One of my coworkers has a Ph D

In Exercise Science.

Thing on the news right now about young people in Cedar Rapids

Cedar Rapids is a good place if you enjoy nu metal and sadness. The locals are trying to recruit YOUNG PEOPLE to enjoy the many job opportunities, like at Rockwell Collins, which recently laid off 200 people. YOUNG PEOPLE can inject new energies into Cedar Rapids by like working at the art museum and going to bars. Whenever the news story showed pictures of the Rockwell Collins building you could overhear the cacophany from the nearby highway. They will smell the massive quaker oats plant and it will smell like sexy young people money.

Cedar Rapids' official motto is "City of Five Seasons." There are two jokes you can say about this, one being that it's the "City of Five Smells." They are:

1. Quaker Oats
2. Industrial Wastewater
3. Airport
4. Abject Poverty
5. Slipknot

The other joke you can tell is that the fifth season is "A time to enjoy life." Except that's not a joke.

Chicago

I went to Chicago yesterday for a wine tasting and they have glorious greasy meats in that town. Just look at this shit:



Then look at this shit:



Now look at this shit:



Now clean up your keyboards, you philistines.

Chicago feels like a city in which the monopoly man would live - the streets are wide and all the neo-gothic and art deco architecture just reeks of rich dudes in snazzy wintercoats living the high life. Just look at this handsome motherfucker.



He just got off the phone with Treasury Secretary Paulson and won a slice of the bailout pie. Take that, shoe.

Wine tastings are bizarre because you need to be on your fucking game - your mouth feels like a wound by the end of the three hours and all you have around to help the cause is a platter of blue cheese, which as anyone who has ever tasted blue cheese knows, is far from crisp and refreshing. Thankfully this was a trade tasting. Monday I went to one that was ostensibly a trade tasting but somehow turned into this one sloppy girl using the word "mulatto" in mixed company and someone else urging me to "throw the fuck down."



Those dudes have a ridiculous cover of "Baby Got Back."

Wearing a suit makes it a lot easier to walk into random businesses to use the restroom. Herein I will rate the restrooms of the following fine retail and commercial establishments that let my suspender-and-pinstripes cracker ass use the facilities as I schlepped around town for 5 hours:

Neiman-Marcus on Michigan Avenue: quiet and sequestered into an obscure corner on the third fucking floor, and the escalators were too thin to let my piss-logged self pass the lollygagging Indo-Chine tourists. Gawkers must've wondered why a fine-threaded white dude was dancing behind the wealthy asiatic financiers. At least my job is recession proof. Fuck your recondite pissholes, Needless Markup. C-

Potbelly's in the Financial district: The one on 7th avenue NW in DC has some dude singing white boy blues during lunch break. I was looking forward to being serenaded by some Jack Johnson covers as I urinated. There were none but the bowl was rather clean by fast-food establishment standards, and also highly visible and right across from the main entrance, which allows beelining towards the door without awkward contact with employees. Decor was lacking. A-

W Hotel in the Financial District: Who thinks it's a good idea to blare deep house music during a Nurse Practitioner Convention. These dudes do. Thankfully gender stratification in the workplace meant no line for the men's room. I even snuck a peak at the presentation, which was about helping patients across the language barrier. All the world is peachy, but I can do without associating my toilet business with a Moscow discotheque. B-

Boda Putin's harem of dour Slavic goddesses gives the world a big fucking thumbs up.

On Election Night 2004

I had a short story due for a class on the next day, and I stopped progress to check the YahooNews electoral map and watch state by state any hope for the future be shot in the fucking face. It sucked, and that story ended up sucking. It was about a dude with no hands who thought he was Eddie Van Halen. Those were some strange times in my life I suppose.

It was 1:30 when I had a completed draft, and my walk home took me past the bar in which the College Republicans were celebrating. They were screaming, shouting, shooting off air horns, and I took a seat on the curb. I was too broke to afford cigarettes, so I paid a homeless man the change in my pocket in order to score an Old Gold Ultra Light. He said "sucks, don't it," and walked away and I took a seat on the curb and smoked hard.

These two kids wearing fleece sweatervests ran towards me from around the corner, and over the shouts of the drunk Republicans they started screaming "FUCK THE BUSH GIRLS." They pull out two crude, homemade dolls with buttons for eyes and yarn hair. "These are the Bush twins," they yell. And they throw the dolls on the ground, right in front of the Jimmy John's, and pee on them.

After hearing Obama had clinched Ohio and Florida I went home, drank a fifth of 8% beer and blasted some Impressions records and danced alone. It felt good. Then I remembered those republicans, and that shitty Old Gold Ultra Light, and I went to a bar to find some friends and John McCain giving a concession speech on the television. People in the bar were politely clapping to the televised McCain. I was yelling, "Hey where are the college republicans." I told television John McCain that he could talk all he wants to crowds of crying white people but he had lost, so fuck him. I wanted to start a fight with the college republicans. I'm not in college anymore but whatever.

Today my coworker told me it is bad to gloat. But I found the bar they were at. They were upstairs at the Airliner. I ran to the top of the steps, started clapping, and asked everyone why they were so quiet. I asked them how they were feeling and they called me a prick. I asked again and again they called me a prick. I yelled "Go Obama" and they called me a prick. I was gonna say "Hey what's up white people" but then I noticed one Asian guy.