Research side dealies

The things you find out.

For example, our buddy Bob Hay has a very appropriate last name.

Fr. OED: hay

1. A country dance having a winding or serpentine movement, or being of the nature of a reel.

a1529 SKELTON Agst. Garnesche 170, I cannot let thè the knave to play To dauns the hay and run the ray. 1549 Compl. Scot. vi. 66 Thai dancit al cristyn mennis dance, the northt of scotland..ihonne ermistrangis dance, the alman haye, the bace of voragon, [etc.]. 1596 DAVIES Orchestra lxiv. in Arb. Garner V. 39 He taught them Rounds and winding Heyes to tread. 1609 C. BUTLER Fem. Mon. v. (1623) Lij, They doe most nimbly bestirre themselves, sporting and playing in and out as if they were dancing the Hey. 1656 DAVENANT Siege Rhodes IV. Dram. Wks. 1873 IV. 418 Scourge him As boys do tops; or make him dance The Irish hey over a field of thistles Naked. 1753 HOGARTH Anal. Beauty xvii. 237 One of the most pleasing movements in country-dancing..is what they call ‘the hay’: the figure of it, altogether, is a cypher of S's, or a number of serpentine lines interlacing or intervolving each other. ?1810 M. EDGEWORTH M. Lewis (1849) 151 He..danced the Hays round two elbow chairs. 1881 BESANT & RICE Chapl. Fleet II. iv, The hymns they sang might have been a hey or a jig in a country dance.

Huh

The Chadwyck-Healey poetry index (the American version at any rate) provides, on its search page, a way to limit the authors produced to male or female. What up?

Hoobyhorse (a memo)

The hobbyhorse is in the corner for a while. My legs are far too tired to ride it around the room. For legs, read "brain." Y'all may actually have to provide your own thoughts on the news of the day in Athens.

Oh staff listserv...

Less hysterical than the last medical emergency.

Date: July 31, 2006 8:19:37 AM EDT
To: UGASTAFF@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Looking for HELP with Medical Issue

Good Morning-

My boyfriend has a Q-Tip end stuck in his ear. He tried to go to the Athens Health Clinic as he has no health insurance and they told him they could not help him there. We cannot afford a $1000 visit to the ER. Does anyone have any suggestions of somewhere he could go that would do a sliding scale or be gracious and merciful enough to help him?

And yes, we tried tweezers. Looking in there, you cannot even see the Q-Tip so we don't want to damage his ear.

Please help if you can. Any advice would be appreciated.

Please note that this is about my nightmare. The only way it gets worse is if there are birds involved.

Movie Diary

1) Wedding Crashers: Aw, dang. It was pretty sweet and also funny. I think perhaps the dirtiness was overrated--not in the sense that it was less funny than it should have been, but in the sense that it wasn't nearly as dirty as people seemed to think it was. What? Tits and fucking? Big deal. They do make a lot of movies like that, you know? Even if there are also plenty that try to edit them out to get a PG-13. I hate to admit it, but Vaughn is fantastic; the character springs depth and weirdness on you nicely out of the blue. And Ferrell should not even be allowed to come in and be that funny in the sort of retarded gratuitous cameo that's supposed to make everyone laugh at the end of the movie. Seriously. His success is going to make people keep doing it, and generally it's a bad idea. So the movie is not nonstop laughs, but I had a good feeling about it 95% of the time while watching it and after.

2) Lord of War: This, on the other hand, I am conflicted about, despite the presence of my boyfriend. For one thing, he can be lazy as an actor, and he's mostly doing his usual thing here. I don't know if he was uninspired or reined in too much or not given things to work with. He's not bad, but he's not luminescent. So, it definitely looks good and the subject matter is interesting, but then the execution fails a bit. Because, what? Like we don't know arms dealing is bad? Or that it happens? Was it Dan who compared it to Blow? I think that's kind of accurate. It is a bit boring to watch the same narrative again: I'm good at this and it makes me a lot of money and gets me the girl I want; but, hmm, there are some ethical problems with it; and someone on my tail; and now I'm losing control; and I'm losing my family; and they kinda got me, but not really, and in the end I am an empty man and didn't learn much because it is a cynical world. Maybe it's realism. But what they needed was bigger balls. If you're going to end the credits sequence with someone being shot in the head, and if you aim to shock, then why do you cut away classily at people being hacked to death with machetes or show a massacre from the outside of a tent with a blood splatter? So as not to glorify it? I can't imagine it would. Why do you make up a Liberian dictator rather than just going with the real guy? You afraid he's going to sue? Maybe he would, but if there's all this big deal about how the U.S. studios wouldn't back this film, and it's a moral lesson in a lot of ways, then why do you care? This is all too hard. It's a fine movie, and it's pretty zippy in its pace. It's nice that they didn't make Cage do an accent. It's certainly not nice to arms dealers, and there are a few scenes that are effective in their shock value. The way Africa is portrayed is amazing and terrifying and quite beautiful in its insanity. I just wish the script had been a bit better written and tougher.

To Hell with the Irish

It's too bad there's not a way to distinguish between the group as a whole and the football institution via capitalization. I mean the former.

But partially because of the latter.

Look at McGinty, wading into dangerous waters. I think those sharks nibbling on him are Irish. But, hey, he's Irish too. Shouldn't all y'all get along? Is there some kind of Catholic-Protestant divide here?

And what about the damn Red Sox and their Irish fixation?

Honestly, the tradition of being put upon and drinking excessively and feeling sorry for yourself and being handed a big ol' chip at birth to set up there on your shoulder, does that tradition even belong to the Irish anymore? Did y'all not read that Blue Collar Comedy tour piece I told you about? At least the Southern equivalent still gets mocked as stupid by the rest of the country and, therefore, has a mildly legitimate gripe. Who makes fun of the Irish in a concerted way these days? Yes, once upon a time, they were oppressed, but now they're just regular white people with an overdeveloped sense of ethnic pride.

How facetious is this? Somewhat, but solidarity results from outside forces being more powerful. Come on, outside forces. At least provide a reason for them to stick together.

Games

Trying to figure out what book the random spam text comes from. English nerd thing. This one is hard, though, as it seems more like a sentence or phrase here and there than an extended passage. Harry Potter and Tolkien are pretty popular.

But as the farce couldno longer offend her, so the tragedy could no longer terrify. You shall have pigs, I say, if the skies fall and the whole worldis whelmed in war. I advise you to take a little desperate luncheon. Besides, I dont want him in my nice river. The vicar understands his church, too, and would give Mr. In fact, Ive already broken all those new laws and a few more. And what hesays goes, as he would express it. Ask him towait till hes seen the presents. But then, for that matter, we all support Dr. Youve been doing desperate things enough for this morning,said Hood. He jolly well wouldnt, replied the Colonel. And if it be possible for any of them to desire to know any moreeither about Mr. I think I see an openingfor a brisk young man in the ham and pork business. Men are lowerthan swine when they do not appreciate swine. Joan thinks Im an awful humbug, and right she is;I am what has been called a happy hypocrite. No good going down The Hole and those filthy places. It was a finesight to see the old lady clear a hedge and skedaddle across a meadow. You must at least let me write to you everyhour or so. I suppose Im old-fashioned myself; but speaking as an old Tory,I must confess he might do worse. He really is a very wonderful fellow, said Hood. But if any indomitable reader wishes to know what was the new lineMr. You mustnt come here, then, she answered. Do you propose to go on doing all these impossible things? I think I see an openingfor a brisk young man in the ham and pork business. I have no doubt that it is in fact far older. I dontknow whether I mentioned it, but you may be aware that I worship you. Old Oates has gone into another business, answered Pierce quietly. I suppose its some more of Hilarys skylarking, observed Hood;but what is he up to now? Thats not a cloud, he said sharply, its a Zeppelin or something.

Google has the answer if you don't. Maybe I should buy this book. Even with the yucky title font.

Who wouldn't want to...

Do you think Bruce Bruce is like, "I know that monkey ain't doing comedy. He better not be taking my paycheck"? That's what the look says to me.

Read

Hendrik explains why people have a problem with Lieberman. It gets angrier as it moves on, but this is at the beginning:

He is a three-term Democratic senator from a state, Connecticut, that’s as blue as a state can be while still being the spawning ground of the Bush dynasty; six years ago, he was the Democratic Party’s nominee for Vice-President, an unusual honor for a fake Democrat; he has the support of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., naral, and the League of Conservation Voters.

An unusual honor indeed, but one that was still handed out. I'd almost forgotten why I didn't vote for Gore. Lieberman was a large part of it, a massive misstep, a calculation toward the middle that lost tons of votes from the left. You can move backward about a million steps in assigning responsibility here and there for the fucked-up-edness we are in now, but some of those steps light on Lieberman himself, the DLC for lovin' on him, and Gore, for being such a pussy (or, possibly, righteous man) as not to be able to brush off a bj. But blame is useless at this point.

Better to move on and read Patricia Marx's "You Shouldn't Have" (not linked there; it's not online), one of her shopping pieces, this one focused on what to bring when invited out to someone's summer house. I actually always have the same reaction to these: first, annoyance that it's taking up the space of a real article; then, hatred of the rich; and finally, total amusement and joy in the writing, which manages to be subversive about shopping at the same time that it delights in lovely things. She also conveys rules: scented candles are disapproved of, as are fancy soap and cut flowers:

...for they require the hostess to stop the progress of the party while she looks for something to put them in. It is even ruder, however, to bring dessert to a dinner party. In this situation, the host, who has knocked himself out making individual ramekins of chocolate-raspberry souffle, is obliged to give your ironic Fudgie the Whale ice-cream cake from Carvel ($29.95) an equally prominent position on the dessert table.

This is funny in the way that Miss Manners is and equally instructive.

Auletta's piece on Bert Fields and Anthony Pellicano is likewise missing online, and it is full of Hollywood gossip details and power struggles (since that's what Auletta writes about), but this is the only part you need to read:

Fields rarely eats breakfast, but if he's hungry, Guggenheim says, he sometimes pours a Diet Coke over a bowl of cereal.

Really? What kind of cereal? Should I call Ferran Adria? Something in the combo of carbonation and two different kinds of sugar seems brisk and interesting. It reminds me of my breakfasts at camp, which consisted of two bowls of Lucky Charms marshmallows and a large Dr. Pepper. Energy was provided for the day.

Query

Anyone who can tell me why I'm getting at least a couple of hits a day for this would clear up a great mystery. Do people like those Dove ads that much? Or does it have something to do with the multitude of Russian links that come up in the search? Or are people very sweaty these days and desirous of freshing their bodies?

4 sham

Look, woman, be proud of your work. Proofreading is not for grunts. People shouldn't sniff at $21 an hour. I don't make that much. And besides, it makes the world a cleaner, brighter, clearer, more beautiful place. Much like the people who clean the poo off the sidewalks in France. No glory doesn't mean no reward.

There will be podcasting

You may obtain your details there. If there are any I forget, I'll add them here.

Todd Rundgren, maximalist

And looking more like Ozzy every day. (He also says This Year's Model.)

Hobbyhorse

So you've been following the Canine Angels story elsewhere, but anyway, they got arrested, the paper wrote a renownedly retarded editorial about it (which McGinty did a nice job with, pointing out that someone has a problem with Tommy Irvin [someone who loves Brian Kemp]), and they're released on bond.

New detectives on the Baker case. Her parents don't believe in psychics, just publicity. (Guerrilla PR, y'all.)

People who don't live in the district can't run in the district.

It'll be interesting to follow Fourth Street Elementary's progress over the next couple of years and see how the new methods work.

Crops is dry, yo.

Hacking countdown begins.

Shirley Franklin (non-loser) lends support to Martin, while Miles (loser) lends support to Hecht.

Centimeters? Bot Garden bunch of pinkos, clearly.

I'm guessing it's hard to find volunteers for the white mob.

Also, if someone's doing the dance called the bus stop, you can't be near them. Federal judge feels bad but doesn't extend the hold on enforcing all provisions of the state's creepy sex offender law. Bus stops gotta be defined before enforcement kicks in, though.

Rails-to-trails might be dead, but dang does that Lexington exit from the Loop need to be fixed. The state is not interested in being clear or doing much.

See? If you get in a fight with a bus, you're gonna lose.

There are grants being doled out for rural airports to lengthen their runways to accommodate private jets. Supposedly, this attracts both commerce and tourism, but what it really attracts is rich people, who may or may not benefit the communities involved in the way they're theorized to. The paper likes it because they think it'll attract industry. And they provide some good mitigating info:

It's also important to note the OneGeorgia Authority has set up a number of criteria for assessing applications. Among other things, applications will be judged on the basis of the number of jobs that will be protected or created by a given project, whether a project will result in an increase in corporate air traffic, the amount of local tax revenue that will be protected or created, and the feasibility of the proposed project. Projects involving a regional approach will be given special consideration, and OneGeorgia officials also will consider the poverty rate in communities seeking the AirGeorgia funds.

Maybe it's just my Sonny hate that causes the automatic suspicion.

Votes for Saxby!

Shipp imagines crazy world in which politicos tell the "truth" (the insane truth according to Shipp, that is). e.g.,

Suppose both candidates admitted public education in Georgia has turned into little more than a jobs program for teachers who are paid more and more while students achieve less and less.

OMG, papers not supposed to report news! Cut it out!

Proposal for school funding supplement based on impact fees in Oconee County. In some ways, this seems reasonable. If you're contributing to white flight and excessive growth, perhaps you should pay the price. But on the other hand, you were presumably paying taxes for education elsewhere, too, so why should you have to pay more above and beyond any regular increase in property tax?

Popcorn is evil! And so are people who make inappropriate jokes!

So much Tofu Baby letterage in the Flagpole.

City Pages has a brief report on frat house moratorium and historic designation of downtown, stuff on water rights, and people are being physically maimed (nice retronym?) over politics.

Police Blotter (why ain't people crazy with the heat in the OC? edition)

Just a lil' bit.

Dispute: On July 15, deputies were notified of a dispute on a North Oconee High School bus. The football team was returning from an out-of-town event when some students engaged in an argument. One student telephoned some friends in Athens and told them to come to the school. At the school, the three people from Athens had arrived and when an argument ensued, they pushed a coach in the back. A complaint was filed, but the three suspects had not been identified.

Seriously, Oconee County. All you got for us is back pushing? And the usual assortment of people trying to steal shit in the self checkout line? L-A-M-E.

Look, y'all, my boyfriend can do anything

OK....... ( NO DOUBT >>> HE'S A TERRIFIC ACTOR, AND, WHILE I COULD NEVER PICTURE HIM IN THIS ROLE......HE'S SO GOOD.... HE JUST MIGHT PULL IT OFF ! I'LL SEE THE MOVIE ;0))

Publication

Merely the one, as Grub Notes vanished somewhere between one office and another at Flagpole. So you get that next week. This week you get me talkin' about Vetran and how good they are. And almost gone.

Query: Does that Gummy Bear doll behind Bren look like it has a huge, misshapen erection or what?

My favorite new blog

Not really. But it exists now, and that template really is pretty snazzy. Not like this orange and nothin'. And it has a Site Meter counter. Oooooh. It will be updated less often, but it also provides a way for you to comment on things, if you want to. Suggestions are welcome.

No muffin basket

Dudes still kinda abide.

[new link for such, as original is screwed]

OSIS (NYC)

Best one since I moved here: Ralph Fiennes, walking south on Lafayette, looking all grungy and unshaven, carrying what looked like takeout. We made eye contact (perfect blue eyes). <>

Woooo! (That's a sexy sitcom reaction wooo, not a sports-influenced wooo.) More details? Okay:

...he's sooooo cute in person, shorter and more youthful than you'd think.

Exclamation points do not equal content

AthPo has a lovely caption contest inspired by Charlie Maddox's current "push piece" (a vocab word I learned today that I'm not positive I'm remembering correctly), which is ridiculous, and yet it still manages to pale in comparison to the nth version of his website.

1. When I said there should be flashing (it doesn't show up in Safari), I was kidding. Kidding, you hear me?

2. How low does the dpi have to be on a picture for it to show up that pixelated? I'm guessing maybe five, six.

3. Charlie likes italics.

4. Quotation is the only thing that can do it full justice:

Issues that are facing us!

The only thing constant is change! We can stick our heads in the sand and hope that things will change and get better, or we can address the issues that confront us!

The following issues are those that we can and must address, progressively and positively to bring about a positive change for all of Athens - Clarke County!

It is imperative and we shall work together for a positive change that will be of benefit to all of the citizens of Athens - Clarke County!

5. What are Charlie's other issues? We need leadership. Not fighting. And unity. And more leadership.

6. Also, he thinks Athens is seriously wounded somehow.

7. More leadership!

Singles

Singles jukebox #26 is up, with new links to videos (thumbs up, dudes).

See, also, I wrote more:

Ne-Yo - Sexy Love (USA)
I am reminded simultaneously of going to buy Michael Jackson’s History the day it was released and, in a less pleasant way, of the secret enjoyment I have of Rockapella. Clearly, I am impelled toward the rounded, mainstream harmonies against my will. Stop it, brain! I want to like Schoenberg! But my heart keeps pulling me back to Ne-Yo.
[7]

Pet Shop Boys - Minimal (UK)
Maybe dance music never actually takes steps forward. I keep thinking all this stuff coming down the pipe is retro, but it’s more stuck in a wormhole where time moves incredibly slowly, where robots on songs are still relevant (this bit I’m down with), and where we can forget our troubles and drink daiquiris.
[6]

Calle 13 - Japon (Puerto Rico)
Would you please drink a damn cup of coffee? Even Paul Wall gives me more energy than this.
[3]

I like the Ne-Yo. I can't remember being too enthusiastic about anything else, but if you would like the tunes, email me at hillaryhazelbrown@gmail.com.

The Nose Haves It

It's ridiculous to focus on it, but it's in the middle of every shot. And in the lyrics. Which is interesting. But at some point, she has to get over her low self-esteem and writing songs about it, doesn't she? On the other hand, that is our girl pumping her arms in the air near the end. The awkwardness is unmistakable. Shoulda thrown in a lil' jig.

Hobbyhorse

What I want to do with my retirement is spray large, wooly animals with cool water several times a day. (Also, the alpaca business is a pyramid scheme?)

GBI not interested in investigating the sheriff's office.

Jefferson gets parking lot, hits big time.

She likes action? Or she likes "action"? Nudge nudge.

Whoa, doggie. Who's on vacation this week, and who's writing the editorials? This 'un loses steam as it goes, concluding with its usual mushy middle take, but the first several paragraphs seem to suggest Perdue sucks ass on education.

Virtual cocktail party

Featuring Nic Cage. Thank you, Eckerd checkout line and old lady who took her time.

How long can you even take this? I couldn't even hardly get through 4 minutes.

What Mr. McGinty does not mention...

In his accountings of some goings-on.

1) There was apparently some kind of dress code, communicated in code through the pastel colors of the invite, that meant: girls, wear dresses or skirts and look appropriately feminine; boys, bring your pastel polos (pink is preferable) and you damn well better tuck those shirts in. We can't read that code.

2) Johnathan's dad is in love with me.

3) AthPo are some serious bitches.

Dem Hot Beats

Not what you would expect from the CD cover or from Jason Lee's fervent testimonial in the press pack, but Midlake has put out quite an interesting little piece of nostalgia. Call it the equivalent of Civil War reenactors, if they were cool. This is the song I'm a bit obsessed with. It makes me move around in my chair and tap my pencil on the table. And here's the Team Clermont post, on a different song, the song that made the blog rounds and I completely missed because I'm out of the dang loop these days. It's also good, but it's not good to the same extent or in the same way. Call it freak folk with a much more old-timey, structured beard.

This is something that you want to watch

Because it's quite Beatlesque in a very different way than most people would use that word. (It will launch when you click that link, but it will look better than the YouTube version.)

1. It carries a joke way, way out to an extended conclusion.

2. It features very cute zombies.

3. It implies that all band members share a bed in a nonsexual way.

What wouldn't I give for a pig intestine?

That's what the guy at Gamestop said to me as we got into a discussion about how there's no real Chinese food in Athens. He loves BuHi. And dim sum. He says Golden Sun is okay. And he really really wants a (real) Korean restaurant, which in many ways is more likely than Chinese, as there's a larger population to support it, and it's less associated with banquets and such than Chinese is, so you can get by in a smaller space.

Podcaste the nexte

We are losing track of the numbers, as they have advanced beyond fingers (though not yet past toes). This one is not as crappy as we said it is. Send us an Odeo, bitches.

Hobbyhorse

Canine Angels founders throw hands up, leave town. Are charged with animal cruelty. All of that is fucked.

People who go to the Classic Center have problems moving their asses across the two-lane street there that separates the main building from the new section.

Winterville police chief implements new regime; traffic tickets issued in four months almost 10 times the number issued all of last year. Find another way to go. ABH suspects it's an attempt by the PD to assert itself.

Here's one thing about that movie discussed below. Even though it's supposed to be taking place more than 10 years from now, they talk about crude going for $60 a barrel like that's still a bit crazy. Things are higher than that.

More judiciary staff necessary to process folks caught on new red-light camera.

State surplus is $580 mill. A bit to education, most for a rainy day. Where does it come from? People are richer, dying.

You know what doesn't work? Acting like you love the Voting Rights Act after your House buddies tried to get rid of it.

ABH is damn right in the mocking of a disaster preparedness website Georgia has launched.

ABH picks up on R&B story explaining why you've seen so many kids on campus lately.

Letter points out that if the paper had come out with endorsements in the primaries, there might've been greater turnout.

Intern writes on mentoring social program.

Legal ruling in favor of not being an asshole.

Where are you going, Cathy Cox? I'm going to the beach. Jim thinks Reed's political career ain't over either. Shipp sums up primaries and tells us some poll officials demanded picture IDs.

FOP is giving money to McKinney's opponent.

What could happen if state supremes decide for Kidd.

Auburn only has one police force, while Athens has two. Benefits and likeliness of a merger here = not much.

Soul-searching (mostly uncertainty) wrt Novartis's rejection. But it's nice that Heidi thinks more incentives aren't necessarily the answer. Don thinks it's more because NC already had trained workers, as opposed to merely promising to do something about that situation. Maybe that take'll mean Athens Tech's training program really will get moved up on the list of priorities.

Choice of movie in Winterville some kind of subliminal message? Monorail to come?

Early College: Dude! College rules.

Your standard post-primary story on how supporters of defeated candidates might take a while to get behind the winners.

Can we please stop calling Zell a Democrat? Or start calling Russ Feingold a Republican in return?

Tailgating restrictions aren't restrictive, except in the way they restrict tailgating.

A report on grass-fed beef that makes Five & Ten sound like a conglomerate loving establishment, as opposed to the cow lovers at Farm 255.

Hal Rainey smacks the ABH upside the head with figures about the percentage of federal employees and what, exactly, they do, chiding the paper for taking the easy way out and acting as though the federal government is unequivocally bloated.

At the same time, we need to recognize that decisions about replacing retirees need to be made carefully. We need to recognize the pressing need to attract good people to come forward to replace the retiring experts.

In considering how to deal with the retirements, we need to avoid myths that portray federal "bureaucrats" as members of a bloated and inefficient bureaucracy doing useless things that burden Americans. Many federal employees deliver essential services, often quite efficiently and effectively. The administrative costs of the Social Security Administration, for example, equal about 75 cents of every $100 in benefits delivered.

If we fail to replace the retirees effectively, we will severely endanger what is arguably the best government of large size and scope in the history of the human race. We will in turn endanger the people that this government serves.

Movie Diary

1) The Producers (2005): What is the comparison that can be made between this movie and Deadwood? Both contain actors who are completely comfortable in their skins. I've never been a Nathan Lane fan, but this is his element. Big he can do. Broderick is weird, and it's sometimes too much of a Gene Wilder impression. Uma is cute, but not well accented. It's all a bit much, but it shows Chicago what's what in the department of being unapologetic for its cornball nature. Musicals should not aspire to realism. They should aspire to joy of the most artificial kind. And the singing and dancing numbers are marvelously done. Too long and the undertone about how the gays saved bad taste by turning it into camp is a leetle strange, but unexpectedly good.

2) The Fire Next Time: Big ol' TV miniseries thing that I was an extra in a long time ago. Bought and watched for that reason, and was sorely disappointed in that aspect. Movie itself is okay, all about the global warming and the drought/hurricanes it produces. Very very prescient. End consists of equal parts nonsense (why is this happening now other than the need to wrap thing up?), happy conclusion (family!), and ominousness (ooh, lookit that big orange sun).

In the running

Still too lazy to make a singles list. Albums are easier and make for a shorter one. So far we gots...

1. Snowglobe, Oxytocin (I think this comes out for real on Tuesday)
2. Sparks, Hello Young Lovers
3. MC Lars, The Graduate
4. Busta Rhymes, The Big Bang
5. The Gaskets, Loose Change
6. Camera Obscura, Let's Get Out of This Country
7. Bubba Sparxxx, The Charm
8. Juvenile, Reality Check
9. Beirut, Gulag Orkestar
10. Venice Is Sinking, Sorry About the Flowers

Things may yet change. There are months ahead. Ghostface and Danielson both bumped. Not happy-making enough. Maybe they'll find their way back on.

Two very smart dudes

Kaufman: The thing I'm learning more and more as I learn more and more about baseball is the role of luck. I just think everybody underestimates it.

Neyer: Well, I think you're absolutely right. This goes back a long time, but in 1989, Bill James did a computer simulation where essentially he assigned values to teams. He assigned qualities to teams and then ran a computer simulation to see how many times the best team actually won. And the best team actually didn't win all the time. Twenty or 25 percent of the time the best team in the division didn't win the division.

Essentially what it simulates is the role of luck. I've written about this a number of times over the years. Fans don't want to admit how much luck is involved. But it seems obvious to me when you look at how many games are settled by one run every season. And you know, or I know, I believe, there's a great deal of luck involved in close games.

And when you actually watch the games, watch day in and day out, and you see how many home runs clear the fence by a foot, or how many singles just get through the infield, it's clear that the luck factor is huge.

Whether it's five games or eight games or 12 games per season on average, I don't know. It's true that the same teams typically win every year, or at least the Red Sox and the Yankees and the Cardinals do. But it's true that luck plays a huge role, and it's true that the great majority of fans and writers and broadcasters underestimate the role of luck.

We don't want to think about it in general, not just in sports.

Yes, his name is Mason "the Line" Dixon

Rocky VI: The Calcium Deposit Years.

[Update: link fixed]

Hobbyhorse

This is interesting stuff coming out of the ECON department: namely, a new way for figuring rural property values, so dudes who grow veggies or chickens don't get bumped out by Atlanta people who want a bigger yard.

Hispanic votes growing. Kelly Girtz and Charlie Maddox want 'em.

Oconee County schools not full of poor kids. Perhaps that has something to do with their high grades. Soon to have even fewer as the last people in affordable housing get booted out. So they're going to lose some Title I funding, but there shouldn't be too much boo-hooing.

So the ABH first seems to be saying that poor parents in shitty circumstances suck for not being more involved in their kids' education. Then, there's a little step back, with some recognition of the fact that it might be hard. And then spinning a circle saying everyone should cooperate but not how.

The only benefit of VA service being so far away right now is that the old dudes get to swap stories a la Grampa Simpson on the way there in the carpool.

Oh lord. Ex-jail chief now claims he was fired because he's white. Things were ugly enough. Please let's not go there.

Lawyers who do like booze (and I'm guessing they're in the majority) replace lawyer who didn't in Watkinsville.

Strip clubs not "clamouring to locate in Jackson County."

Ooh. Whoever wrote that headline just gave a little more ammo to the voter ID people.

"When I was a little kid, I always liked to draw robots," added Forrest Newton, 11, a student at Oconee Middle School who is attended Cartooning Camp for the second summer.

ABH thinks Madison County Commission shouldn't have power to make disciplinary decisions. Yes, things might turn political, but at least you have to convince two other people to vote with you. One political agenda with all the power has significantly more chance to do harm than five political agenda(s) that might balance each other out.

Tony Eubanks responds to ABH.

If you're really trying to show respect for your family in committing suicide, maybe you'd pick a less conspicuous place to do it.

Novartis picks North Carolina, presumably because they made a better offer. Biotech stuff at Athens Tech to go forward anyway, but only with state moneys, not local ones.

Runoff election is August 8.

Controlled the what now from their bucket seats?

Loran sez, "Sometimes the Internet is a good thing."

Blabbedy-blah we hate negative campaigning. And things Shipp thinks should be addressed.

Ken Justice thinks more parapros would help raise test scores.

Hmm. Perhaps not going to Spirits any time soon.

Will catch up on the rest later.

Pork is the root of all good

I didn't even know exactly where lard came from. I just knew it was good. I'm actually more convinced now, not less.

Movie Diary?

We've jumped into the Masters of Horror series on DVD. These were the first two.

1) John Carpenter's "Cigarette Burns": Surprisingly creepy. Carpenter is a great filmmaker, and I'm a huge fan of his stuff, but he's not usually actually scary, more just silly scary with good action. But this has major atmosphere. Maybe it was just being a little drunk and very tired, but I found it to have a spookiness that sticks with you, even though it's in that style of self-conscious darkness that is often boring (e.g., 8MM). (Speaking of Mr. Carpenter, I find myself going over the list of his films, and aside from the really early ones, there are only a few I haven't seen: Someone's Watching Me, Starman, and Prince of Darkness. He needs to make more movies.)

2) H.P. Lovecraft's "Dreams in the Witch House": Fucking retarded and awesome. Makes me think I need to read some Lovecraft, what with the way science and stupid, stupid supernatural crap come together in explosions of goo. Stuart Gordon, pictured on the menu, is a funny looking dude. We're very clearly renting Dagon at some point now. I am convinced. Features eyes being crushed out in a fountain of blood and a rat man.

Bewilderment

That is the emotion that is conveyed by John Travolta's official IMDB photo.

No exclamation points for the rest of you

The U.S. quota has been used up. Anyway, here is your update:

Thank you for all your support and recommendations! It looks my little Cuzco was bitten by a snake this morning! They are now giving him antibiotics and anti-inflammatories he will have to be monitored for the next 24 hours to make sure he can still urinate. If he is not able to, they will then have to do surgery. I pray not, he has already been through so much already! He saved my other (bigger) dog (a beagle) from the snake!!! He is such a protector!!!!!!!!!!!!! And of course! from now own he will be an even bigger "King of the Rooster"!!!!!! And he will be babied!!!!!

Thanks again for all your help!!!

Gabrielle Union can really act in front of a fireball

I still prefer the uncensored version and I wish Kelis got to make an appearance, but it's still a creative video, one that works pretty well with the song, which expresses very genuine affection but in a somewhat hostile way. You could say "I Love My Bitch" is a reimagining of the battling sexes (who love each other) trope from 1940s movies. Probably not, though. It also reminds me I have to see that movie.

Publications

Forgot to mention a couple of record reviews: Natacha Atlas and Sufjan's Avalanche.

Movie Diary

The Weather Man: So, I clearly already want to give Nic Cage a million Oscars, but this increases that feeling. It's odd to love an actor like that, without it being related to a crush, and it's not that I don't have a crush on Mr. Cage, but it's a purer thing than that. He's just so damn interesting onscreen, even in crap roles, and this is not one of those. Comparisons to be made are probably 1) Todd Solondz and 2) About Schmidt, but with more of the warm feeling of the latter (though not about age). Maybe all restaurants with realistic fast-food moments fall into the same category. Comedy is done beautifully, with Cage looking mopily into the lens as voice-over pauses in just the right spots for maximum retardation. The end is a little abrupt, but mostly it is excellent. Some people appear to think it's depressing. Perhaps so, if you have not made your own peace with your life.

Comics

Make that singular. Too much other reading and nonsense lately to focus much on being a dork in this particular way. Finished Fables book 2 last night, though, due to one-week New Yorker break. As made clear, I like self-satisfied cleverness, but there are things about this book that are better than the first one. For one thing, there's much more of a sense of physical peril in this one, despite the amount of blood literally splashed around in the first. Also: dragon and characters from The Jungle Book, which is itself a strange piece of literature and a lot less cute than Disney made out. I guess I think Willingham is kind of getting at the nature of fables, how they're considerably closer to reality than we often think, at least in terms of how they reflect our concerns and anxieties. He's working on that, at any rate.

Oh staff listserv...

Date: July 19, 2006 9:42:00 AM EDT
To: UGASTAFF@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Help!!

My son just called me and my miniature Datshund is bleeding from his private area. My son is crying and my neighbor is just about in tears! I am not very happy with the vet that I have been using, and when I just called her she wants to give me the run around about it costing me a lot!!! And having to put him to sleep and all this without even seeing him!!! Can someone recommend a good vet for a dog that is more like my child!!!! Someone I can trust! That doesn't always have to give me the Worse possible answer!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And actually has a personality?!

Dude. You might take a while to come up with a suitable post, but when you do, you deliver.

Results

Statewide and local.

Martin will have a run off with Hecht, Taylor hit 51.7%, the coot vote and the crazy vote are almost the exact same size, Reed goes down, Gail Buckner and Darryl Hicks will have a run off for SOS (hell, I didn't know I was picking a winner), Denise Majette cream Carlotta Harrell. Black and Kemp will compete again, even though Black was by far in the lead. Cynthia McKinney also faces a run off, but she did squeak out a lead. C.R. beats Overend by about 800 votes (run off there too). Holy shit.

Hobbyhorse (weekend)

ACC elections peeps insist electronic voting is safe. Except for that one time they lost the backup presidential primary results.

PPA has moved on to talking to middle school students, clearly the most informed and articulate group able to provide data to anyone. Actually, the end is pretty interesting:

The group of middle school students said classes need to be more fun and interesting if teachers want to engage students - when pressed for more specific solutions, they said they wanted classes that include more hands-on lessons, more use of technology and computers, more practical information and less lecture time. They asked for lessons in practical skills such as managing money and developing a business and in trade skills that ranged past the traditional mechanics, technology and cosmetology to encompass clothing design, animation and other art professions.

They also talked about their experiences with racism in Athens, including sharing examples of being followed by store employees who seemed worried they'd steal and having clerks place change on the counter for them to pick up rather than hand it directly to them - as if the clerks didn't want to touch them, some of the boys said.

One girl said it even seemed some black teachers favored white students in classes, treating them as if they were better than black students, and some of the participants pointed to Athens-area private schools as an issue. People think private schools "aren't for black people," another girl said.

Developers finding ways to get around ass-sack limits wrt density.

Madison County Commission power struggles continue.

The commissioners have blamed Fortson for not getting information to an outside auditor in time to meet state deadlines for completing state-required financial audits and for a $500,000 budget miscalculation that complicated the commission's budget planning last year.

Nash told the commission that he had verbally reprimanded Fortson over the issues, but Fortson said he didn't consider the same conversation a reprimand.

Interpretation's a bitch.

Sales tax revenue about to be used to keep conventioneers from a little encounter with the outside world.

Smackfest 06... on wheels.

New columnist, copyeditor, firebrand.

He could also hate Girl Scouts.

Here is the part of this opening situation that is crucial: "The driver agrees to let officers search his car." Not the point of the article, which focuses on smaller PDs making money off traffic stops that often lead to drug seizures, but here again, "Officers often will ask the driver for consent to search the vehicle. Surprisingly, many drug traffickers - thinking police won't actually search - give consent, police say." Dude. Bill of Rights.

Day care costs more than in-state tuition for UGA. What Athens companies other than burton + BURTON offer some kind of childcare benefit?

Mr. Bullock might want to specify the last time this golden age of civility in politics existed.

Next grand jury may dig into Nuwaubian stuff more.

Referenda in the surrounding boonies.

Farm 255 hearts corn mush. And Slovenia's into Athfest.

Mr. Nelson thinks we might oughta be planning for the impact on the town's infrastructure if the vaccine plant (or something similar) does decide to locate here. He also points out that maybe some of those people will live in our millions of luxury condos.

ABH talks about Ben Harbin's desire to see an audit of why a commuter rail has failed to get off the ground. Answer: At least partially, it appears to be because of dudes like Ben Harbin.

Shipp thinks no way Reed wins. Why? He's too good at what he does. We're suspicious of competence.

John English digs some biodiesel.

Havoc not allowed.

Oh hell, this is where the pirate speak should've gone

On Tony Scott's meditations on movie criticism. But double pirate might equal no pirate at all, much like double negative (Note: it does not work that way). What is the response here? More, please. Succinctity is a virtue sometimes, but not when it doesn't let you get your point across. Tony, there must be more words there to say what you wanted to say. And the real answer lies in exactly that: when you have space to fill, you need to fill it with something. This leads to exercising of the brain and often thoughtfulness. And (as is pointed out) a desire to let people know exactly what they're getting into. Public service stemming from love does not always lead to praise. Sometimes it leads to warnings.

Trivial, me hearties?

Perhaps so, but we love trivial around here. So much that it's the topic of my still very much in the works dissertation, which may yet be written one day. Mr. Cox, despite that wife beating incident some years back, remains kind of a hero, a crotchety old bugger determined to do things his way (and his way involves both patience and amazing kindness, so it's a pretty good way, even if you can argue that the results haven't been there in the conventional sense). Records of this sort don't bear breaking in on other in-progress games whenever, say, a bad call is made. But they should. Bobby can enunciate a "motherfucker" for the TV cameras like almost no one else around. Perhaps someday Ozzie can indeed touch him. But perhaps not.

Singles

Jukebox 25 is up. It features me listening to and reviewing the wrong song at one point (damn you, Rogue Traders). Also, tons of J. Simpson love.

James Dean Bradfield - That's No Way To Tell A Lie
Does it bear mentioning that Americans do not make music like this, and one can therefore pinpoint the song as UK-based within the first five seconds? What exactly it is that leads to that identification is not as clear. It might be the mix of very rock guitar with handclaps, something we came to know well in the 1980s from the pond crossers at the time and then again when Franz Ferdinand cropped up, but whatever it is, it’s kinda nice.
[6]

I have entirely forgotten what I thought about Sarah Nixey. Make your own decisions. Hillaryhazelbrown@gmail.com will get you sweet sweet tunes.

Eats

1. White corn soup with chopped Georgia shrimp. With what is maybe vanilla very finely in it in tiny black flecks. And pockets of wonderful saltiness, at least partially in the tiny shrimp chunks, which yield up first salt, then sweet, as you chew 'em up slowly. Five & Ten is king of soups.

2. Mmm. Lamb's tongue salad. Also involving mache. Soft and beautiful.

3. Watermelon salad with French feta and serranos. All stacked-up-like and perhaps a bit difficult to charge into, but the combo works (Mr. Brown had recently been reading about how some people put feta and watermelon together, I expect because feta = salt). And damn that's lovely watermelon.

4. Salmon thing with lentils. Nice.

5. Pork chop with caramelized endive and a sorghum gastrite. This could maybe step back a touch on the flavor. The gastrite is a lil' overwhelming. The endive is bitter and marvelous.

6. Roasted Bell & Evans airline chicken breast with squash and other tasty thingies. Both this and the pork chop have this quality of fine white meats, which is that, as you slice and then chew, you can feel how finely packed the cells are. They're not bloated or full of water. They're compact. The animal has clearly moved around a bit in its life. Animals that don't can also be delicious (cf. veal), but animals that do have a texture we don't encounter too often.

7. A napoleon made with rum raisin ice cream, and what a dark, fantastic ice cream it is.

Niceness. I wussed on the offer of lamb testicles. Maybe next time.

Podcasty

The continuation of all that talk about zombies is up.

Hobbyhorse (Friday)

They're thinking about shutting down the Link because it doesn't get enough riders to justify continued operation. The thing is, it only runs for a couple of hours in the morning and a couple in the evening (around 5), meaning it's scheduled around people's working hours. Perhaps the reason there isn't bus service to the areas it reaches is the reason not many people ride it: not many people.

I should've been faster on this. Grand jury presents findings on the jail. Things are fucked up there, and a lot of it's not even Nuwaubian.

In his response, Edwards countered that in calling for an independent investigation, the grand jury "ignored" evidence that the sheriff's office was already investigating Nuwaubian activities at the jail.

"The grand jury's review of this issue coincided with a sheriff's office internal investigation of the same matter which, upon advice of counsel, had been ongoing for several months," Edwards said.

See, it's not that I don't believe Ira, but I kind of don't believe Ira. This might be why you have to be open about stuff before being forced to be. The full report says the jail is overcrowded, has a seriously outdated water system, has a tiny courtroom that poses a security threat, and is understaffed. Also that they should fix this. It's not that there's nothing to talk about wrt the Nuwaubians; more that there isn't time. Also also that the people who appeared in front of the grand jury often were not appropriately informed. And lots about the voting machines not being secure. (Here's Ira's response.)

Kids is failing tests, and also their parents won't even hear about it.

Even if you change your mind, you can get charged with arson.

1) Why does the 11-year-old have a display case with swords in his bedroom? 2) Does 10 inches really count as a sword?

Farmers v. the breathers in of chicken feces particulate.

Gubmint jobs in high demand.

This is how you end up with creepy bathrooms that have shower stalls in them around the corner from where you take your comp lit classes.

Odell Thurman is a damn idiot.

CAPPA's doing such a great job advocating for things the paper disagrees with.

Oglethorpe County also wants your pencils.

I haven't encountered the well-dressed panhandlers.

Read

1) George Packer on Peter Beinart. It starts out okay (they have their differences), but sandwiched in the middle is this:

The mood among liberals is not so different. Their hostility toward the Administration is so consuming that it leaves little room for imaginative thinking about any alternative foreign policy beyond the conviction that, to paraphrase Kerry, we should be opening firehouses in New Orleans and closing them in Baghdad. The real failure of the Democratic Party since September 11th is not appeasement or softness, as Karl Rove and, formerly, Peter Beinart have claimed, but intellectual shirking, a chronic urge to change the subject from the unpleasant realities of the age of jihad.

When did that age start? Do we have to agree that it did at all?

Although the Party’s foreign-policy élites, hibernating these years in think tanks and universities, are almost by consensus liberal internationalists, the Party’s activists now have little sympathy for the creed. The majority of Democratic delegates at the 2004 Convention believed that the political systems of other countries are none of our business. In the next few years, we’re going to hear a lot about the need to focus on problems at home, the limits of America’s reach, the humiliations suffered by Muslims at Western hands, and the arrogance of thinking that we can export our system around the world. The President has turned “freedom” into a dirty word, and it needs to be carefully rehabilitated before it can be made a rallying cry. A book that wants to inspire a revival of the old expansive liberalism has first of all to reckon with this inhospitable political landscape.

Some of us are always suspicious of "freedom" as a rallying cry, of intervention directed solely by one country (and he does delve into this somewhat). Is the solution to rehab its reputation? Or to do things correctly this time? The Hippocratic oath should apply somewhat to international politics too.

2) John Cassidy on "long tail" marketing. Which is fine until it ends with this:

There’s another blind spot in Anderson’s analysis. The long tail has meant that online commerce is being dominated by just a few businesses—mega-sites that can house those long tails. Even as Anderson speaks of plenitude and proliferation, you’ll notice that he keeps returning for his examples to a handful of sites—iTunes, eBay, Amazon, Netflix, MySpace. The successful long-tail aggregators can pretty much be counted on the fingers of one hand. Although the online economy has existed for only a decade, businesses like these—and you can add Google and Yahoo—have already established seemingly impregnable positions. If you’re a typical Internet user, when you need to find information you go to Google; when you’re looking for a book or a CD, you go to Amazon; when you want a new golf club, you go to eBay; when you want to download a song, you go to iTunes.

There’s an ugly name for industries that are controlled by three or four big firms: oligopolies. A few decades ago, these lumbering creatures were easy to spot. In the skies, cosseted airlines like American, United, and Delta charged passengers a small fortune for the privilege of flying; in broadcast television, ABC, CBS, and NBC dictated what viewers could watch. Today, thanks to globalization, deregulation, and technological progress, many of the twentieth-century industrial behemoths have fallen by the wayside. But don’t assume that giant, exploitative firms are a thing of the past.

In recent years, eBay has sharply increased its commission rates; Amazon has admitted charging its customers different prices for the same goods; and Apple Computer has stubbornly refused to make its iTunes service compatible with portable music players other than iPods. Has the New Economy really moved past the familiar “winner take all” dynamic? That depends on whether you’re looking at the long tail—or at who’s wagging it.

It's not quite so much about who got there first in this case. It's a bit more as though Beta had won over VHS, only with economics a consideration too. Google wasn't always the default search engine. They got there by doing things better than Yahoo, Altavista, and the like. The number of users, in this case, makes things work slightly more like an ideal market. It's easier to know who does things better online. And people do catch on. Didn't AOL start losing customers in droves? Why isn't Walmart as powerful online as Amazon? Doesn't MySpace bear some clear superiorities over Friendster?

Three-quarters until pumpkin

Something learned this weekend: Not only do they stop selling beer at retail establishments in the ACC at 11:15 p.m. every night (this was sort of known), but they also announce said deadline over the intercom at Kroger five minutes before it occurs. i.e., Move your asses, beer drinkers.

A message from google

I have got to stop cursing so goddamn much. Seriously, motherfuckers. It ends up placing me with the rest of these answers to a search. (Mildly, verbally NSFW. Much more so if you click on any of the links.)

Read

Tad Friend's New Yorker piece "Blue-Collar Gold" ain't online (there's a little bit of discussion about it here). But it is well written. Friend is pretty reliable for an L.A.-based take on the entertainment industry, and he doesn't mind getting a little dirty. The complaints in the linked discussion are somewhat valid and somewhat not, considering the focus of the article. I think Friend is very good at not having to say "some of this comedy is not particularly clever." And the thing that he captures nicely is the desire some people have to feel persecuted:

...the tour courts the South less as a geographic region than as a state of mind, one animated by a complex mixture of grievance and self-satisfaction that harks back to the Civil War. Though comedy traditionally emerges from oppressed minorities, Blue Collar appeals to a majority that nonetheless feels oppressed; it stirs up its fans belief that their levelheaded views are being ignored by the elite.

So it's not an unpolitical article, but it's also canny about why those people might feel oppressed (Jeff Foxworthy being told repeatedly to lose his accent). I guess the point is that if you really want a chip on your shoulder, as opposed to being handed one to put up there from birth, you can find one pretty easily.

Panty-watch

34) TRIKS MARATHONGIRL SKIRT BY SKIRTSPORTS, $60 -- www.skirtsports.com.
This low-waisted skirt has seamless panties sewn in, which Ceci said they both found ''very freeing while running,'' but ''too revealing'' to stretch in. Ceci added, ''This brand was our favorite due to the lightweight material and slimming side panels'' in a contrasting color. The panties, side panels and waistband are also made from breathable mesh. ["Running Skirts Blend Style with Speed" by YISHANE LEE, 06/15/06; pretty clearly a review of various running skirts]

35) To the Editor:

''Moving Violations,'' in which Deborah Tannen reported on the differences between responses of New York and Greek women to unwanted sexual advances, surprised me. The Greek women were reported to be more likely to say or do something, and more likely to get help from someone else in the situation.

On a rush hour No. 4 train, when I was 20, a hand went up my skirt and down my panties. I gasped. The nearest woman asked what was wrong. I said, ''That guy's got his hand inside me.'' Just then, the train pulled into 161st Street. The crowd threw the guy out the door, like a watermelon seed.

When people who've never been to New York City say it's cold or unfriendly, I think of that day on the train.

Trish Randall
Vancouver, Wash., July 1, 2006 [author, date, context all clearly identified in the piece; sometimes I think I should stop doing this feature; if I had, I never would have read this letter, for which the phrase TMI was invented]

Note: 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. The end of the year should result in a few more graphs.

[previously]

Last night...

We do not have the best idea ever of what exactly roasting someone is, but doesn't it kinda go like this?

Actually refreshing

The way he says "ayyyysssse." [via Mr. McGinty, as per a discussion on the forgotten Batman movie (Riddler, Two-Face) and then the relative merits of all of them]

Do not buy this

The word "major" is highly interpretible. For example, check out 1996, the year I saw them. Or 2000. Or 2004, which was smaller but wider. The AP is a lazy bitch.

This is what we call ironic as fuck

Or maybe more like "appropriate." I went to take advantage of early voting on Friday afternoon. Mr. Brown tried to get his enthusiasm up for this primary, but simply couldn't, and I hardly blame him. He is still relatively new to this whole exercising his suffrage rights thing, and he doesn't get nearly as excited about stickers as I do. So I realize, after leaving my office for class, that I've forgotten my wallet at home. Damn. Damn damn damn. Thankfully, Judge Murphy says I can vote with my student ID, which I happened to have separately (I keep it in a pocket of my bag for easy access when hopping on a city bus). I swear, deities above, I was kidding about voting with my library card, but clearly, it's a situation that could easily happen to anyone, not just those without the means to get a state ID.

Anyway, levers pulled (metaphorically), so no robocalls, please.

Follow-up

Life imitates Six Feet Under.

Or people do, at any rate.

Read

Read Ben McGrath's "Where Hip-Hop Lives" in the New Yorker. Because you can and also because:

1) It briefly addresses how addictive MySpace is.

2) The term "shit-bag" is both used and defined.

3) Some of us still get slightly titillated by dirty words in the magazine, e.g.,

In January, the suit claims, DMX referred to one security guard as an “eight-fifty-an-hour faggot,” and warned, “If you step outside, I’ll kick your fucking ass, you bitch.”

4) You will learn that Diddy has Shar-peis. Yes, plural.

5) Spike Lee is characterized as not scary.

6) It will make you wonder at a girl being named Ray Ray. Is this possible?

7) The New Yorker beats Hot 97.

Indeed

Podcast #10 is up, featuring zombies.

Well... discussion about zombies, to be strictly accurate.

Hobbyhorse

Pete gives Richard DeRose more space than Andy Rusk. A word more, at any rate. Whatevers. The thing is, a column like this almost makes me less likely to vote for Heidi because of its ignoring of the more liberal alternatives. It's very much "be afeared, o ye, for the Republicans approach."

Lots of letters, on dogs, Tofu Baby, the Bus, etc.

City Pages contains yet more information on your friendly solicitor general candidates.

UGA is also trying to reach out to Latinos. Clearly, we're improving by leaps and bounds every year:

Of the 4,836 students who paid a commitment deposit by June 1 for fall 2006, 7 percent are black, 21 percent are nonwhite or of unknown ethnicity and 4 percent speak English as a second language, according to a UGA report released last month.

Of 4,405 students who submitted commitment deposits in June 2005 for fall semester 2005, 7 percent were black, 21 percent were nonwhite and 5 percent spoke English as a second language, according to the report. Hispanic was not included as a category in the report.

Suck it. I'ma vote using my library card.

Edwards does have a burning desire to respond to some people. (More hostility.) And the ABH editorializes on how this fits right in Edwards's views on communication.

Beautifully appropriate name connected to cootish resignation.

Two of four ACC middle schools actually did make AYP this year. And we know Coile says they only missed it by one kid, so that's really not terrible.

I do understand the need for the legal system to provide some way for people to have their concerns addressed that aren't being so by the government, especially when those concerns are with the government, but suing so you can kick a bunch of poor Latinos out on the street and build another shopping center kind of makes you look like an asshole.

Does this mean the government pays their airfare to China?

Culpepper trying to qualify to run as an independent for state party. Neither Republican nor Democrat, but strong choo-choo advocate.

District 3 candidate may not live in district 3, provides no explanation for why she's registered to vote at a different address than either her house that's being renovated or the house she's staying in.

ABH endorses Chisholm for solicitor general. Why? Because they've decided to behave like neo-Puritans on the entire issue of students drinking underage. W

While recognizing a need to keep open lines of communication between the solicitor-general's office and the county's bars, clubs and restaurants, Chisholm indicated he would not be interested in any sort of partner-style relationship with those businesses in addressing underage drinking.

Athens Politics seems to think (buried within these comments) that it was a pretty nice endorsement, making sure to say the other two candidates are also good, but I'm pretty creeped out by the desire not even to talk to bars [as noted in comments, I obviously overstated things here, and that's wrong, but I still don't like it in general]. Winders, tell me you weren't in on this...

Shipp talks identity politics.

CAPPA update.

Rental rates in college communities tend to be on the high side. First, even if students tell you they want to live on campus, a lot of them don't. Second, there is this:

A study by the university several years ago also found no ready correlation between the availability of on-campus housing and commercial development in the county, which was increasing at "10 times" the rate of university enrollment, Jackson said.

"Something else is driving it," he said.

The answer is the money in speculation. Third, the poverty rate in Chapel Hill is significantly lower than it is here, making affordable housing less of a priority.

Where does northern Clarke County get their water? I presume we're not talking about sewer systems here.

OMG, orientation is so expensive. Except for the fact that the kids pay for it.

R&B also talks a bit about the new transit center.

Why they put those "only in theaters" endings on movie trailers

Because of the lady next to me at Hollywood Video today.

She picked up a DVD and asked the guy at checkout, "Is this that new pirate movie?" Now, it's possible she meant "a" rather than "that," in which case she may have been correct, but I'm guessing not.

Yeah. Shit totally comes out on DVD the week after opening in theaters.

If she'd said "Is this that new Soderbergh movie?" while picking up the last one, released simultaneously in both places, she would've received a "yes," but she was not quite the type.

Police Blotter

They were supposed to bring snacks to the party:

Theft: On July 8, an employee at Murphy's USA gas station on Jordan Road reported someone broke into a snack machine and stole $300 worth of cookies and Slim Jim's.

Related query: how many cookies and Slim Jims do you think that is?

Arrests: On July 8, deputy Scott Underwood was dispatched to Bishop Produce on Macon Highway, where a couple from Albany were causing a disturbance. One witness said "the man grabbed the woman's arm and hit her multiple times with his fist." At least three people from Cleveland and a man from Atlanta, were at the fruit stand during the incident. The woman running the stand said she had asked the couple not to leave trash at the stand, and that the woman complained about the peaches. She asked the couple to leave, but the woman began cursing. She also threw a bag of onions and kicked some jars of jelly. The couple began hitting each other and she called 911. As Underwood was arriving the couple was leaving, but the deputy signaled for them to stop. Underwood said he saw several broken jars and produce lying about. He identified the couple as Suleyman Uysur, 62, and Gulay Safak Uygur, 45, of Albany. Sgt. Shawn Burns took the woman to jail and along the way she began kicking the interior and screaming profanities. Burns stopped his car and when she wouldn't stop her kicking, he shocked her with his Taser gun. Afterward, she sat back in the car and said she would no longer be a problem. She was charged with obstruction, while both were charged with disorderly conduct and trespassing.

Tossing a bag of onions is kind of a skill. It's not like throwing something evenly weighted throughout.

Theft: On July 7, a 19-year-old clerk at Petland of Athens on Epps Bridge Road reported that a man entered the store and purchased $2.13 worth of cat food. He gave her a $50 bill, then another $50 along with $2.13 and asked for a $100 bill. He continued to ask for various amounts of change. When the man left, the clerk discovered she had been scammed of $350.

Damn our public schools!

Arrest: On July 7, deputy David Burchett responded to a complaint on Deerwood Court, Bogart, where a woman said someone had stolen a purple go-cart valued at $1,000. Burchett drove to a nearby neighborhood, where residents said they saw a man identified as Danny William Eaton, 18, of Burson Avenue, Bogart, driving the go-cart. Burchett located Eaton, who said he had bought the go-cart for $150. Burchett and Sgt. Shawn Burns looked around Eaton's home and found the go-cart, which had now been painted red. Eaton eventually admitted that he and another person took the go-cart and fabricated a bill of sale. Eaton was charged with theft, theft by retaining and trespassing.

Hint: Inconspicuousness is not purple. The rest here.

Busyness/Business/Goobernators

So last night was a busy night, filled with podcasting (look for one to be posted today, hopefully) and proofreading and so on. There was not really time for blogging. But I hope that some of you (the Georgians) caught a little bit of the gubernatorial debate that was being broadcast on PBS because it was far and away the most entertaining thing on, even without flashy camera angles or sound effects.

We have Mark, the "big guy," and we have Cathy, the "nice girl," both of whom have been admirably coached into roboticism. They talk slowly, use their hands, provide numerous examples over and over and over again of what they've achieved, and they say things like "As governor, I will...." The two crazy fellas on stage do not do this, and this is where the entertainment comes in. When you haven't received your media coaching, you do apparently at least attempt to answer the question, but you also possibly have not actually thought about it before, which leads to an "I'm thinking" look and sometimes to rambling. It most definitely leads to unexpected answers.

Your candidates providing entertainment are:

1. Mac McCarley: old fella (78), doesn't seem to have a website, running solely because of veterans' issues, was asked at least once if his hearing aid was turned up enough to hear the questions, answered "Where would I get this money? Who knows, but I believe I could cut some of the fat in Atlanta" to one question. Gotta love the admission of not having a plan. Also, when talking about veterans, referred to "the other big guy," possibly meaning Bush (?), not knowing anything about them.

2. Bill Bolton: youngish, but intriguingly nuts, has two websites (both of which he used his entire closing statement to plug and both of which, one can sort of tell from the layout, are indicative of craziness; bbgov.org [yes, that's the entire website] and billboltongovernor.org [semi-professional until you start clicking around]), believes in responsible abortion (when a woman has 10 kids, the government might want to step in and encourage abortion; had slightly panicked look when asked if he was advocating abortion as birth control) and more. Please, do take the time to look around his more expansive website, as it is a veritable treasure trove, especially the part where he answers your questions, including "Are you insane?" (answer: "My platform is different and it has been tested in front of an e-mail audience"). I am not capturing the beauty of the line breaks, which make it all read like poetry. Or how much he hates militant Christians. Or the fact that, live, he comes off considerably like Billy Bob Thornton playing a character. You may have to watch the next debate for those.

The thing is, both McCarley and Bolton captured my interest. I'm still planning on being sensible with my vote, as I disagree with both probably more than I agree with them. But, again, actual answering of the questions posed is kind of nice and novel. Taylor and Cox came off as blank, while these dudes did have both personality and positions (McCarley's solution to everything is in the form of a 1-percent sales tax) that distinguished them from one another. On the other hand, crazy...

Publication

Only Grub Notes this week, but it should be clarified that the problem in locating things lies with Watkinsville, not with me. It was clear originally and was then modified by another hand. The streets are there, but they bear no signs, making it impossible for one to know if one has arrived at one's destination.

Had it, lost it, found it

Just post (or maybe slightly during) We Jam Econo, I was jotting notes on a piece of paper wondering which great bands were not formed largely through adolescent friendship. That is, some or even most great bands didn't all know each other since the teen years, but at least a couple of crucial members did. Jared mentioned R.E.M., which was a good point, but how many others are there? Do family members count as friends? Is there something that gets forged in the crucible of being young together that enables you to keep going as a group and, therefore, have a shot at writing better music (i.e., the fact that you can largely stand being around each other)?

Noted

The only song to repeat in two-plus hours of listening to the "Hits" radio station on Charter TV?

"Stars Are Blind."

Not that I wasn't happy to hear it again.

Hobbyhorse

While I'm still on a proofing break...

Jefferson meets hipsters on familiar ground with beard requirement.

Peeps get lazy on jury duty in the summertime.

Kennedy not too white.

Shockah! Condos more profitable than affordable housing.

Most of the 30 or 40 families who live in the park thought the letters they received July 1 were eviction notices because they read, "This will serve as written 60 days notice that you must be out of your home on August 31, 2006."

Lord knows why they'd think that...

State appealing block on voter IDs, getting out the pander:

"We're pleased it's moving forward," Perdue spokesman Dan McLagan said of the appeal. "We can't for the life of us understand why the Democrats have been so hell-bent on making it easier for dead people, felons and illegal immigrants to cast ballots in their primary."

Dude. Dead people tend to vote Democratic in large numbers.

Moneys: Maddox is leading in the ACC mayoral race, which goes to show that sometimes cash ain't what it seems. And Hudgens is beating Rawson (though the latter got $$ from Jane Kidd). Hudgens is getting tons from insurance companies. You know, the little guy. Advance voting is, not surprisingly, slow.

ABH supports smaller government over quality service. We say to hell with the taxpayer here, at least when the taxpayer makes over a certain income.

Then again, here we have it: if you're poor, it's because you're stupid.

The poor widdle sheriff needs protecting from the big bad newspaper.

Viewing Diary

Deadwood, season 2: "But, Hillary," I hear you say, even though you're quite far away from me, "didn't you just finish season 1 like a week ago?" Yes. And I was out of town the whole weekend and unable to watch then. Your point being? I believe this shows my devotion to the show, my love pledged in a large forum, the fact that few TV programs have made me so completely happy while watching. There is art that is like breathing, and this is it.

Please, compare:

1. Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit, and tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief: your noble son is mad.

2. You have been tested, Al Swearengen. And your deepest purposes proved, there’s gold on the woman’s claim. You might as well have shouted it from the rooftops. That’s why I’m jumpin’ through hoops to get it back. Thorough as I fleeced the fool she married, I will fleece his widow, too. Using loyal associates like, Eustace Bailey Farnum as my go-betweens and dupes. To explain, why I want her bought out I’ll make a pretext of my fear of the Pinkertons. I’ll throw Farnum a token thief, why should I reward E.B., with some small fractional, participation in the claim? Or let him even lay by a little security and source of continuing income, for his declining years. What’s he ever done for me? Except let me, terrify him every goddamned day of his life ‘til the idea of bowel regularity, is a full on fuckin’ hope. (Pours water on the stain) Not to mention orderin’ a man killed in one of E.B.’s rooms. So every fuckin’ free moment of his life E.B. has to spend scrubbin’ the bloodstains off the goddamned floor! To keep from…havin’ to lower his rates. Goddamned that motherfucker!

This comparison has been made many places. That is because it is apt. The above quoted is perhaps less poetic than many individual, shorter lines, but the point is that not only is there an amazing play with language (grammar as well as vocabulary), but there is also the gift of evoking the thought process through it. One of Shakespeare's greatest achievements is this dipping into the stream of present thought as expressed through soliloquy. It's here too. As is a deep love for the weakness we all have in some form or other: drink, fucking, pride, ambition, intellectual limitations (but enough intellect to be conscious of them).