The Hackenblog

Do other cities do this?

“They are the homeless of the domestic animal world — colonies of feral cats that roam residential neighborhoods and lurk around office buildings and commercial garages, scavenging for food.

“Unlike other strays that might rub up against a leg hoping for a crumb or a head rub, these felines are so unaccustomed to human contact that they dart away when people approach. Feral cats cannot be turned into house pets. When they end up in municipal shelters, they have little hope of coming out alive.

“But one animal welfare group has figured out a way to save their lives and put them to work in Los Angeles. The Working Cats program of Voice for the Animals, a Los Angeles-based animal advocacy and rescue group, has placed feral cats in a handful of police stations with rodent problems, just as the group placed cats in the rat-plagued downtown flower district several years ago — to great effect.

“Six feral cats were recently installed as ratters in the parking lot of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Southeast Division, and another group will be housed at the Central Division early in the new year.

“Their reputation as furtive and successful exterminators grew after feral cats were introduced to the parking lot of the Wilshire Division nearly six years ago. Rats had been burrowing into the equipment bags that bicycle officers stored in outside cages; inside the facility, mice were sometimes scurrying across people’s desks.

“‘Once we got the cats, problem solved,’ said Cmdr. Kirk Albanese, a captain at the Wilshire station at the time. ‘I was almost an immediate believer.’”

~snip~

“For more information on ‘working’ feral cats, go to http://www.vftafoundation.org/workingcats.htm.”

LAPD enlists feral cats for rat patrol. The felines have been introduced, to great effect, at several stations with rodent problems. Parker Center may get them too. By Carla Hall, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer, December 29, 2007

God bless people who think up brilliant stuff like this. They make me think better of our own species. Why can’t there be more solutions like this? I ask you. Why?

(If the LAT article is behind the registration or paywall, you can click on this: Feral Cats Mousing for a Living in LA [pdf]. Sorry, LAT, this story is too cool not to be read and you can send me a C&D if you think different. Oh, so, while I’m at it, here’s something else Los Angeles, the county this time, is getting right: Los Angeles Outdoor Gyms in Molinia’s district [pdf]. Yay!)

Latest issue of Sequential Tart, which includes the Mayerson interview, wherein I explain many mysteries.

I haven’t said anything about Benazir Bhutto’s death because I have and had very mixed feelings about what her return to Pakistan might actually mean. I am sorry she died and the unspeakable way she died, but I have a less than glowing opinion of her due to reading The Economist every week she was in power in the 90s and reading Richard Reeves excellent book: “Passage to Peshawar: Pakistan: Between the Hindu Kush and the Arabian Sea,” which gives much background on why and how General Zia got to power and stayed in power in Pakistan. As I recall, three or four horrendously wealthy landowning families, the Bhuttos are one of them, have always had all the power in Pakistan, except when the military grabbed it. I’m probably naïve, but ruling nobility and democracy don’t usually get along so well. Although in some cases, like Spain after Franco, the formerly exiled nobility make it look okay. But Spain, even under the Franco regime, was more developed and ready to rejoin the West and democracy than Pakistan is, was and might ever be.

And Ms. Bhutto’s government in the 90s was messy. She might have come to power through some kind of elections, but she ruled like pasha and didn’t have much traction with the people when she was removed from the prime ministership for alleged corruption (again, as in 1988) in 1996.

I don’t pretend to know what the solution for Pakistan is, but I was and am still sure it wasn’t Benazir Bhutto or any member of the Bhutto family. They are part of Pakistan’s feudal, backward, xenophobic, intolerant, paranoid problem, not it’s forward-looking democratic solution. If there is one; Pakistan might end up a military-backed theocracy and there’s not a damn good, bad, or indifferent thing the U.S. can do about it. Other than offer every woman in Pakistan whose family will send her a first-class full scholarship education and citizenship in the U.S. But we don’t offer that to our own women, so probably that’s not going to happen.

If real darkness descends on Pakistan, it’s not really the U.S.’s fault, but then again the U.S. really didn’t try to actually improve things there. As Richard Reeves points out, the U.S. will put up with any kind of monster as long as it’s our kind of monster. Which is why my stupid country supported General Zia in the 80s to support the mujahideen and has supported General Musharraf to fight the mujahideen in the 00s. Our foreign policies definitely make our own problems for our U.S. and then our government makes even more problems trying to solve them (sometimes militaristically, see Iraq, Panama and Haiti).

So, I’m sorry for Ms. Bhutto’s murder, but I never thought she was Pakistan’s savior. I’m not sure there is a one for that poor country until the mullas are pried off the educational system for the poor, which means Pakistan would have to make an educational system for the poor, women are emancipated and educated, and the U.S. stops propping up vampires like Zia, Musharraf, and, yes, to a lesser extent, the Bhutto family.

And that, other than to highly recommend Mr. Reeves’s book, is all I have to say on this subject, which is why comments are off.

Happy new year, everyone, better days a’comin’, please God, haven’t we suffered enough?

Even if it’s Hillary, even though Bill recently said the US should leave some troops in Iraq to protect the Kurds from the Turks (also here), which is one the worst ideas I’ve heard in a long time. Nothing against the Kurds or Turks, but I’d rather leave diplomats and NGO aid and development agencies and money we can more or less keep track of there and work with the rest of the world on it. I mean, hopefully next year and beyond, the US can become a country in the world and not a world in a country.

However, if a Republican is inaugurated next year, we can just kiss everything that matters good-bye anyway:

“The religious right—in the form of its umbrella organization the Arlington Group, formed in 2002—is certainly split and unenthusiastic about the presidential candidates. Pat Robertson has endorsed Giuliani; Richard Land, the head of the Southern Baptist Convention, has said he could never vote for Giuliani and would consider backing a third-party candidate if Giuliani is nominated. So the unanimity on Bush’s behalf we saw in 2000 and in 2004 will likely be gone. But as far as policy is concerned, the Christian right has only one overriding goal: a promise from candidates that they’ll appoint ‘strict constructionist’ judges. And every one of the candidates, Giuliani included, has made that promise resoundingly and repeatedly, in public and presumably in private. As recently as November, Giuliani told the conservative Federalist Society that ‘we need judges who embrace originalism’ and vowed that he would appoint justices in the mold of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.[8]

“That, above all, is what the Christian right needs to hear. It is well worth remembering that when the next president is sworn in, John Paul Stevens will be three months shy of his eighty-ninth birthday. It seems unlikely that he would be able to outlast a Giuliani or Romney or Huckabee or McCain presidency. One more judge like John Roberts or Samuel Alito will mean not only the probable end of Roe v. Wade but of affirmative action (sharply curtailed already), efforts at school desegregation (school systems have resegregated to a surprising extent in recent years), and many other progressive social goals. All of the four major Republican candidates have vowed to see to these outcomes. Paradoxically, the personally pro-choice Giuliani, if elected, could go down in history as a hero to the Christian right—the president who finally ended Roe—in a way that even Ronald Reagan has not.”
How the Republicans Have Become Prisoner of Their Own Ideology, Naked Capitalism, December 29, 2007

Gah! C’mon, Dems! It’s crunch time! (It has been for awhile, but that’s moot now.)

“I love this semi-animated short film about a man who is tormented by a concrete golem-like creature. The integration of urban design from Montreal and Vancouver is seamless and elegant.”
Drawn.ca, December 28, 2007

I’m not a huge Klimt fan, but I’m a huge fan of this site about him: iKlimt

Sorry, needs Flash, but is worth it. The site plays a Satie Gymnopédie. How elegant.

Is your blogpost too cool to leave in cyberspace?
Journal of Bloglandia

Wouldn’t it be nice to have some of all this great writing in one place? A slightly smaller place than the internets? As in 8.5×11″ and fits in your briefcase, backpack, tote bag, or whatnot.
Journal of Women on Comics

(via)

“James Monroe looks like some sort of Cro-Magnon man, Andrew Jackson looks bewildered, and John Quincy Adams looks like a child molester or ax murderer, possibly a combination of the two. Martin Van Buren is about the only one that looks mostly normal, but then he was kind of odd looking in real life so, they probably just didn’t know how to deal with that.”
Mad and bewildered Presidents, TMTGM, December 27, 2007

Maybe I don’t get it, but I really hate dollar coins.

“Again, here’s another instance of what tries to be a string of coarse gags. When you try to tie them all together they contradict each other though and it all becomes rather scurrilous nonsense instead. This song has the dubious honour of being one of Zappa’s biggest hits. Because of its lush melody, this song went on to become a #1 hit in Scandinavia. Teens apparently remained ignorant of its crass sadomasochistic content as they danced and romanced at the disco. Zappa would probably argue that the whole point of the exercise is to exploit the tension between sentimental musical hypocrisy, which promotes one false set of societal stereotypes, and this gross social reportage.”
StreetLaughter 37: Frank Zappa: Bobby Brown Goes Down, December 28, 2007

I bought this album on cassette, that’s how long ago this was. It and ELO were my car tapes for a couple of years. I remember pulling over to listen to the words of “Bobby Brown..” because I couldn’t quite believe what I was hearing. I was so young then. And it still shocks me that I paid money for albums on cassettes once. Anyway….

Here’s the best part:

The album versions are better than both of these clips, but what would I do without YouTube?

“But merchants in East L.A. said the sting of progress is even more painful here, an area that was struggling economically before the construction started.

“‘The people are different, the businesses are different,’ said Rocki Esparza, owner of Manny’s El Loco Restaurant. ‘People that have businesses here are barely surviving.’

“Esparza’s fast-food Mexican eatery has been on the corner of 3rd Street and Atlantic Boulevard for 16 years, building a regular lunchtime crowd of neighborhood residents and area workers.

“Large concrete barriers and small orange cones along this section of the construction zone have limited access to the restaurant’s parking lot — turning a once lively spot where seating was scarce during peak hours into a place with plenty of empty tables.

“Esparza has turned to catering events and delivering food to homes, as well as laying off two of her 10 employees.

“‘I think I’ve lost my customers, and I don’t really think that they’ll be back,’ she said. ‘The only reason I’ve stayed in business is because we’ve been well-rooted. But I’ve depleted my savings, and I’m wondering about my future.’”
Gold Line work upsets East L.A. merchants,
MTA officials say the light rail line will bring prosperity to businesspeople. By Jean-Paul Renaud, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer, December 27, 2007

MTA officials say the light rail line will bring prosperity to businesspeople

Maybe, if they survive the construction phase of it.

And, I live in Lincoln Heights, which is not too far from East LA, but I’ve only had gone over to Self Help Graphics twice in the 10 years I’ve lived here. So, I’m not sure where all this new business is going to come from.

I’m not against public transit, hell, I loved it when I lived in Europe, and I feel terrible for the business people getting fucked over by the metro construction. But when the MTA says anything they do will bring prosperity to anyone but the MTA, they’re kidding everyone. The MTA’s only goal is its own enrichment. And if they destroy a string of East LA businesses in the process, I’m sure the MTA couldn’t care less.

They’ll never do this, but if all public transport in LA were put on a donation basis, we’d have useful public transit that might even reduce our carbon footprint or whatever that snappy phrase is. What we have now is an overpriced system that car owners, like me, don’t use. And, sorry, I’m no angel, but why should I pay whatever it is (MTA’s webpage sucks for fare information, too) to take the often late train from LH to Pasadena when parking in Pasadena is free?

Remembering Molly Ivins.

And it might never stop hurting.

Important information to understand this post: According to Wikipedia: “The median income for a household in the city was $117,267, and the median income for a family was $125,708. Males had a median income of $98,928 versus $51,853 for females. The per capita income for the city was $59,150. About 3.7% of families and 5.0% of the population were below the poverty line, including 4.8% of those under age 18 and 3.0% of those age 65 or over. The vast majority, 69.7% of persons had a Bachelor’s degree or higher, compared to 27.2% at the national average, respectively.”

And obviously they don’t share, even when they are shared with:

“Patti Keating, a state parks official, researched the matter and told me San Marino is in the clear. She said that despite the city’s having received more than $600,000 in state funds for Lacy projects, state code allows a city to charge nonresident fees as long as they are reasonable and not excessive.

“If that raises your blood pressure, so will the tip I got from three readers:

“Even federal funds have been used to upgrade Lacy Park.

“This was confirmed by Elisa Vasquez and Linda Jenkins at the L.A. County Community Development Commission. They told me that San Marino has in the past received nearly $70,000 annually in Community Development Block Grants.

“Excuse me?

“The U.S. Housing and Urban Development website on the block grant program describes it as a way ‘to provide services to the most vulnerable in our communities’ and as ‘an important tool for helping local governments tackle serious challenges facing their communities.’

“One year, I’m told by Jenkins, San Marino used an unspecified portion of the federal grant for the serious challenge of building an apron around the Lacy Park playground. I guess this was so ‘the most vulnerable’ children of San Marino didn’t fall and rip their knickers.

“As with state money, the federal block grant program allows a city to charge nonresident fees as long as they’re reasonable and not excessive, according to Jenkins. But at both the state and federal levels, no legal definition of “reasonable” is provided.

“I would therefore like to argue, here in the court of public opinion, that there is nothing demonstrably ‘reasonable’ about the $4 weekend fee at Lacy Park.

“Does South Pasadena charge San Marinans and other nonresidents $4 to use the perfectly lovely Garfield Park? No.

“Does Los Angeles stick it to nonresidents who use the spectacular Griffith Park? Of course not.

“I’m told by Ballantyne that the weekend fee generates $60,000 a year. But the extra part-time staff needed on Saturdays and Sundays costs San Marino only $33,000.”
You paid for San Marino to play, by Steve Lopez, LA Times, December 26, 2007

Oh, San Marino, have you no shame? Guess not. Maybe the law on accepting taxpayer money for public spaces needs to change because San Marino certainly isn’t going to change.

Benazir Bhutto is dead, killed by an assassin who blew himself up afterwards. Many others died in the explosion.

It isn’t so much Benazir Bhutto that’s getting to me. She was a politician, as corrupt and deficient as the rest of them, but she had some ideals she wanted to present, and as always, the US was on the wrong side, supporting the bloody regime that tried to suppress her and may have killed her.

It’s humanity. God damn us, what will it take for someone, anyone, to stand up and say that THIS CANNOT HAPPEN ANY MORE? Must our end be like this? Will we destroy ourselves in the end? Every one of us knows that there’s so much better in our hearts and souls, which is leading me to one chilling conclusion:

We do this because we like it.

Recycling is good

Journal of Bloglandia

Journal of Women on Comics

“It’s a failure of imagination to think that climate change is going to be an escape from jail – and it’s a failure in a couple of ways.

“For one thing, modern civilization, with six billion people on the planet, lives on the tip of a gigantic complex of prosthetic devices – and all those devices have to work. The crash scenario that people think of, in this case, as an escape to freedom would actually be so damaging that it wouldn’t be fun. It wouldn’t be an adventure. It would merely be a struggle for food and security, and a permanent high risk of being robbed, beaten, or killed; your ability to feel confident about your own – and your family’s and your children’s – safety would be gone. People who fail to realize that… I’d say their imaginations haven’t fully gotten into this scenario.

“It’s easy to imagine people who are bored in the modern techno-surround, as I call it, and they’re bored because they have not fully comprehended that they’re still primates, that their brains grew over a million-year period doing a certain suite of activities, and those activities are still available. Anyone can do them; they’re simple. They have to do with basic life support and basic social activities unboosted by technological means.

“And there’s an addictive side to this. People try to do stupid technological replacements for natural primate actions, but it doesn’t quite give them the buzz that they hoped it would. Even though it looks quite magical, the sense of accomplishment is not there. So they do it again, hoping that the activity, like a drug, will somehow satisfy the urge that it’s supposedly meant to satisfy. But it doesn’t. So they do it more and more – and they fall down a rabbit hole, pursuing a destructive and high carbon-burn activity, when they could just go out for a walk, or plant a garden, or sit down at a table with a friend and drink some coffee and talk for an hour. All of these unboosted, straight-forward primate activities are actually intensely satisfying to the totality of the mind-body that we are.

“So a little bit of analysis of what we are as primates – how we got here evolutionarily, and what can satisfy us in this world – would help us to imagine activities that are much lower impact on the planet and much more satisfying to the individual at the same time. In general, I’ve been thinking: let’s rate our technologies for how much they help us as primates, rather than how they can put us further into this dream of being powerful gods who stalk around on a planet that doesn’t really matter to us.

“Because a lot of these supposed pleasures are really expensive. You pay with your life. You pay with your health. And they don’t satisfy you anyway! You end up taking various kinds of prescription or non-prescription drugs to compensate for your unhappiness and your unhealthiness – and the whole thing comes out of a kind of spiral: if only you could consume more, you’d be happier. But it isn’t true.

“I’m advocating a kind of alteration of our imagined relationship to the planet. I think it’d be more fun – and also more sustainable. We’re always thinking that we’re much more powerful than we are, because we’re boosted by technological powers that exert a really, really high cost on the environment – a cost that isn’t calculated and that isn’t put into the price of things. It’s exteriorized from our fake economy. And it’s very profitable for certain elements in our society for us to continue to wander around in this dream-state and be upset about everything.

“The hope that, ‘Oh, if only civilization were to collapse, then I could be happy’ – it’s ridiculous. You can simply walk out your front door and get what you want out of that particular fantasy.”

~snip~

“But if you think of yourself as terraforming Earth, and if you think about sustainability, then you can start thinking about permaculture and what permaculture really means. It’s not just sustainable agriculture, but a name for a certain type of history. Because the word sustainability is now code for: let’s make capitalism work over the long haul, without ever getting rid of the hierarchy between rich and poor and without establishing social justice.

“Sustainable development, as well: that’s a term that’s been contaminated. It doesn’t even mean sustainable anymore. It means: let us continue to do what we’re doing, but somehow get away with it. By some magic waving of the hands, or some techno silver bullet, suddenly we can make it all right to continue in all our current habits. And yet it’s not just that our habits are destructive, they’re not even satisfying to the people who get to play in them. So there’s a stupidity involved, at the cultural level.”
Interview with Kim Stanley Robinson, BldgBlog, December 19, 2007

I wonder what would happen if this guy and James Howard Kunstler ever went on a date. I’d love to chaperone.

If you have time, read the whole interview. I’m only quoting the stuff that hit me hardest and there was a lot to think about in the rest.

I’d forgotten these, but they still make me laugh.

“Each one of those cases is a person who had insurance and got sick. They filed for payments authorized by their coverage and Blue Shield said no and attempted to cancel their policies. These sick people then had to fight tooth and nail to get the payment to their doctors so they would not be liable for the bill. In over 200 of those cases they lost and the companies dropped them completely from coverage. Of course that means that they then have a pre-existing condition and thus would have a next to impossible time getting coverage from another company.

“It is a disgusting practice that is all about trying to squeeze out a few more dollars in profits. It is illegal and I am glad to see the state launching the investigation and moving to fine them. It sure would be nice if that dissuaded the companies from trying this in the first place, but I don’t hold out that much hope that it will.”
Blue Shield Illegally Canceling Policies, Working Californians, December 13, 2007

This isn’t my favorite version of Scrooge, the Alastair Sim version from 1951 is, but it is the one that makes me laugh the hardest.

The Upshot of Wapshott, an interview with yours truly at Sequential Tart.

More than you knew, more than you probably ever wanted to know. However, I do say some cool stuff about comics, smut, art, and publishing, and not necessarily in that order.

I wonder how many people don’t know he was a chorus boy on Broadway way back when. He appears to still have it. (via)

Anybody know what’s up with Twisty Faster? Her superb blog http://blog.iblamethepatriarchy.com/ appears to be somewhat messed up.

Update 122607: Twistyville appears to be back. Now if only there were a new post…

Update 011708: Twisty speaks! An unexpected, but inevitable, post.

Don’t see those words on the Hackenblog very often, do you?

Jesus surfing and Jesus on a Harley. (Just click the link, you know you want to.)

I really must read this site more often.

“Researchers in Chicago used drugs and manipulated genes to control the sexuality of fruit flies, making them gay and then straight again within a few hours. ‘It was very dramatic,’ said scientist David Featherstone. ‘They even attempted copulation.’ Scientists cloned fluorescent cats, developed an antidote for zombieism in cockroaches, and revealed that evolutionary changes in the lower backs and hip joints of females prevent pregnant women from toppling over. ‘When you think about it,’ said Harvard anthropologist Katherine Whitcome, ‘women make it look so very damn easy.’”
Weekely Review, Harpers Magazine, December 18, 2007

Journal of Bloglandia (ISSN1950-7645)

Journal of Women on Comics (ISSN1940-7637)

Please cross-post, thanks!

Streetlaughter has the best, circa 1969, definition I’ve ever seen.

Faggots: Dave Berg, Streetlaughter, December 13, 2007 (click for the larger image, but do read the post, it’s a good ‘un).

Thanks, Dorian, this was my first laugh of the day.

Huckabee’s son
was packing a gun.
A carry-on Glock
at Little Rock
airport.
Huckabee’s Son Arrested With Gun at Little Rock Airport, AP on FoxNews, April 26, 2007 (via Jill at Skippy’s)

Mad Kane is so much better at this than I am. Really.

(Wow this story is old. Anyway. These stories have a bad habit of disappearing, so there’s a pdf of it here.)

‘”City officials today unveiled the parking meter of the future, which takes the swipe of a credit card as well as small change. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was among the VIPs touting the Easy Park-Easy Pay machine, which was installed in a city parking lot at 11229 Magnolia Blvd. in North Hollywood. The Los Angeles Department of Transportation is replacing 6,000 of the city’s 40,000 meters with the multi-unit machines that allow motorists to use cash, credit card, debit card or their cellphones to pay for parking. LADOT officials unveiled the first unit in a city lot in North Hollywood. “Anyone in Los Angeles who has parked on the street or in public lots knows the frustration of broken meters, unwarranted parking tickets, and the stress of scraping for spare change to cover your trip to the local store,” said Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. City engineers plan to replace 1,000 meters in city parking lots and another 5,000 along Los Angeles streets by next spring. If the new meters are deemed a success, LADOT will replace all of the city parking meters within two years. (CNS)’”
Fancy parking meters, Bottleneck Blog, December 14, 2007

Finally! Thank God, technology, and LADOT. Here’s a picture and story at abc.com. Might be time to buy a new cell phone. (Ug.)

I think women get as much out of dressing up like Slave Princess Leia as the fanboys get out of looking at them.

This is just my hypothesis, I’ll let you know when I got the theory in hand.

Dan Kelly had this originally, and a link to a flickr account with only amateur SPLs, but damn if I can find that link. Dan, if you read this, if you could come across with the link, I’d be much obliged, if only for my fanboy readers (all 3 of them).

Update 122607: Slave Leia Appreciation Society link from Mr. Dan Kelly. Thanks, Dan!

Oh well, someday there’ll be a cure:

“An informal poll of my US female friends revealed that they spend roughly $700 (£350) a month on what they consider standard obligatory beauty maintenance. That covers haircut, highlights, manicure, pedicure, waxing, tanning, make-up, facials, teeth whitening etc. They will spend a further $1,000 (£500) a month on physical conditioning such as military fitness, spinning sessions, vikram yoga, Pilates, deep-tissue sports massage, personal training etc. On top of that, add the occasional spa day, a week-long ‘bikini boot camp’ in Mexico at the start of every summer and seasonal splurges on personal shoppers and clothing. I’m not sure any of my British female friends spends £700 during an entire year on her appearance. American women see these costs as a simple and sensible investment in their future.”
American beauty? Having observed females on both sides of the Atlantic, our correspondent claims British women are unkempt and lazy about grooming. By Tad Safran, TimesOnline, December 11, 2007

I don’t know anyone who spends that much on grooming. Of course I live in reality, so I wouldn’t know anyone spending that much. I mean, how could you hold down a job, have a life, and do all that?

Best quote in the comments: “Well done, ladies! Evidently Tad has failed to detect and override the Boor Repellant that every British women keeps in her grooming kit. Perhaps it’s time to be charitable and share the secret with our American sisters.” Brava, Bella!

Is your blog entry too cool to stay in cyberspace? Well, send it on in to the Journal of Bloglandia, ISSN1940-7645 and it can be cooler in print.

Deadlines are ongoing. I’ll publish an issue every time I have 60-70 pages of material. It won’t cost more than $8 a copy at lulu.com. It will be 8.5×11 saddle stitched, color covers, black and white interior. The Wapshott Press is the publisher, lulu.com the manufacturer, the Journal will have an ISSN number (ISSN1940-7645) and bar code so it could be sold by retailers. Email me if there are more questions that are not addressed at J Bloglandia.

By the way, this journal is called the Journal of Bloglandia because Blogtopia (y!sctp!) was taken, but it’s the same kind of idea.

Please cross-post, thanks.