Jackie.

Now It's Summer

Tsha and Josh and God.
Originally uploaded by todd.burbo.

Tsha, Josh and I went to the Sox v. Tigers game tonight. The Tigers blew a 7-1 lead, which was a bit rough considering all this shit I had been talking, but the night was gorgeous. This was the start of it: drinking forties on Josh's roof in Wicker Park.

I was smoother.

Lolz, check out this douche. He tried to hit on this girl that I used to stalk, and she posted their correspondence as a bulletin, because it's a total classic.

Jovan: interesting profile you have there, not to mention captivating pics!

Erin: you've sent this message to me before...multiple times.

Jovan: hmm, evidently you didn't have the brains or taste enough to respond before. What else would one expect from someone dumb enough to admire some chimp like Barack Obama.

***

Please keep the blatant racism in mind as you check out his profile. Feel free to send him fun messages. Especially if you're black.

Things I've Done Today

1. Avoided upsetting customers.

2. Decided that the new Spoon record is living up to the hype.

3. Pulled or strained a hamstring riding my bike.

4. Discovered that Kara's true Daemon is a Chimpanzee. Wasn't surprised.

Lincoln Park

Me and Tsha went to Lincoln Park tonight. Here's proof.

I love shiny objects.

Last winter I met a smart girl, and she introduced me to Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. It's a children's fantasy series in the vein of Narnia, Harry Potter, and Lord of the Rings, but it's darker and more subversive than any of those works. Aaaaand it's an absolute masterpiece. I've been dutifully passing the books on, trying to expose friends to them before the first film is released this winter.

Anyway, In Pullman's world(s), human beings have a physical incarnation of their souls, called Daemons. They take the form of animal companions that represent the qualities of their human. Children's Daemons can change shape at will, reflecting the untapped potential of youth. But around puberty, they settle on a permanent shape. Humans and their Daemons are absolutely inseperable; they are literally the two halves of the same being.

The girl I mentioned earlier would always ask me: "What would your Daemon be?" A loaded question, in the eyes of a dork. And we were dorks. Luckily, I always managed to dodge it. I wanted to believe it would be a river otter.

But you can't choose your Daemon's shape, so I was never sure. But now, thanks to the magic of the interweb, the girl's question has been answered. Scientifically. As part of the upcoming film's marketing campaign, you can take a quick myspace-style personality quiz here and meet your real Daemon.

Without further ado...



Modest? Who you callin' modest!?

Just 5 seconds of your time, please.

Nobody Panic.

Shaved Head.
Originally uploaded by todd.burbo.

If my apartment had a security camera, it would show some interesting things from last night. For instance, 2 a.m. found me running around in the dark, wielding my laptop as a flashlight, frantically throwing clothes and blankets around my bedroom.

It's sort of a long story, but it involves a recurring nightmare featuring a large spider, and a newfound (or newly discovered) tendency to sleepwalk. An ex-girlfriend once woke to find me frantically pulling her out of bed, away from that fucking spider. Usually it takes about a minute for me to realize that I'm dreaming, even if I'm running through the house. To any aspiring therapists: please tell me what it means.

Oh yeah, and last week I got drunk and buzzed all of my hair off. This is what I looked like by the time I realized what I was doing. That's even a decent re-enactment of the face I made.

Anal Disembowelment, Chinese Opera

Gross

Everyone thinks I'm making it up, so thank God CNN covered this story about the 6-year-old girl who got her intestines sucked out through her asshole by the drain of a public kiddie pool. Yes, you read that right. Disemboweled via her rectum. And fuck you guys for thinking I would make something like that up.


Beautiful
I consider myself a fan of everything Damon Albarn does, and by that logic I now consider myself a fan of Chinese Opera. Mr. Albarn, of Blur and Gorillaz, is composing the music for Monkey: Journey to the West, an opera based on a 16th-century Chinese fable and a 70's Japanese TV show. For the show, he invented an instrument that uses a keyboard of arcade-style buttons to control a 24-note scale of car horns that he recorded in China. God damnit, I love this man. Image and details from Wired.

For the ladies... and soccer fans, I guess.

Check out this stud! Liverpool have finally signed an A-list striker, for a club-record 26.5 million pounds. That's, like... $476 million dollars. Roughly.

His name is Fernando Torres, he's Spanish, and until now he scored goals for Atletico Madrid and Spain. A YouTube search of his name will yield a few highlight reels, and more than a few photo montages of his abs. Dreamy.

I won't lie: I'm glad to finally have some glamour at Anfield (sorry Crouch and Bellamy, but... yeah), but this dude had better unleash a flood of goals to justify the loss of my current favorite Spaniard, the Five-foot-Seven Slice-of-Heaven, Luis Garcia. My little buddy went back to Madrid to help ease the pain of a $476 million-dollar bill. Roughly.

While on the soccer tip, the next reported target for Liverpool is Man United defender Gabriel Heinze. I'm not particularly optimistic about it, as Premiership rivals aren't in the habit of selling each other quality players.

Also, Arsenal snagged a new striker out of the blue yesterday: The Brazilian by-way-of Croatia, Eduardo Da Silva. I don't know much about him, as he was playing in the nether-regions of Eastern Europe, but I think it's safe to say that he'll have a hard time filling the stylish shoes of Thierry Henry.

A New Era

The Process
Originally uploaded by todd.burbo.

1310 N. Leavitt is down to two occupants, and one less mongoloid means much less crap. To date, our place has pretty much been a clutter factory, but those days are done. This weekend, Chris and I began a modest cleaning spree that gathered steam as it went, and ended with us tossing about half of our furniture- pretty much anything with a surface to collect the afore-mentioned clutter. Now the place is super sparse. There's even a bit of an echo. I love it so much that I stand around with my hands on my hips, just admiring it.