Month: November 2007

On November 1st, I woke up to find about a half-dozen police cars (marked and unmarked) parked on my corner. One in my driveway, one in my neighbor’s driveway, a couple around the street. My girlfriend, who watches cop shows, noted that there were detectives as well as patrol officers on the scene (they dress differently, I guess) and that the detectives had on rubber gloves. Crime Scene tape went up across the driveway of one neighbor. Within a few minutes, though, everything looked pretty normal… I mean, aside from the cops. There wasn’t any tension, they were standing around talking, no ambulances running around, no helicopters or SWAT teams or obvious CSI type stuff.

I felt like it would be rude to go and ask, but the subject did come up on the Davis Square livejournal community. We waited for the Somerville Journal’s weekly police blotter, but that didn’t have anything in it.

Later I heard from a neighbor who did have the guts to go ask the police: It wasn’t a crime, so it didn’t get into the police blotter. What it was was just horribly sad. The people who live at that house have a couple cars they’re fixing up, parked ’round back. A homeless guy broke into one of those cars (were they even locked?), sat down, fell asleep, and didn’t wake up. Cause of death not known.

It’s ignorant pricks like Georgia governor Sonny Perdue that give the South a reputation for being composed entirely of ignorant pricks. It’s a reputation that ex-southerners like myself fight daily to live down. And so I am particularly indignant when ignorant pricks rise to high political office in places like Georgia, do ignorant shit, and make me look bad to my Boston neighbors.

I’m talking about things like having an official pray-for-rain service. Admittedly, he’s also trying conservation to cope with the drought, but he’s relying on prayer rather than real action to address the underlying problems that make the drought so bad, notably decades of piss-poor urban planning surrounding Atlanta.

He says “The only solution is rain, and the only place we get that is from a higher power.” That’s wrong on two counts. First, the solution would be decent urban planning, sane water use policy, and conservation. A little rain would just stave off the day of reckoning when Atlanta finally does run dry. Second, rain comes from clouds, you ignorant prick.

The NYT is subtle and almost Colbertian: Surge Seen in Number of Homeless Veterans.

My contribution is an homage to Variety: Ro-Ro A No-Go For MSNBC-Oh. OK, I thought it was funny.

DListed pays tribute to Janis: “Oh Lord, won’t you buy Britney a clue, she’s already got a Mercedes-Benz.”

(On that last note, I have a confession: Of all the stupid shit I’ve seen celebrities do over the past few months, Britney Spears’ new car pisses me off more than anything else. I’ve seen people do horrible things – manslaughter, DUI, racism, general idiocy – and the impulse purchase of a $185,000 Mercedes-Benz SL65 is merely frivolous. Still, she can’t even drive very well! It’s such a bad idea! I know that being more bothered by this than by other things – hell, caring at all about any of these celebrity gaffs – is evidence I’ve got my priorities all wrong, but what can I do? I live in tabloid nation.)

You ever watch TV? Well, there’s this strike going on. You might have heard about it. You might or might not care. Here’s a video explaining what’s going on:

Basically, writers have been paid 2.5% of profits for reruns on TV, less than 1% for DVDs, and just about nothing for internet viewing. They want 2.5% for everything, because, hell, content is content, right? Disney boss Michael Eisner and the rest of the big studios are saying that there are no profits on internet viewing to share. That’s kind of a lame excuse, though, because if there are no profits, it won’t hurt to promise to share 2.5% of them.

Basically, the conflict boils down to the fact that Michael Eisner and the rest of the studio heads are selfish assholes.

From an NYT article about riots and police response in Tblisi, Georgia: Holy crap, these are the scariest, creepiest cops I have ever seen.

The Somerville News has endorsed Charles Chisolm over Rebekah Gewirtz for Ward 6 Alderman, in a race that ends at eight tonight. They rail and fulminate against the “PDSers” or “PDs” or something. Not sure what that means, but everyone in the comments thinks they’re terrible people. Progressive Democrats, perhaps. That sounds about right. The change in Somerville over the past few years seems to have been from an old-fashioned Democratic machine based on church and blood ties to a new kind of Democratic machine fueled by yuppies and dog parks.

I voted for Rebekah mostly because Ron at the Davis Square LiveJournal Community thinks she’s good. But also because she lives near me. As I guess one might, running for an office as local as Ward Alderman. But if the Somerville News thinks she’s some kind of kooky liberal, that’s an extra incentive to vote for her.

Let’s just point it out now, shall we? Rudy Giuliani is a liar. His accomplishments as mayor of NYC were limited to harassing the homeless, presiding over police brutality, and being mayor during 9/11. Also he is a liar.

Not as much of a liar as our current president. Not as much of a liar as, oh, Mitt Romney, who keeps lying about all kinds of shit. But a liar nonetheless.

I have probably mentioned the obnoxious loud exhaust that came with my used motorcycle. Well, a couple weeks ago I found someone on the Internet who traded me his old stock muffler for my noisy aftermarket one. Unfortunately, the stock muffler didn’t quite fit. I don’t know why that was the case, but the muffler was just about a quarter-inch too long and I couldn’t get the attachment screws to line up. Obviously the solution was to whack at it with a mallet to make it fit. No dice.

Then I tugged it back off. They call them “slip-on” replacements, but it doesn’t exactly slip so much as jiggle. I’m probably damaging the expensive parts of the exhaust by tugging on them constantly. I certainly pulled a muscle in my back. Anyway the obvious way to fix the problem was to cut the pipe down a bit.

I borrowed a friend’s Dremel tool and rapidly burned the fiberglass cutting bit to nothing. So I bought an eleven-dollar tungsten cutting bit and rapidly broke the bit in half, trapping the bit in the chuck. Went back to my friend’s house, she showed me how to remove jammed, broken bits (apparently this is a common and simple problem). I went back to the hardware store and bought a five-pack of the fiberglass cutting bits I’d first tried — a bargain at six dollars for the lot — and used up three and a half before I got a donut of muffler cut off. A sanding wheel to flatten all the scratches I’ve put on the thing over the past few days, and I’m set. The muffler fits smoothly (i.e. liberal use of WD-40 and a mallet) into tube A, tube A fits around the main exhaust outlet B. Assuming I haven’t broken anything while fixing this, I’m done!

Well, there’s this bit that’s supposed to go around Tube A, and tighten down, but I can’t quite fit it, so I’m not going to put it on. Seems well-enough attached anyway. Also I wonder if WD-40 was the right lubricant for something that’s going to get very, very hot. I imagine I’ll have some smoking and burning the first time I start up, especially since there’s plenty of half-burned fiberglass and powdered rust in the muffler now. And of course there’s the nagging conviction that cutting the front end of the muffler is not the best way to make it fit; this might totally screw up the airflow and break things. I mean, isn’t a stock muffler supposed to just… fit on?

Nonetheless: I AM A MAN BECAUSE I CAN USE POWER TOOLS. And because I used ear protection, but not lung, hand, arm, or eye protection. It wasn’t CONVENIENT! Well, I was wearing glasses. That counts, right? Sort of? I’m not blind! Also I have spread burnt fiberglass all over the basement. At least now I won’t set off the neighbors’ car alarms when I ride home.