How To Handle a Snowy Day in Chicago

Be smart and stay warm.

Douchebag Hurricane Swamps Wrigleyville

We had a perfectly drunken storm of: Saturday, St. Patrick's day, and eighty insane degrees. It breached the police barricades to close Clark Street. I've been through six Bull's championships, Cubs playoff games, and Presidential visits, but last Saturday was officially the craziest I have ever seen anywhere, much less Wrigleyville. Drunken idiots packed the streets and scorched my ears with drunken sarcasm about my running shorts at 3 pm. On my jog I saw that Addison Avenue contained buses full of already drunken idiots from Wrigley Field to the Kennedy Expressway and the radar showed them headed within three blocks of my house. Only an act of God could have saved us; Jesus, please turn our green beer into water! Instead, the sirens went on all night as the poison spread and the living turned themselves into zombies.

I never realized how unfun drinking really is. These people weren't good company, they were stupid and annoying. I hope they got sick as hell and learned from their hangovers not to come around here any more.

The Sky is Broken...

with 75 degree days in early March you can't tell me that there's no global warming. And this is just the beginning.

On the other hand, it's a perfect day to ride in to work, before it's too hot to go outside.

Mitt the Feckless

Once in a while you see someone use a word so perfectly that it becomes the new definition for you. The word feckless does not get used in ordinary conversation and most people don't have an intuitive sense of what it means. Luckily for all of us, in this article in TPM Josh Marshall shows us all feckless personified; Mitt Romney just can't seem to seal the deal against a weenie like Rick Santorum.

It’s like struggling to land a one pound fish or searching for the way out of a paper bag. People see you doing that and you just look weak and feckless, even pitiful.

One thing about Bill Clinton, he was always closing.

Manipulation

There is a article that says germs in our gut manipulate us.Manipulate is a pejorative word, and not really true in this case. When your guts feel better it makes a genuine difference. We have a very important nerve from the gut to the brain, the Vagus nerve and it connects the intestines, the heart, and the brain. A set of organisms that makes your gut feel better sends that signal along to vital regions and we feel better as a whole. We have to make friends with these bacteria since they provide vital services to us as we do for them. Let's just call it a fair deal for both sides.

Commodification and Profit

Commodification helps refine prices, but conversely the defined prices bring an end to the days when you could make easy money. I am sure that 15 years ago when someone came across an old item they just put it out on a table at their next garage sale. Or, like my buddy Sean, find an old guy advertising in some local paper no one reads and then offer him 5% of what its worth. This more subtly devious form of lowballing has come to an end after so many years of the Antiques Road Show - most people check eBay first to make sure they're asking a fair price. Only the most obscure items require a real appraisal. The point is that you have to know what the item is worth to you and how far away it is from being worth a lot to someone else. People collect weird stuff and to get a good deal you have to be one of them.

Don't Sit Down

Here is a list of all the studies saying sitting on your butt can kill you. I sit down eight hours a day at work, and even people with active jobs can sit four or five hours a day. It doesn't matter if you have a fancy Aeron chair, it's the lassitude in the muscles that causes them to act badly in spite of the workout you put in that morning. I have heard that you should stand up for five minutes an hour.