So the students at Gordon Tech, as some sort of class project, were all given a bunch of multi-colored sidewalk chalk and encouraged to write their thoughts about school on the big slabs of concrete out in front of the place. Which just happens to be right along my path to work every morning.

A lot of them are cheerfully banal ("School is awesome - Gordon Tech rocks - my friends are cool"; a lot of them are whiny, but equally banal ("I have too much homework - my old school was better - the teacher yelled at me because I was late"), and some of them are embarrassingly artsy and 'poetic' (I'm guessing this is a function of the school going co-ed, thus unleashing a torrent of teenage Latina Sylvia Plaths on the sidewalks of Albany Park).

But the best one, at least in terms of being really strange, is this lengthy gloom-and-angst-ridden thing written in gangbanger graffiti lettering. I don't remember exactly what it says (I'll try and snag a picture of it this week if it's not too faded), but it's basically "DARKNESS FALLS ON THE CAMPUS...WE ARE HUSTLED INTO LITTLE BOXES...THE TEACHERS ALL PRETEND TO CARE...BUT NO ONE REALLY CARES". Typical depressed-teenager stuff. But the best part is, this text, in full-on Latin Kings tagger-script, is contained in a word balloon coming out of a really stylized drawing of Homer Simpson. Man! You tell it, Homer! Stupid uncaring world!