rock over London. rock on, Chicago.

I got a little bit of an eye infection. haven’t seen a doctor, but I don’t think that’s necessary; it was quite bad the first day, but it’s grown better. it just itches, is all, and I don’t scratch. so if I’m still in a bad way in another day or two, doctor visit, maybe.

Blagojevich has appointed someone to the Ill. senate seat. everyone at work thought this was the shittiest move in the world. and so do all of the talking heads on TV. I don’t see what the big deal is. well, no, that’s not true; I do.
the senate Democrats wrote the governor informing him that they won’t confirm anyone that Blagojevich might nominate. the man is being accused of trying to sell a senate seat, so the argument goes that anyone he would pick would also be dirty. 
but I would bet it’s kind of an etiquette thing, too. ’don’t fuck with the party, Blagojevich, you’ve done enough political damage, so stop talking and lie still,’ they said. and it looked like he was gonna do it — his lawyer said Blagojevich was going to do it – and then he went ahead and appointed some guy named Roland Burris, a mid-level Illinois party member who, although a reported lightweight, is not dirty at all. 
Blagojevich has to know he’s a pariah, right? so maybe this is a big eff you to the political establishment. he picks someone who apparently is free of his taint. ew. and the senate is now forced to make the decision: let Burris in, as he might actually make a decent short-term senator, or block him and and answer unpalitable quesitons about stonewalling a competent candidate. and then it might go to court, and get nasty. Harry Reid has repeated that they wouldn’t seat him. shit, he probably wants to kill Blagojevich with a hammer.

I would say that I’m happy about all of this coming about, because it’s a gonna be interesting to watch play out. but it’s also a giant sore for the Democratic party. I think that at a national level, politics is dirty across the spectrum, but I’m still not excited when I’m proven right.

let’s see, what else. I don’t have any other infections that I know of, so that’s good … and I’m super pumped about Indiana, that’ll be a lot of fun.
tomorrow’s New Year’s Eve. I have to work, but I’ll get out around 10 pm. plenty of time to see the ball drop. or something like that.

so I’ve been listening the hell out of some ‘Sticky Fingers” lately. solid album.
I’ve been coasting toward classic rock a lot. I think. that’s a pretty broad generalization.
but what do I got resting on top of the stereo right now, I’ve got: ‘Sticky Fingers’, ‘Ill Communication’, ‘Are You Experienced?’, ‘Harvest’, ‘Exile on Main Street’. and this album, called ‘Takes One to Know One’ by Elmo Williams & Hezekiah Early. found it in my brother’s basement a year ago. it’s fucking great, one of the best I’ve ever fallen in front of. I’ve never seen it in a store, but if you happen across it, spend the no more than $8 it’s bound to cost and pick it up, it’s worth it.

I’m headed for Indiana at the end of the week. I got a haircut for this, and not the kind you do yourself in your bathroom with a pair of clippers, because this is Important Stuff. Smith said maybe I should get a suit, and I said maybe he should get fucked.
no, I didn’t. but a lot of driving is coming up. people to shake, worlds to move. the big news is Uncle Bill proposed to his girlfriend, so he’s gonna finally be settling down at the age of 60. but they’re putting the wedding off for, like, four years. something to do with his pension, I think.
whatever. I may not get to be in the wedding party, but I’ll have a hell of a time at the reception, I tell you what.

I’m up forever working on this editing tip again. 3 am. but good news: ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ marathon on the sci fi channel. this show’s always been a little cheesedick, but hey, it’s a respite.

this Christmas sucked. working on Christmas sucks. it’s something that should be avoided. lemme tell you. when you grow up, don’t get a second-shift job. or at least live near your family. one, or the other. 

but fuck it, just another one in the books. and I done worse. so Merry Christmas!

I’ve got this editing tip I’m supposed to be cracking on, but fuck it. it’ll get done, tonight, late. it’s mind-numbing, these definitions. so I’m watching ‘Family Matters’ and drinking tea, and wasting time by writing about bullshit on my blog. so.

I found my copy of ‘Exile on Main Street’ earlier this week.  hell yes! it was in a zydeco album behind the bench of my truck. which is where everything is. always.

talked to Mar tonight on the phone. she said I should hear hurry up and come back to Valparaiso. t-minus two weeks, Mar. I’m going home … home, I guess, for a week. will probably be pulling my hair out by the roots by the end. fuck it. Mar told me that while she was in LA visitng her boyfriend they had a drink with a friend of hers from high school who had moved out there. when asked to describe our home in Valpo, this person described it as such: “It’s completely a woman’s house.” which I would never have thought to describe it as, but that works pretty well. it’s women who’ve mostly lived there, anyway.

‘Family Matters’. Urkel is a lot funnier when you imagine he’s coming over to Carl’s house all the time and acting like an asshole because he’s actually some kind of sociopath; like, outside the Winslow home, he’s normal. has normal friends. has  a normal job. but before he walks in the door, he gets into character. he starts speaking in a nasal falsetto and pulls his jeans way up into his crotch. and then he goes inside and hassles the living shit out of his neighbors because, I don’t know, he gets some sort of warped glee out of it. and then he ends up jerking off in the bushes while the credits roll. all I’m saying is an R-rated, slightly creepy ‘Family Matters’ would be much funnier.
during the commerical breaks, they’re running these extended ASPCA ads, featuring Sarah MacLachlan and Christmas carols. hmm. whatever happened to the Lilith Fair? and why am I not watching Urkel right now? this shit is bumming me out, all of these homeless animals. fuck this. bring back Urkel.
okay. he’s back. so back to editing.

Season’s greetings!!!! A year has passed, and so much has happened! Everyone is a bit longer in the tooth, has grown a little grayer, but time is nothing to worry about; in this family, we all age like fine wine. But there’s so much to cover this year, let’s skip the formalities. On to the updates!

 Youngest daughter Mary has continued to surpass all of our expectations, graduating from Indiana University with a History degree in May. After a few months enjoying the great outdoors in Montana and a brief career in the glitter department at the arts and crafts store in Bozeman, she’s decided to resume her studies back in Bloomington. She’ll be pursuing a master’s degree in Library and Information Science starting this January. In truth, we couldn’t be more proud of her. And we urge you to direct any and all questions you may have about the Dewey Decimal System to Mar’s e-mail account.

 On the political front, Valerie and Grandma Mary were at the crest of the Democratic wave that swept America this year. The pair saw a then-Senator Barack Obama address a raucous crowd in the gymnasium at Roosevelt High in Gary during the election season. Obama’s rousing speech moved Val to hit the phone banks in support of his campaign, and she helped turn Indiana blue for the first time in over a generation, despite the best efforts of the stupid redneck who pulled Val’s Vote for Change sign out of the front yard in Valparaiso. Well, that moron is a sore loser, and he’ll just have to wait four years before he can waste his vote on some awful jackass like Sarah Palin. So tough luck, buddy, wherever you are! 

In Washington, Virginia and Mike are beginning Year Three of the Great Anna Mc Project. Little Miss Anna is in the bumblebee class at a Capitol Hill preschool, and is jabbering more and more with each passing day – and is a budding fan of the AC/DC songs Mike plays for her on the stereo. “Let There Be Rock” is a particular favorite. Virginia, meanwhile, has finally “scored the perfect frickin’ gig” (her words, of course). As an agreements manager with Rainforest Alliance, Va. now works from a home office, and can, in fact, cut deals in sweatpants if she so desires. Sweatpants at work, the apex of modern business. Truly: Virginia has dared to dream.Down in Charlottesville the generally lazy, listless Matt has managed to maintain a job on the Daily Progress copy desk for nearly a year and a half. Now a few years into an exciting career in the expanding field of print journalism, he’s weighing his options. Shall he go back to school? Join some carbon-neutral commune in the Blue Ridge Mountains? Or head back to the Midwest?  Well, back in Valpo, Uncle Bill gave everyone quite a scare in May when it was revealed that he would require quadruple bypass surgery to free up the arteries in his ticker. The surgery was a success, God bless, and he will be present for the 100th gathering of our family’s Orthodox Christmas Eve dinner Jan. 6. Every family has its traditions, and we’re proud to maintain one that has remained uninterrupted.

Really, it’s amazing to think: It’s a century that we’ve been on these fair shores, and with no prolonged stays in prison, no trouble from the IRS, and only marginal complaints from the neighbors. What will the next hundred hold for the Mc family? No one knows. But Year 101 is starting right now. So, have a merry Christmas, enjoy the holiday season, and please remember to support your local UAW. Because if we can guarantee a stockbroker’s salary, then we certainly can afford to help someone in this country who actually does tangible work for a living. They make the cars that you drive, instead of growing absurdly rich by trading in massive debt that the rest of us will now have to pay for. Thanks, Wall Street! 

Happy holidays!The Mc’s

Jan. 3 to Jan. 11, I take Indiana by storm. save the dates, readers in the Midwest!

I’m editing this big ol’ file for this big ol’ environmental group right now. I am one of five or six on an editing team, and I definitely feel like the scrub. I’ve missed a lot of shit after the fact, and I find a lot of what I’m reading horribly confusing, but I’m getting better. I swear to god, I’m getting better.

yesterday I was talking to a friend of mine about your boy throwing his shoes at Bush. she thought that it was tasteless, tactless, etc. if he wanted to express his displeasure with President Bush, he should have found a much more constructive way of going about it. I think some of this comes from the fact that my friend is a journalist, and so was the the shoe thrower. maybe it’s a bit demeaning to the profession. you’re a journalist. you need to remain objective. you’re not supposed to have a pulse.
no, that’s not fair, I didn’t mean that. what I meant to say, is: you’re supposed to be rational, measured, reserved.
but I thought it was awesome.
everyone seems to operate on the definition of President George W. Bush as an elderly, wizened statesman. I guess that’s technically true. he ’s been the president since the millenium, and he was a governor before that. but all of the associations that “wizened statesman” brings up – benevolence, pragmatism, rationality — he doesn’t occupy any of them. the Bush administration rode a wave of sabre-rattling and national hysteria after Sept. 11 into support for it’s asinine political agenda, and it resulted in a war sold on flimsy pretenses that sank billions of dollars into a morass of nation-building in the Middle East.
so now there’s a potentially stable democracy in Iraq. that’s great, it really is. but the ends don’t justify the means. the administration and its allies are still assholes for putting the nation, and the Iraqis, through it all. sectarian death squads, IEDs, reprisal killings, unchecked private security firms, Iranian involvement, pure anarchy for three years. for all of that, Bush is a dick. he’s the figurehead. he’s the fucking decider. so, yes, for all of the above, George Bush II is a dick.
you know, it would never happen, but there could be arguments made for putting that son of a bitch on trial as a war criminal. I say he’s getting off easy with just a symbolic act of defiance.
so I’m sorry that his secret victory lap didn’t go as planned, that his nice, calm bubble full of autocrats and American-blessed leaders and photo opportunities was rudely interrupted, and that icy-hot press secretary Dana Perino got a black eye. but a television reporter (and yes, a shitty journalist)  threw his shoes at the President of the United States. that’s Arabic for “fuck you.” I’d venture a bet that most of the people you’d ask on the Baghdad street feel the same way, and I hope Bush remembers that when he retires to Dallas next month.

the worst thing about working with editors exclusively by e-mail? everything is correspondence, which means my grammar should be impeccable. and it never is.
I just used ‘then’ in place of ‘than’, and noticed it after the fact. fuck!
I’m a professional copy editor. you’d think this wouldn’t be a problem.

yeah. right.

in national news:

looks like they’re gonna give the auto industry money that was set aside to promote fuel efficiency. this is the compromise, a nice little parting “fuck you” to Nancy Pelosi from the White House. dirty San Francisco hippie. 
the auto industry, like a junkie on payday, will chug this cash down and pass out in an alley, and then show up bleary-eyed, sober, and in pain again in a few weeks.

everyone and your mother has heard about charges against Blagojevich in Ill. right?
it’s comical, how much he tried to peddle influence. he effectively tried to sell a Senate seat, and leaned on the Chicago Tribune (which declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy Monday, it should be noted) to reshape its editorial board into something that wouldn’t criticize him. tried to get a concrete company to donate $500 grand to his political campaign chest, or else he would fuck up its involvement in a massive Ill. toll road project. leaned on the chief executive of a children’s hospital for cash, too, or else he’d withhold funds.
this is epic.
you gotta hand it to the man: if you’re gonna be corrupt, be corrupt. nothing half-assed about this guy, including his haircut.

ok. I gotta go to the DMV. no, it’s alright; I know what I’m doing.