Secrets of the City

Did the PiPress just now discover politcal blogging, or the fact that the Republicans have made it a forum for generating pit bull attacks and talking point noise? Hey, guys, welcome to 2001.

Gotta give credit for the headline, though. Beware of blogs, indeed!

How about making those who kill while driving drunk register like sex offenders?

Actually the Strib beat them to it. They discovered political blogs, especially Brodkorb’s, this weekend, too. I wonder is this is what we have to look forward to from the PP, repeating the Strib?

Figures. In typical PP form, they omit the most popular and arguably most powerful right-wing blog, Power Line. These local fellows are directly responsible for taking down Dan Rather. But, I suppose that’s no big deal.

When they do that though, omit the most important or popular thing, you have to wonder if they did that on purpose to avoid giving them any more publicity than they already have, or if they’re just didn’t do their research or otherwise don’t know their subject very well. Because either possibility is likely.

Brave frontal assault on the mean old MSM, buckwheat. Spoken only as a unregistered, anonymous non-blogger could!

I’m not surprised about that waterpark. Sounds like Ikea will reign as the most entertaining thing over there for me.

Speaking of germs, I took a trip to the Old Country Buffet last night (G-pa took the family out). I came upon these two kids dipping their fingers into all the salad dressings and tasting them. They were too short to read the labels. They would taste one, lick the finger clean and taste the next one. I asked them which flavor they were looking for and pointed it out to them, but they kept on licking.

Too bad Kili wasn’t there to give them a stern talking to…

Why are blogs, or MSM accounts for that matter, that point out something somebody said or did so dangerous?

You’d rather (pun unintended) get information via press releases and lawyers statements?

Buckwheat, ever heard of yesterday’s news? Rather was two years ago, which hardly qualifies as news. Entenza was last week. Try to keep up.

I’ve found it hard to keep current with my head in my ass.
I’d give buckwheat some advice but I’m not going to waste my breath (
?) knowing it would not be followed.

I heard that we landed on the moon…can anyone confirm this for me?

Rather was two years ago, which hardly qualifies as news. Entenza was last week. Try to keep up.

Entenza was last year. MNPublius and MDE were on it last year. PiPress, Strib, (MNspeak,) and everyone else were late on it too.

Right on Aaron. Everyone missed that boat.

And what a bummer about the waterpark. I was hoping that would be a nice way to trick my family to come visit here during the winter. Guess I’ll stick to meeting them in the Dells.

You’re missing my point. Bill Salisbury, the allegedly unbiased reporter, ends the piece with:

Here’s a selection of other blogs that cover Minnesota politics:

The he lists a handful of blogs from each political side. When he gets to the right, he mentions Craig Westover, Kennedy v. the Machine, The Wind Beneath the Right Wing, and Residual Forces.

Seems to me that if you’re going to only name a handful of blogs, you’d include the 2004 Time Magazine Blog of the Year, especially considering it’s some local guys. Unless you omit them on purpose in the event a reader who has never heard of them should actually visit the site. We wouldn’t want that to happen, would we Salisbury?

Seriously, Jason, take them to the Circus World Museum in Baraboo. It’s just a few miles from the Dells, it’s ailing from lack of tourism, and it’s unbelievably cool.

My parents are big fans of the Circus World Museum, too.

Has anyone every been to the Wonder Spot near the Dells? I have always wanted to go there, even though there may be no real wonder there.

buckwheat: maybe he only wanted to mention real blogs, and not just one-way talking points generators like Powerline. Funny that Powerline just hands down its agenda from on high, without a comments section, which is just as bad, if not worse than the criticism those types level against the “MSM” devil.

Blogs? Dangerous? I’m out of here!

Gratuitous attacks on the oh-so-liberal PiPress aside, I think Buckwheat is right to mention that leaving out Powerline seems odd. However, it may be that they wanted to focus on bogs that were more about state politics and my impression of Powerline is that it has pretentions of being a national force. After all, Dan Rather, blah blah…

So what’s the inside deal on Jason Lewis coming back to town?

Lewis returns to airwaves Aug. 7

A familiar voice will be back on the radio airwaves come Aug. 7. That’s when conservative talk show host Jason Lewis starts his new gig on KTLK-FM. He’ll be on-air from 5-7 p.m. weekdays, a slot that is currently filled with political conversation from conservative Sarah Janecek and liberal Brian Lambert, former Pioneer Press media critic. The future of that show has yet to be determined. Lewis left town and his longtime gig at KSTP-AM in the fall 2003 for WBT in Charlotte, N.C.  Amy Carlson Gustafson

Sounds like Appalachia wasn’t the dream area that he thought it was.

Who would have guessed? That blow hard left in a huff and now wants to move back so he can raise his children here. Who is going to listen to this flip flopper?

MINEAPOLIS COPS BUST ZOMBIE LRT DANCE PARTY. There’s supposed to be an article on Indymedia, but I can’t get the site to load.

Whoa, was Kevin Bacon in the bunch?

Did Kili have anything to do with the Zombies arrest? He is all about rail safety.

The Strib posted a shocking expose on personal blogs today as well. People are blogging about the minutiae of daily life? Who knew?

The Circus World museum is excellent! The guide was very happy to show us features not on the official tour. Very cool place.

The Wonder Spot reminds me an awful lot of Woodhenge. Woodhenge is not far from Stonehenge, has cement markers where they think wooden markers once stood, AND there is plenty of parking. Both disappointing and pointless.

Indymedia is back up. More on the zombie bust here.

“Bail set at 30,000.00 each. charged with simultation of weapons of mass destruction for dancing to homemade radios.”

Homemade radios?

So were their homemade radios designed to look like bombs?

I would guess that homemade radios would have copious amounts of duct tape and oddly protruding wires involved.

I wouldn’t think ascetics would be the first priority.

Information on zombies: 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. (No sign of “bean”.)

6?

Why, oh why, are there no mugshots?!

About time they cracked down on the damn zombies.

You can try arresting zombies, but there are always more to take their place.

28 stops later

I saw the zombies on 7th and Nicollet just after leaving dinner (~7:00 p.m.). They were walking down the mall with their homemade radios blaring, all of which was odd, but tolerable.

The “oddly protruding wires”, however, were actually quite scary — one woman accidentally whacked 3 different bystanders in the face with the very long antenna coming out of her backpack. Nothing resembled weapons, though.

I saw the zombies on 7th and Nicollet just after leaving dinner (~7:00 p.m.). They were walking down the mall with their homemade radios blaring, all of which was odd, but tolerable.

The “oddly protruding wires”, however, were actually quite scary — one woman accidentally whacked 3 different bystanders in the face with the very long antenna coming out of her backpack. Nothing resembled weapons, though.

Dells! Robot World, people!

I never miss Tommy Bartlett’s “Ass Clown Reveiw” when I’m in town!

And I see they have a new show Butt Pirates of Bartlett Bay!

Been saving now for over a year
Let’s pack the kids get outta here
We’ll leave behind our troubles for a week
We’ll borrow the pop-up from Phyllis and Steve
Just tell the boss I gotta leave
Be the best week of our lives as I can tell
We’ll take our dream vacation in the Dells

So let’s board the dogs lock the door
We’ll roll down Interstate 94
Be the best week of our lives I can tell
We’ll take our dream vacation in the Dells

I once asked my sister-in-law, who is from Austin and graduated with Marty, what was the story with that song. She told me thats where the Hormel workers go on there summer vacations. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

Couple of days late on this one, but from the Midtown Greenway Coalition website, regarding the burnt railroad bridge over the Mississippi:

Federal grant dollars have been awarded to get the Greenway across the river using the old railroad bridge. Freight trains still use the northern half of the bridge. The challenge of having a bikeway close to the trains could delay bikeway construction on the bridge.

Just thought you’d want to know.

I love the Zombies. Odyssey and Oracle is one of the great psych-pop records of all time. I mean, who doesn’t love “Time of the Season” ? …..what’s your name, who’s your daddy?

oh no way! Last I’d heard they weren’t going to do it while freight traffic still ran. That’s awesome!

Note to self: If I go, leave my faux WMDs at home.

Woops forgot link: http://www.ZombiePubCrawl.com

Was anything done to stop the kids sticking their grubby fingers into the salad dressing?

Where were their parents?

Did anyone see the Joe Soucheray article this weekend? It definitely should’ve been a daily link: http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/columnists/15098480.htm

I haven’t heard any better plans than his; plus, I love the digs he gets in there towards Mpls — “In St. Paul, in the remnants of our warehouse district, we just discovered a 19th century wooden toilet, in of all places, the B&M Furniture Store. We are going to treat that toilet better than Minneapolis will end up treating the Metrodome.” CLASSIC — I LOVE IT!. Leave it to Soucheray for some good Garage Logic.

Was anything done to stop the kids sticking their grubby fingers into the salad dressing?

Where were their parents?

Hey, at OCB, chaos is the only ruler. Those kids were searching for salad dressing all on their own. It’s the Lord of the Flies of restaurants.

I was interviewed for the Strib story but he didn’t mention anything about my blog. Maybe it’s not personal enough and didn’t fit the story. Afterall my blog is pretty much photos of Uptown Mpls and there’s not much about me. I did mention Powerline when he asked me how I got into blogs. I don’t know about you guys but I found the Time magazine article fascinating at the time. Maybe the Strib and the PiPress are sick of hearing about Power Line.

Did any of you other bloggers out there get interviewed by the Strib and not get published? Just curious.

For the record, Jon Tevlin wrote a nice story about the local political blogosphere several months ago: With these social groups, the beer flows left and right. Power Line has also been written up quite a bit. These new articles (save the personal one) were rightly more about Brodkorb than a comprehensive survey of the local political blogopshere.

That was a cool story, I’d like to see the right and the left bloggers get together on neutral ground. Or maybe face off in a trivia contest. Something like that.