Recently the rates on Chicago’s parking meters were jacked up and new meters were installed where previously there had been none. Most citizens are not pleased with this exciting new development and some of the more cynical residents of this great city suspect that there must be secret plans to funnel the anticipated increased revenue into an Olympics-related slush fund.
Over the last 20 years, finding free, legal parking in Chicago has gradually become akin to locating a website without pop-up ads. Since permit parking zones were first instituted decades ago, they have become a cancer, metastasizing throughout Chicago's neighborhoods. This writer has no issue with such zones, as long as 1) there is a preponderance of senior citizens and/or handicapped individuals who need to park close to their homes and 2) more than three quarters of the housing stock is apartment buildings without garages. However, you can now find permit parking on streets occupied by mainly single-family homes with garages. Don’t whine that restricted parking is needed because there’s shopping nearby, or a train station, or a Dairy Queen. These permit parking zones are not necessary. The aldermen simper, “But more than 50% of our residents want them.” Aldermen – and women – get a clue. If more than 50% of your children asked to be served ice cream for breakfast, lunch, dinner and dessert, would you cede to their wishes? Sometimes you have to be smarter than your constituents and this is one of those times. Using garages for the purpose for which they were originally designed will solve the problem of residents not being able to find parking. Not meaning to insinuate that many garages are so full of crap that getting a car in there is harder than pulling a camel through the eye of a needle, of course.
That is my rant about permit parking, and it may be recycled later in this blog. For now, I would like to offer a nightmarish scenario as to where Chicago seems to be headed, getting-around-wise.
Now that LAZ Parking has done such a brilliant job of taking over our parking meters, let’s figure out some other ways to inconvenience and stealth-tax our drivers. How about installing 24-hour meters on the residential side streets, in the alleys and on the shoulders of the expressways. Those neighborhoods that are too blighted to merit meters (and where the installers would likely get mugged trying) can be permit parking only. Make sure that there is a hefty fee for the yearly – make that monthly – permit that the residents can’t afford.
Now that all streets are either metered or permit, let’s tackle the private garages. To enter his or her garage, an owner will be required to deposit a $10 bill, which will then be whisked into a secret Olympics 2016 fund. To exit the garage, come up with another $10. Stopping with drivers is for sissies. To make sure as many people are inconvenienced as possible, slash service on the CTA. Cut bus routes and hours of operation, and don’t forget to raise fares. To obtain one of those convenient “Chicago Cards”, require citizens to submit their Social Security Numbers and all bank/brokerage/credit card account info. Then eliminate payment by cash or regular fare card.
Let’s start licensing bike riders. The fees from all those licenses will help fund a new Olympic event, the “pothole slalom” and before you can say “Lance Armstrong” it’ll cost you to get around by bike. Finally, don’t spare the pedestrians. Set up a toll booth at every intersection. To cross any street, charge a toll of $5 per leg. To show that this is really a compassionate city, give any amputees a 5% discount, but make it exact change only, otherwise no deal.
If considering the above makes you crave copious quantities of alcohol, look on the bright side. Thousands of jobs in surveillance, security and law enforcement will be created. And won't it impress the Olympic Committee to be able to claim that our unemployment rate has gone from 10% to less than 3%?
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Friday, June 12, 2009
Beccah, Ditch That H!
I thoroughly enjoyed reading the story in today’s Chicago Tribune about the young lady from Mokena, Illinois, Beccah Beushausen, who blogged her way to fame on a mostly made-up story about being pregnant with a terminally ill child who died soon after birth. I never had the pleasure of reading her blog and today was the first I heard of it. It was followed by thousands of pro-lifers eager for affirmation of their beliefs, and it drives home an important point: don’t believe everything you read, even if it agrees with you! That goes for us pro-choicers too.
Trust, but verify.
Having said that, I have to hand it to her. She is apparently a terrific writer who knows how to push emotional buttons. That is one thing I have never been able to do. I can tell a story, but I can’t sap it up and any excess emotion gets tempered with a little comedy thrown in. I also have a very hard time making up stuff. You could say that I have a dearth of imagination when it comes to generating sentiment. Go back and read the story “A Tale of Two Babies” earlier in this blog. Every fact in that story was corroborated, verified and approved by the mothers of the babies before I hit that “publish” button.
Beccah (and if I were her, I’d get rid of that superfluous h at the end of her name, since in Jewish tradition H is the childbearing letter and she misused it, whether she’s Jewish or not) has some choices. She can channel all that writing talent into cranking out a couple novels. That’s a positive use of her gift. Or she can appear on Oprah and The View and apologize over and over, telling, re-telling and crystalizing her sad story. Not so positive. Of course, the visual appearances would be more lucrative and less hard work. And money, especially easy money, is one thing we can all use.
Or she can fade into oblivion, having experienced her proverbial 15 minutes of shame.
Trust, but verify.
Having said that, I have to hand it to her. She is apparently a terrific writer who knows how to push emotional buttons. That is one thing I have never been able to do. I can tell a story, but I can’t sap it up and any excess emotion gets tempered with a little comedy thrown in. I also have a very hard time making up stuff. You could say that I have a dearth of imagination when it comes to generating sentiment. Go back and read the story “A Tale of Two Babies” earlier in this blog. Every fact in that story was corroborated, verified and approved by the mothers of the babies before I hit that “publish” button.
Beccah (and if I were her, I’d get rid of that superfluous h at the end of her name, since in Jewish tradition H is the childbearing letter and she misused it, whether she’s Jewish or not) has some choices. She can channel all that writing talent into cranking out a couple novels. That’s a positive use of her gift. Or she can appear on Oprah and The View and apologize over and over, telling, re-telling and crystalizing her sad story. Not so positive. Of course, the visual appearances would be more lucrative and less hard work. And money, especially easy money, is one thing we can all use.
Or she can fade into oblivion, having experienced her proverbial 15 minutes of shame.
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Take My Money...Please!
I’m starting to look forward to the next telemarketer who asks me for money or the next business that tries to push unwanted services in my direction. Since I got rid of Caller ID, I’ve been picking up the phone more often. If it rings between 6 and 9 p.m. there’s a good chance it’s a charity, arts organization or semi-legitimate business hoping to make a hole in my pocket.
Charities and arts organizations aren’t too bad and I would consider sending them a few bucks if I had their assurance that my name and phone number wouldn’t end up on the mailing and calling lists of every other worthy cause in the nation. And in fact, I donate regularly to Purple Hearts and am pretty much a soft touch for anything veteran-related, especially when it involves contributing goods instead of money.
However…
I am a Suspicious Aloysius when it comes to people trying to sell me services I don’t need or trying to guilt me into parting with my money. Some of the most aggressive telemarketers are those folks who call on behalf of police functions. When I politely informed the caller that I donated through my employment and my church and had made all my donations for the year, he questioned me. “You don’t support law enforcement?” I roared back with the equivalent of “I’ll enforce YOU!” and asked for his name and his supervisor’s name. He backed off, a wounded and chastened cur slinking off into telespace, phone between his legs.
Another opportunity arose the other day when I contacted a tech provider to get some over-the-phone help. The assistant I got was more interested in selling me services I didn’t want or need than actually helping me to solve the problem. I politely refused one such service, repeating at least three times that I didn’t have the budget for it. But if I had the presence of mind, the conversation would have gone more like this:
Tech Dude: This service is very inexpensive, it’s less than $11 a month!
Me: Sorry, but it’s not in my budget.
Tech Dude: For only $10.95 a month you can have this service!
Me: You wanna repeat my last sentence?
Tech Dude: But it’s only $10.95 a month! That’s less than a tank of gas!
Me: Since you think it’s so necessary that I have this service and you feel it’s so inexpensive, am I to infer that you are willing to personally pay for it so that I can have it?
Tech Dude: [silence]
And that is what the next phone-beggar will get from me. If it’s that important to you that I buy your service or make a donation for which I have no budget, I will turn the tables and ask you for the money.
Bring it on.
Charities and arts organizations aren’t too bad and I would consider sending them a few bucks if I had their assurance that my name and phone number wouldn’t end up on the mailing and calling lists of every other worthy cause in the nation. And in fact, I donate regularly to Purple Hearts and am pretty much a soft touch for anything veteran-related, especially when it involves contributing goods instead of money.
However…
I am a Suspicious Aloysius when it comes to people trying to sell me services I don’t need or trying to guilt me into parting with my money. Some of the most aggressive telemarketers are those folks who call on behalf of police functions. When I politely informed the caller that I donated through my employment and my church and had made all my donations for the year, he questioned me. “You don’t support law enforcement?” I roared back with the equivalent of “I’ll enforce YOU!” and asked for his name and his supervisor’s name. He backed off, a wounded and chastened cur slinking off into telespace, phone between his legs.
Another opportunity arose the other day when I contacted a tech provider to get some over-the-phone help. The assistant I got was more interested in selling me services I didn’t want or need than actually helping me to solve the problem. I politely refused one such service, repeating at least three times that I didn’t have the budget for it. But if I had the presence of mind, the conversation would have gone more like this:
Tech Dude: This service is very inexpensive, it’s less than $11 a month!
Me: Sorry, but it’s not in my budget.
Tech Dude: For only $10.95 a month you can have this service!
Me: You wanna repeat my last sentence?
Tech Dude: But it’s only $10.95 a month! That’s less than a tank of gas!
Me: Since you think it’s so necessary that I have this service and you feel it’s so inexpensive, am I to infer that you are willing to personally pay for it so that I can have it?
Tech Dude: [silence]
And that is what the next phone-beggar will get from me. If it’s that important to you that I buy your service or make a donation for which I have no budget, I will turn the tables and ask you for the money.
Bring it on.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Diving Into a Pool of Estrogen
Pssst, nice lonely straight guys! Want to know where to meet some wimmin? That’s right, I wrote wimmin. I can tell you where to find them, but you’ll have to go with an open mind. Before you bail out, I should tell you that these wimmin are for the most part intelligent, good-looking, ethical and financially secure!
Sonia Choquette, a world-famous author, teacher and intuitive, also known as a psychic, is one of today’s most dynamic leaders, guiding humanity to operate from a perspective of inclusion rather than exclusion, love rather than fear, and knowledge rather than ignorance. I have read and re-read all 14 of her books and I have taken classes with her over the past 10 years. Her techniques and workshops are in demand all over the planet because they work. I can testify. Thanks to my studies with Sonia I have been able to forgive people I had previously held grudges against, attract miracles such as a trip to Romania, buy a condo, and then sell it at a profit to buy a house. See her website here, http://www.trustyourvibes.com/.
Whenever I attend one of her events I accurately forecast one thing about it without any psychic skills: the ratio of females to males will be about 15 to 1. The ratio of females to straight males is more like 25 to 1. These events are always sold out. They packed us in like sardines at the one I was at last night, 115 people in a room designed to comfortably hold about 50. And, as I predicted, there were about seven guys in the room. I think one of them was a movie star. The claustrophobic atmosphere faded as soon as Sonia started speaking. She discussed scientific phenomena as she gave us instructions on how to honor our spirits and support the six-sensory life. She spoke of courage, mental clarity, wisdom and the importance of allowing one’s self to play the fool. At the end we were all milling around talking excitedly to one another, whether we had been introduced or not. It would have been the perfect opportunity to meet a potential sweetheart, because there were no pokers up anybody’s butts!
Nice guys, I know there are many on-line sites where you can search for a girlfriend while wearing holey sweats, comfortably scratching under your arms, picking your nose, drinking a beer and belching noisily. However, for adventurous dudes, I suggest the physical approach. Grit your teeth, open your mind, put on your bright red underwear and drag your carcass to one of Sonia’s events. Trust me, the competition will be sparse. If you hose yourself off, put on some clean clothes, maybe a little after-shave, and keep your eyes and heart open you have a good chance of being the Alpha Male in the room!
Sonia Choquette, a world-famous author, teacher and intuitive, also known as a psychic, is one of today’s most dynamic leaders, guiding humanity to operate from a perspective of inclusion rather than exclusion, love rather than fear, and knowledge rather than ignorance. I have read and re-read all 14 of her books and I have taken classes with her over the past 10 years. Her techniques and workshops are in demand all over the planet because they work. I can testify. Thanks to my studies with Sonia I have been able to forgive people I had previously held grudges against, attract miracles such as a trip to Romania, buy a condo, and then sell it at a profit to buy a house. See her website here, http://www.trustyourvibes.com/.
Whenever I attend one of her events I accurately forecast one thing about it without any psychic skills: the ratio of females to males will be about 15 to 1. The ratio of females to straight males is more like 25 to 1. These events are always sold out. They packed us in like sardines at the one I was at last night, 115 people in a room designed to comfortably hold about 50. And, as I predicted, there were about seven guys in the room. I think one of them was a movie star. The claustrophobic atmosphere faded as soon as Sonia started speaking. She discussed scientific phenomena as she gave us instructions on how to honor our spirits and support the six-sensory life. She spoke of courage, mental clarity, wisdom and the importance of allowing one’s self to play the fool. At the end we were all milling around talking excitedly to one another, whether we had been introduced or not. It would have been the perfect opportunity to meet a potential sweetheart, because there were no pokers up anybody’s butts!
Nice guys, I know there are many on-line sites where you can search for a girlfriend while wearing holey sweats, comfortably scratching under your arms, picking your nose, drinking a beer and belching noisily. However, for adventurous dudes, I suggest the physical approach. Grit your teeth, open your mind, put on your bright red underwear and drag your carcass to one of Sonia’s events. Trust me, the competition will be sparse. If you hose yourself off, put on some clean clothes, maybe a little after-shave, and keep your eyes and heart open you have a good chance of being the Alpha Male in the room!
Friday, May 22, 2009
Job Creation in the Age of Unemployment
With all the news about recession, unemployment and dearth of job creation these days I thought I would weigh in with a job that needs to be created, pronto. The requirements: must be familiar with the English language, have a sense of subject, verb and direct object, and able to state an idea in less than 20 words. The job: rewriting those “customer agreements” that are sent with your credit card statement and utility bills.
Who reads those “agreements”? Well, I do. And here is a sentence buried in the fine print in section 8, letter a, on page 4 of one such agreement.
Therefore, except as set forth in Subsection 8b below, your monetary remedy for loss or damage caused by the provision, operation, or use of any Services or for the delay, malfunction, or partial or total failure of any Services, including such loss or damage caused by [XYZ Company’s] negligence, shall not exceed the credit specified in the applicable Tariff or Guidebook, or, if no credits are specified, shall not exceed the amount of the malfunction, or failure (except to the extent additional monetary remedies are provided for in Section 9).
Here is my translation:
So, if you are an idiot and use your phone to bean your mother-in-law over the head, we won’t buy you another one. Also, if one of our technicians totally effs up your wires, you are screwed. Suck it up.
These “service agreements” – and I can think of two things wrong with that description – are total bull manure. With all the laid-off attorneys these days jonesing for things to do with all that dormant talent, the credit card companies and utilities might want to think about cultivating an attitude of nervousness. For starters, these verbose, badly written directives discriminate against our large immigrant population, much of which is not familiar with the ins and outs of American legalese. Last time I checked, discrimination was more than bad manners; it was against the law. Let’s get a few attorneys named Hernandez, Szczęśniewski, Dizdarević and Abdelkadiri to start needling The Man.
Who reads those “agreements”? Well, I do. And here is a sentence buried in the fine print in section 8, letter a, on page 4 of one such agreement.
Therefore, except as set forth in Subsection 8b below, your monetary remedy for loss or damage caused by the provision, operation, or use of any Services or for the delay, malfunction, or partial or total failure of any Services, including such loss or damage caused by [XYZ Company’s] negligence, shall not exceed the credit specified in the applicable Tariff or Guidebook, or, if no credits are specified, shall not exceed the amount of the malfunction, or failure (except to the extent additional monetary remedies are provided for in Section 9).
Here is my translation:
So, if you are an idiot and use your phone to bean your mother-in-law over the head, we won’t buy you another one. Also, if one of our technicians totally effs up your wires, you are screwed. Suck it up.
These “service agreements” – and I can think of two things wrong with that description – are total bull manure. With all the laid-off attorneys these days jonesing for things to do with all that dormant talent, the credit card companies and utilities might want to think about cultivating an attitude of nervousness. For starters, these verbose, badly written directives discriminate against our large immigrant population, much of which is not familiar with the ins and outs of American legalese. Last time I checked, discrimination was more than bad manners; it was against the law. Let’s get a few attorneys named Hernandez, Szczęśniewski, Dizdarević and Abdelkadiri to start needling The Man.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Getting The Buddha Drunk
Those of you who are familiar with this blog know that my younger brother is The Buddha. He was my “little” brother until he surpassed me in height. There were very few girls in our family. I had two younger brothers and scads of younger boy cousins. I never let anyone kiss me or pinch my cheeks, but I was always conniving to kiss The Buddha and all the cute baby cousins as soon as they got born. They tolerated it for a while, then rebelled. But I was bigger and stronger and, as The Buddha once complained to a friend, “She kissed my cheeks until they were prune.” The older he got, the harder it was to get my claws on those succulent cheeks. He was at the height of his adorability when he was five and I was 10 and that’s when I brought out the big guns.
My parents didn’t drink alcohol very often, but every Christmas Eve we had a huge party for relatives and close friends. Wine was served. I never tasted it but knew that if you drank liquor it made you something called “drunk” and it messed with your judgment, rendering you pliable. I formulated my evil plan during Christmas Eve, 1967 and when my parents were occupied with conversation, I walked The Buddha around our 6-room apartment giving him leftover wine to drink from all the glasses I could find. It didn’t amount to much, but when we had reached the kitchen at the back of the apartment, I informed him, “Now you’re drunk and you have to let me kiss you 50 times.” To my delight, he said flatly, “OK.” So I got in my 50 kisses.
Many years later I told him I was sorry for all the torture and those 50 kisses on Christmas Eve, 1967. “I wasn’t really drunk,” he admitted, “I just wanted to get it over with.”
My parents didn’t drink alcohol very often, but every Christmas Eve we had a huge party for relatives and close friends. Wine was served. I never tasted it but knew that if you drank liquor it made you something called “drunk” and it messed with your judgment, rendering you pliable. I formulated my evil plan during Christmas Eve, 1967 and when my parents were occupied with conversation, I walked The Buddha around our 6-room apartment giving him leftover wine to drink from all the glasses I could find. It didn’t amount to much, but when we had reached the kitchen at the back of the apartment, I informed him, “Now you’re drunk and you have to let me kiss you 50 times.” To my delight, he said flatly, “OK.” So I got in my 50 kisses.
Many years later I told him I was sorry for all the torture and those 50 kisses on Christmas Eve, 1967. “I wasn’t really drunk,” he admitted, “I just wanted to get it over with.”
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Telepathy: Not just for skilled psychics!
It works for you, it works for me, it works for the janitor, the realtor, the homemaker and the financial planner down the street. It’s how you get in touch with someone you miss, or meet someone you have been hoping you won’t run into. Whether you want to connect with somebody or avoid him, it works. The key to it is focus.
I was set to go on concert tour to Poland with a group of singers but I was not all that enthusiastic about it for various reasons. It was about two days before departure and I was in a nasty mood, skulking through downtown Chicago on a last-minute shopping trip to buy some much-needed cosmetics. I thought it would be just my luck to run into Mark, a guy I didn’t really want to see, because he was so grown up and I was feeling very childish. My umbrella was misbehaving so I slammed it on the ground in a rage. I looked up and there stood Mark right in front of me.
“Hi, wassup?”
“Oh, nothing special. I have to go on concert tour to Poland in a couple days.”
“That’s great!”
“No it isn’t, I don’t want to go.”
“Then don’t go.”
Right. Stiff my fellow singers, waste the ticket money, acquire a reputation for being unreliable, become persona non grata, in that order. But thanks, Mark, for the advice.
As I got older I learned to focus on what I did want, rather than what I didn’t want.
I missed my friend Regina. I hadn’t seen or heard from her in over 10 years and her birthday was coming up. More than anything I just wanted to be able to wish her a happy birthday and tell her how much I missed her, but didn’t know how or where to find her. I looked her up on the Internet, no luck. Every search I did led to the same result: zip, zero, nada. I turned it over to my Spirit. As always, my Spirit came through. “Think of the song.” That was it.
Three decades earlier, Regina and I were in a Polish folk group. There was one song we did together that was a hit every time we sang it. “Regle, moje regle….” It was from the mountains of Podhale in the extreme south of Poland, and you could hear the echo when we sang together. She sang top and I sang bottom, and we blended like the Robert Shaw Chorale.
So I listened to my Spirit. “Regle, moje regle…” I imagined Regina and me singing. And in between phrases I sneaked in a “Happy Birthday, call me!”
A couple days later I got an e-mail from…you guessed it, Regina. She had looked me up on the Internet, and, since I was a semi-famous personality, she had been able to track me down.
And the subject line was “Regle, moje regle…” Just in time for her birthday. Happy Birthday, dearest Regina!
I was set to go on concert tour to Poland with a group of singers but I was not all that enthusiastic about it for various reasons. It was about two days before departure and I was in a nasty mood, skulking through downtown Chicago on a last-minute shopping trip to buy some much-needed cosmetics. I thought it would be just my luck to run into Mark, a guy I didn’t really want to see, because he was so grown up and I was feeling very childish. My umbrella was misbehaving so I slammed it on the ground in a rage. I looked up and there stood Mark right in front of me.
“Hi, wassup?”
“Oh, nothing special. I have to go on concert tour to Poland in a couple days.”
“That’s great!”
“No it isn’t, I don’t want to go.”
“Then don’t go.”
Right. Stiff my fellow singers, waste the ticket money, acquire a reputation for being unreliable, become persona non grata, in that order. But thanks, Mark, for the advice.
As I got older I learned to focus on what I did want, rather than what I didn’t want.
I missed my friend Regina. I hadn’t seen or heard from her in over 10 years and her birthday was coming up. More than anything I just wanted to be able to wish her a happy birthday and tell her how much I missed her, but didn’t know how or where to find her. I looked her up on the Internet, no luck. Every search I did led to the same result: zip, zero, nada. I turned it over to my Spirit. As always, my Spirit came through. “Think of the song.” That was it.
Three decades earlier, Regina and I were in a Polish folk group. There was one song we did together that was a hit every time we sang it. “Regle, moje regle….” It was from the mountains of Podhale in the extreme south of Poland, and you could hear the echo when we sang together. She sang top and I sang bottom, and we blended like the Robert Shaw Chorale.
So I listened to my Spirit. “Regle, moje regle…” I imagined Regina and me singing. And in between phrases I sneaked in a “Happy Birthday, call me!”
A couple days later I got an e-mail from…you guessed it, Regina. She had looked me up on the Internet, and, since I was a semi-famous personality, she had been able to track me down.
And the subject line was “Regle, moje regle…” Just in time for her birthday. Happy Birthday, dearest Regina!
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