The World of Mr. Newit

Free eye-patch with first month's payed rent!

From the newspaper of record, The News-Herald:

Woman recovering after river rescue
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
An unidentified woman is recovering in the hospital after she leaped from the old Pelton Bridge Monday night in Willoughby.
”Apparently, she had been drinking with her boyfriend at River Isle Apartments. She became upset for some reason and tried to jump into the water,” Willoughby Police Lt. Tom Trem said.
Authorities extricated both people and sent them to Lake West Medical Center in Willoughby. The man was treated and released. The woman was flown to MetroHealth Medical Center in Cleveland.

Trem said the woman had some minor cuts and a broken wrist but was recovering.
The woman, 28, landed in a couple of feet of water. Then, her boyfriend fell into the embankment, trying to help her, Trem said.

This is brilliant. If you are not familiar with this bridge it is all of fifteen feet off of the water. And by water I mean trickle. Flood stage for this part of the river is about eight feet. It sits normally at about three feet this time of year. So she takes a header off of a ladder into a cup of water.

As to that apartment building, well, it houses the best and the brightest. The local pizza delivery calls it, officially, “Escape from New York”. As in, “Dan, take this pizza to Escape from New York apartment 223.”

But it is nice to know she got a nice helicopter ride out of it.

Guitar magazines contain some of the most painful prose anyone is likely to encounter outside of the free local ‘zine. The word choice rankles, the basic coverage of the topic at hand is scattershot and the understanding of basic mechanics and electronics is closer to the time of alchemy than electron tunneling. Basically it hurts to read and you don’t end up much better informed than when you started. I found an exception, however, in Premier Guitar magazine.

Premier Guitar is remarkably well written by people who know of what they speak and about interesting subjects. You are more likely to read an interview with a guy who makes boutique pickups than the illiterate ramblings of an outdated guitar gawd. They do fall into the trap of “vintageism” - all old things are always better - but they often temper this with comparisons to new equipment.

So today I went to subscribe to their magazine on their website and I find that they have the issues up for viewing for free. Assuming one has a functioning high speed internet connection this might be a great thing for you. As I live in the back of beyond and must subsist on satellite, it is nice for links and sound files. I hope this business model works because this could bode well for the future of publishing. Each advertiser gets their adverts displayed in beautiful color with all links highlighted. Nice.

Highly recommended.

From the NY Times January 12, 1884.

Great traditions of news gathering!

Today’s above-the-fold News-Herald story was about the topic that is on everyone’s mind: the recorder’s office paperwork. Yes, I know, you’ve heard about this at every turn but this is important. Obama got so caught up in the topic last week he even forgot to mention some small happenings of no importance in a far away land. Whatever that was about. I mean, again, this is of universe altering importance. Whitespace! On documents! This must be regulated! So things may be filed! Correctly!

Gosh, I sure am glad that the fine folk at the News-Herald are at the fore of important document filing news. Keep up the good work! I can’t wait for next week’s expose on sticky note placement!

IWW Advert from WW1. Morons.

Crusader Nation is a fine book to give one a good, albeit fairly shallow, understanding of the forces at work in the Progressive movement of the first two decades of the twentieth century. From the frenetic absolutism of TR to the revolutionary fervor of the IWW to the righteousness of purpose of Wilson, Traxel’s writing deftly conveys a feel for the personalities and people of the age. This is especially true of his writing about the interesting life of John Reed. This is a shining part of the book, giving good depth to the topic of the first American Communists and fellow travelers.

My only criticism is the lack of details in many of the topics being argued. For example, the famous fourteen points that Wilson abandoned–much to the dismay of his stateside leftist following–is not covered in any detail. Why then did the Greenwich Village set get so angry about the modifications, whatever those were? In the same vein Traxel barely mentions the reasoning for any opposition to the League of Nations.

Overall I recommend this for someone looking for a feel for the age but doesn’t long for the fine detail.

Ponderous, that head.

Last year sometime I decided I was going to try to do something with the old newspaper stuff I collect. This was a project that didn’t go anywhere. I still like the idea and may return to it someday but I’ll have to come up with some better skills. Yes, the writing is fun and the articles are fine but they need to pop off the page better.

Here is the first installment.

The Capital Exposition - v1i1

Oh, and some background to the “jokes”:

The king of entangling aliances and originator of the socialized state (to keep the prols from annoying the monarchy), Otto von Bismark was a hell of a guy. It is not surprising that Theodore Roosevelt would constantly state that he was a great influence.

Bob Barker is an owner of a vet clinic empire (no, probably not but would explain a great deal).

The last line is about TR’s cousin, FDR, trying to change the number of justices on the supreme court because they weren’t agree with him fast enough. Oh, and Irving Berlin was a hell of a composer.

And here you see one of the main problems with this idea. It was just a collection of bad jokes most of which required knowledge of things not needed for every day life. And then if you did take the time to figure it out, they still weren’t that funny.

Unfortunately it still makes me laugh thereby dooming me to only be able to create fringe art for people without standards of quality.

Today’s paper annoyed me so I thought I’d write a crank letter to them. They are pretty good about such things. I’ll post if anything else comes of this.

I just wanted to pass on a brief note concerning the quality of the News-Herald. Firstly, I want you to succeed. I believe firmly that the local newspaper covering local news is an invaluable asset to a community. Lately, however, we have seen corners cut in the most obvious and amateurish ways. An amateurish product will not continue to be a viable product especially in the current newspaper business climate.

Recently the errors on the comics page have become rather pronounced. I can live with the Sunday comics stuffed onto a single sheet, even when the size and orientation of each comic is altered (perhaps some of the plentiful whitespace from the Announcements section could be brought further back in the paper). Unfortunately, though, recent papers have had the same comic run two days in a row (I believe it was a Non Sequitur), a repeat of a comic run a few days prior (Pardon My Planet) and today’s For Better or For Worse today was cropped incorrectly, cutting off dialog.

Another constant wonder is that the editorial cartoons are blurry. I understand that these are mostly scans of artwork created from outside your organization but their resizing does not need to render them a poor Rorschach. I do not see this same error in any other papers I read.

Finally, Bouquets and Brickbats is a sad joke. I realize that it is important and effective for local news to highlight the good things that local people have done. But the Brickbats are just a waste. The barbs are either hilarious rants about world nutters (the dictator of Venezuela is probably not on your mailing list) or also ran status stories blown up to preposterous proportions (this week’s rant against an old guy digging in the street is not exactly Earth shatteringly important). Either have something pointed to say about some issue close to home or just make it a limp-wristed Bouquets section.

Now, you may look at the list of complaints above as just ranting about details. There is merit to that argument. However your industry is under siege by the decentralized news gathering found on the internet. Your biggest advantage is professionalism. Therefor my suggestion would be to either do these details correctly or jettison them. It is better to have a smaller, higher quality product than something quickly resembling a middle school newspaper.

Thank you for your time and if you would like to discuss this further do not hesitate to contact me.

Curmudgeonly yours,
Andy
Leroy Township

Look out honey 'cause I'm using technology

Search and Destroy

Yes, it is probably the most obvious choice for a song when one thinks of loudness but that is because it is true. Raw Power is the album that I use to judge what is Rock and Roll. Loud to the point of distortion, aggressive even when the songs slow in tempo, assertive lyrics to the brink of hilarity, The Stooges are the answer.

For about a year I was working Saturdays and had to open up the shop at around 6:30. That wasn’t pleasant. So every morning I would blast this album and it helped push the coffee into an unwilling brain of mush. This is a routine I recommend.

I forgot to mention that I put up the OffsetVoid.com site again. I have to work on it a bit but it is fun.

http://www.offsetvoid.com