Indignant Desert Birds
Peaking under the Veil of Ignorance
According to a chart I put together, the City expects to only lose about $9M (~1%) in General Fund Revenue from loss of property taxes.
This, despite the fact that SF housing prices have slipped 31% in the last year. I guess they expect that no one will move or be foreclosed on.
Maybe we should tighten our budgets a bit more…
Update (As of 6:57pm PST):
I should add that the SF Board of Sups canceled their “Budget & Finance Committee” meeting today owing to lack of things to talk about. It’s within the rules, of course, but…
It looks like the SF Board of Supervisors Budget & Finance Committee meeting was canceled today. anyone know why?
I’m off to read the budget now. Exciting stuff!
So, naturally the same day that I post a screed against newspapers, My “hometown paper” announces that they need to either get bought or shut down*
Naturally I found out about this on a blog, the Chronicle won’t be publishing it’s next issue until tomorrow morning sometime…
*The third option is to fuck the union
Much has been made of late about the “Death of the Newspaper”. These articles– like this one from time– never use those scare quotes; their use is implied. What has never, to me, been sufficiently explained is: why I care if the newspapers die.
I don’t. The basic problem (for the newspapers) is that I’ve got a magic box on my desk from which I can: Chat with my friends, Order books, Buy Other Stuff, Watch movies, Listen to music, Surf for Porn, and Make grammatical Mistakes like Capitalizing improperly.
In addition to sitting on my desk, the box comes in convenient “lap” and “phone” size.
If news is going to reach me, it’s going to have to do so this way. I’m pretty well served for International news: Her Majesty’s Secret News Source does a great job. So does Turner’s Folly. As does Microsoft’s only non-crashing program. And others.
The claim that quality punditry can only come from new newspaper is so laughable that not even the Dead Tree’s most ardent defenders are making it.
Local news, I’m told. There are no quality local news outlets. This is demonstrably false.
Newspapers aren’t timely: they take up to 24 whole hours to report on basic things like traffic, fires, earthquakes, and other events. And if your local newspaper decides not to cover the world’s largest pillow fight, it’s pretty useless.
Newspapers do a ton of original reporting, it’s true. Like the time the New York Times declined, for 14 months, to tell America that we were being spied on by our own government.
For that sin, if nothing else. Let ‘em burn like the useless paper they are.
Very broadly speaking, a horror movie is one in which the audience identifies with the victims. As they struggle to get away from the supernatural (or otherwise) awful occurrence, the audience sees itself reflected in the eyes of would-be slain, and is rooting for them to get away.
In a slasher movie, we’re rooting for the killer.
In order to make this plausible, we have to hate victims. Maybe they did something last summer, or are general douchebags, or had bullied the killer all his life. The slasher is a modern embodiment of the Greek Erinyes, and we’re along for the ride. The most recent Friday the 13th movie is quite a ride.
A basic outline of the plot: A bunch of teenagers go into the woods to party, screw, smoke, and have a good time are picked off one at a time by a guy named “Jason”. A few weeks later, another group of teens goes off into the same woods to do the same thing. Also: the brother of one of the girls from the original group is trying to find his sister. Also: there are tits. Lots of them.
Amazingly*, the tits are attached to women with actual and distinct personalities. Also, the guys fondling the tits have actual and distinct personalities. And the guys who only wish they could do said fondling? Yup. What about the girls who don’t get naked? Them too. This is actually a problem.
Remember what I said about needing to hate the victims? I didn’t. I can’t hate teens for the crime of being up in the woods to party, smoke, and screw. Unless you’re Pat Roberson (or Osama bin Laden), you can’t either. The result is that we’re left identifying with the bare breasted woman who just took a machete through the top of her skull. The guy who left the (relative) safety of the house to fetch his (stoned) friend? That’s the heroic guy I want to be. Well, the hale and hearty version of him, anyway. Not the version of him with an ax in his back screaming for help.
And so the movie is horrific. Over and over again we see normal American Teenagers killed for the crime of being normal American Teens. 97 minutes of pain. The only conclusion I can draw is that we’re so decadent that just living here is worthy of death. Or the writers didn’t think about what they were doing.
The movie isn’t awful, though. It’s has some very sharp camera work and film editing. This isn’t faint praise– despite the fact that I knew exactly what was coming and what to expect, the tension was maintained and I was consistently shocked to find Jason somewhere he shouldn’t be. Very well done, folks.
Rating: 3 machetes out of 5 Hockey masks. Mechanically great, but the writing is a mess. Scary, scary, scary…
*for a slasher movie
Before I got to Ohio, I knew what everyone else knew: Ohio Democracy is a joke. An awful, sick, joke where racism keeps the Republican Party in power.
I didn’t know until I got there that those problems had been taken care of. Jennifer Brunner had been on the case. Jenifer Brunner fixed the lines, and gave minorities their vote back.
3 Days ago she announced for the Senate.
I hope she wins.
Here’s the thing: if you were one of the people who over-leveraged America to the point where a few people defaulting caused the entire system to collapse– if you were one of those people, STFU. Let us fix the problems that you caused, and we won’t shove you up against the wall because the revolution need never get violent.
Idiot.
The problem with the modern GOP– why you’re not winning elections– isn’t this, it’s this, and, more egregiously this.
We’re in the midst of an economic meltdown, caused by the GOP, second only to Great Depression (also caused by the GOP). In reaction to this crisis, the GOP is doing everything in their power to get in the way of fixing the problem.
No amount of twittering, facebooking, blogging is going to fix that.
Love,
The Punning Pundit.
PS: while I’m at it: the problem is also This and this the 18-30 demo you’re trying to court is almost as pro gay marriage as they are anti-swastika.