Red Wheelbarrow

Cat math

2010-02-02T21:58:00.001-05:00

Eleven days til we go to look for some cats. We've done a complete calculation that we can handle two cats. Ratios where pets outnumber people lead to the animals taking over, hunting humans down with nets, and showing us a half buried Statue of Liberty. More info on which shelter they will be from - pending the actual cats.

Commuter's Manifesto

2010-01-27T10:31:00.002-05:00

As a frequent rider of the local Cleveland mass transit system, GCRTA, after another year has gone by it's time again to issue congratulations on a job...done. Whilst they contemplate cutting routes and schedule frequency to save money, might I suggest a few ways they can save money.

1. Answer complaints. I don't know what other peoples experiences are, but I've never gotten a reply to any complaint I sent via the website to GCRTA. Even if the people complaining are as crazy as Democrats thinking it's time to be more concilliatory to Republicans who have their best interests at heart, answer them. I jhave to note that none of my complaints have been insane so far. This may change depending on #2, below.

2. Kill the Muzak. There is no reason to install a bunch of speakers to blast crappy music 24x7 at people waiting for trains, who cannot escape. You're not trying to trick us to shopping longer in your store with slow balladeering. We can't leave. Whatever you pay for that Muzak service, picket it and spend on keeping routes open instead. That way we only have to suffer from people playing bad music on their cell phones on the trains themselves, which leads to #3.

3. Enforce your rules. There are rules against eating on busses and trains, against playing music loudly. Yet people are so sure the rules are not being enforced, they bring dipping sauce onto the train. This is a sign no one is paying attention, and I think eating fast food on mass transit trains is how the Roman Empire fell, just sayin'.

4. Get rid of the empty train going from Tower City through the remnants of the East Bank of the Flats. Run when there's a Browns game, it's the only time anybody rides it. If you want to cut low profiut routes, you cannot get much worse than an empty train.

5. Open your books. If you want more public funding - the only way you will survive - the public needs to know what everything costs. If the thought of seeing how much cash has gone down the drain for the Euclid Corridor, that's the cost of wanting taxpayer funds. The method of cutting lines and hoping the state bales out the same management team is just not getting any support for you.

Enough with 2010 already

2010-01-07T11:51:00.001-05:00

As Lynn observed, winter has awoken like a hungover Gen-Zer late for work and hit us all at once. So I'm taking trains more now and seeing what you might call technique. One fellow's method for hitting on unwitting passers by was to shout across the train whilst wearing a ski-mask. I can only imagine it to be disconcerting to have a masked man yelling to you "what stop you getting off at".

Propaganda is not so much good

2010-01-04T10:26:00.002-05:00

Propaganda has never been a source of tasty treats. We even see it in person at times, as we drive near a nearby mall to see anti-abortion protesters holding up photos of purported dead fetuses. One fellow also held up a sign "PRO LIFE ATHEIST". We thought briefly about supplying him with an addendum to his sign, "VIRGIN" but perhaps it was unneeded. I did notice the religious protesters stood a couple of feet away from him. Would this lone on-believer be so quick to join these folks if he knew what a traditional treatment of atheists used to be (do not click if you are planning on a tasty meal with a pressure cooker today) back in more "traditional" times.

We're pretty cynical in the West, but in other parts of the world the bloodthirsty rhetoric we are used to seeing outside our strip malls can have more impact than bargained for:

Human rights advocates in Uganda say the visit by the three Americans helped set in motion what could be a very dangerous cycle. Gay Ugandans already describe a world of beatings, blackmail, death threats like "Die Sodomite!" scrawled on their homes, constant harassment and even so-called correctional rape.

"Now we really have to go undercover," said Stosh Mugisha, a gay rights activist who said she was pinned down in a guava orchard and raped by a farmhand who wanted to cure her of her attraction to girls. She said that she was impregnated and infected with H.I.V., but that her grandmother�s reaction was simply, "'You are too stubborn.'"

(from a NYTimes story by Jeffery Gettleman)

I like seeing more coverage of what calling people evil actually does out in the real world.

The Christmas Message

2009-12-25T08:37:00.002-05:00

So the lead item on Cnn.com right now is about people claiming Jesus wanted us to be rich. I'm not sure which is funnier, that they read the Bible and came up with a lot of references to the Almighty wanting people to get more bling, or that this is the lead story on CNN.

I'm not saying this is why I left this particular club, but apparently you can find a reason for anything in there. My personal favourite Xmas message can be found here.

Excerpt from a review that made me stop reading the review

2009-10-30T16:02:00.002-05:00

"I said, "wow" out loud several times while watching this movie."
- [name withheld]

That's all I needed to know. Sometimes the best reviews are the ones you avoid reading in full.

Conner 1999-2009

2009-10-26T13:54:00.000-05:00

We had to put our friend Conner to sleep this morning. He had a blood clot that caused his back legs to be paralyzed and he had congestive heart failure. We came home early from MI yesterday and spared our neighbor from finding him (for which we are very glad). We had a nice evening with him last night and thankfully, did not deny him treats.

We had him for over ten years and will miss him very much.

Love,
Martha and Jerry

Spooky Dogs

2009-10-17T15:18:00.003-05:00

In this difficult economy, dogs in costumes make a lot of sense.

Click the pic for the HD version on YouTube, it's worth it to see a high def green dog.

Kate Beaton + Poe = Win

2009-09-21T12:23:00.001-05:00

I can never get enough of her web toons

Free stamp too free?

2009-09-21T09:50:00.010-05:00

Claus Oldenbur and Coosje van Bruggen created one of Cleveland's most memoriable scultures, the Free Stamp. I couldn't help but notice that this image:

from Cleveland Beer Week's website is basically the same stamp, with Beer instead of Free.� Letting go of the idea of sacrificing freedom for beer, I wonder if the orinal arist approved this use.

Forum post of the week

2009-09-17T20:05:00.002-05:00

I realize looking for reasoned, intelligent discourse on national politics on local forums is oft futile but sometimes you find a gem:

<blockquote>I am much more confortable having Half-Breed Obama be president than say a full-white midget like Robert Reich.
- gmlove</blockquote>
<a href="http://lakewoodbuzz.infopop.cc/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/33460472/m/307102103?r=730105203#730105203">source</a>

The 'wingers in that thread are striving to explain how they are not at all racist, bear in mind.

Then there were 6

2009-09-10T09:07:00.002-05:00

The Remaining Candidates for the Council at Large in Lakewood, OH.

Ryan Patrick Demro
Brian Powers *
Jared K. Shapiro
Daniel E. Shields
Monique Smith
Nickie J. Antonio *

* = Incumbent

Vanity, thy name in signs

2009-09-09T09:28:00.001-05:00

The PeeDee has an article about the raw cost of the stimulus dollars at work signs dotting our fair state. If they were going to end that, though, they'd also want to figure out how much it costs every town in the state to change their "Jane Smith, Mayor" signs at the border of many of our cities. These always seemed to me like pointless excercises in getting name recognition out for the elected for the elections to come. If it didn't work and elections weren't running on the idea of voters who vaguely pay attention to who's running, the signs would not doubt be a great target of effeciency cuts.

Elections and the web

2009-09-09T09:13:00.002-05:00

I would say the web had a minimal impact on the Sep 8th primaries here in Lakewood. The person with - in my opinion - the most informative website, Anthony Davis, came in a distant last place, just behind another candidate who had no website at all. The second highest vote getter had no website. Are people just voting for familiar names? The top 6 have the two incumbents, and two people who've either run before for local office or held it in the case of Ryan Demro. The majority of the folks who had websites had fairly generic affairs. Not that I am a political genius myself - my elected history is that of having been vice president of my high school band council. Elections where all we know of is the candidates face, name, and noises about a need to improve our town is a bit familiar and dull. I have to think also that 12,000 people is just a miserable turnout, though I don't have the number of eligibles at hand.

Sep 8th Primary results

2009-09-09T08:55:00.004-05:00

Source: Cuyahoga County Board of Elections
http://boe.cuyahogacounty.us/en-US/master-results-list.aspx

Interesting that the bottom four candidates had more all together than the top one...The two incumbents came in first, but there are enough votes that went to the others that if they don't gather enough of them, they might lose.

The top 6 vote-getters move on the real election.

Lakewood Primary candidate websites

2009-08-17T14:33:00.002-05:00

There is a Primary Election on September 8th for the Councilperson at Large seats on the Lakewood city council. Without a full blown newspaper covering it, I had to dig around to find some of the candidate websites:

Anthony Davis http://www.democracydavis.com/
Edward M McCartney - unable to find website
Ryan Patrick Demro http://ryandemro.com/
Brian Powers * - unable to find their website
Jared K. Shapiro http://jaredshapiroforcitycouncil.webs.com/
Daniel E. Shields - http://shieldsforlakewood.com
Monique Smith http://www.moniqueforlakewood.com/
Nickie J. Antonio * http://nickieantonio.com/
Daniel Bartos http://danielbartos.com

* = Incumbent

They taze dogs, don't they?

2009-07-28T09:31:00.001-05:00

I'm no dog expert, but this seems excessive. Tazers should not be the default response of police.

Book Cover

2009-07-28T09:29:00.003-05:00

I have to agree with Jessa Crispin that this book cover makes one wish for blindness.

Every sperm still sacred

2009-07-28T09:19:00.002-05:00

The Catholic church is still against birth control, natch:

"There is such a saturation of contraceptive thinking [in our culture]," Jacobs said. "We think that's a false message, to use contraception and say it's safe."

Although a wildly thrown condom might pose an eye hazard, it's hard to see what danger exactly they mean.

Source: Angela Townsend writing for the PeeDee

Fish and Chips?

2009-07-06T16:25:00.004-05:00

The Mayor of Liverpool, Nova Scotia, invited Paul McCartney to his town while he's having a concert in the province.

"I am writing to personally invite you to join us for fish and chips and an informal ukulele jamming session on the banks of the Mersey River in Liverpool," Mr. Leefe wrote.

Source

McCartney is a very public vegetarian.

Bye Sarah

2009-07-06T11:14:00.003-05:00

Jezebel's Anna N. analyzes Sarah Palin's resignation speech.

For a better understanding of Palin's approach to theology, consult the children's show Veggie Tales.

I sometimes wonder if American politicians who spend most of their energy saying the press needs to shut up remember what country they live in.

Seven Deadly Sins of the Train

2009-06-25T11:36:00.002-05:00

As many of us lock ourselves voluntarily in shiny metal boxes, "contestants in a suicidal race",Sting might say, it occurs to me that perhaps bringing back some of the shaming techniques of the middle ages might be helpful. We've already started going medieval on our prisoners of war, so why not bring back more of those "Dark" ages to brighten up our day. We can avoid the listing of virtues, as they are always a bit grating...

Learn from this justly irritating Youth,

To brush your Hair and Teeth and tell the Truth.

- Hillaire Belloc, from A Moral Alphabet

Now onto the sins!

The seventh sin is smell. Bringing hot, greasy food onto the train entraps us all into a McNightmare from whence we cannot escape. Coffee is neutral enought to get a pass...but smokers are always going to make me gag. The only thing alleviating the smoking sin is that you can escape the smell by moving a bit away, not always an option with the fast traveling smell of food.

The sixth deadly sin is "headphones". By encasing it in quotes, it indicates the headphones are at such a loud volume as to penetrate the heads of all in a 10 foot radius. The loudness of headphones is directly proportional to how truely awful the music being played is. I have yet to hear anyone blasting out a particularly engaging interview being given by Terry Gross

The firth deadly sin is cell phones, though it bleeds into the sixth with blended purpose phones much as the crappy ringtone you downloaded is making all our ears bleed. Exceptions for loud use of cellphones are if you have to give instructions to Jack Bauer how to best torture a suspect into opening a socket to save the city. Otherwise, as my late friend K_ would say, "Shut it.".

Fourth on the list of deadly train sins is paying for the ride. As the train prepares to leave, there are inevitably some dazed riders who only now realize they have to get off the train, and slowly make their way to the front, so they can lay down their bags across two sets of seats to only now begin looking for their ticket. Followed by a five minute conversation with the train conductor - who they seem to not know cannot leave whilst they are hanging out of the door - about where the train they are now leaving might be going next.

The third sin is person space. Not satisfied with taking up two sits as they nap on the train, these folks also stick the legs out into the hallway, making a dance necessary to get by. Not to mention the baseball fan - not sure why it's always them - who comes onto the train solely for the purpose of stretching, which can only be accomplished by placing their arms and rapidly balding heads as far back into the seats behind them as possible.

The second sins can apply to bicyclists, people with stroller carrying babies or groceries and those with giantic cardboard boxes of unknown seeping items who then find the only place for these is in the hallway, completely blocking egress for everyone behind them. This could be an actually deadly sin, in the event of an emergency.

The first deadly sin belongs not to passengers but to the management. Not aligning schedules to reality is not the fault of drivers if the schedule is impossible to keep - it's up to the Train-masters to correct. No GPS on trains, announced "times" for trains that are just someone reading the printed schedule, and not the real time when the train will arrive, is keeping us all in the dark.

Gone forever

2009-06-25T11:35:00.001-05:00

Now no married person will be able to tell their spouse they want to "go hiking in the Appalachians" without being given at the least a quizzical look.

10 Years

2009-06-23T20:14:00.001-05:00

10 years, and thousand of miles....now two rivals will meet again.

Mrs. Peggy

Conner

Lakewood, Ohio - the Battle of the Lake! Then Peggy goes to Niagara Falls with M_ for a tad. Conner is disdainful of waterfalls, since "the incident".

Daily Proverb

2009-06-23T08:16:00.000-05:00

Watching birds bathe and drink from a birdbath, one sees they have not heard of the germ theory of disease.