ante diem xi kalends june 2003 c.e. Yeah, I forgot to upload last night because around six in the evening I shut everything off due to the thunderbolts and lightning, grabbed A Fire Upon the Deep and fell asleep an hour later like an old man. I'm sleeping in the living room again and it's a happy thing because it feels cooler in there and there are Spot benefits. First, Spot will sleep with me. Second, Spot will not come over to my face and do the happy wake-up routine. Since I went to bed so early I ended up waking up three times before I was supposed to wake up but that didn't make me cranky. Please note that when I do sleep in the living room I get minor bouts of panic since I realize that three feet above my head is a huge pile of comics, books and magazines which could be tipped over at anytime should a curious white cat with black spots happen to investigate them. In Yer Dreams! The gist of last night's dream was how my father came out to visit me despite his doctor's warnings. I never let him into my apartment so he ended up staying at a nearby motel. Unfortunately he didn't know that he could park in the street, parking in the street between the hours of two and six in the morning is illegal in New Jersey, so he parked in the parking lot of a library behind this house which doesn't exist in waking life. Short story longer, his car was towed and we tried to get it back so he could get home or entertain himself while I am at work during the day. We head over to the CSPD and bother with the bureaucracy to liberate his vehicle and leave feeling like nothing was accomplished and my spirits dip even lower since I feel responsible for the situation. I decide to steal a school bus and we start speeding around Colorado Springs, weaving between cars and tipping over double and triple decker busses. I slam on the brakes and my bus does a 180º, slams into a building and we get out to meet up with a couple of my father's friends. I don't recognize any of his friends but he seems to know them and acts happy to see them. We're walking along together until we get to the doors of a bank, they run in and start a big hold-up much to my father's pleasure. We go inside and walk around while the other folks are frozen like statues in fear of their lives from the gun-toting bank robbers. The thieves grab their sacks of money and start running out the door which seems to end the stasis of the bank customers and security guards. When my father's friends are almost out the door I notice they left behind a cashbox full of fives and tens so I grab it thinking "What the fuck?" and start the mad dash towards escape. NPR Part II NPR is continuing their report regarding the FCC's move towards deregulating the radio market and the number of stations a single corporation can own at one time in a market. I wrote about this in an earlier entry. While listening to their report I resigned myself to the idea that things suck all over and there really isn't anything one can do to make any meaningful difference in the world even if you choose your own battles. NPR did a story about the Bloomberg administration in NYC is handing out silly summonses to their citizens to boost revenues. One guy, a barber, was fined for sitting on a milk crate outside his store while waiting for a customer. That's the only example I can think of offhand. Apparently a community like Colorado Springs isn't that important for NPR to mention in their news but they are important enough to get an outlet at the local college station. I'm sure there's news somewhere in this sleepy southwestern burg but either the current regime in Colorado Springs keeps everything under wraps hoping the citizenry remain apathetic or there's nothing noteworthy going on besides human interest stories and the usual crime stories. And now, a tangent Bloomberg was quoted as saying there are performance measures but there aren't any ticket quotas for the NYPD. I was waiting to hear if the chocolate rations were being raised from three grams to two grams. Call a duck a fucking duck rather than a rooster because everyone knows it's a god damned duck. These actions are quite egregious because the government is using the judicial system as a source of revenue rather than for justice. One of the worst examples of using justice for increased revenue has happened right here in Colorado Springs. A young lady was driving her car in a school zone and happened to be caught going over the speed limit in that school zone during what Colorado Springs considers to be school hours. This woman of gentle and thoughtful demeanor has never had a traffic violation in her life. Unfortunately the esteemed city council and mayor of Colorado Springs have deemed it necessary to make doubled fines for such infractions mandatory for all infractors. Heh. When this young lady appeared before the judge to make her case the judge apologized to her because of city council passing this ordinance because in any other situation he would have reduced the fines or dismissed them altogether considering her record. Now this judge did not come across as being a bleeding heart liberal but a white haired hardass who would abide by the letter of the law which reinforced his words as being honest rather than shallow and simply for the sake of the people who were subject to this outrageous situation. The judge repeats that city council is to blame and he no way of making judgements beyond the ordinance. Why did they double fines? For the children. How can you not do it for the children unless your heart pumps cold, black, oily blood and you knifefuck kittens in your off-time. Of course the children aren't to be blamed for being used as a straw man argument for more safety ordinances and laws. I think I just used the term "straw man argument" incorrectly BUT SO WHAT I'M TYPING NOT WRITING AND I HAVE A SELF-IMPOSED DEADLINE TO MEET WHAT WITH MISSING YESTERDAY AND HAVING TO WRITE TWO ENTRIES. And that young lady with the big fine grew up to be... Roy Cohn. And now you know the rest... of the story. NPR Part II (continued) This would've been a fine story for NPR to cover or for any of the budding cub reporters of Colorado College. Yet NPR doesn't seem to consider stories that are important to Colorado Springs to be important enough for their nationwide network. KRCC couldn't cover this story since NPR states that participating stations can not have their own news desks or do any news commentary. This was a big issue when they fired this one guy the month I arrived here for making an offhand comment on an NPR story about the Supreme Court. Maybe I'm spoiled and expect better. I lived somewhere where I was in spitting or pissing distance of newsy places and the news outlets there gave equal time to local stories that weren't in New York City or Philadelphia. Why isn't it like this everywhere else??? Probably because I'm an arrogant east coaster who believes if it's good for us then it's good for everyone else. Perhaps it's due to the fact that everything seems so homogenized out here that people really don't care about what happens locally and they rather live vicariously through the coasts or the distant metropolises like Denver which isn't even populated by Colorado natives. So fatty, you're asking yourself and me, why don't you write something for the local newspapers? I'm a hack. I type, I do not write. I don't have the patience for rejection or the stomach for success. Journalism, on any level, requires research and I don't need research when I have spivak's razor. Of course if some sociopathic asshole could get a job at the New York Times (free reg) then why couldn't I get a freelance position at the Gazette or the Independent? I'm lazy, I'm not black and it would take away from me being able to write for you, gentle reader. Heaven preserve us should this site become neglected or completely abandoned without any catch-up entries to fill the intervening voids. Plus I'm really good at excuses.