man!" as he arranged the books to be destroyed. Alan offered the books as a sacrifice to "no one in particular." I feel so oppressed.


As far as book burnings go this one was tame based on what I know from history. There was no bonfire, they soaked the books in tikki torch oil, and they forgot to bring a lighter so they had to borrow a few from the crowd. We were not allowed to approach the trough instead we were instructed to stand behind a fence and watch the slow moving spectacle.

So you can unclench your pearls and/or your butt cheeks and put down your weapons. Spare me the "censorship and oppression are wrong" and "books are sacred" arguments. I don't care to hear them because in America we live pretty freely when compared to people in other countries.  We are so blessed that last night at the book burning they destroyed a Nook.

For those of you who are familiar with my previous occupations watching a Nook get manhandled and then tossed into a fire (sadly I saw no lithium-ion battery explode) is apt because I left BN right before the Nook took over the company.  My job at a bookstore and a library for four years in tandem is also what makes your censorship argument null to me.

I do not believe in censoring literature which is why I would never walk into a bookstore or library and demand that books be removed from the shelf. Did I deal with my share of patrons and customers who did that? Why I sure did! At the bookstore we placated them with dulcet tones and promises to pass their problem along to corporate. At the library we apologized genuinely and gently directed them to a suitable book. Both institutions were in the business of circulating books: one for profit and the other to serve the public. 

It seems book burnings, like petitions and complaining, are a poor form of protest. Consider the way some readers enjoy their books: on e-readers. We could burn every single hard copy of 50 Shades of Grey and every other trashy book on the face of the planet and as long as it's sold as an e-book it will survive.

There are always going to be books like 50 Shades of Grey, Twilight,  The Da Vinci Code and there are always going to be people to make fun and maybe burn a few if we want.  You can't stop the bum rush so just sit back have a beer, chat with fellow bar patrons, and watch the flames dance. The authors of such books are laughing all the way to the bank anyway.

Yard Work of the Devil

Cut that lawn! Cut that lawn!

This past Sunday David and I had to do yard work because yard work is part of being a homeowner and living the dream- or my nightmare.

We purchased a home with a considerable amount of landscaping that we, for some reason, thought we could handle. It has the usual back and front yard to mow and let’s see... one hundred million shrub type plants that need trimming. At this rate we should expect to never stop trying to work our scrap of land into something presentable for the next 60+ years.

The crown jewels of our front yard are three giant deciduous trees (oak or maple?) that shed their leaves like a toddler sheds clothes after they have pulled open every drawer in the house and donned every single item they find. These trees are so plentiful we still have leaves caught under our one hundred million shrubs. Leaves I am too lazy to rake out even though I have tried and we are probably supporting several dangerous nests of ticks.

To better understand my predicament let's break down the work by season:

Spring-Summer: If it has been a harsh winter you will have to mow your lawn almost twice a week because the grass grows that fast here due to all of that water sitting on it for months. You will clean up stray leaves left over from the fall, put more mulch down that will attract ants and throw artillery mold all over your house, weed until your hands bleed, deadhead flowers, attempt to eradicate dandelions, and get attacked by prehistoric sized bugs and swarms of insects you have never even heard of before now. Chipmunks and squirrels will glare at you from afar because your OCD need to clean nature is disturbing the caches of food they worked so hard to store. All of this is done in 90 degree heat with humidity and the threat of a thunderstorm or tornado at any second. Blast your AC until the polar ice caps melt. This is the season when you will spend hundreds of dollars on supplies and equipment.

"Oh, don't mind me. I'm just plotting your demise."

Fall: Begin to panic because all that work you did was for nothing. It’s fall now and things are starting to die or as David always gently explains: “Going dormant or sleeping for winter. Not dying.” To which I reply: “Whatever. Sad looking plants with no leaves are dead.” Leaves are falling like crazy. Now your neighbors are glaring at you because you don’t want to start raking until the last fucking leaf has gracefully swirled to the ground. Now all of those leaves are on their immaculately kept lawn exquisitely decorated for Halloween. Glare back at them while holding a beer and screaming football scores at the top of your lungs because it’s fall! The weather is crisp, we are in football country, and the leaves will still be there tomorrow- in your yard, not mine, your problem now, sucker!

Winter: Stop panicking and begin to weep because you tried to glue all those leaves back to their branches hoping to postpone winter. All that glorious sun and heat you’ve been enjoying will suddenly just give way to freezing or below freezing. Blast the heater until the polar ice caps melt.

Snow is not a novelty.

There will come a wind off the frozen lake so sharp you begin to tense even before you leave your doorway to run to your car. Did I say run? I’m sorry I meant slowly pick your way across the icy walkway so you don’t die from exposure when you slip and break a leg while hauling a shovel to dig your car out. At least this season there is no one glaring at you because they are all inside. staring out the window laughing and pointing because you are dumb enough to leave the house after a snowstorm for Chinese food.

Repeat this process until you are too old and move somewhere warm where there is no yard work or snow ever. I believe this is called Arizona or an assisted living facility or Heaven whichever happens first.

Hello! I'm Back and Greener!

Last November I took a job as a blogger of the science/clean tech/green/environmental sort. That’s why I fell off the face of blogspot. At times it feels like I have fallen off the face of the planet too.

The set of sites I browse on the Internet has changed in the last six months because of the blog (that really I am not qualified at all to write) that needs to be posted daily.

Before this freelance job I spent my time on TMZ and retail sites salivating over celebrities and shoes. Now I spend my days waiting for news of an oil spill off Brazil’s coast or Mitt Romney to give a speech that subtly digs at our President’s environmental policies. It’s engaging work and I try my best to be an engaging blogger but some days I feel in way over my head with the content. Hardly ever do I feel like an insightful writer. But my bosses are happy with my writing and they haven’t fired me after six months in their employ so there’s that at least.

The other difficult part about being an environmental blogger is the guilt I often feel about the way I live. Though I have always been a bit of a hippie and eco-conscious blogging about that stuff has pushed me to live a shade greener than I had been and has exacerbated my paranoid Type-A traits.

 A few weeks ago David took me to a local mall (I’m not that off the grid I still love stuff) and while there I bought him a soda in a glass bottle. After he finished he moved to throw it away and that’s when I screamed, passing in between him and the trashcan I practically threw myself on it like it was a grenade. I hissed: “You can’t throw that bottle in here! Are you crazy?! It has to be recycled! Do you know what they will do to me if they find out we didn’t recycle that bottle?”

Now there aren’t roaming bands of eco-bloggers checking up on their cyber colleagues to make sure we are using composting toilets, biking to our destinations, and shunning plastic. While we try to practice what we preach we are all still a bit hypocritical because we live in a world that makes certain demands of us: we drive cars, we use electricity etc.

But there are commenters on the Internet that will be more than happy to rake a green blogger over the coals for his or her actions. For example over at grist.org commenters are doing just that to Elisabeth Kwak-Hefferan.

She decided to take a No New Stuff challenge in May to see if she could do without certain items, find them secondhand, or repair what she already owned.

Today she posted about her struggle to purchase or not to purchase a can of hair mousse. Like any good hypocrite who shops at Sephora and wears mascara I scoffed, “Mousse?! What the eff is this girl doing buying mousse?” Then she wrote she already had a bottle of hair product at home but she wanted to replace it because she didn’t like it. She wrote a disclaimer to defend herself because she knew the shit was going to hit the fan when we found out her need for mousse.
  

“While it would certainly be admirable for me to give up all styling-related energy and resource use, I still live in a world where professional standards dictate I have to look halfway decent on occasion. For me, that requires a gob of styling product and a steady hand with a blow dryer.”

Did she just admit to using a hair dryer? Good Lord, what sort of unruly, awful hair does this woman have? How decent does she have to look that “wash and go” isn’t good enough?

 Well, now I was irate. I have never used a hair dryer not even in the winter to prevent my hair from freezing nor in the summer to keep my hair from looking like a poodle’s. I checked to make sure I was at Grist because I couldn’t believe she was a regular hair product user, owned a hair dryer, and former editor of Backpacker magazine.

However, I wasn’t nearly as angry as other Grist readers. They wrote about how Kwak-Hefferan had “epically failed” in the store on the last day of her challenge, called her mousse conundrum a “First World Problem.” Essentially calling her privileged and wasteful. Others applauded her for trying and pointed to the angry as the reason green living isn’t more popular because we are all judgmental, holier-than-thou, elitists.

As of right now Kwak-Hefferan hasn’t defended herself against the little mob and she may never. Though I expressed my distaste about the mousse to a friend over chat I’m not upset enough to tell Kwak-Hefferan she failed. In fact, I stared at my hands with chipped tangerine nails, chastened because we all have habits some of which are easier to break than others. Being responsible about the environment, about anything really, requires that you lead by example and are respectful of others because being self-righteous will accomplish nothing in the long-run.