Saturday, July 09, 2011
The old man & the gorilla
Berg and a Mystery

Second, the YYM and a friend, at Berg. Coolness, with Maßkrüge.

Finally, the mystery. The famed G-bike was stolen in 2009. (If you want to watch the video, it can still be seen. Sad...) It had a pirate flag. No trace of the G-bike has ever been recovered...but the pirate flag has appeared in the Archiv. How? Who? Detective (defective?) Hajo is collecting photographic evidence.

Now, I do admit that the G-bike was actually stolen by the police. I have no idea why they would take it, except perhaps that it was parked in a way that was blatantly and obviously illegal, blocking a firelane. In any case, Hajo is still on the case, and if the culprit admits to the theft, in the bar or biergarten where Hajo happens to be at that moment anyway, Hajo will let us all know.
San Fran Realism
The San Francisco - Oakland Bay Bridge half of which is in Nancy Pelosi’s 8th Congressional district is being rebuilt.
Governor Jerry Brown has decided that CA has to build the bridge without Federal Funding. Why would he do that?
Because...the buy American provisions of the USDOT would prohibit using Chinese Steel.
And using the cheaper steel saves more than the fed funding would save. Using Chinese steel is expected to save $400,000,000 on the $7,200,000,000 Bridge. The Bridge financing is made possible by two key aspects. First, the 270,000 vehicles per day on the bridge pay $6 per crossing during peak hours to $4 in the off peak currently. These user fees provide a substantial share of funding.
The second aspect is that the federal funds are not lost but can be applied to myriad of other California projects that are eligible for federal funding with much smaller surcharges for protectionism, allowing some reallocation of state user taxes to be used in rebuilding the Bay Bridge.
So...when it suits him, Jerry boy is a right capitalist, shi?
(With thanks to JS, who wrote in)
The wisdom of the American businessman
Friday, July 08, 2011
Not the Onion...Or Is It?
1. Guys take flattened, dried alligator for joy ride.
2. Duck tape used to save...ducks! And, yes, I mean "duck tape."
3. Food trucks, food trucks, what ya gonna do? What ya gonna do when the mayor comes for you? Make a ...Facebook page! And then "unlike" Mayor Bloomberg.
4. Having medical insurance increases the amount of health services people consume. Tomorrow: sun rises in the east.
5. Rod Stewart is mistaken for author's elderly aunt.
6. Michigan Congressman had no idea that law outlawing light bulbs would put "Washington in charge of decisions over light bulbs."
(Nod to the Blonde, Angry Alex, and The Chelsea)
A day in the life of the worst aid worker in the world.
6.00 am. The alarm goes off. I open my eyes and I stare at a ceiling I swear I’ve never seen before. I hear the sound of excessively honking traffic and gridlock and recognize the stark-white detailing of some mid-range hotel in yet another third-world city, virtually indistinguishable from the last. I’m feeling a rough. Probably the combination of a little too much cheap local beer without a confirmed % Vol. rating, and the dodgy sushi restaurant we tried last night around the back of the block. There’s something about raw fish when you’re several hours’ journey from the nearest seaport.
So the guy is some combo of stupid and irresponsible, drinking too much and eating dangerously on a work night. Not a good start. I'm going to go on a limb and assume that aid workers are not actually required to do this.
6.35 am. I’m in the shower. All lathered up with generic hotel-room shampoo that oozes out of the little bottle like that slimey thing from Ghostbusters. I’m standing beneath the spout when the water suddenly runs cold. I don’t react, because it’s happened so many times before, but the little pulse of revulsion it sends through my gut is unavoidable, as I attempt to finish my wash as quickly as possible. I tell myself I really ought to speak to reception about getting my room changed, but I know it won’t make any difference, so I don’t bother.
OMG, the hot water ran out. Let the revulsion flag fly. Oh the unimaginable horror! Plus I love the assumption of the worst about the hotel management.
7.05 am. The hotel has a buffet breakfast. Dry turkey-bacon, watery scrambled eggs, stale bread for toasting, salty baked beans, fresh buns with little packets of Anchor butter and bowls of jam you never know if you can trust or not. It’s open-air and mild, but the flies aren’t out yet. It’s early, so the clientelle are all professional. There’s a bunch of despondant-looking aid-worker types mixed in with Chinese businessmen and the occasional wizened long-termer, generally white with greying hair, wrinkles, and a red veiny nose. I try and decide which group I least want to sit close to and work through my tea and toast in peace.
Every piece of food gets it’s own scornful adjective (dry, watery, stale, salty), and our hero, seeing no one of his high level in the dining room breakfasts alone.
7.30 am. My teeth are brushed (I’ve risked using tap-water this morning) and I’m waiting by the front entrance to the hotel for the office driver to pick me up, laptop, notepad and file in the backpack slung over one shoulder.
7.55 am. My driver arrives.
OMG again. His DRIVER is late. Let’s flog him as a lesson for next time.
8.25 am. We’re still in traffic. It’s rush hour, and there’s four lanes of moving metal slowly extricating itself through a narrow two-lane intersection. A bus the size of a small ocean-going liner is sitting directly above our rear-bumper, sounding its air-horn and telling us in no uncertain terms that if we don’t move forwards it will turn us into fine and somewhat stained aluminium foil. Two taxi cabs are trying to usurp the two square feet of space in front of us between a produce lorry and an expensive Mercedez sedan with tinted windows. A street vendor is banging on my window and trying to sell me my choice of cell-phone cards or a pack of cigarettes. The driver has the air-con cranked way too high and my finger-tips are actually hurting from the cold, but I’m frightened that if I crack the windows, we’ll both die of carbon monoxide poisoning.
Hey Genius. Rush hour = traffic. If you don’t want to be stuck in traffic, don’t start your commute during rush hour. Mrs. Angus and I lived in Mexico City for 2+ years and had to do exactly that. We made sure to leave the house (driving ourselves by the way) by 7:00 to ensure that our 20 minute commute didn’t turn into a 90 minute nightmare. Take some responsibility for yourself, dude. (Notice that he’s complaining about the cold. That will change)
OMG yet again. The elevator is out! How this guy has the courage to keep soldiering on in the face of these epic adversities is beyond me. Plus, now he's too hot!
1.45 pm. We’re sitting on a sunken brown couch in a hallway in some minor government administration building. It has no springs left and is the sort of thing that my buddies might put in their basement den after finding it at a yard sale, cover with an old bedsheet, and drink beer while watching the hockey. In front of us, men in suits are striding up and down the corridors trying to look important, their footfalls echoing between the bare walls. Cheap wooden doors have brass nameplates on them. There’s no air-conditioning and the place smells vaguely of detergent and cigarette smoke.
1.55 pm. The Humanitarian Coordinator knows we’re out here. We know he’s in there. We know he’s in there alone, and that he’s not doing anything useful, except maybe putting some purple ink-stamps on various pieces of superfluous paperwork so that he can justify drawing a salary in the name of frustrating the international community’s efforts to help his people. But he’s going to keep us sitting out here for, ooh, another five minutes I reckon. Just because he can.
Thursday, July 07, 2011
Standing on shaky ground
If the administration's spending cuts are mostly fake, its desire for tax increases is not. While the proposals are constantly shifting, you can be sure the president is looking to grab big chunks of cash from lots of people (and small businesses) who make less than a million a year."
Iz our children learning?
The report on the Atlanta Public Schools, released Tuesday, indicates a "widespread" conspiracy by teachers, principals and administrators to fix answers on the Criterion-Referenced Competency Test (CRCT), punish whistle-blowers, and hide improprieties."
Wednesday, July 06, 2011
Don't take the Deal!
Tuesday, July 05, 2011
lavish links
Monday, July 04, 2011
Loud Penis
And you did not even know that you did not know that.
But now you know.
(Nod to Tommy the Brit)
We Like to Watch
"One study, for example, found that children who had just finished playing
violent video games were more likely to fill in the blank letter in 'explo_e' with a 'd' (so that it reads 'explode') than with an 'r' ('explore')...The prevention of this phenomenon, which might have been anticipated with common sense, is not a compelling state interest." [Justice Scalia, majority opinion (footnote #7) in support of First Amendment protection for violent video games]
"Among the most popular 'casual' games (so called because they are quick and simple to play) are twisted, violent games with names like Beat Me Up, Bloody Day and Boneless Girl. Young people don’t need to rent or buy casual games. They are available on computers, tablets and cellphones — free. (California’s law wouldn’t have applied to these games, even if it had survived the court’s scrutiny, because they are not rented or sold.)" [Joel Bakan, NYT op-ed]
(I had never seen "Boneless Girl." WTF? I mean, WTFingF?)
(Nod to Kevin Lewis)
You say it's your birthday.....
This has got to be the best song ever with the words "4th of July" in it, and one of the best songs Dave Alvin ever wrote.
Norman Rockwell and Independence Day 2011
The picture below captures, with a Norman Rockwell-like clarity of composition, a little of how most of us feel about the fallen. The casket contains the remains of 2nd Lt. James Cathey. The honor guard covered the casket with a flag, and prepared to meet the family on the tarmac. The passengers watched, letting Lt. Cathey get off the plane first.

The night before the burial of her husband's body, Katherine Cathey refused to leave the casket, asking to sleep next to his body for the last time The Marines made a bed for her, tucking in the sheets below the flag. Before she fell asleep, she opened her laptop computer and played songs that reminded her of 'Cat,' and one of the Marines asked if she wanted them to continue standing watch as she slept. 'I think it would be kind of nice if you kept doing it,' she said. 'I think that's what he would have wanted'.

(The pix are from 2006, but for some reason have been circulating as an email in the last weeks...Besides, for the family that's only five years. It is never going to be long enough ago. Thanks to AB for sending this to me).
Sunday, July 03, 2011
Russ and John talk about FotC Video on CSPAN
A Tangled Web: Papiss, Pliss
Camp comes down hard on unauthorized sunscreen users!!
“The camp is just doing what the state ordered them to do,” said Paul Basken, a father of two children who attend Barrie camp. “But this can’t be serious. I mean, if I didn’t feel safe about the camp, I just wouldn’t send my kids there.”
Oh, Paul: They are NOTHING if not serious. I just hope these same legislators and bureaucrats can soon be put in charge of whether or not I am "authorized" to take my aspirin. Show yoah papiss, pliss.
(Nod to the Anonywife)