There is a dead rat in the wall behind my bed, and my whole fucking room stinks. Since I can't take a sledgehammer and break down the wall, I am going to have to tolerate the fucking stinkage for a few more weeks, paranoid that it is actually my laundry or myself that smells like rot.
Its actually gotten worse in the past 48 hours. Theres nothing I can do. Its bullshit. I mean, if I call the landlord about the rats constantly scratching in the wall right behind my head at night, and now dying and rotting there, can they do anything? Take down the entire wall or something? Yeah right.
I decided I could tolerate the noise but this stench is bullshit.
Also, the bathroom permanetly smells like mildew.
I think that living on the ground floor is way more problematic, and I'm taking note for the future.

in the event that homosexual marriages become legal in washington via court challenges, i’ve already begun preparing. i got ordained by the universal life church, which i think should suffice to the law as “any minister or priest of any church or religious denomination.” the irs seems to recognize the universal life church, and it is one of the few i could find that doesn’t have a doctrinal conflict with atheism. secular humanism is another option that i need to research further. my boss has already approved me taking off of work on short notice to go to city hall and perform marriages, should legalization occur and should the county temporarily waive the regular 3 day waiting period on marriage licenses. i’ve started working out templates for short ceremonies but non-new-age-hokey, non-patriarchal, non-religious templates are a bit difficult to come by.

So, Marcia helped me get a freelance photography assignment for the Washington Post Express (thank you, Marcia)... And when I called the person who was setting up the shoot, they were like "Josh Sisk... do you have a website?" To which I replied... Indeed. Then she said "Killoggs.com?" and I was like "Uh... that's right." She then went on to explain that she was the person who interviewed me and Ben for the US News & World Report blogging story 2-3 years ago.

Pretty wild coincidence.

It's cool, Saturday I am going out to shoot this picture of a young couple and their condo. I just got an email for a possible other assignment, too. It's nice to fufill one of my goals for the year.

There's a human skull (+ mandible) sitting on my desk. They let us take it home from lab. It was so weird walking around town with a human skull in a box. I took it home because I need to learn all the bone and bony landmarks, foramina and structures that pass through the foramina for Tuesday, when I'll be "presenting/teaching" my lab group (student-led teaching, we each get a turn). But rather than inspiring me to study, it's inspiring me to do that soliloquy in Hamlet, and take silly pictures with it, sort of like Amelie did with the garden gnome.

Tonight, I took a cab from a friend's house to meet Linus to see "The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra" which wasn't as dreadfully bad as it has been reviewed -- nor was it good.

After I told the cabby that I wanted to go to the Landmark on Diversey, he asked me what I wanted to see:

I explained that I wanted to see the movie.

"A skeleton... is it a horror movie?"

"No, it's more like a spoof"

Silence

"Like a comedy."

"Oh, a comedy. I don't go to the movies much. But..."

And he made an odd pause.

"Do you celebrate the Hannukah?"

"No, no, I don't." I said, distracted by some Roscoe Village chick through the window, but thinking it was an odd question nonetheless.

"Well, you should see the Passion of the Christ. I wept. Many people there with me wept. These people, you know, the Jews, they have been doing this for so long 2,000 years. The Palestinian people who belong there now, they are whipped everyday in the same manner. The people have not changed, the Jews, I mean, only the technique."

"Yeah," I said, "The technology."

I didn't want to go into how the Israel did not exist for most of those two millenia.

"The Palestinians today were like that great man. They have no weapons. They allow themselves to be beaten because they know they are right. The Jews are butchers."

"I wept." He reiterated.

"Do you believe in the Jesus?"

"No, actually, I don't know what to think about that." I offered

Silence.

"Where are you from?" I asked.

"India." He said, "I believe in non-violence. But I believe in the Jesus."

"What did you do in India?" He obviously wasn't going to shut up, so I tried to steer him to another subject.

"I was an engineer. I'm going to nightschool now at UIC (Indian cabbies in Chicago always say that. I have no idea if it's true or not.) "

"I believe in resistance through nonviolence." he said, "But, what is happening in Palestine today is evil. It is the same people doing the same thing that they've always done. I believe, like many people, that nonviolence is not always appropriate."

"Also," he continued, "It is our money that keeps the Israeli's alive. If our money were not there to prop them up. They could not continue to do as they do."

"They are a no-good people. I didn't realize it, until I left seeing the movie with watery eyes."

He took wellington up and dropped me at the corner.

It wouldn't have bothered me so much, had I not spent a good part of the afternoon in bed beneath doses of tylenol, reading The Turner Diaries.

That's all. Didn't mean to bring it up again.