Antidisingenuousmentarianism

1) This is how we write a news story. Take something that's been kicking around for years (three-laning of major road), add something that seems like a trend without having proven to be so and that isn't even explicitly connected (none of the accidents happened on Prince), add quotes from community agitators (Brad Aaron), shake and serve.

Converting Baxter from four lanes to three was unpopular at the time, but is largely considered a success today.

By the commission and BikeAthens? (Also, numero cinco, but should massive stupidity even count?)

2) Gas prices, assholism on the rise.

Despite those increases, Gov. Sonny Perdue said he won't extend the gas tax break he ordered on Sept. 2 in response to Hurricane Katrina because the $75 million cost to the already budget-stricken state is prohibitive. Taxes are actually due to increase by a few cents beginning Nov. 1.

That motherfucker can turn on a dime.

Two 18-year-olds from Macon figured out alternatives should they have to pay more than the $60 they had just spent to fill up their golden pickup in downtown Atlanta.

"We're going to get a street bike, seriously," Cody Casler said.

"How about horses?" Cole Aganew replied.

It's nice to know the kids are thinking about alternative transportation.

3) Look, I know you don't think this article on supermarket options in Jackson County is the hottness, but I think it's interesting and clearly an indicator of where a given county is going.

4) Presumably, this nixed the sale?

5) Or it was on top of the pile?

6) God, there's no more politically courageous stance than coming out in favor of being tough as fuck on sex offenders. Presumably these bills do include teens who get busted under the statutory rape laws?

7) Dodson's letter on public-access channel gets printed. Apparently, the boy likes freedom of speech. This letter wonders why ABH would mention fiscal effects of Rock Eagle sheltering Katrina victims. Because it's the news and it's true, perhaps? It may not have been put in the best way, but it is kind of the case. This one accuses Cathy Cox of being "reactive" rather than "proactive," like Perdue. For "proactive," read "jumping to conclusions."

8) Nerds hit each other with sticks! It's just like that Visa ad.

9) First proposal of task force on education implemented. And it's essentially a duplication of the Department of Public Service and Outreach, only called something trendier.

10) Jackson Street Books still protesting the conversion of 2-hour meters to 1-hour meters in their own way.

James Doster of the Downtown Athens Parking System said he disagrees that one-hour meters negatively affect downtown business, and he said turnover for parking is the reason there are different time limits.

“When students leave cars downtown and go to class for four or five hours, this does affect businesses,” he said.

So does this mean you get to give them an extra ticket for the extra hour they're over the limit? "Although owners of the Jackson Street bookstore do not advocate attempting to remove car boots, they do offer free literature on how to remove the boot yourself."

[bugmenot ABH]

That's the marking in the margin that should go next to this headline. Whose choice is it?

Twenty new kids from across America leave their iPods, cell phones and shopping malls behind and descend on a secret and rugged new location in the middle of the Tehachapi Mountains. For centuries, adventurers made the difficult journey through this rugged landscape in search of a new life. Although the scenery is beautiful, the mountains can be unforgiving, and few survived the trip without the help of family or friends.

This is the first paragraph of the press release for the new season of Endurance, one of Team Brown's favorite shows ever and beginning Saturday at 12:30 p.m. on NBC. Take all the ridiculous pomposity of Survivor, then minus the actual life-threateningness involved. And the money. Now take The Real World and the social dynamics involved. But minus the drinking. And about five to seven years, meaning these kids are smack in the middle of the most awkward time of their lives. There will be tall tan blond boys with curly hair and long eyelashes, and the girls will love them immediately. But there will also be the uncool kids. And all considerations of real strategy will be thrown out the damn window as all decisions are made based on who you have a crush on or who you think is a bitch. Also, the tribal council is replaced with essentially a rock-paper-scissors game. Ooh! And there are videos of auditions, one of which briefly features Hulk hands.

Plus, look how adorable the music editor of Flagpole is when he's coming down a slide at the Jelly Maze.

One of the fully assembled rides near the Hollow's west end is something called The Zipper. It's riderless but in furious motion, a kind of Ferris Wheel on amphetamines. Individual caged cars are hinged to spin on their own axes as they go around in a tight vertical ellipse. The machine looks less like a zipper than the head of a chain saw. Its off-white paint is chipped, and it sounds like a shimmying V-12...

And it is the best fucking ride in the universe because it consists of 99 and 44/100 percent pure terror--terror in a slightly different form than, say, the Free Fall at Six Flags, and in this case consisting of falling backwards while spinning extremely rapidly but also thinking "Fuck! This cage is rattling like it really is about to fall apart or come off its hinges or be launched across the fairgrounds, taking out numerous wanderers when it finally lands!" My darling husband, who created the collage above last night (How many beers did he have before putting it together? I'll take bets), yelled "I'm divorcing you" mid-ride. He doesn't usually go on such things. I have a stomach of pure steel, and even I could at least see how such a ride might make people vomit. The only thing I'm sorry I didn't get a picture of was the exit sign on the gate "EIXT," with the I scratched out and what was maybe an X written above it.

Also, the flames may be added in this particular photo of the demolition derby car that got pushed up onto part of a barrier, but that's not because they weren't there. They just didn't show up in this particular photo. There may have been laughter (and only from our group, embarrassingly enough) when they played the national anthem (a version full of revving sounds, hence the laughter) before the derby started, but there was some pretty serious "woo"ing by the end, especially when this one guy's radiator blew.

The fair is awesome. Many, many more pictures will be uploaded at AthensWorld post-weekend, when I have time to clean some of them up a little.

MSNBC reports:

Expect the hubbies in the new season of "The Simple Life" to be a bit randy. That’s what the producers are looking for.

The concept for the new show has former best friends Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie — who are no longer speaking to each other — trying to be surrogate moms in strange households.

Fuck! TV is pushing boundaries even more than we thought.

Apatow's diary continues, and the Rolling Stones are my new ideal band to hang out with:

Ben, however, was magnificent. I sat in awe as he told Mick what he would do as director, writer, and actor. At one point Ben said he wanted the movie to have the look of Gimme Shelter, to which Keith Richards replied, "Well, this time let's do it without the murder" and laughed his ass off. They all did. It was like being in the den with the devil.

Later, Ron Wood raised his hand, without anyone asking a question, and said, "I'm in." Keith Richards looked at him and said, "OK, Brian Jones." It seemed to be some inside joke based on the fact that Brian Jones thought he was the boss. Or not, I am guessing. It was just cool that we saw Keith Richards say, "Brian Jones." When Ron Wood said he liked something Ben pitched, Keith Richards said to Mr. Wood, "Are you gonna direct the movie, too, Alfred Hitchcock?"

1) UGA hax0red. All that noise about replacing SS#s as the primary identifier on campus remains just noise. DHS notified. R&B thinks maybe this'll provide more motivation.

2) Rock Eagle's lost some money because of housing refugees.

The canceled events ranged from small banquets and civic club meetings to a bicycle race to raise money for multiple sclerosis and a United Methodist Church retreat expected to draw 1,000 men, Smith said.

"We just learned that for security reasons we cannot use the (Rock Eagle) facility as long as they are housing evacuees," said a post on the Methodist group's Web site signed by church officials. "We weighed other possibilities but realized the spirit of Rock Eagle is special to all of us and could not be duplicated elsewhere."

Excuse me? Security reasons?

3) Drivers ID'd in hit-and-runs, one of whom is a fugitive, the other of whom thought she hit a deer, because they totally love to skateboard.

4) Lord knows the MPAA will find a sympathetic audience in a college town with a flourishing arts scene and a lack of ready cash.

5) Are they gonna take away the big 3D neon gun that shoots sparks too?

6) ABH editorial on Cox ads: it ain't no biggie.

7) Kids who were on block scheduling will have a harder time making up the unnecessary two days missed.

8) Cynthia Tucker slams Perdue's transportation policy.

9) For being only in the R&B, this is mighty big news. The sewage treatment plant on Bailey Street has purchased an air-scrubber to alleviate the Poop on the Loop stench, though it may take a while to start working, by which point it'll probably be cool enough to minimize the smell anyway.

Crystal Gangelhoff, a senior from Marietta who has lived in East Campus Village since it opened, called the smell “staggering” and said it is worse at night.

“It smells like poop, and you feel a little nauseous,” she said.

She said at one point, the air was so foul it made her cough.

Get that girl a Hall's, stat! This ain't no joke!

10) Beer and wine have tastes?

[bugmenot ABH; bugmenot AJC]

OSIJM (just met) this dude: http://www.georgiatrend.com/site/page7430.html

That's more like it. Athens regains its status.

Standing for, in this case, Oh Shit Ice Saw...

OH SHIT ICE SAW

Gwyneth. Leaving work at CNN yesterday going to get in his car – drove right by her as she was walking to get into a black SUV.

No, "his" doesn't mean "Ice's." Who do you think it refers to, esp coming from a noted Coldplay lover? Stupid Atlanta, with their good celebrities.

I meant to mention this Tuesday, after Prison Break had aired, but it slipped my mind at the time. At any rate, you know how I wrote briefly about the anxieties the show provokes? They're continuing to amplify those, and while it makes me uncomfortable, there is definitely a kind of "I can't believe they're doing that" pleasure in that uncomfortableness. Basically, they're playing the white woman as menaced by black sexual predators card, and they're playing it hard as fuck. Also, the anal rape by an inbred hillbilly (born of a retarded mother, no less) card, but a little less hard. As with 24, I don't think it's intentionally politically incorrect (which a lot of people would assume of FOX), and I don't think it's unknowing either. What it is is a willingness to exploit the audience in any way possible to produce a reaction, which makes for good TV and minimizes story flaws.

1) Boo! Can't the shark get a little nibble?

2) This episode was extremely low-ranking in terms of actual taking off of shirts. If you were playing a drinking game, you would have been sadly sober.

We've moved on to My Secret Book, which is a little book by Petrarch in which he engages in three dialogues (Plato-stizz) with Augustine on things like why he's not happy. Anyway, here's the first bit I came upon that I thought y'all might be entertained by. Augustine says it:

Certainly the chatter of the intellectuals will never stop: it abounds in such brief definitions and prides itself on providing material for neverending disputes. Yet for the most part they do not really understand what they are talking about. And so if you question one of that lot on the definition not only of man but of anything else, he has a ready answer: if you wish to go further, there is silence. Unless, of course, the habit of chattering has given him not only loquacity but impudence, in which case his manner of speaking will show you that he has no real knowledge of what he has defined. I should like to ask men like that, so fastidiously superficial as they are, 'Why let yourselves get entangled in such snares? Why do you ignore things, and grow old among mere words? Why do you dwell upon childish absurdities when your hair is white and your foreheads wrinkled? If only your madness harmed no one but yourselves, and had not so often corrupted the idealistic minds of young people!'

And pushing 'em fast. Is this the best show ever that Team Brown has never heard of? Dr. Who but with awkward teenagers much?

1) Shipp says the current focus on denying illegal immigrants public higher education is partially a tactic to distract you from Sonny's fuck-up in canceling school for two days. Here's a letter that says parents are required to take care of their children but provides no justification for why government should make that more difficult. This couple wants to know if Perdue did his research, which is sweetly naive. Research? God doesn't dig research. That sounds suspiciously like communism. I mean, science. R&B talks about provisions faculty, staff, and students made, which don't seem to have amounted to much, but then, they only talk to a few people. The real question is how gas prices are affecting NASCAR. Which apparently is for them to know and you not to find out.

2) Magic new UGA internets is not for you.

3) Advantage Behavioral Health Systems board seems to want to drag this seven-year lawsuit out further instead of settling.

4) Peeper! And odd use of "jutted."

5) Whoo! Booze.

In 2002, Auburn residents voted to allow the sale of liquor-by-the-drink, but the change hasn't drawn any restaurants because there is no public sewer in town, said Stephanie Glander, council liaison for the city government.

6) There's a new commission in Atlanta trying to figure out guidelines for who gets honored with statues and the like on the capitol grounds. Please do note:

But the Capitol's fourth floor museum with its preserved specimens of a two-headed calf and a two-headed snake won't be scavenged for extra space, several lawmakers on the panel insisted.

"That two-headed calf is one of the most important things to school children," said Sen. Johnny Grant, R-Milledgeville. "The snake, nobody cares about. But the calf - that's history."

7) ABH comes out strongly against denying illegal immigrants admission to state colleges and universities. This is a fine editorial, one of the best they've run in a while. Hooray for displaying of testicles.

8) Letter-writer doesn't understand how anyone could be against parental notification wrt school clubs. I mean, they're teaching the kids how to ass-fuck in third grade, y'all. And here's one in favor of local access (but not truly public access) channel. Really, we'd prefer it to be wide open, but anything would do. Dodson says we can make people sign a contract, as is done in Austin, saying, e.g., no porno.

9) As with the number of pedestrians being hit by cars, this cluster of reported rapes is probably just randomness doing its random thing rather than a trend, but it looks crappy.

10) Interesting timing on this article on landscaping of North Campus, since JKD, visiting Athens, was commenting on how crappy it looks lately. That said, football season is cited as having a significant effect on the grass.

11) R&B covers increased effort to raise funds for need-based scholarships, mentions that it might increase the number of non-white people on campus too.

12) Cathy Cox is being accused of running public service radio ads warning against investment fraud on radio stations with mostly African-American listeners in order to bump up her numbers among that group of voters. Would we be shocked? Not in the slightest. It's not as though Gov. Perdue hasn't done comparable things, such as with that website he spent all that HOPE scholarship money on. And I'm sure Taylor has to, even if I can't call particular instances to mind.

13) Second item here makes it very clear that Tailgate Station deliberately obtained the piece of land ACC wanted for rails-trails:

The Tailgate Station section of land was once owned by the railroad, but then Tailgate went to court to pursue ownership of it under a law that permits an abandoned railbed to return to its original owner. (Tailgate traced its site ownership back to an 1882 deed from Athens Manufacturing Company to the Georgia Rail Road and Banking Company.) Judge David Sweat ruled in Tailgate's favor, but ACC Attorney Bill Berryman says there are still questions about Tailgate's ownership of the land, and they must be resolved before the swap can go through.

13) Pete's into three ways.

[bugmenot ABH; bugmenot AJC]

Reality trumps video games.

You NYC people. So spoiled.

I went to see the Daily Show taped yesterday - so therefore I saw Jon Stewart. The guest was Viggo Mortensen - who in real life has that same weirdness as Peter Weller, you know, kinda creepy and seems to have a sense of humor that is funny but completely unatainable to earthlings. Yesh, he's a really good looking Peter Weller. And probably as talented acting-wise. And said that David Cronenberg was a "funny guy".

What do we get here? Tennis players no one knows and occasionally Stipe doing something weird.

Just between the cheeks?

Arrest: On Sept. 19, deputy Brad Williams was dispatched to the parking lot in front of the Philly Connection on Experiment Station Road after a woman called saying a deputy was needed. When Williams arrived, he saw Michael Hopkins standing outside a white car screaming vulgar language at a female, who was screaming back at him. Williams told both to be quiet as they were causing a scene in a public place, but they continued their rowdy behavior. Hopkins looked at Williams and used a profane word and informed him he could take his badge and shove it in his rear end. At that point, Williams told Hopkins he was going to be handcuffed, but Hopkins said he wasn't going anywhere so he began walking away, then took off running. Williams chased and Sgt. James Hale arrived to assist, and he followed Hopkins in a patrol unit. Hopkins slowed down and Williams grabbed him and forced him to the ground, where he was arrested. Williams then returned to the Philly Connection, but the unidentified woman in the white car had left the scene. Hopkins was charged with disorderly conduct and obstruction.

He needed to stir that shit and put it back in for another minute:

Dispute: On Sept. 21, deputy R.W. Elder was dispatched to Atlanta Highway in Bogart where a woman said she was cooking supper when she took her son's food out of the microwave. The son came into the kitchen and became angry at her action. He picked up a radio and threw it to the floor, then raised his fist at her. She called 911. Gregory Thornton, 40, of Bogart was arrested for trespassing.

They ran a DNA test to be sure:

Arrest: On Sept. 23, deputy Bryan Yoder was dispatched to the University of Georgia Plant Science Farm on Snows Mill Road, where an employee discovered that someone had entered the breakroom and stole $100, a submarine sandwich and a container of baked beans. Yoder was told about a man living in a tent near the cotton field and as Yoder went to his car, he saw the man walking out of the cotton field. He drove over to the man, who said he was looking for a job. Yoder asked if he could look through his belongings and the man agreed. They went to his tent, where Yoder located a container of baked beans. The beans matched those taken at the science farm, so Zachary Roger Casey, 23, was arrested on a charge of burglary. Casey also gave officers an address of Cherry Lane, Athens.

The rest is here. [bugmenot ABH]

Hassiotis sent me this, from the NYT:

"It's a sad day in the city of new orleans when a hero makes a decision like this," Nagin said. "He leaves the apartment in pretty good shape and with a significant amount of leadership."

Which made me remember this, from the Fall Preview theater section in the New Yorker, which is set in type at least two point sizes bigger than the regular listings:

...this season features many venerable names, from playwrights and actors to shows themselves....Wendy Wasserstein has a drama to unveil and new musicals come in colors: Andres Llyod Webber's "The Woman in White"

Oh, New Yorker. Do not make me laugh at you in such a way. This was on the first page of the listings. In the first column.

"Things banging don't make livers," he says.

Well actually, Mr. Nugent, [wink wink] they kinda do.

Updated 2:20 p.m.

1) Wait, Perdue's decision to cancel two days of school to make himself look good was stupid? I thought I read that yesterday in the Red & Black. Was it really more important to weigh in on the dangers of free speech yesterday than to get asses in gear and be timely? It's not like Perdue handed down the decision Monday. There was plenty of time to write a word or two. What the editorial might've mentioned is that actual policies that help conserve fuel (e.g., funding public transportation) are more helpful than last-minute stunts that, while they might save a little diesel, probably waste a compensatory amount in regular gasoline as parents find places to stash their kids for the day. Letters are huffy too. Daycares slammed. This article talks about political takes from both sides:

In Washington, President Bush praised Perdue for his decision, saying the governor "showed some leadership" in "anticipating a problem." The state's top Republican lawmakers also rallied to Perdue's defense.

...Angry parents and teachers can be a potent force in Georgia politics, as Perdue knows better than most. Feeling slighted by his predecessor's education reforms, they helped Perdue defeat incumbent Democratic Gov. Roy Barnes in 2002 to become the state's first GOP governor in 130 years.

But this controversy probably doesn't rise to that level.

Didn't Barnes eliminate tenure? That will piss teachers off a hell of a lot more than giving them two extra days of vacation. And is running at 90 percent really a shortage?

2) Some opinions on TCE as carcinogen provided with actual numbers. The more numbers the better.

3) Pedestrians: please walk on the sidewalk and in crosswalks. Drivers: please be careful. I don't think the spate of car-human accidents lately is indicative of anything except randomness, but jerkass behavior of all sorts could always stand to be reduced.

4) ABH wants cameras in the police officer murder trial in Pendergrass.

5) Loran Smith takes on crazy pronunciations. Woo!

6) UGA student says in AJC op-ed that success on the SAT is just about playing the game, rather than a real measure of anything.

7) Cain't go wrong with bashing immigrants, y'all.

The federal government mandates that illegal aliens receive K-12 education and emergency care from our hospitals. There is nothing we can do at the state level to change that. However, we can address the issues that take services away from legal Georgia residents.

OMG! They're learning! For free! Kemp don't want them to.

8) UGA administrators turn over possible ways to conserve energy to BOR, including: extend more 4-day/10-hour work week opportunities for faculty, use department and administrative vehicles sparingly, encourage students to drive less, utilize more hybrid or alternative fuel vehicles on campus, and monitor lighting levels and hours of operation in University parking decks. Altering bus routes was thought about but not that seriously, since it would tend to encourage driving. The staff listserv is in a minor snit about this because it privileges faculty over staff (and admittedly, even if faculty work 40 hours a week, they don't do it on that kind of schedule), but I'm not sure why. Misinformation?

9) University is finally, after years and years, thinking about offering some pretty shitty graduate health insurance. Cheers.

[bugmenot ABH; bugmenot AJC]

Reality TV is a liar indeed.

Guess the genre:

He was bare-chested underneath his blazer. His pecs were rippling in between the black lapels; and seeing where the jacket seams hit his shoulders, I could tell just how broad those shoulders really were.

I know you think it's Mr. Garrison, but click for the reveal.

"I've experienced this several times where I was on the receiving end of this artificial rain. When many cicadas congregate on warm days, they feed on the tree fluids and often urinate 'piss' while doing so. This bug urine is called 'honey dew.' The little buggers have pelted me several times while I was observing a little 'too' close. It isn't uncommon.
Lastly, the 'honey dew' does not stain, or stink. In fact, it feels like rain drops."

Don't you want to know what the question was? Warning: They might confuse you with a tree branch.

Yes, that blog at Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer is a fine thing. Not least because of the images through which it captures what college football is. And this one, of a group of LSU fans in the stands during the loss last night, is a good example of how. Those of us who are devoted to the college ball know this feeling, and I'm trying to distinguish how it's different from the similar one that results from a loss on the pro level or in a different sport. I think because there remains a kind of innocence and hope on the college level, which is in the process of being ground into the mud. You know how before you graduate from college, you think the world is your fucking kumamoto and that you will go and conquer and do exactly what you want to do? And how it feels when you realize that 99 percent of that is not so? Look at the picture again. That's it. So when people try to justify wasting their weekends on the couch by saying sports teach us valuable lessons, they are not necessarily wrong.

Book 11, Chapter 9 (Italics his):

This then, O God, was the Beginning in which you created Heaven and Earth: marvellously speaking and marvellously creating in Your Word, Who is Your Son and Your Strength and Your Wisdom and Your Truth. Who shall understand this? Who shall relate it? What is that light which shines upon me but not continuously, and strikes upon my heart with no wounding? I draw back in terror: I am on fire with longing: terror in so far as I am different from it, longing in the degree of my likeness to it. It is Wisdom. Wisdom Itself, which in those moments shines upon me, cleaving through my cloud. And the cloud returns to wrap round me once more as my strength is beaten down under its darkness and the weight of my sins: for my strength is weakened through poverty, so that I can no longer support my good, until Thou, Lord who art merciful to my iniquities, shalt likewise heal my weakness: redeeming my life from corruption and crowning me with pity and compassion, and filling my desire with good things

Here is the stuff most people actually liked on Stylus. My unchosen comments follow:

Alexis Strum, “Bad Haircut” — Strings are kind of nice, but song’s neither perky nor “you go, girlfriend” enough to stick in my head.
[4]

Charlotte Church, “Call My Name” — Fuck! Donna Summer is back!
[7]

Andy Bell, “Crazy” — Pretty competent disco that’s a letdown post-Church/Art Brut/Go! Team/LCD. It’s just a bit quieter and has less of the siren song of the dancefloor in it.
[5]

Sebastien Tellier, “La Ritournelle” — This is so low-key that I actually forgot I was listening to it. Brunch music.
[4]

The Go! Team, “Bottle Rocket” — Helpless to resist the combo of horns and drums being hit with the force of Thor. Booty twitching.
[7]

Tatu, “All About Us” — We missed you, ladies. Nice to see you back, with slowly building noises of winter winds and guitars that get bigger and bigger as the song goes on, creating mega-drama. Not as much fun as earlier singles, but attention-grabbing still.
[7]

1) Apatow and his wife heart the reality TV, but they also feel bad about it more than I do. I feel bad occasionally, but not about Being Bobby Brown, at least partially because Whitney and Bobby seem rather made for each other and like they're having fun much of the time.

2) Little Brother's R. Kelly parody, "Cheatin,'" which is not bad, but then it's not hard to parody the R., and also, why would you want to?

So yes. If you look through the WireImage gallery of the Serenity premiere, you will see a weird-haired Krumholtz and many a Jossverse vet, and then, on page 4, right next to the pictures of Joss himself and his wife, is Jose Canseco, doing his "Sleepy Blue Steel" to the camera. Is Canseco a secret Buffy fanatic? Or did he think there would be a lot of cameras there? Either is hard to believe.

1) ABH covers University's expansion plans more in depth.

Under a 20-year master plan for campus development unveiled in 1998, South Lumpkin Street would be rerouted between Baxter and Broad streets, shifting west toward Newton Street.

But that plan has been abandoned for the time being, said Hank Huckaby, UGA senior vice president for finance and administration.

The street rerouting likely has been abandoned for good, according to UGA spokesman Tom Jackson.

That's a good thing for Athens-Clarke County taxpayers. Contractors will soon be digging up South Lumpkin Street between Baxter and Broad streets as work gets under way on the final phase of a multimillion-dollar makeover of the street and the adjacent storm drainage system.

2) Far be it from me to take the side of the vegans protesting against the deliciousness of honeybaked ham, but nonetheless I kind of must.

3) Y'all already know about the schools being closed. But why didn't I hear about this?

The governor also asked employers to follow the state's example and allow workers to do their jobs from home or on a four-day, 10-hour work week. By executive order, he halted non-essential travel by state workers, even canceling a series of school visits he was planning to make next week.

So that's 2.5 hours per day? I could go for some of that. Slightly fewer people idiots? Or at least different kinds of idiots? Some people are pissed that they now have to find daycare for their kids, but Sonny Perdue and W are on the same page when it comes to caring about poor people. R&B comes out agin it in an editorial. Where's the ABH on this? Campus buses will run.

4) If you need an ID to vote with, you can get one at the Loretta Cleveland Fall Festival Oct. 15 at Triangle Plaza in East Athens, due to Brian Kemp's arranging for the GLOW bus to be there. That's "Georgia Licensing On Wheels," not "Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling," unfortunately.

5) Why does UGA have a bomb disposal robot? Because bombs have, in the history of the world, existed. Duh. Also, where does one get a terrorism basket? Also also, managing football traffic is good preparation for managing terrorism induced traffic. Woo! SEC!

6) Lobbyists aren't filing reports of their lobbying. Or possibly just not doing any lobbying. But the former seems more likely. How do you spend only $5 lobbying? Buy your commissioner lunch at Wendy's?

7) Nuwaubian Building to become a bookstore. Hopefully with decor preserved? I still think Team Brown's idea to turn it into a bar would've been hugely successful.

8) That nonexistent biotech corridor continues not to be.

9) Meow. Navy School-area residents "said they'd also be happy with a college campus, as long as it wasn't the University of Georgia." Nah, they just want the tax moneys.

10) Pro and con in the AJC on letting illegal immigrants make use of the HOPE scholarship. Con makes being an illegal immigrant migrant worker sound like a pretty sweet-ass deal. Where does one sign up for that?

11) Yarbrough hearts church, but also shrimp. We agree on one of those. Winders smacks Hudgens around. Jim now kind of likes the dope-smoking hippies (and admits that sometimes the government can actually do stuff). And Shipp runs down Perdue's latest fundraising letter, point by point.

12) ABH likes the rail-trail land swap solution. But massively pussies out on the public-access channel question (and controversially comes out against reality shows where people are forced to eat bugs to win money).

13) Ponsoldt thinks the M&C should get involved in the release of the homicide records the ABH is litigating for. Andy Rusk is getting mentioned in the letters section. (And his website is up.) Dear Nick Jones, what's your take on Derrida?

14) Some students went to Washington. Did it work yet? There were protests here too.

“Nobody’s really paying any attention to the troops anymore,” College Republican Kiera Ranke told the crowd of about 100 Republican state supporters.

God yeah. It's not like... Oh...

Protesters observed a moment of silence for the fallen troops in Iraq.

As anti-war protesters gradually dispersed at the Arch, they placed their signs behind the white crosses lining the fence that separates downtown from campus. Each cross bears the picture of a Georgia native killed in Iraq.

Y'all are not supporting Andrew Dill's way of life though! Support his desire to drink bourbon and sweet tea at General Beauregard's, dammit!

15) It's time to pull out that "playing with heart" cliche.

16) This student thinks the ethics/reasoning course requirement might be a good idea because she doesn't know why not to do things that are wrong, or at least thinks others don't.

[bugmenot ABH; bugmenot AJC]

SFJ sez

Backstreet Boys, "Just Want You To Know"
Remake of Heavy Metal Parking Lot, the docudramatic footnote that suggests Spinal Tap was not realistic enough. Sad sad sad. Boy band aesthetic being apologized for, with hipster icing on a very stale cake. Decent song.

But is the point that it's all "we hate boybands"? Or is the point that metal bands are boybands? I would strongly argue the latter, though obvs Backstreet knows that rock is in ascendance right now.

Leaving early on a Friday so that one can take a nap in preparation for socializing (and rock) means that one misses extensive flipping out on the staff listserv about the fact that schools in Georgia are closed today and tomorrow so that Gov. Perdue can get reelected. I mean, because gas prices are anticipated to be a million dollars a gallon and pandering to panic never hurt anyone that much. I mean... you know what I mean. So, of course, UGA people being who they are, they wanted to know if the university was also canceled for no reason. Nice splitting the difference follows:

TO: University of Georgia faculty and staff

RE: UGA to assist employees affected by school closings

In light of the fact that area public schools will be closed on Monday and Tuesday to conserve gasoline, the University of Georgia has authorized two extra days of leave for its regular 12-month employees. Employees may elect to use the extra days on Sept. 26 and 27 or at any other time in the future they determine appropriate.

“We want to be able to meet the needs of employees who may be experiencing a hardship resulting from school closures, while at the same time implementing a plan that is fair and equitable to our workforce,” said Hank Huckaby, senior vice president for finance and administration. “We think this plan achieves that.”

“While this measure is meant to accommodate those employees whose personal commitments are affected by the closings, our staff is encouraged to report to work Monday and Tuesday so there will be as little disruption as possible to university operations,” said UGA President Michael F. Adams.

UGA administrators made the decision to award the leave days after receiving guidance from Interim Chancellor Corlis Cummings that all 34 institutions of the University System of Georgia would remain open.

According to President Michael F. Adams, in light of the System guidance, the University will operate on a regular schedule next week. He has asked that a plan be developed to minimize fuel use on the campus for the coming weeks. In addition, and in light of the Governor’s executive order, he has directed that all non-essential automobile travel by University employees on state business be curtailed until further notice. In addition, any out-of-state business travel by automobile must be approved in advance by the appropriate vice president until further notice.

Opining on the UK stuff is up again. Here are addenda:

Paul Weller, “Come On/Let’s Go” — This is very grizzled and sloppy in that way the English are good at pulling off (e.g., Wreckless Eric). It could have more melody, but it’s not without charms.
[5]

Jo O'Meara, “What Hurts the Most” — Stupid jukebox. Be less adult contempo. Thwack!
[2]

King Biscuit Time, “C I Am 15” — This is mostly sort of horrible and monotonous, especially when the random reggae part comes in, but the incorporation of clappy, snappy sounds like in step actually give it some growing power. Hate is at least moving to acceptance, if not to love.
[4]

Liberty X, “Song for Lovers” — Yo. This must be pushing childhood buttons somehow. It should all be wrong, with inspirational content, super-dated rapping, big choir, and thin production, but I feel no ill will toward the song. It’s like the fast fun songs Disney still does from time to time.
[6]

Art Brut, “Good Weekend” — Claim is totally believable and helps, in fact, make the song. Shouty!
[7]

Second half to be up tomorrow, no doubt, with stuff people liked in general.

OMG, Sufjan is teh rock  Hey, so remember how I had a birthday a week or so ago? Apparently, it pushed my crankiness up another notch, meaning I was entirely too frustrated by the largeness of the crowd at the Sufjan Stevens show and the heat in the building. Which meant that we left. Also, socializing seemed more important at the time. I believe it may have been the Schlitz talking. But, Hillary, you say, you could've gotten to the show early and staked out a good spot. But nothing! It was far more necessary for me to return to the lovely patio at the Manhattan and discuss grammar peeves and how Webster's Third New International is the hippie dictionary. Really it was. There are a few more photos from the weekend of going out and doing things up at AthensWorld, including some documentation that we actually were (briefly) at the Sufjan show--important documentation, as this was the only time I was able to see the man himself.

Also, I am completely gay for Murder Beach all over again. And for the pie at Paul's BBQ, which remains the best pie ever in the history of the universe.

Lataz.

Sometimes a search string is a story in and of itself.

Motherfuck! How did I not know Polanski has done Oliver Twist? Not beating out gay cowboys in the excitement department, but not bad either.

1) ABH finally gets around to covering the frat-house forcible relocation story, a week after the R&B.

"They feel like it is home and they are being displaced from their homes," [Rodney Bennett, UGA vice president for student affairs,] said.

Because they are, maybe?

The move is not keyed to any imminent plans by the school to build something new on the land beneath the fraternity houses, but space has become available on River Road with the demolition of some fraternity houses no longer in use, Bennett said.

UGA planners are interested in the South Lumpkin Street houses for the land, not the fraternity houses themselves.

"I don't think we intend to refurbish the TEP (Tau Epsilon Phi) house into an academic facility," Adams said.

Toga Party in Freshman English, y'all!

Also Thursday, Adams declined to say anything about possible tuition increases next year, but said he had talked about UGA budget needs with state political leaders.

"Our greatest need this year is faculty salaries," the president said he told state leaders.

OMG totally. I've seen the faculty eating out of dumpsters lately. R&B covers the same press conference, quotes Adams saying, of the frats, "I don’t think anybody’s going to be kicked out tomorrow." Cartoon suggests how the planning process might have gone.

2) Rock Eagle shelter closed. Pretty much everyone's found a place to stay. A few people are still in hotel rooms.

3) Akins, owner of Akins Ford Dodge Jeep Chrysler Plymouth in Winder, won the framed copy of the Ten Commandments...

4) Commission results: trade of land for trestle with Tailgate Station approved (but for a little less land than thought at first, which is better), McCarter does his anti-Puerta thing (but vote is indeed Oct. 4), Kinman wants a sidewalk master plan, Dodson hearts public access.

5) Article on UGA-Clarke County school district partnership mentions the chamber of commerce's involvement in something similar, providing business mentorships. Am surprised.

6) Madison County is raising some pretty badass teenagers. Maybe it's that nefarious gay-straight club influence.

7) Eternal vigilance is the price of the HOPE scholarship?

8) More expensive burritos worth it at the price of also keeping OBL out of Athens. And Donald Keyes points out that snazzy bus shelters will definitely not increase ridership. (Sidebar: sensible and attractive public art in Athens)

9) University seeking to add more need-based scholarships. Good move, but you know how you could do that? Income caps on HOPE. I think I'm making myself hoarse here.

10) Some students to protest the war. Others to sit in a room and have a very quiet little rally.

11) Creative dining suggestions that may top even using a melonballer.

12) R&B column uses word "proletariat"! Woo!

13) Glass houses. Stones. This first letter might remind you of that saying. Also, last letter says motorcyclists are being ticketed on campus, which I'd heard.

14) Dude. At least our bulldog isn't a leatherman.

[bugmenot ABH; bugmenot AJC]

I was so not going to watch The Apprentice this season. Or at least I was going to switch to the Martha version. But catching Trump on Stephen Smith's horrible show (which, incidentally, determined the answer to the question "Who would you want to punch more: Donald Trump or Stephen Smith?") reawakened the love that dare not speak its name. The awkwardness (I'd sell my soul for a screencap of the moment when Trump was talking about how he knows Tyson better than anyone, "even you [meaning Stephen Smith]"; the look on Smith's face, which can be translated as "fuck you talkin' bout, crackah?" was pure gold). The painful pomposity. The wild claims (that he was the best baseball player in the history of his high school). Oh sweet trumpness.

So, yes. I watched. And he made them run their asses off in the first ten minutes, desperately looking for the helicopter he'd hidden on the golf course. There should be more of this--the naked state of greed and competition, only in high heels. Next week: the literal ass-smooching contest? Let it be so.

Added: Also please to note the golden weinerphone, which results in the uncomfortable moment of laughing at a scene in which a man finds out his grandma has died. I love you, Mark Burnett.

Palmer? Or Plummer?

Former has advantage of consistency and not provoking hatred. Latter is facing a much weaker pass defense in Kansas City, which, while improved, is still not as good as Chicago's.

Also, former means eggs in one basket, as Rudi, Perry, and the Cincy D all seem to be starting for us as well. Week 10 is gonna be a bitch, y'all.

I have really not been carefully following my gay cowboy news lately, and so the boys at Mez Eclipse had to point me to the trailer for Brokeback Mountain. Sure, I could mock them, but in this case it's too easy, and besides, I appreciated the helping hand. Anyway. Hotttness does indeed seem to be in the offing. Will this turn out to be a mere Intimate Circumstances? Hopefully not. It must be said that it is particularly stirring when they start whaling on each other. Woo!

This being apropos. Book ten, Chapter 31:

Another evil is of the day, and would that it were sufficient unto it. We repair the daily deteriorations of the body by eating and drinking, until the day when You will destroy both the belly and the meats, for You will kill our emptiness with a marvelous fullness, and You will clothe this corruptible with eternal incorruption. But for the present time the necessity is sweet to me, and I fight against that sweetness lest I be taken captive by it.
. . . This You taught me, that I should learn to take my food as a kind of medicine. But while I am passing from the pain of hunger to the satisfaction of sufficiency, in that very passage the snare of concupiscence lies in wait for me. For the passage is itself a pleasure, yet there is no other way to achieve sufficiency than that which necessity forces us to travel. And while we eat and drink for the sake of health, yet a perilous enjoyment runs at the heels of health and often enough tries to run ahead of it: so that what I say I am doing and really desire to do for my health's sake, I do in fact for the sake of the enjoyment. For there happens not to be the same measure for both: what suffices for health is too little for enjoyment; so that often it is not at all clear whether it is the necessary care of my body calling for more nourishment, or the deceiving indulgence of greed wanting to be served. Because of this uncertainty my wretched soul is glad, and uses it as a cover and an excuse, rejoicing that it does not clearly appear what is sufficient for the needs of health, so that under the cloak of health it may shelter the business of pleasure.

Oh you kid. It's not like gluttony's a sin or anything...

...clad in a white button-down shirt depicting a dragon attacking a tiger [vadimus had it first]

1) Reports of cheating on the rise. But it's not actual cheating that's rising, just faculty awareness of the new academic honesty procedures. Oh, and even reports only rose three since last year. Major fucking trend alert! Also: pondering what numbers mean in a vaccuum = they can mean whatever you want them to. That's the beauty of the thing.

2) Five Athens-area gas stations are being investigated for price gouging, but they won't say which ones. Chances are this is crap. If they overcharged people from the Chamber of Commerce in particular, they should get a pizza party rather than a prosecution.

3) So is Tailgate Station making more money because the commission failed to tie up loose ends with the rails-trails conversion? That is a bit what it seems like. Also, La Puerta del Sol rezoning being discussed tonight? Still being voted on on Oct. 4? Or has it been moved up? Also discussion on renewing Charter's cable franchise and the lighting ordinance. Jui-say!

4) Man. School-system conflicts are complicated. This article tries to lay it out clearly, but still. Basically, students in part of Walton County were compelled to attend Social Circle schools back in the day, to integrate them further, but now Social Circle has better schools than Walton County, and the latter is trying to get the students who reside in that specific part back. Money is, of course, extensively involved. What's unanswered is how integrated both school systems are now, i.e., which is more so, and who has the money and who needs the money.

5) If you work downtown, you might already have an inkling of this from the large booms that probably shake your building periodically.

6) Maysville is being sensible, in case you wanted an update on this story.

7) Update on the doctor who was hit by a car and killed: he was wearing dark clothing and it was 6:30 a.m. They're trying to figure out if he was in the road or on the shoulder.

8) ABH also thinks Clean Air Athens is overreacting. But think of the children!

9) Op-ed in favor of restricting (at very least) the use of cell phones while driving in Athens. This is the part where the libertarian in me shrivels up and dies because, eff yes, people should not be driving and talking on the damn phone.

10) Jerkface hearts market. R&B column writer explains how economics work, but check out this adorable conclusion: "Remember that while we’re stuck in low-wage jobs now, our diploma soon will free us from this predicament." Ah, sweet ignorance of youth.

11) Drek Davis thinks starving refugees don't want no Louis Vuitton. Do you know how ridiculous people are, Mr. Davis?

12) Campus Transit extending weekend routes. Maybe soon you'll get more chances to puke on the bus late at night, if things keep going in this direction. R&B editorial sure hopes so.

13) How to avoid complying with open-records requests, lesson 1: Don't write anything specific down.

14) Education College prof snarks a bit at students ("In nearly all educational institutions, you can count on the students to see the issues most clearly."), but ultimately provides a pretty good take on grade inflation.

15) New vocab word: booty-doo.

Added:
16) Note also this letter in Flagpole, which I meant to mention yesterday but forgot:

At the risk of lengthening an exchange that has already probably outlived its useful shelf life, I'd like to very briefly respond to Matt Hudgins. Matt, we agree. I live in Normaltown because I appreciate the diversity, vigor, eclecticism and creativity of this wonderful community. I dread the homogenization, strip mallification (a new word!), and franchising of our town. The last thing I want is that Athens look like Snellville one day in the not-too-distant future. One way that we can keep that from happening is if all of us make a conscious decision to support great locally owned businesses, even if it takes a few minutes longer to get served (Clocked vs. McDonald's), costs a few pennies more (Taco Stand vs. Taco Bell), or takes a bit more effort to park nearby or walk there (Farm 255 vs. Applebee's). It's well worth it.

Because apparently wanting some kind of a modicum of customer service is equivalent to loving all evil corporations and destroying the world's artieries. Right?

[bugmenot ABH]

These being, of course, so you can grow that soda tree you've always wanted.

Pirates v. faux redneck culture: Which will be the bigger trend when we look back on all this in ten years? Debate.

Actor : character :: not-cool : cool.

It's nice to have a thing that you can get together with friends and watch. TV can be an isolating activity or not, and I'm not saying either is better than the other. It's just been a while since I had a date with a show and with a friend or friends at the same time. That said, we had to watch the last two episodes of the previous season before watching the premiere, and that season finale was the longest damn thing ever. It felt like hours of reaction shots and people staring at each other meaningfully. Does this mean my attention span is shrinking? It might, or it might mean they didn't have enough plot to fill an hour and a half. Also, the whole "man of science"/"man of faith" thing? Yeah. Kind of shallow.

Book Ten, Chapter 8, in which he starts talking at length about the faculty of memory:

I shall mount beyond this power of my nature, still rising by degrees towards Him who made me. And so I come to the fields and vast palaces of memory, where are stored the innumerable images of material things brought to it by the senses. Further there is stored in the memory the thoughts we think, by adding to or taking from or otherwise modifying the things that sense has made contact with, and all other things that have been entrusted to and laid up in memory, save such as forgetfulness has swallowed in its grave. When I turn to memory, I ask it to bring forth what I want: and some things are produced immediately, some take longer as if they had to be brought out from some more secret place of storage; some pour out in a heap, and while we are actually wanting and looking for something quite different, they hurl themselves upon us in masses as though to say: "May it not be we that you want?" I brush them from the face of my memory with the hand of my heart, until at last the thing I want is brought to light as from some hidden place. Some things are produced just as they are required, easily and in right order; and things that come first give place to those that follow, and giving place are stored up again to be produced when I want them. This is what happens, when I say anything by heart.

Basically, it starts to get much more philosophical at this point, which is interesting, but I prefer the narrative.

I've just realized the time scheduled for the Mississippi State game conflicts with the Sufjan Stevens show. Maybe I can run back and forth between Room 13 and the 40 Watt all night long.

How many people in town do you think this is a problem for, his embrace of Illini motifs notwithstanding?

1) Danna Lea is crazy, y'all. It's nice of the county to drop the charges against her (considering they're now saying she didn't technically violate the no sign ordinance), but it seems more due to agitating than anything else.

In another twist to the sign saga, Lea and Knight said they had planned to subpoena Davison to ask her about telling a local newspaper that county officials met with Lea to offer a compromise.
. . . But Lea could very well show up in court down the road. Tuesday, Francois was back on the sidewalk, and Lea said the other frog, "Francis," which she had taken down, will join him soon.

"It's not for sale, it's not a sign and it's not a display," she said. "If they ticket me again, they ticket me again. The frogs will be on the sidewalk."

I bet the commission wants to punch blindy mcblinderson in the mouth right about now.

2) OMG! CosmoGirl loves UGA!

3) Hey assholes, slow down.

4) Most everyone who was in the most recent trailer park to close has found a place to stay. Check Flip Hambrick's story.

5) Okay, so the Athens Clean Air people are prone to overreact, but these numbers are a little funky:

The plant vents more than 10,000 pounds of TCE a year, but by the time the chemical reaches Coile Middle School or a nearby church, it's so diluted that the health risk is far below federal standards, an environmental toxicologist said at a June public hearing on the company's request to renew its Title V air quality permit. That permit allows it to emit up to 100 tons of TCE per year. The company reported its actual TCE emissions for 2003 at about 111,000 pounds, or about 56 tons, according to the federal Toxic Release Inventory.

111,000 pounds is, of course, "more than 10,000 pounds," but putting it as the latter seems strange. Did the plant dramatically reduce its emissions last year? Is it a typo for 100,000?

6) Dude, if you want that perfect living room accessory, you better hurry. (Here's the link to the auction.)

7) Paper printouts for electronic voting being proposed... by a Republican.

The three counties to be outfitted with printers in the 2006 test would be Cobb and Columbia, both rich in Republican votes, and Decatur, home of the current secretary of state, Cathy Cox. Cox, a Democrat, is seeking her party's nomination to oppose Perdue next year.

Ah... that's more like it.

8) Feel free to make fart jokes. It wasn't so funny when we were all stuck in traffic and pissed about it. R&B has photos.

9) Pickups are exempt from state seatbelt laws? ABH says make it so on public roads but not elsewhere. They also think the commission should try to keep us cool.

10) And the Winders-response letters start. Also, parking isn't really an academic issue.

11) Hersko, whose only complaint was that the dining hall should serve bigger chicken fillets...

12) Football team disagrees on whether bicycles are cool or not.

13) R&B says not to encourage the Tate preachers by yelling at them. But that message ain't getting through to this girl.

[bugmenot ABH]

Bubba Sparxxx at Lemon-Red. Is this new? Or what? I'm not on top of shit. I don't know. But it has pizzicato and shouting. [Edited to reflect necessity of three X's]

This is like a whole shopping list:

Damage: On Sept. 5, a resident on Windbrooke Court, Watkinsville, reported that he went to his Chevrolet pickup about 7 a.m. and found where someone had smeared peanut butter, flour and honey on the truck and wrapped it in plastic. Some potatoes were stuck in the tailpipe and a cow's tongue was placed in the bed.

In a baggie?

Theft: On Sept. 16, Wal-Mart security arrested Nicole Burgess, 32, of Will Hunter Road on a charge of shoplifting. She obtained a pet fish in the pet department and then was seen putting the fish in her purse and leaving the store. After she was detained, officers found some Listerine and soap in her possession.

This is so baroque:

Arrest: On Sept. 16, deputy David Burchett was dispatched to North Burson Street, Bogart, about 11:50 p.m. for a noise complaint. A stereo was blaring from the residence of James Waldo Yawn, 31. Deputy Burchett and the trailer park manager went to the residence and got no response when they knocked on the door. They opened the front door and went inside where Burchett saw a smoking pipe and some marijuana, along with a pistol-shaped knife and a three-foot long sword. Burchett found Yawn asleep in a bedroom, so he handcuffed the man and then woke him up. Yawn was on probation, so Burchett secured the weapons and arrested him on charges of possessing marijuana and violating the noise ordinance.

If you care to read the whole thing and are an urban type of person, you will learn that there are things called "snake chaps" and also that there are specific bows related to hunting bear.

Here's a little box about the Sufjan Stevens show coming up on Friday and, finally, after delays and technical difficulties, the latest UK singles jukebox (feel free to email if you're interested in any tunes mentioned).

Book Eight, chapter V:

By now I was quite certain; but I was still bound to earth and refused to take service in Your army; I feared to be free of all the things that impeded me, as strongly as I ought to have feared the being impeded by them. I was held down as agreeably by this world's baggage as one often is by sleep; and indeed the thoughts with which I meditated upon You were like the efforts of a man who wants to get up but is so heavy with sleep that he simply sinks back into it again. There is no one who wants to be asleep always--for every sound judgment holds that it is best to be awake--yet a man often postpones the effort of shaking himself awake when he feels a sluggish heaviness in the limbs, and settles pleasurably into another doze though he knows he should not, because it is time to get up.

Can you tell I woke up a little late today?

The key words here are: "one played by Nicholas Cage."

Because they get the real shit there.

Meryl Streep, yo. They're filming "The Devil Wears Prada" in front of my office building

Damn you, New Yorker! This fella expresses the frustration we all feel at their inability (or unwillingness) to put the best stuff online. The piece in question was very old-school and just pages and pages long and full of tromping around in the jungle and researching and such. Sigh...

1) Otherwise normal story on Red Cross shelter in Eatonton turns strange:

Not everything on the nonprofit scene in Putnam County is completely copacetic, though. Something of a rivalry seems to have arisen between the Red Cross- and GEMA-run Rock Eagle and the church-run donation center. Phillips, the Baptist Disaster Relief volunteer, criticized Rock Eagle officials for shutting down a donations distribution center on the camp's grounds.

2) It's more expensive to live in Atlanta than in Athens? Fuck yeah it is if you're renting downtown.

Other criteria shared by all seven cities on the list, according to an article in the magazine's October edition: a "solid or improving job market" and a cost of living that's average or below. The list appears in a column in the magazine aimed at new professionals, recent college graduates and students.

Oh we have a kickass job market... in the field of making burritos. (Here's the CNN piece on Athens music history, too.)

3) Elections and stuff, in other counties. Citizens Involvement Committee in Greene County thinks if you don't use stuff, you shouldn't have to pay for it.

4) The Sloppy Floyd Building? Named after a two-decade state representative, apparently.

5) There is a good band name here.

6) The parents of students now temporarily attending colleges other than Tulane and Loyola think they should pay the tuition amounts at the schools those students are attending, rather than the higher ones of the schools in which they are technically enrolled. I suppose it depends on what your diploma's going to say.

7) ABH still doesn't like that parental notification law wrt clubs, because it's an invasion of privacy.

8) Chair of Foundation still loves Foundation. Query: Do you think he wrote this? Or do you think the new communications firm did?

9) Loran Smith hearts the choo-choo.

10) More construction! No, boo! Less construction!

11) Tate 2 Committee needs a freshman.

Banks, director of Student Activities, said the board also needs two University faculty members, two staff members and one alumnus or alumna.

And they need an architectural firm. Basically, everything. R&B wants to know what the big hurry was to pass the extra fees for students, then?

12) Add food coloring or frozen pineapple wedges to ice cubes and float them in a punch bowl to make a more festive display.

[bugmenot ABH; bugmenot AJC]

Dude I was absolutely fucking sure I pulled up alongside Marcus Giles on Saturday afternoon. Like fucking spot on rolling in his BMW that was sleek as hell.

Then I remembered they were in NY. Fuck.

We know Gilly no doubt opts for the H2 anyway.

Are the monsters allowed to touch you?

Is this the haunted house where there are 13 floors and when you get to the top you get your money back?

Are there Snakes/Bugs/Chainsaws/Clowns in there?

Read the terrifying faq at Netherworld's website . . . if you dare.

Team Brown is definitely kinda considering going to this. There are pretty rock pictures of people freaking out on page 3 of the gallery.

For example, I can’t listen to any of the “alternative” rock stations anymore, at all. I would rather have dental surgery than listen to the steroid-afflicted death-metal influenced nonsense on those stations.

Rick Moody gets old. And cranky. Maybe he even thought that strange Rolling Stones performance during last night's telethon was pretty great. Then again, so did I, esp. Keef's Galaxy Quest-style salute to the victims of Katrina.

Book seven, Chapter XII:

And it became clear to me that corruptible things are good: if they were supremely good they could not be corrupted, but also if they were not good at all they could not be corrupted: if they were supremely good they would be incorruptible, if they were in no way good there would be nothing in them that might corrupt. . . . Thus whatsoever things are, are good; and that evil whose origin I sought is not a substance, because if it were a substance it would be good. . . . Thus I saw and clearly realized that You have made all things goos, and that there are no substances not made by You. And because all the things You have made are not equal, they have a goodness [over and above] as a totality

1) Music in Athens used to be for sissies. Not like now, when the average diameter of a rocker's arms is up to a good 5 cm.

2) Shift to managed care for Georgia Medicaid patients delayed by Katrina. Well, that's one good thing to come out of it.

3) ABH reports on the eye in the sky in action. Apparently, it detected no crimes the weekend of the South Carolina game, but it did let officers know when there would be a lot of people in a given area, like all of downtown, which they probably should've known already. Also, what happens to your trash when you throw it on the ground while tailgating? Amazingly, it is not picked up by magical fairies and turned into pixie dust. (Is it a coincidence that R&B runs a story on the same thing? Did American Stadium Services send out a press release?)

4) Austerity cuts probably never to be restored to Georgia school systems. Have I been saying this or have I been saying this? It's going to take, at very least, a major change in who's in charge in the state.

5) The gays love Heidi, so much that they give her a meaningless award in order to lobby her for domestic partner benefits. Which should be in place in Athens. Also, Kidd voted for the gas tax repeal, as did Heard, Smith, and Kemp, because rocks and hard places and such. Wusses. Shipp says Dems have their eye on School Superintendant's office, understandably, considering the hash Republicans have made of it.

6) Alleged arsonist claiming DA is stalling in bringing his case. I find it very hard to see how Mauldin could get reelected. Jackson County, on the other hand, is pretty efficient.

7) Indeed, parental notification of afterschool activities bill will be coming up.

"From my perspective, homosexuality is a perversion," [Sen. Ralph Hudgens, R-Comer] said. "I would want to know if my child is joining the club and why is he joining the club."

Friendship with a gay student would be an acceptable reason to join, Hudgens said.

I suppose that's a little better than thinking it's not acceptable. Kemp hasn't decided which way he's voting on it because he's generally a giant puss on things like this. There are also some low rumblings about possibly banning gays and lesbians from being foster or adoptive parents in Georgia.

8) 15-year-old gives ABH sarcastic "woo."

9) Small-town (read: Smyrna) freshman writes column.

10) Jim explains why the letters page doesn't print Astroturf, but blames a lot of it on MoveOn and people's desire to be cool. Huh?

11) Poor people don't need raises! They need, um, I have no answer. Yes, it's true that the price increases caused by a raise in the minimum wage would end up hurting those who received the raises most, and perhaps a better way to go about redistributing income would be through tax credits (read: giveaways) to the poor, which cuts college students and teenagers out of the equation. But yes, it could also be a lot more sensitive, as AthensPolitics points out. On the other hand, when it's students complaining about not making enough, one can understand the dismissiveness.

12) But if the Supreme Court does take the case, and the 9th Circuit precedent isn't struck down, what might come next? A challenge to the presence of the words "In God We Trust" on this country's currency? Um, yes, ABH?

13) The question here is what gets defined as pork. Some things are easy. Other things get defined as such in an effort to slash federal funding across the board.

14) McCarter writes in about inappropriate contact between Stuart Cofer and the Planning Commission. No, not that kind, you filthy filthy kids. Also, bus stops and Da Vinci's and rambling. Also also, there is this thing called supply and demand. Also ^3, criminal background checks may deter volunteers.

[bugmenot ABH; bugmenot AJC]

This will be my new shorthand for "that place is totally and horribly fucked up":

Send Jon Lee Anderson.

As in, "OMG! I was by the KA house Sunday morning, the day after the game. Send Jon Lee Anderson, yo!" You're welcome.

1) 32 Stories: The Complete Optic Nerve Mini-Comics, by Adrian Tomine: In which we see our hero, the author, move from crudely drawn stuff with extremely high-schoolish content and subject matter to much less so. Not as good as Summer Blonde, but expectedly so, as some of these are only a page long and don't have time to develop. Also, he was in high school. High school, damn it. There's definitely an indie-rock feel occasionally (oh, I am so sensitive and can't be around people who grate on my nerves), but it lessens as the book progresses.

2) David Boring, by Dan Clowes: This, on the other hand, probably is the best thing I've read by Clowes. I don't really know how he does what he does, but one thing that is particularly cool is the amount of time that can pass/the disconnect between panels. He's doing montage in comics form. Or maybe it's that montage is fundamentally more related to a form like this than it is to film. Clearly, judging from this and Like a Velvet Glove, he's interested in pieces and how they get put together. He's also pretty thrilling in the way he makes you feel the transgressiveness of what his characters do.

It's a democracy, people. Just unfortunately not one where people have to dress up and sing funny songs to attract our attention. This is more Queen for a Day than Idol, but still. Weirdly squashed and out-of-focus photos alone should make it worth a little of your time.

To the reader:

If I seem a little brain dead, it might have something to do with me proofreading for eight hours straight on Saturday. On five hours of sleep. With a hangover.

1) All of Lost but the last two episodes (which we've pledged to watch with Miss Karen, who provided the DVDs for us to watch): Yes. It is a pleasing show. Also, it looks like a Corona commercial a lot, which is kind of soothing. They did find an awful lot of clothes in the wreckage, though, and someone appears to have access to an iron. Sayid is kicking major ass. Though not enough to be rewarded with an Emmy, apparently.

2) The Miracle of Morgan's Creek: Sturges only leads to more Sturges. It's like crack. Anyway, this remains charming and hyperactive, and one wonders how in the hell he managed to make a movie about a sweet girl who gets knocked up by a soldier she doesn't even remember. Also, Hitler joke! In 1944! Eddie Bracken (you may know him as Roy Walley in National Lampoon's Vacation) is funny and endearing every moment he's on screen. And it's maybe William Demarest's biggest role that I've seen.

Croxton brings the fucking rock. I may have been hit from behind with a beer can for saying the France did an awesome job for only half of them being there (dude, there are nine people in the band, and only four were on stage; half is generous), but sheesh. It was a compliment. "Champagne" was jammed. Quotation marks mean "extract of ass, labeled as sparkling wine." Ears were made to ring. And I was introduced to shots, which aren't so bad when you only do a couple of them.

Who? D. Mason? B. Lloyd? or D. Stallworth?

The former is always underrated, and with not-Boller starting, is likely to get more passes thrown to him. On the other hand, Baltimore sucks against Tennessee.

The middle fella had a good game last week and is, like Mason, the #1 guy on his team, WR-wise, but is still unproven and is also facing a good defense in Philly.

The latter is the #2 guy on his team, but has a shot at blowin' up this weekend.

The other two starters, incidentally, are Reggie Wayne and Jimmy "old motherfucker who gets the job done" Smith.

Feel free to provide input.

1) State DOT to fix (hopefully) the total clusterfuck that is the 316/I-85 interchange. There will be bridges and HOV lanes. Work will mostly be done not during rush hour. Tolls got nothing to do with it.

2) This is embarrassing, and it's not even my county. Madison County cattle farmers hate the gays, while Madison County High School administrators are being pretty cool about the new club. The only option right now if parents continue to be jackasses is for the county to ban all clubs, which isn't going to happen.

3) Higher fuel prices may mean fewer school bus routes, but more kids on them.

Dean Alford, who chairs Perdue's education finance task force, has said that a new formula being crafted by his committee would include a look at funding for transportation. But that formula is not expected to be considered by the General Assembly until at least 2007.

Well that'll be helpful as fuck, General Assembly.

4) Federal agencies get first shot at the Navy School property. They have to look, pass, and deed it to the redevelopment agency locally. Doesn't seem like they're interested, but it might move slower than we wanted.

5) Occam's razor might be useful here.

6) ABH iffy on transferable development rights.

7) Yay! Local access good. Charter bad.

8) Yay! Cappi's letter receives a response, talking about how regulation can occasionally be good.

9) Athens job market is teh suck, R&B realizes.

10) Gary Black, Republican candidate for state commissioner of Agriculture, speaks to the College Republicans and talks about environmental responsibility and alternative fuels. Bizzarro world?

Andrew Dill, a senior from Jacksonville, Fla., and chairman of the College Republicans, has had the opportunity to watch both Brian Kemp and Gary Black speak on separate occasions to the club.

“I can’t make an endorsement one way or the other,” he said. “Brian has been a great senator, but Gary’s background in agriculture gives him advantages.”

What's the position they're both running for again?

11) R&B has been covering student ticket scalping a lot over the past few days. This article explains why the university doesn't want to require ID scanning.

12) Student op-ed on grade inflation: thinks classes should be harder.

13) Another one thinks the university should run its bus routes until 2 a.m. Thursday through Saturday.

14) Here is the R&B version of their interview with the France. And here is the real version. You will not learn that Crog bought a boat in the official version.

[bugmenot ABH; bugmenot AJC]

“Tuesday night, I’m in the Quarter with fifty bucks to buy gas—I’m not looting,” said Kenny Dobbs, naked to the waist, slick with sweat, and squinting through the smoke of his cigarette. “They pull me over at gunpoint, siphon half my gas, take the fifty bucks and a fifth of Crown. N.O.P.D.”

The R. Kelly mannequin wearing the official Randy Moss Halloween mask.

Book six, chapter IV:

Thus I was ignorant how this image of Yours could be, but I should have knocked at the door and proposed the question how it was to be believed, and not jeeringly opposed it as if it were believed in this or that particular way. The anxiety as to what I should hold as sure gnawed at my heart all the more keenly, as my shame increased at having been so long tricked and deceived by the promise of certainty, and at having with a rashness of error worthy of a child gone on spouting forth so many uncertainties as confidently as if I had known them for sure.
. . . I was glad also that the old scriptures of the Law and the Prophets were set before me now, no longer in that light in which they had formerly seemed absurd, when I criticized Your holy ones for thinking this or that which in plain fact they did not think. And it was a joy to hear Ambrose who often repeated to his congregation, as if it were a rule he was most strongly urging upon them, the text: the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. And he would go on to draw aside the veil of mystery and lay open the spiritual meaning of things which taken literally would have seemed to teach falsehood. Nothing of what he said struck me as false, although I did not as yet know whether what he said was true. I held back my heart from accepting anything, fearing that I might fall once more, whereas in fact the hanging in suspense was more deadly. I wanted to be as certain of things unseen as that seven and three make ten.

From a woman who knows her tennis:

depalmas downtown: mardy fish, professional tennis player, andy roddick's doubles partner.

and yep, that's mardy in the andy roddick amex ads at www.andysmojo.com.

this is 'major big' in my little reality.

Unfaithfully Yours: It has been a while since I've seen a Preston Sturges I hadn't seen before, but this birthday present reminded me of what it is like the first time. And what it is like is a bit like being whomped repeatedly with a two-by-four, but in a way that you thoroughly enjoy, even while being disoriented and sometimes helpless (from laughter). It is mad and all over the place. Its comedy is incredibly dark, especially for the time. Looking through the Videohound's list of "black comedies," they don't really hit their stride as a genre until the 1970s, but this is among the earliest, being the year before Kind Hearts and Coronets. Structure and a few shots are clearly influenced by Hitchcock, and you can read the whole thing as being about how our imaginations are influenced by movies, i.e., life is considerably messier, but of course this is illustrated via slapstick (and gorgeously executed slapstick, in which the humor comes from anticipating the joke and seeing the thought process of the character as he makes stupid decision after stupid decision) and in a movie that isn't incredibly realistic. What I really would like to know is which eye Rex Harrison was blind in and whether that is the eye that is repeatedly zoomed in on. Anyway, the verdict here is that Sturges is a fucking genius, but then you knew that already.

1) Foundation chairman defends PR hiring in column at ABH.

Given the fact we are an all-volunteer board, we do, however, need support services and have hired them in the form of an outside group to create and disseminate our communications. This was a more efficient use of funds than hiring staff, providing benefits and leasing office space to accomplish the same tasks.

It is important to have frequent communications with those who have entrusted their funds to the university through the University of Georgia Foundation as well as the academic community, our own board, and the general public. This is a commitment we will fulfill through our communications firm.

So it's "communications" rather than PR? Albany Herald editorial thinks it's so people remember the Foundation exists and make it competitive with the Arch Foundation. And one AJC letter-writer (scroll down to the sixth one) tells the Foundation to keep the heat on Adams.

2) It is disgraceful that the newspaper does not cover everything I want it to. Because it is magic and all-knowing and has unlimited resources.

3) Plastic boobies coming to the OC?

4) So the guy who reported one of the homeless person murders and who some other homeless people think should be a suspect has now been the victim of a hit-and-run. Is it connected? That's what the ABH is wondering, but acknowledges that "the incident might be completely unrelated to the slayings."

5) I'd like a better explanation of what "development rights" are than this article gives. Basically, it seems like a way for rural property owners to receive fair value for their land without actually putting anything on it, but why would anyone buy that land if not to build on it? For speculation?

6) Orbit bus fucks up a dude's Oldsmobile [second story]. Do not mess with the Orbit bus.

7) ABH quotes Heidi as saying, of Lamar Wansley, "You're allowed to register to vote and to go out and vote because of people like Mr. Wansley," but the article only mentions that he fought in WWII. Is that why she'd say this?

8) Chi Phi apparently has a document in which the university granted them the right to stay on the land back in 1960. More details included. Meeting about all this is in October.

9) R&B covers Delta bankruptcy as it relates to students. i.e., not all that much unless your parents work there.

10) God damn Bobo.

11) State Transportation Board had another hearing on the commuter rail.

...most of the Lovejoy line’s opponents who spoke Wednesday were concerned about a specific aspect of the project: an agreement by the Clayton County Commission to cover its operational shortfall, expected to reach at least $4 million a year.

“We do not believe taxpayers should pay this deficit,’’ said Wole Ralph, a member of the Clayton commission who voted against the agreement. “The state is responsible for regional transportation ... (and) should be funding commuter rail.’’

He and others called for a referendum that would let Clayton residents vote on the funding.

To which they were kinda told to suck it.

12) R&B thinks you should watch the president's speech tonight over The OC. Here: bla bla responsibility bla bla blame game bla bla accountability bla bla giant commitments that probably won't be met. Now enjoy yourself some Bilson.

13) College students enjoy group in-jokes, love Luke Perry (still?).

14) If the public transit system sucks, it's surely because they want it to suck.

[bugmenot ABH; bugmenot AJC]

The Gaskets have a new video up, which 1) captures slightly the energy they bring to their live performances, 2) in some ways comes off like a parody of blue-screen acting, and 3) ends with them punching the crap out of a lot of stuff. Yay!

From Book 3, Chapter I:

I came to Carthage, where a cauldron of illicit loves leapt and boiled about me. I was not yet in love, but I was in love with love, and from the very depth of my need hated myself for not more keenly feeling the need. I sought some object to love, since I was thus in love with loving; and I hated security and a life with no snares for my feet. For within I was hungry, all for the want of that spiritual food which is Thyself, my God; yet [though I was hungry for want of it] I did not hunger for it: I had no desire whatever for incorruptible food, not because I had it in abundance but the emptier I was, the more I hated the thought of it. Because of all this my soul was sick, and broke out in sores, whose itch I agonized to scratch with the rub of carnal things--carnal, yet if there were no soul in them, they would not be objects of love. My longing then was to love and to be loved, but most when I obtained the enjoyment of the body of the person who loved me.

Damn is it ever hard to believe this dates from the fourth century. Obviously, there is translatorial skill here, but there's something quite forceful underneath the exact word choice too. Compare the Pusey translation of same (I'm reading the Sheed, btw), which isn't quite as direct, but produces a similar impression:

To Carthage I came, where there sang all around me in my ears a cauldron of unholy loves. I loved not yet, yet I loved to love, and out of a deep-seated want, I hated myself for wanting not. I sought what I might love, in love with loving, and safety I hated, and a way without snares. For within me was a famine of that inward food, Thyself, my God; yet, through that famine I was not hungered; but was without all longing for incorruptible sustenance, not because filled therewith, but the more empty, the more I loathed it. For this cause my soul was sickly and full of sores, it miserably cast itself forth, desiring to be scraped by the touch of objects of sense. Yet if these had not a soul, they would not be objects of love. To love then, and to be beloved, was sweet to me..."

After an odd evening out, Team Brown came home to find States McCarter's newsletter dangling from our mailbox in a plastic baggie. Why, you might ask yourself, would the commish go to such trouble as to distribute (no doubt personally) his newsletter to those in other subdivisions who might not get it regularly? And you might scratch your head before the lightbulb goes on and you realize: "Oh my god. It's because of La Puerta del Sol." So anyway, yes. It is. And it explains some things. It also encourages you to contact your commissioner because "I can assure you the proponents have already done so and will continue to do so. They are small in number but are vocal (unfortunately, this is how government often operates)." I'm going to quote the points of opposition (by neighborhood residents, not Mr. McCarter himself; his comments are in parentheses) that he summarizes:

1. CSD [Cedar Shoals Dr.] was intended to be a low commercial area. (This is why teh zoning was professional limited-commercial (PLC) under the old zoning ordinance and commercial-office (C-O) now. Zoning is put in place to protect. The original Cofer's store was approved as a planned development because the retail use was much larger than allowed under the PLC. The proposed 2.5-acre development is much more "commercial" than Cofers).

2. Approval of this rezoning would open up CSD for more of the same. (Absolutely the truth. In fact, there is already such talk.)

3. What would happen to the site should the uses proposed go south? (Certainly a possibility, as a high percentage of small businesses fail.)

4. There is already an overabundance of empty retail space in the area. Why can't the businesses proposed locate in some of these spaces other than requesting a rezoning on CSD? (How true about empty space, and more space is being built in areas properly zoned. This has been a major position that I have taken.)

5. The location would require almost exclusively car travel. (Also true; our recent planning has encouraged walking and the location of businesses in clusters so that customers can walk more. Essentially nobody would access the CSD development other than by car; there is not even a sidewalk on that side of CSD.)

6. The development will bring much more car traffic to CSD. (True, and even if CSD can handle the traffic load now, more will be coming because of development already started or approved. Don't forget the intersection "choke points" that are already congested, and we have just made them functional with the expenditures of big taxpayer $$$$.)

7. It is unreasonable to believe that the Eastside can support an exclusively upscale (white tablecloth) restaurant that the petitioner proposes to establish (one such restaurant failed on the Eastside).

8. It is likely that the restaurant will be similar to the two already operated by the petitioner on Tallassee Road and on Prince Avenue (the current restaurants are Caliente Cab on Tallassee Road (likely to be closed) and the Pollo Criollo on Prince Avenue should you want to take a look).

9. Alcohol sales on the site could be problematic from the standpoint of Cedar Shoals High School (CSHS), as inexperienced student drivers will be using the same ingress/egress on CSD during hours when the restaurant will have a large customer base present. (Folks sometimes forget that there are a lot of night activities as CSHS; the petitioners have indicated that they will request an alcohol "pouring" license and such a license at that location is legal.)

10. The noise generated by the proposed development could create problems for area residential and other folks who located on CSD because it was zoned to be a "quiet" area (at the July 25 meeting the petitioners indicated that music activity would occur both inside and outside buildings).

11. The business compound could become a "hanging out" place for CSHS students who skip school (there are reports that this problem has already started in the area).

12. There is a fear that the residential component (designed to be added for visiting cooks and musicians) may become something quite different.

I am now convinced that the major driving force for the rezoning is the desire of the property owner to sell the property.

There are, of course, other pages, but this is main thrust of the argument and I'm getting a bit carpal-tunnely from typing this much.

So first of all, talking to Jeff Probst about the show that he didn't create and has no power over but merely hosts seems a little silly. But also, there's this:

Asked about the obvious (Katrina) in a recent conference call, Probst had this to say: "When 9/11 happened, 'Survivor Africa' was just about to premiere, and I was very uncomfortable promoting it [because] suddenly, a show called 'Survivor' is about as insensitive as you can get and certainly not relevant. That was four years ago, [and] I feel like 'Survivor' is [now] familiar and comforting [and] that at some point at least you know that it's something good and solid and that [you] can rely on. And no one in their right mind thinks 'Survivor' is about surviving. It's technically a game show."

I'm not arguing that Survivor shouldn't premiere. I think people tend to overreact wildly to their audience's perceived sensitivities. But if you do care about that kind of thing, you might note that being in dire need of food and water is a part of Survivor, while trying to get out of a building that's been hit by a plane is, um, not. That is, this situation should make it more likely for the show to postpone itself or whatnot. On the other hand, man do we ever have some good scabs built up. [via]

1) Remember those racoon-killing/eating jackasses? The one who actually operated the pellet gun is serving probation. The one who skinned it is less, uh, remorseful.

2) History is everywhere.

3) Yeah, criminal background checks for school volunteers are a little invasive, but less so if the school actually considers the results seriously and you're not automatically disqualified for smoking a little weed once upon a time. But I understand why schools feel the need to cover their bases. The parents who object are just insulted by the idea, but if they'd look at it rationally, it makes as much sense for them as anyone.

4) States realizes they're windmills. Story says he's lined up a potential commissioner to replace him, a guy who also lives in Cedar Creek. And now we've got a new mayoral candidate, Dean Rusk's grandson, who's 25 and don't like the gummint.

Local officials are too concerned with enacting new regulations, especially in downtown, he said. He cited the indoor smoking ban and an ordinance regulating sidewalk signs and merchandise displays as examples.

Rusk, who described himself as an independent Democrat, also opposes a recently passed mass grading ordinance that he says will make houses more expensive and lead to less affordable housing.

He also takes issue with new stormwater utility bills that will fund a utility to filter out pollution from runoff, based on the amount of impervious surfaces like pavement on a piece of property, calling it a "roof tax."

Things just got considerably more interesting.

5) Moratorium on tall buildings downtown not necessary, says Lynn, since none are planned by the time the historic preservation guidelines are supposed to be ready. And also, there are already tall buildings. Not sure that last part is a particularly good argument, but we'll see how the guidelines turn out.

6) Possible chancellors to be presented today.

7) Dear illegal immigrants, Georgia Republicans would like you to know that you're allowed to come here and work for nothing to build our buildings and so on. Just don't expect a god damn thing for it. Not that you're getting anything already. But if you want to study real hard and take the SAT and potentially get into UGA, no can do.

8) It's not irony so much as it is stupidity.

9) ABH thinks it's possible Cox's desire to consolidate diplomas may very well be a way to raise SAT scores in Georgia.

10) Shipp thinks Perdue has a shot at national office, based on the past couple of weeks. Also, has no problem with "refugee."

11) We'll say it again: local fucking paper.

12) Professor thinks grade inflation hasn't come up enough as an issue.

13) God knows this'll terrify the hell out of the Commission.

14) Oh, and we've got our own Scientologists now.

[bugmenot ABH]

They hurt because they're so damn true. Part One. Part Two.

Next up? Chingo Bling. Hispanic Weird-Al-type rapper. Creator of, among other tunes, "Taco Shop," which reworks 50's ridiculousness and amps it up even further. Please also note that you can buy both a bobblehead of the man himself (complete with swooshed ostrich boots and rooster he says is 47 and 0) and things emblazoned with the Air Chingo logo. Poke around. Enjoy.

The first literature we're reading in my current class is Augustine's Confessions, which, while not the sole reason I decided to take the class, was a motivating factor in that decision. It's been on my list for a long time. So anyway, you're going to be getting bits from that for a while, since it is beautifully written and far more interesting than I even thought it would be. This bit is from the first book, after he's won a rhetoric contest at schoool.

What could all this mean to me, O My true Life, My God? Why was there more applause for the performance I have than for so many classmates of my own age? Was not the whole business so much smoke and wind? Surely some other matter could have been found to exercise mind and tongue. Thy praises, Lord, might have upheld the fresh young shoot of my heart, so that it might not have been whirled away by empty trifles, defiled, a prey to the spirits of the air. For there is more than one way of sacrificing to the fallen angels. [XVII]

There is also this, on the next page:

It is strange that we should not realise that no enemy could be more dangerous to us than the hatred with which we hate him, and that by our efforts against him we do less damage to our enemy than is wrought in our own heart.

What is that? Five, six dollars?

Burglary: On Aug. 31, a resident of Tarpley Lane reported someone broke into his home, and while items were knocked over, he determined a rotary telephone was missing.

Maybe 16 Volts is a brand of malt liquor.

Arrest: On Sept. 3, deputy David Burchett was dispatched to check on a report by a motorist that he had seen a man walking on the U.S. Highway 441 bridge at Experiment Station Road and it appeared suspicious. When Burchett arrived, he found a man identified as William Gabriel Thomas, 24, of Mullins, S.C., walking unsteady on his feet and speaking with slurred speech. Thomas explained he was "looking for 16 volts." While that baffling statement was not explained, he went on to say his friend had been in an accident up the road. Burchett put Thomas in his patrol car and the two went up the road and located a 2000 Dodge Ram 1500 in a hole in the median. The driver was behind the steering wheel passed out. Burchett awoke the man, who then tried to the start with truck, but there were no keys in the ignition. Emergency services personnel arrived on the scene, but this man, identified as Christopher Lee Ostrander, 23, of Rocky Creek Farm, Watkinsville, refused transport to a hospital. He also smelled of alcohol. Ostrander was charged with DUI and Thomas was charged with being a pedestrian under the influence.

I'm thinking he was prejudiced because she was crazy.

Arrests: On Sept. 3, deputy Scott Underwood was working a special detail about 11:30 p.m. when he observed a car near Kroger with two young children jumping up and down in the backseat. He stopped the Buick Century to ask why the children were not in seatbelts, but the driver almost instantly started shouting and cursing and accused Underwood of being prejudiced because she was black. He asked for her license and she said, "I don't got no ... license. Take me to the ... jail." Underwood then called for backup assistance as the other women in the car by this time had joined in by becoming loud. After some time, the woman told Underwood her name was Renta Hailey, at which point dispatch alerted Underwood that her license had been revoked. By this time, the noisy women had attracted a crowd of onlookers and employees from the Kroger store. Underwood was placed in deputy David Burchett's patrolcar, at which time she started kicking the window. Besides Hailey, 21, the deputies arrested Claudette Lansanna Hailey, 29, both of Huntington Road, Athens, on charges of disorderly conduct. Renita Hailey was also charged with two counts of child-restraint violations and driving while her license was revoked. Underwood then tried to get witness statements, but the onlookers had left and only two employees from the supermarket were willing to give statements on what they witnessed.

All the rest.

Clearly this is entirely coincidental, and yet it amuses. Some illumination may be required. CBCP = Committee for Black Cultural Programming.

If the hypothetical spawn of Team Brown turns out anything like these rock-ass kids performing "Whip It" (and by performing, I mean only acting out the instruments and doing the vocals, but still, it's pretty damn cool).

In A.O. Scott's NYT Mag article about the literary magazines The Believer and the new n+1, there is this:

Blogs embody and perpetuate a discourse based on speed, topicality, cleverness and contention - all qualities very much ascendant in American media culture these days. To start a little magazine, then - to commit yourself to making an immutable, finite set of perfect-bound pages that will appear, typos and all, every month or two, or six, or whenever, even if you are also, and of necessity, maintaining an affiliated Web site, to say nothing of holding down a day job or sweating over a dissertation - is, at least in part, to lodge a protest against the tyranny of timeliness. It is to opt for slowness, for rumination, for patience and for length. It is to defend the possibility of seriousness against the glibness and superficiality of the age - and also, of course, against other magazines.

Because you can't be fast and long? Or topical and smart? And then there is also this:

Of course, one aspect of that experience is the impulse to rebel against it - the desire to rescue thought, feeling and ambition from the quotation marks that seem perpetually affixed to them, to recover the possibility of earnest emotion, ethical commitment and serious thought. That desire can find any number of outlets, one of which might be - why not? - starting a literary journal, a small magazine.

And later, this:

The magazines themselves feel decidedly youthful, not only in their characteristic generational concerns - the habit of nonchalantly blending pop culture, literary esoterica and academic theory, for instance, or the unnerving ability to appear at once mocking and sincere - but also in the sense of bravado and grievance that ripples through their pages.

So as long as this quotation-mark attitude isn't being applied to celebrities, it's okay? And finally:

Her frustration, it seems, is not so much with book reviewing as such but with everything that conspires to trivialize literary discourse and to prevent books - and not only books but also music, movies, opinions, utopian dreams - from being taken seriously. Like the editors of n+1, she and her colleagues speak a language that is not only literary but unapologetically highbrow, less in its choice of objects than in the way it perceives them. The Believer is happy to write about pop songs or reality television, to make jokes and indulge in whimsy, but it tends to disdain the nonchalant, knowing sarcasm that has become, elsewhere, the dominant form of cleverness.

Maybe what I object to is calling this tone highbrow. It's more like upper-middlebrow. Highbrow is not, for example, expressing a deep love for the classics. It's more like the classics themselves. I don't find The Believer all that intellectually rigorous in its articles, and while there's nothing wrong with that in itself, it's sort of a problem when you present yourself (or are presented) as doing such. Make sense?

34) One subject, Leo, struggled with porn addiction for years. His wife divorced him after her 14-year-old daughter found photos on the family computer of Leo wearing her panties. [from a review of Pornified: How Pornography Is Transforming Our Lives, Our Relationships, and Our Families by Pamela Paul, review by Amy Sohn, 09/11/05; reviewer calls bullshit on author, says "thong"]

Panty-watch is a regular feature here dedicated to tracking appearances of the word "panties" or "panty" in the New York Times, partially because it's amusing to see the Gray Lady venturing into such areas and partially to see if it correlates with anything specific. There will be graphs or a graph at the end of the year.

[previously] [bugmenot NYT]

Taking a sip of what one thinks is a Diet Coke only to discover it is a Diet Cherry Coke.

Picture John Candy moving it toward the screen and then away from the screen.

So there's a new poll that supposedly shows that people are sick of reality TV. Only it completely doesn't. Yay for bad analysis of statistics to fit a story!

A whopping 82% of the respondents said the shows, ranging from "American Idol" to "The Apprentice" and "Survivor," are either "totally made up" or "mostly distorted."

But only 30% of the respondents said truthfulness in reality shows really mattered to them, while 44% didn't care.

But that's not quite the same thing as the headline, "Reality TV bites, 82% say in poll."

1) Even stand-by melts away.

2) Oglethorpe County courthouse takes down embroidered rendition of 23rd Psalm. "According to lawyers with the Georgia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, displaying the 23rd Psalm is essentially the same thing as displaying the Ten Commandments"; except without that whole "the laws of our country are based on them" justification.

Stamey said she hung the tapestry, a gift from a relative, for two reasons - to cover an unsightly window in the hallway and because she wanted to share her faith and the 23rd Psalm, she said.

...Stamey said county officials asked her to take down the tapestry herself Monday, but she refused. "It's not to harm anyone. It's to help," she said.

Would someone please explain this to her?

3) Emboldened by the effects of alcohol, young men and women are prone to say and do things they normally wouldn't. What's the best part of this wrap-up? The unexpected pronoun in the following:

A 19-year-old teen was arrested when she was caught urinating in plain view in a downtown parking deck.

4) State Superintendent of Schools Kathy Cox wants to eliminate the "career-technical" option for diplomas. Does this mean fewer students graduating? Also, Republicans will revive the drive for requiring parental permission for after-school activities (a.k.a., my kid ain't gon' be no faggot).

5) Public forum on designating downtown Athens a historic district tonight. David Lynn says "property owners were blown away" at Monday's meeting, but why?

6) Diversion centers seem to work.

7) ABH reacts predictably to Foundation's stupid expenditures on PR. AJC thinks it's fixable, but concludes, "In other words, the foundation's sole purpose is to thumb its nose at Adams and the Board of Regents. The best PR agency in the world can't pretty up that kind of pettiness." Here, we are kind of for nose-thumbing.

8) And releases a plea for some small gentility at the football games. Indeed. Not that it will explode a young child's ears to hear the F-word, but it's polite at least to look around before letting it fly.

9) Letter writer calls ACC Commission communists, pretty much.

10) R&B gives an update on the Danna Lea frog story, in which Heidi says they tried to work out a compromise and Lea says no.

11) Also, an update on how many students displaced by Katrina are here.

12) Athens not only has brunch. It also has burritos. There's also a little place called Taco Stand you might want to check out, R&B.

[bugmenot ABH; bugmenot AJC]

Here is Kevin Barnes being serious. And here is Kevin Barnes being considerably less so.

Dear NYC people: go to the show.

If I could, I would point you to the New Yorker's profile of Rickey Henderson, languishing in an independent baseball league, desperate to get back in the game. It doesn't leave out any of Rickey's flaws, but it's sad nonetheless how much he wants to play and how much less likely it is that he'll get to every day.

But it's not up, so instead you can read David Denby's article on Susan Sontag and the movies, which is interesting in that she didn't seem to like a lot of the movies she championed. This would be a form of aestheticism completely alien to me. Why would you spend so much time on art that gave you no pleasure? It also, of course, has Denby being snotty about contemporary culture:

“Stripped of its heroic stature, of its claims as an adversary sensibility,” she wrote in 1979, “modernism has proved acutely compatible with the ethos of an advanced consumer society.” She was talking, of course, about what soon came to be known as postmodernism. “Art is now the name of a huge variety of satisfactions—of the unlimited proliferation, and devaluation, of satisfaction itself.” Her hopes had fallen victim to the dismaying larger trend in which every radical development in modernism degenerated into routine: by the eighties, avant-garde techniques from the films of the sixties were showing up in commercials and music videos. Art had not only become commodified, as the Marxists like to say; it decorated corporate culture. The breaking of forms had led not to an agonized “reorganization of sensibility” but to an amiable shrugging off of seriousness in art and the levelling of all cultural activity.

1) UGA Foundation hurts public image by trying to improve public image, i.e., hires PR firm with donor money. Also, exciting insight: Foundation = mostly white dudes.

2) Ah, the sweet smell of football season.

3) Georgia wants to cut jet-fuel taxes. I mean, Delta wants to. Lots of agencies want to get in on the act. But if you rely on natural gas, you better invest in some nicer doors. (Shipp points out one big reason this is a problem in Georgia.) Gas prices also result in fewer field trips for schools, more bike cops. What'll happen on the last day the gas tax is suspended, though? More panic? Republicans high-five each other and Democrats generally say it's a waste of time and money.

Lt. Gov. Mark Taylor challenged legislators Thursday to donate the $128 daily per diem each lawmaker receives for being in Atlanta this week to hurricane relief efforts. He said the money could raise more than $30,000 a day from the entire Legislature, or more than $150,000 in contributions for the week.

And Taylor's suggestion of an indefinite suspension wasn't adopted. Bike sales are going up in Athens, but note that SUVs do allow one to find gameday parking; it's the hidden indicator!

4) ABH suing ACC PD to gain access to two murder files. The latter is refusing to comply with the open records act.

5) Construction costs have increased due to "Katrina."

6) Operation Boiled Peanuts. Yeah.

7) Dodson pokes head out, calls for bold leadership on poverty issues and, um, bike lanes. Mr. Dodson, might I suggest you focus on something like this?

8) ABH has a good piece on the organizational changes new fire chief George has made in the department. And also a piece on what it's like at Rock Eagle.

9) Athens lawyer McKillip running for Kidd's vacated house seat.

Two other Democrats are reportedly considering runs in District 115 as well. Dan Maxey, a retired Methodist minister and owner of a rare book store, hasn't yet made up his mind, he said. Scott Dix, a former state representative from Gwinnett County who declined to run in 2004 after switching parties from Republican to Democrat, and recently moved to Athens, also is considering a run, according to Kidd, but he couldn't be reached for comment.

10) Poor Oconee County. So many soccer moms, so few soccer fields.

11) "Bring Them Home Now Tour" lady disses football. Because no one anywhere should ever have any fun while bad things are happening.

12) Oh dear. Dog-fucking officially arrives in ACC.

13) It ain't a Greek Park if you don't call it one. R&B wants the university to answer a few questions about plan for the land.

14) Student blames all of ACC's job woes on the commission.

15) Winders finally addresses use of "refugees." (R&B has a letter about just this.) While Jim goes on about how Congress is useless in times of crisis. But that's not so much the point, is it? They don't have to be useful at the time if they've been useful ahead of time in setting up appropriate chain-of-command and the like. Arg. And editorial today supports private-sector being involved in disaster relief. Like Halliburton?

In many respects, the private sector is uniquely qualified to respond to disasters. Businesses, in particular, are accustomed to moving quickly to meet customer demands, and speed is an undeniable asset in disaster response.

I'm sure the Ford motor company has no bureaucracy at all.

16) Will ACC Commissioners address the annoyance of loud music coming from cars? This could be the next big issue!

[bugmenot ABH; bugmenot AJC]

Or so I hope.

Not picked. Called half a dozen times in just under ten years and never picked. I didn't even wear my "I hate the gummint" t-shirt, but I did consider the jhpii one. It's really quite the experience in mind-numbing boredom, as they actually take away your reading materials and lock them in a closet, so you are forced to do nothing but stare into space as the lawyers and judge confer. I am a patient person, but when I have nothing to entertain myself with but watching the strip of wallpaper that's half hanging off the wall (a la Barton Fink) and the cataloguing of others' footwear I feel as though the ol' gray matter is dying. Anyway, hopefully it can be massaged back into shape during the week.

If you can't, in fact, breathe, you might want to check out the UK Singles Jukebox's takes on some U.S. hits, complete with some updated ratings from ys truly.

Jury duty is in full swing, with a bitty break right now while they interview more people and those of us who've already stepped up to the mic get to run around and try to let our loved ones know what in the hell is going on. I may be here tomorrow. I may not.

So, there's been mucho Cindy Sheehan stuff lately and the like on your basic liberal blogs (e.g., here today), which I generally consider myself more liberal than, but I'm not sure I can get on board with this "bring the troops home now" stuff. It's got nothing to do with the pride of the country or some abstract reason for sticking it out, and it's not that I think things shouldn't be seriously modified over there, it's just that I don't think leaving makes things better. It's not right to barge into a place, fuck it up, and then leave without trying to make things right. Does this place me with the centrists? I still think the whole thing sucks, and it's not like I haven't been willing to say that from the beginning, but what the hell good does it do now other than to make oneself feel better? It's not like the people in charge of this country don't know you don't like it. They just don't care, and I'm not sure how you're going to change that other than with some kind of brain transplant. For what it's worth, it makes me uncomfortable as hell to feel this way.

1) If you think I automatically like all "soul" albums, you are mistaken. This Wade O. Brown fella's album might be the most boring thing I've heard all year. And I listened to that damn DMB album multiple times.

2) Lost has been embarked upon. It seems very Abrams indeed. Sometimes what will happen is obvious in the extreme ("Let me just put this crucial piece of technology down for a minute while I walk over here after providing exposition so that I can promptly die"), but there are smart things too, like casting such an array of ethnicities, enabling one to remember who's who more easily. He's still no Whedon, but looking forward to watching more and hopefully catching up in time for the new season.

Via mass email, that we should all wear our name tags. "This has always been the case, but it is even more important now in these times of heightened security." Because if the Hurricane hits Athens, we'll be able to identify the bodies with the magnetic badges. Woo!

1) ABH now covers denial of Soloski's appeal, with a few more details and a comparison of his case to the other two recent sexual harrassment cases on campus.

2) University Council approves some new majors and suchlike, but finds it harder to get rid of existing programs.

3) UGA's going to have/already has 50 new students from the Gulf region. And some more details on how many refugees are in Athens (most of them are staying with family).

4) So Clarke Central and Cedar Shoals both offer their facilities for rental by non-school groups, but the latter has a snazzy big auditorium, and the former doesn't. This led to the former asking the school board if funds earned from rentals could be spread around among all schools. The answer is no.

5) Be afeared of computer hacking. Very afeared! I mean, if google says there are a bunch of hits out there on something, it must be super easy to do. Right?

6) Sheehan supporters bus tour hitting Athens tomorrow.

7) Georgia's relaxing its Medicaid and PeachCare restrictions for evacuees. Which is a nice thing to do but also shows that it's really just likely to happen in case of disaster. If you're in Georgia and poor and need healthcare, you're a lot less likely to get it. Also, um

Also troubling to the department is a potential $220 million shortfall in the health insurance plan for state workers, generally one of the largest employee groups in most areas.

That's gonna be fun.

8) House passes gas tax suspension 164 to 6. Morris says, "Token Democratic opposition came from a handful of members in relatively safe districts. . . . But Rep. Rich Golick, R-Smyrna, accused Democrats of trying to score political points in the wake of a tragedy."

9) Whew. Good thing Zaxby's in Suwanee managed to weather the huge costs of 9/11 to their business.

10) ABH doesn't think Ten Commandments plaque should be sold on ebay.

Here's something else to consider. What if the successful bidder is less interested in the history of the Ten Commandments plaque than in making some sort of anti-religious statement with it, perhaps destroying it in some unfortunate fashion? Will Ten Commandments-Georgia then think auctioning off the plaque was a good idea?

Griffin suggested this week the plaque could bring somewhere between $20,000 and $40,000 to Ten Commandments-Georgia. Maybe it will.

But what will auctioning off the plaque cost Ten Commandments-Georgia in terms of its credibility?

All together now: what credibility?

11) Letter says CAPPA only wants that one part of Prince three-laned, but that doesn't mean other people don't have different plans/requests.

12) University strongly encouraging Lumpkin St. fraternities to move to planned "Greek Village" on River Road, where they'll be out of the way of visitors' sight and easier for the university to keep an eye on. Also, UGA wants the land.

13) Now members of non-Greek organizations have to sign a form saying they understand that hazing is bad. You know, to stop SGA from forcing their freshman senators to do keg stands.

14) R&B article on closing of Azucaa/plans for La Puerta del Sol says commission vote on the latter will be Oct. 4 and if it passes, building will start in January.

15) Tell me again about how high our academic reputation is?

16) Living wage movement is also on campus. Headline makes it seem as though they're seeking raises for themselves, though.

[bugmenot ABH]

Way to fucking go, Nicholas Lemann. You get chosen to write the initial Talk of the Town piece in the New Yorker on the hurricane, and which direction do you go?

It’s true that the Bush Administration has repeatedly proposed cutting the budget of the Army Corps of Engineers, and that for years there has been a list of widely agreed-upon hurricane-protection measures that the federal government has chosen not to fund, with now horrific consequences. But it’s also true that, after the levees broke, we watched every single system associated with the life of a city fail: the electric grid, the water system, the sewer system, the transportation system, the telephone system, the police force, the fire department, the hospitals, even the system for disposing of corpses. Perhaps it is all the fault of the force of the storm; I suspect that, as we move into the yearned-for realm of reliable information, we will find out that society and nature were co-conspirators in the tragedy. And the societal fault won’t all have been the federal government’s.

Those damn New Orleanians. How dare they not keep their electrical system on when their city's underwater.

Remnick does okay on the whole righteous anger thing and Dan Baum's piece on looters contains this bit:

Chris Wormuth, from next door, kept fidgeting with his riot gun. Wormuth, an emergency-room physician, had been idled by a lack of serviceable generators at Oschner Clinic. He’d just returned from a run to Lafayette, where he’d bought six small gasoline generators—enough to preserve the temperature of his hundred-thousand-dollar wine collection, but not enough for air-conditioning. After several fitful, steamy nights, Wormuth was developing the panda look of the grievously sleep-deprived. “The problem with New Orleans? Two blocks away from here there are people living hand to mouth,” he said. “I don’t know of another city where, if you’re in a two-million-dollar house, you’re not sure that everything around you for two miles is a two-million-dollar house.” He pointed at the Dr. Ronald E. McNair Elementary School, two doors down. “That’s now a hotel for looters,” he said. “They’re in there all night, partying."

This is the note that is currently glued to the tops of Papa John's boxes:

Dear Neighbor,

Because of the recent disaster in the Gulf, practically overnight there has been a dramatic impact to the cost of doing business. In the past, we have stood our ground to not charge a delivery fee. However after much consideration and consultation, regretfully we now have to do so. Until further notice, we will charge $1.50 on all delivery orders. We hope to be able to return to free delivery at some point in the future. We thank you for your understanding and we appreciate your business.

Sincerely,
Robert Eggers
Owner/Operator
Papa John's Pizza

Hurricane = pizza delivery charge? Come off it, motherfuckers.

Update: Here's an article (note the date) on exactly this.

1) Ramsey Center raquetball courts reverting to original purpose for now. R&B story on same says: "Jeff Snowden, a Red Cross spokesman, said Monday night he could not speak on behalf of FEMA as to why no evacuees were arriving." Because there's no good reason for them to come to Athens unless they're students, in which case they're less likely to be poor and need emergency housing?

2) Willing to invest a lot of money in irony?

Ten Commandments-Georgia, a non-profit group that helped raise money for a lawsuit over the Barrow County display, says it is putting the Ten Commandments display up for sale on the Internet auction site eBay. The funds will help pay off legal fees the group already has vowed to raise.

Not, note, the settlement fees the county was stuck with when the suit failed.

3) Homeless people don't have phones. Newsflash!

4) Oh you think you're running for office, Gov. Perdue? Well, Mark Taylor is running for office even more so. He wants the gas tax to stay suspended until otherwise declared so, rather than going back into effect at the end of the month. A gold star for pandering to the big fella.

5) Meredith gives farewell speech, gets standing ovation from the folks who wanted his ass outta there. Also:

After the meeting, board Chairman Timothy Shelnut played down suggestions that Meredith used the speech to defend his chancellery.

Suggestions like the headline on this article? Also, Regents deny Soloski's appeal for a neutral party review of sexual harrassment claims. So his only other option would be to pursue legal action, which he lacks the money for. How about getting a job elsewhere? Heh. Good luck.

6) Out-of-state tuition will be waived at USG schools for Katrina refugee students.

7) Headline clarification necessary. In case you thought it was one of those flying, squeaky things.

8) ABH anti-three-laning of Prince, except in the area that already could be.

9) Paying higher prices for gas = charity?

10) Calling an idiot an idiot is apparently now "repugnant elitism."

11) Article on tailgating overshadowed by greatness of the name Jimbo LaBoon.

[bugmenot ABH]

IMDB news has this today, significant part bolded by yours trulys:

Pulp Fiction star Samuel L. Jackson was forced to relive his first ever TV commercial on Tuesday night, after comedian Jay Leno paid "thousands" of dollars to track it down. Jackson appeared on Leno's chat show to promote his new movie The Man, when the funnyman - notorious for digging up stars' old works - proudly unveiled the actor's ad for Crystal Hamburgers. Leno told Jackson, "I found something that I've been looking for easily (for) 10 years, really hard the last six years... The quality of this is so poor but it cost me thousands. I said to the guy, 'I don't care how much it costs, just send it to me.'" After watching the black-and-white commercial twice, Jackson admitted, "That commercial validated my being an actor to my mom and all her friends, 'cause all those years I was gone, I was doing theatre, they'd go, 'You say you're an actor, well why don't you go apply for one of those jobs on a soap opera?' Like you could just go and make an application or something! And then when this came on, my mom's phone blew up."

That said, my new pseudonym of choice has clearly been found...

Dear Pitchfork,

Perhaps this so-called neglect of Robyn has a little to do with the fact that her album is import-only and $32 in the U.S.?

Love,
me

NYT Dining Section ran this odd article Wednesday on how black people don't frequent fine dining establishments in New York, which is odd because the city "has substantial black wealth and a boldface-name black elite." But this doesn't seem to be the case so much in Atlanta. Is it just that Atlanta has even more black wealth/elite? Or what? [bugmenot NYT]

Can I get this? Parking would theoretically be a bitch, but who's going to tow me if I park in the middle of the street.

Also, presumably I could briefly beep the siren at jerks.

1) Bravo's presentation of ASSSSCAT, the Upright Citizens Brigade improv show. Am sure it will be rerun mucho, so you'll have your chances. Sadly, a one-time thing rather than a series and will increase your respect for everyone involved, including Horatio Sanz, who I think is funny but I had no idea possessed any sort of improv skills. You can also see how the UCB TV show grew out of this kind of process and, in what is almost an equal pleasure to watching the show and laughing at the jokes, you can see the mental gymnastics at work. That is, when an audience member shouts out a word for the monologist to riff on, it's obvious that s/he steers away from anything that might be expected. i.e., It's all about making it harder for the improv-ers, who also do their best to make things more difficult for one another. This results in a lot of moments where you can see the disconnect briefly between what one person wanted to do with the sketch and the abrupt switch to a new direction. You can see it on their faces, and the quickness with which they respond is both funny and impressive. Good stuff.

2) Kim Deitch's The Boulevard of Broken Dreams, which I ripped through in about an hour and was called an asshole by my darling husband for doing so. I cain't hep it. When I've been slogging in the wilds of anthropological theory mixed with large chunks of philosophy, 160 pages of pictures with a word here and there is pie-easy. So here's another huge question about comix and graphic novels: do they seem more obsessed with their predecessors than the artists working in other forms? There's a lot of history represented on the page. It's not that word novelists don't do this (Barth is a good example of someone who does it constantly, and it seems characteristic of other postmodern authors), but it does seem more common in the graphic novel. Is this a function of how few I've read? Is it because it's a fundamentally postmodern form? Is it because the history isn't nearly as long as that of the traditional novel? What up?

Late but here.

1) Avenged Sevenfold, "Bat Country" -- I was ready to dig this resurgence of metal. Their website is great, and they seem to know how to rock, but there's no melody, and that's kind of important in a song. Or maybe it's just bad. 1. (video at iFilm)

2) Bobby Valentino, "Tell Me" -- I love that the premise for the video is that Bobby V works in retail. And is allowed to wear that belt buckle. I'd say this is the second-best song on this album and really exemplifies that bubble bath feeling I talked about in my review. It's so warm and relaxing to listen to, but it's also got the interest provided by those fab strings. 8. (audio and video at AOL music)

3) Hilary Duff, "Wake Up" -- God forbid anyone learn how to spell her name or mine the first hundred times. This is cute and perky, but a little flat and not sweeping and awesome like "Come Clean." It's nice that she likes to party, though. 6.
(video and audio here)

4) Sean Paul, "We Be Burning" -- Sound quality could be better, even though this is streaming on his official site. The guitar tone is nice but buried, and I like the drum hits. Wish the song had more of a progression, but that's how this kind of thing goes, and it's catchy enough. 6. (SP's site)

5) Franz Ferdinand, "Do You Want To?" -- Covered. Still love it. 9.

6) Slim Thug feat. Pharrell and Bun B, "I Ain't Heard of That" -- Yeah, it's damn well produced. And everyone's right about how hooky the chorus is. That guitar riff is ringing memory bells but not well enough for me to identify what I'm thinking of. Pharrell's squeakings totally add something. As good as anything out of Houston yet. 7. (audio and video at AOL Music)

1) Hurricane refugees estimated to arrive in Athens tomorrow. ABH runs down who's doing what locally. UGA holds open forum to address student concerns, offers admission to 60-70 displaced students.

2) DuBose Porter makes trouble at special legislative session to improve Perdue's chances in next year's governor's race: "This is one of the largest taxpayer-funded publicity stunts in history." Gets his mic shut off. Because that's how we do things here.

Rep. Ben Harbin, R-Evans, the House budget chairman, agreed that gas retailers needed to know the Legislature would approve the action.

"We're politicians," he said. "People don't know what we're going to do tomorrow."

The surplus we had will apparently pay for it, so don't even think about any extra funding for anything in the next budget. But who will protect the Pita Pit drivers?

3) Hey! Savannah's mocking us. Get to partying harder, Dawgs.

4) Maysville citizens still pissed at their government, and kind of rightly so.

5) Can you say unfunded mandate? Just because the curriculum's changed doesn't mean schools get money to replace all their textbooks with ones that contain the new required information.

6) Looks like three-laning of Prince and therefore the decision on whether or not to take local control of Prince and Milledge (and forego state money for maintaining those roads) will be coming up again. Dodson wants to go ahead and three-lane the half-mile stretch that is under local control. Am sure it would create no traffic problems...

7) R&B talks about land-line service in the residence halls and how eliminating it could save the university money. Also, 95% of students have cell phones.

8) ABH takes brave stance we haven't seen anywhere else, calls for FEMA head's firing.

9) Shipp overestimates Georgia.

Would federal, state and local government in Georgia respond differently - and more efficiently - from the way government answered the New Orleans catastrophe?

Georgians would try harder, we hope. Whether the outcome would be any better is doubtful.

Yeah! We're not like those lazy bayou dwellers. But there's a good rundown at the end of measures in Georgia that have helped to screw the poor lately.

10) Students use google to research papers, are big dumbasses.

11) Dude, you're kind of encouraging people to hurl bottles, you know?

12) Thomas Brown loves Wild Wing, iPod, Kanye.

13) What? The smoking ban sucks?

[bugmenot ABH; bugmenot SMN]

This last issue of The New Yorker was the annual one devoted to food. I point you to Calvin Trillin's account of eating fanesca in Ecuador, which contains much about the delight of eating, unlike many of the other articles. There is some good stuff, including a Gopnik piece on two very different chefs (one innard-focused, one into veggies) and how their willful strangeness connects them and Malcolm Gladwell's piece on a cookie bake-off that's really more of an exploration of innovation models, but much of it isn't online.

The sweet tones of "Drinkin' Bone" making their way to my ear from the future?

Reviews of Hope Partlow, Kanye West, and Bobby Valentino are in this week's F-Pole. Read "scrapy" (as in making a scraping noise) for "scrappy" in the West.

Also also, inquiring minds want to know: is the depiction in the letters of Mike Barthel's review-writing process accurate? Is it true he uses a notepad?

Update: On the other hand, Mr. Barthel, your reference to Britney's "Bye Bye Bye" may provoke more letters. Or not.

Can "concealing some merchandise in a Walmart bag" be a new euphemism for something?

Arrest: On Aug. 29, security at Wal-Mart arrested Joanie Elaine Craft, 28, of Dacula on a charge of shoplifting. She was seen taking items into a bathroom, where they were removed from the packaging. She was seen meeting with a male friend and concealing some merchandise in a Wal-Mart bag that she had brought into the store.

I've tried to picture this multiple times, but it's not working:

Arrest: On Aug. 30, Sgt. Byron Smith was working security for Kroger when he was notified by an employee about a possible theft. He followed two men into the parking lot and observed one stoop down and objects hit the pavement. He checked and found some beef steaks, which had been removed from the meat department. Bobby Glen Porter, 44, of Thompson Street, Bogart, and Kinte M. Terrell, 28, of Stonehenge Way, Bogart, were both charged with shoplifting.

Where does the bag come in? Also, new favorite name? Lopatan Slaymaker.

Arrest: On Sept. 1, a clerk at the Oconee Food Mart on Macon Highway reported that a gold Honda pulled into the station about 8:20 p.m. and the driver pumped $48 worth of gasoline, then drove off without paying. The car had a paper "tag applied for" on the license plate. About 1:50 a.m. Sept. 2, deputy Brad Williams was patrolling through the city of Watkinsville when he observed a vehicle matching the description of the car. He radioed Watkinsville policeman Lopatan Slaymaker, who pulled in behind the vehicle on Greensboro Highway and stopped it. Slaymaker and Williams approached the car and had the suspects get out. During questioning, the driver, Jeffrey Steven Delacruz, 18, of Greenwood Drive, Bogart, admitted that he had committed the gas drive off. He said he placed the bag over his license plate to conceal it during the crime. Delacruz was arrested for stealing the gasoline.

All the rest.

Will our long national nightmare ever end?

Maybe these writers are reacting with their emotions, or perhaps they’re just stupid.

1) Living wage rally in Athens attracted about 100 people. Note: no university representatives present (or at least mentioned). Blake's article before the fact has a good deal on UGA and how it's raised its minimum salary. The thing is, positions classified as "temporary" can still pay less, not to mention they don't offer health insurance. ABH talks about the job losses from Katrina in connection with Labor Day (also, the vacation day's not ironic; it's a celebration of labor).

2) ACLU staying on top of the voter ID thing. Federal lawsuit a-comin'. And Dan Matthews fires off a letter on same.

3) If you stand in the doorway of the University Architect's office downtown, are you allowed to have a beer outside? Also, "tailgate pirates"?

4) Perdue panders to Georgia residents, screws own treasury out of $75 mill plus the $30K a day (5-day minimum) the special session will cost. ABH supports it though (and, parenthetically, praises UGA's hurricane efforts). ABH covers some moves people are making to save on gas money, with snicker-inducing headline. Walter Jones, Morris News Service correspondent, has a good piece on the political jockeying over gas prices and SATs. Some people think panic was justified.

5) Damn, that's what you call pre-emptive. McCarter accuses supporters of La Puerta del Sol of distorting the issue. Also note: Bruno needs a loan to build the new location of Azucaa.

6) Ramsey Center will host shelter, if necessary.

7) Chemistry Building's alarms falling down on the job.

8) Jim addresses looting in classic third-way style (necessities okay, TVs not) and thinks Jesse Jackson should've too. It kinda seems like he was busy helping people.

9) Shipp's column, about how the South will recover from Katrina, is a mess. It takes an apocalypse to improve things at all?

10) ABH praises Sigma Pi for mature response.

11) Mrs. JMac(?) has letter knocking ABH for lack of hurricane coverage. Local paper, we say again.

12) Loran Smith hearts pants!

13) New Gwinnett college needs name, preferably not involving "Gwinnett."

14) Letter-writer to R&B (second down) contends that if the university's admissions process were completely diversity-blind that we'd end up with one of the most diverse classes ever. On the other hand, he's an MIS major, so we know he was dropped on his head as a baby.

[bugmenot ABH; bugmenot AJC]

Y'all know me and Kanye have been flirting for a long time. I'd just like to announce that I'm officially in love. [transcript for those of you without video capacity]

UK Singles Jukebox with my contributions again.

Almost everyone else hates the Goldie Lookin' Chain. Blurbs not picked:

Coldplay, “Fix You” — Look, I know the turtle is more virtuous than the hare, in terms of being consistent and not a big jackass (or jackrabbit, as the case may be), but the turtle is boring. Kneejerk anti-Chris Martin sentiments are as old and tired as kneejerk pro-Chris Martin sentiments, but what really remains is that these songs are long and take forever to get anywhere. This is pop, and we like the speed.
[2]

Jack Johnson, “Breakdown” — Smartly rips off that acoustic cover of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” that was last heard in Kmart ads, leading you to think it may be a quality tune at the beginning. But then it veers into faux soul. Attention, white people: no more singing about trains. Unless you are Tom Waits.
[5]

Foo Fighters, “DOA” — This is much improved over their last single, with an actual melody and a genuine rock sound, but it still sounds more imitative of classic stuff than evocative of the same feelings the classics provoke. More of a video featuring people riding in a car than an actual tune to listen to while doing so yourself.
[5]

Ying Yang Twins, “Wait” — At first it was outrageous, now it’s more hilarious than anything else. Where are they? A library?
[5]

Pussycat Dolls feat. Busta Rhymes, “Don’t Cha” — Meh. Girl power and all that, but Busta puts the lie to that as his arrhythmic verses are far superior to the collagen-lipped “sexiness” of the rest of it.
[4]

The Arcade Fire, “Rebellion (Lies)” — At least there is the possibility of dancing to this, but it’s still over five minutes long. My tiny monkey brain is thinking about checking out within two.
[4]

As previously, feel free to drop me a line if you'd like to hear any of this.

My French grandpa (i.e., still over there and always has been) was so freaked by the hurricane coverage that he called my mom, miles and miles away in the big ATL. What does Europe think of all this? I think I can paraphrase it as, "Holy fuck. America is the Third World." He said it looked like Rwanda.

James Hugh Potts II, I salute you. I may have jumped the gun on getting antsy about my t-shirt, but come Friday, there it was in the mailbox, beautifully packaged and nicely printed on an American Apparel tee. Mack's pictures are accurate. Imagine whoops of delight.

Update: Mr. Brown's arrived Tuesday (09/06). Life is complete.

Demons: Hee. Once one is basically done with Dario, one branches out, but the thing is: there's only one Dario. Demons is kind of a gorier, longer version of the video for "Thriller" and clearly dates from the same period. It tries to work the Romero thing, but doesn't do it nearly as well as the old fella. Not a whole lot of plot. Rock-ass soundtrack, though, with mucho Claudio Simonetti and a bit of Billy Idol and Motley Crue. You could maybe program it into a meta-film festival, but the connections between the movie itself and the movie within the movie aren't really explored. Why does the usherette turn into a demon? Why is it set in Berlin? What the hell is that pimp doing there? Why does the ending go this way instead of that? These are unanswerable questions, and so it's a bit frustrating. A step up from the Fulci I've seen, but a step down from Soavi in the Italian gore-meister pantheon.

So in the future I can just link back to this post.

Paranoid mom + hefty car insurance fees + living on same block as school led to no driver's license in high school. MARTA will take you most places you need to go in Atlanta.

Then --> marriage. Which = permanent chauffeur.

Now? Now I'm aware of how dangerous driving is. If I were still 16 and stupid, I'd be a lot readier to do that shit. As is, I'm working on it, intermittently. I do think it's overrated.

On the other hand, I do know how to change oil.

What the first ever Fanball music video might look something like, I'd encourage you to check out Goldie Lookin' Chain's new one here. Track suits, wiggaz, deliberately poor FX, refs to Tekken and Weird Science? Yeah, that's it.

1) No hurricane news here. It's everywhere already. You already know you might want to toss some change their way, and if you don't want to, me telling you will not make a bit of difference. Here's some local relevance.

2) ABH covers Parker's reprimand.

3) Gas is recovering.

On Thursday, at least some filling stations in the area remained out of gas. However, most gas stations throughout the nation have some gas, according to AAA Auto Club South.

..."There will be people who call for caps or ceilings on the price of gasoline. That's not the way to go," Bill Lastrapes, head of the economics department at UGA's Terry College of Business, said in a statement.

"The high prices are painful, but the price fluctuations serve a purpose, and that is to signal consumers that there is a scarcity in the supply," Lastrapes said. "It sounds unfeeling and uncaring, but we'll adjust our behavior and be much more likely to conserve under these circumstances."

But what's this?

Nevertheless, U.S. Rep. John Barrow, D-Georgia, of Athens, is asking the Federal Trade Commission to investigate reported instances of unnecessary gas price inflation.

"An investigation of this ongoing situation would produce a careful analysis of the circumstances surrounding the increase in prices, as well as provide concrete recommendations that Congress and the FTC can use to help ensure that future natural disasters and/or terrorist attacks do not cause similar disturbances in gas prices," Barrow wrote in a letter to FTC Chairwoman Deborah Platt Majoras.

Runnin' for office again, y'all. Just in case you didn't catch that... So what is price gouging? Eh, it's totally vague. Athens Transit doesn't know yet if more people are riding the bus as a result. ABH calls bullshit on it all. Did this letter writer get the gas or not? This one hates on COC.

4) Holy Christ. That's a hell of a park.

5) This is actually kind of a nice response by Sigma Pi.

6) ABH calls it wrong. There ain't no poor people in Clarke County. Those housing projects? They're totally just dorms.

7) ABH talks about Munson and who could possibly fill those shoes. Yes, he is cranky and old and inaccurate and insanely pessimistic, but he is our guy. Personally, I'd recommend Dantzler to take over, but after that panties comment a few years back, he may not have a great shot.

8) Remember those restrictions passed on panhandling in Atlanta? Spreading here. The downtown development authority is a ass.

9) YD's have Jane Kidd to speak. She's focusing on education and healthcare.

10) Journalism reports news.

11) Op-ed in R&B on thwarted efforts to recruit more Latinos. Would not be shocked if this were university incompetence, but also would not be shocked if student inaccuracies have crept in.

12) Sandal craze sucking people into mists in Athens.

[bugmenot ABH]

This would be what I spent my four-day weekend working on. Ooh, and more photos.

Is it the polyester that makes it specifically "cutthroat"? Because the sword's not included.

Really, they have quite a number of varieties: swashbuckler, princess, goth, hip punk, high seas, peewee, sexy Captain Hook...

But hurrah for college football being on the TV again. Hurrah for Erin Andrews jiggling and driving Mrs. Spurrier nuts with her questions. Hurrah for the man we love to hate displaying his childish temper in front of tens of thousands. And hurrah for Lee Corso for saying South Carolina is teh suck.

Sidebar: Why is Gameday in Pittsburgh this weekend when it is commonly acknowledged that the only game worth watching is in the 30602? Discuss, using vagina-related expletives.

That Gang of Four, as mentioned on sidebar, is hitting the 40 Watt as well as Earthlink Live or whatever the hell it is in Atlanta. Convenience charges are for bitches, y'all.

Sorry for lateness this a.m., but I did lunch yesterday and then I had my class until 4:45 and then hit the DMV this morning to renew the ol' learner's permit (comments about patheticness totally allowed here). So anyway:

Oh shit, Hassiotis and I totally saw Danny Ware in his fancy ride yesterday on Baxter St. He drives a white Chevy Caprice Classic, but not the snazzy rectangular old-skool kind. More like a sort of grandpa sedan kind, if your grandparents are anything like my grandparents and committed to buying American vehicles in a grouchy way. So it has the words "Caprice Classic" on either side of the back end in a script font, and the license plate (the giveaway) says "WARE 28." He does have mad large shiny rims, though, which cool it up a touch. Is it expensive looking enough to have come from a booster? Not really. Caprice Classic? Boosters can do better than that. Anyway, he was talking on his cell phone, but he was nonetheless a pretty careful driver. Yay for Danny Ware!

Could someone with a color printer maybe whip up a few of these and post them on campus? Or outside a commission meeting?

1) Hi, we're a bunch of douchebags.

Lay said short supplies are not anything new to her, but she still can't believe the widespread panic.

"It's like they're going to run out of air," she said. "And they're not."

Whew. Good to know those "no air as of 4 p.m. today" rumors aren't accurate. Note that Chamber of Commerce didn't help. State of emergency yadda yadda. R&B says some UGA employees were sent home early to fill their vehicles. R&B staff photographer relates her story, complete with pump-mate who doesn't understand that we have an amendment about presidents and the number of times they can be elected. R&B editorial quotes Douglas Adams. Dear other states, you officially get one free shot.

2) UGA thinking about making some housing available to Katrina refugees and Tulane students.

Requests for transfer to the University will be examined on a case-by-case basis, giving first priority to Georgia residents who were admitted to the University but chose to attend an institution impacted by the hurricane, he said in a news release.

says R&B.

3) Chemistry Building on campus evacuated for a few hours due to a noxious chemical leakage. Key paragraph that at least one person who reads this will appreciate?

No one at the university knew what the benzoyl chloride was used for, since it belonged to S. William Pelletier, a professor emeritus of chemistry and former UGA provost who died last year.

He strikes from beyond the grave! R&B says people were more confused than worried.

4) Candy, small child present at solicitor's swearing in.

5) La Puerta Del Sol again characterized as "controversial" and again by States McCarter.

6) Rape not academically oriented.

7) Wider sidewalks on eastside would encourage more bike riding. Yeah, and it's not like they just tore them all up and replaced them with new ones in the past year.

8) Keith Parker reprimanded but keeps tenure. Also, massages feet. But didn't technically violate sexual harrassment policy.

9) Senior chemistry major doesn't think ethanol is the best solution.

10) "Today I want to buy this sword with a skull on it."

[bugmenot ABH; bugmenot AJC]

1) Alice Munro's "The View from Castle Rock." You know, she's really some kind of genius with these things. Can we name our hypothetical daughter Alice, Mr. Brown? It implying now both rabbit holes and magical happenings but also a kind of firmly planted rationality (both these things being present in Carroll and Munro) that I like the combination of.

2) Malcolm Gladwell on "The Moral Hazard Myth," in a fine argument for universal socialized medicine.

3) Richard Thompson cracking wise about the queen.

and 4) Schjeldahl on Matisse, complete with line, "Anyone who doesn’t love it must have a low opinion of joy."

In response to someone else saying that those who panicked yesterday must be feeling a little foolish now:

I don't think that anyone feels foolish. They were talking about it in the newspaper yesterday. Sometimes you have to take things serious. Even if it did turn out that we are not running out of gas we are still prepared just in case it did happen. And some people did run out. I think that this is one of the resons that we lost some of the poeple in New Orleans because they didn't listen to the warnings. And also 9/11....

Cha-ching!!

Television 1, Knee-jerk anti-TV folks 0.