rock over London. rock on, Chicago.

grams tapped out this morning around 1 am.

just got back from P493. I’m sitting there, dumbfuck stupid, and people start handing in papers.
way to be on the ball, Matt.
so I sit through a presentation by two folks from a juvenile offender rehabilitation program – you know, the kind that assholes like my man Mitch Daniels don’t like to fund, so they cut – that was thoroughly depressing.
then, I told a semi lie about the death in the family and got an extension.
so I’m walking back from class, and I call Mike. no answer. call Dad. no answer. call Mar. she hasn’t heard anything. call Debbie. no answer. call Dad and Debbie’s house in Virginia. no answer.
kind of like a reflex, in the union parking lot I yelled, “fuck, does anyone answer their fucking phone anymore?” I mean, if they’re going to answer them, it should be now. have to buy plane tickets, have to find out dates, have to call off work. this takes scheduling.

I don’t know what the actual assignment is – the one that I was supposed to turn in about two hours ago – so I email my entire class. right now, I’ve only got hints. it’s a movie review. so I have to watch a movie. and apply theory we’ve learned in class. I’ve got a list of approved films, but no details to the assignment.
I’ve got to buy plane tickets. I don’t have any formal wear. I can’t stop blowing my fucking nose. can’t stop thinking about Alisha at the same time, and it’s enough to make me want to put my foot through the wall.

god damn fuck.

okay, it’s been a week.
Mar and I flew out wednesday morning, early early. had to get up at 4 am. I tend to go fall asleep closer to that time, so when I went to bed at 10 tuesday night, I laid there and stared at the ceiling for about three and a half hours. only slept for two hours. sucked, brah. for real.
this trip was basically just an assortment of quick visits. kind of like doing the rounds.
I saw: the Richies, the Koons, grams, Mike and Virginia. etcetera.
oh, and saw Jim Harper, randomly, at Union Station, while I was waiting to meet my brother. Jim’s a first year Georgetown law student, just moved out there. the kind of optimistic-wide eyed-owns every season of the West Wing on DVD- kind of DC achiever. the kind of DC inhabitant that, perversely, my brother hates. he was slack jawed for a second, said “what the hell are you doing here?” small world, after all. Jim’s an alright guy, though.
most of the time was spent driving between locations. I was tired the entire time, but I think that was mostly cause I was sick. sleeping and driving. what a vaction.
only saw Spencer for about 45 minutes. we watched “Cops: resisting arrest 2.” that means there’s a “Cops: resisting arrest 1.” maybe a 3. I love that show.
watched some red faced bull of a man with rolls of fat on his neck pull a gun on a guy sleeping with his kids, because he was suspected of stealing a nail gun. no wonder people love police officers.
it sucks that’s the only time I got to kick it with him. time keeps on rolling, we’ll hang out sooner or later. Spencer lives on the Hill near my brother, or his girlfriend does at least, so he’ll be around.

oh.
and now, looks like I’m going back. just talked to Dad on the phone. grams had a heart attack or something. it’s pretty bad, he says.
called Mar, told her. she’s like, “fuck, I knew it.”
knew what, Mar?
“knew when we saw her on friday that this was like the last time, you know?”
yeah, I guess I did.
well, she’s still around as of this writing. let’s hope it stays that way.

moving on, I guess.
Bears. 8-3. because of them, my manager Marcus owes me two cases of Pabst’s Blue Ribbon. technically, he owes me cubes. but if he buys me a cases, that’ll be okay too.

I applied for reviews editor in the Weekend section. wrote out an essay, did all the necessary things.
there’s gonna be an interview process. you’ve got to be fucking kidding me. the editor-in-chief is Maggie Bozich, who, if I’m not mistaken, is younger than me. I wonder what she’ll ask me? what the hell does Maggie Bozich look for in an interview process?
plus, I’m still kind of sick – called off work yesterday, spent the day in bed – so I should be a gem in a lengthy Q and A.

now I have that kind of cough that you get when you have an itch in the back of your throat, but the cough never seems to scratch it. so you end up coughing your throat raw. ahh, gotta love winter weather.

man, what a bummer of a post.
fuck it. I’m getting over my cold, the Bears are alright, semester is almost over, Alisha is around somewhere, I might buy a suit. I’ll be alright.

so I really fell off the horse about finishing that prison tour thing.
I will. just not for a while. me and Mar got a 7 am out of Indianapolis tomorrow morning, which means me and Mar are getting up at 4 am. that’s in like, what eleven hours? so I’m not doing it now. not tonight. not tomorrow. not til at least sunday. Thanksgiving is here.
I love Thanksgiving. no other point to it than eating.
so I’m sitting here, wearing my “numb Chuck” Norris t-shirt that I got in the mail yesterday, reflecting on my internship interview I had this morning. went well, I think. who knows what the guy askng me questions thought of me. I didn’t wear the numb Chuck shirt, I had a tie on. looked dapper.
and I’ve got a headache, cause I’m kind of sick, and I’m thinking about Alisha, and I’m really fuckin’ hungry, and I need to cut my nails, and I realize, that you know what?

this is the funniest fucking web site I’ve seen in quite some time.

it’s always changing, cause you can vote on different “facts” down below. click on “back to facts.” but as of right now, in the top thirty, my favorite would have to be
“Chuck Norris once ate three 72 oz. steaks in one hour. He spent the first 45 minutes having sex with his waitress.”
but they’re all funny, so it’s not fair to play favorites.

a t-shirt and a web site. a review of one of his gloriously jingoistic movies. I’m Chuckcentric. it’s kind of fucked up.
happy Thanksgiving.

I’m in DC weds morning through sunday morning.
my phone number is xxx xxx xxxx
I’m going to call youse.

I don’t imagine anyone would take my cell phone number and screw with me, but if you do, here’s a premature “get fucked.”

and oh, I’m totally working on “prison tour part deux.” totally. but right now, I’m totally working on putting some pants on, cause I’m late for class.

I left my apartment at 7:20. got there about twenty minutes early at 8:40.
they frisk you when they go in, and suggest you leave your shit – wallets, keys – at the gate. cause in the offchance you lose them, you’re not getting them back.
the prison.
it’s like a campus. all separate buildings. each separte unit is split by fencing. you have to walk outside between buildings, and it was fucking cold. like 30 degrees this morning. plus, there isn’t a lot to block the wind, so it felt worse.

anyway, to get in and onto the grounds, you first have to get buzzed through the perimeter fence. fence opens, and you have to wait until it shuts behind you, then the next fence opens.
all the chainlinks were 14 feet high, topped with razor wire. the inner fence had spools of it at the ground, middle, and top. outside just had the top. between the fences is about twenty feet with motion sensors.
each fence is wired, too. not electrically. the guide kind of laughed that question off. said it takes about 62k a month for the electric bill. but if it’s shaken; like, if someone tries to climb it, an alarm goes off. the sensors and wiring alert the prison command center, and the nearest guard tower.
there are seven or eight guard towers. each guard tower is armed. shotguns and semi automatic assault rifles. perimeter is covered by roving patrols, a couple of jeeps with two guards in them. they’ve got shotguns. if you run for it, they shoot to kill. Wabash Valley has never had any breakouts. attempts, yeah. but no successes.

first place we went was the Secure Housing Unit. SHU. it’s a severe looking building. not too big. compact, like a bunker. the only windows were in the administrative office section. the cells here don’t get windows.
you don’t go directly in here when you get to prison. this is for people, as the officer leading the tour said, who “earn it through bad behavior.” which means violence. each cell is 8 by 10 feet, single bunk. you’re in there 23 hours a day. you get an hour of recreation, which is basically when they put you in a large, four walled courtyard with 20 foot concrete walls. I don’t know, maybe they give you a ball or something.
when we walked in, it looks like another governmental building. there are about a dozen metal doors with a window in each of them for visitation booths. no physical contact here. you talk through reinforced glass and a telephone. where I was standing, you could look through and see an inmate (who wasn’t a resident of SHU, just a guy from the general population working there – you’re allowed to do that, to use a trade if it applies to shave time off your sentence) talking to a resident through his door. I didn’t stare at him, because I made a conscious decision not to. the classmates I was with, however, didn’t mind. when the guy looked back – a serious looking latino guy with a shaved head – they giggled and said, “oh god, he just looked at me. did he see me looking at him?”
it’s kind of like going to the zoo.
okay, so you get buzzed through a couple different sets of doors. you walk down the second floor of a maintenance corridor with grating for flooring, so you can see below you.
there’s a “control pod” in the center of each wing (there’s four wings) and it has three columns splitting off of it. each column is seaparted into two corridors with cells on one wall. there’s an upstairs and downstairs. if you’re in one column, the only people you could realistically talk to are the people in your column. you can’t see shit, but you can hear a lot. we’ve all seen the movies.
the control pod looks like a cockpit in a spaceship. it’s dim in there. you walk in, go down a little flight of stairs that leads over window floor panels to get the the desk, you have a guard at a big electronic control panel that has about 400 buttons on it, and he sits there with a microphone. no doors open unless he hits the button.
he can see every corridor. there are windows everywhere. it’s like a bubble. he can see everything at any given time. there are cameras, too, on every column. it’s loud as fuck. I don’t know if this is how it always is – I’d imagine it gets quieter at night – but there were people screaming a lot. sounded like being in a gym with three basketball games being played.
I noticed in this section, the guards were all younger types. the guard in the pod at the control panel couldn’t have been more than 26, 27. buzzcut. looked like he was ready for a fight. all the guards looked like that in the SHU.
when we came in, we filed along this skirt around the pod control panel, so we were right up against the windows. the guard barely even acknowledged us. he was constantly checking corridors, talking to the different guards in each column. this isn’t done by the microphone at all; he just yelled out to whoever he wanted to talk to. very serious. if he wanted an answer back, he’d yell louder. added to the ambiance.
to move an inmate to recreation (and oh, they go by themselves. no use putting two violent inmates in a box with nothing to do), it takes two officers. safety regulations say that you don’t do anything in the SHU without a partner.
the column I looked out on, there were two guards moving a guy into a shower. to do that, this is what happens: the guard unlocks a little gate in their door, and the prisoner shoves his hands out (and his rolled towel in his hands) and they get handcuffed. a leash is attached to the handcuffs. so while they’re walked to and from the shower, they’re on a leash. one guard moves ahead, opens the door, the other one keeps him on the leash until he’s inside the cell, and then the process is repeated and he’s uncuffed. showers can be ten minutes to an hour: depends on if the guards are busy doing other shit, that’s how long you’re kept in there.
while I was standing there, you could see the inmates trying to see you through the cracks in the doors. shouting shit. couldn’t make out what some of them said, but I’ve got a few ideas. I watched the second cell down on the second floor. the doors are all thick mesh, and through the doors, these two shoelace loops were lowered down. they came down, caught the latch on the gate they hand you things through, and it popped open. the inmate wanted to see the tour group in the pod. it’s a long day in secure housing.
23 hours in your cell. when you go anywhere, they put you on a leash.
when we left, people were making jokes. laughing.
false bravado to mask fear. that place was uncomfortable and depressing. my classmates are tourists, and they acted like it. then again, so was I. guilt by association, I guess.

later, the mental health unit, the “youthful offender” unit, and walking through the yard.

so tomorrow I’m going on a prison tour.
this is for my probation and parole class. it’s a requirement.
the professor, on the first day of class, put up this little measuring stick. looked like this:

he put his hashmark somewhere a little to the left of the middle. towards the treatment side.
see, this is to rate your view of the criminal justice system. we all had to fill out a card, and if you’re hard for punishment or treatment, you mark it accordingly.

punishment means you think that criminals are criminals, and they know what they’ve done. we shouldn’t coddle them, and it should be exactly as stated: they should be punished by incarceration.
I’ll be blunt. if you believe wholeheartedly in either, but especially in the punishment model, you’re stupid. fuck you. people like you want to return to the code of Hammurabi, and instituted the three strikes law. you’re what’s wrong with corrections.
you hear me? fuck you.
this is something I feel very passionately about.
so Bingham (the professor) said that he expects that we will all have a shift in our personal spectrum after the outcome of this visit.
so here’s my bold prediction: I either don’t shift at all, or I shift more towards treatment. something tells me that I’m not going to be horribly maligned or shocked by what I see. I don’t think I’ll be surprised. I think I’ll feel confirmed.
then again, maybe I won’t. maybe I’ll be raving about how much I’ve been affected by the tour. either way, it’s gonna involve a lengthy post.

today, couple things went down.
I applied for an internship at a local publishing company for next semester. actually wrote up an application (props to Smith) and a cover letter. we’ll see how that works out.
then, while we’re at Kinko’s over by the mall, I’m all like, “let’s get something to eat.”
so Smith’s like, “where?”
so I’m like, “how about Panera?” Panera is just across the parking lot.
so he’s like, “well, how about there?” and he points at a sushi bar.
…
well, I’ll be god damned. sushi is pretty good.

oh, and lest I forget. “Derailed” sucked. and I wrote a review about it.

whenever anyone talks about the NFL these days, it’s about Terrell Owens (I’m not fucking calling him TO). how he got into a fight in the Philadelphia locker room the week before he was suspended for the season. how he’s such a trouble maker. how he said “anybody else want some?”
I’m not impressed.
Terrell Owens is a dickhead asshole with a god complex. fuck him.

because this is how real men fight:
with weights, at a gun range, in the presence of federal agents.

they’ve got Carolina this weekend. you better believe it’s on.

my grandmother in Philadelphia is sick.
was on the ropes, as they say, this weekend. just had heart surgery. the family is slowly converging on her, terrified of her passing.
I know I write some shit like this every time an old person dies in my family … which is quite often, since there’s lots of old people around. fuck it.
I don’t know if it makes me an asshole, or what, but I don’t sweat stuff like this. old people die. even if they’re your sweet, caring, never-a-harsh-word grandmother.
I’d just hope she doesn’t suffer through it. she’s still got four children, and I know it’s eating dad up.
my cousin Maura called me up today. my cousin Maura never calls me. ever. don’t think I’ve ever gotten a call from her before.
“I just came from the hospital, Matt, and she’s looking a lot better. I’ll be honest, we had a scare there this weekend. but she’s got her strength back.”
Mar said a couple of other cousins called her this weekend, said stuff like “I never thought this would happen” and “the holidays are ruined now.”
to which Mar thought, what, death? and nice respectively. nice, Mar.
it’s not fair to wonder why they’re getting so upset. I know it isn’t. when grams passes (and she will; that’s life) I won’t cry. that’s not how I cope. fuck, I won’t even need to cope. she’s old. she’s been alive a very long time. it’s just time to call uncle. no harm, no foul.
that, and I feel a little detached. not to say that I don’t love and care about my grandmother. just, our branch of the family has always been a little more distant – and if only cause of geographic limitations.
first it was three hours to the south in Va. we’d get up in the summer and holidays.
then, it was from Indiana, the occasional Thanksgiving.
now, it’s like every other year. while the rest of my cousins lived minutes away from her.
I don’t see grams very much. whenever I’ve been out east recently, I make a point to go, cause dad makes a point to make sure I go, cause he’s been sweating it a lot. “she’s getting up there, buddy, and it’d mean a lot to her.” and, fuck, it’s my grandmother. it’s not like it’s a chore to visit her; I like to.
I don’t even know what I’m talking about here. just that my father’s mother is coming to the end of her life, and I don’t know how to react to it.

also.
I need music to clear my head. maybe about three hours of Mozart concertos. see, I’ve got a headache…

and.
I really, really wish it would snow.

“Chicken Little” sucks almost as hard as your mom does. read about it here!

so what did I do last night?
Mar and I went to see “Derailed,” right? course, Mar was late (good job, Mar) and we got there just as the credits were starting. we were the last two seats in the theatre.
which meant, it was selling out.
which meant, I don’t get in free with my press pass.
god damn it.
we actually ended up with good seats, which was a shame, cause the movie sucked. imagine if I had to sit in the front row or something. imagine how much more brutal the review would be if I came out of there and my neck hurt from straining backwards to see.

but yeah, anyway. the movie stars

• Clive Owen, and he’s not too bad. oh Clive, you’re so easy on the eyes!
• Jennifer Aniston (who sucked)
• a bad guy named “Laroche” (which sucks and is lame at the same time)
• Xzibit (who played the role of intimidating black man to the hilt)
• Melissa George (who is hotter than Jennifer Aniston, thereby nullifying the basic premise of the entire movie)
• and the RZA. who was okay.

but only because he’s the RZA.

also.
I think, but I’m not sure, that I bet my boss Marcus a case of PBR that the Bears would beat the 49ers tomorrow.

still listening to the Minutemen. and they’re still kicking ass.

yeah. it’s kind of a boring day today, if you haven’t figured that out by this post yet.

I’m exhausted.
it’s not like I don’t get enough sleep. I get plenty.
maybe I’ve got a bug.
maybe I’ve got mono.
or “maybe partying will help.” (by the Minutemen!)

as I look over this beautiful land
I can’t help but realize that I am alone
why am I able to waste my energy
to notice life being so beautiful?
maybe partying will help.

what of the people who don’t have what I got?
are they victims of my leisure?
to fail is to be a victim,
to be a victim of my choice.
maybe partying will help.


tomorrow, I think, or maybe sometime this weekend, I’m buying athletic shorts. you know, shit with elastic waistbands. maybe some athletic socks, too. ones that I can’t pull up to my knees.
so then, I’ll have everything I need to look fashionable at the rec center.
cause, of course, that’s the only reason I haven’t gone running in forever.
right.

Alisha’s birthday this weekend.
I’ve been thinking something along the lines of a singing telegram. but she’d hate that. which would make it all the more funny.
beyond that, I don’t know. I give the ol’ gift of music an awful lot.
or maybe a bottle of whiskey. gotta stay classy.

David Kaczynski is coming to campus tomorrow. giving a talk at 1 pm. he’s, of course, the brother of the Unabomber; the guy who recognized Ted’s handwriting, turned him into the authorities. I’d love to hear what this motherfucker has to say.
seriously. not trying to sound sarcastic there. I’d imagine he’s got an interesting little speech put together.