Football 2013: Northwestern Vs. Syracuse

Football 2013: Northwestern vs. Syracuse

Workaholism

me: do you ever step back and think about how obsessed we all are?

Kaitlin: about the Daily?

me: yes

Kaitlin: yes,

it horrifies me sometimes.

me: =D

“It seems to me," said Magid finally, as the moon became clearer than the sun, "that you have tried to love a man as if he were an island and you were shipwrecked and you could mark the land with an X. It seems to me it is too late in the day for all that." Then he gave her a kiss on the forehead that felt like a baptism and she wept like a baby.

White Teeth by Zadie Smith

The master says it’s a glorious thing to die for the Faith and Dad says it’s a glorious thing to die for Ireland and I wonder if there’s anyone in the world who would like us to live.

Frank McCourt, Angela's Ashes

Novel excerpt: The Midnight Cafe

The Midnight Cafe, established 1962, had been a Jacobin headquarters for the beaten down since the Beat Generation became a staple in that part of town. Over the years, it grew into a fully-earned reputation for revolution, for Marxists, feminists, transcendentalists, surrealists and hedonists alike had at one point considered the cafe a nightly destination for conspiring over whisky. In the 70s, while Tibetan refugees starved themselves on the sidewalk outside, Rastafarian guitarists serenaded passersby from the balcony seating. In the 80s, university students watched the fall of the Berlin Wall on TVs hanging above the bar and listened to radio reports of their Beijing counterparts being crushed by tanks. 

And in addition to the countless poets and lovers who met tragic ends overdosing, over-copulating in the bathroom, it was said that in his youth, a certain congressional lynchpin broke his heart against a chiseled queer on the dance floor before taking up the mantle of hardline conservatism in the 2012 presidential primaries. Michelin was decidedly reluctant to surrender to The Midnight Cafe even half a star, but for what it lacked in actual coffee or real food, a loyal clientele compensated with BYOB.  

No stranger to the establishment, Elia greeted the people she knew with hugs and kisses, quickly becoming acquainted with those she didn’t as she squeezed through an intimate throng of bodies. Talk was kept to a shallow minimum, as attempts to converse were frequently interjected by the clatter of plates, the clink of glasses and the whir of blenders churning out assembly line margaritas. Every last face in the place was beautiful, made so by makeup, by product, by dim lighting and clothes cut scandalously just so. Spirits were high and free-flowing; oxygen was low. 

Chicago Pride 2013 in Lakeview, the year of the repeal of DOMA