We need to talk.

Hello, Chicago!

How does the Rift creolize subcultures? Does a stable city with some vestige of infrastructure around the Rift or a destabilized city constantly reinventing itself demand greater civic engagement and reciprocity between wanderers and natives? How do colonies of exiles turn themselves into established communities?

These are some of the questions addressed in my new thesis, A Sociology of Difference: Riftcomer Culture in Chicago and Rome, coming soon from the Angel of Knowledge Board of the Sciences Press. Best read with a Long Island Iced Tea and chased with Ms. Maria Rebecchini's insightful article The Emerging Hermeneutics of the Roman Journal Network, soon to have a sister article focusing here on the Windy City. It's been a productive two months, full of research, abbaccchio, Mongai readings, and back-to-back tours on the Capitolini card. And I have this to say, on coming home sweet home:

I really can't leave this city alone for five minutes, can I?

There are about fifty of you I need to take out for drinks, stat. You bastards are lucky I get a stipend.

{{OOC: Yes, folken, Dmitri Lang has returned to Chicago. Duck and cover.}}

• 13:29 GOOD AFTERNOON, CHICAGO. Dmitri Lang here, checking out the beta version of some nifty new liveblogging psychic journal software.
• 13:33 testing, testing, testing...
• 13:33 ˙˙˙ƃuıʇsǝʇ 'ƃuıʇsǝʇ 'ƃuıʇsǝʇ
• 13:36 тестинг, тестинг, тестинг...
• 13:37 Lookin' good, Chicago Area journal network. See you with the freshest news. :)

Automatically shipped by TokyoJournal Liveblogging Software, LTD.

So, you're gonna have to tell me why a You Version II just came through the Conrad Hotel rift with a penchant for short hair and leather jackets, 'cause I really want to know.

I mean I really want to know.

{{OOC: BACKDATED LIKE BURNING to, um, January 2nd or so.}}

I AM ALIVE

And I am *very* *loopy*, Chicago, for lo they have put me on the good drugs. and the antibiotics.

Someone tell me everything that happened in this city since the beginning of november.

So let's say you, good citizens of Chicago, were escorting folks to the JCC throught the suspiciously misnamed Plague of Darkness so as to avoid that pesky "death of the firstborn" thing the following day. Let's say that sometime around midmorning, you give your only cans of mace to a single mother who's worried about these things and duck back to your apartment to grab some more for yourself.

Let's say that you get in around 11:56, decide to grab a quick drink of water and a different sweater, and then end up turning around and seeing a re-enactment of Dark City out your window, while all the plaster in your apartment snaps, crackles, and voids your security deposit.

Let us then assume, citizens, that you head for the door only to find that it's CHAINED FUCKING SHUT.

AT THIS POINT, CITIZENS OF CHICAGO, IF YOUR RESPONSE IS TO DIVE FOR THE CROWBAR – YOU HAVE A CROWBAR, DON'T YOU, CITIZENS? EVERY WELL-STOCKED CHICAGO HOME SHOULD, IF ONLY BECAUSE YOU'RE IN CHICAGO, AND THIS SORT OF ВЗДОР IS TO BE EXPECTED, AND TRY TO GET THOSE CHAINS OFF, YOUR RESPONSE WOULD HAVE BEEN VERY SIMILAR TO MINE. IF, UPON FINDING THAT THEY'LL BUDGE ABOUT AS MUCH AS THE BLARNY STONE LEVERED WITH BEAVER GUTS, YOU MIGHT BE TEMPTED TO TRY TO BREAK DOWN THE DOOR, OR BREAK THE WINDOWS, OR PERHAPS TRY TO BUST THROUGH THE DRYWALL.

ASSUMING THAT NONE OF THAT WORKS, AND ALSO ASSUMING YOU HAVE YELLED FOR HELP FROM ANYONE YOU SAW WALKING PAST YOUR PEEPHOLE OR HEARD IN THE NEXT APARTMENT OVER, AND ASSUMING THEY ALL LISTEN TO YOU ABOUT AS MUCH AS AN OFFENDED CAT, YOU MAY FIND YOURSELF IN A DILEMMA VERY SIMILAR TO MINE, WHICH I NOW PRESENT TO YOU AS AN EXERCISE, MY FELLOW CITIZENS:

DO YOU OR DO YOU NOT CLIMB THROUGH THE HOLE IN YOUR BATHROOM WALL INTO THE DARK DANK TUNNEL WHICH, ACCORDING TO FLASHLIGHTS, SEEMS TO HAVE NO END, AND WHICH ECHOES EERILY WITH SCREAMS AND ANIMALISTIC GROWLING?

I EAGERLY AWAIT YOUR ADVICE.





...if I am stuck in here tomorrow and Chicago decides that, yes, Sudden Firstborn Death Syndrome really is the thing to do, I would like it known that Toshiko Sato, assuming she's still alive, gets my movie collection, and Desmond Descant, assuming he's still alive, gets the guitar which UPS was to deliver on Friday but which has probably been delayed due to unavoidable bad weather and Biblical plagues, and Dante, assuming he's still alive, gets all of my various self-defense accoutrements, and the Doctor, who had better be alive, gets curatorship of all of my writings, except for the essay collection I'm doing on these plagues, which will be in a postage-paid package on my desk ready to be sent out to the Angel of Knowledge Board of the Sciences as soon as the United States Postal Service services this area of the state again, and Babel, I would offer you all the snacks and ice cream in my fridge, except that now I can't find any of it except a jug of chocolate milk and a bottle of white wine, which, should you be interested, you are welcome to.

This is Dmitri Lang, your one-stop-shop for Chicago flavor, trying REALLY FUCKING HARD not to sign off.

~ 義

Ace–

I got those plates run. Those vans have been reported missing by their owners: two in Arlington Heights, one in Naperville. Whoever brought them in seems to be collecting pretty far afield.

Just for kicks and giggles, I did a cross-reference with reported CLF activity in those areas and got a bit less than a goose egg. It seems like the CLF's activities, at least their signed ones, have been sticking close to Chicago and the suburbs, and activity in Cicero is disproportionately high.

{{OOC: Sometime a while after the merry Charun adventure}}

I have three bottles of corralejo and a powerful need to not remember anything about a certain coffee shop or hardware store. Are we up?

There's an action-adventure superhero movie called String Theory playing at the Navy Pier Imax.

...wait. Sorry. I need to get that with the right emphasis.

There's an action-adventure superhero movie called String Theory playing at the Navy Pier Imax.

I think the main character fights crime by unspooling the criminals into their component quarks or something. The trailer tried to use the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle to explain why they couldn't track the supervillain. At one point the resident geeky scientist apparently breaks out a BALL OF YARN to explain the eponymous concept.

It looks cheesy and campy and overfunded and the science will probably have no resemblance to reality or even common sense and it's playing on the largest movie screen in Illinois. TELL ME you want to come see it and then get pizza or something.