Let them eat fudge
Fudgelike or cakelike? This is too hard. I just want brownies, not some kind of ethical dilemma.
Author: Bill Cash
What’s wrong with people? II
A word of caution about the Happy Greek. A couple months ago, I got home late on a Sunday night and wanted to buy hummus. Unfortunately, I got to the restaurant about half an hour late, and even though they still had customers in there, the mean woman at the bar yelled at me and told me they were closed. She knew I wanted to buy the hummus! It’s $8.50 a pint! Take my money, please!
Tonight I bought some during dinner for take-away. Not only was I taxed on it, when the waitress brought it out, each pint was only about 2/3 full. Well, at these disgustingly high prices, I just had to send it back. When she came back (it certainly wasn’t her fault) she told me that the owner said it was correct, but he went ahead and added some more anyway.
Excuse me, but at $68 a gallon, you would think I could get the damn containers full, without the attitude and without the tax. I mean, it’s very good, but come on! Anyone else got a horror story?
Recent events and COTA observations
In case you’ve been wondering where I’ve been over the last several months, I’m still here.  Moving downtown has had the effect of joining the witness protection program. Add to that the fact that I now have a new Rival brand Crock-Pot Slow Cooker and I couldn’t be more home-bound. So here’s an update from Bill.
I got a parking ticket last week from the good folks at the City of Columbus Parking Violations Bureau. I realize I’m ruining any future political aspirations by admitting this in such a public forum, but I have to explain how it happened. The short version of this story is, the meters on the new 670 cap are enforced from 7am until 10pm on Saturdays, except for the fact that they’re not enforced from 4pm to 6pm. (Logical for a day that doesn’t have a rush hour, isn’t it?) Anyway, I tried to get out of it because I didn’t bother to read the sticker carefully and because the meters just a hundred feet away shut off at six, but it didn’t work and they sent me a nice all-caps letter telling me to pay up. Oh well — it was my mistake. Anyway, gentle reader, be careful parking on that bridge.
I have to give a shout out to the good people at the Mozilla Organization. I got their new Firefox browser and it is really good. In fact, it is the first web browser since Netscape 2.0 I’ve liked better than Internet Explorer. It’s based on the old Netscape code, in fact, so it’s nice to come full circle. They’re pitching it as a good alternative to the security nightmare that is Internet Explorer. Even if you don’t worry about that, though, it’s really fast, and it has tabbed browsing, great keyboard shortcuts, and this wicked cool orange fire logo. Best of all, Windows SP2 makes it pretty seamless to replace IE with Firefox. So, click this button, and if you like it, then, all right.
I feel compelled to discuss the recent dust-up in the papers about COTA and its last-ditch attempt to save its light rail dreams. This week, MORPC agreed to help COTA borrow $4 million for an environmental study on the line. At the same time, the Federal Transit Administration reminded us that its support for the COTA rail plan came with an expiration date, and the support ends soon because COTA never came up with the local matching funds to build the line.
COTA is therefore taking one step forward and one step back. Some of my friends, and some letter writers in the Dispatch, have suggested that we need to get this sales tax moving so that we can regain federal approval. Faithful friends and readers of mine will know nobody likes the idea of urban rail transport — or anything that supplements the highway in our cities — more than I do. But as I’ve been saying for years, COTA’s been so mismanaged that I just can’t support a tax increase until it cleans up its act. Firing the censured manager Ron Barnes was a great first step, but the agency has a lot more to do to rebuild the public confidence. How about starting with firing drivers who run red lights? And fixing the signs that still don’t make sense? How about a web site that works? When COTA takes basic steps such as these and improves its existing operations, I’ll be able to push for the tax increase. Until then, I vote no.
And finally, on a related issue, I believe it’s a mistake for COTA to depend on the sales tax to raise its revenues. Because a light rail system is a fixed, physical infrastructure improvement, and it does primarily benefit those landowners in the region of the corridor, the economically optimal funding source would be a property tax — say on those landowners within two miles of the route plus all of Downtown. This undercuts some of the legitimate argument of those who say they would never use the system and shouldn’t have to pay for it. (However, any decreases in air pollution would benefit the region as a whole, so there should be some way to recover that benefit through a more broad-based tax.) The other main argument I have with a sales tax is that it is regressive, which means the poor spend the largest share of their income meeting the burden of the tax, and the irony of that is that better transit service benefits the poor more than anyone else. The sales tax giveth away and taketh back.
The last COTA levy, which was countywide, predictably had its greatest support along the North High Street corridor and lowest support in the low-density south. The tax increase could have passed comfortably in certain quarters of the city. COTA should explore a funding mechanism, some kind of special district, that would put the cost on those who would use the service and who demonstrably wanted it the most.
Electronic insults?
My TiVo has started recording the Weather Channel again… What is this supposed to tell me, here? Am I that boring? Or perhaps it’s picked up on my mercurial temperament…
Rhyming
97.1 is challenging its listeners to find a rhyme for chartreuse. What about abstruse?
What I did on my summer vacation
It’s been a while since I’ve written. Since it’s my policy not really to talk about the boring details of my day or my week, I’ve been reluctant to write much at all. Actually, my life has actually been really busy, but it’s all been that kind of minutiae I’ve had to manage. When you take it day to day, it’s not so bad, but when it’s added up it’s a bit of a fright.
So, in the last couple of months, here’s what I’ve been up to.
I’ve moved downtown into the horribly misspelled “ConneXtions Lofts” building. It’s a nice place to be, and I’ve been having fun worrying about what kind of furniture to buy and what to paint the walls. It’s kind of got me in a state of paralysis because I don’t want to decide. Also, I’m really tired of shopping and choosing. I have managed to spend $497.11 at the Container Store and I feel like I don’t have a damn thing to show for it. (Come see how I finally have plastic bins to put my Thurgood Marshall black history stamps in!)
And in minor news: I made a great weeklong vacation to D.C., Delaware, N.J., and Philadelphia, where I visited the National Constitution Center. My good friend and co-worker Rajni Dutta was made a citizen of the United States at the federal District Court here in Columbus! And Sunday I squoze in one last hurrah, a trip to Cedar Point, thusly capping a pretty good summer.
One other thing I’d say in apology for not writing is, you know that I also like to discuss political events here, but again, so much of what I’d say is obvious or would have been covered by the commentariat so much better. I can say that I checked the voter registrations of almost everybody I know in town and they were all correctly registered — congratulations, Franklin County friends! I’m sure you will all vote correctly. Sample ballots will be available for download on billcash.org later this month.
I’ll leave you with this last thought. I was at the gym recently and overheard a guy say to another guy, “Hell no, I don’t want to go to some damn web site and see somebody head get chopped off!” Can you remember a time when a conversation like that would have been unusual? It seems rather long ago.
2015 update: I don’t even remember what beheading we were looking at back in 2004.
I hate Google
Today, the Times reports on MSN Search, Microsoft’s answer to Google. According to the Times, “The new look consists of an empty white screen that loads blissfully quickly, even over dial-up connections, and an empty, neatly centered text box where you’re supposed to type in what you’re looking for. … In short, MSN Search couldn’t look more like Google if you photocopied it.
Well, if you enter “bill cash” into MSN Search, this web site comes up #2, whereas if you enter the same phrase (without quotes) into Google, it doesn’t even rank in the top one hundred. So my advice to you is to immediately begin using MSN Search for all of your searching needs.
(Amusingly, the #1 MSN search result is a web site about Bill Gates’ money.) (This web log entry was sponsored by MSN Search.)
City gets cleaner
I just witnessed Columbus City Council pass ordinance 1095-2004, which bans smoking in all public places. Businesses permitting violations of the law are subject to a $150 fine per offense. It takes effect in 90 days.
I went with Marc, which was quite a thrill, since he seems to know everyone in city government. We sat in the front row of the balcony, where a restless, wheezing, crusty crowd of lovelies wore matching T-shirts reading “KEEP OUR BUTTS INSIDE.” The stagnant environment up there only reinforced my desire for cleaner air.
After what seemed like not too much boring utility stuff, the ordinance came up for discussion. Charleta Tavares was barely two or three minutes into the reading when a man ten feet away from me on the balcony raised his hand. “I have a question!” he yelled. Then he started a shouting match with President Habash. Pretty soon a beefy policeman came by to talk with him. This got rather a lot of my attention, but I think I got the gist of what Tavares was saying.
They added a number of amendments to the proposed ordinance, which were asked for by the Council members, including an exemption for private clubs. Marc and I were a little confused about that, because the ordinance was sold as a worker safety issue, and we thought that was a pretty significant loophole. It turns out this refers to non-profit clubs only.
I can’t bore you with all the details, but I will share some highlights. When Tavares announced that private collections of ashtrays would be allowed in public places, the audience troublemaker, apparently confused, yelled, “This is bullshit!” and “You gonna have to take me out of here!” Which, sadly, the comely policeman had to do.
When Sensenbrenner voted no, he got a weary round of applause from the “butts” people, who knew they were going to lose. When it was announced that the amendment passed five to one, there was a serious cheer from the audience, including yours truly, who couldn’t help jumping to his feet like it was some kind of awesome play.
On the way out, we got into an argument with a guy who had been at the meeting speaking on how the Near East Side was getting short shrift. “Black men get killed a lot more often by guns than smoking, but you don’t hear about that. It’s hypocrisy.” I couldn’t help pointing out that smoking and shooting people are now both illegal. Then he said it was hypocritical that we still allow smoking in private homes. “I agree! Let’s ban that, too!” I taunted. “Bring it on!” (I was embarrassed to have appropriated a John Kerry slogan, but I hear it so often.)
And finally, as we left the building, we marched through a cloud of secondhand smoke spitefully produced by the ordinance’s opponents. Marc cutely began hacking up a storm. Unfortunately, the only retort they could come up with is unprintable here (but George W. Bush used it on the campaign trail in 2000).
As we walked past the man from the Libertarian Party, who did not offer us a bumper sticker, and past the signs reading “Hitler / Stalin / Charleta Tavares”, I couldn’t help getting deep whiffs of the sweet smell of democracy and the sharp scent of common sense. I hope I witnessed lasting history and, if you’ll allow it, felt the healthy winds of change in my city.
(Excitingly, the City’s web site on the ordinance was already updated with the correct vote count by the time I got home.)
COTA fallout
I just read in the Dispatch that COTA has chosen not to go to the November ballot for more money. Ron Barnes is quoted as saying, “Let’s become efficient before we even talk about the levy.” This sounds good, and I’ve already been saying that if I had to vote on it today, I would oppose giving COTA any more money. That really hurts me to say, because I very strongly believe in the cities and in public transportation. But I have little confidence in the management today. They may say they need more money to do a better job, but there are plenty of free things they could be doing and they’re not.
Another letter from a COTA employee criticizing the management appeared this week in the paper also. I’ve been looking for a response to either letter, which I definitely welcome.
Also this week, one of my friends pointed out that not all of the maps were removed from the downtown bus shelters. Some stops, in fact, still have maps from 1998. That’s even worse than no map at all.
I feel bad, because I want this agency to succeed, so I’m uncomfortable being critical, but at the same time, I can’t very well just say that more money will solve everything.
COTA and self-aggrandizement
Sometimes complaining isn’t only fun, it actually could get a little attention. I read a column by a man who had been on a COTA citizens’ advisory committee, who was disillusioned by the closing of the committee, and also by his view of COTA’s apparent perception of itself as an agency that provides useful transportation only to the poor and the disabled, ignoring hundreds of thousands of average people.
So I wrote a letter to the editor in response, and today the Dispatch printed it, at the top of the page, next to a cute little picture of a bus I think they drew just for me! They did only a tiny bit of editing. For my out-of-town readers, here is the edited version:
I couldn’t agree more with Michael Meckler’s recent Forum column in The Dispatch about the failure of the Central Ohio Transit Authority to see the full potential of its service.
In 2000, COTA announced its new Commuter Check program, which let employees receive part of their pay as tax-free transit vouchers. It’s a great deal for employees, employers and COTA. But in four years, COTA has not managed to bring the program to Nationwide, where I work Downtown with 7,000 other employees.
Nationwide, Downtown’s largest employer, told me it was too expensive to participate. COTA should be stepping up and covering some of the cost if that’s what it takes to attract this kind of ridership, but you don’t see this kind of initiative on the part of COTA.
Recently, Nationwide announced it would move 480 suburban employees Downtown. COTA should be at the suburban location every day, forcing bus schedules into the hands of anyone who walks by. This is a golden chance for them to easily target hundreds of new commuters, many of whom will have no idea where to park. The agency should be getting them on board from the very start, and offer anybody moving Downtown free rides for a month.
But COTA doesn’t seem to care about attracting new riders.
- Most buses seem to carry schedules for a route other than the one you’re on, or no schedules at all.
- Its Web site, even after a much-trumpeted redesign, is still awkward and hard to use. Try following its advice and typing “Broad and High” into the trip planner. You’ll get a list of 44 different choices; Broad and High is 11th on the list. And they finally added maps of all routes only recently.
- They ripped out the maps from all of the Downtown bus stops years ago and replaced them with useless, broken digital displays.
I know that some people, against all odds, do take the initiative to track down maps and schedules, find their bus stop and become regular riders. But it’s too rare. More often, I hear stories like Meckler’s, that he tried to stick with it for years but finally gave up.
COTA is like a cult in reverse: Nobody can come in and everybody leaves.
Baldwin Tower is imploded
Grant Hospital’s Baldwin Tower (before implosion)
Even though I hate getting up early at weekends, I decided to drag myself out of bed so I could watch Baldwin Tower be imploded this morning.
My youthful pal A.J. and I biked up to the top story of the giant parking ramp on Capital Street. (It takes up an entire quarter-block and it’s about twelve stories tall. Quite a building itself.) There were about eighty people on the top floor of the garage with us, including two policemen with their cars.
A number of dorks with Yashica cameras showed up and attempted to set up their equipment in varying configurations.
It was a nice day, a little humid, and it was early enough that the sun slanted through the building in a pleasing way. You could see where the glass in certain parts of the stairwell had been cut away—afterward I read these were the floors with the explosives. The antennae on the roof seemed to waver lazily, maybe due to the humidity. I was surprised no one had taken those. Our view was great—because we were northwest of the building and it had been built diagonally to the street, we could see the entire building square on, almost down to the bottom.
Then, at ten seconds after nine, BANG BANG BANG BANG. The glass heaved and flexed, but didn’t seem to shatter. I saw the building turn red very briefly—I don’t know if this was explosives or some trick of the sun—and then it quickly fell into itself. It was like the building were a cereal box being crushed by a giant foot. Left to right, cell by cell, the windows and floors dumped down, down, like a good game of Connect Four when you pull the lever and all the checkers come clattering out the bottom of the game.
A cheer went up from the assembled crowd. The cameramen complained that it didn’t take the twelve seconds they were promised and they’d had no time to prepare. A huge cloud of dust more than twice the height of the building rushed up, nearly enveloping some people who’d somehow sneaked onto the roof of the neighboring building. The cloud slowly drifted north. (More than five minutes later, you could barely see Columbus State from where we were. It was a great deal of dust and who knows what was in it.)
I watched the cloud for some time. I thought about the insurance implications. I thought about how it’s sad to see any building go, even one that was apparently unloved enough to be pulled down.
What is it in human nature that brought all of us there on that early morning? A.J. said I just like destruction, but I’m not sure (I replied I would also come to watch a building get built in twelve seconds). Although there was indeed a cheer from the crowd, I was vaguely discomforted by hearing those bangs and seeing that thing fall on itself. It has been hard to think about any building imploding in a long time. And my conservative nature wants things to stay the same, not to die or to be destroyed. Maybe I needed to stand by and watch destruction in honor of creation itself. It’s futility, but I want there to be permanence in life.
Eventually, the dust dissipated, but I didn’t care to watch it settle completely. We biked down through the garage and headed away.
America loses a friend
Last night, Alistair Cooke, a veteran BBC reporter and general world culture figure, died at home in New York. He was 95 years old.
I think he was a great man, a master of subtlety, very endearing, and touchingly funny and sincere. Even in his eighties and nineties, which are the only years I had to get to know him, he stayed sharp, and put together a weekly radio segment known as the “Letter From America.” He is best known for this segment, where he observes and comments on our country from a British point of view, and I listened dozens of times. For an Anglophile like me, Cooke’s dispatches let me feel as though he and I were sharing a joke, rolling our eyes over the dotty, amusing ways of our over-eager, good-natured American cousins. Alistair Cooke was a connoisseur of absurdity, like I am, and his gentle presence will be missed. You can read the BBC’s leader on his life and career.
Some advertising in today’s New York Times on the Web, however, creates a jarring scene for those who read about Cooke’s long and fruitful life. The obituary contained an ad for the movie Never Die Alone. If you are interested, the full Times article is still available.
Revenge
It’s 11:30 p.m., and my upstairs neighbors are running their washing machine, again, though only the experienced would know that it is not a helicopter landing. Three polite notes have done nothing to stop it.
– New York Times, 21 March 2004, in an article on filtering out life, including by using noise-canceling headphones
The real message to readers: “If you cannot get results by polite means, try adjudicating your disputes in front of a million people in the Sunday Times.”
A visit to the grocery store
Well, I’m fresh back from a trip to the wonderful Kroger — a trip that, I maintain, would have been made partly unnecessary by the Fishline.
It appears the pimply, nice U-Scan boy who used to work every single night has quit. I haven’t seen him in about two months. This a shame, because I love him. Even if it’s actually slower than using a cashier (who can say?), doing U-Scan just feels faster. He was the fastest vegetable code number typist I’ve ever seen. So, wherever you’ve gone, Face, I salute you.
Is it just me, or can the steady erosion and decline of American values be traced to when Sunny Delight changed its name to Sunny D?
And finally, it appears that you can now buy these fabulous Butterball chicken breasts that have been marinated for you. This is a Godsend for anyone who is not getting enough sodium in his diet. But here’s the best part: they’re sold in individually sealed chicken bags. No more touching raw meat — ever! All you have to do is carefully cut them open with a steak knife, dump that knife into the dishwasher, and Keshia Knight-Pulliam! you just got off scot free. I can’t emphasize how many “out, damned spot!” washing experiences this could have saved.
Now we can breathe
So, they arrested our highway shooter suspect. (I want to say “the sniper,” but I always felt like the sheriffs never really wanted us to use that term. Maybe some opportunist cop will have a book coming out with “highway shooter” in the title.) I personally never worried too much, except for one very recent trip back to the city on I-70. I hope that justice will be served and that we might be able to make some sense of this awful experience.
Now, for the usual round of complaints and cynicism! There was certainly some bad reporting coming out of this thing. In yet another Times slight to Ohio geography, repeated articles stated that I-270 carried 77,000 vehicles a day and “most truckers and suburban commuters must use it.” The traffic count is low; the statement is inaccurate. It makes us look like a piddly little town if we only have 77,000 vehicles on the “must-use” freeway. At least the Times didn’t identify it as “two and a half hours south of Cleveland” the way they referred to New Albany a few years ago.
I’d like to turn my attentions to the father of the alleged shooter. According to the papers, he took guns and ammunition away from his son in the middle of February, but didn’t show them to the police until March 12th. Let’s think about this… Your son is a “paranoid schizophrenic” who told you not to use electrical appliances because they allowed the government to spy on him. His girlfriend believed cameras were in the walls. There were at least 24 shootings, centered on the south side. You live on the south side. You took away four of his guns, for some reason, can’t imagine why that would be, and then you waited a month to tip off the cops? Thanks, dad! I don’t care how much you would want to protect your kid (and he definitely needs help — and will need protection from some of the victims): not sharing this evidence was grossly irresponsible.
In another disturbing story, the Dispatch commented on the fact that McCoy Jr.’s mental illness wouldn’t have prevented him from getting a gun. Not only did he not have a court finding against him, even if he did, Ohio is not one of the 17 states that electronically captures these judgments. The story failed to mention the gun-show loophole, which would have allowed McCoy to buy a used weapon with absolutely no background check. Now, having come through this experience as a community, with weeks and weeks of citizens worrying about being targets, with over four thousand leads coming in on the tip line, you would think we would be a little more interested in protecting ourselves from gun violence. Is it so much to ask that, at a minimum, we try not to give the mentally ill legal ways to buy weapons? I’d like to believe we’ll be a little more cautious in the future. I won’t wish too hard.
And finally, I’ll be checking up on that Wal-Mart from a previous entry, to see if they’re going to resume selling that scary video game, or if they’re still selling, you know, guns.
In other news: in my online poll on whether vacuumed ants can escape, there were three votes for “no,” one vote for “yes,” and one non-countable vote linking to a site recommending to vacuum the ants but to plug the hose afterward. (Sorry, but I can’t plug the hose, so that didn’t answer the question.) However, careful observation of my now only slightly infested kitchen shows that vacuuming was indeed a success.
Updated in 2016: Here is a 2013Â news story on the shooter.
Agreed. Please make dinner.
Thanks for your interest in my web site.
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