Achtung! Halt! Papers Please.

Well covered in many other more widely-read forums is this guys account of being arrested after failing to show his store receipt (and driver's license) upon exiting a Circuit City store in Ohio.

This boils my blood (and scares the holy shit outta me). I had a similar, much less severe run in with a store goon years back when I waltzed out of a local electronics store without producing a receipt. I despise being asked to account for my personal property when leaving a store. I'm not a criminal, don't treat me like one. If you saw me steal something, bust me. If not, fuck off. Leave me alone.

So I donated a few bucks to the guy's legal fund. And I'm writing Circuit City a letter (on actual paper) and mailing it (with an actual stamp), telling them that unless they resolve this, publicly, and in the above referenced guy's favor, the money I was planning on spending there this year (after getting my new high-paying job) for the new ~50" HighDef TV and DSLR camera system will be spent at a competing store. (I never said I wasn't a liar).

Don't fuck with my rights. Or anyone else's for that matter.

Search *this*, asshat

Thanks to DT for pointing out this article on retailers searching *your* property after you've made a purchase and before you've left *their* store. Well worth the read, especially around this time of year. As the great Nancy Reagan once said..."Just Say No". Oh, and don't shop at Wal-Mart. They're truly evil.

http://www.bwcitypaper.com/bw.digg.page.final.html

The author is man after my own heart. I've said the same things they say in the article time and time again.

VA Voting Shenanigans

This freaked me out a little. And it doesn't seem to be getting too much press (at least that I've seen). Perhaps I'm just overly sensitive.

An article in the Online Journal says:

"What is being called a "glitch" by Hart InterCivic spokespersons, three cities in Virginia -- Alexandria (my note: population 128,283 in 2000), Falls Church (pop. 10,377 in 2000) and Charlottesville (pop. 45,049 in 2000)-- will not properly display (~Democrat) Jim Webb's name on the November ballot summary screen. Voters will only see 'James H. "Jim"' on the ballot, instead of 'James H. "Jim" Webb'.

To make matters worse, the candidates will have "their party affiliations . . . cut off". To put some perspective and clarity to this, in Alexandria, Falls Church and Charlottesville, Virginia, voters will not be able to recognize Jim Webb by his full name OR by his party's affiliation!"

Those of us who live in VA know that those 6-year-old census numbers have done nothing but skyrocket since they were recorded. So the number of voters seeing incorrect (or incomplete) information on their ballots is going to be significantly higher than the 183,709 recorded in '00. Nice. The last couple of elections have been won and lost by what...27...maybe 30 votes? 100k shouldn't matter at all...right?

While on the subject, did anybody happen to catch HBO's "Hacking Democracy" last night about the ultra creepyness of the Diebold voting machines? Scary stuff. I only watched a few minutes of it (but I recorded it for later viewing pleasure), but I have to say the ease with which they were tampered was startling.

---
Edited to change my population data. Evidently I used the total population of VA (7+ million). Duh. The data has been corrected. However, my point still stands. With a race that came down to 6,000 votes (as of last night), that 100k+ still could make or break somebody. I guess we'll see after all of the the recounts and lawsuits are done.

Are you f*cking kidding me?

In what is at once the most funny and fucked up explanation (spin) I have ever EVER heard, a military official had this to say about Saturday's three suicides at US the military prison at Guantánamo Bay:

"They are smart, they are creative, they are committed," Admiral Harris said. "They have no regard for life, neither ours nor their own. I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us."

Wait, wait, wait. So the enemy is now waging war against us by killing themselves?? That's fantastic news! All we have to do now is sit back and watch it happen!! Maybe Bush knew more about war than we thought after all.

What...

...the f*ck has gotten into this country? Don't we live here because of freedom or something? Somebody needs to mention that to these folks:

The first:
BLACK JACK, Mo. (AP) - The city council has rejected a measure allowing unmarried couples with multiple children to live together, and the mayor said those who fall into that category could soon face eviction.

That sounds vaguely familiar. "Well, we used to throw you out cuz yer brown. Now we're gonna throw you out cuz yer not livin' the way the Good Lord intended".



The next example of stupidness run amok is:
"...judge jails 14-year-old"

...snip...

"The teen, jailed since Wednesday, insists she is not a sex abuse victim and is demanding a lawyer be assigned to represent her, court records show.

However, jail officials said Monday she cannot speak with anyone without permission from county prosecutors."

Will she be "safer" in jail? Perhaps. The kid doesn't sound like she's ready to make decisions by herself yet (regardless if she's of legal age or not). But I would think that by putting her in jail against her will, she should have the right to talk to an attorney.



And finally, a couple from the "well, of course photography = terrorism, dumbass" department...

A NJ lawmaker wants to criminalize taking photos of power-plants and other sensitive infrastructure (via BoingBoing):
The [NJ] state Senate Law and Public Safety Committee is expected to discuss a bill today which would make it a crime -- punishable by up to 18 months in jail -- to photograph, videotape or otherwise record for an extended period of time a power generation, waste treatment, public sewage, water treatment, public water, nuclear or flammable liquid storage facility, as well as any airport in the state.

And lastly, the organizers of the 5 Boros Bike Tour in NYC have a photo contest. Rule #1?

1. Photos must be taken on Tour Day, Sunday, May 7, 2006, and must relate to some aspect of the Tour. Taking photos on bridges or their access points is strongly discouraged in the interest of public safety. Any such photos will not be considered for prizes.

Blogworthy

Not much blogworthy going on at the moment. I've just passed day 8 of my Photo-a-day project on eighteenpercent.net. I never liked the idea of a PAD project, but having literally thousands of older images sitting on my hard drive doing nothing called for desperate measures. I figure this way, at least *some* of them will see the light of day *eventually*. So far, I'm pretty happy with the outcome, and I'm glad to have them out on display.

While on the photography subject, I found a couple of cool articles on photographer's rights. This started from a humorous BoingBoing post about a photographer getting hassled by a dimwitted buidling goon.

Somehow, I ended up on JPG Magazine's site, which had links to a cool USAToday article on photographer's rights. No, really...in USAToday. They also linked to an NPR story on photographer's rights (which I haven't listened to yet), and a pretty well-known "Photographer's Rights" sheet by a laywer I believe is from the Portland area.

This is dumb

DT pointed out a link that I found a bit annoying...

http://www.untitledname.com/archives/2005/10/nypd_bicycle_th.html

Seems the NYPD saw fit to cut a bunch of bike locks off of legally parked bikes, and steal (impound?) the bikes.

So I emailed the NYPD and asked what was up:

"I recently saw a report about the bicycle removal from city signposts around the Bedford Ave L station in Brooklyn: http://www.untitledname.com/archives/2005/10/nypd_bicycle_th.html. I was curious as to why this took place? It seems (from the report above) the bicycles were locked in legal places.

Being a avid cyclist and somewhat an environmentalist, I can't understand why the NYPD seems to put up any roadblock it can to discourage cycling in the city, and thereby encourage more vehicle traffic."

We'll see if they bother to respond. If they do, I'll post it here.

What a Dick

I spent Saturday down in DC at the anti-war protest put on by the ANSWER Coalition, Operation Ceasefire and United for Peace and Justice. While I am, and have always been against this (bullshit, unjust, for-profit) war, I don't support the "bring the troops home now" ideal that was the main idea of many of the marchers. I don't understand how people can justify pulling all of our troops out, after we've toppled a government. It seems to me that that would lead to open class- and civil war in the country, resulting in thousands, hundred thousands, or millions more deaths. We've done a 'heck of a job' fucking the place up. It should fall to us to stabilize things before we abandon it. Basically, I guess it serves us right.

So anyway...

Started the day out driving down town. With over 100,000 expected for the march, plus a few other events going on in the area, I knew parking would be a bitch. So I tossed the singlespeed on the bike rack, grabbed a cable lock, and headed out. My plan was to take Rt66 just into the city, then head north and park a few miles away from the epicenter of activity (the Ellipse at the White House and the Washington Monument). Man, did I underestimate the parking situation. After nearly an hour of roaming every side street known to man (full-on lost a number of times) I made my way over to the Union Station side of town. Eventually, I found one lonely parking space, parked the car, mounted the SS and headed towards the action.

At about 12:30, I arrived on-scene at the Ellipse, where I found 99,999 like-minded folks doing everything from chanting to singing to praying to climbing street signs and waving corporate American flags (I gotta get me one of these!) to just being seen in fantastic costumes. It was looking to be a very animated march. And by far, the biggest I'd ever been a part of.

After milling about taking scores of random photos for an hour past the scheduled march start-time, things finally got moving slowly up 15th Street. The march was pretty uneventful on the whole (damn peace-niks! Where were the riots? Everybody loves pictures of riots!), but as we walked in front of the White House (in the street-cum-parklike "please don't blow up our president" zone), emotions ran high. I continued marching with the crowd until we passed the north side of Lafayette Park where I decided I wanted to spend more time in front of the White House. I cut south through the park and wandered around the "please don't blow up our president" zone for a while more. It was here that I got my favorite shot of the day. The devil (ok, probably not "the" devil, but one of his minions, no doubt) held a puppeteer's rod (you know...the stick thingies to which strings are attached, which in turn control puppets). To this puppeteer's rig was attached 'Dick Cheney', also holding a puppeteer's rod, which in turn was attached to 'W' who was holding an inflatable globe, a quart of oil, and a soft pretzel(?). It was a fantastic costume setup. I (and every other photographer in the immediate area) snapped off dozens of shots. As the other photographers moved on, I kept snapping when Mr. Cheney looked right at me and told me I was #1!


(Worth noting that when I scaled this image to the correct width (400 pixels) the height became 666 pixels. Coincidence? I doubt it).

After a highlight like that (not to mention that I had already spent 2 hours more time there than I had planned on), I figured nothing could top it and decided to head for home. I made a bee-line hike back towards my bike, straight down 14th to Constitution, skipping the Pennsylvania Ave and Constitution parts of the "official" march. A quick pedal up Constitution on the SS (which was very cool, since Constitution was still closed for the march, and the last few thousand marchers were still coming in, so I got to ride upstream in their midst), and I was back at Union Station and the car. A few detours later I was out of the city and heading for home.

I had originally planned on going back into DC for the concert and speakers later Saturday evening, but was pretty wiped by the end of the day. So I blew it off. I didn't realize that there were other protests going on Sunday (including a pro-war march). Had I known about them, I would prolly have gone back down in hopes of getting some confrontations on film (err...you know what I mean).

Interesting numbers that I heard regarding the march:

* The anti-war organizers had hoped for 100,000 people. Estimates were anywhere between 150,000 (DC police chief) and 300,000 (event organizers). I'd bet closer to 300k. It's nice to see that there are lots of people fed up with the war machine.

* Counter demonstrators on Saturday were numbered under 200 from what I heard on the news, and fewer than 400 on Sunday. From what I read, they were hoping for 20,000+. Interesting that they still claim they speak for the majority of Americans.

The war on sobriety, pt. 2

If you haven't read part one, scroll down (or click here) and do so before reading this.

Anyway, continuing...

We arrived at 7th and D to find a large number of people and cops milling about. Clearly, we had missed the exciting part of the rukus. We spent some time in the intersection talking with the other protesters. When it was clear that there was no more rukus-making forthcoming, we decided to head over to Zack's work. He had a couple of things to take care of, and the rest of us wouldn't mind the heat of an office building.

At the office, Zack does what he needs to do, while the rest of us annoy the shit out of his coworkers, who are trying their best to be productive. They were good sports to not throw staplers and shit at us. Thanks guys!

After the office space interlude, someone comes up with the bright idea to go over to the bar across the street from the office (a dangerous place for a bar, no?). Not seeing any reason to forgo this, we head over. More beers and bar-food ensue. Thankfully we get there at 3:53pm and only have to wait 7 minutes for Happy Hour to go into full effect.

Sometime after 4:30pm, somebody suggests that we head out and ride back to Dupont Circle to meet up with the Crit Mass ride scheduled for 5pm. We arrive back at Dupont to find a number of the usual suspects from the morning ride milling about. Still no obvious leader, so Zach again attempts to rally the troops. It seems to work, and there seems to be a group as we ride off into the city. A block or two later, it seems what group there was decided it wasn't time to ride yet, and peeled off. Now, it's just DT, Steve, Zach, me and a couple of CM guys. I'm not really sure where the breakdown occurred, but the six or eight of us ride off, kinda in search of the "main group" (assuming one even existed). At some point, the few people we didn't know peeled off, and it was just the four of us. Not ones to let something like that get us down, we ride around, in and out of traffic for a while longer before calling it quits, sometime around 7pm-ish (I think). From the few mails I've received from the CM list today, evidently, the main group had a good ride as well.

We head back towards home (Zach on his bike, the rest of us in my truck). Hit Arlington, get DT's car. Hit Lost Dog for pizza. Drop Steve and pizza off at DT's and head home. The end to a very very cool day. Even if it was the first day of the new term of our dumb president. Only 3 years, 364 more days to go. Tick tock tick tock.

Not that I voted for him or anything...

But there are some interesting Inauguration and anti-Inauguration events coming up 1/20/05. Plenty of opportunity to make my opinion heard, and maybe take some pictures of the day's goings-on. I'm sure it will be an interesting scene downtown anywhere you go.

A copule of things I'm considering doing with my day (I've already asked for time off from work):

First of all there is the Critical Mass bike ride/protest starting off at Union Station at 7:30am. This is the leader on my list of things to do. I'm just trying to figure out how I can attach my camera/lenses to my body while I ride. I'm sure there will be some great shots to be had.

I'd love to show up and turn my back on Bush:

http://www.turnyourbackonbush.org/

http://www.turnyourbackonbush.com/index2.html

I also found this pretty cool map with parade route, metro stops, street names, entry points and buildings over-lay-able (is that a word?).

If you're coming down, beware the Metro stop closings (my post about this is coming up soon) and street closings. It's not gonna be easy getting around anywhere near the Capitol or parade route. I'm glad I'll be on a bike.