Chic, IL What are you thinking RIGHT NOW?

I would like to know this as well!

 

Please don't suck, please don't suck, please don't suck

 

Paintball is April 26 as posted last month in the stickied Schedule thread. Place still to be determined.

Phil

 

David Simon & Company's attempt at creating a legacy for their work, from this week's Time Magazine:

------


Wednesday, Mar. 05, 2008

The Wire's War on the Drug War
By Ed Burns, Dennis Lehane, George Pelecanos, Richard Price, David Simon

We write a television show. Measured against more thoughtful and meaningful occupations, this is not the best seat from which to argue public policy or social justice. Still, those viewers who followed The Wire ? our HBO drama that tried to portray all sides of inner-city collapse, including the drug war, with as much detail and as little judgment as we could muster ? tell us they've invested in the fates of our characters. They worry or grieve for Bubbles, Bodie or Wallace, certain that these characters are fictional yet knowing they are rooted in the reality of the other America, the one rarely acknowledged by anything so overt as a TV drama.

These viewers, admittedly a small shard of the TV universe, deluge us with one question: What can we do? If there are two Americas ? separate and unequal ? and if the drug war has helped produce a psychic chasm between them, how can well-meaning, well-intentioned people begin to bridge those worlds?

And for five seasons, we answered lamely, offering arguments about economic priorities or drug policy, debating theoreticals within our tangled little drama. We were storytellers, not advocates; we ducked the question as best we could.

Yet this war grinds on, flooding our prisons, devouring resources, turning city neighborhoods into free-fire zones. To what end? State and federal prisons are packed with victims of the drug conflict. A new report by the Pew Center shows that 1 of every 100 adults in the U.S. ? and 1 in 15 black men over 18 ? is currently incarcerated. That's the world's highest rate of imprisonment.

The drug war has ravaged law enforcement too. In cities where police agencies commit the most resources to arresting their way out of their drug problems, the arrest rates for violent crime ? murder, rape, aggravated assault ? have declined. In Baltimore, where we set The Wire, drug arrests have skyrocketed over the past three decades, yet in that same span, arrest rates for murder have gone from 80% and 90% to half that. Lost in an unwinnable drug war, a new generation of law officers is no longer capable of investigating crime properly, having learned only to make court pay by grabbing cheap, meaningless drug arrests off the nearest corner.

What the drugs themselves have not destroyed, the warfare against them has. And what once began, perhaps, as a battle against dangerous substances long ago transformed itself into a venal war on our underclass. Since declaring war on drugs nearly 40 years ago, we've been demonizing our most desperate citizens, isolating and incarcerating them and otherwise denying them a role in the American collective. All to no purpose. The prison population doubles and doubles again; the drugs remain.

Our leaders? There aren't any politicians ? Democrat or Republican ? willing to speak truth on this. Instead, politicians compete to prove themselves more draconian than thou, to embrace America's most profound and enduring policy failure.

"A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right," wrote Thomas Paine when he called for civil disobedience against monarchy ? the flawed national policy of his day. In a similar spirit, we offer a small idea that is, perhaps, no small idea. It will not solve the drug problem, nor will it heal all civic wounds. It does not yet address questions of how the resources spent warring with our poor over drug use might be better spent on treatment or education or job training, or anything else that might begin to restore those places in America where the only economic engine remaining is the illegal drug economy. It doesn't resolve the myriad complexities that a retreat from war to sanity will require. All it does is open a range of intricate, paradoxical issues. But this is what we can do ? and what we w

 

You aren't really thinking that, you just cut n' pasted it from some other source.

D'
"BTWTLDR"

 

Busted!

 

I think we're going to have to change that. It is the same weekend as Kane County at which El Presidente and I have a table on which we will sell our wares.

 

and what wares will you be selling?

 

Ummm the sticky I see above only has dates from Feb. in it.....

And I say change that date!

Make mine BlastCamp.

 

The thread with the dates is here. I haven't had a chance to have the list of Upcoming Events updated since I'm waiting for details on Bowling to be finalized. Kane County is April 27, the day after Paintball. The idea was that paintball is traditionally in late April, so Book Club is being moved to third Saturday that month.

Phil

 

I do believe Kane County is a 2 day event, no?

 

The Kane County schedule only lists one day for the Antique-Collectible Toy & Doll Show.

Phil

 

and I thought I was getting a whole weekend of jason vacation, the form noted two days

 

Not to beat a dead horse (What? Too soon?) but here is backup to your foundation statement, courtesy of the NY Times:

[image=http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/03/09/opinion/09opart.large.gif]

-Haz
"Really pretty great, Yoda is."

 

I still prefer Ginger, but this helps MaryAnn's case:

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Actress from 'Gilligan's Island' serving probation under plea


DRIGGS, Idaho (AP) -- Dawn Wells, who played Mary Ann on "Gilligan's Island," is serving six months' unsupervised probation after allegedly being caught with marijuana in her car.

She was sentenced February 29 to five days in jail, fined $410.50 and placed on probation after pleading guilty to one count of reckless driving.

Under a plea agreement, three misdemeanor counts -- driving under the influence, possession of drug paraphernalia and possession of a controlled substance -- were dropped.

On October 18, Teton County sheriff's Deputy Joseph Gutierrez arrested Wells as she was driving home from a surprise birthday party that was held for her. According to the sheriff's office report, Gutierrez pulled Wells over after noticing her swerve and repeatedly speed up and slow down. When Gutierrez asked about a marijuana smell, Wells said she'd just given a ride to three hitchhikers and had dropped them off when they began smoking something. Gutierrez found half-smoked joints and two small cases used to store marijuana.

The 69-year-old Wells, founder of the Idaho Film and Television Institute and organizer of the region's annual family movie festival called the Spud Fest, then failed a sobriety test.

Wells' lawyer, Ron Swafford, said that a friend of Wells testified he'd left a small amount of marijuana in the vehicle after using it that day, and that Wells was unaware of it. Swafford also said several witnesses were prepared to testify that Wells had very little to drink at the party and was not intoxicated when she left. He said she was swerving on the road because she was trying to find the heater controls in her new car.

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"Veronica's a b!tch and you're a lush!"

 

Mary Ann + Mary Jane = Granny from "Beverly Hillbillies" apparently.

And yes, Virginia, I still prefer Mary Ann over Ginger (double entendré intended). Dawn, I'll gladly bail you out, as long as I can perform some "field sobriety tests" of my own...

-Haz
"Just put this in your mouth and blow."

EDIT: Wow, it appears I was on the right track. Celebrity spokesperson indeed.

 

holy cats, am I tired.

 

If someone can find a better background image for my MySpace page...there will be money for you.

Dave
"Good luck."

 

Maybe the best background image is no background image at all.

 

ZOMG!! teh Confucius!

D'

 

Back from Florida today at 1am. Had an amazing time! The space shuttle was really cool. Will write more but now I need some sleep.

 

Word on the street is that Arthur C Clarke has died. I like to think he spent his final hours enjoying a quiet meal, perhaps dropping his wine glass but not worrying too much about it.


"A hundred years ago, the electric telegraph made possible - indeed, inevitable - the United States of America. The communications satellite will make equally inevitable a United Nations of Earth; let us hope that the transition period will not be equally bloody."

 

Yeah, unlike so many other celebrity deaths, this one makes me genuinely sad.

 

I have been in Florida working for 11 days so far, my hotel is 2.5 miles from the ocean, but I have not seen it yet. I finally get a kick @zz job site and no time to do anything.

 

I feelz your pain, I was on detachment to NAS Jacksonville for 10 days and got to see the ocean NONCE! But, there was a F-117 Nighthawk parked in our hangar...so I stared that that instead.

D'