The Unknown Cynic

October 27, 2016 Chicago, Illinois It's 12:01pm and I'm sitting at my desk surveying the amount of paperwork scattered around atop its surface. Among all of the documents relating to our upcoming ISO audit are a parking ticket that I should probably go ahead and pay, and a Chicago Board of Elections notice giving me the information on the location of my assigned polling place on November 8. I have no intention of standing in line waiting to cast my ballot. I'll either do early voting at another location, or take the option of voting by mail. The current song on the radio is Whitesnake's "Here I Go Again".  Listening to David Coverdale belt out the power-ballad brings me back to the days when I first had access to cable, when MTV actually played music videos, and the visuals of Tawny Kitaen lap-dancing two Jaguar XJS's was wreaking havoc on my religion-induced celibacy. Earlier today, one of my friends alerted me to an online quiz designed to asc

October 24, 2016 Chicago, Illinois I have five bosses here at GND Machine. Two, brothers George and Donald are the original owners who started the business in a home garage back in the 1960s.  They are now in their mid-to-late 70s, and still come in every day to the shop. George, who is the older of the two, and is pretty mellow and easy to deal with, usually arrives around 11am. He will change into his uniform, grab a coffee, then walk around the entire shop greeting every single worker before he begins to work on whatever project he has going. Donald, on the other hand, comes in around 9am, greets whomever is in the office at the time, and then turns into Mr. Crankypants. He'll spend hours sitting next to Paul, the engineer, fighting with him about how something should be designed. This is fun for us, because Paul, who thinks he is never wrong about anything, arguing with Donald, who wants everything done his way, is just comical and breaks the monotony.  My other th

October 21, 2016 Chicago, Illinois One of the perks of my job is the free coffee that is available throughout the day. It is a godsend in the morning when I need some assistance in joining the world of the conscious. I'm not trying to say that it's Starbucks or Peet's quality coffee. We don't have a Keurig machine.  Our coffee gets delivered to the shop in white boxes from a coffee service which also infrequently maintains our antique Bunn restaurant model drip coffee maker. It's actually pretty simple to use. Lighted toggle switches turn on and off the hot plates on which the glass pots rest. Another switch is pushed once to begin a cycle that sprays heated water over the ground coffee that rests in a paper filter held by a removable basket. The coffee itself comes in prepackaged bags that are just the right amount for one pot of the liquid version of the "magical fruit" that is thought to have originated from Ethiopia back in the 11th century.

October 21, 2016 Chicago, Illinois Happy Friday, Friends.  I'm sitting at my desk in the office of my workplace. It's pretty quiet today. The office manager and I are mostly alone in here, with the occasional interruption of someone walking in to ask a questio... hang on.. Okay, back. Angela, the office manager just told me sotto voce to "listen to the radio", her code for me to grab my phone and begin dialing. For the last week, we (mostly her, but she enlists my help when I'm in here) have been trying to be the 25th caller at 10am, 12pm, and 5pm to the local radio station and recite the silly phrase advertising the station's format. So far, she has been the 11th, the 15th, and the 18th caller. I was the 12th the other day, but mostly it's just a busy signal that is constantly in my ear after dialing over and over. I find myself keeping my head behind the computer screen as I call, hiding a bit so the boss doesn't suspect that I'

October 17, 2016 Chicago, Illinois It's been a busy week again. I seem to pack my days and evenings up with work and play. This includes art shows, music venues, mealshares (I promise I'll explain that soon), and whatever else gets me out of the apartment. I ended up being a bit tired this weekend, and stayed in watching Netflix for a few hours. The clouds helped to convince me that it would be an okay idea. The only thing that I wrote was a mildly irritated email to the property management about the car in the parking lot with the alarm that STILL continues to go off by itself.  Despite the assurances I received by way of reply today, I'm currently listening to the intermittent yet constant beeping of the horn. Trying to take it in stride. I just finished cooking a spaghetti squash that my roommate got at an organic farming co-op yesterday. My first time ever trying it. I made a homemade sauce while it was roasting in the oven. As soon as it cools a bit, then be

October 11, 2016 Chicago, Illinois It's 7:30pm on a Tuesday night. The sky is dark already. A few weeks ago, the sunlight would still allow me to see the greenery outside at this time of day. But we are marching inexorably towards the winter solstice and the sun sets earlier each day. I used to get a bit depressed about it. Summertime in the Upper Midwest region of the States is glorious. Especially when you are close to a body of water, and Lake Michigan certainly qualifies as that. When I lived in the state of Michigan, we used to hop in the car and drive down to the beach three minutes away to watch as the sun made its way down towards the water, changing from a beautiful and bright orange to a softer, glowing red as it sank beneath the horizon. These days, I can see the colors through the tall residential buildings to the west, or the reflection of the sunlight on the steel and glass edifices downtown to the north of my apartment. It isn't quite as pretty as the

October 6, 2016 Chicago, Illinois It's been a few days since I published my last post. I've had a busy week. Two of my nights have revolved around food. The first was an annual restaurant crawl put on by one of the upscale neighborhoods in Chicago. I try to attend every year that I am able to. It's always fun, the food and drink are always plentiful, and it's always on a Tuesday because that's usually a slow night for the restaurants. The problem is getting up on Wednesday after going to bed on an over-filled stomach and a shit-load of alcohol in your bloodstream. The second was a mealshare (I'll explain those later) at a home where the German hostess tries to stuff you like a goose in a foie gras mill. I'm not complaining too loudly, because the food was amazing. At any rate, I was eating instead of writing. Tomorrow I am heading to Nashville, Tennessee for the very first time. I have a friend there who has invited me over and over to come visi

October 3, 2016 Chicago, Illinois Writer's block is a common phenomenon when someone is put to a deadline, even a self-imposed one. Most people assume that it is because the wordsmith cannot think of anything to write about. But I posit that it is because the writer has too   much  to write about, and all of the ideas keep colliding into one another until none of them are recognizable enough to pull out intact to express clearly. When I'm not sitting down with my laptop, I can think of many stories that I want to tell. I can even imagine the titles of the stories, the pseudonyms for my characters (because I intend to describe realities), and the phrasing that I wish to use. So the real conflict for me, the wannabe keyboard warrior, is to extract one story from the tangle in my mind. So maybe I can use this post to answer the question that you, my readers (all three of you?), may be wondering: Why am I moving to Thailand? There are many reasons, actually, for my

October 1, 2016 Chicago, Illinois It's been another very eventful weekend here. My last five weekends have been filled with adventure and experiences that will make stories of their own. But one thing that I wanted to write about this weekend happened Friday evening. On the last Friday of each month in Chicago, there is an organized bike ride titled, "Critical Mass". The purpose of the ride that begins at Daley Plaza inside the Loop is to bring awareness to the fact that our streets are shared by thousands of bicyclists riding alongside cars, trucks, and buses in traffic. Chicago has been heralded as one of the most bike-friendly cities in America. We have a very popular bicycle-sharing program. There are many new dedicated bicycle lanes appearing on our streets. Each year, several different planned and organized rides take place throughout the city. Yet, all too often, we receive the news that another bicyclist has died in a collision with an automobile.