Why Russia is about to invade Ukraine

     Have you ever seen anything made in Russia? I don't mean an automobile or a toaster? I mean slacks. Or a steak knife.
     I bet you haven't. Russia doesn't even have a significant share of the vodka market. The United States exports more vodka than Russia. So does Sweden. And France.
     Ever wonder why that is? This is the nation that once known for its craftsmanship. Whose jewelers constructed those amazing Faberge eggs, the treasure of kings. The answer: because Russia is a failed state. Nearly a century of soul-crushing, initiative-dampening communism morphing into an organized crime kleptocracy. A totalitarian state reflecting the grain-of-sand soul of Vladimir Putin, a former KGB goon. Without natural gas they'd be even more impoverished than they already are.

     Its people are crushed down, cynical bitter. The result of living in an atmosphere of official lies. Something for Americans to look forward to, perhaps.
     Hence the pending Ukrainian invasion. Because everyone wants to be significant, or at least pretend to be, even nations screwed by themselves and history. They need to shine on the world stage, and aggression is the go-to move of the weak. Every 5th grade dimwit, every isolated octogenarian sputtering contempt at the others in the day room; constant criticism and knee jerk hostility is the language of the weak, oppression their philosophy, their religion. It's all they have left to feel important, powerful, alive. That's why the Republican Party, as it shifts into a totalitarian cult, has to conjure up imaginary weeping liberals and lap up their tears, an elixir to maintain their strength. Because otherwise they got nothing. And why they must be opposed. The only argument they understand is defeat, their natural condition.

Flashback 2010: Kinky Llama delivers on the double

     In October, I visited Andersonville's Early to Bed sex device store to celebrate their 20th anniversary—they sent a press release, and I figured it was a chance to peek into a world that doesn't get into the paper much. While was checking to see if "dildo" is the sort of word than can run in a family newspaper, I stumbled upon this, and thought it might serve as a Valentine’s Day diversion while I'm in Colorado. It was back when the column covered a page, and I have left in the sub-headings.

Anthony Mikrut with his custom-made Gary Fisher bike
 with studded tires. (Sun-Times photo by Al Podgorski)

OPENING SHOT . . .  
     Valentine's Day gifts can be a puzzlement to us long-married folk. Candy is out—diets— anything expensive roils the budget; anything cheap, well, is cheap. Though this year I blundered upon a novel romantic gift source that, frankly, would never cross my mind in a million years. But I'm getting ahead of the tale.
     Male homosexuality was made a crime in Great Britain while lesbianism wasn't, the story goes, because Queen Victoria objected to the lesbian clauses in the law, announcing that ladies simply do not do that kind of thing.
     Too good to be true, but the tale nicely serves as an image of sexual naivete, and came to mind the moment I heard of the Kinky Llama.
     Not because the Kinky Llama is an online purveyor of sexual devices—dildos, vibrators, gags, that kind of thing. I realize people buy that stuff.
     But what threw me is that, for a mere $5 fee, Kinky Llama's owner, Anthony Mikrut, will bicycle over to your Chicago home, apartment or office, any time of the day or night, and deliver your new sex toy. Business is jumping—Tuesday, he rode 35 miles in all that snow, making deliveries. Ninety-eight percent of his delivery customers are women.
     "No!" I said, incredulous. "Do women really DO that?"
     "Oh yes," said Terri Miller, a Kinky Llama customer. "It happens. You're in a situation. You're looking for something, like lube. Something is necessary in the middle of the night."

RESTRAINTS, GAGS, INFLATABLE SHEEP

     And these people in these situations . . . they're hookers, right?
     "He has clients who are in the sex industry," said Miller, 36, who sells telecommunications equipment. "Bachelorette parties—there are a lot of reasons why."
     Some are in need of condoms. Others keep odd hours.
     What threw me was the middle-of-the night immediacy; would not one improvise rather than go online and order up material?
     "Say you lost your handcuff key," said Miller. "And you realize it after the fact. You can order up handcuff keys and have the Kinky Llama deliver them to your partner."
     The need must be out there.
     "My business tripled last year from the year before," said Mikrut, 34, who started the Kinky Llama in 2006.
     He does have a day job—a manager at Village Cycle Center on Wells. That one detail convinced me this is real. After all, $5 isn't enough for you or I to hop on our bikes, but for a bicycle fanatic, it's plenty.
     I could see where "Kinky" is from, but "Llama"? Are llamas known for . . . ?
     "It's my nickname," said Mikrut, explaining it's from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," where a llama figures in the credits. "My family called me 'Llama,' everybody calls me 'Llama.' "
     OK Llama . . . so what exactly are we talking about here? What's a big seller?
     "A lot of rabbits," he says.
     Such as the Waterproof Jack Rabbit, $52.99 in pink or purple.
     "I delivered a rabbit to a couple making out in a car," said Mikrut. "I showed up to make the delivery, and no one was there. I was leaving, and people in a car said, 'Wait, wait, that's for us.' She tipped me 30 bucks."
     And those rabbits, they're, umm, effective devices, are they?
     "It's insertable. It vibrates, it turns," said Miller. "It . . . does all kinds of crazy things."
     A good gift for one's Valentine?
     "She might like it," said Miller. "You might eliminate the need for yourself."
     Well that's the rub, isn't it? It seems a lose-lose proposition (at least for the guy) -- either the gift is rejected as an obscene joke, or it's welcomed, and used, making certain people moot who do not want to be moot.
     What shocked me was the ease with which Kinky Llama customers discuss this.
     "I heard about it; I ordered some things delivered," said Becky Welbes. "There're all kinds of things to choose from. The one I bought was to be used by myself, but could probably also be used by a partner."
     And the one-hour delivery?
     "You're like, 'I don't really feel like going to the store right now,' " she said. "It was, like, 12:30 and I didn't feel like going outside. I thought: 'I could use something' and didn't really want to go to Walgreens at 3 in the morning."
     This struck me as contrary to the dictum that a lady should see her name in the paper three times, when she is born, when she marries and when she passes on.
     "With the younger generation people are a lot more proactive and open-minded about sex toys and all that," said Welbes, 24. "The younger generation grew up with it; people are a lot more accepting of sex as being part of pop culture. I don't think people are as bashful."
     That they aren't. Mikrut says that yes, customers do inquire about, ah, product demonstrations.
     "I've been invited in a couple times," he said. "But I don't go. It could be bad. I try not to mix the two together. I don't want to ruin a customer either."
     He expects to ride 150 miles Sunday on his black custom-made bike sporting carbide studded tires. The Web site, if you need to be told, is kinkyllama.com.

TODAY'S CHUCKLE . . .

     I'm not sure if this is actually funny, but I laughed, and the guy in my office laughed, and my wife laughed when I told her, so if you don't, you're outvoted, three to one.
     REPORTER: So, what are you going to do for Valentine's Day?
     COLUMNIST: Stay married.
       —originally published in the Sun-Times, Feb. 12, 2010.

Turn around.

\

     It was 6 a.m., still dark, when my brother and I set out to the Wonderland Creek Greenway Trail, just beyond our parents' town home in Boulder, Colorado. We spoke of the practical and emotional difficulties of closing down the place where our folks have lived for 35 years, and moving them to Chicago. We paused to admire ducks on a pond, the sky slowly brightening, and went about a mile and a half when we decided we'd better turn around and get back at our task.
     The "VEHICLE CROSSING" sign was illuminated by the first morning rays. It practically glowed an I briefly considered taking a photo of it for future use. But "VEHICLE CROSSING" is not a particularly enigmatic sign, not like "CAUTION" or "GO SLOW." It didn't seem something that could prove useful to me here, not worth fishing my phone out of my back pocket and bringing it to my eye.
     But some subsystem in my brain must have been working, considering what the sun bouncing off the sign meant, that faint pink cast to the clouds. I stopped and looked behind us.
     "Hey Sam," I said. "Turn around."

North Shore Notes: Soaring

    Our Saturday correspondent, Caren Jeskey, is back on her feet, and returns with her regular report, sharing a surprising development:

     A ruddy faced man with gleaming eyes and a glossy Irish Setter heeling by his side rounded the bend towards me. I’d gotten turned around on a walk in Kenilworth on my way to downtown Wilmette. The streets were designed to keep outsiders out— not easy thoroughfares. A man kindly stopped and offered me directions. “Just take this street to a wall with two doors in it.”
     I collect quotes of the day— sentences I repeat in my head or aloud to myself that conjure up fun images. or otherwise bring me delight — and this one was it.
     “A wall with two doors.” My life, once again, is a French movie. (An artistic ex used to remind me that all we have to do is choose to see the world through the eyes of Amelie or another acteur dans un film d'art et d'essai if we want to soak up the deliciousness). As I moved on, I smiled and gazed up at the stark bare trees on this glorious winter day. I was hoping to see an eagle, or a hawk at least. I settled for a giant crow, cawing majestically from the very top of an impressively aged elm.
     I headed in the direction apple cheeks pointed me to, and found myself on 10th Street. I turned right to head the mile or so to my destination. A couple walking a graying black lab named Fiona cautioned me that the sidewalk was icy. I wanted to walk in the street but feared the wrath of drivers. I’d chance the messy sidewalk. I yielded to a man wearing black Adidas sneakers with crisp white stripes. As he passed me I warned him about the ice ahead.
     I stayed a virus cautious 20 feet or so behind him. Sure enough, he misjudged the situation and I watched him tumble into a hard fall, his arms flailing about and his messenger bag flying into the snow. The first thing he did was look back at me from his flat on the back position— I’m not sure if it was out of embarrassment or camaraderie. The two of us just trying to get some exercise in the dead of a Chicago Winter. I called out “are you ok?” and he said “yes!” He got up and brushed himself off. I suggested that we retire to the street, drivers be darned. He agreed. Again I gave him about 20 feet of space and we walked single file towards Central Avenue.
     At the end of the trek we chatted a bit. He thanked me for my support and the warning that he had not heeded. I reminded him to take some ibuprofen as soon as possible, for I knew he’d be bruised and in some pain when the adrenaline wore off. I had wiped out on the roof of Mariano’s myself just a couple weeks ago, and again when I forgot that Yaktrax are not ideal for a dark foyer with concrete floors. These little coils that slip over your shoes work great on the ice, and I highly recommend them, but please be careful on surfaces other than snow, ice, or nubby concrete when you have them on.
     Adidas and I parted ways. I passed an old wood-framed house with a porch that’s made for sitting. I passed the bell that was originally rung to gather Wilmette residents to the town square many moons ago, and the Lutheran church with the banner reading “Black Lives Matter to God and to Us.”
     I stepped into Torino and ordered a citrusy ramen to go — double masked of course— then I headed to Central Station Coffee & Tea. I left there with an oat milk latte with their homemade raspberry syrup. Small paper shopping bag of noodle soup in one hand, coffee cup in the other, I gingerly made my way back to my new rental home a mile and a half west.
     A mere two weeks ago I was miserable and sleep deprived since loud neighbors had moved in on December 1st. The stress of it all put a damper on my holidays, my career, and my well-being. Today I sleep in a place so quiet I can easily forget anyone else is around at all.
      Three weeks ago a neighbor was carjacked in her alley in my old neighborhood of Ravenswood after dropping her child off at school. A woman was carjacked on the 5100 block of North Broadway three weeks ago today. She had just gotten her car back from her last carjacking the previous Wednesday. I am very concerned for her. I had to stop reading a local neighborhood group’s Facebook posts since the outrageous number of shootings less than two miles from where I was living, on a weekly basis, were impossible to digest.
     A savvy friend commented “I knew you’d end up in the suburbs” because I was so craving a quiet home to live, rest, and work in. If I am to show up for my burgeoning caseload of clients I have to have peace and safety myself. I sincerely wish everyone on this planet could have the same.
     Just before I moved, a neighbor snapped a photo of an eagle in a tree near Wilson and the river. There is beauty and delight around every corner for all of us, but only some of us have the good fortune to be able to enjoy the wonders of this world. For others, life is a daily exercise in survival.

Boulder flashback 1999: Traffic signals curb risks

      I have an affinity for fire hydrants, traffic signals, street lamps and stop signs. So it made sense that I would notice a new kind of WALK sign that is now ubiquitous but I first noticed on a trip to the People's Republic of Boulder.

BOULDER, COL.— How you cross the street says a lot about who you are.

     Young bucks, for example, clad in the false immunity of youth, saunter into the intersection whether or not they have a WALK sign, laughing and talking among themselves.
     They never notice the cars jamming on the brakes, allowing them to live. Or, if they do, they toss an indifferent "Hey, kill me" shrug.
     On the other hand, we older people tend to respect the crossing signs. We perch patiently on the curb, holding our coats tight at the collar, waiting for the signal.
     There is safety in the cautious approach, though it does hold its own kind of danger—an emotional rather than physical danger. It's humiliating to stand planted like a palm, respectfully gazing with Pavlovian obedience at the DON'T WALK sign while assorted passersby—old ladies and 8-year-old boys and such—brush past, crossing in that yawning period of time after the WALK signal goes off but before the light changes.
     I thought this was a problem with attitude, perhaps a lack of courage. But an invention I spied while visiting Boulder, Colo., not only suggested it is a mere technological matter but also presented a clever solution.
     Boulder has a downtown pedestrian mall, the way Oak Park used to, only this one succeeded and is popular with mobs of shoppers, jugglers, funny hat salesmen and grubby youth hanging out, waiting for Jerry Garcia to rise from the grave.
     At the mall's main intersections, surging crowds tended to fill the intersection the moment traffic stopped and not leave until the cars actually began rolling forward, shooing them to the curb.
     To address this problem, Boulder installed a WALK/DON'T WALK sign unlike any I have ever seen: the moment the little pedestrian is displayed, signaling it is OK to walk, a red big numeral next to it begins counting down the seconds until the street light will change and traffic will start up again.
     "We call them the Countdown Pedestrian Heads," said Joe Paulson, signal operations engineer for the city's transportation division, explaining that the city put them in last year at two high-traffic locations.
     We talked a long time about pedestrian signals. I never thought about it before, but the reason you have trouble at crosswalks is because, when the system was designed, they tried to economize and squeezed the information conveyed by traffic lights with three signals—red, amber and green—into just two signals: WALK and DON'T WALK.
     "It's an unfortunate nomenclature," Paulson said. "What we really mean to say is, start crossing and if you haven't started, don't start now."
     Paulson said the countdown indicator, which begins when the WALK signal is flashed and ends when the light changes (with four seconds of grace for daredevils) is a great success.
     "People notice them, they intuitively understand them and, generally, they like them."
     We don't have anything like that in Chicago, and given the system's lone drawback—at $ 550 a pop, it costs more than twice what the standard signals cost—we aren't likely to get one soon.
     But at least it's good to know that the problem is solved somewhere and that it's not our fault.
                  —Originally published in the Sun-Times, May 25, 1999

Boulder Flashback 2000: "A big world hidden in small worlds"

NCAR

      Off to Boulder today on family business. I've been going there for almost half a century, and every now and then someone asks why I don't live there. It's sooooo beautiful.

      "Just lucky I guess," is one explanation. This is another. Reading it now, for the first time after 20 years, I'm surprised that I've turned into a pants-wetting liberal, because this sounds like a proto- crusty libertarian venting his disdain. Or even—horrors!—a conservative-in-the-making. Dodged that bullet.

     BOULDER, COL.—When the wind is calm, the mountains act as a bowl, trapping the smoky effluvia drifting up from the city in a stagnant brown haze.
     This haze dampens the finely tuned self-regard of people here by implying they live in a polluted place. So they are moved to action: They ban fires in fireplaces, communicating that fires are verboten that day by printing a red dot on the front page of the newspapers. If the coast is clear, the dot is blue.
     It is no empty threat. If a cop notices smoke coming out of your chimney on a red dot day, he'll give you a ticket.
     The ban is gospel. My mother, normally as cynical as myself, if not more so, eagerly chirped, "It's a blue dot day!" when I arrived and demanded the traditional Prodigal Son greeting of Manhattans, Scrabble and a fire in the fireplace.
     As an outsider, it is clear to me that the fireplace business is a sham, both overly intrusive and ineffectual. If they really want to cut down on the haze, they would somehow restrict those giant sport-utility vehicles even more popular here than in Lincoln Park, because mountains exist here in reality rather than in daydream.
     But to do that might inconvenience people, might keep them from blasting from Starbucks to soccer to Whole Foods.
     It's all part of what I've come to refer to as "The People's Republic of Boulder," a net of well-intended social programming that sounds progressive until you actually think about it.
     For instance: My mother showed off her new cellular phone, the service for which is provided free by the city. They do this because she teaches in the public schools. If you fail to make the connection, here's a hint: Columbine. Rather than entertain the notion that such tragedies are unique events that cannot be forestalled, it's easier, if not cheaper, to give away free cell phone service, so teachers are ready to call in SWAT teams next time.
     The town is peppered with progressive, Swedenlike socialist bells and whistles: crosswalks with flashing yellow strobe lights built into the street, to catch the attention of speeding SUV owners. Big signs that flash: "YOU ARE SPEEDING!" to shame drivers into slowing. Camera/radar devices at intersections check your speed, take a picture of your car and mail a ticket without diverting any of Boulder's finest from their chimney-checking duties.
     Every time I visit, my parents—oblivious to the Singaporelike police state in which they live—make the pitch that I should abandon my life in dynamic, frantic, forward-straining Chicago to join the cultlike sonambulism of life in Boulder.
     The notion always leaves me speechless. Why anybody would want to live in a town where the officials are sniffing at your chimney? Where all the women aspire to look like Spanish widows from a W. Eugene Smith photo essay—plain, coarse-spun clothes, severe hair pulled straight back and covered? I swear, there's more makeup in Sugar Rautbord's purse than in the whole town.
     There's no way to tell my parents this, of course. The smaller the place, the more certain its residents are that they live in the only spot on Earth.
     My visit reminded me of the time I went to the top of the Sears Tower with a trio of Yanomamo Indians from South America. They were the real thing—they checked their spears at the entrance to the observation deck. They stood for a long time, gazing out at the enormous vista of streets and buildings, running to the horizon.
     What, I asked one, through an interpreter, will he say about this to their fellow tribesman, back in the rain forest?
     He said: "I am going back to tell my people that though we call ourselves 'the fierce people,' and we think we are The People, there is a greater world out there than we realize."
     Isn't that how it always is?

     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Feb. 10, 2000

Wordle: like winning a tiny lottery

     Maybe carjacking. The mayor said something judgy and tone-deaf, again. A reader phoned, Monday, offering a photo of his friend, killed for his Mercedes in the South Loop. That never happened before. “I’m sorry for your loss,” I said, flustered at how blase he was. I passed the photo on to the city desk.
     Maybe expressway shootings. My kid drives the Dan Ryan to work every day, and at each bulletin of the latest shooting, I check the age of the victim, if unnamed, to reassure myself that it isn’t him. Is that too personal to put in the paper? Probably.
     Or maybe Wordle. Yes, definitely Wordle. In a world gone completely bonkers, between our endless pandemic and World War III about to break out in the Ukraine, Wordle is a balm. With the news an endless grating atonal symphony performed by an orchestra of car alarms, train horns and fingernails raked across chalkboards, Wordle provides five minutes of calm, quiet, focus, and the expectation of success.
     Wordle is a word game, if you’re one of the few who haven’t played yet.
     Created last year by Welsh software engineer Josh Wardle,CQ Wordle exploded in December when he fiddled with the algorithm so players could share their scores. Like any good virus, Wordle is highly contagious.
     “Guess the WORDLE in 6 tries,” the instructions explain. “Each guess must be a valid 5 letter word. Hit the enter button to submit. After each guess, the color of the tiles will change...”
     The game is simplicity itself. A grid with 30 square boxes, five across, six down. Underneath, a QWERTY keyboard. Nothing else. No advertisements, yet. My wife always starts with “ADIEU” as her first guess, because of the four vowels. If the word you guess contains a letter in today’s mystery word, that letter comes up green if in the right place, yellow if right but in a different position. And letters that aren’t in today’s word at all are gray.

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