This morning's news was grim: budget cuts have forced the closure of city Parks Department restrooms. A 35 percent budget cut this year following a 15 percent cut last year means layoffs and not enough staff to clean restrooms. The "people who are against everything," in their infinite wisdom, advocate urinating in the bushes and on people's lawns. This could be hazardous to health in more ways than one.
Instead, I suggest the neighbors get together and "adopt a toilet" in their neighborhood. One neighbor gets the keys, and a page of cleaning instructions and signs up other neighbors on a schedule. It's not a new idea -- citizens have been "adopting a highway" for some time, cleaning up trash along roadways. So instead of chasing a urinator off the lawn with a nine iron, a resident can pitch in on a rotation with other neighbors and keep the toilets open and the neighborhood clean.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Culture Wars: On June 12 Pull the Plug on Television for Good!
If you want to check out American civilization at its worst, then watch television. Flip through the channels to see the stupid, degraded, petty, dull, ugly, perverted violent chaos of crassness and morbidity that passes for programming, punctuated constantly by advertising for drugs, food, weight loss drugs, sex drugs or magical household implements that make everything fun -- even appearing on the screen during the program. It’s only by carefully following the program guides does one encounter the creative, witty, bright and uplifting. And in each and every basic cable or dish package you are forced to get the obesity channel, the sex channel, and the buy-some-crap channel. There’s no café plan. It’s so bad that even hard-bitten right-wing crustaceans are reluctantly donating to public television.
“Civilization,” said Timothy Leary “is unbearable, but it is less unbearable at the top.” Leary -- the Harvard professor who brought a CIA-sponsored LSD test into the mainstream and helped an entire generation go psychotic -- should certainly know. It was he who suggested we “turn on, tune in and drop out.” Leary had his head frozen at death and -- like one of the long-dead presidents in “Futurama” -- awaits a neck-up resurrection. But I digress. And I do like Futurama.
So what to do? Britain makes the taxpayers pay for uplifting programs whether they watch them or not, and the EU now limits television advertising to 12 minutes per hour of content. The U.S. lets the market run things downhill as far as the market will bear. North Korean TV is all about “Dear What’s His Name.” And so it goes.
Why do we put up with it? Well, for one thing, kids have to watch television because they can’t read. Once schools dropped the pretense of education, they were free to move directly into counseling and dispensing antidepressants to kids who can’t read, spell or do math. Now that schools have dropped physical education, they can use all those gymnasiums to conduct obesity clinics, teach political correctness and work on a positive self image.
If I hate television so much, why not just turn it off? Good idea! I think I will. I’m taking advantage of television’s digital makeover to pull the plug for good on June 12. If you find yourself yelling at the television, just reach around and pull the plug from the wall. Come on, you can do it! As Timothy Leary didn’t say: “Turn off, tune out, drop in.”
“Civilization,” said Timothy Leary “is unbearable, but it is less unbearable at the top.” Leary -- the Harvard professor who brought a CIA-sponsored LSD test into the mainstream and helped an entire generation go psychotic -- should certainly know. It was he who suggested we “turn on, tune in and drop out.” Leary had his head frozen at death and -- like one of the long-dead presidents in “Futurama” -- awaits a neck-up resurrection. But I digress. And I do like Futurama.
So what to do? Britain makes the taxpayers pay for uplifting programs whether they watch them or not, and the EU now limits television advertising to 12 minutes per hour of content. The U.S. lets the market run things downhill as far as the market will bear. North Korean TV is all about “Dear What’s His Name.” And so it goes.
Why do we put up with it? Well, for one thing, kids have to watch television because they can’t read. Once schools dropped the pretense of education, they were free to move directly into counseling and dispensing antidepressants to kids who can’t read, spell or do math. Now that schools have dropped physical education, they can use all those gymnasiums to conduct obesity clinics, teach political correctness and work on a positive self image.
If I hate television so much, why not just turn it off? Good idea! I think I will. I’m taking advantage of television’s digital makeover to pull the plug for good on June 12. If you find yourself yelling at the television, just reach around and pull the plug from the wall. Come on, you can do it! As Timothy Leary didn’t say: “Turn off, tune out, drop in.”
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