Sunday, August 28, 2005

minor corrections

[This was actually posted at 2:10 AM on the 28th, but I'll leave it where it is.]

Sigh. If I still can't write about the Quimby's show on Aug. 20 (and my cynical gin-inflected mood right now makes me wonder if I should bother; no one's posted here since it happened anyway) just yet, and besides, I have a horrible new story to tell (see below re: break-in), at least I can point you to Jason Pettus' very entertaining reports on it, posted Wed. Aug. 24:

http://www.jasonpettus.com/archives/000210.html
http://www.jasonpettus.com/archives/000209.html

I love that Jason posted such a detailed and illustrated account of the night (even though, oddly, on my computer, two of the photos that don't come up are the one of me and the one taken in my apartment!), and that he says he was looking forward to this as an audience member, as well as a performer.

But I'd like to gently correct a few details (in the order they occurred in his reports):

Okay, this time the name of my book-in-progress is correct (he's not the only one to get it wrong in the past). It's not so much about my ten years in Chicago as about mid-2003 to the present, but with plenty of flashbacks, so I won't quibble.

I should point out, though, that I didn't actually make a suicide attempt. Not to get too picky about uh, whether I've actually tried to kill myself or not, but for the sake of accuracy, people should know I haven't. It's definitely something they might think based on my doing a zine called Thinking about Suicide, so I'm not offended. I just hope no one I'm related to sees that. (Technically, a person could sue for libel over something like that. But not me, obviously.)

Moving on...Jonathan Messinger's show at the Hideout is Dollar Store, not Dollar Show; the link takes you to "information.com," one of those blah little links pages that has nothing to do with any kind of show...

Shag's Little Thing, which ran at Phyllis' Musical inn for six years (and we hope, will start again in a new venue), was an open mic/variety show, not a "reading series." (But I'VE been invited to arrange/host a new reading series, and maybe Shag will be involved.)

Oh, and yes, though my apartment IS filled with vintage and kitschy and pop-culture and retro stuff, the cage my parakeet lives in (just one now; as many as 4 have lived in it at a time) definitely isn't antique; it was $20 or so, I think from one of those discount stores on a Latino section of Milwaukee Ave. (It does have an older style to it. But I believe--and it's been a long time since I've read any bird-care information--you're not supposed to actually use antique cages for live pets; at least, you should never use old wooden cages. Hidden dangers.)

Anyway, hope that helps. Again, I'm really grateful for the reports, especially since 1) people actually read Jason's blog, as opposed to this one [but there's no sign that anyone's read MINE because of him
linking to it] and 2) he knows how to put photos up, which I haven't bothered to figure out yet, despite taking nice ones every day.

Various nerdy endeavors

Here’s about a week’s worth of the dorky things I do because I don’t have a job and I’m done with school. I also saw my boyfriend several times. Oh, and got my apartment broken into. See the other 8/28 posts.

The first story doesn’t make me look good—but then, neither do the details in last Monday’s post (I have AOL dial-up AND DSL? My ex-roommate owes me a five-figure sum?).

***
My “poster” for the Aug. 20 Quimby’s show was an 11x17 color copy, the text overlaid over favorite Chicago photos I’ve taken and 3 very different Chicago maps. I needed to get one up quickly so I actually paid for a color copy at the Kinko’s a block from the store (I inexplicably put $30 or $40 on a copy card once, and it could take years to use it up). It was on the nice slick color copy paper. Later I made more color 11x17s somewhere else that cost me, um, less, but unfortunately aren’t on the slick paper.

Anyway, I forgot to take the poster down after the show and couldn’t get to the store Sunday, so I went by Monday afternoon before running my suburban trip. And it’d been thrown out because the employee thought it was “just a copy.” Okay, so it wasn’t screenprinted or cardstock or anything…but maybe it looks like something someone might want back. The employee found it in the trash, crumpled up of course, and I took it.

It always feels HORRIBLE to have someone get something out of the garbage for you—no matter how valuable or sentimental it is, this is a deeply humiliating occurrence. I don’t know if this’ll make sense to people, but I wanted it back not just for sentimental value (this was the one actually in the store window), but because this was a copy I paid for, and NOT because of the cost, but for the SYMBOLIC VALUE of being a color copy I paid for, when I usually don’t have to pay for them.

That little incident made it impossible to talk to the Quimby’s employees right then about how the Aug. 20 had actually been. And I'm not kidding when I say this cast a cloud over the next few hours.

At the Harlem Blue Line station, I’d just missed the 209 bus, so I had time to walk a few blocks around there, taking pictures of kitschy signs, adding to the long list of pancake house/family restaurant/snack shop establishments to “get to someday.” I almost got something at a burrito place but I’m glad I didn’t because right away in Des Plaines I saw that the little cafĂ© under construction had recently opened—it’s Mexican, bright and new and “cheerful”, and had better prices and more vegetarian choices than the Chicago place I skipped. Veggie or potato tacos, $1.40! I had a huge burrito with avocado slices nicely inserted in the middle cut.

I returned books and browsed the new books at the library, checked out 5 more, and took 209 back to the midpoint of its route, Park Ridge’s Metra stop.

I stepped in what I thought quite possibly was the wrong direction (the literal other side of the tracks), but hey, I had a feeling—and almost instantly arrived at [My Last Name] Park! (Isn’t it worth the risk of giving up the entire semi-anonymous thing, just so I won’t have to invent such tortured locutions as [My Last Name] Park?) I didn’t know any people of renown in Chicagoland had [my last name]. I saw a plaque for the town’s time capsule, buried in 1973. And the city hall across the street, but no library.

In fact, I’d given up and headed to Panera, when I realized that big building across from the gorgeous old theater looked suspiciously library-like. And it was! I went in for about an hour. (Full report when I write my piece on “Libraries of the Suburbs” you’ve been clamoring for.) I picked out books to check out then realized the Chicago library was closed, so Park Ridge probably couldn’t call them to confirm my card and let me check out books…

So I walked out, through a highly restaurant- and coffeeshop-saturated (seriously, two Starbucks within a block? In a suburb?) area, and had bottomless coffee at Panera for a while, then got the 9:00 bus heading home.

***
Tuesday afternoon I was interviewed by Vanessa [oops, had to edit this later--sorry].... I met her at the Perpetual Motion Roadshow in Chicago Aug. 13; turns out she’d bought and read Noncompliant and written to my PO Box, but I hadn’t checked my mail since before the Portland trip.

She’s an anthropology student who got a grant from her college to come to Chicago this summer and interview people about zines. At the Quimby’s event, we set up a meeting at Earwax in Wicker Park.

I really enjoyed this, partly because I uh, like talking about myself (although her questions were more about how the interviewees perceive and fit into the zine community, and not much about what their specific project is), and partly because I’d been out of the zine scene for so long, I like hearing people’s ideas about where it’s at now.

My one minor complaint was that she didn’t have a prepared list of questions—not that I needed the discussion to be particularly efficient or whatever; it’s that I kept worrying I was spiraling off into all kinds of tangential topics (i.e. the history of Ajax Records). I explained everything all out of chronological order.

I thought of a really good question later—one that I’d love to hear other people across the zine world answer—do they regard their zines purely as an end in themselves, or as a stepping-stone to a so-called-“legitimate” (not self-published) writing career? For me, it’s both; I’d still love to do zines even if I was a published author, but I can’t imagine not wanting to take my writing to a wider audience and “only” doing zines. I wish I’d asked Portland people about this. Anyway, that’s a tricky topic I’ll expand on another time.

***
Tuesday evening I went to Andersonville, for the second in the Bookslut reading series, although by the time I got there I realized I wouldn’t stay, I’d be going to see Star Wars in Grant Park. But I told a couple people I’d be there—like Jason, who gave me back some stuff he’d borrowed, and Charles Blackstone, one of the readers. I bought his novel, The Week You Weren’t Here, from him at the Printers Row Book Fair. I like it a lot but didn’t get to see him read until Aug. 18 at Barbara’s Bookstore.

There’s this older man who goes to many readings and then asks lots of questions, often about how the author’s personal life relates to their work, and he asked Charles quite a few. I didn’t realize the extent he was a regular (when I see someone older at a book reading, I tend to think they’re a relative of the author, and it’s usually the case) until a Barbara’s employee said something. I definitely remember him badgering (but nicely) Elizabeth Crane. He showed up to the Hopleaf right as I was leaving.

Anyway, I had a couple things to ask Charles, and I did, and also said hi to Wendy McClure, who also read at the Quimby’s thing, and I didn’t say hi to Jessa Crispin, who I met last month, but at least this time I knew where the reading was, and found it early. (Referring to Jason’s story of the July reading, which got quoted in the Bookslut blog promo for August—about how attractive the audience was…)

***
The last outdoor movie in Grant Park this summer was Star Wars. We’d meant to go to another one but it never happened, so I thought we should see Star Wars. Also, because the early summer was spent watching Episodes I-III.

See, I said I’d go see the new one in theaters if he wanted, but I hadn’t seen Episodes I and II, and he said I needed to, so there was complicated process of borrowing a projector and setting up a decent, temporary home theater (also good for running through much of my Simpsons Season 5 DVD set) and renting I & II. Then finding a Chicago-area theater still showing III, and in certified THX sound, and so we saw it in Evanston on July 4, but the sound didn’t seem impressive enough (even I was underwhelmed)…Oh, it’s all a long epic tale of good and evil…

It’s been nearly 10 years since I (first!) saw the original Star Wars, and I honestly don’t remember much more of it than I would if I’ve never seen it (I mean, most people growing up in the U.S. absorb a fair amount of it without seeing it). I rushed downtown for the movie, starting a little after 8. I could tell people on my train car were going to it and once I got outside the flow of people with captain’s chairs and mats was obvious.

Since Shag and I hadn’t been to any of these outdoor movies, we didn’t set a meeting place, and we don’t have cell phones to find each other, so I decided it’d be better to try to see the movie than search for him. I sat on the grass for a little while, then a couple spots in the mostly empty bandshell area (not bad picture/sound for being so far away).

I realized we should have at least picked a meetup place for after the movie, but we didn’t, and I looked a while, and finally gave up and went home, but went to his place later that night, where he quizzed me on aspects of the movie and I realized how little I’d actually seen/absorbed. I missed a reading, and I end up missing both my boyfriend and much of the movie?! I still thought it was worth it, to see a movie outside in lovely weather and thousands of people and the Chicago skyline.

***
Wednesday afternoon may have been my first trip all the way to 95th on the Red Line. (My first outside glimpse of the station up close was during a southbound Greyhound trip—it’s a secondary Chicago stop.)
I had the foresight to head out during (the early side of) rush hour, so the train was too crowded for me to really see out. I took the West 95th bus to the Woodson regional library, at Halsted. Then to Hoyne, where I looked at the Beverly branch library (in a former church?!) and the very bustling Borders store. Then, at a new-ish shopping plaza (with the second time capsule plaque seen this week!), I went to Panera a while. All these were first-time visits. Waiting for the Western Ave. bus, after dark, I looked at Evergreen Plaza (kind of bleak) and one of those great and giant spaceship-resembling banks.

***
Saturday 8/27: my first visits to the Edgewater and Bezazian branch libraries, both far north. I got to Edgewater for the last hour of their big book sale, which I’ve heard of for several years but always miss. By then, it was $1 for all you could fit in a plastic bag, so after the first couple books, it’s like getting everything free!

I had decent luck--some fiction I wanted, “How to Publish a Fanzine” (Mike Gunderloy, 1988), 3 in the “Woman Alive” series of hardcover advice books (1974) (I’m slowly gathering the whole set from thrift stores; I actually had 2 of these 3 but took them all, because they were “free”), etc. That would have been worth the trip, but then I saw the cookbook section was full of recipe booklets, and I grabbed up everything I saw (plus a few spiral-bound organizational fund-raising cookbooks).

I LOVE these things (especially the mid-century ones)—put out by appliance manufacturers (Sunbeam Mixmaster Mixer “Portable Electric Cookery”) and gas companies (“Martha Holmes Holiday Recipes” from The Peoples Gas Light and Coke Company) and food industry organizations (“Frozen Foods the Automatic Way,” a 1940 booklet from the Evaporated Milk Association) and food companies (“You Can Count on Cereals,” which shows how “Grape-Nuts Wheat-Meal” is made), and newspapers (I have several “Mary Meade Recipes,” from Mary Meade, Home Economics Editor of the Chicago Tribune).

As with anything I like, I want to do a zine or zines about it someday, but for now I’ll just mention my favorites I got yesterday:

*The “Horseradish Recipe Book: New Cooking Magic with Horseradish” from the National Association of Horseradish Packers announces, “Horseradish…15 Million Pounds of It!”

*”Man-pleasing recipes,” from the Rice Council of America, 1971, starts, “No man likes the same thing every night!”

*”Cook with Vegetole, the All Purpose Shortening—It’s Texturated”

*”Enjoy Good Eating Every Day, the Easy Spry Way” with “Aunt Jenny,” 1949 (Spry was another vegetable shortening, “with cake improver”)

*”Bananas…how to serve them,” a wonderfully detailed and illustrated 1940 book from the Home Economics Department of the Fruit Dispatch Company. Mmm, “quick food energy”!

*I never thought about French’s Mustard being from the same company as French’s bird seed, but it is (and the R.T. French Company was on Mustard St.). On the back of “Mealtime Magic,” “Claudette Colbert enjoys her canary’s light-hearted song.” “Claudette Colbert, gay and sparkling, is one of Hollywood’s most glamorous and popular stars”

*Cheery Heering Liqueur’s 1964 booklet says “Entertain Differently in the Danish Manner” (with all sorts of cold meats, of course)

*”A Cook’s Tour with Minute Tapioca,” 1931!, contains “Superbly Effective Desserts for Formal and Informal Occasions” (who doesn’t prefer effective desserts?)

I took my unwieldy bag and got the Broadway bus and stopped at the Bezazian branch library. Bezazian (named after a soldier who died in WWII) inside looks incredibly like the Albany Park branch, almost like a mirror image of it. (Surely, this is my most obscure reference yet.)

***
And today I’m off to enjoy my last day as a 28-year old…

happy news or not

These are supposed to be happy times and all: I just planned/hosted my first event at Quimby's Bookstore in Chicago, I'm meeting all kinds of people who do cool stuff and maybe like what I'm doing, my birthday is this Monday, I've had my 10-year anniversary of living in Chicago, I just had the one-year anniversary of the first experience I'd label as "casual sex" (hmm, I don't think I'll be posting about that here--but look for details in City of Destiny, the book!), Thursday I got another cute haircut and after 10 years continuously dyeing my hair I'm growing the natural color back (what will it be?! we're all in such suspense!), I might be hosting a new reading series if I didn't have so many freaking computer problems preventing me from ever getting to my email to set the damn thing up, I'll be reading at Quimby's next week (9/3) as the "local guest" part of the Perpetual Motion Roadshow...

...and I can deal with minor, it-had-to-happen-eventually indignities like a guy I dated (years ago) apparently not recognizing me, last night at Quimby's (but then I realized earlier today, I'd also seen him at Fireside Bowl nearly 2 years ago and he didn't notice me then. This time I tried to get his attention, though, and shortly before he left did talk to him)...

...but 3 days before your birthday--that's just the WRONG TIME for the first (and it'd better be the last) time you've experienced someone breaking into your place and going through your stuff in a weird, invasive way, and...

well, I'll write more later.

Monday, August 22, 2005

the Quimby's event

...will be described shortly. I just needed to make some reference to it on the off chance that anyone reading Jason Pettus' site links to this one and only sees old/unrelated posts. He hasn't posted his report yet, but did tell a very interesting story I hadn't yet heard about a guy making furniture out of FedEx boxes, and getting in trouble with FedEx.

Anyway, for anyone who happened to read my months-ago post on my goals/dreams as a writer (that I now think of as "112 Easy Steps to Modest Literary Fame"), several developments since my Portland trip (which itself constititued a few of the steps):

1) the aforementioned Quimby's event (the first literary event I've assembled and hosted)

2) my first hostile response to my current literary endeavors (I mean, what I've started in the past couple years)--well, I only read a little of the email, but what jumped out seemed hostile, and you can bet I'll post a response here (the person seemed to misinterpret me politically, and I didn't feel personally hurt by it)

3) an invitation--and this was before the Quimby's thing (but as far as I know, hasn't been rescinded after it)--to curate/host a reading series at a fairly new, all-ages space...

More on all those later. I'm in a hurry now to go retrieve the poster I left in the Quimby's window, return library books to Des Plaines (which, if you know anything about me or my projects, is the "real" City of Destiny), and hopefully check out the Park Ridge library and Panera store for the first time (it's good to have ambitions in life).

back from Portland

uh,for about twoweeks now. In this entry: CTA, Portland Oregon, computer stuff.

Updating my previous couple posts: the CTA Tattler blog, because of stories like mine below (as I've inferred from a Chicago Tribune article about it, that referred to the particular CTA snafu I experienced and the resulted blog posts), has started some kind of live CTA delay/reroute/whatever news feed (with no official connection to the CTA, but it's something that CTA employees themselves will probably use--it's easy for upset passengers to forget that often the drivers/station workers don't know any more than we do about what's going on during delays)--which is a wonderful idea, although utterly useless to those of us whose only high-tech personal gadget we carry around is a digital camera, and who have the misfortune to be stuck with fellow passengers (see my story below) who are completely apathetic about finding out about the delay they're experiencing.

Christ, that was just one sentence.

I did get to check email once during my Portland trip, a couple hours after I arrived there, at a coffeeshop that gave 15 min. free Internet to customers, which I learned about from a cool guy I met on the Greyhound into town. I didn't think I had time to post to the blog then, and I very much wanted to go back during my short trip but the place was closed (Sun. early evening) when I tried. I've never posted to CoD except from my home computer. it's not just that I wanted to post from Portland, it's that I wanted to post from what's got to be the smallest coffeeshop I've EVER seen. There's seating for about 5 in front of the counter, and maybe 2 more outside. Trust me, the place is tiny. The owner was very friendly and the drinks relatively inexpensive. The store is called Wired on Burnside, as it's on Burnside, a few blocks west of downtown (21st or 22nd?).

Anyway. I'll post SOME things about the trip here, but I'm really planning to write a zine about it--all in one sitting at a coffeeshop, as I've done once before. (For a zine called, of course, Coffee-Fueled Cliche.) I would have done it by now but I also need photos and...(long boring explanation deleted) I can't download/print my photos at home right now.

I've been hit with numerous computer troubles. My PC's hard drive was nearly full before I left , and the first time I turned it on after I got back, it came on and then--poof!--shut off and couldn't be turned on again. Power supply trouble, I heard, and my wonderful boyfriend came over (shortly before an important deadline, I might add) and spent the day transferring the hard drive into the Mac. See, I had a PC and Mac (left behind by my former roommate, who owes me a five-figure amount for back rent/bills, by the way) side by side on my desk. I used the PC for all my data--word processing, photos--and for AOL dialup. And the Mac for DSL, which doesn't work on the PC, but the Mac isn't attached to my printer, so any Internet stuff I wanted to print had to be put on disk and transferred to the PC. It was an okay setup, but as of last Sunday, the Mac has both Mac and PC hard drives in it.

Anyway, since then, I've had at least a couple other problems that limited email access, so I've been even worse than usual about it. And I still don't have a way to download photos or print anything, and I hope I can get it all taken care of soon so I can several shorter zines I've been planning done.

Some of the computer problems were easily fixable, which gave my boyfriend excuses to make fun of how technologically inept I can be. I've resented this, of course. But then when he was here this past weekend, he helped with my CD player (a Hello Kitty boom box, sad but true) and I realized, I've been having serious trouble with it for weeks because...it wasn't on a flat surface.

He was kind enough not to gloat about that.

Tuesday, August 02, 2005

on a bus to Portland

(One of two new posts, see the long rambling story below this!)

In a couple hours--this means I guess I'm not even going to try to sleep--I'll be heading to the Greyhound station for a bus to Portland, Oregon. I won't arrive till Thursday morning. This is more than twice as long as the longest Greyhound trip I've ever taken (from Chicago to Bryan/College Station, Texas), and my first bus trip in over a year.

It's my 4th or 5th trip to Portland, and first to the Portland Zine Symposium, where I'll be tabling with my zines, stickers, etc. I didn't know of anyone else going from Chicago, so it was up to me to get there myself, and by the time I checked plane fares a month or so ago, I could barely find anything under $400. An advance, Go Anywhere bus fare was $178. It's an inexpensive trip, but more than half of it will be spent on the bus! Greyhound has some vague ad campaign about something they've changed--in all that time, I guess I'll find out what it is.

This is also my first bus trip going farther west than Iowa. I'll transfer in Omaha and Denver (never been, and I'm not really going to get to see it at 6:00 am, either.)

When I get back, I'll have just 10 days to get ready for the City of Destiny Chicago Writers' Night (dull name, I was in a hurry to come up with something) at Quimby's Bookstore. You can look at their web site to see what's going on August 20th.

Talk to you soon...

that damn CTA story

I never updated my blog to point out that my story, "Cooler," was the center panel story on thisisgrand.org for a couple weeks in July. And now it isn't anymore. But it's still on there, and you should check that site out regardless. The following story is too angry and rambling to turn into a polished anecdote for that site, I'm sure.

[I was frustrated, as you'll see, about not knowing why I was on an incredibly delayed CTA train, so I Googled for the story and found it on the CTA Tattler blog. The following is the post I wrote the morning after...a little agitated, still. Additional details in brackets, obviously.]

This is the first I've heard about what happened. I watched all 5 9/10 pm news broadcasts and saw nothing, although it seemed CBS-2 did a tease right before 10, but I didn't see the actual story. I can't believe how fast these stories disappear! This is probably the WORST delay I've faced in 10 years of almost-daily CTA travel.

I was around 35th St. [visiting 4 different branch libraries!] and thought it'd be faster to take the Red Line to North instead of the Halsted bus. (Of course it normally would be.) I got to the station at 4:52. A northbound train had just passed. They made an announcement about the subway being closed and the Red Line running on the el tracks. No explanation why. I boarded the next train around 4:55.

I got off at Fullerton at 6:25. In that hour and a half...The train went onto the elevated tracks and stopped at Roosevelt--same announcement on the platform, but NOT the train. I figured it'd be stopping at any corresponding Red/Brown Line stops--i.e. , Roosevelt, Van Buren, Chicago--and of course, wouldn't be able to stop at Harrison or Division. (Were Red Line passengers there told anything?)

And that's what happened through downtown. It stopped at the Brown Line stations, we heard the announcement again, but we weren't told anything. Of course people on the platform looked confused. I wondered if people were being redirected from the subway stations to the Brown Line. (Apparently they weren't?) [Nope. And if there really was a security threat, why have people stand around in the stations?!]

Everything was very slow--I saw a clock downtown reading 5:27. We got past Chicago, past Division...and stopped.

There was NEVER one of those canned messages about sitting on the tracks, train ahead, whatever. And still no announcement to passengers!

I don't know when we stopped just before North, but I checked my watch and it was 6:15. So, we were easily there 20 minutes or more.

The part that REALLY amazed me, is that aside from a few quiet murmurs on cell phones, NO ONE said anything! No one pressed the service button (I didn't want to give up my seat to find it, and I was too angry to formulate a polite question anyway). No one seemed to even care they were having to stand in a packed train for a half hour for no stated reason! [I wrote this after I'd cooled down considerably. It was the angriest I'd been, probably, in 10 years of taking the CTA.]

At the risk of stereotyping, I know there are neighborhoods and/or times of day when a motionless, unexplained half-hour CTA delay would pretty much incite rioting. And in this case, I would have preferred it to the bizarre apathy! I hadn't come from work, I wasn't starving, I didn't have kids to get home to, I wasn't in a hurry to get to an event--but a lot of those people must have been. [Nor did I have a transfer card or pass about to run out.] And they didn't do anything!

So we spent about a half-hour stalled less than a block from my stop (North/Sedgwick). I seriously considered asking if the windows opened so I could crawl out.

When the train started again, I eagerly leapt up--and the train DIDN'T STOP AT NORTH! (See above about corresponding Red/Brown Line stops.) [It's a good thing I didn't yell out what I really thought of my fellow passengers...only to get stuck with them for another 10 minutes.]

Again, we never got any announcement about 1) what happened with the subway tracks, 2) why everything was so slow, 3) what stops we'd stop at.. Of course it didn't stop at Armitage either.

So we finally got to Fullerton. And after a 90-min ride that should have been 25 minutes, I had to take an extra bus. I was too angry about everything to want to ask CTA employees what happened.

Ironically, the only way this fiasco really inconvenienced me was that I missed the afternoon news...which would have reported what it was we were going through! And then, as if the inept/arrogrant CTA and meek/apathetic passengers weren't bad enough, the news media doesn't care enough to report it.

Okay, I know that was long. But I'm just so glad to finally learn what happened! [Actually, CTA Tattler reported it was a suspicious package left in a station, and there was plenty of anger at whoever left it. Theoretically, I knew I should be mad at them, but all my anger was already aimed at the non-communicating CTA, and apathetic riders and news media. I honestly felt nothing towards anyone for leaving a package. I should also add, someone said that the media doesn't report these much because they don't want copycat security scares. Which is also the logic for not reporting much about suicide attempts on the tracks. But it seems like we heard plenty about bomb threats that were called in here just after the fatal London bombing. And that's what I later heard this was, in the newspaper--a bomb threat, NOT a package.] How do I make a formal complaint about this? [Yeah, right, like I do stuff like that.]