Impressions

My commute in so many words...sunshine in my eyes, pretty, not a trace of snow, rows of bikes, coworker's high-pitched, nervous talk, peasant blouse and shiny beads of peacock green, stomach growling, ready for dinner, blank spot on the ride, grimace and a seat by myself in back, Ian Fleming and Russian writers, line across the lake, clouds/smog, razor-thin and at horizon's edge, not much green seen as I'd have liked, mysteries and missteps, crowds milling and I'm looking at absolutely everybody, seeing everything, soaking it up like a sponge, receptive, El train droning roar, up the steps, fumbled feet, pleasant thighs and skinny jeans, on the platform, Chuck Taylors everywhere, train approaching, then on board again, minding the waning sunlight across downtown, the building shine, the mosaic waves on the river, northbound, no delays, not too crowded, tall gal with Jackie O hair and silver buckle shoes with black slacks, piercing blue-eyed gaze calls to mind a soul I know, her man's eyes ceramic blanks, they talk furtively, standing, another passenger ("customers" says the Transit Spokesman) has a serious hair-pouf, a regular brunette wave, another man wears a Tide detergent baseball cap, a seat by himself (drove the woman sitting next to him away), then lost time and space, I get distracted by the asses and then I'm off the train and on my way down and a hipster (looking like a young Shirley MacLaine) gives me a looking over in passing, makes me think my sideburns are probably getting too long, then I'm curbside and there are green beads a-flashing as barhoppers hop the bars and cars scoot by, I beat the light, past derelict saloon ("no time for Jameson, maybe in the morning") and I'm past dirty curb detritus, up brick-lined walk, long shadows, now, green lights strung specially for St. Patrick's Day at witchy home, broken brick walk fixed, girl-jogger thighs here and there in passing, then at another intersection, waiting, seeing "Bauknecht" thinking "Building Knight?" Right? German, "knecht" for "knight" and "Bau" for "Building?" Don't know, then past the smell of spilled beer and fresh leather (new shoes, mine, pewter-hued) and I'm home.

St. Oscar of Wilde

Seems right on St. Patrick's Day to honor another of my patron saints, another early one: Oscar Wilde. With him, it was so many things -- his writing, his wit, his style, his fashion, his aesthetics and profound sense of art (and the artist's role in society) -- I was always highly impressed by and influenced by him. I always felt like Victorian society was challenged by his sybaritic ways, and bit back at him savagely, seeking to destroy the man (and, sadly, largely succeeding, at least in the physical sense of radically shortening his life, although is sparkle continues to outlast his actual life). His understanding of beauty and art's centrality to life made a huge impression on me. "Dorian Gray" always stuck with me (so much that I even named a character that in a short story as a kid, "Dorian's Flowers").

He's a feast of wit, and one of his quotes I ran across in early college...

As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.

...has always hung with me. I've pondered the meaning of it a great deal for over 20 years, and have tried to get at the vulgarity of war in a number of stories.

I will always be a Wilde Child. Anybody who knows me knows that my wit and charm are some key qualities I possess (a sharp tongue, yes, but silver, too). And I know that Wilde influenced me early on in that respect.

Different Perspectives

Heading north on Clark Street, I took this shot, because all of the perspective was catching my eye while I was walking -- the buildings in the foreground, the reflected buildings in the windows, and the ones in the background (and the sky overhead). With the afternoon light captivating me, I had to take the shot.

Erin Go Braghless

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I enjoyed having the past couple of days off. Not used to not being at work on a weekday -- even the light seems different. The people, the city, all of it -- different on a weekday. I don't know if it's purely psychological, but it just seems different from a weekend (and it must be qualitatively different -- fewer people in general, more students, old people, bums, and crazies are out). I enjoyed the extra time with the boys. Always, always fun.

Made a kickass Shrimp Creole last night from scratch. Good eatin! Wanna see?

Mmmmmm! It was good! I had all of this great afternoon sunlight streaming into the apartment, so I had to play "food photographer" and snap a shot!

Oscar Mayer Being Wieners?

Hmmm. "Cold cut envy?" Oscar Mayer, oh, you ham! You'll LONG for their deli fresh meats. Mmm hmm. Psychosexual subtext in your advertising, anyone? She looks like she really, really wants to take a mouthful of his...sandwich?

A Tree Grows in Chicago

I couldn't quite get my clementine seedling in proper focus, but here's a peek at it. I'm so pleased. I hope it thrives. I'll take good care of it. If I got to play boy billionaire (or middle-aged millionaire, haha) I'd love to have my own garden. I'd make a Japanese garden. I love those. I really wanted to do that with the property I had in Indiana, but it was almost too much space to even hope to make something like that. But someday, I'll have a nice space and will make a beautiful garden.

I think my endless tinkering in Farmville is reflective of that desire, that urge to create something beautiful out of a natural space (even a virtual space). I think the desire to create something beautiful runs right through the heart of me.

Sleepless in Chicago

B2 woke me up around 2 a.m. with coughing, and I got him his medicine and then couldn't get comfy, couldn't go back to sleep, so I was up until around 5ish, then finally went to sleep, only to have Exene's alarm clock wake me up around 6. Soooo, needless to say, I'm taking another day off from work.

Zzzzzzzz....

A New Hope?

Watching some of "Star Wars" with the boys, I am struck at how rotten the tactics are of the Rebellion. Like in the end, they send 30 small fighters in against the Death Star. Well and good. But they squander their few numbers by bad deployment, ensuring that the fatality rate is terribly high. They basically send a three-man squadron into the trench for a bombing run, without proper cover. Unsurprisingly, Vader and company waste them. What they should've done is much like you'd have in any team sports -- have your forwards taking the offense, and have some guys covering the back, and then maybe some in the middle to lend a hand when needed. So, instead of this...

T.I.E. Fighters === Rebel Squadron A (RS A)

...they could have had this...

RS D === RS C === RS B === T.I.E. Fighters === RS A

Do it like a conveyor belt, and whoever survives A's bombing run loops back to the back of the line, with a reserve squadron running interference to cover them. The above configuration (counting the reserve) would allow for 12 fighters allocated, which would leave 18 fighters to otherwise divert the attention of the Imperials. Just keep it up until somebody manages to fire their proton torpedoes into the exhaust duct and voila!

The point is that instead of the incredible man-wasting tactics of the Rebels and the guaranteed high casualty rates, they have better tactics and better survivability in the squadrons. Vader and his crew couldn't have picked off the squadrons if backups were right on their tails.

Instead, they send them down one squadron at a time, with the other Rebel fliers just apparently holding their dicks while their buds are getting wasted.

Of course, this lets Luke get to play the hero, but it's impossible to believe the Rebels could even have survived as long as they had in the face of such rotten battle tactics.

I mean, in "Empire Strikes Back," they use trench warfare against the superior armor of the AT-ATs on Hoth. WTF is that all about? Oh, I know -- high casualty rates again. The poor bastards in the trenches get absolutely slaughtered. Now, you could speciously argue that they are doing a delaying tactic to buy time (with their lives) for the transports. But the infantry's presence on the battlefield doesn't so much as slow the AT-ATs down. What's more, it's demonstrated by Luke (both in a speeder and on foot) that grapple guns and grenades apparently work marvelously to dispatch AT-ATs, so the Rebels were likely better off charging the AT-ATs on foot with grapple guns rather than futilely blasting them with weapons that are immediately shown not to work (which calls to mind whether the Rebels have faced AT-ATs before, which, in all likelihood, they have). Again, bad, bad tactics yielding extraordinarily high battlefield losses.

*shaking head*

I don't mind a role being established for the heroes of the story, but not at the expense of tactics with the groups in question. At least make the tactics good.

Don't even get me going about "Lord of the Rings," how the Uruks (an army built expressly to deal with cavalry, hence the pikes they carry) get wasted in battle.

Piece of Cake

Oh, I made an apple cake last night that came out tasty. I used apples on hand, so it was a mix of Braeburn, Gala, and Golden Delicious in it. The boys enjoyed it. It's the kind of cake that would be delicious with ginger or cinnamon ice cream, although it was fine by itself, too. Although the recipe didn't call for it, I put Calvados in it, too, just to tweak out the apple flavors a little more. A good cake for the fall, I think.

*KOFF*

B2 is fighting a chest cold, as I'd said earlier. I decided to take a sick day from work (since I have that cold, too), and watch the boys. I took B1 to school -- it amused me -- one of the 2d grade girls saw B2 in his shades (he's been wanting to wear his shades, "Just like Daddy.") and she asked B1 "WHY is your little brother wearing sunglasses on a cloudy day?" and B1 just shrugged. One of the other girls (a more fashionable one) said "Oh, EVERYBODY is doing it THESE days." Made me chuckle. I put the boys in their IRISH kelly green stocking caps, too. One of B1's less astute classmates asked "Why are you wearing that IRISH cap?"

*shaking head*

B1's too nice, but the proper "Irish" response to that kind of question is a headbutt.

Anyway, it's just B2 and me home today, me giving him TLC. His little voice is all hoarse from the coughing.

Today I'm going to do my laundry, half the boys' laundry, and will pay bills and do the taxes (finally). I'll vacuum, too, as the rugs need it. Tres domestique!

St. Ernest of Hemingway

Hemingway first reached me in high school, although I don't think I appreciated his writing properly until I was older, and really got past the larger-than-life image he presented to the world. While his style has been aped, parodied, and avoided over the years, he was, for all of the cult of machismo that arose around him both in his life and after his death, a writer of amazing sensitivity. So much so that I often wonder if the whole Papa mythos, his alcoholism, and his big-game hunting and fishing was a reaction to that same writerly sensitivity all writers of merit must possess to get at the heart of their craft. I always felt that, interpersonally, Hemingway was a bit of a charlatan -- like insecurity drove him to act like he was the biggest badass in the room, almost as if he had to apologize for being a writer of such great talent and artistic sensitivity. The persona he cultivated was, in my opinion, camouflage for the artist that he was -- his veneration of, say, bullfighters, was really him projecting on the self he wanted to be, but never could be -- he wanted to be the participant, but, as a writer, could only truly be the spectator. I think people who aren't writers see that persona as the man, whereas reading his work, his amazing writing, I came to the conclusion above. It's a good thing he did get as much written as he did, as it left a huge imprint on the last century, and certainly influenced me as a writer. His quote when he won the Nobel Prize is illustrative...

"Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day."

PPD: Goose, Woman, Goat

A goose, a woman, and a goat, are bad things lean.

Up

B2's got a lingering cough from that cold. I just gave him some kiddie Mucinex, and am staying up a bit to keep an eye on him, until the medicine kicks in.