Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Chuck Don't Get It

At the latest Public Safety Committee meeting, Clowncilman Windbag proposed treating every Cincinnati liquor permit holder like the worst of the worst. He acknowledged his desire for prohibition in the already Constitutionally challenged city. I am guessing the Taliban really inspires him.
He proposes making every liquor permit holder submit safety plans to the city or police. He wants to "tweak" the matrix thingie concocted by ex-councilwoman Cole to make it a one strike & you're out proposition. While Officer Jahnke explained that the matrix evaluation system was set up precisely to avoid a 1 strike rule & Councilman Thomas explained that the system had actually worked from the city standpoint, Chas didn't get it. He went on to holler & rail in a short rancorous performance piece about (other) councilmembers "showboating". With his suggestion that shots fired that miss the intended victim should be graded at a lesser value that shots fired that kill their intended victim, officer Jahnke seemed kinda uncomfortable in having to explain the immoral aspect of even trying to murder a person to the ex-pastor.
In the last liquor license review hearing an officer explained that a very few establishments rose to the occasion of getting a police recommendation of license rejection. Of Cincinnati's 52 neighborhoods only about a half dozen had problem license holders. In one neighborhood only 2 out of almost 90 were cited.
It was proposed that the police be the sole arbiters of who should & shouldn't be nominated for rejection & that "the community" should be left out of the equation.
Ms Cole questioned the logic of the police in previous years & came up with this matrix evaluation so more objective information could be used in decision making in relationship to, essentially, shutting down businesses, eliminating jobs and leaving more abandoned buildings in the city. She questioned why incidents outside a liquor establishment when the establishment wasn't even opened counted against the place. The police tended to hem & haw and never seem to be able to give an answer.
The fact is, the law enforcement arm of the city needs to be kept in check by the representatives of the city. Mr Winburn's proposed Talibanish bureaucratic police state is short sighted, wrongheaded & un-American.

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Will 3CDC Plan Spark Zombie Apocalypse ?
Painting by Vince Locke

The Cincinnati Business Courier reports that 3CDC's plan to renovate Washington Park complete with a 2 story underground parking garage could unearth human remains. While most of the stiffs were moved to Spring Grove & Wesleyan cemeteries deeper tombs might have been built for the undead, the nosferatu, the zombi.....
3CDC could unwittingly be on the verge of beginning the zombie apocalypse. The streets of downtown Cincinnati could be over run by flesh eating monsters. Are there enough engineers in town to save us?

Biz blogpost here

Monday, June 28, 2010

Beatland

Before there was Cream, Coliseum, The Mahavishnu Orchestra, Blind Faith - there was The Graham Bond Organisation.
And cheesy British humor.
And lousy lip synching.

Saturday, June 26, 2010

.xxx

The porno guys on the web have been pushing for a xxx suffix for porn sites for awhile. It holds appeal for porn businesses because it would make it easier for schools, libraries & parents to block their sites. Sound illogical? Well, it keeps them from having to deal with kids using their parents credit cards & racking up charges & then having to square it with parents who blame the sites & not their perv kids.
ICANN said, Friday, it will consider adding .xxx to the list of suffixes people can pick for their websites.
The problem around here in 1st Amendment challenged Hamilton County is that hyper active law enforcement types & psycho-pervs like the CCV could & probably would try to force all local ISPs to block sites using the suffix.
It would not be a mandatory thing & nobody expects established sites to change over. Altho the bible belt psychos would probably drool at the chance.

AP story here.
Electricity & Music

Note the offending amplifier

Findlay Market plans to more stringently enforce it's ban on amplified music performed by artists. Currently Delbert Williams (pictured above) uses a small amp for his acoustic guitar. He doesn't really nead it to be heard but it gives the guitar a different sound. It's more "blusey".
The issue should not be how the instrument makes sound but how loud it is. It would be pointless to play an electric guitar or keyboard without amplification & through amplification one can add numerous effects like reverb, wah, distortion & such. It seems insane that I could not take a keyboard, laptop & small amp down to the market & play at a volume lower than the din of shoppers. I wouldn't necessarily need my MG100DFX to power my SG down there but with the master volume control I can play super distorto overdrive madness at the volume of a whisper. Of course, if I were to play in public I would probably want something lighter so I could get away quicker when people started throwing crap at me anyway.
Historical Findlay Market may be Ohio's oldest continuously operated public market but it's the 20th century. Electronic instruments, like refrigeration are here to stay. The market's and, for that matter, the city's policies prohibiting electronic music on the streets is obsolete & needs to be changed.

Fishwrap story here.

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Ghiz on Food Truck Parking

Council voted 7-1 in favor of councilwoman Quinlivan's pilot program to provide city owned parking lot space to mobile food vendors for a fee. The disenting vote was from councilwoman Ghiz. While she sorta had a libertarianish point on the government not being involved in any way of supporting small business, her one constituent who complained of not knowing about the food trucks apparently lives in the back room of his bar. There have been articles about this in the Fishwrap since mid-March.
The rest of her arguments were pretty hollow. Sidewalk seating, city taxes, workers comp, etc are all covered already. If she felt these businesses were operating illegally, she should be calling the cops. Complaining about DCI fees when she had no answer on the issue of the vendors paying or not but their having the approval of DCI was pretty bizarre. Bearing in mind that it is a pilot program that requires review in 90 days & 365 days inspires me to say, "Give it a shot". We need to experiment once in awhile. I think, frequently the conservative mindset is more mired in fear than conviction. Ghiz seems to have made up her mind regardless of any facts. Hers is not the type of leadership we need.

The 6/23/10 meeting can be found here, eventually.

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

$60 Million for Tremont City ?

Seems a little high but if you are looking to buy a city, Tremont City ain't for sale. The $60M is to clean up 3 million gallons of industrial sludge that could do to Springfield's aquifer what BP did to the Gulf of Mexico.
Springfield's water supply, of course, comes from the sparkly depths of Lake Erie & seeps through the sands & rocks 130 miles to the Champion City.
Of course the Great Lakes could become another Gulf of Mexico, too if the oil drilling ban gets overturned.
More on that good news here.

Whoulda thunk it? Tremont City has it's own EPA page.

Noose Son story here.
Reception to Raise Money for Olympian & Featherweight Champion Memorial

To raise some cash to finish the bronze statue of Davey Moore, there will be a reception on Saturday June 26 from 1-3PM at the Springfield Museum of Art.
$37,000 more is needed, tickets are $20. Memorabilia will be on display.

Noose Son story here.

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Crime Stats Tid

In 1966 Cincinnati councilman John Herd pointed out that crime in Hamilton County had risen by 300% since 1956. He was responding to citizens fears after a family had been brutally slain in Bridgetown & a serial strangler had Cincinnati locked in terror.

Monday, June 21, 2010

Pickles

When I first moved to Cincinnati in the early 80s, my sweetheart introduced me to hot dill pickles that could be purchased at bars & pony kegs around the town. Establishments would have 5 gallon jars with hot or mild pickled cucumbers, pickled eggs & pickled pigsfeet. It was fairly common to see groups of kids walk into dark smoky bars to purchase these delights that were served up wrapped in paper.
Over the years, the pony kegs either got cheap & seedier than tolerable or went corporate, the bars went seedy or trendy, regardless, the pickled crap disappeared. King Kwik sold out or went out of business, I forget. The remaining convenience stores might have carried individually packaged hot dills from some far off corporate pickling plant but they just were not the same.
Bill's or Bob's or whatever that place was that later became The Comet sold the crap as late as the mid 90s. Does anybody in Cincinnati still sell the pickled goodness?

YUM

Sunday, June 20, 2010

Friday, June 18, 2010

Still Older Crap

Somebody on PhaseBuch posted this the other day and, although it is cheesy as hell, I like it. Marlene Dietrich recorded this in French, English & German. In 1962 she sang the song in German in Israel & broke an unwritten rule of not using the German language publicly. Apparently it went over well.

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Why Chris, Why ?

So, I'm eating lunch, watching the Chris Smitherman channel (used to be Media Bridges) and he's telling us that the City is plotting to declare bankruptcy so the county can take over & the county with it's greater white population will squash the black population's influence.
Problem is, that ain't how it works.
From the Ohio Auditor's website we find municipalities in Ohio don't do Bankruptcy - they do Fiscal Emergency:
"The original municipal fiscal emergency law was enacted in 1979 as a response to a financial crisis in the city of Cleveland. Since that time, financial planning and supervision commissions have aided over 50 governments declared in fiscal emergency."

And, surprise, nothing about county takeover.
More fear-mongering misrepresentation....
Ohio SB 243

Thoth



Ohio Senate Bill 243 proposes ban on human-animal hybridizations.
Why?
Steve Buehrer (R Delta), introduced the legislation originally in a broad way that made no distinction between therapy for serious illness & handicaps and super hero breeding.
The use of these "hybrids" is due to the shortage of donated human eggs in doing "stem-cell" research that can help people with any number of crippling health problems. For more on the background, check out BioNews.
The bill has passed the Senate & is going to the House.
As a comic book / science fiction fan, my first thoughts are of characters like Spider-Man, who not a hybrid at birth, gained spider like powers after being bitten by a radio-active spider. One of my favorite characters along this line was Oedi, the cat man from the Dreadstar comics. A far off galactic empire created a race of cat men to blend the ferocious fighting skills, coordination & hunting ability of a cat with a human who could fit the uniform. The result? A race of hybrids who liked to sleep a lot. They later found that the beings could farm pretty well, too. Oedi's combat skills didn't manifest til the galactic empire slaughtered his wife.
How would our society deal with a culture of "sub-human" human constructs? This is famously explored in Philip K. Dick's Blade Runner.
Currently, most plans for these hybrids are to make therapeutic goo.
Try as I might, the only arguments I can find in favor of this legislation always grind down to religionist opinion. It invariably winds up with quoting Christian scripture & frequently citations of Ohio being a Christian state.
Ohio's Christian Taliban set is tittering with glee at the thought of kneecapping scientific & medical progress.
In pre-Christian days people had gods who were part goat, bull, elephant, ibis, jackal... Ma'at had wings. It differentiated them from the gods. There have been any number of hybrid creatures like centaurs, minotaurs, unicorns, flying dragons & such frequently tasked with protecting us.

Ganesha



In Christian thought it is believed that God made man in his image. Hence the human form is something kind of sacred. It's this differentiation from other species that gave the Christian domain over everything else. You can see how this belief could be skewed to give European Christians dominion over sub-Saharan Africans, Indians & Asians practicing their own religions. You can see how it could lead to denying inter-racial marriage with a mindset that inter-racial = inter-species. Couple that with the concept of these sub-species being "soulless" & you got a real recipe for, well, everything bad in modern western civilization.
Do we need to perpetuate this?
If the Republicans who support this legislation were real libertarian, free marketers they would condemn it in a minute. What about the jobs that will be lost by hamstringing our research industry? Unfortunately, when sex is involved these clowns do a 180 & go all Stalin Hitler Taliban on us. Do we want these people legislating along religious lines and leave a group of people handicapped by disease only to then label them a burden on society and bemoan the tax dollars spent on warehousing them? Think they won't eventually come up with a Final Solution?
This is wrong headed and un-American legislation.
~ cheap shots deleted ~

Saturday, June 12, 2010

Just Got Paved


My street got repaved yesterday & this song has been rattling around in my head since. Of course, as soon as I walk out the door my lens fogs up - but what the hell, nobody pays any attention to the stripes, anyway.

Go on, you know you want to !

"SCARIEST living sensation of the CENTURY! An ABSOLUTE "MUST" if you get your kicks from the STRANGE and MYSTERIOUS' See 2 eerie botanical MONSTERS in 6 glowing colors, actually GROW real green "hair"!"
"In ADDITION to these TWO HAIR RAISING MONSTERS, we will send you a fantastic "ASTRONARIUM" greenhouse! This professional piece of equipment is disguised to look like a spooky SPACE GROTTO or CAVE, complete with 3-D spacemen figure: Looks JUST LIKE the SURFACE OF ANOTHER PLANET! Inside this Astronarium is a CONCEALED HYDROPONIC TANK"
"You ALSO get a CRYSTAL PLASlIC HYDRO-ABSORPTION UNIT which completes the CAPILLARY CYCLE OF LIFE which begins as soon as you plant a MONSTER!"

Friday, June 11, 2010

Things to Come

ok, I just really like this shot from the British 1936 movie "Things to Come". It was an anti-war movie written by H. G. Wells made as England was becoming pretty sure it was going to war. The gummint put the kibosh on the movie's release to quell any anti-war support. Good plan. In the movie the upcoming war lasts decades, engulfs the world & collapses civilisation. It then traces humanity's climb out of the abyss over the next 100 years.
It's in bits & pieces on YouTube, but since the movie was only released decades after it was made & wasn't widely distributed, video tapes & DVDs look really good.
Great Christmas Eve viewing.
So why post it now? Because it's hot muggy & icky out & what we need is a little Christmas, right this very minute, candles in the window & .....

Tuesday, June 08, 2010

We Deny The Vote

As Hamilton County Commissioners continue to struggle with balancing a budget, individual commissioners are coming up with plans. Portune has given up & proposed increasing taxes. Pepper has suggested eliminating a tax break. Hartmann has suggested taking money voters approved for health care for the indigent be shifted to paying for entertainment venues.
It seems Hartmann's suggestion would be illegal without a vote of the people. When the state of Ohio tried shifting highway maintenance funds, raised through a gas tax, to mass transit, the state was sued successfully.
What's interesting is that COA T, who has howled the mantra, "We Demand a Vote" year after year with ballot initiatives that invariably increase the cost of government, "applauds" Hartmann's plan. These guys say public votes are better than letting politicians make decisions because they hate the whole Cincinnatus ideal that is central to American society.
Did the wind just change direction?
Meanwhile, this vocal unelectable minority continues to waste public funds & snarl the court system as they try to bend government to it's will.

Monday, June 07, 2010

I told you there would be a pony

Friday, June 04, 2010

Northside - Be There or Be Square

June 5 Northside hosts it's biggest Art Fair. With the moving of the Gay Pride Festival, The Northside Summer Art Fair is taking over Hoffner Park with over 50 artists, dancers, a marching band & A PONY !!
Up the street at Happen Inc. Clay will be going Round & Round all afternoon. They'll be knitting at the Cumminsville Branch Library at 2.
At least 2 garage sales, 1663 Bruce & 1623 Argyle for all you cheapskates.
& as you head up the hill in search of cooler climes, check out Citirama on Rockford Place. CityBleat explains it here.
When the sun goes down slide on back to Happy Valley & visit Mayday, Boswell Alley, Melt, Picnic & Pantry, Northside Tavern, Honey, NYPD Pizza, Junker's, White Castle, The Comet, Ko-Sho, Ginger's, Portofino's, UDF, 5th Amendment & MORE !

Wednesday, June 02, 2010

Benefits of GPS On Buses

An article at UrbanCincy tells us Metro is going to update their communications system including the addition of GPS monitoring on buses. The author points out the benefits of this in knowing when your bus will actually arrive. Well, maybe.
Morning rush hour buses are pretty much on the money. In the afternoon, when dumbass kids use the bus to get home from school, it all falls apart. In the late evening, when nobody wants to stand around at the bus stop the drivers just kinda drive around at will. That is, they don't move at a constant rate.
What could be really cool is if some buses could add sensors to monitor when people enter & exit the bus (clusterfucks at the front would be a problem) & tie the recording of data to a clock so Metro would have a much better idea of where & when people are getting on & off the bus. As it is now, I am pretty sure they are going on guesstimates. Sometimes it looks like somebody is counting.
While the "every two block" bus stop model is nice, I doubt many non-regular users even know to plan on it, so some stops could probably wind up being eliminated, improving efficiency.
Not all buses would need the investment in recording hardware - just a few that could be rotated around through the routes.
Further, if you could ID a Metro Card to a passenger, he could be given an option to swipe his card on exit, providing further accuracy in how people use the bus. The rider could be rewarded with discounts on the next month's card. Or be penalized for overusing the system! EEK !

Tuesday, June 01, 2010

Memorial Day at Wesleyan Cemetery

Wesleyan Cemetery started out as a church graveyard for a Methodist church in downtown Cincinnati on Catherine Street. It was near where the P&G building stands today. They were running out of room & downtown real estate was prohibitively expensive so in the 1840s they moved out to what was then the middle of nowhere, Cumminsville. The caretaker was a good guy & moved out to the new cemetery. He took great care of the cemetery til he died. Then everything went to shit.
The cemetery fell into disrepair, records, if kept, were lost, people couldn't find graves, graves were being resold, graves were compromised, the Method Men abandoned the cemetery, caretakers raided the trust fund meant for upkeep...
Ultimately it fell into the hands of government & the city & county played hot potato with it til the city finally had it dumped on their lap. They cited maintenance costs that, per square foot, would have made mowing my lawn a $70 job.
Anyway, it's finally semi normal & for the past few years the Northside/College Hill Kiwanis have sponsored a Memorial Day service. There are veterans of every war the United States has fought in interred in the cemetery & for decades no such cervices were held there.
Thanks to all involved for doing this.

The Queen City Rainbow Band, MC Don Beische & Twin Towers Chaplain, Joe Boone


Kathy Dahl discusses the history of the cemetery


Sergeant Marcus Glasgow reflects on military service

Sergeant Glasgow prefaced his talk by hoping he didn't come off as a PTSD victim. nah.
Steve & Denise Driehaus attended as did Eric Kearney.