Tired, bored and laughing my ass off
Those of you who pay attention to this space on a regular basis may have noticed that there hasn’t been a whole lot to take notice of over the last few weeks. I would say I’m sorry, but I’d be lying. Truth is, in the 5 or so years I’ve been keeping this site up this has been the first time that I’ve looked around me and be so overwhelmingly bored with what I see that I’ve found little to nothing worth commenting on. It’s a terrible feeling, to be honest. Just bounce between local politics that leave one wondering if the rise of a stupid class has finally taken permanent hold of our lives, to national politics which seems to be using a three ring circus run by school children as it’s operating model, to individuals who act shocked when their chimpanzee house mates eat their friends faces; well the material is certainly there but even acknowledging the mess of a society we currently have seems like an exercise in forced irony. But alas, looking at my site stats people keep coming here looking for something and the guilt sets in. So here’s a bit of a brain dump to keep those of you who who have a flair for the obvious, occupied. Enjoy.
Local budget crisis
Let me be fair here, I KNOW the city manager and council have a tough road ahead and the last place I would want to be right now is in their shoes. And that’s not only due to the abysmal fashion sense on display every Tuesday night. I actually feel for these men and women; sort of. Lets be honest here, our problems in Worcester didn’t start on Sept 16th 2008, as with most municipal governments it started long before most of us were born. Now we’re in a mad race to keep the wheels from falling off the bus but unfortunately it seems like nobody remembers what a wheel looks like. The biggest problem in worcester right now isn’t a lack of funds, it’s a signal to noise ratio heavy on the noise. The most telling example of this I’ve seen is the annual shit show known as our highest paid city employee list. Take a look at this mess if you’ve got a chance. I’m going to avoid the obvious and not by name the one city department that dominates the list (again, trying not to force the irony folks). But what the fuck? We’re paying people over $100k a year to do jobs that used to be so underfunded they demanded a pension system just to allow folks to retire and still be poor. Now those same jobs will get you a pair of luxury SUVs, a second home at the Cape and a boat; yet the pensions are still in play. The strangest phenomenon occurs if you try and explain to the recipients of these salaries that in the private sector we don’t all make 6 figure salaries. Go ahead an try it… the ignorance is simply staggering. Just as a point of reference I don’t know many in the private sector who haven’t experienced some degree of salary freeze or roll back this year, if not loosing their jobs altogether. Not as a reaction to the market place, but as a preventive measure to hold off further economic pummeling. Ultimately, thats our real problem in Worcester. Not that we pay people way more than they could ever dream of being worth. But that we only react. If you try and think of this recession/depression not as the start of bad times, but instead as the result of terrible policy then we’re all to blame for not correcting these issues over the last two decades of relative stability and growth. It’s certainly fair to focus intensely on keeping the machine running, but if the byproduct of that work does not include planning for long term stability in municipal governance than we deserve everything get get, or don’t get as the case may likely be. If 85 percent of the city’s operational budget consists of personnel costs, than there is only one place to look for increased responsibility in spending and thus far we’re doing it wrong, very wrong.
Federal budget crisis
I have nothing to say. Why? Because I’m not a economist with a lifetime of studying macroeconomics on my resume. Neither are you and that’s worth thinking about. But I will give you one helpful bit of knowledge that was probably skipped over in your public school education; comparisons to the New Deal make you look stupid. After the Great Depression, even with the massive spending during the 30’s unemployment stayed ridiculously high until we decided to ‘employ’ 16 million Americans in the Nazi killing business and Keynesianism was applied to military spending. If you’re expecting the stimulus bill to fix everything… well I hope that works out for you but it’s not that simple. ‘Change you can believe in’ is the new ‘history repeats itself’.
People living with monkeys
Tragic. OK got that out of the way. Folks, chimpanzees are not cute pets, they’re wild animals, got it? So unless you think living with an incontinent, criminally insane and overly hairy person with the strength of 10 men sounds like a good time please don’t expect me to feel bad for people who have their faces eaten by primates wearing track pants. If there is anything truly upsetting about this Travis the chimp episode in Stamford CT last week, it’s that the Stamford PD didn’t feel it necessary to shoot the damn thing until if decided to eat someone’s nose. Personally I would have thought stealing its ‘mothers’ car and driving around town would have been the final straw, but apparently the man in the yellow hat was able to intervene. Nature 1 - Humans 0; Happy Birthday Darwin!
Taxes, taxes and more taxes
It’s how we fix everything, right? Need more money to pay more ridiculous salaries, just raise taxes. I typically put myself in the ‘taxation = political laziness’ camp. But there are some interesting side bets with Gov. Patricks newish beer tax. It really wasn’t too long ago that we lived in a dry country, in theory. One of the interesting myths surrounding the end of prohibition is how, exactly, it ended. Seems we like to think some well intentioned, right thinking congressmen realized the inherent flaws of prohibition and decided to kill it on a whim. Not so much. If not for the Great Depression we may very well still be a dry country. What resurrected ones right to drink ones sorrows away was the opportunity to tax. By legalizing booze, we legitimized an existing (if legally illegitimate) industry ripe for taxation and funneled vast sums of wealth from the black market to government and the open market. And equally important the revenue generated from taxing booze far out matched the cost of fighting it. So while Patricks plan is certainly ludicrous, it isn’t without precedent. If anything we should be looking to expand upon that model. While I still think taxes are lazy, now is the time to be reevaluating all controlled substances to weigh their potential to generate revenue.
America, Fuck Yeah
That’s all for now folks. Someone out there, please do something interesting.
Please?
Crack Babies - The Epidemic That Wasn’t
Yesterday I mentioned a bill designed to combat a drug problem that doesn’t exist. Somewhat related, if only due to the subject matter, the New York Times recently revisited the ‘epidemic’ of crack babies. If you grew up in the ’80’s you probably remember health care professionals and politicians warning of a future populated by zombies who were exposed to crack cocaine in the womb. Well guess what, it never happened.
When the use of crack cocaine became a nationwide epidemic in the 1980s and ’90s, there were widespread fears that prenatal exposure to the drug would produce a generation of severely damaged children. Newspapers carried headlines like “Cocaine: A Vicious Assault on a Child,” “Crack’s Toll Among Babies: A Joyless View” and “Studies: Future Bleak for Crack Babies.”
But now researchers are systematically following children who were exposed to cocaine before birth, and their findings suggest that the encouraging stories of Ms. H.’s daughters are anything but unusual. So far, these scientists say, the long-term effects of such exposure on children’s brain development and behavior appear relatively small.
The point of course is not to figure in crack as part of a well balanced prenatal program, but the moral crusade which led to mothers loosing custody of their children and in some cases being jailed for drug use that may very well be less significant than fetal exposure to alcohol and tobacco.
Age 32 and just learned to tie my shoes
This is something I found sad, embarrassing and very cool. I, like most people learned to tie my shoes as a kid and just sort of stopped thinking about it. I don’t believe my style of shoe tying has led to major setbacks in life, but it seems as though I’ve been doing it wrong. And chances are good you still are. What I was taught to tie is called a ‘granny knot’, which appears to be the single most useless knot on the planet. What you want to tie is a ‘reef knot’ which looks almost the same and requires only a slight adjustment in your tying style but will keep people in the know from laughing at you. Added bonus, this one stays tied.
NYT advertising revenue continues to plummet
There’s some pretty grim revenue news coming from the Worcester Telegrams parent, The New York Times Company, today.
New England Media Group - Advertising revenues for the New England Media Group decreased 31.4%, and excluding the additional week, decreased 17.7%. National advertising revenues decreased due to weakness in telecommunications, pharmaceutical/packaged goods, technology and travel advertising. Retail advertising revenues decreased primarily due to weakness in the jewelry/watches, department store, records/books and computer/office supplies categories. Classified advertising revenues decreased because of softness in real estate and help-wanted advertising.
Outside the New England region the numbers look equally terrible with advertising revenues down 13.8% in December from 12 months earlier and just over 6% for the year. Interesting business model ya got there.
A fun and somewhat related anecdote: While at the START Holiday Arts fair this past December I had a T&G employee tell me “it is a proven fact that nobody actually reads news online”. So If you’re reading this and it was news to you, please go back and forget the experience immediately.
Equally fun and anecdotal, advertising revenue here on RB for the same period is up 345.74%
What the hell is going on here?
Still confused? Let me help you with that:
“I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because…ah some…people out there in our nation don’t have maps and…ah…I believe that eh-education such as in South Africa and the Iraq everywhere like such as and I believe that they should….our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S. or-or should help south Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future for our gen…”
Ok, so that didn’t help one bit. Can someone please explain this to me?
Barnyard buggery in the Bay State
Since we in Worcester can always use another reason to fight the slow absorption into Metro-West, how’s this one for a back-up.
People in Metro West fuck sheep.
A Sherborn teen was charged yesterday with having sex with sheep at a farm near his home, and police reports suggest the encounters may have gone on for nearly a year.
Between 3 and 4 a.m. on June 27, according to police, the camera captured and filmed a person identified as Roger Henderson II.
The man grabbed a sheep by its hind legs and dragged it to the corner of the stall, according to police. The man removed his clothes and appeared to have sexual relations with the sheep. After finishing, the man put his pants back on and left the barn with his shirt in his hand, according to the report.
See kids, great public schools and a median household income over $120,000 can only lead to one thing, getting caught in the barn with your pants down making sweet love to a startled but otherwise well to-do sheep. Personally I’ll settle for a $35,000 median household income and a few banged up, $20 hookers from Webster any day.
What’s in a name?
Todays T&G has a bit on one Kelly Hoose who had charges of possessing child pornography against him, dropped Dec. 19 in Worcester Superior Court. Justice served and all that, end of story. Except there is an interesting side note that didn’t seem to make the paper. Hoose was apparently in possession of pics of Melissa Bertsch, a Dr. Christine Barron determined that some of those pics constituted child pornography. Bertsch never worked in porn as a minor, so this would be a mistake on the part of the good Doctor. It happens.
But how can it happen? A quick google search reveals a similar case played out involving pics of Bertsch in Belfast 18 months ago, does a Doctor trained in forensic pediatrics not know how to use google? This story reads like Hoose was trying to report child porn and ended up getting busted for it; maybe he is a dirt bag, but if not, thats a pretty big hit to ones reputation. Especially if a simple google search could have saved the courts, Hoose and Bertsch the trouble.
UCLA Student Tasered by Campus Police in Library
This is a pretty graphic video, so you may want to read the back story before taking a look.
link
What blows my mind is you can hear the tasers being used at a few points while the police are demanding the kid ’stand up’. I’m no expert on the subject, but it would seem the use of taser might get in the way of following commands that require coordination and motor skills. Maybe UCLA should provide the operating manual to its officers.
Mommy, when I grow up…
From the ‘oh, I am so happy to have a son’ department comes this tale of one Cheshire woman’s battle to keep her daughters from working at Scores. The Peekaboo pole is… well it’s a pole. A stripper pole if you want to get technical. A stripper pole that had been for sale at Tesco, Britain’s number one chain in the children’s toy section. You know, for those early bloomers in your life. From the product description:
“Soon you’ll be flaunting it to the world and earning a fortune in Peekaboo Dance Dollars”.
Look, I love strippers. I love strip clubs. I prefer that strip clubs be full of strippers. But I also like to live with the myth that all beautiful strippers are plying their trade to pay for law school. It would bring some serious creepiness to the table if I had to imagine 5 year old girls being primed for stripping by their well meaning uncles via this particular Christmas gift. Seriously, what the fuck? I demand to meet the genius/idiot who got this through a planning meeting.
In fairness to Tesco, the product is now only for sale online and will be sold as an adult fitness item. That would make this a perfect companion to the personal massager you just bought.
Because knowing is half the battle
Obviously Americans should be up to speed on American foreign policy, right? So then why is it that the US gets a different Newsweek than the rest of the world?
This weeks US site.
This weeks site as the rest of the world will see it. (notice the world covers in the sidebar)
The stories inside remain the same but it’s better this way, we wouldn’t want Americans to develop a complex. Or something like that.
(via metafilter)
