Here's a story about a couple of folks who gave money or property to the True And Living Church of Jesus Christ of the Saints of the Last Days in exchange for the opportunity to meet Jesus here on Earth during the Second Coming. He didn't show, and they have been awarded $270,000 in a breach of contract lawsuit.

I'm not even going to touch this one. Not even to make a "class-action lawsuit" joke.

It's About Time:

Illinois Governor Jim Ryan, on Fidel Castro: "I am aware he is a communist to the core. But there are good people in Cuba who need help."

It's About Time, and I'll Believe It When I See It:

George Bush, In His Address: "Corporate America must be made more accountable to employees and shareholders and held to the highest standards of conduct."

It's About Goddam Time!

A couple in Peoria, AZ, were handcuffed and jailed because they left outdoor Xmas lights up in violation of ordinance requiring that they be removed no more than 19 days after Xmas. They were arrested last week after ignoring a court summons, the citation itself coming from last year, when they still had their lights up in April.

How To Sign Up For Cable Modem Service
in 100 easy steps!

1) Call the company you would like to do business with.
2) Wait on hold
3) Be told that they do not service your area.
4) Ask who does
5) Be told they don't know, but it's probably AT&T Manhand.
6) Go to AT&T Manhand website
7) Find that there are no phone numbers listed there.
8) Look in the yellow pages, under "internet"
9) Find that there's nothing there
10) Look under "cable"
11) Find "see television"
12) Look under "television"
13) Find an entry that says, "See our ad this page"
14) Find that ad reads "live customer service 24-7"
15) Call the number
16) Listen to "number out of service" message
17) Call 411
18) Get new number
19) Call new number
20) Listen to "our offices are now closed" message
21) Call back during the week
22) Wait on hold
23) Find that the number given is not my local office
24) Wait on hold for them to transfer
25) Spend 30 minutes with CSR discussing options, entering information, setting up installation appointment
26) Wait 2 weeks
27) Stay home from work waiting for cable guy, making sure not to leave the house during the four-hour period
28) Wait until you give up and realize he's not coming
29) Call back
30) Wait on hold
31) Tell rep your problem
32) Wait on hold while you're transferred to correct department
33) Explain situation to rep
34) Give information to be looked up
35) Be told that there's no reason noted why the tech didn't show
36) Hold while they set up another date and time
37) Be told that the tech didn't show because they don't service your area
38) Ask why they made you set up a time and stay home from work before they figured that out
39) Listen to clueless CSR mumble something about the computer
40) Hang up
41) Call back
42) Wait on hold
43) Listen to see if new rep is a mouth-breather
44) Explain problem
45) Give all the information
46) Hold while it's investigated
47) Be told that your address needs to be entered into the system by filling out a "serviceability" form
48) Hold while rep gets form
49) Give rep info for form
50) Wait 72 hours until address is entered
51) Receive call from rep to schedule time
52) Schedule time
53) Wait 2 weeks

to be continued...

One of the many, many ways in which a bank or financial institution prevents you from accessing your own money is the old debit-card switcheroo. They put that expiration date on the card four years out, and they they always mail you a new card in a blank envelope and perform the "service" of cancelling your old card for you. Has this happened to you? One day, all of the sudden, everything you pay for by automatic withdrawal just stops working. This happened to me a year and a half ago, with my ISP.

My house currently has 9 residents. Over the past two years, with the three apartments turning over, I'd estimate that about 30 people have lived there, so we get their mail plus mail for 10 more or so from years ago. None of these 40 people, apparently, have ever heard of the USPS's mail forwarding service. We don't have individual mailboxes, so you can imagine the huge pile, mostly junk mail, that comes to our foyer table every day. It's understandable how we could miss an envelope marked only with our address, or at least put that envelope in the junk-to-be-perused pile instead of the open-right-away pile.

At any rate, one day my internet service shut off, late at night, because my debit card had been graciously cancelled for me by my wonderful and customer-service-oriented financial institution, the fuckers. At the time I was using chicago.net, because I always go for the ISP that registered the domain for the city, knowing that they'll be the oldest company on the block and thus likely to be staffed by geeks instead of perky customer service reps. There's nothing I hate more than calling an ISP to ask questions and getting some 3-days-of-training call center CSR who probably has pictures instead of words on their computer keyboard. It's always the same:

Me: "I'm interested in upgrading my 28.8 kilobaud Internet connection to a 1.5 Mega bit fibre-optic T1 line. Will you be able to provide an IP router that's compatible with my token ring ethernet LAN configuration?"

CSR (response A): "Uhhh... I have to get my supervisor."
CSR (response B): "Can I have some money now?"

So the geeks at chicago.net were always helpful, if not always cheerful. But when my service was disconnected, they were closed. I was heavily addicted to an online RPG at the time, and so I needed access NOW. I flipped through the yellow pages and for some reason chose "Moore Internet".

11pm, I call and wake up Bill Moore at his home. "I need access and I need it now, I have my credit card in my hand, can you help me?" I desperately pleaded.

"Ayuh," said a half-asleep Bill, and I started to hear keys clacking. He hooked me up, and I got my fix. In the next year and a half or so, there were only two service interruptions, and he was always willing to bullshit about the virus that had taken him out or whatever problems they were having. I would wholeheartedly recommend that if you want a dial-up ISP in the greater Chicago area, call Moore Internet.

But, alas, like grains through the hourglass, these are the technologies of our lives. Our house has four computers now, and though the airport will share the line, we need a bigger pipe like a hippie with a fat sack. I switched to cable-modem today, and disconnected with Bill.

To call him, I had to look him up online. Yahoo pulled up two results for "Moore Internet": "Moore Internet" and "Moore's Machine Shop", both with the same address. For a year and a half, I've been getting my dialup service from a machine shop. And it was the best service I ever had.

So if you've been dicked around by HyperMegaGlobalNet.com, maybe you're looking in the wrong place. It took a machinist to get it right for me. Now, I've gotta do something about those chode-enthusiasts over at the bank. I think I'm going to start keeping my money down at the auto-body shop.

So we got a cat tree (the "Deluxe") for the kittens. I suspect that out there circulating with all the 9/11 hoaxes and the Nigerian $45 Million transfer scams, there's an email that says, "You know you care too much about your cats if..." and buying furniture for them is the second-to-last step. The last step is always something like having them surgically grafted to your chest, or having 200 of them, or letting them run your life to the point where you're tapping the crystal serving cup like that chump in the Sheba cat food commercial.

But Gabey and Mosey are our offspring, and we got them furniture out of the hope that they won't destroy the people-furniture as much anymore. SingularGirl gave birth to Gabey, and I shat out Mosey. This is apparent in their respective personalities. If you don't understand how they could be brothers, yet one was immaculately conceived in a human mother and the other spontaneously formed in an act of sin against nature south of my taco compartment, then there is much you don't know about feline genetics. Needless to say, we have plenty of pictures of the cats, we have the "Staying Together For The Sake Of The Cats" refridgerator magnet, and now it's time to take it to the next level.

Fortunately, they've taken to it like dogs take to roadkill, knowing instantly that it was theirs. The high-up hidey-hole allows them to be simulaneously higher than everything else in the room and cowering in a hole, two of cats' favorite things. They're so passive-aggressive. You haven't fed them by 7:01, they sit on your face. You lock them in the bedroom, they shit in your shoe. And unless you've got treats for them, it's all, "Talk to the butt." At least they pay their way by eagerly munching the spiders that have me and Singular squealing in fear like a teenage Mormon bride. But they're sooo stupid- I beat Gabey at checkers 9 out of 10 times, easy.

I strolled into the Laundromat, and noticed that the shlub-on-duty was the guy who had asked me about my earrings last week. Lots of people ask me about my earrings.

"Hey, how's it going?" I said.

"Oh, I remember you!" he said, then pointed to his earlobe, "Big stud, right?"

I replied, "Yeah, you can call me that if ya like."

On Friday, a friend of Lun's won a party at a club called Glow. I neglected to get the address before we headed out in the cab, and so we spent way too much time driving to incorrect locations shouted by passersby. Guadalupe and her two friends gave up and went to Girlbar. I finally made it, but after the hour of all-you-can-drink that the party included.

Glow was quite the bootylicious locale. It was like a frat bar from my hometown, except everybody had learned to dress. White kids freakin'. It was so freaky, it approached the hedonistic atmosphere of a tame gay bar. Since I go to bars to drink, not to get laid, and drinks were $9, I wasn't too impressed.

However, I was safe with the party, behind the velvet ropes. Ooh. There I was, behind the ropes, without hookers OR hard drugs! It was like a little living room that they had set up upstairs. Quite nice. At one or so they kicked us out. The party headed to Girlbar in search of my roomie and I went home to sleep.

Saturday, we played way too many drinkin' games. Asshole, Beeramid, and the plethora of four-player games that we roomies play all the time: Mille Bornes, Monopoly, Crash Bash. We gamed so much we were too drunk to go out, even though we were on DJ Psychobitch's list at Crobar. Oh, well, maybe next weekend.

Just thought I'd post some pics of my home for my homeys who haven't been able to visit. It was built in the 1890's right on the newly-built boulevard, a stone's throw south of the Square. My name is Johnny, I live on the second floor. My sister's in Ecuador, and when she showed these pictures to her friends, they exclaimed that I must be a millionaire. Heh. If only they knew. I'm so broke, if I got mugged, all the guy would get is practice. Call Hospice, I'm "terminally billed".

The inside pic doesn't really do it justice, because you can't really see the "double parlor", which means basically that the front three rooms are only separated by those columns. So it's really wide open. Plus, you can't see our fabulous bar, or even the disco ball. My mom took these pictures for the kinfolk and so she must have tried to make it look like we live a more prudent life. Heh. If only they knew.

They forgot the U.S..

Remember what Ashcroft said: "those who scare peaceloving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: your tactics only aid terrorists for they erode our unity and diminish our resolve."

So remember, if you love your freedom of speech, keep your mouth shut.

I'm a fucking idiot

...because I let Piloto convince me to drive him around the west side looking for la mota. Y'see, we were all partying at E-D's house, all four of the roomies, watching the four televisions that Cabuto had set up for some reason. One of those parties where you run out of beer at 1AM and turn to hard likker. Ooooeee!!! So anyway, at about 2:30 AM, Piloto wants la mota, so he's about to go drive around drunk looking for it. I'd never been suckered by him before, so I fell for it and drove him, but I never will again.

"I know three places where dey sell eet," he said.

"At two thirty AM?"

"We'll just drive by and see eef dey are outside. Eef dey are outside, dey are selling eet."

So we drive by the three places, and of course there's nobody there. It's fucking 3AM. I can't believe I'm doing this, but I knew he was going to do it all wasted anyway, and though he says, "Oh, I drive like thees all de time," I know that once he wrecked, drunk, went through the windshield with Cabuto, then ran from the cops to a friendly corner store where they gave them a change of clothes and hats to cover their bleeding scalps.

All the while, in this neighborhood, I notice that there's a guy standing on every street corner. Every corner. It's like fucking Night of the Living Dead. They're just standing there, watching the cars go by. One guy has a huuuuuuge rotweiler with him, spiked collar and all. When we stop at a stop sign, Piloto rolls down the window and asks a guy if he has la mota.

"I got rocks and blow," he says, "Good rocks."

Yes, I was offered crack. In a situation that makes it look like I was intending to buy crack, if the cops a) could legally sell you drugs and then bust you for them, b) ever busted a user rather than a dealer, except when they're trying to get people to testify against a dealer, and c) gave the tiniest bit of a shit in this city (no less than two times in the past week have I driven PAST a cop while I was going the wrong way down a one-way street and not gotten so much as a glance in my direction). "We Serve But Don't Observe." I think it has to do with the fact that they're engaged in a war, and you don't bust people for jaywalking during a firefight. But the point is, I was stupid to let that pinche guey drag me into that situation in the first place. I said, "Piloto, creo que no podemos fumar la mota ahora" (or something to that effect, it was a result of the "Drunken Gringos Think They're Fluent" factor), and we went back to the party.

But the fact remains that I was damn lucky to get outta there alive and free. Crack bad. Crack dealers bad. You never meet anybody who says, "There's a difference between crack use and crack abuse." In fact, now that I think about it, what the fuck did he mean, "good rocks"? Good? As in less addictive? As in lasts six minutes instead of five? Explodes your heart faster, or slower? Good crack. What a crock.

Singular commented yesterday that she dreads going to the gym because it reminds her of how out-of-shape she is. I empathize completely, but feeling that way is a slippery slope, because avoiding the gym is what leads to being out-of-shape. To me, the gym is the one place I don't feel self-conscious about being shlubby, because when I'm there, at least I'm doing something about it. Of course, if you know me, you know that my balance of feeling in control versus the depths of despair has to do not with where I am but with which direction I'm headed in. I don't feel bad about myself right now, even though I'm the second-fattest that I've ever been, after the time that my parents gave me their deep-fat-fryer and I ballooned up until I got rid of it. I weigh 215 pounds.

In our society, fat people are the last group that it's "okay" to make fun of. People who would be aghast at a racial joke, a joke about the disabled, a queer joke, will chuckle heartily at fat jokes. Look at "Shallow Hal"... a whole movie dedicated to fat jokes slathered with a thin veil of "we shouldn't laugh at all these fat jokes". You've seen the trailer- fat girl jumps in pool, makes big splash. HARDY HAR HAR! Fat girl sits in chair, breaks it. BWAAA HAAA HAAA. Fat girl has giant underwear. OH STOP I'M DYIN HERE. Note that Jack Black himself is a big fat slob, but since he's a guy, he gets to be the hero, without any computer animation to make him look less chunky. However, even the thought of a FAT GUY being attracted to a fat girl is so outrageous that they based an entire movie around it. Not that other movies are all that- I can't tell you how many times in the last couple of months I've gone to the theater, looked at the marquee, and walked out- it's just an example of how its acceptable to make fat jokes when just about every other form of generalized, blanket prejudice is a major faux pas.

Perhaps the cause has to do with the issue of control. The perception is that fat people have made a choice, through action or inaction, to be the way they are. I'm kind of torn on this issue. On one hand, there are people who by metabolism or glands cannot control their weight. They number just about the same as those people who can eat all the junk they want and still be in great shape. The middle 80% are people whose bodies are affected by their patterns of diet and exercise. Seriously, how many people do you know who are morbidly overweight, who exercise regularly and eat light? It happens. Not often. More often, people like Singular's 400-lb former employer moan about their thyroid while cramming two mayo-laden tuna footlong subs into their gullet for lunch each day. We are the fattest country in the world, probably because of fast food.

Bear in mind that I'm not talking about "husky". I'm talking about obesity. Everybody's body comes in a frame size. What are the kids sizes? "Slim" and "Husky". This is something you cannot control. Samoans, as an example, are genetically husky. But Melrose Place came to Samoa, and all of the sudden, we've got anorexic and bulimic Samoan teenage girls trying to be something they simply cannot be. A healthy, husky person has a beautiful body. Our society has unhealthy ideas about body image. It's nice (not really) to hear that we've exported this sickness to other countries.

If it sounds like I'm condemning the obese, you've got me all wrong. I believe that each individual has an obligation to themselves, and noone else, to keep themselves healthy. I've failed in that obligation. My metabolism kept me in shape until I turned 23 or so, and it started to slow, and I didn't change my lifestyle, in fact I stopped taking martial arts, and now I've got a "dunlap", but not a "dickiedoo" (A dunlap is when your belly done lapped over your belt, a dickiedoo is when your belly sticks out farther than your dickie do). I'm trying to get in shape while I'm young, I've been going to the gym for a few months now, and I feel noticeably better cardiovascular-wise but I'm not any thinner because I didn't change my diet until recently, and as a southern boy I'm addicted to grease. I would rather have chicken-fried-chicken and home fries than all the ice cream and cake in the world.

My gym has several locations in the city, and we used to go to this one in a trendy neighborhood, but everybody there looked like a supermodel, and it made us uncomfortable. Of course, the reason they do is because they go to the gym. So we started going to this other location downtown where there's a mix of people of all shapes and sizes who are trying to improve themselves. If I go to the club, and everybody's got huge pecs and tight clothes, I definitely feel like people are looking at me and thinking, "What a shlub." I don't feel that in the gym, because what are people gonna think? "What a shlub, he should go to the gym"?!?! Being at the gym signifies my acceptance of my shlubbiness and my desire to do something about it. The people there who look like supermodels look that way because they've dedicated themselves to looking that way. It's hard work. It's hard, especially if you've had a kid, to get yourself in shape. It requires behavior patterns that have to be maintained for a long time before they pay off. It requires sacrificing the pleasures of eating, one of our most basic needs and therefore one of the strongest stimulants of the pleasure centers of the brain. There's also always the lingering knowledge that you shouldn't listen to society's pressure to be thin, that people who care about your looks are shallow and not worth concerning yourself about, maybe even that the lifestyle required to be in shape is no way to live.

Can you see how I'm torn? I don't think people should judge based on appearance but I think people should take care of themselves. Some people can't control their weight but most people can. The ones who could but don't reflect poorly on the ones who can't. The cure for shlubbiness is almost as bad as the disease. And overall, people's shallowness is generally in inverse proportion to their weight. I guess it's like religion- people start following a god and all the sudden think they can judge others. Come to think of it, it's a lot like a religion: A pursuit of an ideal that can never be attained, requiring constant commitment to guard against regress, with the rewards coming after a long time but being so good that you want to encourage others to join you. Like religion, it's the journey and not the finish line that is important. It's more about lifestyle and self-respect than it is about how others percieve you. This fact is often overlooked with both religion and physical condition. The pursuit of the ideal in both cases can be harmful. If done right, though, they can both make you feel better regardless of whether you ever reach that burning beacon on the distant horizon.

It's been a while, but there's finally another issue of The Roommate out.

Me and nine friends played Whirlyball this weekend. What's Whirlyball, you say? Well... take a basketball court and replace the hoops with a round target where that square on the backboard is. Get a softball-sized whiffleball and give each player a scoop, sorta like jai lai or lacrosse scoop. Two teams of five. Oh yeah, everybody drives a bumper car!

It's sorta like polo on bumper cars instead of horses. The key is to pass the ball to your teammates, since carrying it won't get you far- every time you get the ball you find yourself being battered by three of the opposing team. Sometimes you are concentrating so hard on getting the ball that you don't watch where you're going and BAM! right into the wall. Plus, if the ball's all the way down at the other end of the court, you might as well just ram whoever's closest to you. The fact that the court is at a bar doesn't help your driving skills.

Let me tell you, it is a brutal sport. We played two half-hour games. Not for those with back problems. Everybody has a seatbelt-shaped bruise across their hips now.

Imagine playing hockey or basketball where there were no fouls, and you were encouraged to ram the heck out of your opponents. Physical size doesn't matter since everyone's got the same vehicle. Our two teams were closely matched and the scores were 8-10 and 7-7. By the time the hour was up, I was done. I felt like a hockey puck.

For New Year's, we went first to my friend Lun's house for a fireup. One of the best things about the city is the diversity- everybody's from a different place. Lun's from India, and there were me and my roomies from Ohio, a friend from Wisconsin and her friend from Alaska, Lun's friend from Sweden, and a bunch of my friends from Mexico City. Of course, Singular, Guadalupe, Piloto, Cabuto, and E-D were there. We talked a bit about worldwide NYE traditions. In my family, you absolutely must eat black-eyed peas on the first day of the year, for good luck that year. My sister's in Ecuador right now, and she says that they make effigies called "anos viejos" and burn them in the street. Then all the guys dress up like women and dance in the street until drivers give them money. I told her that we had people burned in effigy in the street, and men dressed as women dancing in thongs in traffic for money, but it wasn't for New Year's, that's just Chicago.

We headed down to Navy Pier to watch the fireworks. The El train is free on NYE to encourage people to keep from driving drunk. Everyone's spirits are high and the city becomes a little friendlier. The
fireworks over the lake were beautiful, with two competing shows, and the glowing city in the
background.

I noticed an odd phenomenon while down there. In residential high-rises, you can see the windows of hundreds of apartments at once. On New Year's Eve, everyone's watching the same show, right? Dick Clark in Times Square, doing his 120th NYE celebration. So when everyone's watching the same show, all of those windows glow and pulse in sync as the televisions inside flicker from scene to scene.

Then back to our place, where we had the first party of 2002! It started at 1AM on 1/1. We figured people'd have other plans for the evening but would want some place to go to relax. So we ushered in the new year until the sun came up. Nobody got sick, but Brooklyn did get so drunk that he threw his pants out the window.