ukla's blog: "Shockingly Provincial"

The phrase, "Oh, I didn't go anywhere. I just wasn't answering the phone." Comes to mind. One might reasonably assume that my prolonged absence had something to do with the holidays or perhaps a vacation. This isn't exactly the case. First of all the old man was on vacation. This is never good for me. When he isn't working, he and the the crazy lady (aka my mother) push back their bedtime to almost two in the morning. This pretty much eliminates my private time. I cannot write with them awake and about as they both have that god awful habit of walking in and reading the computer screen over your shoulder to see what you are doing. Then there is the Christmas thing. I don't really hate it. I just get really aggravated with all the petty things leading up to the date. The crazy lady goes extra nuts what with the need to prepare the house for the holiday. (Decorations. cleaning. Putting things away that we are going to need the day after, but should be out of sight for the Holiday gathering). Christmas Eve is our big day. We have prime rib. We set fourteen places. By the time everything is said and done I've spent a small eternity with a very intense woman who I just want to get away from so I make her even more intense by refusing to be dragged along to yet another gathering on Christmas Day. It is the gathering for my older brother's side of the family. While I certainly love and respect all that side of the family, I'm not particularly close with them and all I really want to do is kill things on the computer without someone always asking me (aka telling me) to do this chore or that chore. So while the folks are away Christmas day the phone rings. I look at the caller ID. It is from the home of a family that I know has somebody in the hospital with cancer related surgery. There is no way I'm answering the. The chance that I might end up having to deliver bad news to my mother is all too great. Let the answering service buffer me. Side note: For some reason the folks feel I should always answer the phone when they are out. I don't understand this. The answering service will record a message. I notoriously forgot messages. They just don't stick in my brain. Write it down one might say. My handwriting is often impossible for even me to read. Numbers get just plain butchered. It doesn't matter. My unwillingness to answer the phone galls them. So the parents come home late on Christmas night (possibly into the morning after). One of the the very first questions (after having me unload the van of presents) is, "Did anyone call?" The mother is still ticked with me for not going with for the evening's festivities and I can see her getting just plain angry when I relay the fact that the phone did ring, but I didn't pick up. The mother goes to stomp past me on her way to retrieve the phone messages. Her foot catches on a stack of bottled water. She goes down. Hard. It hurts allot, but she doesn't want to admit there is a fracture. Who wants to spend Christmas night in the emergency room. We all go to bed knowing there is a fracture and that the morning will require a trip to the emergency room. Bright and early the old man wakes me up and tells me to get dressed, we are going to the hospital. I think, "There is absolutely no reason. I need to go. The old man is going to drop Mom off at the entrance and park the car. I will be there, primarily to escort my mother the 10 feet from the entrance to the check in desk." I don't say this. I get dressed. I know the old man is pissed at me. My mom in the days that will follow will joke that I am the reason her arm is broken. I am fairly certain my father feels this to be true. Doctor's office's and emergency room's have a special kind of torture in them now. They always have a television on. The problem is they always have on shows like Judge Judy or The View on at a volume on can not tune out. After about four hours of this hell my mother could see I was about ready to explode. My mother asked If I wanted to go. I said yes. She asked my father if he would take me. He said no. (Again part of it was the fact that he would never leave my mother to wait alone in the emergency room, but allot of it was he was pissed at me and wanted me there as punishment.) I finally decided to walk. I asked the old man if he his ear protection with him. He said it was out in the car. He did not offer to get it for me. He did not offer me the keys to the car that I might fetch them myself. I was pretty much (explicative deleted) out of luck. I buttoned up my jean jacket and braved the 39 degree weather. I may have stopped to warm up at a video game store along the way. Hours after I arrive home the parents return. My mother is worn out and turns in early (sleeping in the computer room because she cannot get up and down the stairs to her bedroom with the monster temporary cast on her arm). Eventually I go to sleep. The next morning a cat is tossed into my room to wake me up. I come downstairs and hear my mother half talking half sobbing. I ask my father what's wrong. My grandmother from my older brother's side of the family, has passed away. The paramedic called my mother because, when trying to get answers from my grandfather (who suffers from dementia) they finally get em to tell em the names of his children. My grandfather lists em from youngest to oldest and includes the name of my mother's first husband (who passed away thirty five years ago). My mother has the same first name as my aunt and for some reason my mother's name was the first of the two on the list by the phone. The paramedic is in a hurry and needs a name of a funeral home to release the body to. She names the local place that buried her first husband so many years ago, then has to get a hold of my aunts and uncle to not only break the news to them, that their mother has died, but to inform them that she was pressed into making a decision on funeral directors. Hours later we arrive at the house. For some reason the funeral home has yet to pick up the body. All of My grandmother's children see her as she is laying on the kitchen floor. (I stay outside. I saw her this last thanksgiving. That is my final image of her) A sad truth is learned. Sometimes there is no dignified way to get ones deceased relative out of the house through narrow halls and steep stairs. My brother is furious. The men don't even cover up the head all the way. The rest of the week is spent on things related to to the wake and funeral. I am saddened that the world lost one of it's best. My grandmother was loved by many and spent many years taking care of a husband who stopped working and took up drinking full time, long before he ever got sick. When asked why she cared for him rather then let him be put into a long term care facility she said that she would never have had her four wonderful children, 23 grandchildren and eight great grand children with out him. She didn't do all that alone I think was her phrase. Gram was also a lifelong Cubs fan. She managed to pass this devotion on to most of her children and grandchildren (including my older brother). The first time I ever went to a baseball game was with my brothers and my grandmother. If I were a sports fan, I probably would cheer for the cubs too, despite the fact they are part of the north side. This is one of those rare occasions where I don't know where to end. I have no summary. I can not begin to do justice in describing my grandmother's life. More Laters

So anyway offspring of a friend of the family (hello asexual anonymous intro) was just hospitalized for an eating disorder. This is something you never want to hear. Sure you giggle a little when you hear a kid you went to grade school with is serving twenty in the big house for tax evasion (the little devil inside always makes you giggle even though you know it is wrong). There is a little joy in seeing overweight stressed worn out slob who was once the attractive person who ages past wouldn't give you the time of day. I'm sure there are quite a few who delight in the knowledge while I used to be that top 10 percent A + student, I've dropped out of college more than once and now live with my parents as a Paranoid Unemployed Dungeon Master. But this anorexia thing is just plain scary. You see overweight comedians make jokes about not understanding eating anorexia. There are folks who will say it's not a disease it is just stupidity. Some people will look at in much the same way as they view alcoholism, a matter of will power. Now I used to spend a lot of time drunk. I worked in a bar. I drank the nights I worked. I'd come in and hang out on my nights off. 3 - 5 nights a week I come home buzzed at the least. If I was in a bar there was no way I was not going to drink. It is that simple. I didn't go to rehab and you wont catch me with in five miles of AA (no I do not need to say I'm helpless and only god can make me better). I can have a beer on my own. Heck on my birthday I even pulled out the 16 year old bottle of Bushmill's Irish whiskey and made myself a cocktail. I can not have 2 or three drinks. I can not go into a bar. It isn't a matter of will power. If I have more than a couple drink I'm going to get 100 % totally blasted. If I go into a bar I'm going to get drunk and spend every dollar in my wallet. It is not a matter of will power. It is a matter of accepting the reality that I cannot drink socially and not putting myself in a situation where I might. Eating disorders have the problem that you can never get away from a problem with food. You can throw away all the fashion magazines. You can stop watching television. But that wont stop a person from seeing unhealthy body images. It is a constant struggle with the self esteem and the need to be thin. So many of these children (and adults, the ones that live that long or start late) end up with serious medical conditions or dead. I was amazed to find out that the child will be hospitalized for almost a month. Not that I don't think it is necessary, I've just amazed that the insurance company would approve. I've seen people attempt suicide and get almost pushed out the door after a couple weeks. I guess the insurance companies figure that if they don't pay to try and get the person healthy now, they will could possibly be paying for a number of hospitalizations down the road. I think the worst part of this is the kid went to the parents. The parents had no idea that the kid was only allowing 300 calories a day. I know they aren't bad parents. Life gets a little busy and suddenly your kids are teenagers and it seems like they can almost take care of themselves with a minimal amount of supervision. So you spend a little more time at the office or you never eat together as a family because this one has band and that one is out with the friends and hey the kid used to be over weight maybe a little bit of wanting to fit in spurred a healthy desire to take care of ones body. It is days like this I am almost glad I'm not a parent. There are so many things to watch out for that a person can go crazy from worry. I think no small amount of luck is involved if A child grows into adulthood without one serious problem arising. In summary: An unhealthy body image can be a serious problem. While fat people also have health issues, they tend to live longer than people with eating disorders. Parenting is scary. More Laters This blog is archived at a>.

So anyway I went to see Craig Ferguson do a live stand up comedy show last week. A friend was going to see a later show, thus giving me the excuse the procrastinate talking about it to the Internet world. So first a word about the venue. The show was at the Chicago Zanies Comedy Club. It is located on the North side of the side (which as a south sider I shake my fist at on general principal) in a piece of real estate that local tavern would have a hard time fitting into. Standing in front of the building, waiting for the doors to open, I thought that perhaps it was somehow dimensionally transcendental (see Dr. Who) or bigger on the inside that on the outside. While not actually physically possible, I've seen businesses absorb surrounding buildings, knocking out the walls between, while keeping one original storefront entrance. This was not the case. The place is tiny. Now a comedy club cannot charge a mere 35 dollars a ticket (plus the cost of two drinks or food items) and book big name people without paying a great deal of attention to fire safety code. The place was packed shoulder to shoulder and the legs of the people behind me were halfway under my chair. You cannot turn to talk to your neighbor for fear of shouldering or elbowing the people front and back. One of Ferguson's first jokes was about how he felt he was doing some sort of act in front of a line of people waiting to get into a movie theater, that he ought to be dressed like a clown or perhaps make a balloon animal. The place could also benefit greatly from being shut down for a renovation. The decor might simply be called the crap that was when they bought the building from some failed business venture years ago. Everything in the place was just plain filthy looking. The please wait to be seated sign near the door not only looked like it had been stolen from a 24 hour restaurant, but that it had multiple layers of nicotine attached to it. (Zanies is a no smoking establishment). The "stage" is circled in blue curtains that probably haven't been shaken out (let alone cleaned) since they were first put up. Hanging from the ceiling in front of the curtain is a wooden sign painted to look like an electric sign showing the logo / brand / name. If this place didn't have the contacts to pull in big name comedians it would have long since been out of business. One can tell they do have the contacts because every free surface in the place is plastered with the photo of a famous comedian who has worked there. Now that ll the negativity is out of me on to the comedy. Ferguson wasn't the first one on the stage. First was an announcer / comic who had a few good jokes, but seemed stoned. He talked about his job delivering flowers and how people expect the driver to actually have some knowledge of plant care. He discussed the idea of the sexy nurse when most nurses wear scrubs these days. He also commented that one has a hard time with the entire sexy nurse idea when one's mother is a nurse. I have to agree. Next was the "featured comic." I'm not sure what this means. Maybe it is something like the local who would perform this night no matter who the headliner is. Anyway her name is Patti Vasquez and I have to say she is incredibly funny. Rather than wax poetic about her talent I direct y'all to her website. Click on the Video link. A lot of the performance in that video is what I saw live. If anyone wants to get me a Christmas present I'll take a XXXL version of fer save the boobies t- shirts. She regularly performs in Chicago and I'll definitely try to catch her next new show. Now to the Featured Entertainer. Ferguson is, in my opinion, the funniest man on late night television. His television comedy may hint at blue subjects from time to time but the language is all ways clean. The live stand up also hints at the blue without ever really crossing into it (except for a bit at the end where he talks about his enormous penis) but the language was less than pure. The first thing he said was something like , "What the F*** is up with this weather!" He is also very spontaneous. The woman sitting right in front of the stage had a hideous laugh. At one point he points down to her and says, "Quit it." Then "That's the sound you make when your happy?" We got to hear about things ranging from things as current as Brittney Spears going around without underwear to stories about growing up in Glasgow. He made the comedy seem like it was coming effortlessly and in many ways he reminded me of Dylan Thomas. (Except Ferguson knew when to give up the drinking). In Summary: There is nothing wrong with Zanies that a gutting or a move wouldn't fix (at the very least a bath). Patti Vasquez is an good example of the kind of humour Chicago produces. Craig Ferguson has an enormous penis (that's what the man said). More Laters

That may be the name of a song, but I'm serious. It is 13 degrees Fahrenheit outside the last I looked and it was 14 the minute before that so it will probably drop further until the sun make its way round here once again. It wasn't that long ago we had 60 degree weather and I was out walking for my daily mocha wearing only a denim jacket as protection against the elements. Now winter has just sort of happened overnight and I am cabin bound so to speak, until the world thaws out again. The old man likes to say that if he hadn't been born in Chicago, he probably wouldn't live here. I have to agree. You might see people on the television talk show circuit talking about how they love Chicago or how they loved growing up here but I'll bet dollars to donuts they usually live somewhere with a much more reasonable weather pattern. In the summer it is too hot. In the winter it is homeless freezing cold. Spring and Fall are those two or three mythical weeks in between the time when it is either too hot or two cold. I go on like this because It has brought my to a new definition of well off. A person is well off if they can live in this frozen wasteland and set there thermostat to say 79 degrees and hang the expense. If one can walk around the house in a pair of shorts and a tank top on a night like tonight and not have a care about what it is costing then one has officially arrived. That, I believe, will be my financial goal. Sure I could move to a more temperate climate, but that would mean moving away from family and friends. That's just not going to happen. After thirty odd years a person gets used to having one's family about. Why, one may ask, would I need to have a house so warm? I don't really. I just get tired of the temperature dropping every night after the old folks hit the sack. I hate the run program button on the thermostat. When the button is pressed the house drops to 64 degrees. If you are sitting near a window (say perhaps at the computer) it is much cooler than that. How can one properly win the interweb bundled up in five layers of close I ask? One cannot. In Summary: The Midwest is filled with people who may not actually like the weather, but are unwilling to leave their families. The old man is secretly (or not so secretly) trying to force me to go to bed earlier by taking away the heat. I'm not done whining about this yet. More Laters This blog is archived at Shockingly Provincial

This is the first blog cross posted here. Archives can be found at Shockingly Provincial. Now on with the rant. These days the PC thing to attack fast food restaurants for is not labor practices or wages. It is advertising directed at children. Every television sweeps season one of the major networks runs an in depth investigative bit about childhood obesity. Sometimes it is a one times news item that goes along with some sort of medical announcement. Sometimes we see a series of interviews done over a period of time with parents, doctors and of course the children themselves. This scares people who make and or sell products that help make children fat. They want to maintain their "child friendly" status. So we see announcements about how different chains are cutting out trans fats. We see corporate pledges to decrease and or eliminate entirely marketing directed to children. Networks like Nickelodeon and Disney start to become somewhat more pickey in what products they will allow to be advertised during their broadcasts. Then there is some absolute marketing genius over Burger King. He or she saw the writing on the wall. Avenues of marketing like school posters and children's cable stations are disappearing. A new outlet must be found. I betting they were more than a little familiar with Max Barry's Syrup and Christopher Buckley's Thank You for Smoking. They decided to go right to where the kids live: Video Games. Burger king is selling not one, not even two, but three games that can be played on the xbox or xbox 360 systems. They are selling these games for the unbelievably low price of 3.99 with the purchase of a value meal. So when the cheap relative wants to buy the kid something fun yet cheap this holiday season it's just a quick trip to BK for a couple thousand calories and a dirt cheap game. It doesn't really matter how good these games are, they cost less than a tenth of what any other new game goes for on the shelf (59.99) Adults will buy em because they are so cheap and children will play em, if only for a little while, because it's something they haven't played before. From what I've seen most of the games feature the Burger King (the plastic guy in the crown. I'm not sure how much of an advertisement for the store he actually is, but I'm sure it will boost revenue and projected revenue. (whatever that really means). I wonder how long before we have games like Starbucks Sim Barista. Maybe a new grand theft auto where you sell drugs out of a Taco Bell drive up window. British Petroleum Oil Drilling Extravaganza. I've seen the Future[TM]. More Laters