Only when you are falling asleep can this:
turn into this:
Watching television late at night
Monthly Archives: January 2002
A little over ten years ago…
John Hackett. Birthday boy. Afro-man.
Mr. John Oates’s number one fan
My older brother, John, is one year closer to thirty today.
I do not have, offhand, a hilarious picture of him to post, so I will instead share with you this email message he wrote to me. This was his response to my assumption that a fellow posting as “HansDrinker” on my forum was impersonating several of my friends on the very same forum. “HansDrinker” was, as it turned out, John. (Note: the thread in which his original message and my reply appear has been erased, as I felt really stupid about it.) I can’t say I agree with everything he said in response, but I can’t argue with the way he said it:
Unfortunately, I don’t know of the person who has been impersonating you. It certainly wasn’t me – I’m perfectly happy being myself, or a crude likeness thereof. Would an impersonating asshole go to the trouble of filling out the personal info (all 100% true by the way, and full of hints on my true identity) on the profile and post a picture of rocker John Oates? Would an inpersonating asshole think up a creative and thought-provoking name (one that I have been using, on and off, for several years, mind you) like HansDrinker? Would an impersonating asshole go to the trouble to check and double check the lyrics to the theme song from such a shitty show as the Facts of Life? I think not. I apologize if my post in some small part ruffled some feathers (as a soon-to-be 28 year old I can certainly verify that the facts of life are indeed all about you) – that was not my intent by any means. I was only trying to be amusing to you and your cohorts (where’s the joy?) and be part of the club. I saw the email below and went to your forum almost trembling with excitement at what new witty posts may lay in waiting. Needless to say I was disappointed at what I found. I look at the Lucubus on almost a daily basis, and I was looking forward to the opportunity to contribute my two cents worth to the forum.
I don’t know what hardships this asshole impersonator has caused you, but I am dismayed at the one obvious result. Despite the name encased at the top of the menu at the top of your forum start page (“I Do Not Know These People”), it appears that you do indeed know “these people”, and any unknown newcomers are met with extreme prejudice and hosility. The irony of the forum title notwithstanding, perhaps in a deeper sense it speaks of the inability for human beings to truly connect with one another in this modern, electronic, cold-hearted age where people spend countless hours “communicating” with each other using a keyboard and modem and don’t even know the name of the person that lives in the apartment next door. Regardless, were it my forum (a pipe dream, alas), I would have been delighted at a new, well-crafted, obviously thought-out post from a total stranger who put witty things into his profile. Perhaps in time I would come to think “This man of mystery, HansDrinker – what a lovable old drunk!” And perhaps in time you would have come to think that, as well.
But it is not to be. And so, I proclaim to you – HansDrinker is John Russell Hackett, born on January 30, 1974… [personal information snipped] …Like yourself, I attended Northwestern University, graduating with a degree in environmental engineering. I then went to Clemson University and obtained a Master’s degree in the same discipline. I currently live in Denver, CO, and work at an engineering consulting company, where I do work in the areas of environmental radioactive waste remediation and risk assessment. I am single, but looking (and, if one were to judge by the length of this, in obvious – nay, desperate – need of a girlfriend). In my spare time, I enjoy reading (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay was fucking awesome), playing guitar, listening to music, and David Lynch movies. More recently, I also have gotten into mountain biking, taking black and white pictures with my new digital camera, and the West Wing (the Bernie Mac show is also pretty good).
Well. Perhaps this has convinced you. Perhaps not. It may be better to be feared than loved, but you catch more flies with sugar than you do with vinegar.
I have posted this at his suggestion. Happy birthday, John!
Blogger Pro? Should I? I wonder…
Two startling revelations about jury duty
They’re keeping this quiet. I’m blowing the lid off.
1. The jury selection process is a lot like “The Price Is Right”.
It’s true. In the morning, our potential jurors assemble in the waiting area and become the “studio audience”, if you will. Gradually, jurors assigned a particular panel number are asked to “come on down”, at which point they are led to a courtroom. As there are twenty-four to a panel, or something like that, once they are in the courtroom, twelve names are arbitrarily chosen once again to “come on down” and sit in the jury box. Then, the judge and attorneys ask you to “identify the price of an item up for bid”. If you “come closest to the correct price without going over”, you stay and be a juror. Otherwise you are sent home, your fifteen seconds of fame fading fast from the collective memory. Another interpretation is that those who “guess the price most accurately without going over” get to go “spin the wheel” in the judge’s chambers, where they are often dismissed, which is the “top prize”. The losers must remain in the jury box for weeks on end. Trust me, it will all make sense once you do it. As a result of this observation, I have had the “Price Is Right” theme song running through my head for the past several days. I can think of worse fates.
2. Court stenographers are routinely hot.
By and large, based on my personal experiences, this assessment is accurate. All of the stenographers so far (there have been two per day) have been women, and of these approximately ninety percent of them have been very attractive, and the one that wasn’t I largely ascribed to the unfortunate mullet-based hairstyle she wore. Nonetheless, there is a certain luminescence they present, almost mystical in nature. It’s not that they radiate light, but they reflect the light in a skillful and aesthetically pleasing way. I had the pleasure of sharing an elevator ride with one of them, and let me tell you, those fingers can do more than type two hundred fifty words a minute. They can also press elevator buttons.
Results may vary
Recently, the cable channel FX has started showing a very peculiar ad:
Some dietary supplement or other, I suppose.
I saw a man he danced with his wife
In downtown Chicago, it seems that 90% of all the stores on the first floors of the buildings are represented by one of the following businesses: McDonalds, Au Bon Pain, Sbarro’s, Wolf Camera, or Dress Barn. Starbucks is also fairly ubiquitous, but this is the case for every major city, and every minor city for that matter, and so we shall give it no attention. The existence of Starbucks the corporation as a virus infecting all of civilized creation has been established by philosophers far more prescient than I.
And what of McDonalds, you ask? Surely that is viral as well? Certainly, but you must understand the scope of this. As far as redundant McDonalds locations go, this beats out even the brief time I was in Milan, Italy, and there were three McDonalds restaurants within one block of the train station. In the course of a fifteen-minute walk through the downtown area, I passed by at least five separate iterations of each of these businesses, many of which occurred multiple times on the same block, and as soon as I passed one set of these businesses, the next began. It was as if I were Fred Flintstone running endlessly through my granite house, with the same scenery scrolling behind me over and over again. Similar to that, except my feet didn’t make the “dinkydinkydink” sound.
Sbarro’s, of course, is an international chain, but one that does not have nearly the cachet of the aforementioned two. And yet, its popularity is natural, because people like pizza. The most recent claim to fame Sbarro’s has to offer, unfortunately, is that one of its downtown Jerusalem locations was the site of a Palestinian suicide bombing which killed a number of people.
Au Bon Pain, “the French Bakery Café”, is an unknown quantity — for me, at least, because I’ve never eaten there. I can’t imagine there is a high demand for quiche anywhere in the midwest, but I suppose that if it were going to be anywhere it would be here amongst the uppity and well-traveled attorneys and politicians, and not out in the sticks somewhere.
Wolf Camera is interesting, because it proves that people are still, by and large, taking pictures with film cameras. And taking a lot of them, too, based on the number of locations available to do one’s business at.
I have no idea why anyone would shop at a place called “Dress Barn”. It’s like buying a bicycle at a place called “Bike Silo”. It just doesn’t make any sense.
So why do these businesses have so many locations in close proximity to one another? My father points out that downtown Chicago is a very crowded place with a high population density, implying that these businesses are playing it smart by putting in locations that will catch the overflow from busier locations. (“Oh, honey, this Dress Barn is too crowded, let’s go to the one across the street.”) I think it may be more complex than that, and upon further reflection it becomes fairly clear that it is all due to the fact that the failing economy has left municipal governments little recourse in raising money for their programs; thus, they have adopted Dress Barn, Au Bon Pain, and the rest as their Official Sponsors. I mean, come on, that’s some valuable advertising space that’s getting sold on the ground around City Hall and the Daley Center. Next time you eat or shop at one of these locations, check their storefront signage. In tiny print, it will say, “Official Sponsor of the City of Chicago”.
Why, I almost guarantee it.
I know art when I see it
It’s the Prime Number Shitting Bear!
Onward, Christian propaganda
This message is for Jesus Christ. Well, not just for Jesus but for the whole Trinity – the Father, the Son, and the Friendly Ghost.
Today, I looked at a website which brought into focus the ridiculous things humankind attempts to do in your service. That website is “The Truth for Youth”. As I read these Jack Chick-like comics designed by probably perfectly nice people to help influence teenagers to adopt “Christian values”, I experienced many feelings. Anger, astonishment, bemusement, intense burning dislike. Because I was having such strong negative feelings about a work which purported to espouse the philosophy for the best way to live one’s life, I paused to consider the possibility that I would be going to go straight to hell, or at the very least be Left Behind?. Then I asked myself, “Self? W.W.J.D.?”
Well, you sure wouldn’t put a shiny plastic fish on the back of your car, that’s for damn sure. Or would you? Well, to each his own. But you have inspired me to notice that these prescriptive Christian brainwashing materials rely far too heavily on the Bible as evidence. They seem to forget that the Bible was written by humans. And while the text may have been divinely inspired, humans are imperfect beings. Even though you have only walked as man just the once – as far as I can tell from what is in the public record – certainly you must know what I am talking about. Humans have biases, almost always, whether they know it or not. This is true for the scriveners and for the translators and everyone else around and between. If your words are in there, we cannot say for certain what they are, where they are, or if they are in the proper context. And yet, these recruitment packages place no thought at all to the matter that their version of the Bible may have been tampered with at some point in the past, which strikes me as naive, or, more insidiously, willfully manipulative. And “manipulative” is the perfect word for these cornball religious tracts. I truly fear for tomorrow if our children grow up reading this trash. (There, now I sound like one of them!)
Thanks for your time. Ten-four, good buddy!
Performing my civic duty
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I now count myself among your number, thanks to Cook County and its judicial process. Let me simply say that the Richard J. Daley Plaza building is very tall and has a nice view. Also, jury assembly rooms sure are crowded in the morning!
Further bulletins as events warrant.
Textification masturbation
Remember the days of Trash-80s, Apple ][s, and the piracy of BBS? Neither do I, but I just found out it’s not to late to start reliving them anyway, and learning a little about American History in the process.
I always wanted to step into the shoes of a teenage computer nerd with a modem circa 1983 (the life that could have been, if only my parents had had sex sooner) — spreading trite German-sounding humor to the world; painstakingly drawing naked ladies with nothing but the 128 basic ASCII characters as my palette; beating that damn Rom Raider to the punch on publishing the walkthrough for the new Adventure! game. Thanks to a little article in Salon, now I know how and where I can step back in time:
(Note: experiencing this site to the fullest will require a radical reduction in your expecations of web-based visual stimulation.)
Don’t mind if I do
In his just-begun and already half-hearted initiative to promote himself shamelessly wherever he can, and receive his justly unfair share of attention, this new guy will occasionally put appearances, words and pictures in this space.
–this new guy
Being a Lego bastard WORKS
I read a comic book called TRANSMETROPOLITAN. It is written by Warren Ellis and illustrated by Darick Robertson and Rodney Ramos, and it is published by the Vertigo imprint of DC Comics. TRANSMETROPOLITAN is about the crusade of journalist Spider Jerusalem to find out about and expose the horrible things that the President (whom he nicknames “The Smiler”) has done while in office and while trying to get there. To celebrate this fine comic book’s final year of publication (it is now within ten issues of the story’s end) I have made Lego figures of my favorite characters.
Spider is aided by his “filthy assistants”, Channon and Yelena, who help him gather evidence and protect him when they are not trying to kill him. Spider’s offensive weapon of choice is the bowel disruptor.
Here, Spider gleefully blasts President Gary Callahan (AKA The Smiler) with the bowel disruptor. That can’t be pleasant!
The Harry Potter Lego figure was hanging around, and so Channon and Yelena are showing him how they use broomsticks.
Spider blasts Harry’s enemy Draco Malfoy with the bowel disruptor, because the little bastard’s been asking for it for four whole books now.
Tee hee!
Referrals, in both directions
I have updated my page of links. Most of the links I have added are things that I have mentioned in articles past, but there are a few goodies in there which I have found in my Favorites folder and have decided to pass on to you, the viewer.
Lately I have been looking at my web stats with much interest, primarily the referrals. It seems that a good deal of my hits are coming from Google searches for all sorts of crazy things. Perhaps the most popular searched for things leading to my page are anchors for the Chicago Fox affiliate’s various news programs. This is due to the fact that I have had a tendency to go on about them, but particularly the lovely weekend anchor Nancy Pender, who still has not responded to my open invitation to take her to dinner. I can only imagine she has used and discarded far better men than I. If it is so, than that is so it shall be, as I wish her nothing but happiness, and that’s about all a body can ask for in this harsh, cruel world, isn’t it?
Another popular and possibly related search has been “girls gone wild” or variations thereof. And yes, I am aware and amused by the fact that typing them here will only lead to my site showing up higher on the list of results for these queries. It makes me feel good inside.
The most curious recent Google search leading to my site would definitely be “story erotic Aunt bus”, which leads to some articles that I wrote last February. Sadly, the word “bus” only appears on the page as part of “Juke-U-Bus”, so its position in the search results has been somewhat inflated. Another interesting query was “fuck policewoman” – the list of which turns up my site as the third result, which is peculiar because I thought I’d score much higher, what with all the talking about fucking policewomen that I do.
Of course, the referral of which I am proudest continues to be the search for the phrase “I am a total slut” (the phrase, mind you, not just the words) which, as of this moment and for the last several weeks, turns up my site as the number-one non-sponsored link. Yes! I am a total slut! I am a total slut!
Kaboom!
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