It's the Wednesday after St. Patricks day weekend, and I'm walking down Michigan Avenue to work and I see someone wearing green. I immediately thought, "wow, that person has been wearing that shirt since Saturday!" So I tweeted about how not to wear green after St. Patricks' day,
"Never wear green the week after St. Patricks day, ppl will think you never change your clothes #tip" [link]
And then I come into work and someone was wearing green! Oops! So I tweeted this,
"Never tweet while commuting to work about what ppl shouldn't wear, cuz one of your coworkers will be wearing that when u come in #tip #style" [link]
And then I realized that Wendesday IS St. Patrick's day. No wonder why people were wearing green. I'm such a clueless Protestant boy.
By the way, as of today, my "Finger tattoos" photo has been viewed 20,030 times and "Chicago's Moving Bridges over the Chicago River" has been viewed 37,598 times. Finger tattoos is catching up!
I was just wondering if monkeys drink water. Because I never saw a monkey drink water, I thought maybe monkeys don't drink water But then a friend happily shared this video with me, Youtube - Monkey Drinking and Playing with Water.
I want to drink water like this monkey.
Note: this video is more fun to watch with the sound turned off.
2018 Winter Olympics bids were due yesterday. Only three cities put their hat into the ring:
* Munich, Germany
* PyeongChang, South Korea
* Annecy, France
It's really cool how blueletterbible.org has audio pronunciations for Greek words. Give a listen to the greek word anapauō (meaning rest). I wish when the guy read anapauō, that he would have said it in a more restful manner. Instead I feel like I'm getting punched in the face.
When Jesus said, "Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest." I don't think he said "rest" like he was punching someone in the face.
There is no song titled "Jackin it up" on iTunes or Amazong MP3. Quick! This song is just waiting to become a top 40 hit.
The jackhammas are a-poundin'
I say
The jackhammas are a-poundin'
outside the Tribune Towerin'
I'm tryin' to git some work done-in
But these jackhammas
these jackhammas
They keep a-poundin'
a-poundin'
A-prrrchh-a-prrrrch-a-pprrchhhprrccch-prrrccch.
Seriously. The Pioneer Court outside the Tribune Tower has some jacked-up tiles and it's all fallin apart. So they've been replacing the tiles in sections. It's only taken them two years so far.
We had peace and silence for a couple months, and then today, the jackhammers came back and are now working on another part of the court. This will take them about three months. So I get jackhammers all day long for three months at work. Hence, I'm trying to spin this into a positive and get into the jackhammering by finding a song titled, "Jackin it up" on itunes or amazon mp3. But alas, there are none.
alforque tweeted: WTF is Gen Z?! RT @ChicagoGirl1: There is a Generation Z now? When did this happen? http://bit.ly/ciOPp1
What would come after Generation Z? Is there a letter that comes after Z? In the Greek alphabet, the last letter is Omega. Would that then be Generation Omega?
A yelp post asks, If there was a new letter after "Z", what would it sound like? Here's a couple of their responses:
-- Gillooly
-- Sub-class 'z', 'zed'
-- A Double "Z" like "ZZ" like Double "U" makes a "W"
-- it would be the schwa sound we all learned about in phonics in the 1970s
Rather fitting that this Yelp post about the end of the alphabet has its comments turned off due to the post being older than two months. It's like the question about the endings, hit the end itself.
A smoker walks in your direction on the sidewalk. You pass each other by and hold your breath, because of the stinky smoke. 15 feet after the smoker, you are able to breath again because the smoke has dissipated into the air.
I'm thankful that cigarette smoke fades into the outdoor air. What if it hung around like a nasty cloud? Bleh.
Or what if our atmosphere was so heavy that the smoke fell to the ground and made a line on the ground? That would be weird. We'd have contrails of smoke everywhere from smokers walking and smoking.
Next time someone tells you, "I'm tootin like a ballotin," you can respond with, "Yes, I appreciate your flatulence metaphorical reference to a deep decorative rectangular cardboard box with overhanging edges used for packaging chocolate candies."
"How about we get ourselves a ballotin of Godiva chocolates?"
On the 14th floor of the Tribune Tower there is a gray garbage can in the kitchen area. We throw away so much stuff in the kitchen that can be recycled. To help solve this, a few weeks ago I put a blue recycle bin next to the garbage can.
But nobody uses the recycle bin. It rather baffles me. Today I found a clean paper bag and paper wrappers in the garbage. Normally I will quietly garbage pick the paper and put it into recycling. But the quantity of the paper in the garbage today unsettled me. As i took the paper out I audibly said, "what is this paper doing in the garbage? It can be recycled," hoping that the perpetrators heard me.
Knowing just saying something out loud probably won't do much, I put a couple sticky notes on the garbage cans directing people to the blue recycle bin. Then to be even more specific, the sticky notes listed what little things can be recycled.
here's what the notes said:
PLEASE RECYCLE
use the blue bin
------------------>
tea wrappers,
papers, cardboard,
bags, sugar packets
every little bit helps :)
------------------>
I purposely made the list in all lower case to make it more friendly. I know I'm being passive-aggressive with this. But c'mon people, at least put your paper in the recycle bin that sits right next to the garbage can. Every little bit truly does help.
A friend of mine is trying to exchange her broken hair dryer. Today she IM'ed me, "whoa, this hair dryer thing is becoming a pain in my arse!" To which I responded with the following hair dryer puns:
-- this whole hair dryer thing BLOWS
-- it's totally DRYING the life out of you
-- this is a HAIR-RAISING experience
-- you are getting totally ripped off and SCALPED
My twin brother is going to start spelling the word "gray" as "grey." I disagree. I'm just not a fan of the spelling of "grey." Grey eliminates the simplicity of gray. Grey makes gray complicated and stuffy.
Gray is simple. Gray is pure. Gray is honest. Long live gray!
Quiet Metra train
The platform is completely empty at the 103rd street Metra station at 10:17pm on a Tuesday night. As the train arrives, I'm the only one to board the only open car on the train. While looking for an open seat, about 3/4 of the train is sleeping. I think to myself, "This will be a boring ride home"
The only open seat left on the train welcomes me to sit down and join the rest of the sleepers.
There's a problem
The train stops at 87th street and Halsted. The conductor comes onto our part of the car and announces, "we have a problem. There's a broken freight train at 16th street, and we cannot get past it. This train will go back to Blue Island (15 minutes away), you will take shuttle bus to the Metra Electric line at Blue Island and that train will take you back into the city."
Uh. Excuse me?
Go backwards to Blue Island? Blue Island is in the opposite direction of where I came from. It's further away from the city than where I originally boarded.
I ask the conductor when the next Blue Island train is leaving. He didn't even know! How could he not know? We could be waiting there in the cold for two hours!
The conductor said we could also just take the Halsted Street bus which was right where we are. Sounds simple enough, right? But when is the bus coming?
iPhone to the rescue!
I tell people on my car, "hold on, i'm gonna look up when the next bus is coming on CTA bus tracker. I whip out my handy dandy iPhone.
Da-na-na-naaaaaaa!
I pull up all the stops for the number 8 bus route northbound. But there's no stop for 87th Street. How can that be? The conductor said there is the Halsted Street bus. But I'm telling ya, 87th street is not on this list. All the numbered streets stop at 79th street.
How can this be? The conductor said there's a Halsted Street bus.
Answer: The Metra conductor knows nothing about the CTA.
I pull up the CTA system map on my iPhone.
Da-na-na-naaaaaaa!
Certainly enough. The Halsted Street bus only goes as far as the 79th street. We'd have to take the 8A bus to get to the 79th Street station. I pull up the schedule for the 8A bus, and it's not running this late. We'd have to walk 8 blocks to the 79th Street station.
Someone asks how far the red line is. That was simple. I show there's a 87th street stop, so that means it's also 8 blocks to the red line. A few of us opt to get off the train and walk to the red line. As we get off, I announce to people, "We are getting a group to talk to the red line. Anyone who wants to join us, please come."
Adventuring out
We got about 20 people from the train to walk with us. It was quite a slice of Chicago. All races, all ages. We even had a mom with her baby in a stroller.
We walk down the stairs to the ground level and wait for the mom and the baby in the stroller. Once she reached the ground, we start our eight-block trek to the red line. Everyone is very friendly. One fellow told me that his car broke down in Tinley, and the tow truck dropped him off at the Metra station at 159th where he waited two hours for this Metra to come. Can you imagine? Your car breaks down. You get a ride in a tow truck. You wait two hours for the Metra, and then the Metra train flips out. Poor dude. He was in good spirits though.
Thankfully after walking half a block, someone notices the 87th Street bus coming. We all quickly cross the street and wait thirty seconds for the bus to come.
Bus saves us
There we all stand. The adventurers. The ones willing for a fun challenge. All standing in the middle of what feels like nowhere at 10:30pm at night. As the bus driver pulls up, we joke that he must be wondering why in the world all these people are standing at this one bus stop.
As we board the bus, there are so many confused people how to use the CTA bus. I was kinda suprised that so many people who ride the Metra wouldn't know how the CTA operates. There were people who didn't know how to use CTA cards.
The fun people: bar hitter
Once we get going, it's funny to see how different people react to this situation. I sit in the back of the bus and there's this one dude who wants to use this as an excuse to get people together in a bar and drink.
The fun people: the hockey dancer
Another dude sees a guy with a Blackhawks cap and starts doing hockey moves in the aisle of the bus.
The fun people: BMW guy with a broken car
The guy who had his car busted sat next to me and gave me his card. He works for BMW.
The bus quickly arrives at the red line, and our happy group gets off and walks down to the red line. More confusion with people. Which is kinda funny, because these people just figured out how to pay for the bus, but yet they were still confused with how to pay for the train. Eventually everyone got through the gates and we waited for the train to come.
About 10 minutes later the train comes, and most of us board on the same car. We chit-chatted for a bit. The topic was about gambling and people's favorite gambling boats.
The fun people: Suicide gambling story guy
Then one dude gets all excited talking about how someone committed suicide because this person lost all his money. But he tells the story all excited-like. I turn to the BMW guy and say, "this trip is just getting weirder and weirder by the moment."
The BMW guy was going to get off at Belmont and take the 77 Belmont bus to Damen, but he wasn't sure if the bus was running that late. Bust out the iPhone!
Da-na-na-naaaaaaa!
Yup, sure enough, I was able to reassure him that the bus was still running this late.
The fun people: Paper-bag-booze-drinking gay dude
Then a couple seats in front of me there's a dude drinking booze out of paper bag talking about he just broke up with his male friend and he's all sad, and he's going out to get himself pepped up. I ask him where he's going. He said he's getting off the red line at Belmont to go to Boystown. I say, "ah Halsted. I lived at Halsted and Cornelia." I dunno why I shared this piece of information within this context, because I didn't live there for Boystown. In fact, I didn't even know Boystown was there until I after I signed my lease. But so when I shared this little bit of info, the drinkin-his-sorrows-away guy gives me this stare like he wanted me to come with him. I was like, Uhhhh. So i turned to the BMW dude and said, "I really liked living by Wrigleyville with all the Cubs games."
My stop Fullerton came and I left my friends on the train. It was a fun adventure.
Conclusion
The sleepy Metra train ended up yielding a fun adventure thanks to the help with my iPhone.
The following is a letter I sent to the Balance Bar Company:
Greetings dear people of Balance,
I am a fine consumer of your delightful Balance bar products. I enjoy having one before or after a workout. From time to time, I'll have one in the morning at work. They bring great nutrition and sustenance that my body needs. I open the wrapper to each bar with great anticipation of the balance bar tastiness inside.
Imagine opening up a Triple Chocolate Chaos bar and having the hopes and dreams of TRIPLE! CHOCOLATE! CHOAS! The name brings shivers down my spine in thinking of the chocolate being tripled. Of the chocolate being crazy. Of the chocolate being incredible. The anticipation. The wonder. The hopes. The dreams. Of Triple... Chocolate... Chaos.
Now imagine when you open the bar and you see a bar that looks like it has the life squeezed out of it. Literally. All the chocolateness is oozed out of the bar. It's like the bar was a balloon and someone popped it. The entire contents of the bar has decayed its chocolateness outside of its body. It's like someone murdered the happiness of the chocolate bar. It's a murder scene inside my Triple Chocolate Chaos wrapper. There's chocolate guts everywhere. The horror! It truly brings new meaning to the "chaos" in Triple Chocolate Chaos.
The sad thing is that this happens to about 50% of the Triple Chocolate Chaos bars I purchase. As I mentioned before, I am a fine consumer of your energy bars, therefore, I have had many a triple chocolate chaos bar. This is not a one time occurance. There is a product flaw with the Triple Chocolate Chaos bars. Half of them ooze their life out inside the wrapper before they are even opened to the world. Do these bars have a fear of the world? Are they so afraid to be eaten, that they crap their pants all over the inside the wrapper before they are eaten?
The ID for this particular bar is:
* UPC code: 5004998883
* Inket number: 13UUL2010XBP34
* Time of birth: 12:40 (seriously! You put date of birth on your energy bars)
I beg you to please take a look at the photo. It's like the photo of crime scene. Will you please be like Angela Lansbury and solve the mystery behind why these Triple Chocolate Chaos bars are oozing and dying? Something must be done.
Let's say you have an event one week from today that you really want to be at. Now you can jump to the future and be at that event!
The only catch. This time machine is kinda slow. To attend an event one week from today, it takes exactly seven days to arrive at the event. But this time machine is very accurate. When you say you want to arrive exactly in one week, it will take you to that exact time.
One of the problems with other time machines is that you end up leaving people you love behind. Or you end up visiting your parallel self in the future. With this super time machine, everyone you know and love comes with you.
Come on aboard, we are moving ahead to the future! Let me know the time and date you want to go to, and i'll enter that into our time machine. That's another cool thing about our time machine. It's able to handle multi-tasking and multiple event destinations.
SRSLY. Enter a time and date of when you want to be. And I'll tell you how long it will take to get there.
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