Tag: complaint

What a kick in the teeth

Just as he pronounced himself, “ready to pitch in the majors again”, the Braves released Tom Glavine. Now, I understand that this is their right, and the guy is 43 years old. But he won 20 games for the Braves five times. For the vast majority of baseball fans today, it doesn’t get much more “Braves” than Tom Glavine. I don’t know if there was a good reason for doing it this way – waiting until he worked his way back into shape doing rehab in the minors – but it sure comes across to the fans as a terrible way to treat a guy who has been really important to your franchise since 1987, save the few years he spent as a Met. I’d love to see him come to Baltimore. Or Washington – I’d definitely find a babysitter for an evening if I could go see Glavine pitch. As an aside, some awesomeness from the article:

Glavine described himself as “very surprised” in a text message to The Associated Press.

The idea of a 43 year old man texting the AP is almost surreal. I hope he used an emoticon or two.

Guest post – Baltimore sucks, too

I do a lot of complaining here about the DC government. Turns out Baltimore has its share of problems, too. Here for your reading pleasure is a guest post from Gary at Vinotrip. Baltimore has a lot of problems. What big city doesn’t? I’ve lived in or around the city for most of my life and, as most Baltimoreans do, I give the city a pass on the problems that it faces. Sure, some things are nuts and don’t make sense, but it’s a good town. Two weeks ago, City Councilman Edward L. Reisinger (who represents me and my district) sponsored a bill to raise off-leash fines for dog owners from $100 to $1000. To little fanfare, the bill passed. Along with the good men and women of the Baltimore Police Department, Animal Control swept down on Riverside Park and started handing out $1000 fines. Needless to say, everyone is bitter. Smart move, Ed. Pass a ten-fold increase in fines targeted at dog owners in your district, then hold a neighborhood meeting about it. I get that dogs have pretty much taken over Riverside Park and if you are afraid of dogs, God help you because you’re going to fear for your life in this neighborhood. There is a leash law in the park, and that leash law should be enforced along with the law about picking up after your dog. Got all that. But the problem is sending several police officers and Animal Control officials to the park for days at a time. In Baltimore City where we probably have more important things to do besides extort taxpayers in a park. Well, city officials, your free pass is over. My self imposed gag-order on bitching about Baltimore has been lifted. Early last week, on Tuesday April 28th, a water main ruptured underneath a major downtown street. Water poured out, shut down streets during morning rush hour, closed businesses, and pretty much ruined the day for lots of people. They still haven’t gotten it fixed. Finally today, an entire week after the main broke, the city got up a sign on the major freeway heading into downtown regarding the major crosstown street shut down. For a full week, people rolling into the city found out the hard way that Lombard Street was still closed. The city can’t fix it. The city can’t put up a sign about it. The city can only bitch and moan and pander for Federal stimulus dollars. The best part is the quote from Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon at a press conference

“This is an example of what happens when you having a very aging infrastructure system,” Dixon told reporters.

You. Are. The. MAYOR. Don’t tell me we have a problem. I know we have a problem. GO FIX THE PROBLEM. Were I Dixon’s speechwriter, her news bite would have sounded something more like

“This is an example of what happens when you having a very aging infrastructure system,” Dixon told reporters. “But things aren’t all bad. We have a per capita murder rate so bad that if we had New York City’s population, there would be over 4,000 murders per year. Property taxes are 2.2% but we still can’t get water mains to stop exploding underneath downtown. We couldn’t even describe what a fully funded school looks like. Half the homes in low-income neighborhoods are boarded up and vacant. We send out Traffic Officials to stand under the traffic lights and direct traffic like we’re in North Korea. As your mayor, I’m riding around in a hybrid taxi trying to smile while being indicted for fraud But don’t worry everyone, we have that Riverside Park dog problem handled. I am on top of the dog issue. I’m sending more units down there as we speak.

It’s enough to make you cry. For all the problems going on, we get $1000 tickets dished out for having a dog off-leash. Maybe they can put that money toward fencing off a dog park, or the schools, or more police, or the water mains, or the traffic light timing…

Pedestrians should know their place

Have you ever been driving down 17th Street NW, getting ready to turn right on E to head out to Virginia, when some guy in an ill-fitting suit talking on his cell phone jogs across the street against the light? Have you ever given him a look and thrown up your hands in frustration? Has he ever had the audacity to flip you off in return? This didn’t happen to me this afternoon just after five, in case you’re wondering. I pride myself on paying attention to pedestrians and right-of-way. I know, what do I want, a cookie? But really, many, many people in this city, especially Maryland drivers (You know who you are) pretend that pedestrians don’t exist, and crosswalks are merely warnings before stop signs or red lights to run. So when I’m treated like this by pedestrians who think they are much, much more important than they really are, it bothers me. When you have the right of way, I’ll gladly wait. But when I have the right of way, I expect you to be on the sidewalk where you belong.

The Opposite of Community

Internet forums are often wonderful. They can take a group of people who are spread across the globe, joined only by a common interest, and bring them together to talk and make friends. Or they can be terrible. You can have something like the Columbia Heights Community Forum, which takes people with common interests who are already co-located in one DC neighborhood, and drives them apart. At least someone notices my struggles with the forum. It’s really an unbelievable amount of hate and rage and incoherent ranting. Some go around pushing buttons, and others simply wait to have their buttons pushed so they can scream about it. It’s really too bad that something that could be a positive force in the community is actually driving people apart. Although, like a train wreck, I just can’t look away. I can’t even stop posting there.

Compare and Contrast

Original

Had I known her husband was a giant among those of us who joust at the windmills of parking enforcement, I would have bought her a beer. (Source)

“Quoted”

Had I known her husband was a giant among us who jousts at the windmills of parking enforcement, I would have bought her a beer. (Source)

Correct me if I’m wrong, but when one quotes another source, one generally doesn’t edit the quote to change the meaning, right? I mean, I didn’t study journalism in school, so I might be crazy here, but I always thought you were supposed to write exactly what the other person wrote or said, unless you make it clear that you’ve changed the wording. And even then, you change the wording either to clarify the context or to fit in the allowed space. You don’t change the meaning of the quote. Also, the wife maintains that “tilt” is generally used instead of “joust” when making that particular reference. She also feels that the analogy is slightly flawed – parking enforcement is an actual enemy, so to speak, unlike the windmills. We had a nice discussion about it, and we decided that she should just let me handle the references to classical literature. At least, that’s what I came away with. And she doesn’t have a blog, so that makes me right.

Isn’t that what you’re supposed to be fixing?

Metro Use A Rarity For Half Of Board | WashingtonPost.com

[Ward One Councilman Jim] Graham said frequent night meetings make mass transit inconvenient.

Taking transit is not convenient for their jobs, [Metro board members who don’t actually use Metro] said.

So, what they’re saying here is, “We’re so grossly incompetent that we can’t even make Metro work for ourselves. Good luck to all you poor schlubs!” What kind of schedule do these people keep that Metro isn’t convenient? I don’t believe that they have Metro board meetings at 4AM on Sundays. Seriously, this is like the CEO of Bank of America keeping his life savings under his mattress because the branches are too inconvenient. Maybe the reason that Metro has a $29 million deficit is because it’s not serving the residents of the DC Metro area. And maybe the people responsible for fixing it could actually use it and see for themselves what the problems are. Instead, they’ll probably just raise fares again, making it less convenient for everyone. Next year we’ll have a $40 million deficit, and more people who don’t use it will make more bad decisions.

I can always tell when Wikimetro sends out a new batch of spam

Whenever I see the traffic to this page and this page quadruple, I know that Wikimetro has sent out another batch of spam to various bloggers, pitching their scam. If Wikimetro contacts you, ignore them. Or, better yet, file a complaint. I was thinking of complaining here, but never got around to it. I don’t think the FBI appreciates online scams very much.

It annoys the you-know-what out of me, too, Bud

Bud Selig is a dirty, dirty liar.

“I don’t want to hear the commissioner turned a blind eye to this or he didn’t care about it,” Selig told Newsday in a Monday phone interview. “That annoys the you-know-what out of me. You bet I’m sensitive to the criticism. “The reason I’m so frustrated is, if you look at our whole body of work, I think we’ve come farther than anyone ever dreamed possible,” he said, adding, “I honestly don’t know how anyone could have done more than we’ve already done.”

“It’s like this morning,” he continued. “I pushed this old lady down some stairs. I suppose you’re going to blame me for that, too? How was I supposed to know about gravity?” It’s too bad that every statistic for every player between about 1990 and whenever they manage to institute a real drug policy will always have a cloud over it.

Please stop bunching the 16th Street bus, WMATA

I just missed the bus this morning. As usual, I was waiting for the interminable light to cross 16th at Harvard NW when the bus went by. Then another, and another. Three buses, bumper to bumper, and all gone by the time the light changed. So I waited. Not too long, six or seven minutes, but then three more came. From Harvard to Euclid there were 12 people on my bus, then 11 until we got to M. After I got off at H, I think there might have been one person left. No one got on while I was riding. There was another bus right in front of us that picked up all the passengers. And I got on the bus at about 7:20AM, not peak rush hour, but plenty of people are on their way to work at that time. It’s frustrating that, had the buses been spaced out just a little bit, I would have gotten one of the first bunch that went through. And WMATA would have saved some cash. Eleven fares probably don’t even cover costs on the bus.