I expend a lot of hot air trashing the Bee’s comment feature, but today I have to eat my words. (It appears I must also attend mixed metaphor college.) From today’s Bee story about two library branches no longer accepting cash after the branches have experienced thefts.

Commenter “kevinakin1950″ smartly questions the legality of refusing to accept American currency, and goes on to point out that a no-cash policy would discriminate against the poor, who presumably don’t have credit cards. (Let’s not get started on all the people out there who are poor because of their credit cards…)

Continue reading “Library cash story brings out good comments on SacBee” »

KCRA’s report on a shooting death early in the New Year includes one of those “can’t be serious” quotes:

“I was just chillin’ at the party and then all of a sudden I hear that my friend’s been like shot down pretty much.”

“Pretty much” in this case being 100%. Every element of that sentence is classic! This guy reminds me of the Upright Citizens Brigade character “Bong Boy” who smokes so much pot he can’t tell reality from reality television–when he’s being arrested he thinks he is watching “COPS,” etc. It’s possible that’s what’s going on here…

Make a U-turn, if possible

I don’t know why this story of folks getting lost trying to get to the new Red Hawk casino using their GPS devices makes me chuckle. Perhaps it’s the fact that I’ve been in the same situation before trying to decide if I should use my common sense or hand my faith over to a talking box when driving to a new destination.

I have such a love/hate relationship with my Garmin Nuvi. On one hand, it’s been a life saver when I’m forced to take side roads or alternate routes due to a traffic accident or construction. On the other hand it, it’s caused many delays especially when I approach forks in the road or subtle turns. Hard right or soft right? Veer right or stay to the right which is actually straight with no turn at all?

Back to the Bee story…

Continue reading “An unsatisfying journey” »

This is shameful. Proposition 8 was decided by the democratic process, for good or for bad, and this kind of uncivil behavior should not be tolerated. Just as it should never be tolerated when it is pointed the other direction.

Future Sac State grad student “Natalie Dylan” is setting the blogosphere and horny-man media afire by offering her virginity in exchange for tuition. Her current offer is $250,000, which makes me wonder why she doesn’t opt to pay for an education from a more prestigious university.

Oh, that’s right, she’s a virgin whore selling her body with assistance from Howard Stern. Never mind.

To the crotchety fellow who got out of his Subaru wagon with the UC Berkeley sticker and walked across the parking lot to pick a fight with my wife this morning at Folsom Blvd. Save Mart, for parking her cart inside an empty parking space instead of turning her back on the three small children in the car and walking across the parking lot to the cart dropoff, even though you were behind her in line at Save Mart so you knew she had the kids with her, and everybody does the cart-in-the-parking spot thing when the situation calls for it, such as having three kids in your car and it being 8 a.m. and the parking lot being empty…

Continue reading “To the gentleman who “got into it” with Mrs Cool…” »

CoolDMZ wouldn’t be earning CoolDMZ’s pay if CoolDMZ wasn’t a contrarian on the Corti Brothers situation. I’m having trouble mustering a lot of sympathy for the Cortis after reading the Bee’s follow-up story today. I suppose I liked Corti Bros as much as the next guy, though my patronage of things that can be described as “upscale” is seldom to never. (Unless Nordstrom Rack counts as upscale?)

I’m not shocked that Heather Fargo called Darrell Corti and offered the city’s help in finding a new location. Would that help entail explaining how a month to month lease works? All I keep reading is that Corti fans will go wherever he decides to move, even if it is out of town. I hope there are some patrons who are be pissed that a 60 year old company allowed themselves to operate on a wing and a prayer for 20 years despite knowing how loyal their fans were. What if you live down the street, have been shopping there since 1970, and can’t drive?

Continue reading “More on the Corti move” »

This isn’t the first time that the racist idiocy that is the comments box at the Sac Bee has come to my attention. We here at the Rag, and other bloggers like Heckasac have often pointed out the problem.

Today’s racist idiocy comes from this story of the shooting death of a young woman in Oak Park: Continue reading “Sac Bee comments must be stopped - UPDATED” »

Crime is up? Wha?Are you sure.
Because like, I thought it wasn’t.

Via Joe Sacramento (hey Joe, whaddya know!), don’t miss Daniel Weintraub’s piece from earlier this week about Mayor Heather Fargo’s dangerously out-of-it reactions to being confronted with the city’s crime rates, which I have blogged about here often. So often I’m not going to bother to provide links.

“My sense is that we are tracking at about the same pace as other cities,” says Fargo when asked her explanation for Sacramento’s soaring crime rate. The numbers are staggering — Sacramento has close to the worst crime rate in the state, and the rate has risen 50%… fifty percent!! … during Fargo’s term.

Continue reading “Fargo out of it on city’s out of control crime rate” »

So if you’re a registered voter you’ve probably received your pamphlet for the upcoming June 3 primary election. First of all, they probably should have come up with a better name than “primary election,” it’s so played out, what with the other primary election we had less than 90 days ago. (Sure fine, one was a presidential primary and this one is statewide.) But more importantly, your pamphlet for this election contains 2 things: Propositions 98 and 99. Which — without boring you by actually doing any research into the props — are for all practical purposes opposing pieces of legislation. Both descriptions contain language to the effect that if this one passes the other one most likely won’t take effect. This is where things get interesting.

Continue reading “Whose eminent domain is it anyway?” »