 Motto: "Y'all mothafuckas is crazy!" In the final week of January, 2011, I read an article in the New York Times titled, “Grief Could Join List of Disorders.” It said: In a bitter skirmish over the definition of depression, a new report contends that a proposed change to the diagnosis would characterize grieving as a disorder and greatly increase the number of people treated for it. That made me think: what other normal shit is now, like, fuckin’ crazy, bro!? So I came up with a list of other revised definitions for common disorders. The results: Eh. First problem: that Times quote is long, yet it’s still not thorough enough to set up my game. The right quote should also say that this proposed change would appear in the new (fifth) edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the book-to-beat in professional psychiatric diagnosis. Rather than try to squeeze in that long-ass title, I’d rather just toss “the D.S.M.” in brackets somewhere and assume that you—a savvy reader of broad interests now doing post-doctoral work at one of Switzerland’s finer particle accelerators—are familiar with the acronym. Add Comment Three relatively recent things 02/07/2012
Minnesota budget surplus essay for NPR: How to spend it? Paper Machete essay: What's it like being a liberal Catholic in 2012? Audio/answer here. And lastly, a homemade audio bit on the G8 and NATO summits coming to Chicago. It has to do with some rather... is "autocratic" the word?... severe new right-to-assembly regulations Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel wanted to pass. Our august City Council, thankfully, gave him hell and he largely backed down. Don't worry. Satirists like me will keep an eye on this story. I posted this last one on this blog last month, but later removed it because I was on the make. My plan was to get some high roller types with excess CA$H to pay me to record it in a professional studio. I figured if they knew I'd give the product away for free that would be less likely. Live Blogging: The State of the Union 01/24/2012
Just one observation: If a Martian landed in Washington, D.C. and suddenly wound up in the United States Congress at the State of the Union address, he would say, "Ugh, this incessant applause is so annoying. Politicians do that on my planet, too. However, you will have to take my word on that since you earthlings cannot see us with your pre-historic 'telescopes'! HAHAHA!!!" I Am Not a Hero 01/21/2012
 Chicago, 1/20/12, intersection of North and Clybourn. Not a big deal. The word “hero” gets kicked around a lot. We say it so often that we’ve rendered the word meaningless. Rose’s Final-Second Heroics Give Bulls the Win, says the headline in the sports section. I’m gonna destroy this hero, says the hungry man using another term for a submarine sandwich. Where are my heroes!?! Wait, duh—they’re right here in my hand, says the guy having a mild stroke who meant to say “keys.” None of these people is a hero, and I am not either. I rode my bike seven miles in a snowstorm. That’s all. I did not wrestle a tiger away from a group of toddlers. I did not take the controls of a 747 after the pilot didn’t feel like landing. I did not kill Osama bin Laden. I repeat: I did not kill bin Laden. Stop asking. Satire, After the Fact-- temporarily removed 01/17/2012
A memory unbidden and sudden burst into the man’s ken. He buckled over the handle of his cart as laughs and coughs poured forth in prolific tandems that ceased only when exhaustion had What’s so funny? the boy asked. Nothing, the man said. Uh, hahaha! Think Outside the Box 01/05/2012
 The first time I ever heard someone utter this... command, I wanted to put the guy in one and bury it. It was November of 1997. I was a new employee at a large law firm that I won’t name, but between me and you: it was Kirkland & Ellis here in Chicago. I was a paralegal (uncertified and untrained; more like a paraparalegal). My job was to staple things, put stickers on things, mail things, and photocopy things. I saw a bill once. They charged clients $115 an hour for my services. I got thirteen of that. During one of my first weeks on the job, an attorney told me he wanted a copy of every document I sent to an expert witness, starting with a large stack I had just put in the mail. It was not clear why he wanted a copy because we possessed the originals. The originals were, if you think about it, our “copy,” one we could read pretty much all the time, if we wanted. NaNoWriMo 11/30/2011
 James Joyce, NaNoWriMo Legend NaNoWriMo A Play in One Act Dramatis Personæ:
MIKE: So, Steve, you do NaNoWriMo this year?  It was like this, but green. Have you ever lit a single candle on a birthday cupcake all by yourself and blown it out seconds later in complete silence? It is impossible to pull it off and not seem like the most depressed person alive. Before I tell that story, here is a fried chicken review and the provenance of the cupcake. On Saturday November 5th I turned 37. Yo: I look 35, so it’s not like I’m sweating it. An ex-girl of mine invited me out to dinner for my birthday. It’s cool, our relationship is completely de-militarized. Knowing my obsession with fried chicken, she suggested Lillie’s Q in Chicago. She claimed it was the best fried chicken she ever had. I can’t ignore bold claims like that, so consented. We went this past Tuesday night. Here is a poem I wrote 11/13/2011
Reply to Charles Bukowski's "So You Want To Be A Writer" by Dennis O'Toole Bullshit. (C) Dennis O'Toole, 2011 |  Dennis O'Toole is a all-set cobra jet creepin' through the nighttime. He lives in Chicago.
Click here for published stuff. Heads up: Many entries will have a kinda hard to see "Read More" link in the corner. Click it to read less. If you need to reach me, dial: denotoole AT SYMBOL gmail PERIOD CHARACTER co LETTER M Twitter handle: http://twitter.com/deeohtee ArchivesFebruary 2012 Categories |
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