Wisdom on Food: Please note, if you need to get a snack, now's the time.
Cheese Curds, despite their unattractive name, are the superlatives of all cheese. They are small balls of heaven. Do not settle for ones that don't squeak, apparently that means they're bad. People from Wisconsin take these very seriously, and will literally force them down your throat if you don't try it on your own. So try them, or face inevitable death.
Chocolate shakes from Pot Belly's have little shortbread cookies stacked on the straw. As a result, I now have cookie shaped cellulite and constant cravings.
Hot Dogs are a big deal here, but ketchup is frowned upon. To me, this falls somewhere between sacrilegious and unethical. If one more Midwesterner gives me shit for liking ketchup on my hot dog, the over-sized pickle hogging my bun space will be crowding somewhere else.
Jam can be eaten for all three meals if you do it right. That means, paying six dollars for a jar of jam is worth it, because it makes you feel good about supporting local farmers, and because it makes you physically cracked out on sugar, so you saved on real drugs for that day. This also makes for a decent story to tell your friends at work the next day. No it doesn't, I lied about that.
If you eat three personal pizzas at Camp Duncan you will get diarrhea on the ropes course. It will be embarrassing for two reasons, one: you'll have to ask your team leader to take you to the bathroom as if you are in preschool, and two: your team will know you're shitting liquid based on the color your face turned before you asked the question. However, extreme vulnerability makes for better team building than any ropes course.
At Bacci's you can get a piece of pizza the size of a lunch tray for five dollars and it comes with a drink. If it's too big for you, well then, you're a pussy.
My new chins and I out on the town.
Wisdom on the CTA:
The aforementioned Damen Stop on the blue line is where all the good looking people are. If you want to meet someone attractive, tatted up, and extremely educated on various types of coffee beans, go there. Note, talking incessantly about the Damen stop is something you should not do at work, or ever. This is because it makes ugly people mad, and unless you are at the Damen stop, you are talking to someone ugly.
The Red Line is scary, your chances of being murdered are higher, but they have the best subway musicians around. Prioritize accordingly.
The Irving Park 80 does not make a turn when it gets to the Lake because the Lake is in the way of your street, it makes that turn because you've been riding the bus twenty minutes in the wrong direction and its route has ended, and it is now looping back. I learned this the hard way.
Leave roughly an hour to do fucking anything or go fucking anywhere in this hell hole, because it will take you at least that long.
The Green Line toward Cottage Grove is a nice ride with a great view. It's like being Spider Man because you get to ride in between the tops of buildings at great speeds! It's a little less like that, but I swear you'll like it. Unfortunately, if you didn't plan more than an hour to get there, you'll be cursing silently and looking at your watch instead of mentally spinning your spidey web.
If you're getting on the L during rush hour, don't. Wait for three more trains to pass and then it will be empty. I learned this tip from a wise black man who told me his daddy told him that in 1950 one of those rush hour street cars caught on fire and all the people inside burned alive packed in there like sardines. He said you could smell the flesh in the street and we both agreed it was no way to die.
There is a portion of every car that includes one seat behind a little wall. This is called the hobo car. Sometimes people do weird things behind that wall, like pee, and have sex, and change diapers. Don't go back there, every weird smell you've smelled on the CTA is likely to be generating from that area.
This brings me to the smells. WHAT THE FUCK ARE ALL THE SMELLS? Garbage, feces, eggs, farts, urine, cologne, body odor, burnt air. It's constant. If I smell a good smell on the CTA like laundry or someone's shampoo, I instantly get a headache. My body can't handle it anymore, so it rejects it, like a disease or an STD.
Any line when the bars get out is fun and crazy and loud, don't feel bad about screaming or being alone, there's at least four people within an arms length of you doing the same thing. Do stand near a door if you can, because you want to get out of the way when the drunks decide they are hungry and storm the doors.
Wisdom on Living With Married People:
Married people love TV, especially if they have children, this is because they can never leave their house. Thus, HD television is a new "luxury" I have. Unfortunately, I hate it. HD does nothing but make eyeballs shinier than they have to be. What is with the glossy eyed celebrities!? Why are their eyeballs so fucking wet? This is not natural, nor is it something I wanted to experience. I would also like to mention here that because I never wear my glasses, the other effects of HD are lost on me. So this is what they call a slanted opinion.
One of the benefits of having 800 million channels for your HD TV is that it enables you to watch way more wives shows than everyone else. This means, when people are talking about last night's Desperate Housewives, you can chime in by updating them about Army Wives, Prison Wives, Basketball Wives, Sister Wives, Mob Wives, Baseball Wives, The Good Wife, and Wife Swap. You'll never be out of the loop again, because you created it, with your DVR.
If they are trying to feed you, and you are not their child, let them. If you don't, or if you hesitate, this could cause a fight. One person feels the need to host, while the other thinks that hosting is synonymous with suffocating.
"What do you want to eat tonight?"
"Let her make her own fucking food she's an adult!"
"Um, are you upset about something?"
"I'm upset about the fact that you always feel like you have to feed her!!!"
"Well if we're all eating then she should eat too!" If you so much as teeter to either end of the argument, there will be both hostility and anger. This will result in fear and hunger for you, or fear and over consumption out of cordially. Mostly fear. Also fat.
Offering to babysit their child is a must if you are freeloading. This does not, however, mean that they will let you. In fact, it will take months to earn their trust, and even then they will wait until the baby has fallen asleep and they have checked on him several times before they leave to walk to Walgreens and back. This is because you cannot handle watching the child when he is awake, both because he doesn't like you and because that would mean they trust you with something that is alive and not just sleeping.
Wisdom on Working for an Education Non-profit That Provides You With a Living Stipend:
Don't do it.
