(no subject)

I have a problem.

My boss is very good at solving problems. Though he does tend to shoot them in the face, which means more work for me. Mind you, there's something very satisfying about the beep the 33rd-century incinerator makes after you drop a body into it. And I am not opposed to shooting problems in the face myself on occasion, if by "problems" you mean "people" and by "people" you mean "people who have hurt my co-workers" and if by "shoot" you mean "stun gun". Which I find preferable because unlike SOME PEOPLE when you shoot them in the face most problems don't get up again, whereas when you use a stun gun they wake up with a sunburn and a raging headache. It's the little things that satisfy.

So I have decided to write to Ask Captain Jack and present him with my problem. I will be sneaky and he'll never know. I'm a master of subterfuge! Ask anyone. And they won't be able to tell you. I'm that good.

Dear Sir Captain Jack:

Now that I belong to a "social networking" website, people have started friending me. I'm not used to having "friends". What do I do with them?

My normal response to confusing situations is to hide in the pterodactyl's nest and weep copiously but I am uncertain how that would help in this situation. Please Advise!!

Love Sincerely,

Confused in Cardiff Splott

(no subject)

So, in reviewing chapter 42 of Jack & Ellis to prep the start of chapter 43, I somehow ended up copying the entire Jack & Ellis opus into a word file. It's 183,000 words. There's a linguistic regulator valve in my brain that just...blew out or something, I don't even know.

I've already made a tiny list of stuff to cut, but I'm actually kind of pleased that it's so huge because there were a lot of options open to me in where to take the story, and now when I go back through to edit it I can cut out the options I didn't follow up on. And write in the one thing I wish I had (Steampunk AI. No, it's gonna be awesome!).

Other than that, mostly what I did was answer phones and UNCOVER A MYSTERY.

Coworker J and I got to talking about street names (which is a long and boring story you don't want to hear) and he made me get on Google Maps and look for a specific street in the area just east of Old Town. We didn't have any luck finding that, but we did discover that north of the Clark & Division El stop is Hal Sanitarium.

It's pretty unusual to see anything called a sanitarium these days, so I thought I'd look it up. Turns out, Wikipedia doesn't know what it is. Google doesn't even seem to know -- almost every search hit on it is a spampage obviously generated from the Google maps caption. You can't even see it from streetview on Google Maps -- some of the streets aren't viewable, and the one clear street has a suspicious light-refraction sunburst that throws the whole area into shadow.

I'm deathly curious as to what Hal Sanitarium is (searches on "Halco Sanitarium", the only helpful google-reference, also turn up nothing). Coworker J and I have a field trip to the Sanitarium Of Mystery planned, but he refuses to go wandering around the freezing northside until the weather is nicer.

Besides, neither of us want to be eaten by hellbeasts from beyond released into our reality by the psychic energy of a thousand tormented madmen. It's just not the way to spend an evening, frankly.

(no subject)

WHAT I HAVE FOUND OUT:

Hal Sanitarium is not:
1) The Municipal Tuberculosis Sanitarium
2) The Battle Creek Sanitarium
3) Lake County Sanitarium (it's in Waukegan)
4) Lincoln Park Sanitarium (coulda been, dammit)
5) Mentioned in Academic Search Elite, LexisNexis, Jstor, or the archives of the Chicago Historical Society (inasmuch as I can discover in their catalogue).

Theatre On The Lake IS:
1) A former sanitarium
2) A TERRIBLE VENUE (to be fair I already knew this)

Relatedly:
1) Hal Totten was a sports announcer at Wrigley Field in the 20s and quite the snappy dresser though it's easy to see why he was wearing that fedora.
2) I must find and read the Chicago Historical Society document entitled "Persuading God back to Herrin : being a true account of a successful and unusual experiment in journalism conducted by the Herrin news by resorting to the old time religion to regenerate a community that some thought God had forgotten". It's like a Moliere satire waiting to happen.
3) Ladies, I give you Hal Weeks.

God, I fucking love history.