Lil' hobby

Or you could think about a sensible water policy in future. I'm not necessarily saying Barrow County won't also need an additional reservoir, but if they're expecting that kind of growth they could take steps to reduce the water it'll use ahead of time. I'm sure that even some kind of regulations on what grass can be planted in new developments would help. I'm not sure I like the ACC easing restrictions further, either. I mean, this is almost entirely for grass, right? Grass is kind of evil.

It seems like we've finally stopped blaming Atlanta for our air quality issues and started to focus on how to fix them.

This all seems very reasonable, and it's not full of the draconian cuts it could have been. I am willing to pay that extra quarter mill for what we receive in return.

This is a really good editorial. I suppose it could breathe more fire, but the distinction between cost and value is a good one to make, and any editorial at all addressing the parapro issue would be a step in the right direction.

Wait yourself a minute now. David Griffeth, a criminal analyst with the ACCPD, thinks that the uptick in burglaries over the past year or so is unrelated to the economy? Guy, I understand what you're saying, but a. The economic situation of Athens is not divorced from the rest of the country. Just because unemployment remains technically lower than the rest of the state does not mean it hasn't increased. The lack of property values to plunge is, likewise, not necessarily a real economic indicator. and b. Laptops weren't just invented or become widespread in the past two years. Nor have students become more likely to leave their doors open. This does not give me a whole ton of confidence in our local po-po, unless they can lay it all out in a real convincing fashion.

Police Blotter (she's lucky his dealer doesn't take credit cards edition)

Theft: On April 17, deputy Laura Teet met with an 18-year-old woman who said her fiancé, who uses cocaine, had taken her credit card without permission and used it to get $160. This had happened on previous occasions, and the woman said she now wants to end the relationship. Teet checked and found the man is already on probation in Athens.

I assume YM has some sort of quiz about "How to Tell He Isn't Good to You"?

Oconee.

Publication

Grub Notes visits Harry's Pig Shop. Say what you will, the barbecue itself is pretty good, the place is cute, and, indeed, they're trying to do more than make another burger place or another burrito place or whatever.

Lil' hobby

It doesn't really sound very encouraging for the possibility of keeping first-grade parapros in ACC. I would encourage y'all to write your school board rep. I already did. Those of you who are or have been teachers might have more impact.

This could probably go in my police blotter section, but I'm made far less comfortable by the fact that it already happened once and this clearly mentally ill person was still walking around with a gun.

I don't think UGA did such a bad job with the alert. If they do this kind of thing instantaneously, you're going to get just about as many if not more screw-ups than accurate alerts. This editorial pretty much comes down the same way. I don't think perfection is too likely.

Gray water to be allowed? Not that I care about flowers, particularly, but it's a step in the right direction.

Lil' hobby

Y'all, I appreciate the editorial, I do, and I think it gets at the heart of why this thing was so exceptionally awful, and this is a very well-written sentence:

It was enough to tear away the conceit - warranted as it may have been - that this place was different, that its lovely and loving quirkiness made it immune, somehow, from the macabre events that seemed to stalk only other places.

But can we agree to seal this horrible shit off in a bubble? Can we go back to pretending we are immune? Or immune-ish? The commenters below the article are already being jerks as of extremely early this morning, but they're right that it's a conceit. I'm okay with conceit! It keeps the crummy parts of the world at bay.

Holy shit. Really? This is not okay. And it's why defining something as "war" that isn't war isn't okay, because it leads to excessive justification of things that shouldn't be justified.

The Thing

Okay, so it's very weird to write about this, but it's also very weird not to. The last time I had this awful shaky feeling was mid-September, when David Foster Wallace killed himself, but you know what gives it to you worse? Three people getting shot to death about two blocks from your house, in the heart of your idyllic neighborhood. The thing is, by writing about it, you make it seem like it's about you, which it's not. It's about those poor, poor people who were there, and the children of the ones who aren't anymore, and it's about an idea facing a challenge. It's an eminently overcomable one, but still, you know that routine Patton Oswalt does about how Athens is not reality but a fairyland? It's a challenge to that. I think the fairyland still exists. It's pretty strong. And, if anything, I've never felt more invested in and in love with my neighborhood than on Saturday. Not that UGA-Alert didn't work this time. It worked okay. But we heard about the shootings minutes after they happened. We'd walked to a yard sale up on Yonah, where we bought a couch for our porch, and on the way run into a friend who was going to the Town and Gown thing. We were coming back home to call a buddy with a truck. And while waiting for him to arrive, I went outside to (semi-illegally) water the tiny rosemary and basil plants I'd just put in the ground a few days ago, whereupon our neighbors told us a woman had just come by and told them three people had been killed up that way, i.e., Prince. It didn't get any less weird with more information, but the Boulevard listserv was helpful, and so was all the new media stuff, like Facebook and Twitter, and listening to the police scaner online wasn't very helpful but it made you feel like you were doing something and distracted you from the helicopters overhead. I crashed my browser probably five times. Anyway. I don't know any of the three dead. I may possibly have met Ben Teague once. Jared's met him. But the weirdest thing is the disconnect. It feels so big but is only a blip on the news. Not enough people got killed? No one was named Caylee? Even within Athens, I'm guessing a few streets makes a big difference, let alone living a mile or so away. And, you know, I get compartmentalizing too. I do that. I guess I just want to say it is a big deal, and my heart hurts for Town & Gown and everyone even tangentially involved, and it was actually a perfect night to go out and hug people. No editorial even? I know it's not the only day on which people have gotten killed, but Athens exactly doesn't have frequent murders, and some statement of support or sadness or whatever might be worth making. This is mine.

Publication

I thought I was really going to hate this Blue October record, especially because I could hear the hand of Lillywhite even before reading he served as producer, but I kind of ended up at least respecting its craftsmanship. At least the songs have melodies. You probably shouldn't buy it, though.

Lil' hobby

I think this is maybe, in the end, a fair compromise. What happened was a tragedy, but he's still a juvenile. On the other hand, you can't have 24 beers and then drive home after napping for an hour. Really? 24?

These cuts don't seem too bad. Here's the question: why is Athens in a better situation than neighboring counties? Football? Less reliance on sales tax? Bigger cushion built in? That would be something useful to know.

It's hard to strike the right balance in conveying news like this. Things suck, and they might end up sucking less or they might end up sucking more. Keep on your toes, in other words.

Thank you, Lisa Caine. This is a really excellent guest editorial, and it's nice to see someone who is both a Christian and involved with charitable organizations make the case that charity is both a duty and should not be necessary.

A clearer editorial on drug testing in the OC schools. And an interesting letter on the same subject.

Jerry Haas does not understand representative government. Here's how it works. Those few he's talking about, they represent a bigger many than the many he's talking about.

Mike Light has some corrections to note.

Two Amazing Pieces of Mail

The thing about the eagle ring is that it should really be called an eagles ring, being that it has one eagle embracing another eagle. But I suppose they didn't want confusion with the band. The phone ad is just... a very strange tactic.

Publication

The thing about the song I reference in the first paragraph of this review of Gorilla Zoe's new record is that it's quite embarrassingly stuck in my head, and here's how the lyrics of the chorus go: "I poo poo, I poo poo, I poo poo, I shit on 'em." Awesome, right? Anyway. He has a record. It's not, surprisingly, all that bad in some parts.

Yeah, yeah. This is a good plan. Read the article, though, to discover Sonny Perdue is working for the mechanoids.

This makes me extremely nervous, although it's nice to know UGA added fewer new staff positions than average (kind of a lot fewer). Still, I like the point that some of those are grant writers, who presumably were hired because the university has less money, not more.

Read

There is something about Jana Prikryl's poem in the April 13 issue of the New Yorker that won't leave me alone. Don't ask me what it means. What I find, most often, is that poetry grabs me through rhythms and rhymes, through unique combinations of words, not through meaning. Even the poems I love most (Paradise Lost, The Faerie Queene, The Divine Comedy--yes, they're all narratives, but that is not the point here) get me through things like grammar or structure rather than through what they're saying. What they're saying could be said differently. How they're saying it is what's up. Anyway, Prikryl's poem is one of those sneaky sort of rhymed ones, although the rhymes drift away at the end.

Siblings and Half-Siblings

We sisters had the Vondörfer hair,
pink with ripples and electrodes in the right places,
wavy orange stuff environing our faces.

We were lucky with our looks—decked
in matter—like everyone on earth.
That they divorced us well before my birth

and raised me in a faraway land of unicorns
and you in the Bloc, eating cabbage
and drinking Becherovka, now seems tolerable baggage

for these waves, which brandish so prettily. Yet just how
the old guys did it seems not too wide of.
Dare you to ask how he took our brother aside

between one alp and another on that
Austrian postcard and punted:
Where would you like to grow up?

Father had muscle enough to ask such a thing
of his only son and son had the stiff upper
to say: Yes, run me away from my mother

and sister. Did his yellow hair luff
in a gust as he stood there
turning the question around in his mouth?

Did he stare and pocket his fists?
It was, even to a twelve-year-old, obvious.
He said so, granted going West,

possessing what he’d soon get more of, belief,
a style of ampleness—not without doubt
but without the files of teeth

that make food of us from inside.
Thanks, then, to his head, gut, nerve
the four of us boarded a Lufthansa flight

and this poem is written in English, more or less.
But those were different times.
To marry and remarry and reproduce

bent you to the hoax; exeunt with care
and scrapes. We, sister, have our degrees
of pleasure and our tantrums when they fail to please.

Also

Did y'all realize 24 got awesome again? This is like the highest standard deviation season ever in terms of quality from episode to episode.

Holy Hell: Pizza! The Movie

Okay, so I emailed DJ about this, but this is too good to wait on. Team Brown is caught up in Pizza! The Movie (not to be confused with Pizza: The Movie, which is entirely different but, judging from the clips shown in this movie, much, much worse), a documentary about pizza and, even more specifically, international pizza competitions, which don't really involve deliciousness of pizza so much as making pizza really fast or, oh god, freestyle. We are watching a dude freestyle the eff out of some pizza right now.

Um. And then there was a guy taking his pants off while also freestyling with some pizza. Really.

This conveys some of it (Tony Gemignani is a major character):



There is not only a U.S. Pizza Team but two pizza magazines (PMQ and Pizza Today, who hate each other) and a pizza cruise. A pizza cruise.

Jared just compared this documentary to porn in that it pretends initially to have a plot, but then there's 20 minutes of straight pizza twirling set to super cornball cheesy music.

Plus.. intrigue. Potential conspiracy. Dudes who say they're allergic to flour. Lots of shit talking ("If you want a real pizza magazine, try Pizza Today"). Big-haired ladies in Dallas who like tequila with their pizza. The word "pizza" will begin to lose all meaning, while the fact that one person after another declined to be interviewed for the movie keeps getting funnier.

This isn't in the movie, but it gives some idea of what is:



Update: OMG. Pizza Matrix!

Lil' hobby

Although I'm still a Knapp fan, I think this "Tough Choices for Tough Times" report is probably going in the wrong direction. As pointed out in the rest of the article, two-year does not automatically equal technical college. However, if you read the rest of the report, it's not as though it becomes more difficult to transfer. The panel is recommending the opposite. It's also recommending changing the methods of determining how teachers get raises (tied to impact on students) and offering a defined contribution plan through TRS to new teachers. Which, I'm not sure that the latter is going to be very attractive, considering the recent stock market. Mostly, the problem seems to be in the recommendations' lack of consideration of fiscal criteria. I suppose most of them don't require a ton of new investment, and they don't say "fully fund according to formula," but there's not really cost-cutting either.

Do we need moderate-income housing? My impression was that we had plenty of that and of high-income housing.

No thanks, World Cup. We don't want your millions of tourism dollars. We're doing just fine.

NORML gets two years probation, decides to try for more.

Police Blotter (green and slimy edition)

Damage: On April 9, deputy William Evans was dispatched to a home on Crystal Hills Drive, Athens, where a man said his Nissan Xterra is in the shop because someone put diesel fuel in the tank. He said he's not sure when or where it happened because his juvenile daughter drives it. It may have happened at Oconee County High School, where his daughter's a student, he said.

Just a thought here. Has he considered asking his juvenile daughter?

Theft: On April 13, deputy Laura Teet was dispatched to a home on Burson Avenue, Bogart, where a 73-year-old man said he was victimized by a man who had been coming around his house for three or four years asking for money. In the past, the victim said, he felt sorry for the man, so he gave him $10 or $20 a couple of times. At 11 p.m. April 11, the man came to the victim's door and said he wanted to introduce his girlfriend, who he said was from Florida. The victim invited them in, and the man said his girlfriend needed to use the bathroom. The woman was very large and almost didn't fit through the door, the victim said. Then, the man asked for a soda, so the victim sent him to the kitchen to get a Coke from the refrigerator. The two left shortly afterward, and the victim noticed his money clip containing $132 cash, including some $2 bills he'd kept for years, was missing from the kitchen table. The man drives a gray Chevy or old GMC pickup, the victim said. The victim asked Teet if he would get into trouble if he shot the man's tires out when he came around again. Teet told him he'd be charged with aggravated assault and that he should just call the sheriff's office instead.

Dudes. You have got to visit your grandparents more often. Craziness breeds in solitude.

Damage: On April 10, deputy Douglas Martin was dispatched to a home on U.S. Highway 29, Hull, where someone had damaged a woman's hot tub. The woman said she recently cleaned and refilled the tub, then noticed a light green, slimy substance on the inside of the tub that was difficult to wash off.

Did we learn nothing from You Can't Do That on Television?

Arrest: On April 11, deputy Michael Moore was dispatched to a home on Ivywood Drive, Hull, where a woman said she came home to find that her daughter had made a mess on the kitchen table while dyeing Easter eggs. The mother told her to clean up the mess, but she refused and an argument ensued. The daughter called the mother a derogatory name and they began fighting. Moore determined the daughter was the aggressor in the dispute and arrested [Mary Sue Judd], 41, for battery.

The punchline is the age.

Oconee. Madison.

And I'm sure they all use microscopes, which, lord knows they'd brain someone with if they were under the influence of the devil weed marijuana. This article makes it perfectly clear that Oconee would like to be able to drug test all of its students but the administrators are aware of the fact that that's been struck down as an invasion of privacy, so they're trying to find a way to cast as wide a net as possible without necessarily seeming to do so.

You would think, at a certain point, that people might think twice before doing Tony Cole a favor. That said, the idea that he might be hired from a steakhouse to make $60,000+ a year (not cooking steaks or serving them) makes me more angry at the dude who hired him. You know that story about the scorpion and the frog (or whatever)? One of them is a screw-up, and it's in the other one's nature.

Y'all couldn't have stopped at STOP?

Words

So, Dan Savage was very entertaining last night, and the crucial, missionary-action-necessitating thing we audience members all learned is his new meaning for "between the hedges," when he was asked to come up with one by someone. It is, of course, a girl-guy-girl threesome, although he did point out that it may be somewhat inaccurate these days, as we all shave down there and look like "leukemia patients." Still, it seems like really good slang that could catch on.

Movie Diary

1) Madagascar: Meh. Sassy animals. Too many references. Occasional amusement. Good work by Sasha Baron-Cohen at being a more amusing Robin Williams. I can't really get this comparison out of my head.

2) Synecdoche, New York: I'm still very much thinking about this. It requires it. It's not my favorite of Charlie Kaufman's films (that'll probably remain Adaptation), but it's the most complicated, and it definitely bears some turning over. What does it tell us? 1. We're all going to die. 2. Our lives have no meaning. When we die, we turn to earth, and that's it. 3. Does art outlast us? Oh, maybe. 4. Does it matter if it does? 5. Maybe. It certainly provides some shape to what is otherwise shapeless. 6. Everyone is the protagonist of his/her own story. 7. Art needs limits. Artists want to keep expanding them, but that can be dangerous and obsessive and undermine the function of art. 8. Is art a transcendence of the human plain or an escape from it? And aren't those kind of the same thing from different angles? 9. Is realism and truth the highest goal? See? Complicated. There were moments where I didn't like the movie very much and then moments where I liked it very much indeed. I think I ended up liking it quite a lot. Keep making movies, Charlie Kaufman, please.

Read

Finished plowing through the April 6 issue of the New Yorker this weekend. Sy Hersh's piece on Syria isn't nearly as scary as his articles usually are, perhaps because it's less clear about what's looming. Peace with Syria? Something even better? How will Sy handle this brave new world that has such diplomacy in it? He does get in one great Cheney quote, in which the ex-VP refers to England as "perfidious Albion" in response to that country's meeting with Syria and agreement to exchange intelligence. "Perfidious Albion." You have to miss a guy, a little, who speaks like a sci-fi/fantasy villain. Presumably he then wrapped himself in his cloak and dove back underground.

Tad Friend's article on Leo Nordine, foreclosed house seller in L.A., is excellent--Friend's stuff usually is--but not online. You get the feeling there's nothing else this guy could be doing well, and you don't hate him for what he does either, as he goes about it like a decent human being.

Anthony Gottlieb reviews a book about the Wittgenstein family (a bunch of wackos) and, in passing, imparts this wonderful bit of knowledge:

Perhaps it was because Paul, after he lost his right arm, had the most tangible affliction in the family that he found the focus to remake himself. His determination to succeed on the concert stage was, in part, inspired by the example of Josef Labor, a blind organist and composer who was a favorite of the Wittgenstein family. Géza Zichy, a one-armed Hungarian count whose pianism had enthralled Liszt, was another encouraging model. Zichy wrote a self-help book for amputees, which explained, among other things, how to eat a crayfish and remove one’s underpants with only one arm.

Simultaneously?!

Finally, Peter Schjeldahl's lovely two-page review of a show of five paintings on loan from the Norton Simon Museum to the Frick is behind the curtain. Sadly. It's rare that Schjeldahl doesn't have something valuable to impart, but his sense of wonder remains finely developed, and he certainly exercises it here, plus discusses the way in which collections driven by one personality instead of by committee end up, well... let me just type a bit of it:

The abrasive match of two formidably refined tastes affirms the superiority, for aesthetic enjoyment, of intact private collections over the committee-screened, canonical hit parades of standard museums, where even, or especially, the greatest works feel more officiously endorsed than actively valued. After all, amateur enthusiasm is our one trusty route to communion with the Old Masters, whose original social and spiritual functions have long since gone obscure, if not obsolete (though nothing can be wholly lost that lives in art). It helps a lot when the spectre of a particular person, who particularly loved particular things, stands at our shoulder, urging attention, inviting cordial argument, and marvelling at our shared good luck, to be so extraordinarily entertained.

Now, one can disagree with Schjeldahl here and point out that some of what he's reacting to is seeing something he's seen less often, but it's sure lovely in the writing, isn't it?

Lil' hobby

Yeah, this rate hike sort of sucks. I mean, I'm guessing my bill doesn't go up that much. That's the advantage of continuing to conserve. But it's still frustrating. How's that sewer plant building going, guys? A progress report would help us feel our money's going toward something. And the combination of raising rates and the department moving into a snazzy new building really looks crummy. As is often the case, Kelly Girtz's suggestion is worth a look.

Yes, they're good grants and pretty well doled out. I think one or two could probably be quibbled with (it's great that the Cedar Shoals choir gets to go to New York to perform, and I'm sure they raised some of the money it costs themselves, but I'm not sure how the grant alleviates poverty, exactly, whereas I can see the impact of the Young Dawgs program myself, with two students I have participating in it at my office under my supervision), but on the whole, they seem smartly directed and targeted.

Don Marchildon was at church early Tuesday morning? Or is that part of his argument as conveniently framed as the rest of its insanity?

Also, if you'd like to continue to be on the side of the English graduate students who are rightfully pissed at their pay being cut and their work being increased, you might not want to read this "Comment" in Flagpole, which seems, if you follow its argument, to boil the problem down to a bunch of white dudes being in charge. Which, you know, I'm not necessarily a fan of the white dude in theory or even in reality, in this case, but I also don't see how comparing the university system's denizens to a couple of fiscally irrational teenage girls is helping the case...

Ad

If y'all haven't seen this Jenny Craig ad with Valerie Bertinelli yet, please do watch. She keeps getting tanner, even in the course of the commercial. First when she takes off her robe, revealing her super-tan legs, and then even more so, to disturbing extent, when she walks behind the pillar and emerges a new and improved Valerie. Does signing up for Jenny Craig come with a free tanning bed these days? She looks like she's gone whole hog into ganguro. Let the tanorexia stop, please.

Lil' hobby

Whoo. The ABH's article on teabagging contains the following:

State Sen. Bill Cowsert, R-Athens, told the Oconee crowd he had a simple message for lawmakers in Washington: "Run our federal government and our federal budget like we do the state budget here in Georgia."

With tax revenue declining, the state General Assembly struggled to balance the budget this year, but they got it done, Cowsert said.

"Work within your means like we do in our state," he said, addressing Congress. "We cut $3 billion in spending. We did not raise taxes. We did not borrow a dime to do this, and we didn't cut any essential government services."

After his speech, Cowsert acknowledged lawmakers got more than $1 billion in help from a federal economic stimulus bill passed in the opening weeks of the Obama administration to combat the ongoing recession.

However, the stimulus money was dedicated mostly to education, healthcare and transportation, and state lawmakers made sure it wouldn't create further deficits, he said. "Had that not been there we would have just cut another billion dollars."

1. So Cowsert's in favor of cutting education, healthcare, and transportation?

2. For the love of god almighty, I am not a huge fan of the way the federal government spends its money, but that is greatly preferred to the way our fair state does the same thing (or, rather, doesn't do it).

3. This was extraordinarily disingenuous.

Clearly, no one cares about the lieutenant governor's race.

The point should be made that freshmen are experiencing a 25% hike in tuition because of the stupidity of the fixed-for-four plan, no?

The only reason the plan to drug-test students in Oconee County limits its scope to two groups of students is that labeling it a public safety issue is the only way to get it implemented. Aren't y'all freaked out by the invasion of privacy? At all?

I don't even want to get started on this.

Read

I'm really glad that you can read Atul Gawande's piece "Hellhole: Is solitary confinement torture?" because it's the kind of important article that could begin to change things. Not that the most punitive-minded among us spend their days reading the New Yorker and wondering what Gawande thinks, but it's at least more influential than some venues. And while you may not start out thinking of solitary confinement as torture (I thought it might not be so bad), you might well be convinced by the end, where this powerful paragraph lies:

This past year, both the Republican and the Democratic Presidential candidates came out firmly for banning torture and closing the facility in Guantánamo Bay, where hundreds of prisoners have been held in years-long isolation. Neither Barack Obama nor John McCain, however, addressed the question of whether prolonged solitary confinement is torture. For a Presidential candidate, no less than for the prison commissioner, this would have been political suicide. The simple truth is that public sentiment in America is the reason that solitary confinement has exploded in this country, even as other Western nations have taken steps to reduce it. This is the dark side of American exceptionalism. With little concern or demurral, we have consigned tens of thousands of our own citizens to conditions that horrified our highest court a century ago. Our willingness to discard these standards for American prisoners made it easy to discard the Geneva Conventions prohibiting similar treatment of foreign prisoners of war, to the detriment of America’s moral stature in the world. In much the same way that a previous generation of Americans countenanced legalized segregation, ours has countenanced legalized torture. And there is no clearer manifestation of this than our routine use of solitary confinement—on our own people, in our own communities, in a supermax prison, for example, that is a thirty-minute drive from my door.

That is nicely laid out and quite condemning, and it suggests that change may not come, but I'm sure Gawande is an optimist to some extent. Awareness is the first step?

I didn't think Anthony Lane's review of a collection of Samuel Beckett's letters would be all that interesting (not a big Beckett fan--he's too obscure, too boring, too removed, too scatological, the last of which Lane points out), but Lane goes on to make a case that the letters are interesting because they reveal the person no less than the work, and the person and the work are really hooked into one another:

That is good to know [he remarks, in response to a footnote about Turkish baths that the editors of the letters provide], but, still, where does “my person” end and the business of writing begin? Should we adhere to a Cartesian division of the two, or is it not more honest to admit that the making of literature, at the nib’s end, is not so much a noble calling as one of the “dirty habits” to which an author is compelled, no more or less mysterious than the call of the bathroom or the temptations of the fridge?

It's an unfashionable take, especially the extent to which it's interested in the process of writing, but it's certainly an interesting way to write about the collection, and Lane's lack of romanticization when it comes to the creation of literature has to be born out of his own experiences writing on deadline, doesn't it?

More students, less money. I should be taking bets on what'll happen this semester along the lines of people falling out of a bus.

Fixed for four plan is gone. I'm not saying Georgia wouldn't continue to raise tuition sans budget cuts--I'm sure they would--but Sonny Perdue has got to look at this realistically. If he wants to help struggling families pay tuition every year, how about an income cap on the HOPE scholarship or some state-funded need-based aid? There are a lot of other solutions out there.

This doesn't make me nervous at all. Nor this, in which Bobby Tribble encourages people to bring their guns to steakhouses.

I guess I've overlooked these lockdown searches when they've happened before, but I'm really not a fan of this approach. Or this one!

Drug abuse has not been a particular problem in the school district, but officials want to take pre-emptive action to keep students safe, said Mark Channell, the system's executive director of student services.

Do we learn nothing? Pre-emptive action based on nothing is not a good idea, jerkwads.

You know what may not help Nancy Denson's run for mayor? This. But, um, Bill Cowsert doesn't talk to a very wide range of people:

"We're looking at having to either eliminate services or reduce services," Mayor Heidi Davison said.

Many taxpayers are fine with that, said state Sen. Bill Cowsert, R-Athens. They will accept cuts to services like police, parks and schools if it means their bills are lower, he said.

"I think you'll hear, 'I don't want all the services you're giving me,' " he said. " 'I want to pay less taxes.'"

Yes, I suppose today's tea parties could be the beginning of something even bigger and stupider. Thanks for raising that specter, Jim.

Anisa Sullivan Jimenez does provide some new information on the lost parapro positions, but even if it's not the loss of that many people's jobs, it's less the individuals we should be worrying about and more the elimination of the positions. I'm certainly compassionate to the individuals. Heck, I may know some of them. But the bigger problem here is that it'll be difficult for those remaining and for the kids in those classes.

Police Blotter (tagging Ashley Furniture really sounds like a euphemism edition)

Damage: On April 5, deputy Timothy Nix was dispatched to Ashley Furniture off Epps Bridge Parkway, where someone spray-painted the word "P.Wood13" on the side of the building.

Your town can't be all that ghetto if it's Ashley Furniture getting tagged. What? Walmart too scary? Haverty's too far?

Damage: On April 6, a resident of Piedmont Park Road, Hull, reported that someone used spray paint to write obscene words on his pickup. The letters "B.U." were painted on the windshield.

Boston University? Blow You? Buck Up?

Complaint: On April 6, Lt. Jeff Vaughn was dispatched to a home in Danielsville, where a 31-year-old woman said her 16-year-old son had used her debit card without permission to go to an Internet site and purchase some pornographic movies and male enhancement pills for $250.

It's like chocolate and peanut butter.

Oconee. Madison.

Publications

Mark Mallman best of review finally runs. I am a big fan of this record.

And Grub Notes writes up the cuppings at 1000 Faces Coffee.

Lookit

I've been a pain in the ass wrt big government for a long time.

Lil' hobby

Yes, thank you, McGeezy. Not that I don't love the older residents of Athens, but Obama it up already, right?

This is sure to raise sympathy for professors... My guess is that these are average numbers, but yes, still.

Oooh. You guys better be careful. Except... you're already being careful. Yay! And don't call it a game of darts, but, um, it's kind of like a game of darts. I think I agree with Jim generally here, but it's hard to tell. Also, the focus on not spending any kind of potentially limited in time government money on projects that require ongoing capital outlay leads to things like that ACC Water building downtown everyone got all pissed about. It leads to the multimodal transit center but not to the expansion of bus service. To expensive equipment and buildings without the staff to operate them. I'm not saying we don't need new roads and bridges. Stuff like that is necessary. But at some point there has to be an ability to expand other things that need expanding.

Also, I think Alice Kinman might be a nice choice as well, if she were interested.

Listen

I totally recommend that you go check out this 5.5-minute epic from Keri Hilson, Ne-Yo, and Kanye West. It's kind of one of my favoriter songs of the year, and I'm amazed that when people bring up Kanye's rhyme of "OMG" with "woe is me," they're doing so in a negative sense. I haven't seen this South Park episode yet, but y'all, does Kanye really need taking down a peg more than any other rapper/producer/fashion impresario/blogger out there? This kind of lack of discrimination in targets is why I tend to veer away from South Park more than toward it. Not that there should be much kindness in comedy, but a bow and arrow is funnier than a machine gun.

Lil' hobby

Worth reading this article on silly tax day protests just for Michael Winship's historical interjections. Also, it's harder to make an acronym out of whiskey. More letters.

We've now got two people running for mayor. Neither of whom is particularly exciting. We're early yet.

G Day

You don't realize until you google it, if you live in this town, that "G Day" will produce a lot more Australian results than Georgia ones. Anyway. It was fun.

This dude not only strutted the sidelines of the lettermen's flag football game, smoking (or possibly just chewing on) a big cigar, he also played in it. I couldn't tell if he still had the cigar while in the game.


Here is he is with Uga VII, who doesn't appear to have gotten any less sluggish.

#88 is a mystery. He's not the dude who got injured in the game though.

Pre-game stretches by current players.

More photos here, including blurry ones of victorious flag football coach Jack Davis being carried off the field on his team's shoulders.

Publication

Um, a review (partially unfavorable, partially okay with it) of Bow Wow's new record.

Lil' hobby

Look, I love Leah Ward Sears. I think she's hot and inspirational. But saying the biggest problem in our culture comes from the disintegration of the institution of marriage is kind of nuts. And that's not because she's anti-gay marriage. She doesn't seem to be. I even agree with a lot of the points she makes, but comparing the need to strengthen marriage as an institution to the Civil Rights Movement is... odd. She could have talked about the widening gap between rich and poor or the lack of responsibility in American culture, both equally relevant factors, even if you're focusing on African American issues (which I presume the lecture is sort of supposed to do). It'd be rad if she ended up on the Supreme Court, though.

Twenty-five teachers is a lot. And I'm sure those parapros are really, really necessary. There has got to be a better way to handle this, and Greg McClure proposes some options.

I'd like to see more on why this is necessary for a school system that doesn't really seem to have problems. The end of the article talks about how the state seems to be implementing some stupid changes in the future, but why? And what else does Jefferson want to do?

I really like the quote that ends this G-Day article.

Maybe they're trying to save money. I mean, really, dudes:

Admittedly, it appears the NORML chapter didn't have what the university says is a required approval to use the school's trademarks. But, again, no one could confuse the NORML logo with any official UGA trademark. And unless the university is willing to engage in a vigorous legal effort to assert its claim that NORML has infringed on a UGA trademark, it is unfortunately easy to conclude the school is doing nothing more than harassing the group for the sake of harassing it.

You don't think a drawing of a bulldog, no matter how crappy it is, sitting in front of the Arch smoking a j, is going to piss off the university and dilute its trademark? And you don't think the university has better things to do with its time than deal with annoyances like the student chapter of NORML? What it's doing is administering a mild slap, a warning to any other student groups who might be thinking about doing the same. It's not pursuing the matter in court because court's not really necessary. They're not dealing with adults here. They're dealing with a group of weed-smoking college students (and probably a few libertarians, who are difficult enough). If they were pursuing it in real court, I'm sure we'd be getting editorials about wasting taxpayer money. And who has been bending Jim's ear about this anyway?

?

If you, too, have been wondering what the eff this is, there's a bit of explanation here. But not enough. Jeopardy! doesn't have a "why" possibility, but that's my question. I mean, I kind of want to hang out with Alex Trebek, but the overlap between Jeopardy! fans and people who want to go to the Galapagos Islands is pretty small, I would think, unlike, say, people who want to go to Paris or even people who want to take a nerded up, history-packed trip around Washington, D.C. Maybe it's spearheaded by Trebek. He does look rather comfortable in his safari-esque outfit in the ad.

Publication

This might change after I get a listen to Andy Gonzalez's brand-new record, but right now it's possible The-Dream's Love vs. Money (reviewed here) is my favorite album of 09.

Lil' hobby

An allowable dissent to make a point. It's a weak-ass ordinance, but it is something.

Yes, I suppose this is okay. Not that you should need to be using a sprinkler on your lawn or, probably, pressure-washing anything, and at least the tiered ACC Water bills remain in place to encourage conservation.

I dunno. I'm kind of curious to see what Barrow County comes up with for these Bible classes. In theory, they could be intellectually rigorous and useful. I'm sure they won't be in practice, but it's something to follow.

Read

I'm kind of surprised David Owen's "Comment" on "Economy vs. Environment" in the March 30 issue of the New Yorker didn't attract more attention. It's a somewhat radical piece in that he's bucking all this stuff about green jobs and electric cars saving our country. 1. He doesn't think they will. And 2. He doesn't really think they should. This analogy helps:

The world’s financial and energy crises are connected, and they are similar because credit and fossil fuels are forms of leverage: oil, coal, and natural gas are multipliers of labor in much the same way that credit is a multiplier of wealth. Human history is the history of our ascent up what the naturalist Loren Eiseley called “the heat ladder”: coal bested firewood as an amplifier of productivity, and oil and natural gas bested coal. Fossil fuels have enabled us to leverage the strength of our bodies, and we are borrowing against the world’s dwindling store of inexpensive energy in the same way that we borrowed against the illusory equity in our homes. Moreover, American dependence on fossil fuels isn’t going to end any time soon: solar panels and wind turbines provided only about a half per cent of total U.S. energy consumption in 2007, and they don’t work when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing. Replacing oil is going to require more than determination.

That last bit ignores the possibility of energy storage, which is one of the few annoyances in the piece. So, why not electric cars?

Electric cars are not the panacea they are sometimes claimed to be, not only because the electricity they run on has to be generated somewhere but also because making driving less expensive does nothing to discourage people from sprawling across the face of the planet, promoting forms of development that are inherently and catastrophically wasteful.

He's looking at all of this like an economist, and while there are limits on how much people will drive if you make driving cheap, he's got a point, throughout.

Lil' hobby

While I think Pete McCommons is right, I don't think his proposal is very likely. I'm also not sure his comparison to janitors is quite right. Not that most teaching assistants and graduate students don't work hard or do necessary work, but they're also in better shape than people who have to empty trashcans for a living and less likely to have to feed a bunch of mouths.

On the other hand, maybe the ABH should be addressing this instead of focusing on the squirrel shooting ordinance in Commerce?

Ben does some good in-depth work on Moss Side's rejection.

He certainly sounds like he's running.

Police Blotter (half a pack of Lifesavers Gummies and a cold Hot Pocket, please edition)

Damage: On March 29, deputy Jeremy Wasdin was dispatched about 8 a.m. to a house on Arrowhead Road, Watkinsville, where a 74-year-old Gainesville woman showed him a substance that had been sprayed on the hood, trunk and roof of her car. Neither she nor the residents of the house had any idea who sprayed the car or why. Wasdin noted the substance was white and pink and appeared to be edible, although it did not smell, and was easily removed with water.

Who tested the theory about it being edible? And how did that not identify it? And what did it mean? You a icing head, old lady!

Arrests: On March 27, deputy David Kidd was dispatched to Ingles in Hull, after two teenagers were seen stealing a package of LifeSavers Gummies. One suspect already had left the store, but Kidd approached one teen who was holding an open box of Hot Pockets. The teen gave his age as 16 and a name, but at the jail it was determined he had lied. [Telly], 17, of Norwood Circle, Athens, was charged with shoplifting and giving a false name. [Casper], 17, of the same address, was also arrested for shoplifting after he was caught outside the store by a Georgia State Patrol trooper.

Frozen Hot Pockets are the new hip snack.

Damage: On March 28, deputy Michael Moore met with a resident of Glenn Carrie Road, Hull, where the man said his ex-wife, her father, her brother and a friend had come to pick up some of the ex-wife's property at his home. They muddied the walls in the house, and one of them defecated on the floor of a shed. The suspects are from Atkinson County in South Georgia.

...and don't know no better.

Arrests: On March 26, deputy Gary Floyd was dispatched about 9:20 p.m. to a home on Gosnell Hutto Road, Danielsville, where he saw [Walter Stratford], 40, sitting on the ground and bleeding from his nose and face. A report read that [Patrick Verona], 17, explained he had "whooped his uncle's rear end" while they were sitting around a campfire after the uncle began talking critically about two women. When the uncle wouldn't stop, [Verona] said he jumped him. [Verona] was charged with battery and underage possession of alcohol, and [Stratford] was charged with simple battery.

Oconee. Madison.

Publication

I really, really enjoyed interviewing this guy Kevin Yates and writing this article on his vegetable garden consulting business, which is really boiling it down to an overreduced level. The article is about bigger things, too.

Lil' hobby

It's about time we got some dam work done (chortle). Seriously, though. This seems an intelligent direction for stimulus dollars to go.

I'm not really counting on the Regents, but it would be nice if they could soften this.

Fine skepticism here. If there is anything you can rely on the ABH for, it's a knowledge of open-records acts.

1. If you use the phrase "spaceship earth" in your opening, lots of people will ignore you. 2. Yes, the corn utensils etc. are kind of awesome. 3. They taste a little odd, though. Really.

Movie Diary

Let the Right One In: I really don't know how I feel about this movie. It's certainly beautiful, with all its bright lighting and snow and strange people with nearly white hair (plus, the Swedes apparently tuck their sweaters into their pants, which I spent way too much time focusing on), but what else is it? It's creepy to me that it's been treated as a love story by a lot of people. Not that it's not one, but it's more like a Charles Starkweather/Caril Ann Fugate love story than anything more standard, and most of y'all probably don't find serial killers endearing in their face sucking. The Onion AV Club has an interesting comparison of book to film that I read after seeing the movie--and don't read it unless you have, if you plan to, as there are spoilers all the way up and down--that brings to light some of the creepier undertones the movie kind of evokes but doesn't pursue, such as Oskar's scrapbook of murders (it's fine for me to be interested in gruesome murders--I'm thirty-one and otherwise emotionally healthy--but twelve- or even thirteen-year-olds being so is possibly a sign of something out of whack). Okay, so there's that, and there's the fact that parts of it are awfully slow and people have conversations that you can't figure out the import of (they don't seem to have any, if I'm referring to the group of grownups that appears from time to time). Still, it has great sections--the cat attack, the climax at the pool--and strong images. It's, you know, interesting.

FO

My first hat knit in the round. I know. Socks aren't usually supposed to come first, but they actually gave me the confidence to do this. Pattern is here, but I changed it slightly, not liking the stockinette edge that turns under, and substituting an inch of 1 x 1 rib because I know I like a snug hat, and it turns out so does its recipient.

Productivity

I'm ALWAYS on time. I would rather be called racist than compulsively late. I have a friend who is a very prominent producer/screenwriter and he is always late. I am convinced that it's a power thing with him. Another friend of mine is a multi-millionaire entrepreneur/businessman and he is also consistently late and flat out admits it's a power thing. I'm not really sure I understand the dynamic but I guess there is some power in having an entire room of people waiting on you. But yes, there is such a thing as West coast time. And the New York minute. I think Cyndi Lauper said it best when she said "Time after Time". Wait, what were we talking about... ?

Huh. I love Rob Corddry.

Read

Ha ha. As though the New Yorker would let you read John McPhee's thoughts on lacrosse without paying for the privilege. Well, they won't. It's such a perfect McPhee piece, though, one that's far more typical than his last one, which confessed how much he needs his fact-checkers. It starts out not all that interesting, especially if you don't know beans about lacrosse, but through an accumulation of detail becomes ever more so, even though the detail considered on its own is not particularly intriguing but, rather, kind of a list of stuff. It's like a magic trick, watching it happen, and by the time he gets to describing all the variants of lacrosse sticks (about which players are very specific in their likes and dislikes), he is just on:

Ask a modern player what he has in his hands, and, typically, he might say, "Cyber head on a black Swizzle Scandium." Next player: "A Penitrator head on a Gait Anarchy shaft." Next: "An Evolution 2.0 on a Kryptolyte shaft." Shafts are made of patented aluminum alloys, of graphite, of vanadium, of zirconium, of weapons-grade titanium. The teardrop heads are plastic and are bilaterally symmetrical (forget the shepherd's crook). The heads fit snugly and are secured with a screw.

And it doesn't leave off from there for the whole last page, by which point you've finally been hooked and it ends. He does compare the arcana of sticks to the difficulty of a newbie walking into a fly-fishing store, confronted with lures as far as the eye can see, and it makes one see McPhee the fisherman as McPhee the writer, teasing us with just enough glamour or information or whatever until we're on the hook.

Viewing Diary

1) Friday Night Lights, season 2: This is the point where I realize what's been going on with Hulu lately what with the networks only letting them stream five rotating episodes or some ridiculous nonsense like that. NBC, if you do not want me to watch your show and force me to watch commercials, we can come to an agreement on that, and that will mean I will just watch it on Netflix once it's available there, and what kind of benefit do you get from that, huh, losers? Anyway, strike-shortened season 2 is kind of abrupt in its ending, and I assume season 3 picks up where 2 leaves off, considering we ain't gone to state yet, but it's almost as good as season 1 and is generally a fine example of what we call "Rory and Lorelai are fighting." That is, the first, oh, five episodes at least just put the characters through hell, and they're all pissed at each other for various reasons, and it just is kind of awful to watch, as a viewer (like many, I presume) who watches the show partially to bask in the glow of these wonderful relationships. It's what you're supposed to do, though, on TV, unless you never want to grow. And it's a sad fact of reality that this kind of stuff happens, and relationships are never quite the same after. Is there a little much in the way of ramping up the drama? Yes, I'm sure there is, and the football fades into the background, but it's still a wonderful show.

2) The IT Crowd, series 1: Two really good TV shows in one weekend? Yes. I heart Graham Linehan, a lot, and this newest show of his is not an exception. He's got really beautiful balance as a comedy writer, and while he loves verbal humor, he is not at all above a well-constructed prat fall, of which there is probably at least one in every episode. The only problem here is the damn six-episode thing. Oh well. Probably maintains quality.

Meme

Jared tagged me months ago on Facebook in this 20 Albums That Changed Your Life thing, which I threw myself into working on but never quite completed. Twenty is a big number. Anyway, here goes, in no particular order:

1. This Year's Model, Elvis Costello. With most of these, I can remember exactly where I was when I heard them, and in this one, I was on the stage of our high school auditorium, probably rehearsing something, and my friend Brad popped this CD into a boombox that was handy, to show me what it was all about. He'd previously lent me The Juliet Letters, which I was wearing out on my Walkman, but then informed me that it wasn't exactly characteristic of the typical Costello sound. This is probably still my favorite Costello album, due to its energy and the brevity of the songs.

2. Tom Glazer's Treasury of Songs for Children. I'm not 100% sure about the album, but the guy is unmistakable. I grew up on all his records, including ones that recorded Colonial songs of the Americas, such as "Tobacco's But an Indian Weed" and a lot of songs about General Cornwallis, and because I was fairly isolated from pop culture as a child, they shaped my musical tastes. I remain a sucker for well-executed folk.

3. Exile in Guyville, Liz Phair. There are several albums on here that I desperately had to have, to the point of going to multiple record stores in a day to locate a copy, and this is one of them. Brad sent me the song "Fuck and Run" on a mixtape while I was spending the summer at my grandparents' in Pittsburgh, and it knocked me over. This was, of course, when I wanted to do music rather than write about it, before I realized, perhaps, where my talents lay, but it's still kind of an inspiring outpouring of an album.

4. I'm Your Man, Leonard Cohen. I heard this at my mom's friend Alix Kenagy's house, just prior to the 1993 Oscars, maybe the first time I'd ever watched the Oscars in their entirety and certainly the first time I'd ever heard Leonard Cohen, whom I pictured, from his voice, as a tall African American. "Take This Waltz," in particular, made me love it, and I had a brief Garcia-Lorca phase as a result, but mostly plunged into the works of Mr. Cohen, which I still love.

5. Supreme Clientele, Ghostface Killah: One of the first rap albums I ever owned--yes, I was late to this scene as to many others--and still possibly my favorite. In some ways, it spoiled me for a lot of other stuff, including Ghostface's other albums, which can't quite touch it in terms of unity and clarity and musical and lyrical nimbleness.

6. I Hate Parties, Big Fish Ensemble. They sound from their name like a jam band, but they're not. They're one of my first forays into local music, although I can't remember why I bought the CD. It may have had something to do with the violinist working at the Bond Comunity Credit Union, where my family banked, in Little Five Points. Anyway, they put on perhaps the first concert I ever went to by myself, not with my mom, and there was Twister on the floor, at the Variety Playhouse.

7. Fragments of a Rainy Season, John Cale. I've given this album to a lot of people, and if I remember, it was my way into the post-VU work of that band's members, although it may have been my way into that band. I can't remember. I do remember that I used to be able to pick out a couple of songs from it on the piano and that it makes up for a lot of the lame-ass shit John Cale has done with some of these songs elsewhere.

8. The Modern Lovers, The Modern Lovers. This should be on everyone's list. The first time I ever came to Athens was to see Jonathan Richman at the 40 Watt, which must have been an all-ages show. We ate at Yudy's and hung out in front of the entrance to the club to say hi, which we did. Jonathan Richman still inspires me more than almost anyone, with his attitude that is both fuck-it and kind.

9. Fetch the Compass Kids, Danielson Famile. Music can be like this? Yes, it can. Thank you, New York Times, of all the sources in the world, for introducing me to Dan Smith's work, which is stunning. This isn't my favorite album of his (it's up there), but it's the first, and their music is what led me into writing, due to Chris Hassiotis suggesting I interview Smith when he swung through town. Thanks, Chris.

10. Waiting for the Sun, The Doors. From my teenage rebellion stage and also my frantic LP-buying stage and also my "I'm depressed and intense" phase. The latter didn't really take. I can still recognize most Doors songs from the opening notes, though.

11. Oklahoma! One of many, many musical soundtracks to which I grew up listening. Oklahoma's still one of the ones I know the best. This was my entertainment as a child, with the plastic Fisher Price record player, was to put on a musical and make up ballets and dances to it with my sister. We'd often create a narrative that didn't have much to do with the actual play, because we often hadn't seen the movie or the play itself. I was also in a junior high production of this one, in the chorus.

12. Rubber Soul, The Beatles. Probably not my favorite Beatles album now (not that it's bad), but it's the one I remember listening to most, growing up. This completes the holy trinity of my childhood: musicals, folk music, Beatles. Actually, you'd have to throw a lot of classical music in there too. This is the least embarrassing one.

13. Body Kiss, The Isley Brothers. Or how I came to the world of R. Kelly. Soul Train featured a performance of "Busted," which Jared and I managed to see at least twice and which is still one of Kells's great, great songs. The rest is history.

14. Themes from Venus, Love Tractor. I didn't grow up with it, but it's still Athens to me more than almost anything else. This album is the kind of gem I want to press on people against their will, a lot.

15. Like a Prayer, Madonna. Another Walkman classic.

16. The Queen Is Dead, The Smiths. This is what you listen to when you're sad in high school and unfree, sometimes so loud that your neighbors come over and complain.

17. Satanic Panic in the Attic, Of Montreal. Another album that led me to local music, although that's hardly fair anymore.

18. Dig, The Coolies. My family met Clay Harper the day we moved, when we were hot and thirsty and no place was open, and then he appeared and solved problems and then, eventually, gave us this record and Doug, both of which I only now see the import of. Maybe these taught me that music doesn't have to be high-pressure.

19. Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols, The Sex Pistols. So what. It needs to be on here. I still love this record, and it sounds like nothing else the first time you hear it.

20. Justified, Justin Timberlake. This was on a listening booth at Tower Records, and I loved it so much that I not only bought there--for some obscene price--but had a hard time stopping listening to it. Pop is okay. Pop is good.

Lil' hobby

Not to mention that they'll most likely want a new one when times become flush again, making this a doubly ridiculous move.

Holy shit, William S. Mayberry. Why don't you just secede? You're not a source of income for legislators to line their own pockets. You are required to pay taxes as a citizen of this state and country, in return for which you receive services. It's a give and take. "Join an activity to oppose your money being siphoned off for some other person's idea of how it should be spent." Or, you know, you could run for office. The government is not separate from you. It is you.

A Baker/Thurmond ticket would make me pretty happy.

FO

So it took me about two months, but I finally finished my mom's birthday present, a few weeks late. This pattern looks great, but isn't that complicated. Only an eight-line repeat, and four of the lines are pretty much all purling. Yarn is Knit Picks Gloss Lace, and it took about a ball and a half. I did have to rip the whole thing out and start over after I had about six inches because I just kept screwing up in unfixable ways, but once my fingers learned where to look for the YOs and SK2PSSO, it got a lot easier.

Lil' hobby

Ben has a really nice breakdown of all the different facets of the proposed lighting ordinance and Kelly's desire to allow votes on each of those, a sensible idea and one that might lead to some of it being passed.

ABH calls out the general assembly in longer, more ornate style than I did yesterday. It's a nice editorial.

Ahem.

Goodbye, New Way. This is sad.

If there hadn't been x number of attempts to halt the opening of a medical school in Athens by the Augusta folks, this might be taken seriously.

Police Blotter (bacon pants edition)

Fraud: On March 20, deputy Tim Nix met with a Victoria Road resident who arrived at her driveway to find 30 moving boxes that had been dropped off by UPS. The woman called the company listed on the boxes and found they were fraudulently ordered in her name. She also found that $1,656 had been charged on her credit card to pay for the items, which included packing materials. She made arrangements for UPS to collect the empty boxes.

That's some rather strange fraud. First, you'd think they wouldn't have been delivered to her house, and second, moving boxes? Don't you mean porno or DVDs or an X-Box?

Fraud: On March 21, deputy Gary Brown was dispatched to Greenwood Drive, Bogart, to meet with a 21-year-old man who said his twin brother was arrested in Athens recently for urinating in public. The brother, who is on probation, gave police his twin's name so the probation wouldn't show up after the arrest. The man told Brown he is concerned that he will get into trouble when the case goes to court. Brown advised the man to go to the Clarke County Jail with his identification and explain the situation. He also told the man to get in touch with Athens-Clarke police, who made the charge.

Hello, Seann William Scott? I have a hilarious movie idea for you. Wait until you hear the first scene...

Arrest: On March 23, deputy Michael Free was dispatched to Georgia Highway 172, Colbert, for a dispute between a woman and her son, who became angry when his mother told him not to eat all of her ice cream. The man began cursing, then went outside and stabbed a hole in the tire of her Cadillac. The man left with his girlfriend in a Jeep, but the vehicle was stopped by Sgt. Dennis Harbison. [Ignatius J. Reilly], 40, was arrested for criminal trespassing.

Arrest: On March 23, deputy Jeff Strickland was off duty and shopping at Ingles when he noticed a man leaving the store with something bulging in his pants. He questioned the man, who denied trying to steal anything. During a search, three concealed packs of sliced bacon were found. [Capt. Cummings], 46, of Forest Acres, Athens, was arrested for shoplifting.

Where are your eyes, Jeff Strickland?!

Oconee. Madison.

Publication

Grub Notes writes up Hollis Famous Ribs (their best menu item ain't what you'd think) and revisits Food for the Soul, at reader request.