Probably Made Up

Killing and a farm house

I’m very good at killing people.

Well, to be more accurate, I’m very good at disposing of bodies and evidence.  No one has ever found someone I killed, and no one ever will.

I don’t like killing now though.  I’ve been trying to escape.

I thought maybe I could back to college.  I remember my first day back in school.  I wanted to try dorm living again.  I walked into my dorm room, and my roomate was there was ladies older than him.

I usually am more cordial, but I was a bit off.  I ended up putting all my stuff away in the dorm an stuff organized.  Then I started opening up and introduced myself.  They were very honest themselves about what’s up.  It was crazy.

This kid apparently is the heir to George Carlin’s fortune.  Not billions, but definitely some nice cash George racked up as a famous comedian and actor I guess.  And these ladies are this guys body guards.  Intriguing.  The women didn’t look like much, but apparently they could handle themselves given they have this job.  Very intriguing.  Combat used to be a lot of fun for me.

The cool part of this situation was that after this semester this kid was going to quit school.  He was only there to satisfy some requirement of getting the inheritance.  So after that he quits and that would mean I could get the dorm room all to myself sweet!

I needed to get a job.

I wanted to see if I could do some farm work.  Never really tried, but seemed like honest hard labor.  I didn’t even know how to go about getting this, but I thought I could just try knocking on some farm houses.  Turned out out that first door I knocked on needed some help and were willing to give me a shot.

Things were going very well with my new plans.  I loved my new employer.  She even let me have access to a room at the farm so I didn’t have to go back to the dorms and share it with Carlan Jr.

One night though it cam crashing down.  I was staying at my farm room.  When I cam up to the room though I saw someone knew something about who I was and tracked me here.  They left me a little gift.  Carlan Jr.’s two body cards were dead, throats slit, fully clothed, laying on my bed.  A note was on top providing some very detailed instructions for how the bodies should be prepared and disappeared.  As well as a tray of food.  The note said the food contained dozens of clues as to who my admirer is, and if I didn’t play along with this strange game, things were going to turn out badly for me.

I did what I had to do, but I’m not good at games like this.  I have no friggin idea what these clues were telling me.  I tried to keep doing what I was doing.  Where am I going to run again, I thought I was pretty blended in and hidden now.  I might as well see how this was going to play out.

The next week while I was in class, little did I know that a woman I didn’t recognize was torturing a man in a beautifully designed room.  An attic.  An attic that looked like it could be above a farm house.  I also didn’t know until later that evening when I returned to my farm house, that this lady and her colleague were setting fire to a bunch of bails of hay.  A fire whose embers fell on my farm house and burned it right down.

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Jason Fried and his new car

I’m becoming closer and closer acquaintances with Jason Fried and DHH at 37signals.  I figured it would probably happen eventually.  We both own companies in Chicago and mingle with the same people.

I attended a talk Jason gave a couple weeks ago.  Kind of odd and sad news for a bunch of Chicago people.  He’s moving to Memphis and then eventually will move to San Jose.  He didn’t go into the details of why the 2 fold moving life plan, and I don’t think I’m going to ask.  Maybe an aging parent or something is tied down to San Jose?

Found out some other crazy plans of this kid.  He’s bought a Toyota Camry and is suping it up.  But he’s basically turning this $20,000 car into a $120,000 car somehow.  He didn’t go into a lot of the detail, but he mentioned the engine is going to be an extremely rare and highly valued performance engine.

Meanwhile, I’m considering a Chevy Equinox.  32 miles per gallon baby! :)

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My Internship for Hillary Clinton

I was an intern for Hilary Clinton during her attempt to become president.  

At some dinner party, I actually got a chance to meet her.  She got real chatty with me.  She probably had had way to much to drink.  

No idea why she told me what she did, but I guess win or lose she was hosting some kind of mass around Valentine’s day of 2008.  And she mentioned a new rumor that was floating around Washington that Obama had been married briefly before Michele, and some folks thought they knew who it was.  

Sen. Clinton’s idea was to send an invitation to Sen. Obama, inviting him and his rumored ex-wife!  And not Michele.  She said it was to show a point that good Christians shouldn’t get divorced and that in her Christian eye he was still married to his original wife.  

This threw me.  I thought I wanted to be in this game of politics, but this kind of thing seemed so friggin petty.  How can our country ever improve if this is what’s going on around Washington.  But could I still have my ideals if I was inside it all?

A week later, I sat 3 rows in front of Sen. Obama at a movie theater in D.C., watching Charlie Wilson’s War.  I got up to use the bathroom during the previews and saw him on the aisle.  I guess I figured I’d probably never have a chance to talk with Obama like this again, so I went to the man, shook his hand and whispered to him Hillary’s plan.  

He acted very paranoid about anything I was trying to whisper to him.  But after I got out what I wanted to say, he didn’t look impressed.  And then he said “Why would I not be with my wife on Valentine’s Day?”, maybe as a joke or trying to just emphasize the cookiness of this whole plan.  Or he just felt maybe that if Hillary did pull a stunt like this, he’s simply just not showing up.  Whatever he meant, I don’t really care.  I felt like I at least got it off my chest.  

I was going to try and tell Sen. Clinton what I thought of her plan, if I ever got a chance to speak to her sober.  But that never happened.  I quit my internship in January 2008.  And I’m now doing strategic corporate consulting for Mckinsey.  Perhaps though I did an ounce of good letting Obama know.  As you likely never even got wind of this rumor.  And Hillary’s Valentine’s Day mass never ended up happening.

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A dog rescue in Lincoln Park Zoo

I have a friend who recently almost lost a dog in a tragic accident.

He started to get into the habit of running with his dog.  And on the 5th time they ever did this, he tried to let his dog jump into Lake Michigan on the west side of Lake Shore Drive.  Where the kayakers do their thing.

His thought process was that it’s a hot day in Chicago and there’s lots of other healthy looking birds and stuff in this water so why not let his dog plunge in and get wet during their run.

Problem is the dog is a Husky with a complete mind of her own.  But he figured she was hot enough that the water would attract her.  Instead she took off in completely in the opposite direction.  Right into Lincoln Park Zoo.

He took off after her, but it just made her run faster.  And I know he’s had trouble with her outside before.  She listens very well, but just never listens to him outside.

The freakish part of the story though is she manages to leap over a fence, but its the fence into the Lion sanctuary.  Right into the cement moat.  :(  I guess it’s not a moat though.  Lions still have access to this area.

Of course the dog immediately was immobilized by the fall into the moat.  She broke 2 legs.  And was stranded there as a lion became very interested in the new animal in their area.

My friend was pretty paralyzed by this situation.  He considered trying to protect his dog in the moat, but had absolutely nothing to use as a weapon or deterrent other than his body.  Thankfully, Lincoln Park Zoo personal quickly were able to respond to this and had a procedure that was real effective in baiting all the lions to go into the inside portion of their habitat so they could fence them off from the dog.

So it ends well.  The dog did have the 2 broken legs that are still healing.  But should be back to somewhat normal soon.  But who knows what happens from here.  Can he run with her again?  Will this incident scare her enough to stay close to her humans?  We’ll see.

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On a cruise with Eliza Dushku and Philip Seymour Hoffman

My wife and I were recently on a cruise with Eliza Dushku and Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Couldn’t tell if they were a couple or not or just friends.

I’m not quite sure how it came about but my wife and I managed to sit at a 4 top near them and they caught us staring or whispering about them.  So Philip came over and sat down next to us and started talking.

I love Philip’s work but man and he seemed like decent fellow in real life.  But he sure was being strange.  I couldn’t tell if he had too much to drink or this is how he normally is.  He just kept asking us odd questions like “Do you know what a somethingsomething is?”  I couldn’t tell if we was making these words up, trying to solve some kind of crossword puzzle left back in his room or what.  Or he just sat their telling dirty jokes.

Anyways, he seemed harmless enough and I still felt my wife was safe enough in his company in the middle of this cruise ship dining room, and I remembered we needed to figure out when we had to disembark from the boat (and hence what time we needed to wake up), as tonight was the last night of our cruise.  So I left real quick to run up to our room to get the daily cruise newsletter that has all the instructions for the next day.

Unfortunately, I found out that we had forgotten to get our luggage outside our door by 10pm and its now past 11pm. So I go back to where my wife is and now she and Eliza are playing hangman.

Getting over how crazy this is, I informed my wife of our mistake of not getting our luggage ready. Eliza said that there was a big festival near our port so that the ship was probably going to be running late anyways, so we probably aren’t screwing up their luggage/checkout procedure.

We decided we should probably call it a night anyways, and said goodnight.  In retrospect, we should have tried to stay up all night to accumulate more stories of this strange meeting.  We just couldn’t believe we just made friends with these two.  We handed Eliza my card with my email address if they are ever in Chicago and want to hang out.

Sure enough we get back from the cruise and I find out Philip is directing a play at The Goodman Theater here in Chicago in February.  We’ll see if I get a call or email :)

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