This piece is fun to listen to, because my voice cracks repeatedly when I attempt to sing.

- - - - - - - - -

We recently had a small rat problem here in our apartment. I don't mean that the rats themselves were small-there is a theory, in fact, that they may have been adolescent raccoons. I mean that the problem was small, at least when compared to the larger problems facing our community, like social injustice and gun violence and that kind of stuff.

But try explaining that to our houseguests as they screamed, "Rat! Rat! Oh God there's a rat on your dining room table!"

"Don't worry," we told our guests. "That's not a dining room table. It's a card table. And that's not a rat. It's a mouse. The rats are much bigger."

Until the rats chewed through the cord connecting my computer to the Internet, I did some research on rats in Chicago. First, I learned that most of the rats in Chicago are Norway rats, which frankly did not surprise me at all, since our rats were always very courteous to my roommate Sven. They almost never pooped in his bed. These Norway rats often move beneath houses when the weather gets cold, and given the Norway rat's fondness for rotting organic material and our kitchen sink's abundance of unwashed dishes, our nest of rats must have though they'd stumbled upon Eden.

Initially, we tried to explain to the rats that thanks to El Nino, Chicago will likely have a delightfully mild winter, thus allowing them to stay outside, but rats are either stubborn or do not speak English.

So we decided to relocate them. To that end, we set up a large wicker basket in the middle of what we call our living room, even though it is technically a hallway. The basket was propped up with a stick, and the stick was coated with dried cheez-whiz. A few hours after baiting the trap, Sven and I were playing PlayStation2 when we heard a soft thump. I turned my gaze from NBA Live 2003 in time to see the basket scoot across our dusty hardwood floor before the rat lifted the basket up and scurried off to wherever it came from. Which is to say, in the general direction of our kitchen.

We thought of buying a larger wicker basket, or possibly an actual rattrap, but after a contentious house meeting, we finally agreed that relocating the rats seemed an awful lot like shipping the Indians off to Oklahoma. After all, rats are people, too. Well, not technically, but still. For weeks, we had lived with the rats as we live with one another. We shared food. We fought about who bought soap last. You know. It was like Three's Company, except instead of Suzanne Somers, we had rats.

Things got back to normal for a while, but then my girlfriend called me one morning to say that she'd discovered via the Department of Streets and Sanitation web site that knowingly harboring rats in your residence is illegal. My girlfriend, who is caring and sweet when it comes to people but frankly rather cruel when it comes to rodents, threatened to call up Streets and San and turn us in. It was for my own good, she insisted, and then rambled on at length about a disease called the Bubonic Plague, which apparently has killed a number of people over the years.

So we called an exterminator, and now the rats are dead. Sven is inconsolable, although he seems to grieve by cleaning the house, so the rest of us are secretly devising ways to further upset him. It's nice that my girlfriend is again willing to visit the apartment, and there's a certain relief in not having to stomp around the apartment chanting, "Just for a moment, please go and hide / That'll make your presence easier to abide" But there's a hole in our apartment that no rodent-proof epoxy can plug.

Godspeed, beloved roommates. Wherever you are now, I hope there are plenty of dirty dishes.

Poor readers might prefer listening to this piece.

When I first moved to Chicago, I lived in Wicker Park, and I quickly grew to resent the Blue Line for its indeciveness. Are you going to Forest Park or are you going to Cermak, Blue Line? I can never tell with you. The Blue Line was just like all the other train lines I'd loved: it couldn't commit.

So when I first met the Brown Line, you can imagine my joy. Here was a train that knew exactly where it was taking me and how to get there. And the Brown Line is so fun. I particularly love the way it starts off inching northward out of the Belmont station, and then accelerates until blasting through a hairpin curve at thirty miles an hour before slamming on the brakes and skidding into Paulina. My relationship with the Brown Line is a roller coaster, and while that's scary sometimes, it's exciting, too. And deep down, I know that the Brown Line will always be there for me.

Of course, my beloved train line isn't monogamous. The Brown Line has a lot of love to give, and I would never ask it to share its elevated tracks with me alone. But lately, I've become disturbed by my fellow Brown Line passengers. Perhaps they never lived on the Blue Line, but for some reason, they just don't seem to appreciate the Brown line.

Instead of enjoying the fine views afforded us by the Brown Line, many commuters spend their train time reading. I suspect the Brown Line can forgive us for reading great novels or important business documents-after all, we can't devote all our time to loving our train or we'll get clingy and obsessive. But I've noticed a lot of people reading bodice-ripping-type Romances on the Brown Line, and that is frankly unacceptable. You've got the most beautiful train line in Chicago right here and you want to read about some fictional sixteenth century Count?

But I'll take a standing room only load of romance readers over one cell phone user. We've all heard it and we've all made fun of it, and yet it continues to happen: "Hey. I'm on the train. I'll be home in like ten minutes. What? Sorry the train is really loud. YEAH...NO I'M ON THE TRAIN. YEAH....LIKE TEN MINUTES."

When you yell into your cell phone about how soon you'll be home, you make the Brown Line feel like you're just using it to get to the next part of your day. Would you take a cell phone call while making out with your partner? Would you say, "Hey call me back in about four minutes. I've got something to take care of real quick?"

Mind you, I don't think it hurts the Brown Line's feelings if you need to use your cell phone to communicate something important. If, for instance, you find yourself standing next to someone who is holding onto the pole in such a way that his armpit is in your face, then I think you should by all means call someone and say, "Hey, I'm on the train, and I can see the individual hair follicles in this guy's armpit, and I sure wish he would notice, or at the very least consider some basic hygiene strategies to combat body odor."

And last: you know that private little cubby in the front of each car? Don't pee there. We've all got our sexual eccentricities, but I know for a fact that the Brown Line isn't in to that sort of thing. The Brown Line wants you to show it love, yes, but not that kind of love.

I understand that CTA passengers don't care about their fellow passengers. So don't shower and act courteously and refrain from urinating on the train for my sake. Do it for our beloved, speedy, and often punctual Brown Line.

Poor readers can listen here.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Since moving to Lincoln Square last October, I have gained thirty-six pounds. At this moment, I weigh 187, and believe me, it ain't muscle. I have become what is referred to in medical journals as a Skinny Fat Person, which is to say that I have skinny arms, skinny legs, and a grotesquely fat belly. I look like a dough ball with four stick stuck in it. Every morning I push my fat gut into the train, and people take surreptitious glances at my midsection, wondering, no doubt, how I managed to get so pregnant.

And so you can imagine my concern when I read that the city of Chicago is sinking. It's not enough that I have become so hideously fat that all my boxers have magically turned into boxer briefs. My newfound girth, I thought, is also sinking the only city I have ever loved.

It turns out, however, that the two phenomena are unrelated. I mean, I really am gaining weight at an astonishing rate and Chicago really is sinking about a millimeter a year. But Chicago is sinking not because of my fatness but instead because of the lousy Canadians, with whom we apparently share some kind of geological seesaw. Canada is rising; we're sinking.

Now, I am not a scientist, but I am a person who is currently on pace to weigh 400 pounds by February of 2006, and therefore I know something about seesaws. Specifically, I know that when it comes to seesaws, fat sinks. I realize that I do not have science on my side here, but common sense dictates that we in Chicago have to shed some weight.

So listen: If everyone in Chicago just loses 20 pounds, it won't do a lick of good. The real weight around here is in buildings, which is why I am proposing a radical plan to even out the international seesaw by relocating the western suburbs to Canada. Hinsdale, you'll be the richest suburb of Toronto. Niles, you'll be a mere twenty minutes from sunny Calgary. And I've got ten square miles of desolate arctic misery in the Yukon Territory for you, Schaumburg. If Chicago is still fatter than Canada after shedding our lesser suburbs, I propose that we begin exiling select Chicagoans and their homes to Montreal. Parlez-vous Francais, Monsieur Daley? Voulez-vous couchez avec les Canadiens, Monsieur Reinsdorf?

Even if such drastic measures fail, I'm staying on the sinking ship of Chicago, and I'll tell you why. My girlfriend. That's right, people. I may spread 187 pounds very poorly around my six foot frame, but I have a girlfriend, and she loves Chicago so much she'd gladly sink into Lake Michigan with it. Chicago may not have Canada's cheap prescription drugs, excellent public schools, low crime rate, or geologic stability, but it's got my girl. And she's as funny as Schadenfreude, as smart as Gretchen Helfrich, and so gorgeous that I can only describe her as "even sexier than Steve Edwards' voice."

There are some things I'll sink for, and Chicago's got two of them: love; and juicy, fatty, Atkins-unfriendly, chili-soaked hot dogs. And now, it's time. Say my name, you sonorous baritone.

Steve Edwards: John Green-

John: Oh God that's good, Steve. One more time.

Steve: John Green is a regular contributor to 848 on Chicago Public Radio.

You can also listen to this piece through WBEZ.

In an average day, I drink about 50 fluid ounces of orange Gatorade, which is particularly impressive when you consider that I have never exercised. For instance, I believe that "running" is a gerund that should always be followed by either from or to. One runs from muggers, or to the ice cream store because it is about to close. Running for one's health seems to me as morally bankrupt as a pre-emptive war: Why attack your heart when it has not yet attacked you?

But it is difficult to live here when you're not given over to physical activity. Many Chicago locations are separated by what is called "walking distance." I'm from suburban Alabama, where "walking distance" extends from your couch to your refrigerator, but here in Chicago, "walking distance" can refer to five, or even six, city blocks.

To me, six blocks is a span of space that ought not be bridged by foot. Six blocks is an epic walk, the kind of walk history remembers with phrases like "death march" and "trail of tears." So because I am a bad person who hates the environment, I drive. Chicago is the rare town in which a person can comfortably survive without a car, and I am the rare Chicagoan who doesn't care.

Now, you're probably not even aware of gas prices, on account of how you commute to work via an environmentally friendly Segway Scooter. But gasoline has gotten pretty expensive lately, because it so happens that fighting wars for oil and democracy shrinks the overall world reserves of oil and democracy.

Just last week, I spent $2.45 per gallon to fill up my family-size sedan. And as I watched the dollar-counter spin ever so much faster than the gallon-counter, I sort of regretted purchasing a family-size sedan, particularly since the family in question consists of me and some Big Mac wrappers.

After I filled up my car with gas, I went home and peed--like I said, I drink a lot of Gatorade--and then on the long walk from the bathroom to the living room, I heard a Gatorade commercial asking, "Is it in you?" Due to the aforementioned urinating, it was not in me, so I got in the car, drove five blocks down Western to Jewel, and purchased a gallon of orange Gatorade for $4.99. And then I realized: Gatorade is twice as expensive as gasoline. Gatorade. Allow me to compare the complexities involved in making these two liquids:

Gasoline: Mine oil, a non-sustainable resource, from miles inside the ground. Refine oil in factory. Ship gasoline halfway across the world in a gigantic, triple-hulled boat. Truck gasoline in hazmat tanker from port to destination, then fill underground reservoirs at station with gas.

Gatorade: Get water. Add sugar.

In the rest of the world, gasoline is, appropriately, very expensive, which is why a family-size sedan in France is a Fiat with a roof rack onto which you can strap Grandma. And I know, I know-France is a circle of hell forgotten by Dante where Gatorade cannot be purchased for any price because the French subsist on nothing but red wine and unfiltered cigarette smoke. But just because they are backwards and hate freedom doesn't mean we can't take a lesson from old Europe. Sugar water should not be cheaper than gasoline, and American slobs like me should pay dearly for the privilege of driving around on fossil fuels. So keep hiking the price of gas. Please. We will pay, because God knows we aren't going to walk.