Laura Miller had a pin-striped suit she was partial to. So does Tom Leppert. Every big-time event he attends, I think he wears the same duds. No? Here’s his look from the Big D NYE (shot from my TV, if that gives you an idea of how many going-out suits I own).
I could post a picture I just took of an orange-crowned warbler, but I’m not in the mood to get blasted by anti-birding comments. Instead, I put forth a (poor quality) video I took of two of my five perfect nieces, Mia and Katie, who sat on my couch and, unprovoked, burst into song singing (a capella) “Tape of Love” by Flight of the Conchords. To me, it was just one of the many special moments in our family holiday season. To you, it may just be a waste of time. But here goes. Ladies and gentlemen, two of my five perfect nieces. (Hi, LK!)
[The only thing that could make this sign better is if it showed the doggie in action…unless that is not a tail – in that case, it must eat like my mutt.]
Why? Well, ideally it means that a lot of people are living there and walking their dogs. The two cities that immediately come to mind as the most notorious for doggie doo doo are Paris and Rome. I’m sure many other large, livable cities have similar reputations.
[La Defense is so uninspiring isn’t int? Perhaps the point was to contrast it with the beauty of the rest of the city. Clever Architects.]
As for Dallas? Well, I’ve mentioned before in the Olfactory Map of DTD about the smell of dog piss and the presence of dog shit in the little pocket doggie park at the DP&L building. This is one of the very few places in DTD dedicated to doggie defecation [if you think I’m letting this alliteration thing go, you’d be wrong].
In all of downtown, there is currently about 5,500 residents. Naturally, some will be douchebags and not pick up after their dog. I can’t recall if I’ve ever seen anybody deliberately not pick up their doggie diarrhea, but the presence is there. That’s fifty-five hundred people potentially using a 5,000 sq.ft. patch of knobby grass.
Even some like to let them go in their building of residence without cleaning up after their pikey mutt. I have even cleaned up some in my hallway just to avoid any potential blame addressed at mine. I reflexively (and probably incorrectly) like to blame spoiled SMU coeds who have never lifted a finger for their little Sparkles or Sprinkles or whatever lame name they heap upon their little Maltese, probably get their rent covered by Daddy, and in all likelihood made a mistake moving downtown, don’t fit in, and CAN’T WAIT to get back to uptown where all is sweetness and light, with gumdrops falling from the trees, oh and the serial rapist there. [Has that dude ever been caught?]
I have a personal quandary, albeit a minor one. Use a permanent grocery getter bag [the obviously more sustainable choice] or collect the plastic bags? Considering that the doggie digger upper bags are never stocked, I choose to stockpile my plastic bags in a drawer that I always carry around whilst walking my pooch. Mine tends to like to hop behind bushes to be lady-like, so I often am taking her to other lesser utilized green spaces.
Fortunately, before the end of 2009, Main Street Gardens will open downtown replete with doggie run. Certainly, it will have similar issues of insconsiderate owners, but at this point, let’s just be glad we have dog owners downtown because even some of the best cities in the world face this problem just because it’s a product of people (not directly, from their dogs – well, in Dallas can also be from the people – which yes, I have seen) living there.
We could use the people and all the problems they bring with them.
[The street I lived on in Rome. Littered with merda, no doubt.]
Here’s hoping your 2009 goes like my 2008 is ending right now: alone, with no one to play with, cold, and frustrated with your inconsistency and lack of focus. Oh. Wait. That didn’t come out the way I meant it to.
Happy new year, everyone. If you’re running out the clock, here’s a time-wasting question: what are you doing for New Year’s Eve?
The medical examiner said today that Jeanmarie Geis committed suicide. In a post to this blog earlier today, a commenter wrote:
Now is the time to ask why the Dallas Police Department didn’t think Child Protective Services should be consulted after the series of odd police reports.
This case raises a lot of questions. I hope we’ll get them answered in the coming weeks. But how do we know that DPS didn’t consult with CPS? Let’s be careful with the speculation.
Update: Our own Josh Hixson includes in his report the salient stuff about Eric Hansen, the man romantically involved with Jeanmarie.
KERA is making some adjustments to its TV and radio lineups. For the full release, jump. But one change in particular thrills me: the insufferable Calling All Pets, which aired on Friday afternoons at 1, has been axed. Lest you think the programmers at KERA have made a New Year’s resolution to stop airing insufferable programs, the move was forced on them when Wisconsin Public Radio, producers of CAP, killed their own syndicated show. Replacing it on KERA will be something that sounds very NPR: A Way With Words, described as “a lively and informative discussion and Q&A program about language.” The grammar police that lurk in our comments section are, I’m sure, thrilled.
Every year, James Howard Kunstler types up a long screed (redundant?) forecasting the events of the coming year. While he may not be exactly right about what happens, he has generally been accurate re: the meta issues and outcomes. The line that I couldn’t agree more with and has been my underlying point with all the generational studies talks and writings:
My hope for the year, at least for my own society, is that we will transition away from being a nation of complacent, distracted, over-fed clowns, to become a purposeful and responsible people willing to put their shoulders to the wheel to get some things done. My motto for the new year: “no more crybabies!”
I’ve written before that we generally have two choices when society collapses, one of violence and retribution and one of rebuilding positively. In the 1930s-40s-50s, it was the latter for us creating the “Great Generation” and the former for the Germans after their entire economy collapsed. I worry that we might not be a well-educated enough society to appropriately handle the shock to the system that 2009 (exactly 80 years or four generations, ahem, Fourth Turning) might bring. Keeping the religious motif going, my point is to preach the positivity of the Millennial generation, as a rallying cry for all to get behind.
Have we chosen to stick our collective head in the sand and pray for the bad to go away? Or, was that just the Boomers, while everyone else was already working on creating a new society, away from merely “sustaining the unsustainable” (which is a perfect turn of phrase by Kunstler to frame the situation we face).
My question is, what are you doing to build a [intentionally left the word “more” out here] sustainable world?
Hint: Buying a hybrid car or tossing used cans into recycling bins ain’t it. These are actions of the Boomer, sustaining the unsustainable – attempting to make ourselves feel good without actually having to put in any of the legwork to affect any real change. Something for Nothing – sort of the motto of the boomer eh (wasn’t there a song back in the 80s that went something like that – not coincidentally)?
And by boomer, I don’t mean to cast aspersion to any particular individual. It is merely a short hand for the accumulation of all the wrong decisions over the last fifty years, the construction of a failed world, and the decision-making process and framework that we currently operate in – a sort of self-reinforcing circle of shit.
As for my part, I promise to never link or reference Dire Straits ever again.
Which I found at Drunk and In Charge – which I haven’t spent enough time at yet to fully know, but it sure sounds like my kind of place.
If you ever feel like committing vandalism, here is an act that I condone.
Our star commentator — whose life may have been the inspiration of Forrest Gump — reflects on the New Year.
Link to Hub and Spokes blog about it:
In their last show, Ray called for a national gas tax, and suggested the Big Three of Detroit should become train manufacturers. (If Click and Clack agree, maybe my train idea wasn’t so crazy after all.) They’re quoted at the blog Hub and Spokes: “I think it’s an idea whose time has come,” Ray said. “I know most politicians have been too wussy to do it, but I think the logic of raising the gasoline tax right now is unassailable.
“Gas is less than two bucks a gallon. There’s never been a better time to do this. If we added a 50-cent national, gasoline tax right now, and gas cost $2.50 a gallon, would that be the end of the world? Hardly.
“This new tax would generate between 50 and 100 billion dollars every year for the treasury. That money could be used to help rebuild our crumbling roads and bridges, and develop new technologies for more fuel-efficient cars… further decreasing demand for oil. This is a way for us to get on the wagon, and stop sending money to countries that don’t like us. We could become energy independent.
“The other thing that the gas tax revenue could fund is high-speed-train infrastructure between major cities. And who would build all of the new high-tech, high-speed trains we’d need? GM and Ford! We’d help them start a mass-transit division, convert some of those factories from building inefficient gas hogs to building high-speed trains.”
I’ve said this here, and here, and here…and you get the point.
I’ve only seen parts of this movie and certainly had never heard this line, but it’s on the same track of many things I’ve said before:
“It’s the sense of touch….What?….In a real city you walk….you know….You brush past pople. People bump into you. In LA, nobody touches you….always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much that we crash into each other just so that we can feel something.”
I was gone all last week. The CarFree guy actually rented a car and drove cross-country with his trusty and troublesome mutt. But, now I’m back in Dallas and back at it .
