EW Letter of the Week

Eugene liberals have a fine tradition of making principled nose cuttings in order to give the face a little what for. This week's l.o.w. exemplifies this tradition, as our writer argues against restoring Iraqi marsh lands because the reversal of the ecological devastation visited on the southern Iraqis could only have come about through our imperialistic war. Sorry, southern Iraqis, I guess you'll have to suffer for all time, any improvements in your lives would be fascist.

TOO BLOODY TO BE GREEN

The 1/31 article by Suzi Steffen in praise of the Americanized Iraqi Azzam Alwash and his dream, so-called, of re-greening the marshlands of Iraq invites a countering reality check. Apparently the UO Department of Architecture, sponsor of the Alwash lecture, and the enthusiastic audience in attendance had no difficulty with the fact that the marshland venture is predicated upon the illegitimate U.S. invasion of Iraq.

"Eden Again," the Alwash return as he now works with the "Canadian, Italian and U.S. backing ... making plans for new villages" is possible only in the larger context of U.S. empire building, nation destruction and interminable warfare.

As it is now Iraq is too blood-soaked to be green and the American war machine bears direct responsibility and has since the early 1990s. The Alwash/U.S. plan amounts to little more than eco-fascism.

John Hickam, Eugene

Loving That Will Ferrell

From an AV Club interview with him:

AVC: Dana Carvey was famous for having a chummy relationship with George Bush Sr. I'm betting that wasn't the case with George Bush Jr. Have you gotten a sense of how he felt about your impression?

WF: I hadn't heard, but I was glad I didn't hear. You know, there was that stuff written about how the staff loved "strategerie," and how he called them "strategerie meetings." I had a couple of opportunities to go and meet him, and I declined, partly out of comedic purposes, because when I was on the show [Saturday Night Live] at the time, it didn't make sense to really meet the people that you play, for fear of them influencing you. And then the other side of it is, from a political standpoint, I don't want to meet that guy.

What Is a Humble Newsie to Do?

All you former Eugeneians might be interested to learn KEZI news anchor Rick Dancer has left the newsroom to run for Secretary of State in Oregon. In Oregon, the Secretary of State's job is largely to monitor elections, election financing and fraud. Rick announced his big news on KEZI after the Oscars on Sunday night and, apparently got a good block of time to make his announcement and be "interviewed" by one of his colleagues.

The Register-Guard ran an article today about the announcement and how Dancer failed to mention that he is running as a Republican. The article focuses on the "equal time" issues and the fact that Dancer's former boss, Carolyn Chambers, who owns KEZI where Dancer has worked for the last 20 years, is a huge player in the state Republican party.

Here's what I love from a guy who's job for the last 20 years has been to report on state and local news, including, one assumes, politics, and who is running for a job that would require him to be in charge of state election laws:

Dancer also said he is unaware of Chambers' support for the party.

"Obviously, I'm a news guy; I don't know what she does with her finances or her money," he said.

So, four days out of the gate, Dancer has reveled himself to be either an idiot or a liar. He should do just fine as an Oregon Republican politician.

Language Rapists

Now, this guy is an asshole.

Writing for the American Enterprise Institute, David Gelertner assures us that feminism has won the day and in the process destroyed raped the English language. How did we accomplish this mission? By teaching a generation of young men (which, of course, means men and women) to use constructs like "he or she," "s/he," "he/she," and the dreaded "they" instead of the singular male pronoun to mean a person of unspecified gender. Mr. Gelertner goes on at some length and hilariously insists on missing the point at all costs. A sample paragraph railing about the abomination of a straight "she" for "he" swap in cases of undetermined gender:

"The driver turns on his headlights" is not about a male or female person; it is about a driving person. But "the driver turns on her headlights" is a sentence about a female driver. Just as any competent reader listens to what he is reading, he pictures it too (if it can be pictured); hearing and imagining the written word are ingrained habits. A reader who had thought the topic was drivers is now faced by a specifically female driver, and naturally wonders why. What is the writer getting at? To distract your reader for political purposes, to trip him up merely to demonstrate your praiseworthy right-thinkingness, is a low trick.

You see I was picturing a "driver" turning his headlights. My "driver" just happened to be a man. A man wearing a gray flannel suit and a fedora, perhaps on the way home from working at the office. Thinking about getting home and pouring himself a nice martini, maybe reading the paper before dinner. A nice steak, potato, and green salad later, he might relax in his favorite chair, light himself a pipe and laugh along with Jack Benny. After the kids were in bed, maybe he'd, and it just happens to be a he I'm picturing here, take the wife into the bedroom for some straight-forward marital relations.

But if some fancy-pants intellectual comes along and writes "the driver turns on her headlights," I am forced to picture a woman driving a car. Then I start wondering why a woman is driving a car. I start to worry about the traffic around her. How are deliverymen supposed to get their packages delivered on time if they're having to watch out for some crazy woman driver? I mean where is this woman going? Why is she leaving the house without a male escort? Should women be in public without a male relative? Aren't they inviting rape? Corrupting young men who can't help themselves? What will become of society with all these women driving themselves around?

You see, it's just better for everyone if we continue to use the perfectly neutral masculine pronoun.

Lawboy's Burden

A moment in the internal monologue of a university lawyer:

Hmmm...let me check my e-mail here. What's this e-mail titled "GTFF General Membership Meeting , Friday, 5 pm , Campbell Center" all about? I better open it up to find out. *Click* Hmmm...seems to be an e-mail about a GTFF General Membership Meeting. Great, now I have to delete this e-mail. Slide the mouse over. *Click* Jeebus, there goes 7 seconds of my life I'll never get back. Oh, how do I hate it when I get e-mail that does not directly pertain to my life! Woe!

Fin

Omar, He Ain't

Crime in Baltimore is out of control. Fortunately, Officer Riveri is on the case.

EW Letter of the Week

More from the haters. This week we have someone of indeterminate political affiliation railing against the city of Eugene for not making the city's trees look better, therefore not incentivising the neighbors to keep their property clean. Blaming the city government for all ills is a non-partisan sport in Eugene.

BLAME CITY, TOO

I would like to thank B.D. May of Eugene for his letter (1/10) concerning urban blight. This problem is not only prevalent in the areas of Adams Street, 24th and 25th avenues, but it has taken hold of a broad area of the Friendly Street neighborhood, and no one seems to care. There is so little pride among some homeowners when it comes to keeping their yards clean and trimmed.

Much of the problem lies with the city of Eugene. The city plants trees in the parking strips, but does not care for them. Young trees are allowed to grow not as trees but as shrubs. Consequently, these bushes, as well as an assortment of other shrubs planted by the homeowners in the parking strips, block the view of drivers at intersections. A city ordinance meant to control these plantings is not enforced.

I have lived on Friendly Street for 21 years. I have watched this neighborhood deteriorate, especially since the city made this street a connector between 18th and 28th. Adding speed bumps was a sick joke and a waste of money. Friendly Street was never intended to become a "freeway." Speed and heavy trucks are tearing up the surface of the street which will not be repaired in the foreseeable future.

Eugene not only needs to update its codes, as May mentioned. It needs to enforce ordinances or remove them. Catering to the affluent communities and utter failure to declare a war on urban blight in the older sections of the city seems to be the future plan by the powers that be.

Betty Williams Johnson, Eugene

The Things You Remember From 1993

I want to be a whale.
I want to be a big one.
I want to be a fat one.
Yeaaaaaaaaaah.

And you can be the shark
That takes a bite out of me.

That's okay,
There's plenty left
of me.

It's Either That or the Terrorist Threat

Overheard on campus:

Student 1: I wonder why that squirrel is not asleep for the winter. Shouldn't he be sleeping?

Student 2: It's probably global warming.

War, Good God Y'all

Presidents Day got me thinking about W. and his legacy. I recently declared him the worst president ever--which had to sting, you know it did--but Bush, as we know, is banking on history to redeem him. Granting that it is unlikely that historians will ever view Bush as anything more than a poor president, is it possible that the people may one day come around and we'll find ourselves living in a time when the name Bush is not synonymous with "what was I thinking?" Will my 85 year-old eyes find myself looking at that smirk on a shiny quarter?

I'm asking you, loyal reader, can you think of a president or a war that was hated at the time, but in retrospect now looks really good? Lincoln and the Civil War are very obvious, although I think at the time of the actual war, it was decently popular.

Anything else? Anyone want to make a case for Truman? Spanish-American?

What Graduate School Is For

I'm stealing this meme from nephew. Feel free to do the same.

If somehow compelled to pass an awkward evening among upper-middle-class, middle-brow intellectuals, I could discuss _________ without sounding like an ignoramus:

A) The end of the Roman Republic

B) Atlas Shrugged

C) US involvement in Latin America pre-WWII

D) Whether the universe is expanding or contracting

E) The West Coast Offense

Thanks for Playing.

Happy President's Day!

I will go out on a limb and say that FDR was the best president in US history and GWB is the worst.

Anyone want to dispute that?

Why You Wanna Do That to Me, Money?

EW Letter of the Week

It was reactionary week at the EW, with 5 out of 13 letters from the non-thinking wing of the far right. Which is only to be expected, as they are often confronted with the non-thinking wing of the far left. So, the reactionaries are as much part of Eugene as the bike-riding hippies, so here's a letter from one of them. I picked this particular one because of the frequent use of the phrase "dirty hippies" and its complete incoherence.

DIRTY HIPPIE FLOCK

As a regular reader of this particular paper, I have come to expect a more left of center view expressed by most of its contributors. However, after reading the (1/24) issue I was highly agitated by the views expressed by Erin Gilday. She complains about May putting property values above community values or using the EW as a soapbox, instead of communicating with those involved. She fails to acknowledge that there are a lot of people who buy homes for investment purposes as well as habitation. When these people purchased their homes, they were moving into a nice, clean and respectable neighborhood. If they would have known about the pending third-world squalor resulting from the upcoming infestation, they probably would have moved elsewhere.

The fact is that dirty hippies like to live with other dirty hippies. No prospective middle class homebuyer is going to want to live in the squalor that has become of this neighborhood, and chances are that a dirty hippie couldn't afford one of these lovely homes. As for communication, how do you communicate with a person who would rather offend your sense of smell than kill a few bugs? Or a person who thinks squalor is a logical alternative to cleanliness? If they like living in third-world conditions, that's their prerogative; they can deal with the repercussions when they try to sell their homes. But don't drag your neighbors down with you.

Matt Brockway, Springfield

I Guess I Hardly Knew Ye

For me, an Edwards endorsement of Hillary costs Edwards more credibility than it does Obama.

Delicious Spam

Jean, raising his head, said: godfather, did my 'not at all,
not at all.' 'the word derange,' retinue of wellequipped
knaves and varlets, as a very pleasant thing. Mademoiselle.
one is foolish last. He had tramped heroically upon his
panic excresences in life, these ornamental trimmings children
in their arms. It was considered no violation with a nice
firm perm: it accepted the task of and then suddenly, when
i least expected it, she answered. The carriage was then
so far in advance perhaps the report that armine was reading
livy and sam trumtwang with his harp, and peter muggledrone
'one must always proceed with method. I made an seemed to
have swum out to meet them, and now there is no need to
dwell further on the matter.

Pitchers and Catchers

Pitchers and catchers report today, bringing us one step closer to the greatest sports season of them all. In a matter of days we will have the start of the NSACAR season, March Madness, Opening Day, NHL playoffs, and NBA playoffs. You don't have to care for them all, but damn it's a great time. In Eugene, we'll cap it all with the US Track and Field Championships. Good times.

What Do You Think?

Of the new blog?

Avuncular Happenings

In yesterday's Board meeting, I referenced Peter Gabriel's song "Biko." No one had any idea what I was talking about. Although, to be fair, I'm pretty sure not many were listening to me.

A Post Wherein I Take the Guise of Andy Rooney

Why do I have so many pockets? Between my pants and my jacket, I have eight pockets. That's just my jeans. With the silly cargo pants, the pockets are even worse. I have a pair of perfectly fine khaki pants that feature a small pocket on the back thigh for my cell phone. I've always wondered if anyone actually ever used this pocket. The back of the thigh is not exactly an convenient place to reach nor to sit on if a cell phone is within. Eight pockets seems excessive.

Just Like a Man

The Die Is Cast

I've been watching HBO's Rome again, so I am in the frame of mind to wonder if this is what it would have been like to be a citizen in Rome in 44 BC.

Not that I think that Bush is going to refuse to leave office or anything, but we are rapidly going down the road to a very imperial presidency. We currently have an administration that basically advances the argument that as long as the President believes (even if he is wrong or his belief is not credible) that in committing an action will aid "the war effort" or "keep Americans safe" that no law actually applies to him or anyone who carries out his orders. Further they argue that no one, in particular Congress, has the right to investigate these actions. They argue that the President can unilaterally issue exemptions to laws. Well, they don't argue this, the President just issues the exemption, then the administration says that the order cannot be questioned.

If the President has unlimited power in a time of war. Not constrained by the laws of the United States or international treaty and we are in a permanent state of war against "terror," then what is the difference between the US and Rome? Am I supposed to be mollified that power is incorporated into an office instead of a man? For how long?

And then what do we, as citizens of Rome do, exactly? Our President is a war criminal (I don't think there can be much debate about this point), but can't be prosecuted because he controls the largest army in the world. What do we do?

It's on Sale at St. Mark's on Monday

You know you've found love when they promise to hose you down with holy water when you get too hot.

GTFF Bargaining in the News

An opinion in the Emerald taking a different slant on the ol' bargaining question. Anyone who reads this blog could take this guy apart as well as I can, so I won't bother, but dig this last quote:

Unfortunately, as reflected by their rhetoric, the GTFF leadership's efforts to mandate contracts sometimes get in the way of faculty running our programs to, in our professional estimation, best serve our students' present and future needs.

Please also note that this guy is from the Math Department, so 80% of that quote is still bitterness over the legendary undergraduate grader grievance of 2004.

A Sucker Is Born

Kinoki foot padspossibly the awesomist bogus product commercial ever.

[Update]: A lot of people I know refuse to believe this product exists. But it does.

Ummmm...McGuire

I've said it before, and I'll go ahead and say it again, Eve of Destruction rocks my world. Every. Freakin'. Time.

Of course, the state I'm in, there's not much that doesn't rock my world.

Awesomely Emerald

Sports columnist Doug Bonham has a piece today in which he rails against Comcast cable for not allowing their Comcast Sports Net channel to be rebroadcast on DirectTV, his viewing platform of choice. He spends close to five hundred words describing not only his pain, but that of all Oregonians who either don't subscribe to Comcast or live outside of Comcast's reach, and therefore miss hot Blazers action on a regular basis. He goes so far as to call this situation a "crime."

So 500 words describing this horrible situation and then we get to this:

The sad thing is, this is all brought on by Comcast's greed. The only possible situation I can envision is Comcast overestimating their new channel's value, and the other television providers saying, "Screw that." It's not a "Comcast cable versus satellite" thing - I get Comcast Sports Net affiliates from Washington, D.C., Chicago and Boston here in Eugene - it's a "Comcast versus providers" thing.

And a "Comcast hates Trail Blazer fans" thing. All I want to do is watch my team, Comcast; stop screwing that up.

That's right, in a woeful misunderstanding of the law of supply and demand, Doug believes that Comcast must be overvaluing its product because Doug wants it so bad but can't have it. Unless he switches to Comcast. Or the satellite providers pony up more money.

Sweet jeebus, this is so stupid it has me defending both Comcast and greed.

Hillary = The Complete Destruction of All That is Good and Holy

I go this from the frontpage of wingnut site Townhall.com. How many errors can you spot?

Lower Taxes = Love

I still get GOP spam.

I got this ad today which is "perfect for Valentine's Day." For only a $35 donation I can get this adorable elephant and give it to my sweetie. They've even color coded it for me; you know, regular for guys and pink with eye-lashes and bow for girls.

Please do note that the actual size is 5 inches by 4 inches, so you don't want to present this gift at say, dinner, because gift will be smaller than your salad fork. Maybe if the elephant was sporting some nice diamond earrings. That'd be cute.

Hold Those Endorsements

Presented to you without comment (h/t to Chad):

Shut 'Em Down

I hate open primaries. I really don't understand them. In what other situation can you refuse to join an organization, a free organization mind you, but expect to get to vote for the leader of that organization? Makes absolutely no sense to me. You want to be "Independent"? Fine. You want to register with some obscure third party? Have at it. But why in the hell should I let you vote for the nominee for my party?

Again, makes no sense.

PDA Clean Up

I was rebooting my pda and cleaning it out with the thought that I might start using it again to work on all those brilliant bargaining ideas I get and I found a document that I cannot explain and thought I'd share. I think it might be from AFT Higher Ed in Orlando. Wobs, does this sound familiar?

Untitled

I might buy some swim trunks later...want to join me?

We plan to just hang out by the pool here tonight -- drink, smoke

"Blood on the Potato--An Idaho Immigrant's Story"

Hi, You Don't Know Me and Have No Reason to Listen to Me, But I'd Like to Tell You About a Guy I've Never Actually Met

Hmmmm...not sure how much I like this idea. Obama is making it easy for me to phone bank people in primary states. It could be good. No reason not to do it, I guess. Will it work? Backlash? Something feels wrong about it.

GTFF in the News

The Emerald has a decent article about our bargaining with the UO. Check it out.

Decent from a propaganda point of view. From a journalism point of view, you'd like to see more than one person quoted in a such a long article.

A Post Wherein I Take the Guise of a Left-Wingnut

If we are supposed to be worried that Obama is a secret Muslim plant, who will destroy America from the inside should he be elected president, then isn't is fair to wonder if the North Vietnamese didn't brainwash McCain and set him up to be a plant to destroy America from the inside should he be elected president?

McCain does seem to want to replicate the policies from the most disastrous presidency we've had since 1932, so why am I not hearing more about McCain's potential subversion?

Ten Thousand, All in Advance

I got a couple new posts up at the GTFF Bargaining Blog.

For some reason I'm on delayed reaction and only today am I getting more and more pissed-off about their offers. Yesterday I was more grooving on making sure we didn't fire back with all the things we wanted to, mostly because I don't want to get sucked into arguing their very lame rationals for their offers. I mean, they make them lame so that we spend time destroying them. Has nothing to do with their offers. In fact, they want us destroying their arguments, so that we can "win" another 2% on raises and $25 off of fees and feel like we got away with something.

As I say, I'm grooving on realizing all of this, but also thinking that this is what I should have known in the first place and I would/should have learned this in the first half-hour of a bargaining seminar somewhere.

So, the trick is to balance destroying their arguments, which the members will demand we do, without getting sucked down the path of thinking "victory" has anything to do with knocking down their rhetoric and everything to do with eliminating fees. I guess that's what they pay me for.

16 Years, Down the Tubes

My wife just suggested that Raiders of the Lost Ark is not necessarily better than Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle. And while I type this, she further asserts that "this movie is just a little more badass than Indiana Jones."

Pretentous Publicity Photo Friday

A new series?

I know that band photos are pretentious/staged/fake/arty in a certain way on purpose and there is nothing the artists can do but embrace it. Still. There is posing for the "arty" photo and then there is posing for the arty photo.

I also know that the photo has nothing to do with the music and I will caveat right way that I know nothing about the music and would not any in any way be drawing inferences from the crappiness of the band photo.

I will stipulate that John Adam Weinland Shearer is possibly the best musician ever.

I am here only to bring the publicity shot to your attention.

That being said, a jug of milk? Oops, I spilled my milk and am now decidedly not looking at the camera? I love it. I love the studied absence of color so that the black and whites will look better. I love the mild fish eye effect.

EW Letter of the Week

We had some strong entries this week that more than made up for the unbloggable week that was January 17-24. A stirring defense of Mayor Kitty Piercy's liberalness was submitted by former grad unionist Rose Wilde and the AGEL connection alone would normally been enough for her to grace this page, which I imagine was 90% of her motivation for writing in the first place, but the king of Eugene quack also made an EW appearance this week and Rose is going to be at the very top of her game if she expects to unseat the green-anarcho-nut-job™ that is John Zerzan.

Eugene, bustling metropolis that it is, is trying to figure out the best way to move its citizens from one point to the other. Obviously, more roads is option number one. Some are advocating rapid bus, public transportation being the go-to liberal progressive preference to freedom cars. Some in the community, of course, realizing they are being outflanked, have proposed trolleys, which would be even more liberal/green/adorable/restrictive than the buses. How do you out-progress trolleys? I mean were talking heading back to a pre-internal combustion engine transportation choice. Ah yes, pre-industrialization. It really is the only sensible option.

IT'S STILL MALIGNANT

Eugene sports a lot of "green and "sustainable" liberals who dream of slightly re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic we're riding. Mr. Eco-Village Rob Bolman (1/24), for example, whose vision is a light rail system.

Always an industrial solution; never mind that industrialism is steadily snuffing out the natural world and is the basis of the high-tech world with its mounting emptiness and desolation.

More mining, smelting, etc., more of the foundation for all that takes us further and further from reconnecting with the earth and each other. But rail is better than cars! And a slightly slower growing cancer is better than a faster moving one. How about a vision of no industrial cancer instead of promoting it?

John Zerzan, Eugene