I, uh, I wouldn't have ever expected Lou Reed and Pavarotti to collaborate. But they did:



You ask me, it doesn't really work. If for no reason that Lou Reed rocked it up instead of keeping it to nearly just speaking, which he did in the original, and... well, Pavarotti, dude, I respect you, but... shkabooming¹ this song is wrong for it.

¹Shkabooming: Transitive verb, meaning "adding unnecessarily overblown vocal or arrangement elements to." YES, I just made it up. Don't like it? Go to hell.

2008 has sucked so very badly in so many ways. But I think things are looking up. And this year will eventually end. One way or another, as Mr. Darnielle of the Mountain Goats says,

I am going to make it through this year, if it kills me.

(Note to Mountain Goats fans: One good thing has remained constant not just in 2008, but since 1998: a girl called Katherine continues to want a little of my time!)

Flashback to about 6 years ago: My beloved 1991 Acura Integra is about to throw its transmission. My wife and I, flush with some leftover Internet cash, are looking into a new car to replace B.L.A.I. And Lo! upon the market did come the new Ford Thunderbird, an undeniably beautiful car. We call around and find a dealer that is not charging an extra markup on the retail price. Upon visiting the dealer, we test-drive the car (and Mmmmm, even a small V8 is still a damn V8) and look at several different models and colors. At one point, when my wife is not standing there, I open the trunk and discover the trade-off between having a convertible and having some trunk space.

The salesman looks at me, sees a young, white, married yet childless male and literally sniggers, then uncorks this line - "Hey, all you really gotta fit in there is a set of clubs, right?" To which I replied "Um... I don't golf." He, being a salesman, recovered quickly though I'm at a loss to remember how. We bought the car anyway, and today it's still a pretty cool car and also, I'd like to note, paid off.

But flash forward to today, and to irony:

It turns out that you actually can't fit a set of clubs in the trunk. Not a set with wheels on it, anyway, though I don't think the wheels were the actual problem - the problem was the woods, which were Too. Bloody. Long. I had to haul them out of the bag and chuck them in the passenger seat before I could cram the rest of the golf bag into the trunk¹.

So hey, Mr. Ford Salesman, no. No, you were not right. On any number of counts.

¹ I would have discovered this long ago had I actually played golf, instead of playing once every several years, today being the first with clubs I inherited a few years back.

I don't really know much about economics except what seems right to me, in combination with what I think I know about human nature. So, two recent situations occur to me:

1) We had a minor yet still quite obvious earthquake in Southern California today. No doubt all of you who have any LJ friends in Southern California... er... such as, well, me, heard about it. One thing this earthquake reminded me of is something we've somewhat neglected over the past few years, namely the need to have a few supplies put away - some bottled water, some canned food, etc etc. Currently we have one very elderly 2.5 gallon water bottle which seems to have evaporated to about 1 gallon, and a few cans of green beans and corn.

I expect that I am not the only person noticing this. I further expect that those who run grocery stores are also noticing this. If I were them, right now I might raise my prices on these "supply" things just a bit - perhaps from $2.99 for a 2.5 gallon jug of water to $3.29. Not gouging, just... taking advantage of a situation. We're adding no more than a dollar or two to each shopper's bill. Same deal with, say, canned green beans. They normally go for about 69 cents. Why not charge 79 cents? It's not like you're denying anybody any food. Nor are you making obscene profits. Is it any different than charging more for heavy coats in September, or for bathing suits in April?

Is this a problem? I don't even know whether it's happening. It would be different if we'd had a major quake that knocked out all services and somebody was charging $20 per gallon of water... wouldn't it be?

Anyway, I intend to stock up a good-sized earthquake larder in our otherwise useless garage. But I'm going to wait to buy the supplies for a week or two. Hopefully the earth will cooperate. Only God and Tom Kovach know.

2) Gas prices. They've been coming down a bit recently, which seems to fit with what I've heard inasmuch as the current supply is much larger than it normally would be at this time of year - usually, in mid-summer, refiners are scrambling to keep up, but currently (apparently) there is a larger supply than normal. Clearly, demand is down, and people are driving less. To which I say hey, cool. There are both left-wing, right-wing, and entirely non-political reasons to use less oil, all of which appeals to my semi-libertarian self.

Still, though, it seems like prices are coming down awwwfully slowly as compared to per-barrel prices. Now, according to the guy I heard on NPR, many refiners and gas station owners were slow to raise prices and were thus taking a hit, so now is their time to recoup those losses. But I have to wonder... were they ever actually selling at a loss, or were they just selling at much less of a profit than they were used to? And is this, as with me the theoretical store owner above who is willing to snag an extra 10 cents per shopper, even a problem?

It's worth noting that gas station owners buy their gas in massive multi-thousand gallon chunks when they fill up their huge underground tanks. So even if crude drops to $44 a barrel tomorrow, the station owners bought their gas when it was being refined from crude at $144. So they really *can't* drop prices... unless they can because they know that they'll be getting better prices for their shipment in a few days and they can slowly drop prices now, charging more expensive prices on the cheaper gas they'll be buying in a few days. Or... something. It's all very complicated. I know someone I can ask about it, who used to own five gas stations, but I don't see him very often so for the moment I'm asking the Internet.

3) Today I saw a sign today which had clearly been professionally painted onto a store window which said "Over a 100+ designs." That seems wrong to me. Either it's "Over a hundred" or "Over one hundred" but you can't have it both ways. Your thoughts?

A Ms. Amelie Gillette, author of the Onion's weekly "The Hater - Pop Culture Something Or Other" asks us, "Star Whats?"

I've never seen "Star Wars." This is partly because I was either nonexistent or significantly lacking in motor skills when they first came out, and partly because I'm generally not interested in outer-space adventures. I don't just mean the Star Wars prequels starring Hayden Chritensen and Natalie Portman as the world's most wooden members of future space royalty. I've never seen any of them, including "Star Wars," "The Empire Strikes Back," and "Return of the Jedi." What's more unless they suddenly somehow become about something other than outer space, I don't plan on seeing them. Which usually makes people pretty angry, or at least shocked.

She goes on to explain that she has received a Cliffs Notes of Star Wars because so much pop culture references Star Wars, and how that is in fact better than watching it.

Well, I am neither angry nor shocked, though I am surprised that if you wish to bill yourself as someone versed in pop culture, that you would actively ignore one of the largest artifacts of pop culture. Imagine, for instance, an Egyptologist who declined to visit Tut's tomb, because hey, enough people have talked about it, I get the general idea.

But really, it is the smugness that bothers me. And the idea that it is about an outer-space adventure. No random outer-space adventure could capture the mind the way Star Wars does. It is, and I assure you I am not the first person to mention this, a retelling of the Joseph Campbell hero story with a thin veneer of sci-fi pasted on. It's not ABOUT outer space, eejit, it's about people, and it happens in outer space.

The best science fiction, which I am sorry to say that Star Wars actually isn't, uses new and imagined technologies and strange settings to explore, well, us. Isaac Asimov tried to explain and define what is human. Poul Anderson used sci-fi to attempt to find an answer to the question of who is God and why it's important. Niven and Pournelle kept chopping away at what is right and good and moral and why. And Harlan Ellison kept reminding us how once we thought we'd found the answers, that we were terribly, terribly wrong and needed to start over and think again.

It is a shame that most people's view of "Science Fiction" is still set by, say, Flash Gordon and the like. And it's kind of sad, I guess, that someone who calls herself a pop-culture expert refuses to see a movie about the hero in all of us, merely because it's not set in her home town.

Today as part of an "all-hands" meeting which I didn't belong at but had to attend anyway, I was treated to a presentation on health illiteracy. Most of you will probably be unsurprised to learn that a good 30% of the US population is functionally illiterate - they may, painfully, be able to read, but comprehension is nil. They couldn't find an intersection on a map. Etc, etc. Naturally, complicated health information or prescription instructions are even worse, and may be so for the more literate of us. Among the stories given to demonstrate this problem was that of the guy who received a bottle of 100 30-milligram blood pressure pills. The instructions were "take 30 mg. every other day." After 5 days he'd taken 90 of them, landed himself in the ICU, and died.

So naturally all this is bad and expensive for the health-care system and health-care professionals must take steps and all of that... but somewhere deep inside my evil lizard brain formed the thought "Well, maybe we're weeding out the stupid people." Immediately followed by the even more evil thought "Won't work - people generally reach breeding age before getting sick enough to need to see a doctor. Gonna have to try something else."

*sigh* They say confession is good for the soul. Maybe so, although I'm finding that it's definitely good for padding out my journal.

This is only of interest to Los Angeles area residents, but it ought to be of great interest:

Metro is inviting public comment on the Metro Westside Extension Transit Corridor (aka "What the heck are we going to do about Wilshire Boulevard?") Check out this press release at http://www.metro.net/news_info/press/metro_176.htm

If you can't see that, or if you'd rather have a brief summary, here is the important part:

The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) will be conducting several meetings in October to obtain public comment on the agency’s Westside Transit Corridor Study, which will analyze various transit alternatives and environmental impacts for the possible extension of the Metro Red Line or Metro Purple Line to West Los Angeles.

Agency consultants will evaluate potential environmental impacts for several transit modes, including Bus Rapid Transit on dedicated lanes, at-grade or aerial Light Rail Transit, subway or aerial heavy rail.

All meetings are from 6-8 p.m. and will be held at the following locations:

Tuesday, October 9, Emerson Middle School, 1650 Selby Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024
Thursday, October 11, Pan Pacific Recreation Center, 7600 Beverly Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90036
Tuesday, October 16, Wilshire United Methodist Church, 4350 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90005
Wednesday, October 17, Beverly Hills Public Library Auditorium, 444 N. Rexford Drive, Beverly Hills, CA 90210
Thursday, October 18, Santa Monica Public Library, 601 Santa Monica Boulevard, Santa Monica, CA 90401

I, for one, plan to attend the meeting at the Pan Pacific Rec Center. I don't think I'll be able to get to the one in Beverly Hills, though I wish I could - I'd love to see if the residents of Beverly Hills mobilize once again to attempt to deny any sort of transit coming through their town.

So why the hell should you care? Don't government agencies just do whatever the hell they want to do? The answer is actually no, they don't. They're not allowed to. But they often get to, due to public apathy, or sometimes they are prevented from taking pretty obvious steps that would benefit millions due to the yelling of a few obnoxious people.

The trouble is that normally, *very few* people show up to give their comment. It's usually the same 10-15 people who show up to all of these sorts of things, and it's ONLY them. So these few crackpots who do show up have a disproportionate weight, because public agencies are required by law to take all public comment seriously (and show that "hey, this was the public comment we got" if they are challenged on any action they take.) If only a few dozen normal people showed up and filled out comment cards, I assure you, it would make a *huge* difference.

If you absolutely cannot make it to any of these meetings, please take the time to write a very brief letter stating that you support an extension of the Red Line down Wilshire Boulevard (or whatever it is that you believe.) Send your letter to:

Mr. David Mieger, AICP, Project Manager and Deputy Executive Officer
Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro)
Mail Stop: 99-22-5
One Gateway Plaza
Los Angeles, CA 90012

If you can't even do that, please comment at the “Contact Us” page of the project web site at www.metro.net/westside, or by phone on the project information line at (213) 922-6932.

Please know, however, that a comment submitted in person is rated more highly than a letter, which is rated more highly than a phone call, which is rated more highly than a comment submitted on a website. So if you can show up to one of those meetings, please do.

Whether you're for it or against it, make your voice heard. Participate in your government, people.

My personal opinion, for what it's worth, is that there ought to be a subway or maybe even aerial heavy rail, as long as it connects seamlessly with the existing Red Line at Wilshire/Western and is faster than driving, which shouldn't be hard given the traffic on the 10 or on Wilshire. But whether you oppose mass transit or love it, EVERYBODY ought to oppose dedicated bus lanes. They work in some places, but not on a corridor as congested as Wilshire. If we're not going to do anything, we'd better at least let as many cars through as possible. Transit only works if it's easier, or faster, or a lot cheaper than private cars - trying to force people to get out of their cars, such as with HOV lanes, doesn't work. This is why grade-separated transit is the only thing that's going to work along Wilshire.

INT. - A STRETCHY ROOM WITH NO WINDOWS AND NO DOORS

The room has been stretching, changing what appeared to be normal portraits into scenes of mortal danger for all those pictured in the portraits. A creepy narrator begins to speak about the "corruptible, mortal state" of those in the portraits.

NIBLET gets a bit sketchy and clings on to MAMA.



CREEPY NARRATOR
...you will see that this room has NO windows, and NO doors. Heh heh heh. Of course... there's always MY way.


INT. - CEILING
The ceiling suddenly becomes transparent, revealing a corpse hanging from a crossbeam, possibly one of the actual creepy moments in this attraction.

The lights go out and the room is plunged into sudden darkness. People in the room begin to scream in a fake manner.


NIBLET
I wanna go outsiiiide!

ROOM
Hahahahah!



Poor little guy. He's only three. But he has perfect comedy timing, he really does. Once we got out of that room and into the "dancing ghosts" section of the Haunted Mansion, he was basically okay with it.

And he was really, absolutely and truly, the best guy during the entire day. Despite getting utterly exhausted, he was totally the best little guy the whole day at Disney Land. He seemed to have a pretty good time, too. It's easy for me to forget that he is only 3 (and just barely 3 at that) because he is such a little man. Lord knows we saw enough other kids who couldn't contain themselves as well as he did, and they were, like, 32.

Anyway, apparently early aging runs in the family, because I realized today that despite having only last week grown out of the 18-34 demographic, I am already *well* out of it. You see, when we first arrived, I saw a girl wearing a shirt that something about "Hollister" and "So Cal Love" and I thought, heh, well, okay there, little town of Hollister, you're finding a new way to sell some shirts and stuff.

I kept seeing it throughout the day and I thought "wow, this town is pretty hip and cool, somehow, and they're having a Disneyland day in this central California town."

It took seeing a teenaged girl with a frankly astonishingly revealing pair of shorts which should have read "Juicy" but instead read "Hollister" to realize that, oh - this has nothing to do with Hollister, California - it's a new brand of clothing. It took waaaaaay too long for me to figure it out, frankly.

I swear to you on all that is holy that I had not seen nor heard of this brand until today.

And so I am officially old. I expect to be introduced to further new brands of clothing over the coming years, but only as further surprises as my child will demand clothing with these brands.

The fight which will ensue is further proof of how old I now am. But: As of last week I can run for President, by golly. So expect to see me throwing my hat (my NON-BRANDED hat) into the ring any day now.

Children of the 70s and 80s, peruse the various toys presented in this fine compendium of Christmas Wishes, and let it bring back the fond memories of toys gone by.

Then weep for your lost childhood.