Festivus Friday: Air your grievances, large or small
Every Friday at the Daily Mole, we ask you to air your grievances from the week gone by.
Eligible targets: bosses, spouses, politicians, co-workers, favorite teams, BFFs gone bad, media, celebrities (real or local), other people’s pets and children, or anyone/anything else that has caused you aggrievement or dyspeptitude in the previous seven days.
Use some common sense. If you’re talking about private individuals you know personally or work with (if it’s a personal story, that is), change names–and don’t provide identifying details that would violate their privacy, because the sad fact of American jurisprudence is that even scoundrels have privacy rights.Beyond that, let them have it.
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Big Deep Questions: What’s the weirdest thing you ever bought or sold on eBay?
Tell us all about it. And if you’re able and inclined to send a picture of it, please do: steve [at] dailymole [dot] com.13 Comments Share This
Crowd check: The economy at street level
The Mole is no economist, and chances are you aren’t either. But while professional economy watchers continue to debate whether we’re in a recession yet, the air of panic among analysts, investors, and people on the street grows more unmistakable by the day. Earlier this week, the stock market fell nearly 500 points in morning trading before the Fed revived it–for how long, we’ll see–with an emergency rate cut. The real estate crisis shows no sign of reaching bottom anytime soon (Behind the Mortgage blogger Alex Stenback said in a recent Molecast that he thought the bottom was still 12-18 months away); consumer debt, government deficits, and foreign trade deficits stand at record levels; and the dollar is so weak that experts are speculating about when it will fall from its throne as the world’s benchmark currency (previous Mole post).
Our question: What’s your dread level about all this? Does it strike you as just another one of those cyclical downturns we go through periodically, or something worse? Again, we’re not asking for expert speculation here. Just your gut sense, and whatever you’ve been saying or hearing about it.
More: The Molecast I did two weeks ago with economics journalist Doug Henwood is the clearest rundown of current economic indicators I’ve heard from any source. I highly and immodestly recommend you check it out, if you didn’t listen at the time.
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Vlog: Sparkling Mike offers lake-ice safety tips straight from the Bible
The Angry Clown’s friend and confidant Sparkling Mike has advice, and a little tough love, for those Minnesotans who wonder if lake ice is really safe yet.
(Sparkling Mike tends to swallow the mic at certain moments in his first vlogging appearance, but he was nervous. He’s working on that.)
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Vlog: Angry Clown, “The Carol Molnau Song”
The Angry Clown celebrates everybody’s favorite local villain of 2007–in song.
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Festivus Friday: We would appreciate it if you complained more
Every Friday at the Daily Mole, we ask you to air your grievances from the week gone by. (And we remind you that there is no time like the New Year to begin cultivating new habits.)Eligible targets: bosses, spouses, politicians, co-workers, favorite teams, BFFs gone bad, media, celebrities (real or local), other people’s pets and children, or anyone/anything else that has caused you aggrievement or dyspeptitude in the previous seven days.
Use some common sense. If you’re talking about private individuals you know personally or work with (if it’s a personal story, that is), change names–and don’t provide identifying details that would violate their privacy, because the sad fact of American jurisprudence is that even scoundrels have privacy rights.Beyond that, let them have it.
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LOL Polz: Northfield Mayor Lee Lansing
Regular LOL Polz contributor and local improv performer Jill Bernard goes a little inside-politics with her latest contribution, so here’s the money quote concerning Northfield’s Tammany Hall moment from last Saturday’s Strib:
“When Northfield’s embattled mayor refused to resign Saturday, the college town’s City Council told him to clean out his desk and turn in his City Hall key. The [city council’s censure] vote came just days after investigator William Everett, who was hired by the city this fall, told the council that Lansing violated the city’s ethics code when he lobbied to have the city relocate its municipal liquor store to property owned by his son, David.”
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Festivus Friday: Your last chance in 2007 to air your grievances
Every Friday at the Daily Mole, we ask you to air your grievances from the week gone by. But since this is the last Friday of the year, feel free to rehearse grudges and resentments that festered inside you at any point this year.
Eligible targets: bosses, spouses, politicians, co-workers, favorite teams, BFFs gone bad, media, celebrities (real or local), other people’s pets and children, or anyone/anything else that has caused you aggrievement or dyspeptitude in the previous seven days.
Use some common sense. If you’re talking about private individuals you know personally or work with (if it’s a personal story, that is), change names–and don’t provide identifying details that would violate their privacy, because the sad fact of American jurisprudence is that even scoundrels have privacy rights.Beyond that, let them have it.
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Who’s your top civic villain of 2007?
You could think of this as 11 Who Don’t Kare: We want to know who struck you as the biggest public turd in the punchbowl that was Twin Cities 2007. So after conferring with some fellow Festivus celebrants, the Mole has assembled a provisional list of 11 nominees and the grievances they face, but no doubt we’re forgetting many worthy candidates. Who?
DFL leadership: The Kelliher-and-Pogemiller-led troops parlayed a big 2006 electoral victory into a) no meaningful legislative progress, b) a crisis in party finances, and c) barely a peep during the “battle” over a special session to deal with transportation funding.
Minneapolis Downtown Council chair Sam Grabarski: Has big ideas for making downtown a more effective retail theme park, and they include allowing cars on Nicollet Mall.
St. Paul Police Chief John Harrington: Was the object of complaints and a lawsuit charging political cronyism in the administration of his department; never apologized for his department’s conduct in the warrantless seizure of a local TV reporter’s cell phone records.
Former United Health CEO Bill McGuire: Made the most expensive settlement of a back-dated stock options case in 20007; complained to a judge that the freezing of his remaining $800 million in options was interfering with his financial prerogatives; became a billionaire running a health insurance company that perennially denies claims it should be paying.
Kevin McHale: He had to trade Kevin Garnett by the time he did it, yes, but whose fault was that? You’d be hard-pressed to find any professional sports franchise from the past five years that has made so little of so much.
Minneapolis Police Department: Besides the usual quotient of embarrassing high-profile incidents–this month’s utterly unfounded, gunfire-filled raid on a north Minneapolis home, the city’s $4.5 million payout to Officer Duy Ngo, shot in 2003 by one of his own colleagues–the department was also hit by a pair of civil rights lawsuits alleging chronic prejudicial treatment of non-Anglo cops, the more publicized of which is pitting five of the department’s longest-tenured and most respected African-American officers against MPD Chief Tim Dolan.
MnDOT Commissioner Carol Molnau: No explanation required.
Governor Tim Pawlenty: Sure, we know about the 60 percent approval ratings. We also know that if Carol Molnau’s management of MnDOT wins her an uncontested spot on this list, then the man who appointed her–and who benefited politically from her acquiescence in the face of whatever budgetary crumbs MnDOT was thrown–has to be on the list too, doesn’t he?
Twins owner Carl Pohlad: Should Pohlad even be on this list, or should we retire him and name the award after him? Only a few years ago, amid a run of Twins division titles and higher-than-customary payrolls, there were those cynics and paranoiacs who swore that once the Twins got their stadium, they would stop spending even to this new, minimally competitive level. Lo and behold: Torii’s gone, Johan is going, and the chance to build a Central Division powerhouse around the nucleus of Mauer, Morneau, and Santana is already history; the Tigers have seen to that.
Par Ridder: There are mitigating factors here: 1) Ridder’s always entertaining, not quite human-looking hair, and 2) the fact that his travails provided comic relief during a year of otherwise disastrous news in local mainstream media. Still, he is not a hard man to hate.
TJ Waconia and the fly-by-night mortgage industry: TJ Waconia gets the honor of naming rights here because, as Steve Brandt wrote last month in the Strib, “the FBI has identified the owners of TJ Waconia as the targets of a mortgage fraud investigation that would represent the biggest such case uncovered so far in the Twin Cities area.” But the category really belongs to all the hustlers who, by whatever means, either scammed homeowners outright or put them into mortgages that were bound to blow up on them.
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Festivus Friday: Air your Yuletide grievances
Every Friday at the Daily Mole, we ask you to air your grievances from the week gone by. Eligible targets: bosses, spouses, politicians, co-workers, favorite teams, BFFs gone bad, media, celebrities (real or local), other people’s pets and children, or anyone/anything else that has caused you aggrievement or dyspeptitude in the previous seven days.
Use some common sense. If you’re talking about private individuals you know personally or work with (if it’s a personal story, that is), change names–and don’t provide identifying details that would violate their privacy, because the sad fact of American jurisprudence is that even scoundrels have privacy rights.Beyond that, let them have it.
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What are you reading?
Me: Recently finished James Lee Burke’s The Tin Roof Blowdown, a post-Katrina story by the (excellent) serial mystery novelist that contains some of the best prose descriptions of New Orleans after the storm that I’ve read anywhere–and a plot that does not quite live up to those parts of the book. Not my favorite Burke, but good.
Also read Zeroville, Steve Erickson’s fabulist novel about the psychic pull of Hollywood images. It’s my favorite Erickson since Days Between Stations, and, oddly, his most accessible novel owing to all the movies reference points.
You?
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LOL Polz: Camera enthusiast Rich Stanek
Send us your LOL Polz! If you’ve never done this before, the Mole recommends you pick out a few photos to doctor and head over to this online LOL Cats builder tool, or to the one at I Can Has Cheezburger. When you’re done, send the results in jpg format to steve [at] dailymole [dot] com.
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LOL Polz: Mark Ritchie
Local improv performer and LOL Polz specialist (here, here) Jill Bernard’s latest is an homage to the recent troubles of Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie. (More LOL Polz)Send us your LOL Polz! If you’ve never done this before, the Mole recommends you pick out a few photos to doctor and head over to this online LOL Cats builder tool, or to the one at I Can Has Cheezburger. When you’re done, send the results in jpg format to steve [at] dailymole [dot] com.
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Op-ed: For the hearing-impaired, web’s multimedia revolution represents an old battle that shouldn’t have to be fought again
After corresponding with us about this issue, reader David Galitz agreed to write the following piece for the Daily Mole. (Thanks, David.) You can submit op-eds too: send to steve [at] dailymole [dot] com.
As a hearing impaired individual, I find myself following the birth of the new web media with frustration and concern. Beginning with Julia Child’s “French Chef” in 1975, it took over 35 years to achieve near universal closed captioning of television programs. Only in 2006 was the goal of 100% closed captioned programming (with certain exceptions) reached. Today, as increasing amounts of information and programming are being placed on the web in audio or video format, little of that content is being made accessible to the deaf and hard of hearing. For example, services such as Amazon’s Unbox, NBC’s Hulu, and Netflix all lack captioning support, and growing numbers of broadcasters are streaming their shows, news stories, and entire news broadcasts to the web without captions. Political candidates are also increasingly turning to the web with multimedia content. A quick check of the major Presidential candidates shows only Hilary Clinton providing captioned video content (on approximately 50% of the video clips).
Why does this matter? Ideally, it wouldn’t if web media were merely a new platform for distributing the same content found elsewhere. However, more and more of this audio and video is being provided as web-only content: “webisodes” of popular programs, exclusive webcasts of news broadcasts and reports, even traditional newspapers are getting into the multi-media game on-line. There is also new media and citizen journalism sites such as The Daily Mole, TheUpTake, and even YouTube, which promise to cover stories and perspectives that have been neglected or ignored by traditional media outlets in the past.
While the frustration of not being provided similar options to participate in and enjoy the same entertainment and cultural opportunities is significant, it is the potential lack of accessibility to the expanding news and information sources that Read more
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LOL Polz: Norm Coleman
This Day in Infamy contributor David Noon sends along this (pre-smile-makeover) image of stormin’ Norman.
Send us your LOL Polz! If you’ve never done this before, the Mole recommends you pick out a few photos to doctor and head over to this online LOL Cats builder tool, or to the one at I Can Has Cheezburger. When you’re done, send the results in jpg format to steve [at] dailymole [dot] com.
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Festivus Friday: Time for the airing of grievances
Every Friday at the Daily Mole, we ask you to air your grievances from the week gone by. Eligible targets: bosses, spouses, politicians, co-workers, favorite teams, BFFs gone bad, media, celebrities (real or local), other people’s pets and children, or anyone/anything else that has caused you aggrievement or dyspeptitude in the previous seven days.
Use some common sense. If you’re talking about private individuals you know personally or work with (if it’s a personal story, that is), change names–and don’t provide identifying details that would violate their privacy, because the sad fact of American jurisprudence is that even scoundrels have privacy rights.Beyond that, let them have it.
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What were the good things that happened here this year?
The Mole (with help from the monkey, left) is in the process of compiling a top local stories of 2007 list for next week, a task that is not exactly full of uplift considering all the lousy things that happened here this year, from the bridge collapse on down.
Our question: What were the positive (exciting, encouraging, hopeful) things that happened in the Twin Cities this year? It’s meant to be entirely open-ended: Maybe it’s something that happened in the news–good luck with that–or maybe it’s a new band, a new building, a local artist you discovered, a new dining spot/watering hole…
It’s anything that happened this year that makes you feel a little better about the place where you live.
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Vlog: Did Critical Mass bicyclists cause the 35W bridge collapse?
Local citizen videoblogger The Angry Clown thinks the answer is no. He only blames them for everything else.
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LOL Polz: Tim Pawlenty and RT Rybak
Today’s offering is from reader Loose Strife.
Send us your LOL Polz! If you’ve never done this before, the Mole recommends you pick out a few photos to doctor and head over to this online LOL Cats builder tool. When you’re done, send the results in jpg format to steve [at] dailymole [dot] com.
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LOL Polz, continued: Tim and Sonia, Michele and George
Some fresh entries in our continuing LOL Polz feature, from reader Peter Bartz-Gallagher.
Send us your LOL Polz! If you’ve never done this before, the Mole recommends you pick out a few photos to doctor and head over to this online LOL Cats builder tool. When you’re done, send the results in jpg format to steve [at] dailymole [dot] com.
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