Someone’s not doing their job.

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I am currently at my parents’ house for Death to All Turkeys Day 2014. That house is located in not-Chicago, which makes it pretty hard to write a blog post about Chicago.

Therefore, you get the stray ones. The little bits, observations and lame-ass jokes that have stuck in my head over the years but were never enough on their own to make one of the 1,001 Afternoons. Enjoy.

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I love July 4 because I sometimes need to know where complete and total assholes live in my densely populated urban neighborhood. July 4 is the night they set off flares to help me find them.

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I was visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past Perfect. It had told me about the meaning of the holidays.

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Today’s throwback Thursday is this status. Conceived in the past, written thereafter, seen a fraction of a fraction of a second before our brains register the words, read by the light the sun shed eight minutes ago. We fall a millisecond before our brain registers the motion; our stars are misfit versions of skies long-dead. Nebulae we see forming now died thousands of years ago, the Pillars of Creation a millennium-gone monument to destruction. We live in the past, our brains and light too slow to read what is now, only what was in moments before. The consolation of this is a brief instant of immortality: We’ll all die before our bodies know we’re gone.

Also, man can you BELIEVE our hair back then? O-M-G!

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An ad at my Metra station said that three out of four teenagers believe having easier access to marijuana may accelerate teens in trying other drugs.

Nine out of 10 teenagers believe liking the same pop song means you’re soul mates who will stay together forever. Teenagers are stupid.

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From the website of a literacy charity I was did not end up donating to: “The amount to our organization does not impact the amount of you’re benefit.”

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Some children will grow up to be homeless people. (I never said they were all funny.)

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Kim Kardashian’s main purpose in our society at this point is to give people a quick shot of moral superiority without them having to do anything. Somehow, the less you know/care about her and her actions, the better a person you are.

She’s “I don’t even own a television” for people who own televisions.

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“I need to look professional. So I’ll wear a ribbon over my shirt. A big, pretty ribbon.” — The person who invented ties.

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And finally, two incredibly nerdy things I have said out loud to other people. Click for explanation.

“I’m going to be swamped like Alec Holland.”

“Square my i because this shit just got real.”

Happy Thanksgiving.

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How did he get there? What happened? And how does tough does a man have to be in this neighborhood to go out at night in a wheelchair? That’s what scared me.

That and the fact the house they were hanging out in front of had no lights.

I kept driving.

I had checked out my car-sharing car to drive to Chinatown. Highway traffic pushed me onto surface streets. My sense of direction pushed me to Little Village, almost four miles to the east of the dim sum and illegal weapons I sought.

The cruise west on Cermak had been pleasant and uneventful. I passed some storefronts closed for the night, some closed forever. Botanicas, abogados, agencias de viajes, a Church’s Chicken.

A few stories beckoned, things I made mental notes to come back and write about when they were open (an old theater called Apollo’s 2000), when I could bring someone to translate (a place called Pizza Tango) or when I grew a foot taller, got some muscles and learned how to fight (a sketchy looking pool hall with a hand-painted sign).

Turning back north on Kedzie into North Lawndale was a bit harder a transition. The stores went away, replaced by homes punctuated with corner convenience liquor stores that all took LINK. Groups of young guys hanging out on corners in front of buildings with no lights, some in wheelchairs.

A firetruck stopped and started up along the road, apparently pulling over to check their directions.

But I was in a car.

A car is separate. A car is safe. It’s the urban battle tank, we convince ourselves. Nothing bad can happen in a car and if something looks like it needs some extra security, just roll up the windows and gape at the poverty, gape at the urban blight, gape at the people just trying to get through a day on cracked roads that lead everybody out but them.

The car turns us into a fool, a gawker and a tourist.

And on my gaping tourist drive, my coward’s run through a place I had no reason being, I caught a glimpse of myself in the rear view mirror.

It was the one I saw there who scared me.

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