The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

Early efforts

When I moved to my current house, I planned to hook up my ancient cassette player to a stereo system in my library. So I got my ancient cassettes out of storage and brought them to the new place. It took a couple of stages (ordering bookshelves, getting the bookshelves, waiting for them to fix the adjustable shelf in the center bookshelf) over a few months. In that last phase it looked like this:

You're reading that right. I packed that box of cassettes on 3 January 2005, and put a sticker on it when I moved in February 2008 to confirm that the contents hadn't changed.

Over the July 4th weekend, I finally organized the cassettes, getting to this point:

Much improved. And in order. So, naturally, I played the one marked "Samples," dated 4 June 1988, and realized I had no idea how to make a mix tape at that age.

Now, I've always had eclectic musical tastes, but apparently it took me 6 or 7 tapes to decide that a segue from Monteverdi's "Cantate Domino" (ca. 1620) to Lennon's "Because" (ca. 1969) might sound a bit jarring to most listeners, including future me. Still, I used to play all those tapes in my old Mazda while driving all over the country, so listening to them again put me right back in college.


My old Mazda, June 1990, somewhere near Peekskill, N.Y. The first year I had her (around when I took this photo) I had driven about 24,000 km.

No hurry to get to Ravinia tonight

I've got tickets to see Straight No Chaser with some chorus friends at Ravinia Park tonight—on the lawn. Unfortunately, for the last 8 hours or so, our weather radar has looked like this:

I haven't got nearly as much disappointment as the folks sitting in Grant Park right now waiting for a NASCAR race that will never happen in this epic rainfall. (I think Mother Nature is trying to tell NASCAR something. Or at least trying to tell Chicago NASCAR fans something. Hard to tell.)

While I'm waiting to see if it will actually stop raining before my train leaves at 5:49pm, I have this to read:

I am happy the roofers finished my side of my housing development already. The people across the courtyard have discovered the temporary waterproofing was a bit more temporary than the roofers intended.

Free time resumes tomorrow

During the weeks around our Spring Concert, like during the first couple of weeks of December, I have almost no free time. The Beethoven performance also took away an entire day. Yesterday I had hoped to finish a bit of code linking my home weather station to Weather Now, but alas, I studied German instead.

Plus, with the aforementioned Spring Concerts on Friday and today, I felt that Cassie needed some couch time. (We both sit on the couch while I read or watch TV and she gets non-stop pats. It's good for both of us.) She'll get more couch time tonight, don't worry. But she'll also be home alone for about 7 hours today.

I don't have rehearsal tomorrow, and in fact I have no responsibilities beyond my normal day job until next Saturday, so I should finish the coding soon. (I also have a task for an old client that will take me a dozen or so hours, and I really need to start that before my trip.)

In the hour I have before Cassie's next walk and me driving out to Oak Park, I need to study more German and some Czech. In the former we're now discussing how the bear and the mouse need to an apartment („Der Bär und die Maus brauchen eine Wohnung”, for what purpose I can only imagine), and in the latter, whether I eat salt („Jíš sůl?”) and that they have good coffee („Kávu mají dobrou”). Clearly I have more work to do in Czech.

Beautiful morning in Chicago

We finally have a real May-appropriate day in Chicago, with a breezy 26°C under clear skies (but 23°C closer to the Lake, where I live). Over to my right, my work computer—a 2017-era Lenovo laptop I desperately want to fling onto the railroad tracks—has had some struggles with the UI redesign I just completed, giving me a dose of frustration but also time to line up some lunchtime reading:

Finally, today marks the 30th anniversary of Aimee Mann releasing one of my favorite albums, her solo debut Whatever. She perfectly summed up the early-'90s ennui that followed the insanity of the '80s as we Gen-Xers came of age. It still sounds as fresh to me today as it did then.

In other news

Stuff read while waiting for code to compile:

Finally, Chicago Tribune food critic Louisa Chu says I should take a 45-minute drive down to Bridgeview to try some Halal fried chicken—just, maybe, after Ramadan ends.

Mark Russell dies at 90

Political satirist Mark Russell will be missed:

With his deadpan solemnity, stars-and-stripes stage sets and fusty bow ties, Mr. Russell looked more like a senator than a comic. But as the capital merry-go-round spun its peccadilloes, scandals and ballyhooed promises, his jaunty baritone restored order with bipartisan japes and irreverent songs to deflate the preening ego and the Big Idea.

Presidents from Eisenhower to Trump caught the flak. He sang “Bail to the Chief” for Richard M. Nixon, urged George H.W. Bush to retire “to a home for the chronically preppy,” likened Jimmy Carter’s plan to streamline government to “putting racing stripes on an arthritic camel,” and recalled first seeing Ronald Reagan “in the picture-frame department at Woolworth’s, between Gale Storm and Walter Pidgeon.”

Did he have any writers? “Oh, yes — 100 in the Senate and 435 in the House of Representatives.” The true meaning of the Cold War? “In communism, man exploits man. But with capitalism, it’s the other way around.” Gun control? “I will defend my Second Amendment right to use my musket to defend my Third Amendment right to never, ever allow a British soldier to live in my house.”

Buffalo Toronto Public Media, who hosted his comedy specials for many years, have put together a compilation:

The cure for high ticket fees

I refuse to purchase tickets from the Live Nation/Ticketmaster monopoly, no matter how much I love the act or believe that going to a show would bring about world peace. The Cure's Robert Smith makes it clear the artists themselves hate the monopoly as well:

Hours after Ticketmaster began the “verified fan” process on March 15 to distribute tickets for the band’s first American tour in years — an additional layer of security that Smith insisted upon to prevent scalpers and astronomical prices — the front man wrote an angry screed against the company for the mandatory fees they snuck in for buyers. “I am as sickened as you all are by today’s Ticketmaster ‘fees’ debacle,” he wrote in an all-caps Twitter thread. “To be very clear, the artist has no way to limit them. I have been asking how they are justified. If I get anything coherent by way of an answer I will let you all know … There are tickets available, it is just a very slow process. I will be back if I get anything serious on the TM fees.”

One particular tweet gained virality for showcasing the extent of the company’s malpractice: A fan’s reasonable ticket price of $20 was more than doubled due to processing fees and charges.

At least The Cure have enough clout to get some changes made. Ticketmaster backed down ever so slightly from the 110% surcharges after Smith's complaints:

“After further conversation, Ticketmaster have agreed with us that many of the fees being charged are unduly high, and as a gesture of goodwill have offered a $10 per ticket refund to all verified fan accounts for the lowest ticket price transaction,” [Smith Tweeted]. “And a $5 per ticket refund to all verified fan accounts for other ticket price transactions for all Cure shows at all venues.”

Unregulated capitalism produces monopolies in short order; that's why we have regulation. But having a history degree means watching everything in the present rhyme with everything in the past. So while the monopolies of today have their moment or rapacious greed, I fully expect that we'll see some serious trust-busting soon, and then, 60 years from now, our grandchildren will have forgotten why.

"Religion poisons everything"

Christopher Hitchens may have pissed off a lot of people, but I can't dispute the wisdom of that quote. And today, we have a story out of (where else?) Florida, where a fundamentalist Christianist college woke up and discovered that one of the King's Singers "openly maintained a lifestyle that contradicts Scripture:"

The King’s Singers, a Grammy Award-winning British a capella vocal ensemble, announced Monday that their planned concert at Pensacola Christian College was abruptly canceled two hours before the show due to “lifestyle” concerns.

In a statement posted on their website, the group stated that the Feb. 11 concert was due to “concerns related to the sexuality of members of our group.”

“We have performed at Pensacola Christian College before and we entered into the engagement in the knowledge that this is a fundamentalist Christian Institution. Our belief is that our music can build a common language that allows people with different views and perspectives to come together.”

Pensacola Christian College provided a more in-depth justification for the cancelation in a social media post on Monday, stating that the college cannot “knowingly” endorse anything that violates Scripture.

I sincerely hope none of the faculty members there wears garments weaved from two different threads.

Because this sort of thing pisses me off, here's a photo of Cassie from Sunday night, after we walked hither and yon all day:

She has the right idea.

Tuesday night round-up

In other news:

And finally, a glimmer of hope that the 10-year project to build one damn railroad station near my house might finally finish in the next few weeks.