this is probably the last post it will make

because my brother-in-law is a computer genius he figured out that there is a short between the video card and the motherboard thats making it act like a mother. so he rigged it so that if i dont touch the computer then i can make this post. so he dug up a mouse and a keyboard. so hi.

all i wanted to say is that its butt cold here in chicago and i thank my bro bobby d for the offer of monday night football tickets against the packers tomorrow night but if it wasnt for Winter Storm Warnings on the tv all day that said DONT GO OUTSIDE UNLESS ITS AN EMERGENCY then i might take him up on his offer. i went out anyways with my mom cuz there was no old style beer at my sisters house, also because my mom needed a new headlight bulb. speaking of… it was real nice to see Artie’s book in the airport book store.

i also wanted to show you this creepy device.

its a plastic toilet seat cover that rotates from left to right. (or would that be counter clockwise?) it doesnt keep rotating. theres a number at the top of the toilet deal and a button. when you click the button the plastic rotates through and the number goes down one. apparently thats how many portions of clean plastic are left.

sitting down on plastic is odd. but i did it. for science. and for the busblog. and so far i dont have HIV so as that fine philospher Borat once said “great success!”

tomorrow im driving downtown. its gonna be 2 degrees. with windchill factor it will be minus gazillion. then like i said there will also be a huge football game to be played. rivals. winner gets free beer for a year. all i wanna do is see the trib and take pics and talk to the good people and maybe see if they will show me what office mike royko used to work in.

then tuesday i have a hot date with a young lady who may or may not know the intricacies of the west coast game of Stopwatch. hopefully my stopwatch is in better shape than my thinkpad.

not sure what im gonna do in that department. i know many of you will say, finally, go get a mac! but im a pc. during any other time my company would buy me a computer but they seem to like dells, and like i said, im a pc.

good news is, computers have never been cheaper and i got this laptop from the generousness of busblog reader urban hayseed right after i was canned at buzznet, which was more than two years ago. since then ive come and gone at LAist and then did a year at the Times. while at LAist i drove around the country with this computer so i gotta say i squeezed a lot of rock outta this thing.

maybe this malfunction was the Lords way of telling me to take a week off blogging?

never.

it is so cold even the cold is cold.

the wind was blowing so hard that when the limo driver picked me up at the airport he didnt say anything and i didnt say anything and i just sat in the very back for a good 15 minutes in all my clothes and coat and scarf and just waited for the blood to regain to my face.

actually the driver didnt say jack to me probably because the roads werent good and snow was every where not to mention ice. and wind. and that was fine with me because i couldnt see out of the windows. i just listened to howard stern interview the penthouse pet of the year and a porn star and i ate mcdonalds at midnight.

and i wondered why i left beautiful los angeles

land of palm trees and endless summer

home of year round bikini stores and dudes who wear shorts in decemeber. saw one of them at the airport.

i think i was invited to a bar crawl tonight by this gentleman, but i havent even gotten out of bed. theres a two hour time diff here.

in other news i smell bacon.

in other news i have 666 facebook friends. i wonder if i can keep it at that for a while.

in other news, dont tell karisa that i will probably eat said bacon.

in crazy news – woman twitters a plane crash!

in better news the wind is roaring. and i think i hear my lil nephew.

kbi!

and snow is blowing around everywhere

this is mini raymi in toronto.

on my flight out here somehow i pulled a middle seat again.

funny joke, airline gods, but the joke is now officially over.

and of course the girl with the window seat had to use the bathroom three times

once i caught her vaulting over me.

zulekia in massasnowchettes has problems many women wish they had, so i hear.

and seven degrees on monday.

from kindergarten through high school i grew up in the suburbs of chicago and loved newspapers, specifically the chicago tribune. there was a time when mr mike royko wrote for the sun times and sometimes in the school library i would read what royko had to say and then i would quickly read the entire chicago tribune.

monday i get to go in that classic building for the first time and see what its all about. my mom wasnt very crazy about us driving downtown, and i moved to LA the day after high school, so i never spent much time in chicagos downtown, so im very excited to be in one of the coolest buildings there.

theres also the strange possibility of buying some chicago cubs paraphernalia at an employee discount.

pretty sure i wont be able to say that ever again.

a busblog poetry moment

Rod Blagojevich delivers the speech of the year while busting with the Kipling.

Bravo?

Blago!

if you recall, not long ago the next president of the united states told the illinois governor to step down,
and told the world that he had lost his ability to govern

and instead of bowing to Obamamania and writing off his political life by admitting in any way that he had allegedly tried to not just sell the soon to be vacant senate seat of the first black president of the usa, but other anti american dirty deeds; blago bleautifully recites a defiant poem of courage and masculinity
whos complete version concludes by proclaiming that If you can remain strong against adversity, false claims, and tragedy, then “Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And–which is more–you’ll be a Man, my son!”.

classic kipling but the only problem is blago clearly hadn’t read the whole poem (and certainly didnt recite it all) because in order to “be a Man”, according to “If”, one has to not only has to remain strong after being falsely accused, but he has to also

make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss

old rudyard didnt call the poem “Or”, it’s called “If”

if you do this that and other thing.
not this that or the other thing.

If the governor of illinios wants us to see his stubbornness as a mirror to “if’s” unrealistic ideals, then bro owes all of us one quick high stakes game of pitch-and-toss

a game i understand they play in marion as well

for your friday night

5chw4r7z: If you could give a Christmas present to anyone in the world, who would it be? If you could get a Christmas present from anyone in the world who would it be?

The best Christmas present I could give is a way for my mom to retire and for her house to be paid off. She should be enjoying her grandchildren instead of working now. But alas her retirement was effected big time by the stock market, etc. As for gifts for me? I’m pretty much the man who has everything at this point, so im hard to gift for. I guess I would like someone smart and wealthy to buy my Chicago Cubs. That would be a pretty great gift for more folks than just me.

Basart: You coming to SXSW this year?

SXSW is one of my favorite times of the year. Not only am I going but I’m trying to recruit others to come too. I totally forgot that you’re right downtown. Sounds like party at your pad one of those nights!

Ciavarro: Why does Pitt always have to stick his big mic nose in to everyone’s business?

I believe the correct spelling of that slur has a “k” at the end. Also, i dont think that’s his nose.

what happened to funny pages 2.0? it was the only blog worth reading on latimes.com? WTF? and can you hook me up with that st.clare chick if she is single? thanks, mike ps. Lakers or celtics?

this comment is offensive on many levels. we have 42 blogs at the times, surely theres something that reaches out to people who would ask those last two questions. oh, maybe not after all.

harris: what did YOU think of Zeitgeist, in relation to your own religious beliefs?

havent seen zeitgeist yet. hard to believe that any online movie would alter my religious beliefs. although i am open to re-thinking my beliefs, me and The Big Guy have a pretty good thing going and it quite possibly could be a total imaginary thing, but it sure seems to be working fairly smoothly.

bloopy: not that i came up with a question worth asking her but what happened with karisa’s answers to last week’s questions?. . . also, yeah, what’s up with funny pages 2.0?. . .

karisa has been very busy. she got a new job, she got her hair did, shes trying to maintain the tan she acquired while in St. Croix. plus shes training for a marathon, and also working on various remodeling projects around her home.

she says that she will answer those questions shortly. if you have some more, put them in these comments.

as for funny pages… when Christie did allthingschristie she was able to get the newest videos, web stories, blog posts and she pretty much had the market cornered in regards to spreading the news. nowadays there’s twitter, digg, google trends, reddit… so many big time competitors that tell you whats viral and cool out there. so funny pages, which was me and Christie’s idea, by the way, never really found the large audience that she deserved.

her posts were great, she is great, what she wrote was funny, we even had her post a tad in Hero Complex, but for some reason that blog never took off on the times. maybe our readers weren’t ready for it – who knows. but we sadly had to pull the plug on it and i miss it and think about it and her everyday. *frowny face*

miguel: How come you haven’t talked about your company’s bankruptcy or Sam Zell being called The Worst CEO? I’m sure it’s been the talk of the office.

from the award winning how to blog “25… dont write about your work unless you dont care about getting fired.”

with that said, when our competitors talk trash about our owners we dont really pay too much attention. i can honestly say that that particular blog post has gotten zero people talking in this office, far as i heard.

as for our financials. i was a poetry major so i dont understand much about those money things. or how disney was able to file for that thing seven times, or how cities and counties have filed for it, let alone a media company. all i know is the lights are on here, we keep putting out and producing papers, and we are getting more readers to our site than ever before, even more than our competitor that you linked to.

which means its ask tony

pitt says he didnt like the guest ask tony’s soooo

just ask me and either me or pitt will answer

wait

ok i will answer. go!

what i told you the other day i was gonna do

and she had a cute skirt on, chocolate tights cuz its been cold,
big mary tyler more jacket
and a smart velvet hat
with no brim
which mysteriously
was ridiculously cute.

we ate mediocre sushi and picked out baby names and playfully bickered

yr an asswipe.

roberto.

no really youre super selfish and sorta an a whole.

aesop.

even my roomate says that if you werent so selfish youd be a keeper.

ragebot

the problem was it didnt melt in your mouth. sushi should do that.

radar

yeah well you lied that one time

hippy

duh it was a joke. obvs. like i would really have mono?

bueller

she asked for shredded beets and in seconds there was a tiny plate of shredded beet

lefty

my sister used to smell her food. this girl smelled her food also.

felonious

at one point of the evening she said take me home. except she was mad.

i said are you going to talk to me? she said no. so i turned off the bluegrass and tried to find the king talk show host on the satelite radio.

he was at commercial, so i just played the game silently in my head.

maude

A++++

tifanny

robyn

the edge

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