It's not that I check smutty books out on a regular basis or anything, but if I did, I sure as hell wouldn't do it at the downtown Chicago library. They check every single thing in your bag both coming in and going out. Going in I thought they were checking for bombs. Coming out I realized that they were afraid of people stealing books, because they were looking for the stamped card to make sure the book had been correctly checked out.

It's not like they were patting people down, so it would be fairly easy to smuggle books out clasped between your thighs or stuck into your waistband. If you're into that sort of thing.

When I was in grad school, I used to drive all the way downtown and pay for parking ($20 on a credit card) like a chump when I went to the library there. Which was not often, thanks to the cost of these little jaunts. Why I didn't just take the EL, I don't know, except for the fact that it takes forever for a train to come by sometimes, and then when you are on the train, there is a chance that it will be game day and you will be jammed back to back (or, if you are supremely unlucky, front to front) with teeming hordes of drunk Cubs fans. Like today.

They make me hate the Cubs.

I can't put my finger exactly on what makes me hate these people: the beery smell emanating from their sweaty chests, the fact that their comment upon seeing a crowded EL train is to say, "What the fuck is this? The train to Cairo? A train in India?", the fact that when their hands brush each other on the holding pole they start screaming "You homo!" "No, you homo!" at each other, the fact that their hands are permanently glued to beer bottles cleverly hidden in paper bags...so many choices.

Two of them were particularly bad on the train ride home today. So bad that everyone else in the car, even other obnoxious Cubs fans, began to exchange smiles and rolled eyes. They were so drunkass that everytime the train stopped they started hollering, "Is this the stadium?? Which way we going???" Why no one said, "Yes, yes it is," and pushed them off, I don't know. I would have, but I was too far away.

One of them also started hitting on this young girl right before their stop, leading some of the other boys in the train to start joking around with the girls in their groups about how they could help their girls hook up with the other guy.

They pee so much on the sides of buildings around here that the bricks are being worn away by the acid. The city recently passed a law raising the fine for public urination around here to like $500 or something.

Way to penalize regular folks who just can't hold it in on the way home from the EL stop.