Great time this weekend in Fresno at the fair, but don’t expect to hear about it for a few more days. It’s suddenly become a very busy week at work. Visualize me playing with REALLY large Excel spreadsheets and pretending I know how to do budgeting and forecasting. It’s kind of amuzing, actually, and it does sort of stimulate my inner geek…
One of the things I hate about cohabitation: seeing a tantalizing package from Amazon at the front door and realizing it’s not for me and I really shouldn’t open it…
I may have to buy myself something tonight. It’s been that kind of week…
Happy birthday to Mom…
Thirteen years ago tonight, I’d just been to dinner with my parents and we came home and watched San Francisco shake and bake on the news from the safety of Greensboro. I’d prefer not to have a more intimate earthquake view this evening, thanks…
I shudder to think what might happen if another major quake were to hit SF today. The live/work lofts in my neighborhood would all be reduced to little piles of corrugated cardboard and glue (which might not be such a bad thing), but we’d never be able to rebuild any lost freeways because there’d be too many arguments over which method we’d use to make them more appealing to homeless people (who might want to wander across them at random or live under them) than to evil, disgusting motorists (who’d just be driving on them, after all)…
While the Bay Bridge — sill unrepaired after the 1989 quake — would be history, the Transamerica Pyramid would, alas, still be standing…
Ah San Francisco, where the newspaper has taken to predicting “areas of morning fog, then mostly sunny” on Thursday and Saturday, and “mostly sunny, after areas of morning fog” on Friday and Sunday. For the sake of variety, I assume…
Greensboro has a apparently been deemed “sprawl city” once again. Now keep in mind that “sprawl” is one of those things which is defined in much the same way that Supreme Court justice many years ago defined pornography: no one can tell you exactly what it is, but by God, planners know it when they see it…
By “they”, in this case, I mean the “smart growth” and “new urbanism” Nazis, who define it as pretty much anything other than cute little overplanned neighborhood units which look nice in magazine articles and newspaper features, but where no one really wants to live. The idea, of course, is to transform suburbia into a cartoon-like version of a central city, whether it’s appropriate to the economics of the area and the lifestyles of its inhabitants or not. They’re like the historic preservation crowd but even worse…
To a one, these developments usually focus on the facts that the houses are closer together and that a few token small retail spaces are placed in some sort of pointless village common in the middle of it all. It would just be too unwieldy to add things like supermarkets and the like, and it wouldn’t be at all picturesque. Granted, the yards are easier to maintain, and it takes about five fewer seconds to walk to your next door neighbor’s house, but the greeting card shops and cute little juice joints are doomed to failure, both from lack of patronage and from lack of exposure (assuming anyone ever leases the space to begin with)…
I rather like this: “Both High Point and Greensboro are changing policies to require more sidewalks to be built and have written new laws permitting the construction of more-compact developments.”. That’s great, really, but what good are the sidewalks when there’s nothing to walk TO? In this case, “compact developments” still means little more than smaller yards in a neighborhood surrounded by a buffer zone of shrubbery and connected to some arterial which will take them to the closest shopping center a few miles away…
The problem, of course, is the stifling zoning in suburbia, which keeps the stores and businesses people would actually USE completely isolated from residences. Planners repeatedly claim they want “pedestrian environments”, but they don’t want shopping centers anywhere near anyone’s homes, although a few small shops which sell nothing that anyone needs or wants would be just dandy, thanks. Evidently, they’d just prefer that residents just walk in circles around the neighborhood, waving at all the people who will, of course, be sitting on their porches with pitchers of lemonade…
A few clues: people, especially people in the suburbs, like to shop in big, cheap stores with parking. The days of the corner greengrocer and butcher shop are over, and no amount of nagging and prodding by planners will change this fact. If people want to live in areas which have “pedestrian environments”, they will generally tend to move to larger cities, where these environments already exist and have developed over time. It is not possible to plan them into existence overnight, especially in areas where no one really wants them except the planners…
Most Americans live in wide open suburbs because they like it. Outside the few dense urban areas like New York and San Francisco, Americans have no intention of taking public transit anyplace, so living in an area clustered around a light rail station is not a priority. You and I may disagree, but our urban snobbery is lost on individuals who are quite happy with the way they live, and who — by and large — are willing to put up with a little extra driving to have the way of life they choose. And frankly, what business is it of ours to tell them they’re wrong?
I’ve written before about how so many people using the web are completely deficient when it comes to the concept of context. You know: the sort of people who type the term “cheap Disneyland motel” into a search engine, find a page which happens to include all three words, no matter how randomly, and then — without bothering to read the page they’ve found, which happens to be, say, an architecture critique — click that “contact” button and email the author asking where they can find the best deals on a motel near Disneyland. In other words, clueless idiots…
But this one takes the cake. Several University of Texas students a few years back managed to click onto one of my journal pages when they were still at Planet SOMA and determine that my site was about some drug called “soma” and my experiences using it:
This web site is the journal of a man that explores the effects of “Soma” and other such drugs. His experiences and the mindless state of mind that is the result of the drugs that he is taking are documented as well as his thoughts on whether or not it is a good thing. Explanation: This is useful because in contrast to the previous web site, he totally thinks that Hedonism & drugs in general are a good thing.
Just what website were they reading? How could anyone read anything I’ve written at this site — particularly this page (the one they linked to) — and determine that I’m some drug-crazed hedonist itching to tell the world about it? I haven’t even smoked pot in about 17 years, and I avoid users like the plague. What gives?
Some might call it “libelous”. Which is what I did when I emailed several key persons at the University of Texas this morning. No response yet…
Got a response from the University of Texas. They pulled the page and sent me a semi-apologetic letter which mentions “free speech” and the fact that students sometimes state “strong opinions” on “controversial topics”…
What fucking opinion? What fucking topic? They flat-out lied and said that I use a drug called “soma” and that my site is all about my experiences while using it. That’s not a statement of opinion. It’s a blatant fabrication. And in many academic environments, it could get them expelled…
I’m always amazed at how many otherwise educated individuals haven’t the faintest notion what free speech means…
That said, I’ll mention again that there’s a (completely unrelated) new rant over at Planet SOMA today…
Random thoughts for a Monday afternoon:
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Some days I love the internet: a reader has actually found — an offered to send me — an authentic “hogs are beautiful” poster. He sent me a picture, and it’s the genuine article, the very same print which used to grace every barbecue joint from one end of North Carolina to the other. And oddly enough, it was unearthed in Iowa of all places…
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So did anyone else watch the hours-long “Richmond, Virgina gas station skycam” this morning (on every network) and wonder how long it would take Fox News to establish that the owner of the van was — in addition to being the one and only sniper — the same individual who masterminded the World Trade Center bombings, Jimmy Hoffa’s murder, and possibly the Crimean War?
- Just how will Patty and Selma react to this?
- Going out on a limb: after buying “Saturday Night Fever” on DVD this weekend, I feel compelled to remind you all that — once you get past John Travolta’s hair and the soundtrack — it’s a really good movie…
Maybe more later, or maybe not. I’ve got a pound of ground beef, a can of Manwich, and a bag of buns. The evening is full of possibilities…
Working on some site changes and restructuring. More later…
Anniversary weekend. A year ago today, I was off the Fresno for what turned out to be a rather fateful weekend. By a year ago tomorrow, I was already hooked. And you know what? I still am. I do love my boy, especially now that I get to wake up next to him every morning…
If you’re feeling nostalgic, you can read about that weekend here…
Tip of the hat to Chuck’s list of things he doesn’t care about this morning. I’ll follow with my list of things I’m very weary of:
- Trying to “understand” and “be tolerant of” terrorists, ghetto kids who kill each other (and innocent bystanders), and homeless people who have “no choice” but to steal and to shit on the streets. Having a “hard life” or a “grievance” is no excuse for making other people miserable.
- The notion that any violence committed against innocent Americans without warning is probably justified by our warmongering imperialism (or whatever), but that any organized retaliation BY Americans is barbaric. Why are we always the ones who are wrong?
- The idea that popular opinion is any more sufficient justification for engaging (or not engaging) in a war than it is for denying civil rights or for giving Constitutional protection to a red, white, and blue piece of cloth.
For what it matters, I have not completely formed my own opinion about any impending military action. I am not convinced that attacking Iraq is the most prudent course of action at present, both for economic and political reasons, but I’m also not convinced that it’s an inherently immoral thing…
I can say, though, that most of the arguments expressed in the local paper haven’t swayed me one way or the other. And I can also state with some assurance that trite, simplistic slogans like “no war for oil” are of little more persuasive value to anyone with an IQ above 65 than those “kill ’em all, let God sort ’em out” T-shirts you used to see during the Gulf War..
Unrelated: note the new navigation bar above, which will now take you to the Road Trips and Rants sections, both of which used to be housed at Planet SOMA. This is something I’ve been planning for a long time, and I’m now reducing Planet SOMA to a site largely concerned with San Francisco and the South of Market Area. There will be some new content over there too, but this is where the “action” will be, particularly after my liberation from the Bay Area…