Chicago - A message from the station manager

I Am A Security Guard: And I Won’t Carry A Gun

By Jerome Haller

As part of my ongoing effort to find another job, I took the El downtown for an interview. A security company had advertised openings that paid better than the minimum wage I currently earn. During the session, I confronted one of my deepest fears.
I walked into an office and filled out an application in a cramped reception area. Eight people, all looking nervous, waited along with me. The receptionist sent us one by one into a small room for an interview.
My turn came. A man who resembled a thinner and more chiseled version of Charles Bronson sat at a table. He asked me a few basic questions. Then he plunged into the heart of the matter. “Do you have a problem carrying a gun?”

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Posted on January 11, 2011

My Low Expectations New Year’s Resolutions

By Drew Adamek

I quit making New Year’s resolutions a long time ago. They had become a vicious cycle of failure and disappointment. Setting lofty, life-changing goals only to give up on them by January 15th made me feel like a loser who couldn’t stick to a couple of simple little tasks for more than a couple of days.
Problem is, I am a very sensitive young man. I take perceived failures badly and let them spiral me out of control. One misplaced comma and suddenly I can’t write for six weeks because I suck and I’ve always sucked and I am probably adopted and why did I bother to try because I can’t even use a fucking comma right (see what I mean).
Resolutions have always set me up to react poorly; if I am not thin within a couple of days, I suck; if I haven’t written a novel by January 12th, I suck; if I am not saving any money, I suck. Not meeting my goals makes me feel bad about myself, and feeling bad about myself makes it harder to meet my goals. I don’t put myself through that anymore because living with that kind of emotional self-abuse is not much fun.
But I had an epiphany a couple of days ago: What if I set goals I could absolutely accomplish with little or no effort? Would meeting my goals make me feel better about myself, leading to more goals being met? Would I gain self-confidence and self-respect if I actually met my New Years resolutions, thereby improving my ability to make a better life for myself?
I believe I would.
Therefore, I resolve to have really low expectations for my goals in 2011. I am setting the bar fucking looooooow this year. No more “healthier, more productive, happier” bullshit. I need the confidence boost of not asking that much of myself for a change. I need goals I can actually stick to – shit I was probably going to do anyway. Checking everything off my resolution list is going to give me the motivation to underachieve for another year.
I feel like a new man already – just saying that I’m slacking off makes me feel more accomplished and capable. Sure, I’m overweight and underemployed, but inertia and apathy are going to solve all of that this year for sure. Yes I can, dammit. I just know it.
Here, then, are my Low Expectations New Year’s Resolutions:

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Posted on January 10, 2011

The Week in WTF

By David Rutter

1. Miguel del Valle, WTF?
Read this from the Trib. Discuss among yourselves. There will be a quiz.
City Clerk Miguel del Valle today said he has raised about $150,000 in his run for Chicago mayor and argued that those who are raising more money are doing it by using political connections.
At the risk of seeming more naive than del Valle or the person who wrote that, isn’t raising money through political allies, hacks and hangers-on the way this admittedly flawed process works?

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Posted on January 7, 2011

Indonesian Journal: The Chicago Way Out Of Vietnam

By Brett McNeil

No English! No!
The cop waved me away, disgusted. Zero interest in my cell phone or the voice buzzing through its receiver.
“She speaks Vietnamese,” I said. “Take the call.”
The cop looked at his colleague, another middle-aged and deeply creased functionary in a rumpled green uniform perched behind a banged-up gray metal desk, and the colleague shrugged. The cop took the call.
This was my third trip to a small, shabby and almost invisible local police office inside Hanoi’s Old Quarter, about two blocks from the hotel where my passport had been stolen the day before. I’d come the night before after I discovered the passport missing, and the two young cops on duty at the time refused to take a report. One of them barely moved from the saturnine slouch he stubbornly held in a ratty, padded black armchair just inside the police station. He wore his uniform cap low over his eyes and was rigid in his casual defiance. The young cops said they needed their supervisor to sign any reports and the supervisor was sleeping; no way were they going to wake him. Come back tomorrow, they said. When I came back the next morning, the supervisor was still unavailable. He had stirred and left the office. Maybe he’d be back around 2 p.m., they said. Come back later. The young cops gave me a form they said I needed to complete and have translated into Vietnamese. I should bring it back with me.

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Posted on January 3, 2011

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