The Bottom: Healthy Choice on my socks

It's 12:30 p.m., I just spilled my daughter's soup on my socks, my pajama bottoms and the sweatshirt I've been wearing for two days, which I'm pretty sure came from the women's department.

I need to put the kid to bed, get a shower and a shave, put on men's clothes and make something of myself today.

Please?

My Christmas wish list this year includes just one thing: The 45 RPM vinyl single of every song to chart on the Billboard Top 100 from Jan. 1, 1955 to Dec. 31, 1990. That's around 18,400 records, 36,800 songs including the B-sides, for just $275,000.

Sarah Palin's Neiman Marcus has this amazing collection in its Christmas Book, which also offers a uniform and guaranteed playing time with the Harlem Globetrotters for $110,000, a custom replica of yourself in LEGOs for $60,000, or a thoroughbred racing stable, horses and staff for $10 million. I just want the records. And one of those little plastic 45 adapters so I can play them.

Tightening the screws

For the first time in my life, I’m really concerned about the state of our economy, mostly because for the first time in my life I’m really unemployed.
I haven’t worked a real paying job since the end of June, before the stock market fell down the stairs and broke its hip, before John McCain reassured me that the fundamentals of our economy were strong, and way before he backtracked to say what he meant by fundamentals was the American worker and our ingenuity and spirit.
The corporation I worked for – not this newspaper, which pays me for these columns in baseball cards – sold our business to a competitor in Kansas and laid off all of us fundamentals. Four months later, I’m starting to feel just mental.
Losing your job can hurt, but being unemployed with a severance package felt like a mini-vacation at first. I got up, drank coffee in the sunshine and searched the internet for the perfect next career between pit stops checking box scores, dorking around on Facebook and watching chunky kids fall down on YouTube.
Resumes went out, naps were taken, and dinners were cooked, but it wasn’t long before the thrill of the hunt was gone and the number of job listings had shrunk like the economy had just finished a cold swim.
It’s a frightening time to be unemployed. The latest numbers from the U.S. Department of Labor showed unemployment rose from 6.1 to 6.5 percent last month, meaning 10.1 million Americans are now available to watch “Live with Regis and Kelly” with me in the morning. That’s great for Regis’s ratings, but not so good for my job prospects.
You don’t know how much your job defines who you are, especially to other people, until you don’t have one. In social settings, people always ask, “So, what do you do?” I usually just tell them “male escort” to save them the embarrassment of having to search for something casual and comforting and to say after I tell them I’m unemployed.
If I want to stay positive, I stay away from the nightly newscasts and read only Laurens County news.
Just a couple of years ago, it seemed that Laurens County was the sole place on earth suffering from a recession. Our industries were shutting down, people were out of work and our plastic-making saviors didn’t seem to turn things around like we thought they would.
In recent weeks, Laurens County and its new industry recruits have been the lone bright spot on a bleak national landscape.
First there was FITESA, a Brazilian manufacturer that announced it would invest $150 million and create 125 new jobs in “the LC.”
They make polypropylene nonwoven fabrics for use in diapers and feminine hygiene products. Hey, I may be embarrassed to go buy them for my wife, but I will make them all day long if the pay is right and the benefits are good.
Last week, I read American Titanium Works is going even bigger in Laurens County with a $422 million investment and plans to create 320 jobs at a new “mini-mill” near the Wal-Mart Distribution Center. They say the jobs there could pay around $20 hour. For that kind of cash I will send my 2-year-old to work in the titanium mines.
If I can’t get work in Laurens County, I will try to hold out until President Obama puts his new energy plan into place.
I imagine myself, in a year or two, wearing a hard hat, shimmying up a huge white pole planted somewhere in the American West to tighten the screws on a wind turbine. With the sun just about to set and the sky a deep red against the mountains, and me looking like a new age, eco-friendly male version of Rosie the Riveter for the new century, I’ll pause, gaze across the wind fields and be grateful for this great country of ours and our renewed American spirit.
Directly underneath, my supervisor, T. Boone Pickens will shout, “Attaboy, Greg! I knew I hired the right guy!”

Are you like me?

Do you like poop jokes? Then you'll love this Australian movie I stumbled upon at C#$kbuster.
It's funny, it's sweet, and after watching it last night, I'm committed to calling toilet paper "poo tickets" for the rest of my life.

Catholics and Jane Austen

More proof that Colbert has the best show on television:



"We use every part of the Jesus."

The dog question

According to this link from Reuters, my wife's people have offered up their national dog, a hairless hypoallergenic one bred by the Incas 3,000 years ago, to solve the First Family-Elect's dog decision.

Sixth reaction

My great friend Greg Schrock filed this report this morning after spending the evening at the victory celebration in Grant Park, Chicago.

Dispatch from the Epicenter of Obama's America

Well my friends, it's morning again in America, both literally and figuratively.

They'll blame the financial meltdown and "Bush fatigue," but at the end ofthe day, Obama offered a compelling vision for change in our country thateven their basest attacks couldn't beat. And thank goodness the outcome wasn't terribly close -- both so that we don't have to spend the next four years hearing the wingnuts yammer about rogue community organizations and hanging chads, but more importantly so that President Obama will be better positioned to be President for all the people and get some things done.

Leigh and I were fortunate to be in Chicago, the epicenter of this historic occasion. Ironically, it's been eerily quiet here throughout the campaign season -- unlike a lot of you who live in "battleground" states, the outcome of Illinois was never in doubt, either in the primaries or in yesterday's general election.

With the exception of some late advertising intended for NW Indiana, we hardly saw an ad on television let alone people knocking ondoors or calling for my support. And until I went down to Indiana last weekend to do some canvassing in my native Elkhart County, my direct participation in the process had been embarrassingly low. (There was a good posting from a correspondent for The Nation who was travelling with some folks working the same precinct: http://www.thenation.com/blogs/campaignmatters/379204/hoosiers_for_obama)

So that brings me to yesterday. As I'm sure it was where you are, there was a palpable excitement in the air throughout Chicago. A cheery endurance of long election lines (except in my precinct -- no wait!), but also the awareness that the city was about to witness something really amazing.

The plans for last night's celebration -- and Mayor Daley's suggestion that a million people might show up -- set into motion a logistical operation of epic proportions. Offices in the Loop closed early (Leigh's office closed at noon), and outbound trains were packed at 3 pm. The weather was clearly a good omen -- record high temps in the 70s during the day were giving way to cool but manageable high 50s temps in the evening. Despite my best efforts to secure tickets to last night's "main event" on the south end of Grant Park, we were unable to do so (I KNEW I should have kicked in another hundred bucks).

But like several hundred thousand other folks, we decided to venture down anyway to take in the event. Despite warnings of long lines, we breezed through the highly efficient security point at Congress and Michigan around 7pm and made our way to the north end of Grant Park near the Petrillo Bandshell, where they had set up a large TV blasting CNN as the results trickled in. The crowd was lively and festive, and much like the last time we sat in that lawn -- for Stevie Wonder at this year's Taste of Chicago -- the crowd was incredibly diverse. Black, white, young, old... a good cross section of the city.

The crowd alternately cheered and booed as CNN called states for Obama and McCain and displayed early returns, but in the spaces between people kept themselves occupied -- a man behind us played bongo drums, vendors hawked plastic American flags and "I was there" buttons and T-shirts, people calling and texting others. (The restriction on alcoholic beverages meant that the crowd was a little less surly than it often is for such large events.) But as some of the major dominoes began to fall -- Pennsylvania, then Ohio -- it was clear that it was going to happen. And when at 10pm Chicago time CNN projected that Obama would in fact win, the crowd exploded in jubilance.

People cried. Others danced. Some cried, then danced.

For the next hour, we stood and waited while McCain gave his concession speech (politely received except for references to Sarah Palin), and the expectation of Obama's arrival grew. Chants of "O-bam-a" and "Yes we can" sprouted and faded.

Finally at about 11pm, he delivered his amazing victory speech, the sound of which echoed off the Loop skyscrapers and condominium towers lining the park, enveloping all of us in a series of joyful waves. Aside from intermittent cheers, the crowd of probably 30-40,000 in our end of the park was silent, rapt in attention to the screen in front of us.

When it was over, the nearly 250,000 who had assembled in various parts of Grant Park streamed out into the closed-off streets. Like marchers in a demonstration, we walked with a purpose and a sense of accomplishment. A woman congratulated and shook the hands of passersby, another person turned to me as we walked and said "Congratulations -- your vote mattered this time!" Some stood on embankments and curbs and took in the scene as waves of people walked up Michigan Avenue. People snapped photos on cameras and cell phones as they walked. Here are some of mine: http://www.flickr.com/gp/54377908@N00/2WAaex

Anyway, enough of that from here -- morning is almost over! Time to get to work, America!!!

Best,

greg

Fifth reaction

I'm saddened that Prop 8, the proposition to overturn same-sex marriage rights in California, passed Tuesday with 52 percent of the vote. Similar bans were approved in Florida and Arizona. If gay couples can't marry in California, one of the most liberal states in the nation, what do we do now?

Fourth reaction

I'm watching Oprah today.

Third reaction

Amid all of the historical symbolism produced by yesterday's election, one thing that really strikes me is this picture of our new First Family.
Of course there's the new President and all of his multiracial goodness, but then you have his wife, Michelle, a smart, accomplished and sophisticated black woman who seems like the most perfect, essential and fitting role model and First Lady for this age.
Would I vote for her in 16 years? Yes. Although, she says her priority is to be "mom-in-chief," not write policy.
Then there are the little girls, Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7. It's enough to shed my liberal tears to think that these beautiful black children will be living in the White House 45 years after four little girls just like them were killed in a Sunday morning church bombing.

Second reaction

It's funny that Fox News's promo for the "Fox and Friends" program says "Election Fallout."
The real news organizations all have headlines referring to the historic nature of the victory.

First reaction

We did it.
We did it.
We did it, yeah!
We went over the bridge and past the troll
yeah, we did it.
We did it.
We did it.
We did it, hooray!

Election Day: Ferris

You made me make a phony robo-call to Edward Rooney?

Election Countdown: Black Sheep

I wasn't sure who I was going to vote for tomorrow, until I saw this video by one of my high school rap favorites, Black Sheep, revisiting their 1992 classic, "The Choice Is Yours." Actually, it's just Dres. I don't know where the other guy is. Maybe he's supporting McCain.
Here's the original:



And the remake:

Election Countdown II

Here's a good column from The Christian Science Monitor.