At Pitchfork I found a cool lost cellphone, but instead of keeping it we were able to track down the guy and give it back. I liked it so much that I bought the same model on ebay. Yesterday it came, AND SOMEONE STOLE IT from my doorstep. All I found was an empty, ripped-open box. Awesome. Just further proof that there’s no such thing as karma.

Life

Wait, so, uh…should we cross? Everyone is shopping on this side.

Life, Random

I found this at the local dollar store. Boooo.

Life, Vegan

The city of Chicago is full of bars, clubs, theaters, and other interesting ways to spend your time and money. A few months ago, I paid a stranger from craigslist $70 for this:

If you can’t tell, that’s a badly photocopied piece of paper wrapped up in Scotch tape. Seventy. Dollars. He told me they’re worth $100 though, so I got a good deal, right? Let me start at the beginning.
Read more…

Life mst3k

My relatives were visiting this week, so I took the train out to the suburbs to see them. The next day they drove me back to Chicago, and during the car ride my aunt and uncle were discussing the difference between gregarious and loquacious.

I wish I could hang out with them all the time.

Life, Random

Yesterday was the Pride Parade in Chicago, and the day before that was Pride Fest. pliSkiNAKE had stuff to do nearby, so I walked around the Fest. I found it pretty boring, but I’m hardly the key demographic. There was lots of food I didn’t want, loud music I didn’t particularly like, and awful, awful t-shirts for sale*. They had nothing to do with GLBT pride, they were just white shirts with terrible airbrushed neon animals on them. What. The ’90s say hello.

So I gave up on walking around and instead stood on the corner and yo-yoed. Some people watched, and over the next ten minutes these things happened:

1. A black guy around my age asked if it was a Duncan, and I said no, it’s a YoYoJam. “YoYoJam! No way!” he exclaimed, saying they were great. I wasn’t sure if he was serious, or putting me on. He started telling me about how Duncans weren’t very good because they get knots a lot quicker. I told him I “didn’t think that was true.” He went on a rant about Yo-Yo Balls, and something about doing tricks with them. I told him they really weren’t made for tricks, and he walked away never to return. He seemed genuine.
2. A girl walked up and took my picture, and when I looked up she ran away. It was a terrible picture too, I had just messed up a trick. I wanted to tell her to take another, but she was gone.
3. An almost-skinhead guy walked up to me, inches from my face, and stared angrily at me. “What’s up?” I asked. He pointed devil horns at me with his left hand, nodded, and then walked away. It made exactly as much sense as you think it did. We had nothing in common that I could tell.

Weird day.

* There were some cool shirts in other booths, and I’m sure it was fun for most people. This post really isn’t about the Fest itself.

Life

I moved to Chicago a couple weeks ago, and a few days ago we bought a used pleather couch. It’s big. It’s difficult to get through doorways…

…but we make it:

The next problem is actually getting it up into our second floor apartment. We try carrying it up the back stairs, but it’s too big to fit. We have to use some other method, so we try pulling it up with a carabiner.

No good (as we expected).

It’s getting late, and we don’t have any pulleys, so we have to leave the couch outside until the next day.

We buy three pulleys and rig it up on the left side of the building. Here’s pliSkiNAKE on the second floor railing:

We have lift-off! Photo taken from the basement:

A little higher…

Close-up of the pulley system; the couch is as high as we can get it:

Long exposure from the ground:

Time to rig up something new in order to get it all the way up. Ratchet straps hold the couch up while we move the pulleys:

We release the straps while pulling it over the railing:

…and we’ve done it! (We don’t normally sit this close together. :P)

The final struggle is to get it through the doorway. Does this look like it’s too big to fit through? Because it totally is. But we made it fit.

We may have cuts and bruises, and the couch may have tears and scratches, but we triumphed!

Life