Ghost Cables

 

It's been about forty five years since the City of Chicago first allowed cable television within the city limits. Mayor Richard J. Daley did not want cable TV in the city, so he blocked it. Probably because he hadn't figured out how he could profit from cable. After a long wait, Mayor Daley finally died and we eventually got cable. Since the mid 1980s cable has flourished in the city. Companies have come and gone, merged, and been bought up by the big boys. During all those permutations, those cable companies apparently visited the building that I now own. Each and every one of them strung their own cables from the pole in the alley to my building to provide entertainment to the residents. From what I can figure out, there are cables from DirecTV, RCN, and Comcast, along with some unknown providers. So I have at least five different cables strung across the alley to my house. Only one of them delivers a product. Yesterday Xfinity (Comcast) came and disconnected one of them and strung a new cable. They left the old cable attached to my house with nothing connected at either end. So I went out there with a pair of wire clippers last evening and at least got rid of that bit of cable company laziness. Unfortunately I cannot get rid of the other cables that run from the pole in the alley to the wall of my back porch. Ghost cables that go nowhere. They are unsightly, but they do provide a perch for the multitude of birds that seem to love our yard. I know this because right below those ghost cables are splotches of bird poop. Usually dropped dead center on each of my patio chairs.

They go nowhere, attached to nothing

Dewey Eyed

 

I was watching the CBS Sunday Morning show and they had a segment on there about modern libraries. It was very interesting and it made me think. When was the last time I used a library? Six years ago I voted in the local Chicago Library branch in my neighborhood, but that really didn't count. About fifteen years ago I got a library card from the Wilton Manors, Florida library so I could take out a couple of audio books. That was for our road trip to Chicago that summer. Before that the only time I remember going to the library was forty four years ago in Oakland, California. I was living in Oakland and I had a kitten that the little girl next door gave me. Her cat had a litter and they were so damn cute I had to have one. I soon found out it was infested with fleas. Anyway, that kitten made a sound that reminded me of the Russian word for no. "Nyet, nyet, nyet!" Not meow, or mew, but nyet. So I wanted to name her after Nikita  Khrushchev's wife. In 1978 there was no internet. There were no personal computers, no smart phones. No, you had to go to the library to find things out. Which is what I did. Mrs. Khrushchev's name was Nina, so I named my kitten Nina. That was three times I used the library since high school. Before that I went to the library quite often. The Tinley Park Library, my high school library, and in junior high school I would use Mrs. Sandidge's very special library. Central Junior High had no regular library that I remember. Just the little library that Mrs. Sandidge, our history teacher, had in the back of her classroom. A bunch of books and magazines that had some connection with history. It was my favorite library of all. That's the library where I found a book with the whole story about the Fatty Arbuckle incident. A very detailed description of the Fatty Arbuckle incident. You sure learned things in Mrs. Sandidge's library.

(click here for the story of Fatty Arbuckle)

Red Meat

 

For the last few months I have had a recurring problem. I keep biting the inside of my mouth while I'm eating. Everybody has done that at one point in their life, but this is different. It's like I'm trying to eat my face from the inside out. Yesterday I bit into my lower lip so hard, I was bleeding. Sure it added some flavor to the Italian sausage sandwich I was eating, but it hurt like hell. I can't quite figure out why this is happening so often. At least once a week, and often twice or three times, I bite the inside of my mouth. I've narrowed part of the problem down to not concentrating on what I'm doing. I noticed that if I look away from my dinner plate, to the side, up, or down, I will bite my cheek. So, if I just keep looking forward, chew slowly, and keep a wad of food in my cheek, I'm fine. I have another theory of what's causing this sudden hunger for human flesh. I lost too much weight. The fat in my face that held up the skin is gone. It now sags tantalizingly close to my teeth. Instead of a nice, plumped up face, I now have old man skin that sags and flutters around like curtains on a breezy day. Eating my way out of this and fattening back up might be the only way to stop it. Or I could drink my meals. Smoothies are good. You don't have to chew them and for my evening dinner smoothie, I could include rum.

Alan the Pro!

 

2018, Notice the gap around the mirror.

The word 'pro' is actually an abbreviation of the word professional. I am not that. The pro that I am, is pro-crastinator. Not that I'm lazy. I don't think that I am. It's just that when I have a task to do, one that is more complicated than washing the dishes, I have to prepare mentally. I have to have the whole thing planned out in my mind and I have to convince myself that I will do it to completion. Mark would always nag me to finish things. Like the hallway off of our bedroom. Six years ago he told me to paint it. I still have the paint and some of the tools to do the job. I simply have to wrap my head around taking the pictures off the walls, and taping up the parts I don't want to get paint on. And then there is the big part, bringing the can of paint up from the basement along with paint brushes and rollers.... which I would have to go out and buy. Sorry Mark, that you didn't live to see me finish that job. It weighs heavy on my mind every time I look at the scuff marks on the hallway walls. Another job I started before Mark passed away was the bathroom mirror/medicine cabinet. I began that one four years ago. I opened up a hole in the wall where the 1970s mirror hung, and mounted Mark's flea market find in the hole. A lovely medicine cabinet with two sconces on either side that is age appropriate for our building. The problem is that I left it like that. It didn't quite fit and there was a gap about half an inch wide all the way around it. It was another thing that bothered me, that Mark never got to see finished. These things really do bug me. So why do I procrastinate? It's because filling in that gap would require tile, tile glue (mastic), and grout. I had to get that all straight in my head before starting. I needed a spackle knife, sponge, clean rags, along with the tile and tile cutter. My brain kept telling me that was too many variables. Anyway, over the weekend I sucked it up and pulled everything together. The job is now done. I think it looks just fine. If Mark were still around, he would look at it and shake his head as he walked away. Keeping his thoughts to himself, banking my crappy tile job for some later argument. Which is good enough for me.

2022, Finished

Squirrels Are Really Just Cute Rats

 

A couple of weeks ago I'm sitting in my recliner chair enjoying the early evening and watching some baseball, when I notice movement out of the corner of my eye. Right outside the window, on my front porch, is a planter. In that planter I have flowers. Some petunias, a lot of begonias, and some hanging ivy. Right in the middle of all that I see a twitching, bushy tail. There's a squirrel in my planter digging away like Jeb Clampett looking for oil. Sitting on the window ledge looking out and enjoying the show, is Scout. Not a peep out of her. No barking at the squirrel. She's acting more like an accomplice, like she's going to get a cut of the loot. So I open the window and scream at the rodent to get the hell out of there. It doesn't even look up to see who's yelling at it. Just keeps on digging, dirt flying everywhere. I get the water squirt bottle that I use to squirt Scout when she barks too much. I take aim and shoot at the squirrel. I swear the squirrel gave me the finger as it skittered away across the lawn. The nerve of that thing. I put a lot of thought into that planter. Every year I make a big deal out of that planter and it always looks great. It's the centerpiece of my front yard.

That was a few weeks ago. Yesterday morning I'm taking Scout out for her early walk. As we leave the front porch, I look down. There on the second step is one single marigold head laying there like the horse's head in The Godfather. Up on the porch step is the planter that it came from. The day before there was a nice bushy bunch of marigolds in that planter. This morning it is just dirt. Not a bloom, not a stem, not even any marigold roots. Just dirt. WTF? I immediately ruled out theft. If somebody wanted to steal my marigolds, they would have taken the entire planter. No, it has to be that squirrel. That rat bastard got me back for denying whatever it was digging for in the begonias.

Thursday

 

Yesterday was, get things done day. First thing I did, fixed the flat tire on my Model A that I've been putting off since Monday. That was a learning experience since I had completely forgotten how I did it the last time. It's really no different than when I was a kid and had to patch an inner tube on my bicycle, only on a larger scale. My problem was trying to do it while the wheel was still on the car. Nope, you have to take it off. I eventually laid it out in the yard and wrestled with it there. With my knees, a couple of tire irons, and some soapy water, the tire came right off. Getting it back on was even easier. I'll have to remember that.

Second chore of the day, picking up dog food at the Petco store. I love going to the pet supply store because there are dogs there. Dogs I've never met, wagging their tails, sniffing around, and once in a while barking at me. Like the very suspicious brown dog that thought I had come too close to her owner. I told her that she was a good dog.

After the Petco store, I went over to my favorite old timey hardware store on the corner of Devon and Clark Streets. It's one of those places with creaky wooden floors that smells vaguely of rubber, dust, and lumber and all the employees know exactly what I'm looking for. I should go there more often. After leaving the hardware store, while driving down Granville Avenue, I noticed that my eyesight had become disturbingly bad. My first thought was that the sun was too bright in my eyes, so I pulled down the visor. It didn't help, and I started thinking that maybe the day I won't even be able to drive on a bright sunny day had come. So I kept going, two more blocks of squinting and very slow driving. At some point I looked down for a second and noticed my glasses laying on the console between the seats. But I was wearing glasses, what the hell? I was wearing my reading glasses. I hate this old man crap.

There's Something Askew in the USA

 

Yesterday was a very strange day. I was supposed to drive my 1929 Ford in the Skokie, Illinois, Fourth of July parade. The day before, I had gone over the car. Checked the oil, topped off the radiator, and went around to every tire to make sure they were inflated to the correct pressure. Everything was right. So at ten fifteen in the morning of the Fourth, I started the car and pulled out of the garage. Something was wrong. I had a flat tire. Really, I had just checked the tires the night before. So I quickly jacked up the car and swapped out the flat, still making it to the site of the parade on time. There were three Ford Model T's, and three Ford Model A's all prepped and ready. That included mine with the two little USA flags attached to the front bumper. Everything was so well organized. They had folks riding around on golf carts handing out water and popsicles. Not real Popsicles, but those ones you freeze in long plastic tubes. Still, they were cold and sweet. I got to chit chat with the other guys who had brought their old Fords, and learned that my car really isn't so bad. Not that I think it is, but some of the restored cars do make mine look old. Like maybe ninety three years old. Anyway, we were all getting ready for the start of the parade when one of the parade marshals walked up and asked if we had heard the announcement.

"The parade has been cancelled. There's an active shooter incident at the Highland Park parade and the police have shut our parade down."

I mentioned that Highland Park is at least ten miles away, but the parade was done.

Just about the same time I found that I had a flat tire, a crazy person who should have never been allowed near a gun, took a semi automatic rifle and murdered six people in another parade just a few miles away. I admit, I have become numb to the constant murder of my fellow humans in this country. Every day in Chicago there are murders. But this random act, this thing that only peripherally affected me, hit a nerve. I seriously worried a week ago when I did the Pride parade in my old car, that some hateful human would wreak havoc on us. It didn't happen. So I felt much better this week doing the Skokie parade. Now I don't. Now I'm not sure I ever want to put myself out there again. Not sure if I ever want to shop at a large mall. Not sure if I will ever step into any location where crowds gather. That is the state of things in the United States of America, where we have power hungry politicians who will sacrifice the citizens so they can collect money from the NRA. A country where unborn fetuses are used as voter bait while the actual living voters are put in harm's way. I'm pissed off. Unfortunately a lot of my fellow citizens are not, and will go ahead and vote again for the fetus hugging, gun hugging politicians of the death cult.