THE GREAT GADFLY:

Sit Down, You're Making Me Nervous

There's a garbage strike in my city right now, and at the same time there's all kinds of hullaballoo about The Cubs, because apparently they keep winning all their sports games and they could be up for the Big Sports Honor, whatever that is - custom fitted jewelry, or perhaps free airline tickets. Maybe they win their own hour-long dance special with Lynda Carter on NBC. I honestly couldn't tell you. All I know is, there's a mountain of trash bags outside my door and I live three blocks away from Wrigley Field and my diet pills are WEARING OFF.

The weather out here has been bizarre as well. Summery balm all week, then today the sky turned grey and inky. It was actually kind of a welcome contrast, though I'd be lying if I said it didn't compliment the current dark chill breeze of tension.

MEANWHILE, a Chicago audience is suing limpbizkit for putting on a bad concert. Can you sue a band for putting on a bum show after clocking the lead singer square in the family jewels with a rotten lemon at the concert in question? Talk about adding insult to injury. Then again, this is the city that only recently attempted to sue Creed for putting on a crap show last New Year's. Moral of story? If yer gonna rock the Windy City, make sure your guitars are tuned. Clearly we don't take no mess.

My only question is, why go to limpbizkit and Creed shows if you're so adamantly anti-crap? Ponderous.

Today I had lunch at my neighborhood vegan diner. I'm so happy I can say I have a neighborhood vegan diner. The place was packed this afternoon. Who are all these people who have the time to graze on seitan at 1 p.m. on a Thursday? I wanted to give them a survey about their lifestyles. I mean, I guess now that I have my new job, my lifestyle is their lifestyle, but I'm still not quite sure what to do with my wide open mornings and afternoons. Apparently you spend a lot of time looking as if you just got out of bed (one's cowlick must only be so askew, after all), then you hang out at the Chicago Diner. Hey - sounds good to me. The lemonade rocks my smelly socks.

All this Chicago anxiety is making me a bit edgy today. Everyone at work is scurrying around, engaging in various troubleshoot adventures. Can't they just sit still and call each other, or like, e-mail each other from across the room? There's simply no need for all this activity, not today, no. People just need to cool out.