So, I was just editing a fairly technical mainframe article for the May/June issue of the magazine, when I came upon the following paragraph:
The summary dump size has been increased, which enhances first-failure data capture by improving the possibilities of capturing necessary problem resolution data without incurring the performance burden of making a system non-dispatchable while a dump is taken.
So true. So very, very true.
I don't drink coffee. But if I did, I would feel obligated to make Seattle my home. There are Starbucks EVERYWHERE. And, yes, I know this is a running joke, a joke that Lewis Black is pretty much identified with. But, I mean it, this city is, as near as I can tell, 80 percent Starbucks.
I shit you not. My hotel over the past three nights has been the Sheraton Seattle Hotel and Towers, and in the blocks surrounding my hotel, there are roughly 431 Starbucks. There are Starbucks within a half a block of another Starbucks. You could honestly sit an sip a latte in one Starbucks and gaze out the window and watch someone else sip a latte in a Starbucks just 100 feet away.
I would also like to note for posterity that my hotel was under construction during my stay, and those Goddamned workers were up and pounding and welding and pounding and working and pounding at exactly 6 a.m. every Goddamned morning. And do you know WHY they were up and working so diligently, and loudly, at 6 a.m. each morning?
That's right. . . fucking Starbucks man. fucking Starbucks.
ME: *Killing time at Barnes & Noble before a lunch meeting at the Grand Hyatt.*
*a man wearing camo pants, a tattered jacket and bandana, rides the escalator up to the top floor, and he starts looking at me.*
ME: *Trying to look interested in a paperback.*
UNKNOWN DUDE (UD): Hey, have you seen Scott?
ME: Excuse me?
UD: You know. . . Scott. He was right behind me.
ME: *Gesturing to my conference badges around my neck.* I'm not from around here. I don't know any Scott.
UD: Everyone knows Scott.
ME: Uh, not me.
UD: Are you sure?
ME: I'm 100 percent positive.
UD: If you see him, let me know.
ME: Will do.
UD: *Walks out of Barnes & Noble.*
I'm attending a SHARE conference in Seattle through Wednesday, so blogging will likely be non-existent. But, before I go, I thought I'd kick Nick Coleman in his journalistic Nardles.
We are getting closer to that glorious day when Minnesota throws hundreds of millions of dollars at new sports facilities.
How do I know?
Because you know stuff?
Because on Friday, 50 babies got thrown out of a preschool in north Minneapolis, which means we have more money for millionaire sports heroes and owners.
Chucked out of a four story window, they were, their soft pink bodies making squishy noises as they bounced lifelessly off the ground, while off in the distance, Vikings and Twins players snickered and guffawed.
Don't be shocked. We've been heading this way awhile.
Yes, for as long as Nick Coleman has been writing, we've been informed we've been heading this way for awhile. He's been saying the sky is falling for so long, the sky is thinking about falling just to shut the guy up.
After cutting huge chunks out of programs for the poor to balance the state budget without harming the ambitions of our political leaders, we are celebrating: This year, we will have a surplus! And that means, yes, it's time to get those stadiums underway.
Based on? I'm sure Nick has a source, somewhere, some figures, somewhere, that back up that statement. Surely Nick didn't just make up some conjecture in that gelatinous mass he laughingly refers to as his brain. Perish the thought.
Do you hear anyone complaining? No?
Just you, Nick, but then you've always carried the Torch of Complaints for all one of your devoted readers.
Babies can't talk so good.
And Nick Coleman can't write so good, but we already knew that.
After 21 years, the St. Anthony Developmental Learning Center in the hard-hit Jordan-Hawthorne area of the city -- where two shooting victims hit the pavement just last week and where "For Sale" signs dot the landscape -- shut its doors.
Huh. Fascinating. So, let's see if I understand this: a crime-ridden area of a city is so unpleasant to live in, residents are abandoning it in apparent droves. And in this environment of a retreating population amidst growing crime, a learning center is closing its doors. Color me unsurprised. Of course, to Nick, this is a great injustice that could have been avoided if the state just threw money at the learning center, which ignores the larger problems of, say, people retreating in droves because of growing crime.
I told you about St. Anthony's troubles on Feb. 24. But no one rode to the rescue.
Awwww, Nick's miffed that his lofty position as Minnesota's worst columnist didn't result in outraged mobs chaining themselves to a learning center. That old gray mare, she ain't what she used to be. . . ain't what she used to be. . . ain't what she used to be.
So on Friday, there were tears and anger, and there were dozens of young families -- many led by single mothers still trying to finish school or to beat addiction -- scrambling.
They're scrambling. . . despite apparent advance notice that this was exactly what was going to happen. Unless they went and pinned their hopes on a Nick Coleman column, which. . . *shudder*
Not even Grandma Comfort could stop the hurt.
Ladies and gentlemen, presenting the patented Nick Coleman "amazing Person On The Street" column inclusion! Nick find's these people with the precision of laser eye surgery, and they're always, ALWAYS, portrayed as altruistic victims of a society that didn't give them a fair shake, like the reformed "near-murderer" rapper, Young Plukey.
Grandma Comfort, 70, is a Liberian refugee named Comfort Davies. She has volunteered at St. Anthony for 10 years, helping to feed, change and rock the babies in the infant room. Coming to the United States to escape a war that cost the life of one of her sons, she can't believe a government would let St. Anthony close.
Yeah, it's just incredible that a government would look at a learning center that's a perpetual financial drain due to rising area crime and decreasing population and decide that maybe, just maybe, continuing funding isn't that prudent.
"It will be very hard on the babies," Grandma Comfort said. "The babies will suffer. When they come in the morning, they are starving. These girls who are having the babies are babies themselves. They don't know anything about babies. That is what we help them with. I am begging the government to keep this place open."
One imagines Nick frantically scribbling these quotes, convinced he has the material of the century. The Pulitzer is just within his grasp. "Yes!" thinks Coleman to himself with deep satisfaction. "She said 'babies' no less than four times! There's nothing scripted or suspicious about a quote like that. Nothing at all."
I wanted to talk to another volunteer grandma. But Grandma Bernice, who is 80, went home early, weeping.
Oh, right to the heart! Grandma Bernice went home weeping! Clearly, this is the worst thing to happen to Minnesota since Coleman decided to be a journalist!
"We feel totally abandoned," said St. Anthony's executive director, Pati Yeager. "No one seems to care about what happens to the kids in this neighborhood. All of the politicians say they want to make safe neighborhoods. Well?
"Hellooo!"
Okay, first off, what the hell is the executive director of ANYTHING saying "Hellooo!" for? Second off, keeping a learning center open that acts as an enabling facility for babies having babies doesn't strike me as the best way to make a neighborhood safer.
One suburban nonprofit child center offered $100,000, but the school needs four times that much in new annual funding to keep going. And so it closed.
And the baby chucking began.
St. Anthony DLC, named in honor of the patron saint of lost things, has been itself lost.
*soft blowing of Taps on the winds*
Now, watch the topsy-turvy Nick Coleman haphazard segue machine roar into action.
Carl Pohlad and Zygi Wilf were not on hand to demand that we invest more in quality child care that comes with family counseling, speech therapy and hugs in an area that needs all that and more. No one was.
Yes, yes, those heartless Twins and Vikings owners are so heartlessly heartless, and. . . hey, what the hell does that have to do with ANYTHING?
So 21 years of saving babies is over, undone by budget cuts and demands for academic performance from preschoolers so poor they don't know how to eat at a table, let alone know their alphabet.
Wait, I thought it was because Wilf and Pohlad weren't on hand signing checks. I'm so confused.
Experts say it would take $28 million a year to provide quality preschool care for every at-risk child in Hennepin County.
Again, do you have a source for that, dickhead? Who are these experts? Grandma Comfort? Young Plukey?
By coincidence, that's the amount of new taxes a baseball stadium will cost. Or maybe it's not a coincidence. Maybe it's a straight trade.
This is what passes for journalistic standards in Nick's world. It's kind of sad, really.
Pro sports? Or babies?
You may say we can have both.
Baby football! Now there's an idea!
Maybe we could. But that's not how it has shaped up. We are choosing just one.
Based entirely on Nick's own conjecture. No sources. Nothing to back up his claim. Just good, old-fashioned, Nick-Coleman-Knows-Stuff intuition.
And babies come in second.
Yes you do, Nick. Yes you do.
