The horror ...

This week, while riding around beautiful Ann Arbor in a car, wasting precious non-renewable resources and being inconvenienced right and left by the idiots, morons, halfwits, and imbeciles that are licensed to operate motor vehicles here, I had a truly frightening epiphany: what if somehow the town was magically transformed into a Dutch - style bicycle city? What if all these dolts were on bicycles?

Consider: you don't frequently see people in cars switch randomly from driving in the street to driving on the sidewalk to driving across lawns and back again, and if you do, it usually shows up on the evening news. Most people driving cars don't strap their young children into car seats placed outside the car, well above the center of gravity, wearing protective clothing that wouldn't protect a squirrel from a bad fall off a bird feeder -- and again, if you do, it shows up on Fox. Although many people in cars (especially mini vans) do drive the wrong way on one-way streets, when they do, it's at least frowned upon by police and passerby. All of these things are practiced daily by our bicyclists, as a matter of course, and the only reason complete mayhem doesn't result is that there are relatively few of 'em.

I don't want to contemplate what it would be like if we all parked our cars and took to two wheels -- the horror, the horror.

I haven't really been paying attention

I saw something in the news about some guy named James LeBron ... leaving somewhere, going somewhere? Is he one of the spies we're trading to Russia?

And while we're at it, did anybody hear whether we're getting anything good in the swap with the Russkies? A few cases of vodka, at least?

Hard to adjust

With the rise of Twitter, the word "twit" as an adjective is coming to mean "from or related to Twitter" as in "Twit Pictures," pictures sent over Twitter.

This makes it hard for us older dogs to read headlines like "Celebrity Twit Pics" on sources like the Daily Beast without grinning if not actually cracking up. And if you have the time on your hands to look at the underlying content, some of the shots really are twit pics, in both the new and old senses of the word. Not all, though, unfortunately.

In the interest of fairness

After listing a few of the Detroit public figures who are in jail, under indictment, or being acused of aggravated beastiality (any day now, you just wait), I suppose in all fairness to the rest of the state, I should point out that Detroit is not alone in this regard.

• Former Southwest Michigan Congressman Mark Siljander is beginning his trial for having allegedly taken money from a terrorist group who wanted to be removed from a list of terrorist groups.
  
• Former state House Speaker Craig DeRoche, who was just charged with drunk driving, was arrested again for running around his neighborhood, according to police, his wife, children, mother-in-law, and neighbors, drunk (again) and carrying a gun.
  

Neither of these gentlemen is technically from Detroit although DeRoche did represent part of the Detroit metropolitan area at one point.

A "certain level" of incompetence?

So Detroit is tearing down abandoned houses, and more power to 'em. But the business plan seems to have included the notion that the owners of said houses would respond to invoices from the city for doing the demolition. I can't put it better than the author of this article did:

"Officials have acknowledged Detroit is unlikely to recoup full costs from owners who have walked away from their properties, but they also say collections is an important source of funding for future demolitions.

It's an understandably difficult process, but it appears a certain level of incompetence is marring the city's efforts: 20 of the 213 invoices the newspaper reviewed were sent to the same vacant lots where the razed homes once stood. The city also sent an invoice to itself for a property it owned."

A little under ten percent of the time, they're billing the houses themselves, apparently missing the point that if no one was living there when the house was up, it's not all that likely that they're on-site now that it's down -- or coming back around to check the mail box.

So far, the city is getting about a half-cent on the dollar of the invoices they send out - amazingly enough, people who have abandoned a house are not manning-up to pay for having it torn down. Of course, some of those people may be, what? indigent? In jail? Dead? Otherwise unable to pay? Who knew?

Catching up

I have been remiss in posting the usual rubbish here, so this is a quick catch up summary of the world, in and beyond Joseph Street.

• The goddam Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Environment, one of our better examples of refusenik stonewalling on just about any issue you can name, is slowly being dragged kicking and screaming into admitting that, yes, Michigan does have a wild population of Cougars. Tracks, scat, multiple sightings, and now a blurry trap-camera photo from the UP make it increasingly clear that the big cats are back. Congratulations, Catamounts! With any luck, large predators will continue to repopulate the state, especially since housing costs have fallen to the point where even the average polar bear can get financing for a house in Bloomfield Hills.
  
• Not too long ago, President Obama made a comment about seeking expert opinion on issues, so that he'd know "whose ass to kick." Some people may have objected to the crude turn of phrase and others to the apparent ineffectiveness of any kickage so far meted out, but it does offer an opportunity to provide input. When he called me, I offered my short list:
  
  
  
  • Rupert Murdoch
    
  • Benjamin Netanyahu
    
  • South Carolina State Senator Jake Knotts
    
  • The wonderful people who are calling the offshore drilling moratorium "worse" than the oil spill
    
  • Rod Blagojevich
    
  • Rupert Murdoch, again
    
  
  
• Burke Breathed, the now-retired creator of Bloom County et seq, once had a character say, "Today on Wall Street, they busted everybody but the wiener vendors." An apt description of Detroit, 2010, where the ex-Mayor is in jail; the former city council member, Monica Conyers, has been convicted and is awaiting jail (same goes for her former consultant and bag man;) the current school board president is under pressure to resign after allegedly "fondling himself" in front of a superintendent; the police are being fined $1000 a day for essentially ignoring a consent decree; and almost daily, it seems, somebody is arrested for shooting a child either by mistake or on purpose. There is a debate (if you can call it that) over what should be done with Detroit, with these suggestions running at the top of the list:
  
  
  
  • Shrink the city by demolishing abandoned buildings and relocating people
    
  • Just demolish the buildings
    
  • Demolish the people
    
  • Demolish the city council, school board, and police department
    
  • Use open land for urban farming
    
  • Use open land for opium farming
    
  • Create a sixth great lake, Lake Kwame, as a home for displaced Asian Carp
    
  
  

I think that's quite enough of this, for now.

Librarians gone wild!

Shush!

Another dish

Orecchiette con due formaggi, pancetta, spinaci, e fungi
1/2 lb orecchiette (or other shaped pasta)
1/4 lb pancetta, diced
1 cup crimini (or other) mushrooms sliced
1 spring onion (or scallion) chopped
1 cup fresh spinach, stemmed and torn
Extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper
1 clove garlic, peeled and halved
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 tsp beef bouillon concentrate
1/2 cup reggiano and compté, grated
2 -3 tbsp chicken stock
Preparation
Boil water for pasta. Dice the meat. Chop the onions. Grate the cheese. Slice the mushrooms. Wash and tear the spinach.
Add cream, garlic, and beef stock concentrate to a sauce pan and simmer, gently.
Firing
Add pasta to the boiling water and cook for the recommended time on the package -- 12 - 13 minutes.
Heat oil in a small sauteuse over medium flame; add the onion and sweat until softened. Add the pancetta, and cook until it renders most of its fat. Add the mushrooms and more oil. Cook until the mushrooms are tender.
Toward the end of the pasta's cooking time, add cheese to the cream sauce and stir to blend. Remove and discard garlic.
Top the pancetta and mushroom mixture with the spinach, add the chicken stock, and cover. Reduce heat to very low.
Drain the pasta and add to a serving bowl. Add the cream sauce and toss to coat. Add the spinach, pancetta, and mushrooms, and toss. Season with black pepper and serve.
Notes
An Italian or Californian Arneis is a perfect match with this. Use any combo of cheeses you happen to have around, as long as one of them is parmesan.

Come on, natural selection ...

... let's get cracking. Besides those lovable people who made pets out of pythons(1), then let 'em go in the Everglades, and the civic-minded individual who cost his German municipality 100,000 Euros to find his cobra when it escaped, there are the wonderful folks who run the National Rattlesnake Sacking Championship in (where else?) Texas. I love the fact that, in addition to organized messing with extremely venomous reptiles, the event also features a "petting zoo." Doesn't say what gets petted.

Just so you understand clearly what this event involves, here's what the web site has to say:

"The Catcher has a tool called a pinner consisting of a rod at least 24" long with a hook on the end. The catcher must first immobilize the head of the snake with the pinner. He then places the snake in the sack. The Sacker is literally left "holding the bag". His job is to hold the sack in a position to allow the Catcher to quickly toss the snakes into the bag without allowing the others to escape or bite him in the process."

There is a five-second penalty for getting bitten, by the way, and disqualification for intentionally harming a snake.

This, as an NPR story this morning reminded us, comes in the same month in which the WHO kicked off a web site, centered on the cost, worldwide, of snake bite. As WHO points out, "Snake bite is a neglected public health issue in many tropical and subtropical countries. About 5 million snake bites occur each year, resulting in up to 2.5 million envenomings (poisoning from snake bites), at least 100 000 deaths and around three times as many amputations and other permanent disabilities."

WHO goes on to note that the bulk of these snake bites take place in Africa and Asia, but it's nice to see Texas doing its part to get America back into the competition.

---

(1) - yes, I know pythons aren't venomous.

How long ...

... before this becomes a consumer item from Honda or Polaris?

Except for the two-stroke engine noise, I'd drive one of these to work.