After a long, long day of work, there’s nothing quite as refreshing as wallowing in the pain of others. Or reminding yourself that your life could be worse, whichever. So traipsed on over to PostSecret and let the pathos flow.

In the hallways of an endless, anonymous confessional, there has to be a lesson to be learned. My first reaction - is this my secret? ‘I laugh at the pain of others?’ - was to take the flippant route and say ‘of course the stripper said she loved you’ or ‘no wonder you don’t have friends (you’re ugly and have a bad disposition),’ but for every jokey, cheekily ridicule-ready posting on the site, five others with the emotional punch of a shotgun (ironically) mock your mockery.

Apparently the Buddha was right with his ’suffering is the universal condition’ shtick. Tonight’s take-home message, which changes depending on the time of day I look at the site, my mood at the time, etc., was that yes, you’re a horrible person, you sender-of-postcards-to-PostSecret. But here’s why I keep coming back: I’m so much worse.

Let’s hope this site doesn’t fall into Oprah’s hands: The last thing the world needs is an army of glassy-eyed drones, free from their shackles of guilt purchased for 37 cents a pop, overrunning the countryside.

Dammit. There I go being flippant again.

Fact of the day: Lance Armstrong’s resting heart rate. It’s freaking 32 beats per minute. He’s an effing robot.

According to a comment made by James on Sunday’s post, I should ‘consider the appropriateness of the words “karma” and “attenuated,”’ both of which appeared in a discussion on Don Quixote and conventional wisdom. And he’s right: I wrote ‘attenuated’ when I mean ‘attuned,’ so points for James. I guarantee - I can say this with some confidence, after a prior mixup involving ‘emphatically’ and ‘empathetically’ - I won’t have problems with an inversion on that particular word pairing again. I’m going to reserve the right to use ‘karma’ in the given context, however. Good to know I have editors out there; otherwise I wouldn’t learn anything.

On to the sick humor part of the equation: I love it when small children make age-inappropriate jokes, as is the running gag on ‘Wonder Showzen.’ Were it not for a plug from Neil some time ago, I would no have watched for more than a minute or so, as the show is just freaking psychedelically twisted … but then comic brillance ensued.

Scene: The viewer is treated to a first-hand walkthrough of a chicken slaughterhouse, finding out just how an incubated egg becomes your Swanson TV dinner, while three or four kids give their Mystery Science Theater-style voiceovers.

Plantive-sounding boy: [Watching drumsticks being loaded into tin trays] I wish they could make a mother’s love.
Obviously Adderall-ed girl: [Without missing a beat] They do. It’s called boxed wine.

It’s not often that I recommend a show on MTV. It’s technically MTV2, but still.

Newly-discovered semi-old-skool classic album: ‘Polydistortion,’ Gus Gus. This album’s neither that old, being from 1997, nor that classic, as it’s not exactly in heavy rotation, but I’ve heard at least three of the songs on it in different contexts, from Thievery Corporation mixes to a track in the iTunes rotation for some time to an obscure Oakenfold mix. And gee whiz if the rest isn’t great stuff too. Standout tracks: ‘Believe’ (is that a cowbell I hear? You know, fever and the only prescription and all that, said Christopher Walken), ‘Gun’ (but only with your headphones on or the bass way up), ‘Why?’ (you never ask that question to a Fender Rhodes) and ‘Polyesterday’ (which, after repeated listens, may in fact be better than the Thievery remix).

I’ve been trying to follow up on the second wave of London bombings - and to my chagrin and surprise, apart from outrage in Brazil, it’s more difficult than I would have thought.

Salon’s piece (subscription required, but don’t bother as it’s really not that good) on the new London jogger - those urbanites, mostly men, who have taken up running to work rather than taking public transportation - did make a good point, though. Much has been made in the last three weeks of the moxie displayed by the British during wave after wave of Nazi attack, especially during the Luftwaffe’s blitzkreig assaults. Here’s the kicker, though - I only wish I had thought of this sooner: Very few Londoners were alive during World War II.

There was no comparison that I can recall between 9/11 and the steadfast, romanticized let’s-get-’em attitude displayed by the American populace during WWII, so what’s the point in making such comparisons to Londoners? As far as I can tell, it’s the same reason the attacks aren’t getting stateside coverage: A general lack of constant reminders about the event. During late 2001, you couldn’t go anywhere without seeing long faces and furtive glances, but since we’re not directly affected this time, we as Americans gave the story a (maybe) four-day half-life in the public eye. Quick explanations were given - ‘Londoners survived Nazism; they’ll pull through’ - when such a simplistic explanation would never be given for attacks on American soil.

Not that I’m a blameless party, either. My attention has been held rapt on two cover stories in today’s Chicago Tribune, for example: the fact that Chicago may be building a twisting skyscraper and the fact that wine sales may have surpassed beer in what I’ll call the Sideways effect. So much for thinking globally.

Image ripped off wholesale from Salon, since without a subscription you wouldn’t see it. I won’t make a habit of ripping off images, tho.

Shortly after I read a (very) abridged version of Don Quixote in grade school, I started noticing little references to the book everywhere: a favorite cartoon would do a takeoff on the tilting-at-windmills bit, I saw a Gustave Dore print in a history book (see image to right), a local high school did Man of La Mancha, the answer to a Final Jeopardy! question was Sancho Panza. I thought the all the karma of the world had colluded for a few days, until I mentioned this strange quixotic pheomenon to my dad, who introduced me to the concept of ‘topical sensitivity.’ I’m sure he called it something different and that it also has a different name in the psychological literature (with a degree in psychology, you would think I may be able to remember this sort of information), but simply put, once you’ve become attuned* to a specific topic or concept or so on, you become hypersensitve to its appearance.

I say this because the most recent culprit is the phrase ‘conventional wisdom.’ Apparently when super-economist John Kenneth Galbraith coined the term, he meant it in the most pejorative of senses, more in the vein of ‘we believe it because it’s easy and/or makes us feel good,’ though is not necessarily true. I’m currently reading Steven D. Levitt’s ‘Freakonomics’ and, while it’s a great read, the entire thing is a long, meta-data fueled attack on conventional wisdom: First instance - happenstance, as the military adage goes.

Today, the New York Times is talking about whether or not French woment are thinnner because they smoke more, right on the heels of French Women Don’t Get Fat and all its resultant hullabaloo, stating that ‘conventional wisdom … has long held that short-term weight gain is the price to be paid for quitting smoking.’ Second instance - coincidence.

I picked up an issue of Newsweek the other night - from June 13, 2005, the one with Deep Throat on the cover - and rediscovered one of its bite-sized content sections: Conventional Wisdom Watch. My parents had a subscription to the magazine, so I grew up looking at six red arrows that told whether or not Bill Clinton was acceptable, politically, socially or otherwise, that particular week. Third instance - enemy action.

Maybe I should stop noting instances of the phrase ‘conventional wisdom,’ as it’s becoming somewhat a) OCD-type behavior, and b) boring. Conventional wisdom, though, would dictate the opposite. Ha.

Newly-discovered old-skool classic album: ‘Yo! Bum Rush the Show,’ Public Enemy. This record has been on my radar for some time, but I’ve finally given it the listen it’s been due. Ed Rowlands from the Chemical Brothers once said in an interview that once he heard ‘Miuzi Weighs a Ton,’ it was like a switch was flipped in his head and, while I can’t claim the same, I definitely see the brilliance here. Beats are heavy, Chuck D is the anchoring gravitas and Flava Flav is just, well high-pitched and spastic - but in a way that keeps the album from being too topical or heavy at the hands of D.

*[Correction, 7:35 a.m., July 27, 2005: Incorrect word changed. See both post regarding said correction.]

For some time now - maybe this is number four on the ’signs you’re getting old’ list, right after saying ‘congratulations’ when someone you know gets pregnant, rather than making a barely-concealed grimace - I’ve been tired of going to overcrowded shows. There’s always a brace-faced girl in a baby tee rocking out with her angsty and angry boyfriend who would rather jump in a mosh pit than enjoy the music. (See example from last week.)

Shows for highly-anticipated bands in intimate venues with only 40 or so other people are definitely the way to go. Perfectly hooky pop music, like mathematics, I suppose, could be a universal language. See corollary at Puffy AmiYumi, two Japanese pop stars who sing in (what else?) Japanese, but the language barrier doesn’t seem to have much of an impact on how much you can enjoy one of their songs. I was literally four feet from Dressy Bessy at the Bottom Lounge on Thursday night and, in the echelon of Good Things, such placement near the band is definitely in the top 50. See above picture as reference.

Highlight of the evening: Climbing on stage with the band after the set. I just had the urge to chat up the band after the show, so I jumped on stage and said hey. That’s when you know it’s been a great set: No one bothers to stop you from talking to pop singers.

Let’s assume, for a moment, that the above sentiment is true. Of course, such a statement is used only as a reactive justification, never as a proactive reason, and of course, such a statement is only used by the person who finds himself on the losing end of a deal such as a relationship, never by the instigator of a difficult action, but again, let’s assume for the moment that it’s true. The contrapositive, then, would read ‘if you do not set it free, then you do not love it.’ Suddenly it all makes sense.

I spend so much time at the office, thus not setting it free, because I do not love it. The reason I can’t come home from the office at a normal hour is because I do not love it. And, if we accept as true John Lennon’s postulate that ‘the love you take / is equal to the love you make,’ and we strip the latter of its erotic context, I must learn to either manufacture love, or somehow remove it from a source - a silo, maybe, or a safety-deposit box.

Thus, to get out of the self-destructive circle that is working until midnight, I need to find some repository of love - either within myself or without - or somehow manufacture this ‘love’ with crude hand tools, or with computers, maybe, and then, only then, will I be able to set the office free, because then I will have found the requisite love to break the bonds of cliche that tie me to my chair.

As Bill Murray told us in What About Bob?, it’s so simple, yet so brilliant.

Forward-thinking excitement of the day: Tomorrow (today?) we see Dressy Bessy at the Bottom Lounge. Check, well, the bottom of the Bottom Lounge site. Yes, it’s powered by Icarus Media, the parent company of sixosix magazine. Ah, the memories. And the poppy go-go rock that will ensue come 8 p.m.

Usually when I open the paper in the morning and see a 60-point headline spanning all six columns of the Chicago Tribune, I get to hear news like ‘Terrorists bomb London transit’ or ‘Cubs in World Series’ (fine, I’ll never get to see that one). Today, though, I was treated to something that, in my scope of the world, means next to nothing:

‘Feds go after City Hall,’ it read.

I’m so far removed from Chicago politics that whatever may happen in the Office of the Mayor concerns me less than a page-six, 76-word blurb about Viktor Yushchenko, the newly-elected president of the Ukraine - and I live here. The disconnect between the established Chicago, the one that, umm, works downtown, maybe, I don’t know, and the rest of the town, which simply takes for granted a) local politics in general and b) the fact that a man named ‘Daley’ has and will always run this city. Even people who, on the scale of political demographics, are the same as me - my age, not from here originally, etc - but want to be involved with politics find themselves doing so on the state, not the local, level. The mayor’s father was called the ‘American Pharaoh,’ so I think Daley the younger will be able to weather this small rainstorm - not full-blown hurricane - of a scandal.

Either way, it’s the same to me.

So you’ve reached the end of book six by now, haven’t you? And you have your knee-jerk reactions as to the (somewhat different from the norm) ending? Now read this post - warning: contains spoilers - and rethink the entire episode. Mmm, that’s interesting.

Who would have thought that a day at work that lasts from 8 a.m. until 11 p.m. would be so … so … strangely non-tiring? My body’s awake, but since my mind is devoid of anything interesting, save discussions on Harry Potter and how to graphically present inane material (was that what I was doing all day?), have some pics. Normally these would be in an image gallery, but I’m feeling lazy.

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Told you we watched a six-month-old.

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That’s Death From Above 1979. So much rock from just two guys.

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Some skinny guy named Justin was invited to the DJ tent’s stage by Jean Grae, and that’s when Neil and I decided to leave.

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His name is Four Tet. Listen to him, but be careful: His music can be used for dark purposes as well.

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His shirt reads ‘Medill Force Econ’ and he’s protecting his special lady from the drizzle with a giveaway cardboard fan. Write your own caption.

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Color of the day: Blue. For no other reason than I designed a flier that used a blueprint - get it? Blue? There ya go - as its inspiration. Told you I didn’t have much to say.

Two hours after I exited a mosh pit on a baseball field, courtesy Death From Above 1979, I uttered the phrase ‘you know, I’m going to spend the night with a whiskey and the new Harry Potter,’ at which point I was called a ‘tool’ or somesuch. Instead of sticking to my plan, however, I ended up babysitting a six-month-old. Too bad the parents didn’t factor in the cost of future therapy sessions because they left their highly impressionable child in the hands of three people who spend the better part of the evening laughing at Reno 911!

So I started book six today. As in this morning. Then went to the office for eight hours. Then to the gym. Then back home. To finish the book. And I did. I suggest you do the same. I wasn’t into the first 400 or so pages as much as I was to, say, book five, as it seemed like Her-Officer-of-the-British-Empire Rowling has fallen prey to life as the imitation of art; she writes this one anticipatingly, provokingly - because she knows the scrutiny to which every possible thread of this one will be subjected. The first books stood on their own, but each subsequent addition must work on the same framework. While still expanding the story.

That being said, Oh! Yes! I did finish it in one day because it deserves so! Book seven can’t come soon enough.

I could start by saying what a trip of a weekend it’s been, but that’s just so trendy to say right now. So I won’t. Let me point out the interesting balance-counterbalance aspects of the last few days:

Balance: Drinks at the Holiday Inn hotel bar.
Counterbalance: Drinks - not two hours later - at a swanky nightclub on VIP couches in the Viagra Triangle.

Balance:Spending the entire day outdoors at a music festival, the last hour of which was in a mosh pit.
Counterbalance: Spending the entire day inside, either reading a book on my bed or sitting at my desk at the office, working.

Balance: Listening to Four Tet’s electro-synth bloops, drum loops and sampled sitar very loudly at the office.
Counterbalance: Listening to Jamie Lidell’s mind-blowing updated melding of Otis Redding, Marvin Gaye and Sly Stone just after Four Tet, causing my boss to remark, ‘just what kind of music do you actually like?’

All in all, however, it was a good time. I believe it was a Greek dramatist - Sophocles or Damacles or Heracles or whatever - that said ‘do all things in moderation.’ I’ve given that no thought whatsoever. All things to excess, I say, just as long as they cancel each other out.

Song that gave me the chills yesterday: ‘She Moves She,’ Four Tet. So this skinny olive-skinned guy stood in front of a sweating crowd and pushed buttons for 45 minutes yesterday, and by gum was I ever entertained. The song goes as follows:

Layer 1: Snare, standard 4/4 beat, bass kick.
Layer 2: Windchimes from grandma’s porch. Used sparingly.
Layer 3: Some freakily haunting sitar riff straight off a Ravi Shankar album.

Pretty straightforward. Sure, good stuff, and all, but aah! Then he hits you with this leftfield sonic jolt that sounds like you just scraped the needle across the face of a Scooby-Doo record. And he keeps hitting the button for that weird, out-of-place thing while the sitar player keeps playing, sitting cross-legged on a Persian rug. The rest of the song doesn’t change, it doesn’t notice that a garbage truck has just run over its groove. Oooh this man is good … lulls you into a false sense of groove security and then shakes his finger at you. ‘No,’ he says. ‘You can’t have that song. It’s mine.’

Sometimes work is great. I’m creating, designing, writing, delegating and (add your gerund of choice here) with sunny abandon, happy to be alive. But then, not two hours later, I’m falling asleep at my desk and making snide comments to coworkers for no apparent reason. Work has officially turned into This Really Sucks mode. Theories:

- Tidal fluctuations [unlikely]
- Hong Kong’s major market, the Hang Seng, closing down 0.18 percent [world markets make me *shiver*]
- The ending to Old Yeller hitting me like that time Stephen King was mowed down in the middle of the street [impossible: never actually seen this movie]
- Overwhelming workload getting the best of my mood-buoying crack habit [highly likely]

Anyone? A cookie for the best explanation - I’m at a standstill myself.

Anticipated music event of the week: Intonation Music Festival. Union Park’s going to be rocking this weekend. The Decemberists: Check the catchy little number ‘Sixteen Military Wives,’ complete with a Rushmore-style video. Jean Grae: Underground hip-hop from a former Herbaliser collaborator. Andrew Bird: Formerly with the Squirrel Nut Zippers, now doing the funkiest violin work since Jean-Luc Ponty in the ’70s. And Prefuse 73!

Dammit, Karl. Why did you have to go and [I have to use the word ‘allegedly’ here - Ed.] leak Valerie Plame’s name as an undercover CIA operative to the press? Huh? According to the New York Times, White House spokesman Scott McClellan has declined to comment on this ‘ongoing investigation’ 23 times this week.

The nutshell version: Times reporter Judith Miller and Time reporter Matthew Cooper are told about Plame and her husband. It’s illegal to identify undercover operatives, so the stories name anonymous sources. Miller recently goes to jail rather than give up subpoenaed notes - making her a low-level press corps martyr - and Cooper cooperates with prosecutors. Yesterday blame is pointed at Rove for being the high-level source of information, thus subject to prosecution for the aformentioned illegal activity.

Will the madness never end? At least Miller and Cooper are standing for something in the middle of another self-congratulatory orgiastic media party.

Funniest elements parts of this story: The phrase ‘The president stands behind [name here] 100 percent,’ and the word ‘consigliere’ in front of the name ‘Karl Rove.’ The former comes from a Slate story, and the latter from an article in the July 18/25, 2005, issue of The Nation. When a White House staffer is about to get canned, he suddenly has 100 percent backing. And just imagine Robert Duvall* as Bush’s consigliere! Then we’d have an administration!

Oh Karl! Oh humanity!

*[Correction, 11:33 a.m., July 13, 2005: Robert Duvall played the consigliere in The Godfather, not James Caan as originally stated. See comments.]

So there I was, lost in the traveler’s self-loathing reverie last Sunday, sitting at the airport in Nashville and cursing the fact that I had to pay an extra surcharge to get my heavier-than-50-pound suitcase on the plane, ignoring my coworkers and burying myself in a new issue of Vanity Fair, when I heard a shrill scream from the gate next to me. ‘Seriously,’ I thought, ‘what the hell could be that damn important?’ Granted, I used stronger expletives in my head, but you get the general idea.

The girl (woman?) doing the shreiking ran to the gate and - ‘embraced’ isn’t the right word, more like ‘mauled affectionately’ - the man disembarking the plane. Since I was in my dark cloud of a mood, I was satisfied that she was another emotional female that didn’t need to be making that sort of fuss over the arrival of a passenger. Not 15 seconds later, my metaphorical foot was in my metaphorical mouth, as the entire airport - slowly at first, but gradaully rising in intensity - applauded for the American troops returning from Iraq.

I thought this was only the sort of thing that happened in commercials. You know the ones, the spots that are shilling for Budweiser or something equally asnine, that state ‘we support the troops’ against a black screen at the end. But this was actually happening: As the men and women walked down the terminal, the entire airport stood at civilian attention and clapped. For no other reason than they wanted to express support to those who went through hell, despite the dangers and outside the realm of partisan politics. Like I said, my foot in my mouth. Without any hint of the original sarcasm or satirical intent, let me quote the song written by the South Park twins in Team America: World Police, and say ‘America. Fuck yeah.’

Once I landed in O’Hare, I got to take the above picture. The entire baggage claim area was flooded from a malfunctioning sprinkler. God bless America.

Props: Item number 46, ‘62 Reasons to Love Your Country,’ July 2005 GQ. Among such entries as ‘blue jeans. On a woman,’ ‘Starbucks coffee. Seriously.’ and ‘live-bait vending machines,’ item 46 states, without any explanation, ‘Iraq war vets, coming home.’ Amen. Thanks for the kick-in-the-pants reminder.