Terrible PUNditry: Poetically Correct.

It is no great epiphany to say that Governor Sarah Palin is clearly a master of the spoken word. But here, through the ancient wisdom and mystical nature of Japan's finest export, the haiku, we are able to extract even deeper, more meaningful connections to this brilliant orator, one carved in the stalwart traditions of such titans as Lincoln, Churchill, and Kennedy.

Unless otherwise noted, all references to the following material may be viewed at your leisure here.

On Experience

"Now, what I've done as
Governor and as Mayor
Is (inaudible)."

On Tax Reform

"Still on the tax thing
Because I want to correct
You on that again."

On Domestic Drilling

"Senator McCain
Does support this, yes. The chant
Is 'drill, baby, drill.'"

On Iraq

"Your plan is a white
Flag of surrender and that's
Not what our troops need."

On Nuclear Armament

"Nuclear weaponry
Here in the U.S. is used
As a deterrent."

On Leadership

"John McCain tapped me
And said, 'That's where I want you,
I want you to lead.'"

On McCain

"Who has been there and
He's faced challenges and he
Knows what evil is."

On Foreign Policy

"A comment like that
Was made to char- I don't know.
You know, reporters."

Viewable here.

On Personal Media Choices

"I've read most of them,
A great appreciation
For the media."

"All of 'em, any
That have been in front of me
Over all these years."

Viewable here.

My bicycle and Dave, the friendly, if not grossly misinformed, homeless man.

Today, my bike got caught in one of these:



See, I've read the rules(#2, second paragraph). I know what's up. I knew better, seriously. I definitely knew better than to try to put an awkwardly shaped piece of metal and rubber through a labyrinthine, even more awkwardly shaped gate constructed of hundreds of metal poles and flaking paint.

But, you need to understand the circumstances surrounding that which, at first, appeared to be a comical snafu, but which quickly deteriorated into the kind of human traffic jam you only read about (here), the disgusted eyes of the carless rabble heaping shame and humiliation onto me as they trudged back up two flights of stairs to find alternate exits.

Also, you need to stop judging me.

If I preface this story by saying I was in a not-so-great part of town when this tragic mishap occurred, would that do anything to quell your heartless cackles? I doubt it. You cruel fuckers.
Well, I was. And now, I'm not even going to tell you exactly where I was, because you don't deserve to know. Also, I don't need any more heartless cackles added to the mêlée when you call me a pussy for thinking the Green Line at California and Lake is a bad part of town. Heartless cackles. Heartless cackles. I'm really into that phrase right now. Heartless cackles.

Thing is, I'd never been to this particular stop before today. When I tell you that the reason I found myself at this particular place in the universe is that I had just finished walking a pair of dogs downtown- one that was in its third year of remission from lymphoma, and one that had IBS and incontinence, and was required to wear what amounts to a doggie diaper (affectionately referred to as a belly band) on its way from the apartment to the outside- and was on my way back to a saw blade factory to wash and dry over 1,500 wine glasses, well, you'll just have to trust me. Because that is what I was doing. And also scoring a shitload of crack.

So, where I might normally know the access points of bicycle friendly exits at any number of my regular, more gentrified stops, today I did not. I merely hustled off the train with the lunchtime herd and headed to the nearest exit, where I was being corralled. It wasn't until I reached the halfway point of the trip down that I espied the forbidden gate ahead, but by then it was too late. Not too late to turn around and find the correct exit, mind you, but too late to avoid being seen by Dave, a streetwise tough that looked as bright and sharp as the pile of broken glass he stood in, but not nearly as shattered.

"C'mon man! We can get that shit through here! I done it befo'!," he hollered at me as I faltered in step on the platform, eyeing the gate nervously.

"Nah, I don't think so, dude. It looks pretty narr-"

"It's cool, man! C'mon! Fuck it!"

Yeah, I thought, yeah! It is cool! AND fuck it! This guy knows the score!
________________________

Minutes later, my bike now punishingly wedged in CTA purgatory, neither in the train station, nor out, Dave, safely outside the train station, looks at me, safely inside the train station, and says, "Shit, man. I fucked up."

"I don't know, man. I thought it would go, too. How're we suppposed to get it out?!"

"Fuck.. man I don't know! A damn saw? Shit," Dave mused.

By now, the initial crowd of onlookers and angry passengers had diminished, and we found ourselves quite alone in this predicament. I fully expected at any moment that Dave would grow weary of this absurd task, this extraction of a fucking bicycle from a fucking turnstile, and wander away, leaving me to my own devices and fulfillment of so many existential nightmares.

But Dave stayed. Whether it was pride, boredom, or maybe just working off a buzz before returning to the halfway house (I will note my own unfair characterization of the homeless, thank you.), Dave stayed. And we solved our problem together. And it did not include the destruction of any city or personal property, I can proudly say.

Did we alter any chemical properties, perhaps? There is no way to know for sure (except for any number of blood and DNA tests, MRI's, etc., but must we bog ourselves down with such minutae?), but I can safely say that we were different men when we met on the outside of that gate, bike intact, shaking hands heartily in acknowledgment of our shared triumph. Could there be a more apt physical manifestation of not being kept down by The Man, not letting The City win yet again?

As we stood there exchanging accolades, reminiscing about the experience we literally just had, and smoking drugs, Dave said, "We all fuck shit up sometime, man." He's right, you know.

Then he said, "Got any change, man?"

A heartless cackle* flew past my lips as I handed him a dollar and rode down the street, onward to all points wine and saw.

*Heartless cackle, in this context, can also be taken to mean "Here ya go, man."

On Sending Job Inquiries Via Email, Misspelling 'ASAP,' Pressing Send Before Completion, & Mouse Touchpads are Sensitive Pieces of Shit.

"Hello Rick,
I am still interested in the job. Where is your business located? I can start ASS"

I was looking for a job, and then I (didn't) found (find) a job.

I'm in a restaurant on the northwest side of Chicago. I say that, but I can't be sure. I haven't lived in the city long enough to say anything with much confidence as far as geography is concerned. I do know that the unopened Italian restaurant's kitchen, in which I am standing, alone, frantically shoving a three pound ball of unusable flour, salt, brown sugar, and water into a giant black trashbag hanging from the side of a storage shelf, is a good three miles north of my apartment. But it's also a good three miles east. But, I'll still stick with saying it's in the northwest sector of the city, because my house is "way west," as it's described by my friends that live here.

It wasn't supposed to happen this way. The ruse had been set up perfectly, and the plan was fully laid out, even written out in pen on an old sheet of notebook paper folded neatly in my back pocket. I would come in, make some dough, make a pizza, shove it down the owners' throats, then sit back and collect my paycheck for a month before having to quit and leave for tour. And at a job that was slated to pay 50K/year, that would've been one hefty check. I don't know how much, but the word hefty keeps springing to mind.

The problem is that the interview went too well. Sometimes, in situations of dire awkwardness, rather than clamming up and shutting down, I turn on the charm, extra charmy. There's no rhyme or reason to this peculiar trait of mine, and I cannot control when it may show itself. Of course, there have been many occasions that I have wished for it to come to my aid, to no avail. For instance. In this particular situation, though, I can only attribute it to the fact that I am new to the city, desperate for a job, and willing to do almost anything to achieve what seems to be, at this point, a week and a half into my search, a nearly insurmountable task.

I showed up to this address in response to an ad on Craig's List. The ad mentioned ever so casually that this Italian restaurant was looking for pizza cooks who had experience with hand tossed dough. "No problem," I thought, seeing as how every pizza place I've ever worked at (which admittedly is only two) used hand tossed dough exclusively. There is no doubt that I have tossed more than my share of pizza dough into the air with my hands. This was a shoo-in, a no brainer; it was any number of bad cliches about the ease of doing something. This was a slam-dunk-sure-thing-hole-in-one-lonely-50-year-old-woman-at-the-bar. What?

It wasn't easy finding the place. When I finally did locate the building, directly across the street from an aging cemetary that I learned had been there since this area was still considered the suburbs, I realized that the reason it was so hard to locate was because there were two giant mounds of dirt and a bulldozer right in front of the building. I used this as my excuse for being late as I walked in the door to meet the owner, though that wasn't true at all. I was just late. Instead of being met with the low chatter and clinking forks and glasses of a lunchtime bustle, I saw dust hanging lazily in the rays of sun that barely penetrated plate glass windows that were butcher papered over, protecting them from the layer of fresh maroon paint that had just been applied, if smell was any indication.

This was not a good sign. I was looking for a job that I could start immediately. However, I'd driven all the way over, and the owner, whose name I'll change here- let's call him... Jum- was extremely affable, and, as Digable Planets said, the vibe here was very pleasant, so I decided to see this situation to its ultimate conclusion, whatever that could be.

Jum and I were alone in this fairly sizable restaurant, and we sat at a small table in the middle of the room. He explained to me that they were putting the finishing touches on the place, and hoped to be open sometime in October. The bulldozer outside, he said, was in the process of fixing their water line, which had been damaged and never repaired by the building's owner. He also "explained a little bit about the job," you know, like every hiring manager says.

In addition to bartenders and servers, I realized all too quickly that the job I was applying for was not "pizza cook," but instead, "Master Pizza Chef." My foot tapped out code on the tile floor while I filled out the application(Get. The. Fuck. Out. Of. Here. -stop- Now. -stop- ). Jum sat across from me in silence while I hurriedly scribbled out the banal information that no one ever looks at. He must have sensed the strangeness of the situation, too, because at some point he told me not to worry about the question and answer part of the application ("What is Customer Service?).

We then began a fairly lengthy discussion about pizza that really should never happen anywhere. It's moments 15 minutes into a tangent on the crispiness of pizza dough that put your life into perspective. But, like I said, it went too well. If there's one thing I can do really well, apparently it's convincing a new restaurant owner that I know way more about the craft of pizza making than I really do. This is why at the end of the interview he asked me to come in next week to cook for him and the other owners. "Shit," I thought. "Sure!," I said.

_____________________

The thing is, I do know the difference between ounces and fluid ounces. One measures volume and one measures weight. Today, one hour into my very own two hour, special dough recipe that I did not retrieve from the internet at 2:30 a.m. last night, drunk, I become terrifyingly aware that I do not know the difference between ounces and fluid ounces. I realize one hour into my very own two hour, special dough recipe that I did not retrieve from the internet at 2:30 a.m. last night, drunk, that the reason my dough is so sticky and grossly unmanageable is that, instead of measuring out 29.5 ounces of high quality, more expensive than necessary flour, I only measured out 29.5 fluid ounces of the stupid shit. In actuality, I'm the stupid shit.

An audible "Fuck!" passes my lips, and though we are separated by a giant kitchen door with a plexiglass window and about thirty yards, I can sense the owners, Jum and... Noncy (a late arrival, the full blooded Italian of the bunch- I know she can smell floundering) turning to look in my direction. Determined to waste as many expensive, fresh ingredients as possible, and to satisfy my own mind, which keeps telling me, somewhere back there, that this project can still be salvaged ("Nothing's fucked here, dude."), I furiously measure out the additional 3 1/2 cups of flour I initially shorted my amazing recipe and add it in to the stainless steel mixing bowl, and begin the process of suffocating the already gasping dough. When that doesn't fix it immediately, I rush to the sink and dump scalding water into the bowl, and start kneading the doomed mixture like a kitten on a head full of coke, burning my hands in the process.

Were there a military man behind me to gently rest his hand on my shoulder and say, "He's already dead, son," I may not have tried for as long as I did to resuscitate my dreams for a high paying job, but no such apparition appears, so it isn't until five minutes later, when hard chunks of the original dough began to flake off and mix with the milky mess of the "new" dough that I realize I am finished. I briefly toy with the idea of bolting out of the restaurant with the expensive fresh mozzerella and this really nice knife they've provided me with until I realize I put my real address on the application.

I have just scooped out the gory mess into the trashbag and am washing the bowl which gave birth to the hellish creation when Jum comes into the kitchen, and, as if sensing something wrong, asks, "How's it going? Is the dough coming along alright?"

As I turn to face him, a piece of dough, at once both hard as glass and runny as phlegm, falls from its perch on my now ruined shirt and plops onto the floor. Our eyes fix there, just for a moment, then meet.