Fiscal Responsibilty Meets Tommy Armour
Frankly, there's something fishy in St. Louis.

It's not the odor of steaming sewers in the humid evenings, although that is somewhat rancid. And it's not the odor of fish, because as we all know, if fish or poultry smells, it's inedible - and everything that comes out of the Mississippi smells.

No, it's the Forest Park Golf Courses.

A few years ago, as part of the re-beautification of Forest Park, the park management decided to re-do their golf course, which was at the time an 18-hole course of average layout and playability - it was alright, but not great. The new design, three 9-hole courses, is modeled after a layout originally done by professional golfer Hale Irwin, and you can tell that they did it right - the views are wonderful, there are still dozens of older trees lining the holes, the fairway grass (a bermuda/zoysia mix) is in great shape, the tees are nice...it's just great. And for 10 bucks for a weeknight play, it's really reasonably priced.

But that's not really the problem, or I wouldn't have titled this post as I did - the real problem is that this can't have been cheap. Not at all. First off, the course is managed by a subcontracter who's doing a good job, but charges a good deal of money. In the end, it's almost always cheaper to do anything yourself rather than contract it out - but the city's been working with American Golf Corp for many years, as they ran the old 18-hole course. Alone, I can live with the increased costs.

But then there's the cost of redoing the park the way Forest Park Forever wanted it redone - again, they did a good job. But the new lakes, the new water pump system, the new street design, 6.4 miles of new concrete roadbed for bicyclists, the removal of 6.4 miles of old roadbed and replacement of same with wood mulch for the runners, AND the hugely expensive costs of actually building a golf course. Here's a tidbit: If you can build a 9-hold golf course that has decent fairways and isn't totally flat for less than 5 million bucks, it's only because you're in Paraguay or Afghanistan. And Afghani grass doesn't take well.

For a city and metro area that can't afford to put streetlights on the highways, can't afford to pay someone to redo the downtown traffic lights' timing but every forty years, and can't afford to keep the schools open....this seems a little expensive. All told, Forest Park Forever raised 102 million dollars to rehabilitate Forest Park, which is owned by the city. And that's American dollars, so that's like 45 billion Canadian.

Frankly, Forest Park was a bit dingy and beat-up, but was it really 100 million bucks worth of beat-up? Wouldn't it have been better (correct me if I'm wrong) to, say, spend 40 million dollars repairing schools and improving educational curricula to make sure that future generations of St. Louisians actually had decent educations, which would bring in better employers looking for a more-intelligent workforce, which would improve average pay, which would improve tax collections, which would allow for increased public spending....

Or was it better to build another golf course?

(For information on the Forest Park renovation, click here. The golf course cost $12.5 million, and would have been more had one of the three new courses not included several holes from the old 18-hole Eisenhower course. The city itself spent 55 million bucks on the rehabilitation project.)

And We Thought it Was All Smiles and Fun



That's Carly Patterson, Olympic gold medalist in the womens' all-around competition this year. She's performing her floor exercise, and this is from one of her tumbling passes.

Now, I know you're running really far, and bouncing really high, but geez, girl...try to look like you've done this before. It's as if somebody, somewhere, just stabbed her voodoo doll, or said, "I don't believe in faeries."

By the way, did anyone else notice Mens' gold medalist Paul Hamm's voice? He sounds like he was kicked in the junk. I think he and Kerri Strug would be the perfect couple.

Well, I can't say that I'm entirely surprised
1. Go to Amazon.com.
2. Do a product search for "Super Villian."
3. Check out the third entry through the fourteenth.

All of them are Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen books.

If Amazon says they're villians, who am I to argue with that?

It's a darn shame they aren't villains, because then I'd have a reason for my unnatural hatred of all things Olsen; as it stands, I can only say, "Well, they're too damned powerful for teenagers!" which, in the end, sounds like something Jerry Falwell might say after a drinking binge.

And Now, it's up to the Bruins.
Gary Payton, formerly the pride of the Seattle Supersonics and the Bane of the Lakers (a much less-publicized nickname, since he played for the Lakers at the time) has been traded today to the Boston Celtics, along with Rick Fox, a career backup and nominee for Ugliest Man Ever to Marry a Super-Hot Sometimes-Lesbian Miss America.

Payton, it's safe to say, is one of the reasons that the Lakers didn't win the NBA Title last season - he's kind of whiny, a team-second guy who demands the ball, and hasn't yet figured out that he's old and no longer Gary the Glove, Pride of the...well, you get the idea. Had Payton not signed with the Lakers, they could have found a decent player to replace Robert Horry, whose name is not pronounced like the world's oldest profession.

This mean, despite Bill Simmons' objections, that the Boston Celtics are doomed to fall on their collective cherubic faces this year onto a bed of spiky, pointy, dangerous expectations in the shapes of shamrocks of various leaf counts †. This also means that the Lakers are officially in rebuilding mode, and instead of looking for good players, are looking for role players to cushion Kobe Bryant from having to take any blame. They should take a hint from the Bulls and find a Scottie Pippen - good player who knows when to give up the rock. Instead, they're being like the Celtics were when they drafted Antoine Walker: "We have our star now," they said, "so we don't need anyone good!"

Tough nuts for the Celtics of 96-2003 that Walker blew then, and blows now. Tough nuts for the Lakers, too, that Kobe's so damned overrated, and so damned egotistical.

I'm crowning the Knicks NBA champions this year, just so that I can say that another NYC team is going to beat up on another Boston team when it matters.

†: That was intentionally badly written.

Why do the French Keep Losing Wars?
Because they spend their time on stuff like this.

By the way - I wish he'd do a little Van Halen.

<null>
New color scheme.

When the Media Blames the Media
An excerpt from a BBC Article (the link is here).

Game blamed for hammer murder
The parents of a boy who was murdered with a claw hammer by a friend have blamed a violent video game which the teenage killer was "obsessed" with.

Warren Leblanc, 17, repeatedly stabbed 14-year-old Stefan Pakeerah after luring him to a Leicester park to steal from him on 27 February. He pleaded guilty to murder at Leicester Crown Court on Wednesday.

Stefan's mother described Leblanc, who confessed to police moments after the assault, as "inherently evil". Following the hearing she said her son's killer had mimicked a game called Manhunt, developed by Edinburgh-based Rockstar North, in which the players score points for violent killings.

Outside court Stefan's father, Patrick, said: "They were playing a game called Manhunt. The way Warren committed the murder is how the game is set out - killing people using weapons like hammers and knives. There is some connection between the game and what he has done."

There are always much deeper causes than a kid playing Half-Life who then turns around and shoots his buddy with a real gun, rather than one that's just a collection of pixels.

Most of them revolve around the kid's parenting or home environment, and the question that never gets asked is, "Why didn't this kid know that such a thing was wrong?" Or, on a more important level, "why didn't that knowledge that x thing is wrong stop the kid from doing it?"

As a responsible adult member of society who grew up watching Die Hard, playing DOOM, and swearing with my friends when we thought no one was listening, I am constantly amazed that anyone would ever blame anyone else for their problems. "Oh, the video game made me do it," or "The movie made me do it," and "The McDonalds made me fat."

No it didn't, no it didn't, and no, it didn't. Those are all three, really, the same complaint. You had a choice, and you made it. For some reason, you didn't process that your choices, such as carrying a gun around, or such as confusing Wolfenstein with reality, had consequences. But they do. And when a person makes those choices, the consequences, for better or worse, are something that they have to deal with.

I was a suburban white kid who grew up with all of these supposedly negative influences on me - heck, I even like heavy metal music from the 80s, and I'm not some sex pervert - and yet I'm a relatively normal guy now. I've never killed or raped anyone, I don't believe that there's a master race, I don't like the use of narcotics. So am I somehow superior to these same suburban white kids who tend to become tools of the media to villify some product?

Nope.

Really, in the end, it's my parents that were better. They taught me that when I get angry or confused, I should just stop and think every so often. It's not hard. More people should, and then maybe I wouldn't have had to type out this thing in the first place.

Monday, August 02, 2004

Just to fill my digital print space
A word I didn't know existed: "onomatopaeiizing."

The reason? It doesn't exist.

The "real" word, to describe the same thing: "onomatopoiesis."

The first one, of course, came from the internet, which is in its brief lifetime has managed to become a bastion of new-wordness. Not on purpose, mind you, but there it is anyway.