Green Tee Readings

Bitch Ph.D. and Margaret Lyons at Chicagoist.com cover why John Kass’s column is offensive to women, so I won’t bother adding my perspective on that.

I certainly don’t require a newspaper columnist to absolve him of the “sin” of not seeing a movie I’d prefer avoiding. What sort of relationship do you have where you can’t say “maybe you’d have more fun seeing this with your girlfriends,” anyway? I know that’s sort of a dodge, but I can see how saying “I don’t want to see that. How about you see it with $Friend1 => $FriendN?” would be stupid. Wait. No. I can’t see that.

There’s also the Equality sitting over there in the corner, feeling lonesome and a bit ashamed of every man who’s thinking about how to get out of seeing Sex and the City. Equality would really like to kick you in the shins (maybe higher, depending on how much of a jerk you’re being about it) for every Male Viewpoint Movie you’ve ever ‘forced’ a girlfriend to see. Rudy counts, and so does Field of Dreams. It counts even if your girlfriend ended up enjoying the movie. Equality’s really a nice anthropomorphized concept, so you get one less kick for every movie a girlfriend has ‘made’ you see.

For some reason, I have a lingering feeling that if you though Kass’ column had some good ideas in it or that it was funny you’ll have some sore shins. Don’t be an asshole, watch the movie with your loved one if she wants to see it. If it’s really as horrible as you think it’ll be, think about how awesome it is that the D-Rays are 3.5 games up on the Yankees in the AL East and the Cubs have the lead in the NL Central. That should make everything better.

No Comments yet »

In a spectacular entry for the Semi-Useless Cat Vacuuming Editorial of 2007, Chicago Tribune editor Timothy McNulty uses up some of his time talking about various definitions of middle class.

He notes a few different metrics (and their decidedly different end numbers) for what middle class could be, and ends up concluding that “The term middle class is used so loosely that it is a disservice to readers to use it without spelling out whom you’re talking about,” (to which I say no shit*).

To me, the most useless part is this:

There is a reason that politicians of both parties and commentators, such as Lou Dobbs, send out angry broadsides about the “war on the middle class.” Listeners — no matter how much or how little they make — can choose to believe these commentators are talking about them.

Again, no shit. Also, people who think they’re middle class when they’re making more than $100K per year? Get a grip. You might not be rich, but you’re decidedly above the bog standard definition of middle class. I know how easy it is to deceive yourself about belonging to the norm, but at some point, you have to own to the deception.

In high school I contended that I wasn’t tall* I completely ignored the fact that I almost never had to look up to see someone’s eyes, and that I could see the top of pretty much everyone’s head in hallways. I never feel tall, and I occasionally feel short (when someone 6′6″ or taller walks by, generally), so I think of myself as the proper height, and as normal.

If asked, off the cuff, what I thought the average height of a male in the US I’d say 6′. Multiple sources online claim an average height for an American male to be between 5′9″ and 5′10″. I’m 6′2″, so I’m clearly above average, but I still have to refrain from reflexively saying “No I’m not” when someone else remarks that I’m tall.

I have no idea what it’s truly like to live in a household where more than $100k is being pulled in. I do know that it’d be nice to try, and that there’s no way that I’d be just-plain-folks middle class at that income level.

For a bit of perspective, the Federal Poverty Guidline is $10,210 + $3480(n-1), where n = the number of people in a household. Put less mathematically, for one person, the guidline is $10,210 per year. If you have additional people in the household, add $3480 for every person beyond the first.

No Comments yet »

From Voice of The People on October 13, 2007 (section 1, page 21):

I ran the Chicago Marathon for the frist time in 1996. There were 18,000 runners. When the organizers opened this race to a potential 45,000 runners, they prostituted the race. That is the cause of the disaster on Sunday

Really?

Seriously?

The problems with the running of the 2007 Chicago Marathon are entirely due to raising the cap from 40,000 to 45,000 potential participants? Unseasonable warmth and some bad planning had nothing to do with it?

It seems a stretch of the definition of prostitution to include a 12.5% increase in runners when the previous year’s sign-up slots were filled in May. When I watched my friend Dan Knapp run in the 2005 marathon, the entire experience was probably the most inspirational moment I’ve been witness to. Seeing the approximately 40,000 runners, seeing them run under me from on top of one of the bridges near the starting point, seeing all the people who woke up early on a Sunday morning to watch friends and loved ones, was seeing an amazing thing.

Adding 5,000 more runners, and the friends and families of 5,000 more runners isn’t prostituting the event, it’s making it more awesome.

3 Comments »