Disgusting Freshity

For the most part I really abhor marketing aimed at creating a softer image of something that is repugnant. Take political campaigns, for example. Those campaigns give opportunities for some of the most blatant white-washing of tombs. Though, since there's usually an opponent to delve and criticize, the marketing fluff avails very little.

Other times, the images that marketing portray are not so easily debunked. If the white-washing is really subtle, or if the nastiness of the material that is being covered up is not so nasty, the marketing can be really effective. I still am not sure which is worse. The subtle spins cover up only small sins, but which can endure unchallenged for a long time. The blatant ones will fool those who want to be fooled, but the rest of us just laugh at them.

Sometimes the marketing spin on a company is so wrong that it's funny. Here are some pictures of a local steel forge works, on Cortland Ave. These are shots taken from the outside, looking in through some of the "garage doors."






All in all, these shots show some pretty clean and orderly areas given what goes on in a forge. Still, there's lots of dirt and grime. And I can only guess at how smoky the places get at times.

Well, forges need marketing fluff, too. Or, at least, that's the impression I get from this banner that is stretched across Cortland avenue for people to see right alongside these grubby images:


It.

Is.

So.

Wrong.

"That'll be five cents, please."

“There are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit” - 1 Corinthians 4:12

“There are varieties of approaches, but the same Bums” - 1 Theo 4:12

Last summer saw me hit one of the most stressful and angry times of my life. Ever. Those who know me well know that it takes A LOT to get me angry. Stress is a different story, but I am pretty good at not stressing over small stuff. So, suffice to say that I was in a pretty shitty place. It was so bad, in fact, that my well-honed ability to put a positive spin on (a.k.a. see the blessing in) any situation was utterly unable to spin me out of the feelings of anger and betrayal.

It was weird.

So it was during the first couple weeks of this “strangry” time - when my feelings were the most raw - that I was out with some friends having pizza at Piece, a pizzeria & brew pub near my apartment. I ended up leaving the group a little bit early because the strangriness welled up inside and I just needed to be by myself. I got up, excused myself, and started to walk home.

Walking along the sidewalk with my mind reeling and going over and over and over again the succession of events that got me to this place; thinking of ways to deal with it all; screwed up face; tears dripping their way across stubble and into my beard. I was looking straight ahead, but with my mind whirring at breakneck speed, I only saw as much as I needed to avoid walking into anything. I was in something of a state of shock, I think.

Five minutes into my walk and halfway home, as I walked along the sidewalk of Milwaukee Avenue looking like the sky had just fallen on me, I suddenly noticed a Homeless Guy walking towards me. As he neared, he held out his hand. I stopped and grabbed it.

“It’s OK, man. It’s not all THAT bad.” he says. He could clearly see my screwed-up face.

My mind was yanked out of its strangriness spiral for a moment. It hit me that this random stranger had just given a kind word where one was desperately needed. I felt a little bit better, and shook the hand that I’d just grabbed:

“Thanks, man. I know. I know. You’re right. Thank you!”

I realized that this guy was my angel. I mean, I really believe in angels: people, animals, things that God uses to help us out when we need it. This was just the right word at just the right time. I began to consider how wonderful it was to have a Random Stranger Homeless Guy bless me in this way. And that made me feel a little better, too.

I stopped shaking his hand, released it, and thanked him again as I walked past him, continuing my way home. I was only two steps beyond him when I heard him say,

“Hey man, have you got a dollar?”

[sigh]

Even Balaam’s ass was still an ass after God spoke through him.

Chasing Ambulances

I have had to hire an attorney recently.

I thought I'd have to hire a second attorney, for a completely separate reason from the first attorney.

I have an attorney back in Texas that I hired for business & real estate reasons.

I have had several phone conversations with at least three or four other attorneys.

Oh yeah, and I work for attorneys. But none of the attorneys above were ones that I work with.

How the hell did I ever get to THIS place???

So, when I saw a television ad for a Chicago law firm that specializes in personal injury law (read: ambulance chasers) I mostly ignored it. There are a lot of those commercials, after all.

I ignored it until the final moments when they put a slide up with their contact information. When I read it, I had the strangest mix of laughter and disgust that I think I've ever felt.

Laughter: The firm's name is "VanPopering Law Offices." I couldn't help but see an extra "o" in the name "VanPopering." And that was funny.

Disgust: Their phone number - 1-800-S.O.S-HURT

That phone number, for me, encapsulates the whole ambulance chasing world: Revving up the litigation world; Litigating everything under the sun; Preying on hurt people; Driving up medical costs; Feeding the disgusting lack of responsibility that people take for their own health.

Do these kinds of attorneys actually help people (besides themselves)?

So, to ameliorate my disgust, I tried to turn it to funny. I put their phone number digits into http://www.phonespell.org and found some better ways to spell out that number:

1. 800-POP-GURU
2. 800-POP-GUST
3. 800-SO-PITS-8
4. 800-SO-PIUS-8

F*cking ambulance chasers . . .

In Which the Light Saber Ends the Trilogy Before It Begins

Luke Skywalker comes back to consciousness in Ben Kenobi’s cave somewhere out in the desert of Tatooine. He’d just gotten the crap knocked out of him by a Sand Person while out looking for that ornery ‘droid, R2D2. Ben tended to the unconscious Luke until he woke up, and then began to give him a wee history lesson about the old Jedi order, Luke’s father, Ben’s relationship to him, and so on.

Familiar scene. We’ve all seen it. But while watching it, again, a couple years ago a thought came to me.

Ben hands Anakin Skywalker’s old light saber to Luke. It’s clear that Ben thought Luke had never seen one before (or, at least, that the audience had never seen one - sometimes exposition for the sake of the audience really annoys me). He pronounced “Light Saber” with such enunciation as to send a happy chill up the spine and down again of your high school drama teacher. With the Jedi all but gone, the rubes on Tatooine certainly hadn’t seen one in decades, if ever. Blasters were all the rage, after all.

There’s no warning to Luke to be careful. No mention of how it works or what it does. Does Luke have any clue? The scene sets it up as if he doesn’t. So, what happens next? While Ben is talking, Luke hits the “on” button, and out pops the It-Can-Fuck-Up-Anything light blade. Luke swishes the thing around in front of him with a “whooooaaaa” look on his face.

Now, in my mind, for that scene to be believable, it would need to go something like this:

BEN: This was your father's LighT SabER, a weapon from a more civilized . . .

[Sound effect of light saber being energized]

LUKE: HOLY-MUTHERFUCKIN-SHIT-WHAT-THE-HELL!?!?!?

[He drops it.]

BEN: Dammit kid! Did I TELL you to turn it the FUCK on??? That thing will sever a storm trooper’s armor-shielded Johnson without thinking twice about it! Pick that up, and don’t touch the ON switch until I TELL you!

What if the boy had that light saber pointed at his belly when he had hit the switch? What if it had been aimed at R2D2, or Ben?

Yeah. End Of Scene.

A Plain Brown Tee

I haven't got one. But yesterday I needed one.

Right! A plain, brown T-shirt is what I wanted to wear underneath a light-brown/tan button-down, collarless shirt. I was getting dressed for work (business casual: no denim, shirt with collar - unless it looks really good without.) and had decided on this tan button-down. The choice of what to wear beneath it remained. The shirt is a bit sheer, so whatever is underneath is somewhat visible through it, as well as up at the open collar. I've worn a black tee with this before, but I did not like how much black showed through the light-brown. A Plain Brown Tee seemed to be the way to go.

Now, I'm not sure - or I wasn't then - if I actually have a plain, brown tee, so I began to rummage through my shirt drawers. I found that I do have a brown tee - it's not plain, though. This graphic is centered on the front:

(from http://www.unamerican.com/)

I found it somewhat amusing that my Only Brown T-Shirt, my only tee that came close to what I wanted to wear to work was this one.

I found a white tee and put it on. The day pretty much improved from that point.