You Have to Wonder

Via Paul Ryburn's blog, I spotted this:

There’s going to be an Obama meetup this coming Sunday, July 20 in Midtown. Let me start right off with the most important detail of this event: THERE WILL BE A KEG.

Because worship at the Church of Obama requires you to be really, really drunk.

Midtown Redevelopment News

A couple of Midtown blogs have some welcome news about redevelopment in Midtown.

First, Fertile Ground has news and photos about renovations being done to the Chicago Pizza Factory building on Madison:

Jerry Carruthers decided he was sick of the Chicago Pizza Factory building sitting empty. He's got two guys gutting the inside and fixing up the outside. "We're even gonna fix the lights on the sign," the guy in the shirt told me.

Once they get a renter, they're going to fix the inside up to suit them.

Good to hear, as the area around Overton Square has been in a long, slow decline as its owner and managers have been trying to ready the site for a hoped-to-come big retailer. In the meantime, we all suffer, as does every business and residence nearby.

I'm like most Midtowners who are baffled why this has been happening for so long. Overton Square is ideally located and past history has shown that it can be a people-magnet when it's full of businesses. With the rise of Cooper-Young and the renewed business atmosphere along Madison (heck, Midtown in general), for Overton Square to languish is nearly criminal. Business after business is being slowly strangled by one company's desire for the Big Score.

As, for example, the French Quarter Suites:

I'd like to say something here. Everyone in midtown knows that we desperately need a new grocery store. Even though we have 3 in a 4 mile radius, we all know that they are pathetic. Everyone has their horror stories and their opinions on the matter but when it comes right down to it, they are all far below par compared to ones in the rest of the city. So people like Rasberry know they can dangle that lovely carrot in front of the midtown community and lots of people will get their hopes up and shut up about the fact that Overton Square is quickly becoming a ghost town without any reason to hope for the betterment of the situation. Maybe I'm wrong or maybe I'm just jaded from hearing this spiel for the 234 time but I don't trust any development promise in midtown until I actually see dirt being dug up. And even then I'm still slightly wary.

Via My Midtown Memphis, who also reports on the planned development at Poplar and Cleveland.

It's complex and ambitious, no doubt. But notice that it won't touch any of the current strip shopping centers and house-based and other small businesses along Poplar, Cleveland and Madison! That's welcome news. There's a lot of nice diversity in those businesses.

You can study a plan of the redevelopment here. One big negative that I spotted was the addition of another stop light just east of Cleveland on Poplar, at Watkins. (Madison, too.) It's necessary, traffic-wise, but a pain in the bazoo nonetheless.

Newspaper Bellwether

The Tribune Co. has had two flagship employees -- Chicago Tribune editor Ann Marie Lipinski and Los Angeles Times publisher David Hiller -- resign this week in the wake of further, sharp cuts in jobs:

Tribune Co. is cutting costs to offset declines in advertising and circulation revenue that have sharpened this year for most newspapers in the United States.

Hiller, who stepped down after 21 months at the helm of Tribune Co.'s largest paper, was the paper's third publisher since Tribune bought it in 2000....

The paper plans to cut 250 positions, including 150 in the print and online news departments, and reduce its weekly page count by 15 percent. Some sections will be eliminated and stories are to run shorter....

The Sun plans to stop printing business news in a separate section at the end of this month, and the Sentinel has changed its layout to include more graphics and charts, and it has reduced news staff.

Newspaper revenues and circulation have shrunk as readers -- with advertisers in tow -- increasingly move online. Advertisers spend online a small fraction of what they used to pay newspapers for prime ad space.

Hiller took over as Times publisher after Johnson publicly criticized measures to cost-cutting measures including reducing the paper's foreign coverage.

Hiller then forced out editor Dean Baquet, who also opposed the cutbacks. In January, Times editor James O'Shea stepped down, also in protest of cuts that Tribune had ordered. He was the third editor to leave the paper since 2005. The paper's current editor is Russ Stanton.

Tribune Co. Chief Operating Officer Randy Michaels told lenders on a conference call last month that the company can save a lot of money by trimming staff and "rightsizing" its newspapers. Michaels said Tribune executives were evaluating the productivity of individual journalists with an eye toward cutbacks.

A spokesman said Lipinski's departure is not related to the cutbacks.

Yeah, right.

Danger: Science!

Longtime readers know that Mr. Mike is a bit of a science geek. I also love to share my enthusiasm for the scientific method, empiricism, inquiry, and odd bits of knowledge.

Imagine my joy to discover some professors at the University of Nottingham, England, have made a series of short videos explaining, in very graphic ways, the various properties of the elements of the periodic table!




"Ever since this, I get quite excited." I know the feeling.

I'm a fan of Mythbusters, as you'd guess, and its British cousin, the more wild'n'crazy Brainiac: Science Abuse. And the Discovery and History Channels; if I could afford the Military Channel, which is sort of now what History used to be, I'd have that.

My childhood bedroom wall had a funny dark blue spot on it from when I mixed some random ingredients from my chemistry set. (Can you even buy those any more? I'm guessing the potential lawsuits and hazardous materials concerns have killed them off.) I built and flew model rockets, so yes, I am, in fact, a rocket scientist!

Remember, it's not science until something explodes.

Gotta Love the O

Comedian Bernie Mac did a little show before an Obama fund-raising crowd and earned some heckles for his sexist jokes, off-color language and general crudity.

Obama was, as is usual for a politician, made to come out and straighten out Bernie Mac. Here's what he said:

"We can't afford to be divided by race. We can't afford to be divided by region or by class and we can't afford to be divided by gender, which by the way, that means, Bernie, you've got to clean up your act next time," Obama said. "This is a family affair. By the way, I'm just messing with you, man."

Let's translate that. The "we can't afford" means "I can't afford to have my electoral base dividing before the election." The only unity he's worried about is the votes that will help him win.

Obama then chides BM, satisfying the money-bags cash cows supporters, while making a joke out of it, mollifying BM for calling him out in front of a crowd. Obama gets to have it both ways. He can tell people he corrected BM, demonstrating his principles, while simultaneously being able to say it was all a joke and light-hearted, don't get so worked up, man.

What a tool.

Obama's been showing a lot of tool-like behavior since he locked up the Democratic nomination. Now that he's the presumptive nominee, he's tacking fast back to the middle. The anti-war, DailyKos, progressive left who propelled him into place are, understandably, very angry. They want him to stay on the far left. After all, they paid for him!

But, as he seems to be learning or maybe always knew, he's got to get those Reagan Democrats and undecided moderates -- you know, the god- and gun-clinging rubes in the backwoods of rural America he derided earlier this year. Can't do that from where he won the nomination. So, as the old saying goes, he ran to his base for the nomination, now he's running to the perceived middle for the win.

Hence all the backtracking from previous positions. Watch for more to come as the fall nears.

And why the McCain campaign isn't building a huge bonfire with all this, I don't know. Are they waiting for more people to start paying attention as the election nears, calculating that most Americans are on vacation right now and uninterested in politics? It's a good calculation with a lot of truth in it. Saving this for later helps to avoid the Clintonian counter-response that it's all rehashing "old news."

Or are they just incompetent? There's some evidence of that too. It's what I fear. I'm not a McCain supporter (Vote Libertarian!) but the reality is he's more likely to win than Bob Barr, the best candidate the Libertarians have put forward ever. And Obama would be a disaster for this country. He's already on record many times during the primaries as supporting nationalised health care and raising taxes. When presented with problems that "need solutions," his usual response is to suggest a government or legalistic action. I don't want that kind of president, no thank you.

I have a suspicion that even with the press and news media's complicity/participation in his campaign, Obama's in for a long autumn, much like Kerry.

At least, here's hoping anyway.

Why the Second Amendment is So Important

How Newspapers View Their Decline

From the Instapundit comes the following reader letter, with a revealing look at how at least one newspaper sees itself in the current media world, and its explanations for what's going on:

My son recently interviewed for a job with a newspaper that is a part of one of the large chains. What he learned from the interview, which lasted 80 minutes with both the Executive and Managing Editors, points to a divide that I think is worth noting.

This paper produces a wide variety of niche products. The figure that they reach about 80% of their region with one of their products. The products are focused on parenting, retirees, entertainment, etc, as well as online and print versions of the daily paper. They are making money.

One of the explanations for the demise of the print edition of the traditional newspaper that they gave him was the change in the demographics of the community. They told him that increasingly people move there, spend a few years, and move elsewhere. They don’t move into town and take up an intimate concern for the community. They find that the percentage of the local population that is engaged in local issues is shrinking, and therefore the numbers of people who are interested in a newspaper is shrinking. As a result, the problems of local newspapers are the connected to the problems of local communities. May explain why the quality of people who run for local public office is so poor.

My guess is that many of these old traditional newspaper companies don’t have the resources nor the capacity to shift to a multi-product format. Hence, they are tied to the past, and the past is passing away. Of course, nature abhors a vacuum, and it will be filled by some form of information retrieval system.

The Commercial Appeal is shifting to the online world, but they seem tenaciously tied to their print product. I can't name the number of times they demonstrate a strange cluelessness about how to work their web product. Stories don't always have links to original sources or to the related websites. They don't always put up copies of documents mentioned in stories. More than a few reporters and editors just don't seem at all familiar with the internet; they seem to subordinate good web practices to the needs of making a profit from the paper version.

The CA has been pretty lightly touched by the steep circulation declines common to the rest of the industry. I'm not sure why that is, as most everyone I talk with complains about the quality and focus of the paper. Any thoughts?

I Know Lots of Stuff!

I belong to a trivia team (The Fighting Cacti in the Memphis Trivia League) that survived the semi-finals (just barely!) and made it to the finals tonight. We got off to a fair start but thought we were tanking badly in the second round. We missed at least one question in every section of the 5-part round.

We had the same experience in the semi-finals, thinking we were doing badly -- only to learn we were near the top. Well, fearing we weren't even making top ten, we were delighted and shocked when we came in third place! That's out of fifty-odd teams playing in the final. Our team split the $500 prize.

First place -- a team from Little Rock -- won $3000. We were only about 25 points behind them. Had we gotten two or three more answers right in that miserable second round we would have definitely come in second, and maybe third.

Anyway, we were all very surprised and pleased. What will I do with my share of the prize money? Don't laugh but I'll probably get a new pair of glasses and a new mattress for the bed. Yes, such is the glamourous life of Mr. Mike.

Thanks to James, Abe, Matt and Ron for inviting me to join the team. I'm already looking forward to next year.

We also play at the P&H Cafe on Tuesday nights. That trivia contest is a bit different in that there's a $3 buy-in; the winning teams split the money. We almost always come in second or third there -- out of roughly 20 teams. We have yet to take home the first prize, which comes out around $90 or better, but we usually win enough to cover the buy-in and dinner. Come on out and give it a try.

Caturday!

The Voter and the Parties

The Small Revenges Are the Best

Via ZGeek:

Today on the way home, I had a cool bus ride. I was sitting in the back of the bus pretending not to see the old lady standing next to me. When I noticed a lady get on the bus with her young child. She was dressed in what I can only call "filthy hippy" and pushing an empty pram while she dragged her child on to the bus.

What I then witnessed was a rare conflict for the spaz spot on the bus. You see, buses here in Sydney had three or more seats on the side of the bus that will either flip up to allow a wheelchair or pram in it.
Or, if the bus is packed. The seats are reserved for the elderly, pregnant or disabled.

In this instance, the seats where occupied by three silver haired old ladies. So for the spaz spot, they technically out ranked the hippy mum. But she wasn't just going to let it slide.

She start telling the driver in a loud enough voice that everyone could hear her, how they are reducing the disabled spots and how the bus should have two disabled zones and how young mothers where so hard done by. I swear, if I had shoes on. I would have thrown one at her head.

So, getting no love from the driver or the elderly. She unfolds her pram and sets it up near the front door way. Just so everyone getting on to the bus had to squish around her pram, one by one and her child wasn't even in it. They where both sitting on a chair while the mother spoke words in a baby voice while the child repeated them back to her with more volume.

"Cheese"
"CHEESTH!"
"Carrot"
"CAWWOT!!"

This lasted for about twenty minutes until her stop came up. She then pushed the empty pram down the bus to depart by the back door. When she got there the pram rammed into a guy waiting to get out the door.

"Ow"
"You could get out of the way you know"
"This is my stop..."
"I am trying to get out you know..."

The man, who we shall name "Hero" then did the funniest thing I have seen all day. He smiles at the mother and then looks at the little kid with his best impression of a Wiggle.

"Hey there, do you know how to say 'fuck'?"
"FUCK!" a little voice parroted straight back.

Glorious.

Memphis Blogger Meetup

I got an email from the Rustmeister, a blogger I've seen many times commenting on Say Uncle, who I think lives in Memphis. He alerted me to a blogger meetup coming later this month.

From Squeaky Wheel Seeks Grease:

Okay, now to the details, because I know that’s what you’re all dying to know:

July 19, 2008

East End Grill in Bartlett (map at site - HWY 64 location)

2pm - whenever

Please RSVP in comments, so that we can warn the wait-staff.

If you can make it, please come.

It's good to see someone picking up the ball on blogger bashes/meetups. I was sort of sad that no one did after I stopped back in 2006.

More Like This Please

A story in today's Commercial Appeal that's good news for our local music scene:

Shooting begins July 18 on "$5 Cover," a 15-episode -- or "webisode" -- online program funded by MTV that will be made available to viewers later this year via personal computers, cell phones, iPods and other digital devices that offer an alternative to watching films on TV or in movie theaters.

Brewer plans to use Memphis and Shelby County residents exclusively for his 38 crew members as well as for his lead performers, who will portray "people who are in each other's bands and in each other's beds."

Among the local filmmakers working on the project are Morgan Jon Fox, assistant director; John Michael McCarthy, script supervisor; Nathan Black, director of photography; and Geoffrey Brent Shrewsbury, camera operator. Scott Bomar, composer of the scores for "Hustle & Flow" and Brewer's followup feature, "Black Snake Moan," is a producer.

Memphis Film Commissioner Linn Sitler said the project will have a side benefit: "We'll end up with a lot more experienced crew members here after '$5 Cover' wraps."

As in "The Larry David Show," actors in "$5 Cover" essentially will play themselves, in partly improvised and partly scripted linked dramatic and comedic stories shot on location at the Hi-Tone Café, the Young Avenue Deli, Otherlands Coffee Bar, Java Cabana and other Midtown venues, homes and recordings studios.

Ok,, that last part is worrying, as it means every deadhead trend-hopper will start swamping those places looking for the cool people. I kinda like Otherlands -- despite its lefty-only politics. I'd hate to see it become something else blander and more mainstream.

Read the article for the list of some of the folks involved on-camera. Very impressive.

But this is what Memphis should have been doing all along to promote its alternative bands, instead of pimping out Zombie Elvis and Setting Sun. We'll get the city out there, and the music and bands out there, and hopefully get folks to come here like they came to Liverpool in the Sixties, New York and London in the Seventies, and Seattle in the Nineties. (Especially when they find out how cheap it is to live here!)

There's a discussion of the show already at the Goner Records board.

Many thanks, Craig Brewer.

Gamerz Depot

Some friends of mine have started a game store, called Gamerz Depot. It's in Olive Branch, off Highway 178.



Here is my best friend Mark Havener, who is the wage slave manning the counter. You can see some of the many tables they have for board game, card game and tabletop wargaming play. And a lot of merch on stock, too. Mostly Flames of War, AT-43, UFS and Wings of War, but they also sell some board games, paints, etc. If there is something in particular that you want, always ask, as they have excellent online ordering available.

And they can take PayPal, believe it or not!



As you can see, they give good customer service at Gamerz Depot. Co-owner Greg Lane is arguing with er ... serving customer Jim Johnson. Mark provides covering fire er ... friendly helpful support. Yeah.



Those are Greg's Tau forces about to thoroughly maul my Scions of Iron Space Marines in a game of Epic. Yick, what a disaster that was ....

Check 'em out. Yes, it's a ways to travel down to Olive Branch, but I think you'll find it worth it. It's free to game there and there are good fast-food restaurants nearby, as well as snacks in the store. The Riverbluff Irregulars game down there, as does Adeptus Memphis. And you can usually find me down there on Wednesdays, playing Epic.

We're trying to convince the Memphis Strategy Board Gaming Group to host a Games Day South there once in a while, as well.

Obama's Effect

Check out this graph of performance by the Dow Jones Industrial Average from May to July of this year:




And then check out this chart of Barack Obama's polling performance, same period:




Coincidence or warning?

Graphics Dump

Since I'm putting up graphics, I might as well dump the others in my blog folder.

No doubt you've noted the appearance of Che posters in the offices of Obama supporters. Here, in his official campaign office in Houston:






And here in the chambers of an Ohio judge:




Here are some other "Che" posters:








With all the outrage peddlers out there, why do you never see this image, given how apropos and pointed it is:




I don't watch the show, but others have pointed out how much "Doctor McDreamy" resembles the young Josef Stalin!




Next ... a gruesome reminder:




Those orange splotches are what remains of the bodies of the folks who jumped from the World Trade Center on 9/11/01. They would rather leap a thousand feet into concrete than burn to death inside the buildings. That choice was given to them by Arab Muslim extremists. Remember that when you go to see the new Batman movie later this week. You'll see why.

Remember the small flap last month when Obama's people tried to gloss over the "Presidential Seal" type placard he was using?




Maybe it wasn't such a small thing after all. Consider how much it resembles the background image to his official website. (Note how they first hit you up to join.) Maybe there was more going on than they admitted, and the press never followed up, choosing to accept his "explanation" unquestioningly? For some reason ....




I had an enormous crush on Tami Martin all through junior high school. I met her and Don, who became my best friend up through our college years, on the very first day of seventh grade. I used to ride my bike past her house whenever I had the chance. Too nervous to actually talk with her very often, of course, so nothing ever happened.

We went to different high schools and she began to date on old elementary school friend. But he was a nice guy, so that somehow made it OK in my mind. One day after high school graduation, he went to pick her up from her job in a new clunker car he'd just bought, an old Forties wreck he was going to fix up.

The brakes failed and they went driving into a busy intersection. She was thrown from the car and killed instantly.

Tami is one of the few girls/women I really regret not trying to get serious about. I still think of her every so often, even thirty-odd years later; she was sweet and smart and good. But I didn't have a picture of her and since she died so long ago I never expected to find one.

Well. The internets surprise once again. Here she is, from a tribute page on her high school's alumni site:




And last of all, my cat Bennie!

Commandeering the rug:




Guarding the front door:

It's Not Racist When They Do It

You tell me. Do you see the racism in the Virginia bumpersticker?




Here are some hints on what to look for. (Read up here and here.)






It seems a blatant, if somewhat innocent, use of a racist image to me. Certainly others have gotten into trouble for less.

But not a word of protest I've seen. Hmmmmmm.... I guess it's only residual racism, subconsciously absorbed from the environment via osmosis, since he supports Obama. Nothing to hold him to account for. No doubt he'd happily apologise and submit to re-education. Maybe even redesign the sticker.

If someone called him on it.

The Numbers, They Do Not Lie

Via the Unc, we learn that Congress' job approval ratings are the lowest in modern history! Single digit, in fact. And it only took two years -- one half a presidential election cycle -- to get there.

What happened? Well, it might be the switch to the Pelosi-led Democratic majority. It might also be the utter sell-out by the Republican leadership to the altar of Mammon (where Democrats are also worshipping). You'll notice that Pelosi and Reid aren't much in the news of late. Can you blame them?

Oh, wait. Yes you can!

Democrats promised so much and then completely failed to actually achieve any of it. No, wait, I misspoke. They did raise the minimum wage. Yay for them.

President Bush, meanwhile, has an approval rating three times higher than Congress. And that's after almost 8 years of bashing by Democrats and the media.

Pundits and Democrats are saying that Congress will go even further Democratic this next election, but if you dig into those Rasmussen numbers you'll see that the moderate and independent voters Obama is going for are the very people who are least happy with Congress right now. Reagan Democrats all, they were also mightily pissed off with Obama by the later primaries, as witnessed by Hillary's wins.

It all depends on whether or not the Republicans can get their act and image together in the next few months....

Bwahahahahahahahaha! Sorry, couldn't keep a straight face saying that. They've completely screwed the pooch in the past four years. The promise for conservatives in the 1994 Contract With America was assiduously ground into dust so that Republican leadership could make buckets of money.

At least the Libertarians have the best possible candidate this time around in Bob Barr. He's a professional politician from the mainstream and not some lunatic ideologue as past nominees have often been. He doesn't immediately start talking about disbanding the IRS and legalising drugs and prostituion on Day One. He's a gradualist who wants to move things a little at a time. He stands for things the Democrats and Republicans have demonstrated they don't care about any more. So, I hope we see and hear more from him

But I still don't hold out a lot of hope for America. Republicans have become the party of "We're not as bad as the Democrats!" They don't go after their own principles of smaller government, reduced Federal spending and lower taxes any more. I really do fear we've finally turned the corner into a nation that will vote itself unlimited benefits from the Federal Treasury, paid for with higher taxes today and promissory notes on the future.

Even if Obama loses (and I think he will) McCain is still the sort of person who will dicker and bargain with the Democratic Congress on legislation that's still bad for the country, even if it's good for his name. Like McCain-Feingold. He's not so much a leader as a "strike out on your own" kind of guy. That leaves the Congress in charge (which is, ironically, where the power and control ought to be in my opinion), and they'll whip him around like a bulldog on the knotted end of a rope.

An Obama presidency? Well, I really do think it might be a short one. The threat of assassination is very real, even if the media don't seem to want to discuss it. The attitude of the news media always seems to be a shocked surprise that there are still recidivist racists out there. It's just not a proper subject for adult discussion. Look at how they twisted the Democratic primary votes in places like Pennsylvania and West Virginia, where Hillary won big on the backs of rural, lower class whites. Remember Obama's slur of them as backwards bigots holding on to guns and God out of fear?

So, I fear it's very possible that he might be killed within the next two years. I don't want or welcome it, but it's a probability (not a possibility) that needs to be kept in mind. There are still a lot of people who really don't want a black president for "their" country. It's ugly but true. Who he picks as his vice-presidential candidate really is very important, even if the media won't always own up to why.

Along that line of thinking, I've heard some who think Obama's first term will be like John Kennedy's (hmmmm ... Kennedy) in that he'll pass a lot of important, historic legislation with a Democratic Congress. That legislation won't come into full effect until his second term, if he gets one.

I think an Obama presidency will turn into the Carter administration. I lived through it and it was a horrorshow for this country. We have many of the precipitative ingredients in place -- weakened economy, oil troubles, increasing inflation, farm troubles (thanks to corn and biofuels), disrespect from Arab countries. I think Obama will bring in lots of intellectuals who don't have much common sense and they'll end up dumping this country into a raft of troubles. Just look at the people he's been chucking overboard this year who were his advisors until they got him into problems.

Arch-enemy of the media Dick Nixon led to Gerald Ford. Ford's ineptness led to Jimmah Carter. And Carter's asshattery brought us Ronald Reagan.

Do we have a minimum of four years to wait for a strong presidential leader to emerge from either party? Or will we wait up to eight more years?

The "Netroots Progressive Left" was born in the loss by Gore in 2000. They've been raging and recruiting ever since. They've had almost no successes. The new Democratic Congressional majority was supposed to be their crowning achievement and you can see how that went. Obama is their newest crowning achievement and I already know how that will go.

Like they say, no matter who wins, we all lose.

Conversational Exchange of the Day

Manny: I thought you were, actually. Gay, I mean.

Bernard: So did I for a bit. Then I found out about the prohibitive standard of hygiene. And all that DANCING!

From Black Books.

The Slow Decline Progresses

News from California has to come as a horrid shock to newspaper folks across the nation: The Orange County Register is outsourcing copy-editing to a firm in India.

Now, the Commercial Appeal here in Memphis has already announced that Scripps (their corporate owner) is outsourcing advertising layout and design to another Indian firm. This, however, is a whole new level. Copy-editing is reading the text for errors of spelling, punctuation and usage. It generally takes a person with good skills in English and a sharp eye for detail. The second can come anywhere, but the first? Have you talked with "Peggy" in an Indian support-line call center lately?

The cost of sending digital data across the world is trivial, but the people who manipulate that data in India will do it for much less than Americans will. They have a lower relative cost of living. Plus they don't have pesky OSHA and other workplace laws, nor do they have unions. It saves money.

Will the editors of the papers that benefit from this kind of outsourcing print editorials against it, as they do against other industries doing the same thing for the same reason? Will they swear that the product won't suffer by this change?

Will it? Will the community that supports this paper, and the people who won't work there any more, put up with it if they ever find out? Who will tell them?