Seen on LSD

I took Andy to Midway this morning for his flight to Louisville. On the way back a license plate caught my attention.



After fumbling with my phone to get the picture I became puzzled as to what "CEO GOD" was actually trying to convey. My initial reaction was "That's kind of pretentious." I'm sure that the plate being on a Lexus had nothing to do with my reaction. Is this guy trying to say he's both a CEO and a God? (Maybe I shouldn't assume this is a guy.) Later, on my way back from grocery shopping in Evanston, I began to wonder if he (or now she) was actually trying to be reverent and thankful for his (or her) good fortune. Or maybe it was "my ceo is god" or something along those lines. Now it occurs to me that (1) virtually all vanity plates are pretentious; (2) if someone were trying to be devout, they'd use a less ambiguous message; and (3) the most logical interpretation is, "god among/of CEO's."

As I was writing, it occurred to me that maybe someone else had noticed and documented "CEO GOD" before. Google turned up nothing of note.

In other news, Dominick's apparently no longer carries Vault Zero in the greater Chicago area. I did find some at Food4Less in Evanston, but not much and some of the cases were close to expiration.

[Edit: s/Sighted/Seen Apparently my diction is terrible.]

Tales from the El

Prior to my civ pro final I had met up with a friend to go over some practice problems. Shortly after boarding the train to go home, a guy got on at the other end of the car, but chose the seat facing mine. He struck me as homeless and potential laboring under some additional deficit: he rocked back and forth forcefully, without any apparent reason. This is not the interesting part. I wouldn't have noticed much at all, except, as we neared Argyle, a woman came from the center of the car and approached him. She leaned down and in an incredibly kind, heartfelt, and sincere tone she inquired, "Sir, is everything okay?" Without missing a beat (a tick?) he tersely replied, "YEAH! WHY WOULDN'T IT BE?" As she disembarked, I found myself wondering what just happened. Was he lucid and sarcastic? Or oblivious? Was she new to the city? Or just new to the El? Will she ever again try and comfort a complete stranger? Why didn't he ask her for a dollar?

Gunfire in Clarendon Park "not unusual"

There was an incident two blocks south of my apartment on Thursday. Some shots fired at the intersection of Clarendon and Montrose around 8:30 PM. I walked to Jewel today and my regular route takes me past the intersection. As reported by comments at Uptown Update, a pane of glass in the bus station appears to have been broken. I noticed little pieces of the safety glass lingering around, but some cleanup had obviously been done. I found some of the comments noteworthy:

"Its not unusual to hear gun shots in the park." --barryfishing

"I was at Clarendon Park playing softball, and we all heard the shots. 2-3 minutes later there were cops everywhere. My friends looked at me and said "I can't believe you live in this neighborhood." --J2C

Sometimes it is hard to believe that I live in this neighborhood. I have gathered that this is an early start to the summer violence season. Apparently Uptown is tenuous and unsettled gang territory. Hopefully I don't earn the title "innocent bystander" over the next few months.

Looking Ahead: Fall 2009 Schedule

Go figure, I've been out of spring semester less than a week and I'm already pondering the next.

Business Organizations [Old Syllabus]
Prof. Gold

LARC III
"Staff"

Sexual Orientation and the Law [Old Syllabus]
Prof. Hermann

Evidence [Old Syllabus]
Prof. Cavise

Patent Law [Old Syllabus]
Prof. Manzo

Boolean Apartment Searching

I got my renewal notice last week and I'm thinking about what I want in a new apartment if we move. So far I've structured this Boolean search:

gut AND (garden OR elevator) AND dishwasher AND "in unit" AND (rent <= 1200) AND (BR >= 2)

As you can imagine, it doesn't return many results. A quick explanation:

gut = seems to be the best way to express my dislike for "vintage" apartments

garden or elevator = disinterested in walking up a walk-up

dishwasher = yes, it's a deal breaker

"in unit" = an ineffective attempt to find in-unit washer and dryer

rent & BR = self explanatory

In Case of Emergency

...while in the loop, flee to the subway. According to Wikipedia[citation needed], the State Street and Dearborn subways were built with the secondary purpose of serving as bomb shelters. This might explain why the station is continuous from Lake to south of Jackson.