Mayo update

Mayo has that problem of not knowing exactly when to leave places, and when people point out the rules - and the fact that people pick on him - he tends to put up a fuss when it comes time to leave. Very stubborn kid. I've had to go over the following things with him again and again - it's like dealing w/ an Alzheimer's patient sometimes. My arguments go thusly:

"The school first priority is to insure a safe place for the students to be @. When kids are en masse hanging out in front of the school waiting for their frenz to get out - these are times when fights and gang intimidation deals are carried out. So: security has the kids get off school property right away, then tries to shoo them away from the El station across the street. Although it would be nice to have the kids hangout wherever they want, history suggests that one thousand unsupervised kids will -eventually, if not today then to-morrow, then whenever (and no, St. Charles or St. Rita or Glenbard West kids, I do not wanna hear it- this is the context we have to deal with) start shenanigans that will eventually lead us to the cover of the Sun Times and people will be thinking "What the truck is it w/ these city kids? And what kind of school would let this shit happen?"

So - to provide for the proper environment for our students, kids just gotta be pushed home if they are not in after school activities. Sorta like the law which says you have to stop @ a stop sign - it just helps."

So, i'd been taking Mayo to our schools basketball games. We play @ 4.30 after school, and since Mayo likes to hang out in this hood till 9pm before going home in Chinatown, I figgered it'd be a great thing to help him waste some time here - and, of course, make sure someone is interested in his life. I went last week, and had to leave early - we were up by 30points @ halftime (team, guys, pretty good - not Farragut w/ Garnett/Fields/Wright/Rome - but.... pretty good..... just a lack of supersize in the middle). But the next day reports reached me - that he had run into sometrouble. I thought it was a huge deal, but the story was probaley just blown up before it reached me. So, I took him Tuesday to the game in the gym, and had to make sure that he understood that when the J-V game ended @, say, 6.30pm, he had to go. Whne the little kids come in for their soccer, he had to be gone.

He reported to me that on Tuesday - when I warned him he just hadda go - he did. So he listensd to me, and that's one of the things he had to know. But then I knew he really listened to me - well we'll see: After, for the fivethousanth time, he asked me about the loitering thing - and I responded w/ the above italicized statement or it's close brother - he told me that because each time I have told him the same thing - he now believes me.

In response to the question by


paperplanes

"why don't you send Mayo to get the crazy Christians?"

a gathering of shots from back then/ roofing

found here -excellent collections:
http://flickr.com/photos/eddie-chicago-railfan/

Side of Marquette Theatre : 1985

and thus destruction of said building - and yes, that's St. Rita church in the far distance to the left of the foto up 63d Street:

@@@.com

If I were you, I would have watched Pasolini's "Accatone" instead. What were you thinking???

what are you to do when yr frenz send sucicudal pictures of themselves??

what are you to do when yr frenz send suicidal pictures of themselves??

ready for tip and run

The Navy has announced that the NS-1 Peter Strasser, flagship of all fleets, was refloated and deemed ready for battle yeaterday after a two day refit i drydock. The costs - astronomical - were particularly hard for the deptartment of the navy to sustain, but the ship is now fully functional.

Although there were secret reports that Strasser was to join other units for another tip and run raid soon. The captain of the ship/fleet/country Virgil Hilts, said : "I felt like I was @ Jutland again. All the whilst shells are exploding, great geysers of water ten stories high, the starshells, the waves of the speeding dreadnaughts almost swamping us - to captain again the ship ; especially through that weather - it was like I was a young ensign again. When enemy topredo tracks were spotted on the port bow, we were able to comb the tracks. When the enemy battle cruisers suddenly spotted us through the dense smoke, we were able to wheel around in an instant and get back to safty."

The Strasser passed its tests and is now fully ready for battle.

@@@.com/17 December

Maybe if you had sex with him and slept over and you had pancakes the next morning....

Because it's there

BCD and I

One of the reasons that I got a digital camera was that I wanted to document the roofs that we used to climb growing up in the neighbourhood. This is not the post for that - I've had my camera a year now and a single roof of my youth has yet to be documented, let alone written about. But recently (as you mite have guessed from the cover stars--- and thanks the Smiths, for the terminology--- that adorned this blog for a bit there the last two fortnights) I have a mountain climbing fixation. Hence pictures of Everest, Matterhorn, the Eiger..etc... and the introduction of mountain climbing terms to securityout, etc etc etc...

So - mountain climbing. I'd liked the movie "Into the Wild" a real lot. I wasn't gung ho for it, but Gf was and she won. Now, funny, as I was the one to run w/ the movie-I immediately got the book, read it in what seemed like a few minutes, and then realised that name.....John Krakauer and a book we had here on the shelves - Into Thin Air was by the same dude.

Into Thin Air was about the disastrous climbing season in 1996 where twelve people in various parties died on the mountain. The story was famous for me already - I'd followed the events live on the mountain ten years ago - I remember how deeply heartbreaking it was when one of those stuck dying on the mountain was able to use a mobile phone to have a last chat with his wife. Then there were the people left for dead -the one actually made it back to safety, though badly injured. Finally, the horror of one group actually leaving others to die because it would interfere in their quest for the summit. I remember that time.

And.....the book...... was brilliant. Again, for the second straight book, it couldn't leave my hands. I go on about how I can't concentrate enough and am too busy to read like I did when I was little - but it was finished in 24h - and it would have been done sooner except that I had to do well, fuck, I had to acknowledge people and talk to them --it was the Thanksgiving thing going on.....


Not BCD and I

So- climbing. Those huge mountains - where one has to use oxygen? God it seems suicidal. When you get that high in the mountains, the air consists of only 1/3 the amount of Oxygen as @ sea level. The mind really starts to go @ that level - punch drunk fighters, or drunken goofs - that what the brain turns into. The tales of misunderstanding and mistakes that are made that high are fascinating. To have the brain so gone, and to still have to do intricate climbs - jeeze!! It scares the hell out of me reading about it. So, of course, after I finished that book, I ordered a 2008 collection of stories about survival inn the mountains.

So - now Gf is afraid that I want to go mountain climbing. I explained to her that in 1996 one had to pay $70,000 to outfit and climb Mt. Everest - so i won't be going soon.

However........ there ar elots and lots and lots of mountains - some that really needed be climber, as much as walked up - here in the states. Maybe.

But -again - the reason for this post is those climbing forays we used to do when we were young. Everyone climber the buildings, but I was in the leadership of two different groups. The greatest of these roofing crews was the L5. Although we had several members, there were two = BCD and I - who were the lead climbers. So - if someplace hadn't been roofed before - we led the way. Anytime a difficult piece in the process had to be solved - either of the two of us. So - when we had to literally scale up a drain pipe 60-70 feet up the sheer side wall of a building-it was either of us to do, get into the building and go to the place where we could leave in the others more safely.

I took great pride in that position. And the climbing on Everest really made me think of those days. These mountaineers had to scale up - again - sheer walls that would defeat everyone else. People could even conceive that these places were able to be conquered.

And so w/ BCD and I. We were talking over the weekend (post to come) about two roofs in particular. They were dominating heights - but they were so hard to climb that any worth on a regular basis for us was null and void.

But - they were there, they were in the neighbourhood, and they had to be climbed @ least once. Crazy, we were - because these roofs were so dangerous. So -two targets - on on 63d and Sacramento, and the other on Kedzie just north of the north alley of 63d (a gorgeous gorgeous building, too) were building we just had to climb.

Tha's next - maybe next week.

blood! oh mother! blood!

wellwellwellwellwellwellwellwellwellwellwellwellwellwellwellwellwellwellwellwellwellwellwellwellwellwellwellwellwellwellwellwellwellwellwellwellwellwellwellwellwellwellwellwellwellwellwellwellwellwellwellwellwellwellwellwellwell

or, maybe, is it

wellwellwellwellwellwell
wellwellwellwellwellwell
wellwellwellwellwellwell
wellwellwellwellwellwell
wellwellwellwellwellwell
wellwellwellwellwellwell
wellwellwellwellwellwellwellwellwell
wellwellwellwellwellwell
wellwellwell


well??

God hates ..................

One of the stranger types of whack job Americans are those that protest service peoples funerals w/ their "God hates fags" posters and shouts etc. Well, we got six of them today protesting outside of school. Not sure why we were picked - maybe it was just coincidence - but it was rather pathetic.

However - they should be allowed to say what they want. I'm sure that I have written before about my cousin in Belcoo in the northern section of Ireland (England controls this part). we were discussing the Troubles and the marching season the general consensus amongst Catholics @ that point was "Why let them march through our neighbourhood spouting off all of their hate towards us? We don't want them marching through causing trouble". It seemed to me - being the American - that well, they should be allowed to march wherever they want-I mean, didn't the Nazi's have the rite to march through Skokie ?

However, context is everything - and immed. accepted that if my cousins think that the marching of the Protestants, then that's whats rite in Ireland.

And so, if protesters outside of my school think that "America is doomed" and "God hates Obama" (despite a wonderful press campaign that suggests actually that God LOVES Obama), well, let'm blather on. The worry now shifts to make sure our kids don't target these six poeple for snowballs - there is so much ammo!

NS-1 Strasser as the Seydlitz

The Seydiltz was a German battlecruiser that fought-and almost died - @ the Battle of Jutland. It was part of the battle cruiser fleet that was constattly in the most heavily engaged parts of the battle. In addition trading salvos during the whole of both The Run to the North and The Run to the South, Seydiltz also took part in the Death ride of the Battlecruisers. This was the part of the battle where it seemed that the entire English fleet was justa bout to cut off the entire German fleet - a stunning victory for the English apparent- when Lutzow sent his battered battlecruisers desperately against the whole of the English battleline -just then finding the range and running disaster out of their barrels all over the German line. However, this unexpected move byt he Germans spooked the English, thus allowing thre slower German battleships to skulk off into the growing smoke and gloom).

The Seydiltz wasn't just heavily hit, it was battered beyond belief- but not so battered that it was beyond saving. Hit by 22 giant HE shells, the ship itself was strewn all over itself. Down by the bows, it had to be - I mite be wrong on this, since this has happened a lot over the years- towed backwards into port. And before it even got into port to be drydocked, it had to be beached so it didn't sink. Now, in these days - or even 20 years later - the ship would have been a sitting duck for an airstrike. But since in 1916 the biggest things in the air were Peter Strassers zepplins, attack from air was generally not an optiion. The Germans were allowed to repair the ship and get it back into the fleet. Expensive? Yes.

But probably not as expensive to fix as my car NS-1 Strasser

- I'm too embarressed to even write just howmuch $$ i'm pouring into the goddamn car. That damage that i got avoiding a suddenlyswervinginfrontofme car two weeks ago has turned into a bill that is slightly less than ......... i'm too angry to write anything clever....... But the total bills - whicvh also include two new tyres, wiper repair, and etc etc comes almost to half of what i paid for the car.

Fuck.

I called jackson and Gf to see if I shoiuld even bother and instead just get a new car. If I was to do this next week - when I have vacation - I mita just scuttled the Strasser forever - fuck my brave declaration that this is the last car I will ever buy etc. With new Nissans under $10,000?

But, misguided loyalty led me to drydocking the car one last time and biting the bullet w/ this astronomical cost (really - beside education and the Strasser itself, these repairs represent the most $ o've ever spent on anything.

And i'd just put $400=into it too soon ago.

the pasolini trio

by the way, did you read this? this is much better than anything blackie could do, so i just wanted you to read this.

it rminds me of this :

iuhrncfrvher vgerhgnerhg qrg7 34 t89 yriguhodfahgiurhg erv r wiuerhfiuwhe f

or, perhaps this :

rehuhvcvhqhfcrhcfqhfuxqeunhfuehfinhf4t4ciurgnhngervcihrncgu

rgregqrguhqr ghughiurhgbetwyg54v47ynyg tyg

reighywrhghrg h gbwnhig rg

hg erhgn ernhgiheriughneiu

i mean, rite??

so:

chicken da wichs

whose been eating my ham sandwiches?

every day they want to scrupple up the supple

but we will let them

sled them

into murky clear waters

maughters

slaughters

and gypsum

skating slowly

holy and rye

yeah:

ba' whatta' 'bouta' 'guise?

the wingback

I give this about 225 days before it dissappears again.

However, i intend to savour those days.

the greatest blogger of all time is back.

The Rolling Stones welcome:

astrid

on all fronts, what did you expect?

Ive always been a litle, uh, turned on by Patty Blagovich for the last several years. Yes, I know that many think she isn't the lookerest of the looked@ - but I like to look. And lately, I've taken a greater interest in her. No, not because she's suddenly in ther papaers all the time - but because those papers have described her as "Potty Mouthed". So, for whatever reason, well, actually, I know what reason - and yes, we all have our reasons, all to ourselves. But, yeah, potty mouthed..................................

And: Are people really suprised that this level of corruption happens in Chicago? C'mon - like people think this is some sorta abberation? Not in Chicago. Never in Chicago. Everyone else in office should be watching their phone calls. I won't drop names.

Blaggy's behaviour is NORMAL and EXPECTED here.