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To commemorate the 13th anniversary of Frank Zappa's death, Crooks and Liars has posted footage of his 1980s appearance on CNN's Crossfire. Sweet.

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The cold weather has settled in Chicago, and that usually means problems with the CTA trains, and in particular the Red Line that runs from the north suburb of Evanston down through the Loop and to the South Side of Chicago. For the past 8 years I've been using the Red Line for at least part of my work commute to downtown Chicago, and when the cold weather sets in I usually notice some delay or problem with the Red Line.

This year's onset of winter has already brought a couple of bad commutes, but I'm not sure if they can be blamed on the weather. Last Friday there was a fire on a Red Line train that caused the evacuation of a bunch of trains that were packed with commuters heading to work. I gave up trying to catch a bus and walked downtown. And this morning, another train failure near downtown caused an entire train to be evacuated in an underground station. I was at that station, and thankfully was able to catch a train that was right behind the defective one.

Sadly, I don't think these are going to be unsuual incidents for the near future. The CTA is currently working on a revamping of the Bown Line train stations, which is taking about a bazillion times as much cash to finish as the original estimate predicted. So as the CTA concentrates on other projects, I suspect the equipment failures and service outages are going to continue for the forseeable future. I hope I'm wrong, but this bad start to the winter commuting season doesn't give me much optimism.

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