• Embed Doc
  • Copy Link
  • Readcast
  • Collections
  • CommentGo Back
Download
 
Views expressed in Content do not neCessarily releCt the Views o the publisher or the printed blog inC.
printed with expliCit permission rom eaCh Content proVider
WEEK OF MARCH 26, 2009
ChiCago edition Vol 1 no 8
YOUR VOICE. OUR VOICE. ONE VOICE.
TM
Willis? Whatever is Willis?
(Off tOpic)
b
Brian Dickie
| 3/16/09 |
Brian Dickiepbur.com/50p79 
Well Willis, it appears, is one o these complicated multi this and that companies withconnections to “nancial services”. These olks by and large don’t get great reviews these days.And Willis are said to have an “edice complex”. So this may be an excellent reason or theerce objection in Chicago to renaming the Sears Tower the Willis Tower. Maybe this is anotherAIG - it appears to be heavily into insurance. And its share price is not much to shout about.Much the same as the rest o them.The problem is that we trust NONE o these people any longer. This is o course ratherunair on the good ones. Maybe Willis is a good one. They (whoever they are) renamed theEnron Field the Minute Maid Field ater the last big meltdown. Who knows? - maybe our be-loved Sears Tower will become the Big Whopper Tower when Willis has done with it.Apart rom these musings this has been a lovely day in Chicago. We spent a happy ater-noon at the Merle Reskin Theater with the DePaul Opera Theater’s production o Hansel andGretel. Harry Silverstein as always directed a polished production and Eric Weimer in the pitconducted sympathetically and stylishly. He knows this rep inside out. Just the person to do itwith these young people.It was also an agreeable social occasion. There are many DePaul people close to us, and thearray in the audience included Dean Casey, Jane Bunnell, Marc Embree, Elsa Charleston, RossBeacrat, and some other people rom our Chicago opera world inspecting, as we do, the workthat the Music schools are doing here.
CHICAgO
WElCOME PREsIDENt RODRIgUEz!NOW FIx tHE CtA’s $155 MIllION DEFICIt
b
CtA taer
| 3/1/09 |
CtA taerpbur.com/2k3mb 
Talk about an unwelcome welcoming git! At the same meeting Wednesday where CTAboard members ratied Mayor Daley’s appointment o Richard Rodriguez as the transit agency’snew president, Board Chairwoman Carole Brown said service cuts and more are hikes are de-nitely under consideration to plug this year’s $155 million decit.Makes you wonder i the poor guy even knows where the bathroom and lunchroom is,beore being aced with this gaping hole in the budget caused by the slumping economy.But the CTA has ideas to bridge more than hal that gap with other savings and eciencies.In a report to the board, Paul Fish, the CTA’s vice president o budget and capital nance, sug-gested these 11 cost-saving ideas:These would save $80 million. I (and other readers) oered many o these same ideas, soglad to know they look to us or advice. For the other $75 million, Fish proposed RTA loans and“other unds” (not sure which unds though). And nally, in the “other options” category, hementioned:Labor Solutions To Lower Cost And Retain Labor Force
•
Service Cuts
•
Fare Increases
•
Rodriguez and his new sta will oer details on how to get out o this mess at its April 7board meeting. It seems inevitable that either service cuts or another are hike -- or both -- willbe part o that balancing equation. Unless the RTA does come up with a solution at its ownboard meeting on April 2.Fish’s presentation also showed how the CTA now expects to get 21% less than originallybudgeted rom sales tax and real estate transer tax revenue, accounting or the $155 millionbudget gap.My question is this: Since this decit is related to the slumping economy, when we comeout o this and the tax revenues presumably recover to “regular” levels, would any service cutsor are hikes be rolled back?Lower Injury And Damages Reserve
•
Allocate Remaining Lease Deal Money
•
Reduce Non-operational Vacancies
•
Restrict Non-Emergency Overtime
•
Improve Bus and Rail Scheduling Ecien-
•
ciesIdentiy Savings by increasing Bus and
•
Rail Car RehabsRestructure Management Positions
•
Maximize Real Estate Opportunities
•
Review and Renegotiate Contracts
•
Non-operational training
•
Review Compensation and Hiring Strate-
•
gies
ADVERtIsINg
C d | .c/z91jsv K mz | .c/zv480
 
tHE PRINtED BlOg
2
POlItICs
NO MeNtiON Of iraq iN Bush’spresideNtial liBrary BiO
b
Amanda terke
| 3/1/09 |
think Prorepbur.com/k1j3v 
Last week, Politico reported that President Bush’s advisers have decided to downplay theIraq war in presentations or his presidential library:
t ’ v   c v  c  z. iq  k    . av   v   cc c  v  vc            iq c       cc   .
Not only will the Iraq war be de-emphasized, it may not show up much at all. TP readerGrumpy Demo points out that Bush’s ocial 483-word bio on the presidential library websitedoesn’t have a single mention o the Iraq war. In act, the man who once declared “I’m a warpresident,” has just one short paragraph devoted to national security issues — with no mentiono Iraq or Aghanistan. He instead devotes a long section to his domestic accomplishments:
h        k k    - ,     cv c    ,  n C l b ac  2001. t -       cc, f, c c,   cc  ,  n’       v c. p b  k v c  z mc, v  -v c    -; c , c  ; cv  v;  c , ,  . […]o    s 11, 2001,  ck  n. p b k c-   c    c     . h    vc  cc   v        . t p c        c,  n      cc  k ac  c     c.
Also noticeably absent rom Bush’s list o accomplishments is Social Security reorm. In January, he cited his ailed push or Social Security privatization as what he was most proud o during his time in oce. (A ew days later, however, he backtracked and said he regretted it.)
PHOtOs
a NeW era - take actiON
b
tim Nae
| 3/13/09 |
American Epre Forumpbur.com/21wrv
It is a new era. Every day we realize that in act each day is unique and uncharted waters,truly a new era is in ront o us and all around us. I can look at these words ”new era” in manydierent ways and apply the meaning in so many dierent aspects o our lives. We set goalsto achieve, accomplishments we want to obtain and a lie we want to enjoy. For many o ussmall business owners, we started a business to serve our lives. A business that serves our livesenhances every goal and accomplishment and ullls us. Our proud lie. A business that servesour lie is one that is dedicated to making our business unction and trying to reach our goals. Alie that serves our business consumes us and makes us reactive, not proactive.The dierence between business serving lie and lie serving business could be the dier-ence between succeeding and not succeeding.Gone are the days o having time to recover a business rom bad decisions. Gone are thedays o having the time to have a long learning curve trying to establish your business andreach your goals through trial and error.Proactive or reactive, which one describes you? A proactive person is pragmatic, thinksabout their business and plans strategy beore tactics, but takes action to implement this plan.Good decisions are based o good inormation, but we will never know the ruit o our plan-ning i we don’t take action. The worst plan is one that never comes to action. A reactiveperson usually does not plan strategy beore tactics and will put the cart beore the horse. Thistype o planning or lack there o, requires timing and luck. I you miss your timing you are onlylet with luck and you will probably need plenty o it. It is hard to rely on luck. I was partnerswith a very successul man that grew his business rom one oce and one truck to a nationalcompany with multiple actories. Needless to say he was a great business man. He always said acouple phrases to me over and over and they are worth repeating now.“Without sales, you might as well throw away the key to the ront door, because withoutsales, there isn’t a business ”and“ I you aren’t marketing you don’t get the opportunity.”What did he mean I thought the rst time I heard him say that. Opportunity? I oundout quickly that opportunity meant staying in business to keep selling and creating revenue.As small business owners it is time to get back to the basics that make small businesses so great.The new era is about small business and making good decisions. The new era is about taking ac-tion and responsibility or ourselves and reusing to ail.Zen philosophy says lie is ull o 10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows. Small business own-ers are resilient, we bounce back realizing that any ailure is just an event. The ability to keepocused on your goals, ability to keep building your dreams one step at a time, planning andputting strategy in place beore tactics and taking action is a proactive approach to having ourbusiness serve our lives.By being proactive and saying that I will market wisely and take advan-tage o my resources, we are developing an aggressive proactive approach to having our businessserve our lives. Marketing isn’t about spending more than your competition in the marketplace.Marketing or small business can be simple, eective and aordable.There are resources i you are proactive. More importantly, operating a successul businessis about doing all the little things properly and building your operation organically, one blockat a time. The stronger the oundation, the stronger the structure. The stronger the structure thelonger it will stand and weather any storm. Remember it is a new era and it is our time to shine.When times are challenging, it the successul ones that rise above, not by luck, but by takingaction and doing the little things right one block at a time.
PHOtOsBUsINEssPHOtOs
C s | .c/05qC C | .c/v59z
 
Views expressed in Content do not neCessarily releCt the Views o the publisher or the printed blog inC.
3
Or MayBe yOu Just shOuldN’t dO Whateverthe BathrOOM Wall tells yOu tO dO
b
the Boe
| 3/15/09 |
the Boepbur.com/85dqh 
So I was in the bathroom at Taco Cabana and someone had written “
LIVE EVERY DAYAS IF IT WAS YOUR LAST
” on the wall o the stall which is really horrible advice because i itwas really my last day on earth I’d spend that day calling all the people who have wronged meto tell them they’re assholes. But then you’d wake up the next morning and BAM, you’re stillalive and now your voicemail is lled with people yelling at you because they all got the mes-sages you let last night. I was going to write this all on the stall but I couldn’t nd a sharpie.And then like a month later you’d be at a party and you’d totally run into one o the people youcalled but you don’t remember telling them how much they suck because you were probablydrunk because who’s going to be sober on their last day on earth? Not me, mother’ckers. Andso I’d be all “Oh hi, you!” and they’d be like “Um…didn’t you leave me a voicemail calling mea giant whorebag?” and then I’d be all “Oh. Awk-ward.” But then I’d be all, “But I mean, youare kind o a whore. You slept with my ex-ance, remember? Whore?” Which would actuallybe kind o awesome. Okay, I’ve changed my mind. This is excellent advice. Expect some callstonight, assholes. 
PS.
I tried to look up the “Live every day like it’s your last” saying to nd the author butgoogle was all “Did you mean ‘Live every day like no one’s watching’?” which I think meansyou can dig your underwear out o your butt during important business meetings. I am totallygoing to get promoted. 
PPS.
In utterly unrelated news, I got a letter rom my doctor saying my nal tests cameback positive or rheumatoid arthritis but that my x-rays showed “no obvious deormities yet”and the doctor ended the letter by assuring me this “was all good news”. I don’t know medicineterminology but I suspect when your doctor tells you the good news is “no obvious deormitiesyet” in layman’s terms it means “Lady, you are totally ucked”. Someone start building my blogscooter now. Also, I want ramps everywhere and rom now on all the handicap parking spotsreally do belong to people in wheelchairs and not just to people who eel like they’re disabledbecause they have really bad cramps that day. And also, i you’re in a wheelchair you get ron-tsies in line at the liquor store. We need to get this all passed in congress beore I’m disabledbecause then it’ll look like I’m just doing it or me
because it’s what Jesus would do
.
HOggIN
b
Nea Bouon
| 3/16/09 |
Baard liepbur.com/pn835
Big really is beautiful, especially in the bedroom.
A new study published in Obstetrics &Gynecology shows that overweight women have more sex than women with so called “normalweight.”The research, conducted by Universities in Oregon and Hawaii, investigated the sexual behavioro 7,000 women. It looked at the relationship between body mass index and sexual behavior,including sexual orientation, age at rst intercourse, number o partners, and requency o inter-course. According to the study, “92 per cent o overweight women reported having a history o sexual intercourse with a man, as compared to 87 per cent o women with a normal body massindex.” The ndings debunk the myth that at chicks have less sex and are less sexual. The re-sults actually show the reverse to be true – that overweight women are more likely to get-it-on.The study also showed that overweight women had a higher chance o unexpected preg nancythan so called “normal women.” So ellas, bag it when you bunk a big, beautiul babe.
 
UsUAl sUsPECts
YOU DON’t WANt YOUR FINgERs tO sMEll lIKE VAgINA
b
Kimberee Auerbach
| 3/12/09 |
the Nervou Breakdownpbur.com/86jhw 
When I was a little girl, I liked two things: getting naked and touching my vagina.Nothing wrong with that. Totally normal. Completely natural. Yet, not so appropriate dur-ing dinner parties with my parents’ riends milling about the living room eating Brie cheese onwater crackers.I had a knack or unveiling mysel at the strangest times, in the most unlikely o places.There’s a photo o me, age 5, standing on top o my tricycle seat, trying hard to keep my bal-ance, wearing nothing but a red bandana on my head. In another shot, I’m chasing our dogaround the backyard wearing my baby doll’s dress, which basically comes up to my neck, andno underwear.You’d think I’d be the type to go to Burning Man, boobs bouncing around a bonre, butI’m not. I’m actually rather buttoned up, and I’m not sure why, or how I went rom being alittle girl who relished her birthday suit to a woman who oten wears a bra to sleep.It’s not like my mom tried to rain on my “I hate clothes” parade. She never punished meor scolded me or told me I was going to hell. She had been sexually abused as a child and wasdetermined to make me eel good about my body, to normalize sexuality, to empower me.When I was 16, she even gave me a “back massager,” and told me to put it “down there.”Her eeling, God bless her, was that i I learned how to give mysel pleasure, then I’d be able totell a man how to pleasure me one day.She didn’t warn me that no man’s ngers would ever be able to vibrate with the samevelocity as a vibrator or that certain men in my lie would actually eel threatened by it. My col-lege boyriend once hid my “back massager” to see how long it would take me to notice it wasmissing. Two days.Still, I never stopped masturbating, not or him, not or anyone. To me, it’s always elt sa-cred, something that’s all mine, something no one can take away rom me. I know that soundssuper dramatic, but I’m serious. For most o my lie, I’ve told mysel that I wasn’t smart enough,pretty enough, whatever-the-uck enough— disgracing Stuart Smalley and all his ne work—sothere’s something about making my body eel good that smacks o sel-love and basic survival.It’s gotten me through two bad relationships with men who didn’t like to kiss me or go downon me, and it’s helped me last long stretches o no man land.Recently, I had a relationship, well, relationship is too strong a word, given he didn’t wantto call it anything, so I’ll just say, recently, I ell in love with a man who rocked my world sexu-ally. He lives in LA and I live in NY, so we didn’t see each other that much, but, man oh man,when we did, the rst thing he would do was tear o my panties and dive down, and then hewould stay down and keep going, and I would keep going, and it was amazing. Turns out, I’mmulti-orgasmic. Who knew?When it ended, I cried and cried and cried.I cried because I missed him, yes, and because I thought we had potential, blah, blah, blah,but more because I didn’t want to give up how he made me eel. When people had asked meabout him, I would say, “He makes me laugh and come all the time. What could be better thanthat?”Nothing. That was the problem.When I went back to my “back massager,” it wasn’t the same. Sure, it still vibrated at un-godly speed and with unhuman consistency, but it wasn’t him. It wasn’t warm, even with theheat on. I tried watching porn to get me going, to keep me going, but I got bored. There’s onlyso much in and out and strings o spit you can watch beore getting disgusted.And then it occurred to me, this whole time, my whole adult lie, I thought I had been agood lover to mysel, but my vibrator had been doing all the work. I didn’t know how to lovemysel at all.When I was in seventh grade, pre-vibrator days, my mother came up with a slogan or meto run or Vice President: “Don’t Dance Around The Issues, Vote Kim Auerbach or Vice Presi-dent, She Bops!” not knowing “She Bops” is another way o saying “She Masturbates.” When Iasked my mother what “masturbate” meant, she said, “Well, Kimmi, you know how when youwere a little girl you liked to touch your vagina, well, it’s kind o like that, it’s not polite to doin public, and it’s important to wash your hands ater, you don’t want your ngers to smell likevagina, but Kimmi, sweetie, there’s nothing wrong with masturbating.”Well intentioned, I know, but it set something up. It set up the notion that vaginas smellbad. I’m not blaming my mother or my distant relationship with my vagina or or my addic-tion to my vibrator or or my tolerance o men who don’t like oral sex, but I am realizing thatthat kind o message can shut you down and make you sel-conscious.I don’t want to be shut down or sel-conscious. I want to get naked and touch my vagina.Pure and simple. So, I’ve put away my “back massager,” and I’m choosing to kick it old school.Ater all these years, I’m nally learning how to give mysel the pleasure I thought onlya machine or man could give me. Granted, I can’t rip o my own panties, and I can’t lick myown pussy, but my ngers, well, let’s just say, they’re doing a ne job, and while I do think it’s agood policy to wash my hands ater, I like when my ngers smell like vagina, when they smelllike my vagina.I may never bounce my boobs around a bonre in the desert or balance naked on a tricycleever again, but I plan on reclaiming that little girl, on being ree again.
PHOtOs
dk w | .c/102
of 00

Leave a Comment

You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...
You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...