Posted by ben on 21st September
I initiated pickles over the weekend. These aren’t like the supermarket pickles with the vinegar (though those are good too). They’re deli style, cured only with lactic acid fermentation in brine. If you’ve ever had a deli pickle with a fizzy, sour taste to it, you know what I’m talking about.
I think they might turn out a little soft because I had to freeze the cucumbers until I had enough; my vines only put out like two or three a week. Also, the cucumbers are weird-looking. Like, deformed. Post-nuclear-apocalypse deformed. Twisted, mocking blasphemies of cucumberness. Like something from a Lovecraftian cucumbrous nightmare. Like demon fruit shat forth in darkness by the shuddering hands of a blind idiot god. In their fevered hallucinations, the shrieking denizens of sanitariums for the criminally insane see these hellwrought cucumbers, their very existence a wailing, mocking affront to God and nature. Seriously, some funny-looking cucumbers.
Posted by ben on 17th September
“Act 99 is the way to go. Otherwise, we’ll just have to tighten our belts and do it on the existent budget.” — Lansing mayor Bernero
“Residents have overwhelmingly said they’d prefer more police officers to new technology.” — Susan Vela, Lansing State Journal
Three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
That’s just to install the cameras that nobody wants. Yearly costs are more than fifty thousand dollars. Neither figure includes funding for personnel to monitor the cameras, so either some other project goes unfunded for those, or else the cameras are purely a reactive tool. But it turns out that act 99 has nothing to do with whether or not surveillance cameras are installed in Lansing, only whether or not commercial loans will be solicited to cover the installation. Whether the city goes into debt for them, or we cannibalize other programs for them. No need to outline plans for paying back the loans - the state and city are doing just fine. I mean, everyone knows that GM is practically pissing money at Lansing, right? The cameras that nobody seems to want are going in regardless, because Virg knows what’s best for you.
It’s the same sort of arrogance heard from Senator Graham on the immigration reform bill. He wanted it, and he’s a Senator, so you can all piss off. “…because some people don’t want to say to the loud folks – ‘No, you can’t have your way all the time.’ ” Sit down on the therapist’s couch Mr. Graham, and think about the loud folks. Try to remember what they looked like. Did they seem to resemble the same constituents who voted you into office in the first place? The people you work for? Maybe they just seem loud because they drowned out the only 23% of Americans who supported the legislation. You’re not their ruler, you’re their servant. Your job is to do what they ask of you and if you have a problem with that, you’re welcome to find other employment.
Likewise mayor Bernero. He’s certainly under no obligation to respect the will of his constituents, but we’re under no obligation to renew his employment. After the contempt with which he’s treated the constituency, voting him out of his job is just logical. Any tasty schadenfreude I get from it, well, that’s gravy.
Posted by ben on 11th September
