Wanted

Remember my post about the Beavers?

They're back. A few miles from my home I spotted this:

Giant rodent coming to a woods near you

Shoes on a Wire

There are a million theories as to why kids do this. I don't ask why, I just take pictures.

Those look like nice shoes. Too bad you might want
them back someday.

The Adventures of Payton - Poodle

This is what happens when I am out walking my dog. I thought I would turn it into a comic. Note: Nothing has been exaggerated for comic effect. 

Night at the Museum

Remember when you were a kid and read choose your own adventure novels? Remember the ones about getting lost in the museum where the mummy would come to life and eat you? Then you grew up and realized that nothing creepy really existed in the museum. The museum was a stuffy civilized place filled with dusty artifacts and learned people. 

When you grew up you became a stuffy learned person and went to the museum's members' night where you relearned why the museum seemed like the perfect place for those old choose your own adventure novels. The museum is a creepy place, and the curators are often no less disturbing. 

I had my pick of images to choose from. I had the pile of dead birds, the strange Japanese pagoda in the basement left over from the World's Fair (it had to be haunted), a huge fruit bat in a jar (somebody remarked that it looked like a flying puppy), giant sarcophagi, the 100,000+ dead bugs, the live bugs, or even the row of enormous oxygen tanks. However, all the other images pale in comparison to the one below, which is why I posted it.

So many things are wrong in this photo. Can you count them? The scientist with the no gloves? He was actively showing a group of onlookers the taxidermy process. To the other side of this image off camera? A polar bear head. Not something you see every day and that's probably for the best.

Back in the Day~

While waiting for the metra I overheard a part of a conversation:

A slow moving freight with many cars is passing us by.

Woman: you could hop it now.
Man: aaw hell naw, you'd get hurt
Woman: naw. We did it all the time. You could hop tthat train and ride it to a different state.
Man: wasn't you afraid of getting hurt?
Woman: naw, its going slow enough, you might have to run a bit but you could hop it
Man: I'd be afraid I'd get lectrocuted
Woman: naw, that's the cta where the lectricity is on the tracks. On the metra electric its above.
Me: I'd be afraid of the whoopin' if I got caught.
Woman: oh we never got caught, but thems was different times.
Woman: did you know you used ta could walk from city to city by the sewers under the city?
Me: no way
Woman: there were these huge pipes, they ain't there no more though,
Me: couldnt do that today. Too many crazies
Woman: true, thems was different times. I was a kid 40 years ago.
Then the metra came. My phone rang and she was gone and I was sad for our current and future generations. 

Used ta could kids go outside and have adventures. Now... there's only x-box. 

Signs of Impending Doom

Now that the dogs have ascended to heaven those of us left behind are looking for signs of the apocalypse. Sadly, it seems to have started smaller than expected.

One angry little cloud with rain and hail ready to beat us up for enjoying some vanilla carmel icecream at the local ice cream shop.

Oh Wait... The world hasn't started to end. The new scheduled date for the beginning of the end is October 21, 2011.

In fact immediately after took this picture my dog came crashing back to earth leaving us to wonder if he had indeed been raptured or if he was simply subject to gravity. We believe we are being mislead by those in the know about this apocalypse thing. What does the dog know that he isn't telling us? What secret is my canine friend hiding?

Only time will tell.

Racing the Rain~

Bee balm. Lemon balm. One lonely pink azalea given as a gift. A single brilliant orange poppy.

It is time for them to be placed into the ground. The gardener splits the bee balm plants with her spade dreaming of the bright red flowers that will attract the wanted hummingbirds, butterflies an honeybees. Will they get enough light on this side of the house? Are they spaced evenly? Thunder, distant, sky still blue. Plants laid out and eyed skeptically.

Lemon balm, to ward off evil or  more likely to flavor tea, salads and ice creams. Split with the spade, eyed, approved. Where to put the single orange poppy? Over here, this place is right. By the cracked concrete porch with it's ancient pillars and beloved park bench. By the old trees. A breeze begins to flirt with the air, promising relief from the humidity. She looks up seeing the black clouds, close but not here yet. The sound of wind chimes mingles with thunder. The air still warm on the gardener's skin she stops to listen and observe.

Hurry. Don't get distracted. Get this finished. A fast moving storm.

The spade moves the carefully laid mulch, hands working quickly scissors slit the fabric weed barrier, a hole dug, a plant planted, methodical, focused. Mulch replaced, next plant. Dirt under the gardener's nails, no bother with gloves only the hard clay soil, mulch, plants. The wind picks up. Four plants left.

Thunder, wind chimes, the jingle of the dog's collar from the yard near by. Three plants left. The wind whips up louder than the wind  chimes. The thunder more insistent. Two plants, one plant. Finished.

The gardener stands up and looks at her work. She turns to the poppy entranced. It is perfect.

Warm wet drops fall from the sky. The spell broken, the gardener, unhurried, walks inside.

The World Post Rapture~

Well the rapture has already happened and like the heathen I am, I am still here... However our pets may not have been so lucky. Here's the last shot of some neighborhood dogs as they ascended to Heaven, or the Mothership. We're not sure which. Bye Fluffy!

Happy Spring!

After a miserable winter and a bitterly cold spring the warm weather is finally here. We're happy, are you?

With over 600 varieties of lilacs in existence I will not attempt to figure out which kind this is.
 I only know it smells good and is pretty.

Happy Mother's Day!

Nothing says Happy Mother’s Day quite like a walk by Lake Michigan, celebrating the rare beauty of a warm spring day in Chicago and the woman who labored and gave birth to you and changed your shitty diapers and waited for you to grow up and turn 18 so you could get the fuck out of her house.

And the impromptu memorial spray painted on the sidewalk. You’re the best, Mom!

Beaver: Winona's Big Brown

In the wilds of suburbia there is a tiny stretch of forest. Trapped and fenced between ribbons of concrete this tiny preserve thrives. Through this tiny preserve is a path. Suburbanites wander path in their jogging gear or alongside their canine companions.

One unexpected thing about this small stretch of trees and ponds is the abundance of wildlife. Ducks and geese are everywhere. They're common in Illinois anyway. There might even be deer and the occasional coyote. What I didn't expect to see was evidence of a beaver. Quickly I snapped a picture. I was giddy at my find. "Wow! There's a beaver left in Illinois!" I thought.

Then I turned to the internet for knowledge. What I found out left me both excited and deflated. You see, beavers are so common that they can be considered a pest animal. According to the Illinois Furbearer Guide there is even a beaver trapping season.

What excited me was their size. Beavers are 40 to 50 pound rodents. Do you have a 4 year old laying around? Go look at them. That is the size of a beaver. They are huge rodents with huge teeth... In your backyard. Enjoy.

Protect Yourselves Ladies!

Once upon a time there was a woman who needed to tinkle. This woman dashed into the ladies room, dropped her trousers and took a seat on the magic pot. When she looked up she saw a sign that read "Ladies let's please protect ourselves and wipe the toilet seat after use with clorox wipes. Thanks!" She turned to the sink and there they were, ready to protect her ass from the potty gremlins.

The first question she asked her self being a wise princess was... "Is there really a disease people can transmit via the toilet seat?" The second question she had to ask herself was... If someone had the plague, wouldn't it be wiser to wipe the seat before use? After all if us ladies need to protect ourselves what would be the point of bleaching the seat after the germs were already wearing holes into our butt cheeks?

Curious, the princess went on a quest. She looked to the great and wise internet to find the answer to the first question... What can you catch from the magic pot? The response was... nothing. This was both according to the CDC and WebMd.

The next day at work the princess asked her coworker about the sign. Her coworker's response was, "someone was piddling on the seat." The young woman once again asked herself, how on earth does this happen? In answer the princess was faced with a sad truth. The women who were the most afraid of catching potty gremlins were the ones causing the problem.

The moral of this story is: If nobody hovered, nobody would have to.

Winter is EVIL

Can I take a minute to complain about the weather here in Chicago?  I know, everyone’s a critic, but there’s a reason that some people continue to deny that whole global warming issue and that’s because places like Chicago exist.  You know you’ve made it when you get your own Wikipedia article.  Snowmaggedon, the Snowpocalypse, or the Groundhogs Day Blizzard of 2011.  Call it what you will, to me, snow is just additional proof that God hates us and wants us to get the fuck off this planet.

The snow started innocently enough, as far as snow storms go.  Work calls me after about an inch has landed.  They say the same thing the TV and radio jerks have been saying all afternoon:  this is the big one.   To back that up, they offer hotel rooms to any of us scheduled to work the next day.  I say, heck, why not?  Beats watching the snow fall on Clark Street.   

I took my time, finishing my chores and doing some work at home, by which point this shit is getting serious.   Just to prove it snows in hell, Lake Shore Drive is completely shut down, with hundreds of motorists stranded in the snowy waste land.  I arrive at the redline, only to find out that it too had been shut down.  So back on the bus I went.   It’s now 8PM and the city is a literal ghost town of white shit.  I get a private bus ride all the way to the blue line in Jefferson Park. 

Hiking my way through the treacherous parking lot to the hotel, I feel like Mad Max if the desert had been a plain in Antarctica.  It’s clear to me how easy it would be to die ten feet from your own door if you can’t see it, what with all the ice spitting into your eyes.  There’s also this weird roaring noise, and the occasional lights flashing from the sky.  It’s not planes from O’Hare, since those were grounded hours ago.  That’s right, folks.  Thunderstorms.  Snow-belching, bone-quaking thunderstorms. 

Alas, I arrive at the hotel too late to indulge in a hot tub, but I do enjoy some late night TV and gossiping with a work friend before calling it a night.  Time and a half and a close encounter of the freezing kind.  The next day, I get paid time and a half and eventually make the trek back home, walking down the center of Clark Street, which is about the only plowed street in the whole damn city.   And yes, it only took me 15 minutes to unearth my car the day after, by backing it out of its snow cave into my neighbor’s freshly dug space.  And leaving it there.  Put a chair in that space, bitches.