Ink Stain

Fixed fences make good something or other

9:57 AM, 10/15/2007 .. 4 comments .. Link

What is it about getting mocked for helping the little guy?
I get a call Friday morning about a back yard fence that's been on the receiving end of eight years of abuse. Seems cars parked at Macey's or the store's carts have been bumping, crashing or being thrown into the fence. The home owner has spent thousands repairing the fence over the years. There's also a safety concern. While the current renters don't have kids, the family before did. Kids playing in the back yard.
I'm not the woman's first call, which is why I take interest. When someone has made the effort to go the right route, i.e. calling the store and asking what can be done to remedy the situation, and gets no results, then I don't mind taking a look at something. I'm no fence deflection expert, but the homeowner's solution seems pretty reasonable:
Put a couple of those parking stall concrete blockers (the small ones at the front) along the fence line on the store side to stop carts or parked cars from hitting the wood fence.
But the woman has been sent from Macey's to the property management group to the property owner, all without result.
So she gives me a call. I check it out and I'll be damned if a shopping cart hasn't been blasted through the fence, sending shrapnel well into the back yard.
I call who I call (Associated Food in this case) and I'm told that they were never told of the problem and that they'll remedy the situation ASAP.
Problem solved. It's a short story in the paper and a good day's work.
I'm feeling pretty good about life until I get a phone call the next day from someone I respect.
"Why are you writing stories about shopping carts going through fences? Slow news day?"
I heard that several times now from several other people I respect.
As a matter of fact, it WAS a slow news day. But where is it written that we can't improve the world a thousand dollars at a time? What if that fence comes down on a kid? Is it a slow news day then?
We're a community oriented newspaper and I'll be damned (that's twice now) if I'm not going to help people in the community. Tell me this wasn't more useful than that stupid front page story in the Dnews about Sen. Bramble going on vacation with a lobbyist, who, you know, turned out to be friend of 20 years and not some "special interest" buying him off with a trip to Italy that also included other longtime friends.
I'm not opposed to finding Watergate, I just also happen not to mind fixing the neighbor's gate in the meantime.

Comic relief

2:33 PM, 9/25/2007 .. 1 comments .. Link

It's pretty obvious I'm a crossword junkie. The New York Times and I have a date each day at lunch. I read a story or two, a column or two then get to the Arts section to peel out the crossword. But Thursday through Sunday the crossword can only be completed by a MENSA convention.

So I get finally get desperate enough to turn to the Daily Herald. Yes, yes, we all know the end of that joke, so just keep your cake hole closed. Anyway, sometimes I do the Herald's crossword, which is surrounded by the worst collection of comics since "Alley Oop," "Rose is Rose," "Buckles" and "Crankshaft" which are, not suprisingly, the exact comics I'm talking about.

One of those is also "Mary Worth", which for years, decades even, I've scorned, laughed at and mocked, which all pretty much mean the same thing. Seriously, who's going to follow a cartoon that's maybe two panels long and is a freaking DRAMA about old people and some slightly less older people they know.

You want to know who? ME, that's who.

It's the repetition, I suppose. Looking at that comic, at first off-hand, and then reading it while I mull over how many times this month the crossword is going to use "tor" for an answer. (It's a craggy hill.) But about a week ago I realized I was reading Mary Worth FIRST when I opened the page.

I mean, I had to see what was going to happen to Dr. Drew after Dawn caught him and Vera at the horse riding park. Dawn certainly deserved better than to find those two at her favorite riding place. Granted, Drew tried to break up with her on the phone, but seriously. Then she went and slapped his face on last Tuesday, that was awesome...

Ah, crap.

On the fast track down the ladder

9:32 AM, 8/17/2007 .. 0 comments .. Link

Who knew that a $600 piece of technology I'll probably never own would drive me back into the embrace of a harsh mistress?

After an iPhone story I wrote on a whim back in July, I got this nasty itch. Normally I would rush to my doctor while drowning my memories of that unforgettable night in Bangkok with the soothing sips of Johnny Walker Blue. But since I've never actually been to Bangkok, which is hilarious to say a few times in a row, no seriously, go ahead and try it, I'll wait. .............. Anyway, since I've never been there and the only Johnny Walker I've ever been acquainted with was a third-grade chum, I figured the itch was related to writing.

Then came a few other stories, which were difficult, not because reporting is difficult but because I was a freaking editor at the time with plenty else to do. Then half the freaking staff jumped ship (marriages, job offers from prestigious newspaper and the like) and suddenly I had me a freaking idea.

It was my boss's idea, really.

"Joe," he says, because that's my name, "Joe, why the hell aren't you writing stories?"

Now, it could be the he was really impressed with my reporting and writing skills. Ooooooooorrrrr, it could be that we were seriously depleted on reporters and he needed some damn stories. Whatever the reason, we kicked it around long enough that I finally decided what I really wanted to do was go back to reporting.

It wasn't an easy decision. I've been an editor for six years and while I know a bit about Utah and how the place works, I haven't had a close list of sources for a while. It's also much easier to yell at people to "Get the damn story done" as opposed to actually getting the damn story done.

But here I am, now into the third or fourth or whatever phase of my journalism career, staring down the barrel of a deadline, and instead of writing stories about bridges and a plane crash, I'm blogging about doing it. Isn't technology great?

Crap, here comes my editor. Gotta go.

Il fotoricettore di mille luoghi datanti liberi

5:44 PM, 6/25/2007 .. 0 comments .. Link

So once in a while I need a little pick-me-up.

I've considered drugs, but I'm not up for the whole death spiral thing. So instead I use the old fallback, the ego search on Google.

"P...a...p...e...r...b...o...y" and ... ah hell, this blog isn't even in the first five pages. Google 1, Ego 0.

"J...o...e ... P...y...r...a...h" Ah-ha! See, that's what I'm talking about. Right after the Daily Herald nonsense is the good stuff: the free Italian dating site www.toky.it. Of course, my significant other is sitting next to me at the time and wonders what on God's Green Earth am I doing on a free Italian dating site.

"See, it isn't like that," I say. She raises an eyebrow. I cry like a little girl because The Eyebrow makes me do that.

Best I can tell, they've scraped the Herald's YouTube vids of "In the Loop" and placed them on their site. The question is why? It goes without saying that I'm a pretty handsome guy. But to have the Italians note it, well, that's saying something.

What worries me though, is that if, say, a prospective employer googles to check out my history. Oh, sure, they're not SUPPOSED to discriminate based on whatever, but after seeing that I'm plastered all over an Italian dating site, I'll most certainly have job offers coming out my ears.

Seriously, I'll be beating them off with a rolled up Daily Herald, which really won't be that effective given how thin the paper is nowadays.

Well, that's the life of celebrity, I suppose. As the Italians are known for saying: "Il mio video guidato dung è la vostra pubblicità libera di fotoricettore."

The Nerd Strikes Back

11:06 AM, 6/19/2007 .. 0 comments .. Link

As an eighth-grader I got busted down from advanced algebra to algebra 1/2 (no kidding, it was called algebra 1/2) for failing grades. A month later in front of the entire school, I was given a certificate for having the second-highest math score on a school-wide test. (Nobody was smarter than Paul Wonsewitz. Nobody.)

As a fifth-grader, they dragged me into an advanced class where we got to work on "computers." You put this floppy thing into a slot (after turning around three times, spitting, then rubbing a piece of metal to ground yourself.) Then things happened on a TV-looking thing that had two colors: black and green. They kicked me out when I played stupid. DOS? What's DOS? RAM is like my dad's Dodge, right?

I've run from being a geek most of my life. It didn't help that I was 5'2" until my junior year of high school. It didn't help that until the ninth grade I wore glasses WITH A THICK BLACK SAFETY BAND that looped around the back of my head. (Thank YOU, mother.) And it didn't help that I read through books faster than today's kids read the back of a video game box or super-size their fast food order.

Yeah, I'm talking about you, Fatty...

I've just been informed that last comment was insensitive and rude. Reading through it again, I suppose there's some truth to that, so I'll apologize to all the lazy kids playing video games who are getting enormously enormous. Don't worry though, I'm in the middle class, so the billions of dollars your health care is going to cost down the road rests squarely on my shoulders. I vote we take away their video games and make them pull cars around, thus helping them lose weight and reducing our dependency on foreign oil.

Anyway, it's taken me 34 years, teaching myself to program in Basic when I was 12, being in the Honor Society, fixing every damn family computer we've ever owned by myself, hacking a walkie-talkie with a coat hanger, playing in the pep band all four years of high school, reading "The Hobbit" a few dozen times and getting a 28 on the ACT without practice, or caring really, to acknowledge that I'm a nerd. A geek. Or as the ape-like bullies tenderly put it "Punching Bag."

It's a tough thing for me to do, admitting that.

I always wanted to be athletic and bask in the inherent coolness. Tried, even. I ran cross country and track. I played a year of high school basketball, but then got cut my senior year during tryouts. I played baseball from Little League to American Legion. I was never really great at any of it, but I tried.

Which is more than I can say for being a nerd, which came all too naturally.

I suppose I'll show all my cool and cold - like old Job

6:28 PM, 5/30/2007 .. 0 comments .. Link

I rarely blow my lid, and when I do it's more like when you leave the lid on the rice too long and it just make a goddess-awful mess. You know, when it boils over and leaves a starchy burned crust that takes forever to scrub clean because you can't use a real scrubber on that fancy new flat electric stove top without ruining it. So instead you use a rag or something for 20 damn minutes, repeatedly rinsing it out with hot soapy water in the sink across the kitchen, dripping all of it on the floor. That's OK though, because your socks are soaking the mess up as you walk back and forth. Then, after you've changed your socks, you realize you forgot to put the rice back on the ****ing burner and your kids are asking where dinner is...

Yeah, it's more like that.

It ain't goin' so great right now, so unless you like starchy burned crust, turn the damn heat down. I'm lookin' at you.

{ Last Page } { Page 1 of 16 } { Next Page }

Ink Stain

Fixed fences make good something or other

Comic relief

On the fast track down the ladder

Il fotoricettore di mille luoghi datanti liberi

The Nerd Strikes Back

I suppose I'll show all my cool and cold - like old Job

About Me

Links

Categories

Recent Entries

Friends