Laura Peterson is one of the most innovative choreographers at work in New York City, or anywhere for that matter. Her choreography is always supremely logical, whether rooted in organic forms or technological ideas or a hybrid of both.

Want to see Laura Peterson Choreography perform in Chicago? They've been invited to participate in an exciting throwdown at Links Hall called collision_theory, but they need your assistance to do it. They're trying to raise $1,700 for production expenses in just 30 days with a kickass Kickstarter campaign. Won't you please help?

KICKSTARTER: Laura Peterson Choreography is going to Chicago

Do it for the dancers.

Laura and I were talking over some of the difficulties I've been having this week with my revisions of The Accidental Terrorist when she gave me the absolute perfect image for the central conflict in the book. The main character, in her view, is a fly trapped in a spiderweb, struggling to free itself with only the vaguest notion of the nature of its predicament.

(See, I'm the fly, and the LDS Church is... Yeah.)

This image is so spot-on, so apt to something I was struggling to articulate to myself, that I wish I could somehow work it into the book. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately, since I don't want to be too heavy-handed about it), I'm pretty much constrained by the reality of my experiences during the six months of my life that the book covers, and those six months did not include any spiders.

No, the spider didn't become a factor in my mission until five or six months after the events of the book. I was serving in Bonners Ferry, Idaho, by then. My companion and I lived rent-free in a small house in the middle of a wheatfield owned by some local Mormons. We were a little bored in that town, and one thing my companion did to pass the time was adopt a little spider that lived in a web in the window frame of one of the empty back rooms. He would go around the house catching flies and dropping them into the web, then watch the spider kill them. This was the best-fed spider in northern Idaho. It grew so quickly that after about a month its web (which it unstrung and re-spun every day) was so strong that you could strum it like a guitar and it wouldn't break. The spider itself was as big as the first joint of my thumb.

When that companion eventually got transferred out of Bonners Ferry and a new one took his place, the two of us decided that the spider had to go. It was so big that neither one of us dared to get close enough either to relocate it or to smash it to death. Instead, we used a cigarette lighter and a can of hairspray to flambé it from a safe distance. We could hear the individual strands of the web pop in the flames. The spider itself shriveled up and crackled with an awful sound.

I have several other animal stories from that Bonners Ferry house, involving mice and bats and such, but they're even more disturbing than this one so I'm going to save them for the sequel. The most disappointing animal story, though, was that we slept in one morning and missed seeing a huge moose in our front yard. The nearest neighbors had tried to call us, but apparently the phone didn't wake us up.

Where did this post start? Oh, yeah. With my wife being awesome.

Dan Sinker, a/k/a @MayorEmanuel, appeared on The Colbert Report Tuesday night, and I have to say he hit it out of the park. Occasionally a guest will say something so funny or bizarre that Colbert has nothing to say in response. Sinker did it twice.

The first clip here sets up the interview in the second clip:

It's a good thing I don't believe in omens or I'd probably think that 2011 is fucked. One of the first sights I saw on New Year's Day, when I was out walking the dog in the morning, was a dead squirrel hanging from power lines where they attached to the second story of house in our neighborhood.

The squirrel looked perfectly intact. It was hard to tell how it died. Maybe it had a heart attack. Maybe it froze to death. Maybe it touched a bare spot on one of the wires and fried. Whatever happened, I found the sight of it fascinating and compelling. After I took Ella home, I went back with our good camera and took as many pictures of it as I could.

Over the following days I kept checking on the poor creature. It appeared to be gripping one of the higher wires with its back paws, while it's body was draped over a lower wire. I thought it would likely fall off soon, or that someone would remove it, but as days turned into weeks the squirrel just kept hanging there. At first I found this encouraging. As January turned to February, though, I found it more and more disturbing.

Laura and I considered leaving a note on the front door of the house, reasoning that perhaps the residents had never looked up and seen the dead squirrel decorating their home, but we never did. Then, a couple of weeks ago, we were walking Ella together past the house. A compact SUV was parked at the curb, and three young children were carrying things from the house to the vehicle while a parent loaded the back.

"Oh my God," I said loudly as we passed the kids. "Is that squirrel still hanging up there?"

Laura elbowed me in the ribs, but it was too late. As we continued down the sidewalk, we heard a kid behind us say, "What squirrel?" Then there came a startled squeal of disgust.

I smiled, because I'm the kind of person who finds that sort of thing funny. Message delivered.

This past Saturday morning, out walking Ella again, I checked on my friend Wallenda. (Yes, I have named the dead squirrel.) I didn't think I needed more pictures of it until I noticed that the squirrel was now clinging to the wire with three paws instead of two! My first thought was that the thing had been slowly trying to pull itself up onto the wire and make good its escape from death. Or maybe a strong wind had just blown it around and another paw had caught.

It was only when I was able to examine the new photograph against the older ones that I realized the squirrel was now hanging upside down from one of the lower wires. Its back paws must have finally lost their grip on the higher wire and somehow snagged on the way down. Or someone deliberately moved the squirrel.

Whatever the case, I will keep monitoring Wallenda's progress. Now that the weather is warming up, he should make for an interesting sight over the next few weeks as he thaws, assuming he doesn't fall on someone's head. And if he really is an omen for the year, maybe the message is that even when you're down you can't be counted out.

By the way, I've also meant to point out that rjl20 captured the entire @MayorEmanuel feed in chronological order, together with most of the mentions to which he deigned to respond. Read the whole motherfucking thing at:

http://www.elsewhere.org/MayorEmanuel/

I don't say enough here about Tuesday Funk, the reading series at Hopleaf that I co-produce and co-host with Sara Ross. We have a great show coming tonight, with a lineup that includes Joe Weintraub, Keith Ecker, Maggie Kast, Steven H Silver, and Jenny Seay. I'll even read one of my poems (which is what I normally do, at least when I'm not reading someone else's).

We bill Tuesday Funk as Chicago's Eclectic Monthly Reading Series. We feature essays, poetry, short stories, and less categorizable performances in all genres of writing, but since being asked to help out with the series I've tried to shine a light where I can on science fiction. This month I'm very pleased to have shsilver on the bill, and in future months we'll have brad_beaulieu, finitemonkey, and even a night featuring participants from this summer's Wellspring Workshop.

All of which is by way of saying, please come out and hang with us tonight! Hopleaf is at 5148 N. Clark St. in Chicago. The reading takes place in the upstairs lounge. Seating begins at 7:00 pm, the reading at 7:30 pm. Arrive early or stand! Click the image below for more info:

The man behind the curtain has been revealed. Well, really, he came out from behind the curtain himself. As reported by Alexis Madrigal at The Atlantic, @MayorEmanuel is Dan Sinker, a journalism instructor at Columbia College in Chicago, and one of the founders and editors of the zine Punk Planet.

Having myself waxed rapturous over the @MayorEmanuel tweet stream, I can't help but feel a little disappointed that the mystery is no longer a mystery. I'm not nearly as disappointed as Jim DeRogatis is, because, hey, that Twitter account was a brilliant, engrossing, and uplifting example of a new form of literature, accidental as that might have been, and its author has every right to reap the benefits of his achievement. My disappointment is more that of a fan for whom part of the thrill was the not knowing, and the hope that we would never know. Did you honestly want to know for certain whether or not that top in Inception was ever going to stop spinning? I didn't.

But to be pragmatic, it was probably better that Dan Sinker control the revelation than that someone else out him, which no doubt would have happened sooner or later. And at least now we know whom to nominate for that Hugo next year in the Best Related Work category. (Hey, Chicago in 2012!)

Hats off, Mr. Sinker. As your character wrote: "Only things that fucking suck never end: look at laundry, or dishes."

Motherfucking pro tip: soy sauce and fucking cognac. Motherfucking amazing.
9 Dec

[WINTER PARKING IN CHICAGO]
Axelrod is a motherfucking parking-space shoveling artist. They should hang his fucking shovel in the Art Institute.
26 Dec

He's marked his space with 14 lawn chairs, an ironing board, and a pyramid of milk crates. He'll fucking shank someone if they move them.
26 Dec
[/WINTER PARKING IN CHICAGO]

Jesus fucking Christ, there is not enough motherfucking coffee in the whole fucking world this morning.
29 Dec

[ANGRY BIRDS]
Fuck these Angry Birds right in their motherfucking feathered fucking vents.
30 Dec

These giant bowling ball red birds would be motherfucking amazing if this whole game wasn't fucking me in the ass right now.
30 Dec

All I want right now is a motherfucking cheeseburger and to claw my goddamn eyes out. Instead I'm fucking flinging these fucking birds.
30 Dec
[/ANGRY BIRDS]

[RESIDENCY HEARING]
Carl the Intern's at the circuit court with three pounds of my shit in ziplock bags. He's tossing 'em if the verdict comes in wrong.
4 Jan
[/RESIDENCY HEARING]

Fuck this motherfucking brutal fucking cold right in its frozen fucking asshole.
21 Jan

[BEARS-PACKERS PLAYOFF]
We finally got Spielberg to take off his cheesehead, but he's got a Packers doo rag on underneath it. What the fuck.
23 Jan

Kanye's choking back fucking tears: "Cutler's knee injury is a nice match for my heart injury."
23 Jan

CALEB FUCKING HAINE! YOU ARE A BEAUTIFUL FUCKING MAN!
23 Jan
[/BEARS-PACKERS PLAYOFF]

Double birds to the motherfucking world. TO THE MOTHERFUCKING WORLD.
24 Jan

[ILLINOIS SUPREME COURT RESIDENCY RULING]
We're all fucking crying and laughing and barking and quacking and the city has never looked more beautiful, and in four weeks I'll be mayor
27 Jan

Now we're all crammed in Axelrod's fucking Civic, the ceiling's still dented in, driving down Lake Shore Drive, just fucking freestyling.
27 Jan
[/ILLINOIS SUPREME COURT RESIDENCY RULING]

[BLIZZARD]
Report from Axelrod's weathercenter has the big storm hitting later this afternoon. Perfectly fucking reasonable to get drunk now.
1 Feb
[/BLIZZARD]

[CAMPAIGN SPEECH AT THREADLESS]
Speech preview: "We're Chicago. Maybe--just fucking maybe--we can build something better than stupid T-shirts and half-off deals."
8 Feb

Original plan was to do this speech at Groupon, but now everyone thinks they're fucking assholes. Note to self: Lay off the Tibet jokes.
8 Feb
[/CAMPAIGN SPEECH AT THREADLESS]

Hanging out with nerds at Google today. Up half the night building up my elfin sorcerer, in case anyone throws down a motherfucking 20-side.
10 Feb

Snow stopped, week's done, MOTHERFUCKING BEER O'CLOCK, BITCHES.
11 Feb

Our Grammy party got ruined when we remembered that the Grammys are motherfucking awful.
13 Feb

HOLY FUCK, THE MOON IS MOTHERFUCKING ENORMOUS.
18 Feb

[ELECTION DAY EVE]
Hambone just brought the schedule: (1) shake 10,000 voters' hands (2) pick up Ari from the airport (3) keep Ari away from voters. Fuck.
21 Feb
[/ELECTION DAY EVE]

[SACRIFICE IN THE TIME VORTEX]
"There must be something we can do..." But there's not. Only things that fucking suck never end: look at laundry, or dishes.
23 Feb
[/SACRIFICE IN THE TIME VORTEX]

This can only give a bit of the flavor of the feed, if you haven't followed it. For two good distillations of the story's climax, I still recommend you read Tim Carmody's "The Two Mayors" and "The Last Hours of @MayorEmanuel."