Independents Day

A few weeks back, my friend Tim sent out an email about his San Leandro coffee house. In it, he mentioned a study that tracked money spent in Austin at chains versus local, independent equivalents. Money spent at the independents contributed three times more to the local economy than the same money at chains. Of course, Amazon.com purchases simply removed money, though they're not mentioned in the study. Here's a news report. Here's where you can get the study itself. I sent the link to Pat Holt as well.

Support your local independents. It's in your best interest.

Nicholson Baker

I pitched a piece recently explaining that I wanted to approach the topic in question the way Nicholson Baker or Henry Petroski might. The editor is interested, so I decided to refresh my memory of Baker's writing. I love his obsessive attention to the minutiae that surrounds us everyday, but I had forgotten just how good a writer he is. You can find a number of his best essays in The Size of Thoughts. "The History of Punctuation" is the one I lit upon for a Nicholson Baker refresher course, but I thought about using "Books as Furniture."

Daddy's Girl

Originally uploaded by melissa nicole.

I know. A blog post about one's pet is pretty avant-garde. But this picture of Omelette flopped over on her back and curled up in my arms was so cute that I decided to take the plunge and challenge the blogging norms.

Omelette loves me, this I know,
because the purring tells me so.

Biodiesel Hummer

I stopped at the fare booth for the Oakland Bay Bridge, and was just about to silently rage at the massive Hummer that pulled up next to me. Then I noticed the big decal in the window: "Powered by Biodiesel."

Blink.

Unbelievable. That anonymous driver in his monstermobile can smugly dismiss all the environmentalists who start to froth at the mouth when they see his vehicle. He's retrofitted his normal, gas-guzzling urban warfare machine into an urban warfare machine that's more eco-friendly than the cars most of those environmentalists drive.

I would have said that such a combination was inconceivable. My generation will probably suggest that the word doesn't mean what I think it means. But I was struck by the absurdity of the image, and actually laughed out loud, my silent rage transformed into stunned disbelief. A Hummer made me feel guilty about the unleaded gas in my reasonably fuel-efficient Saturn. It came across as chutzpah, that's for sure.

At least we can still rant about this guy's wannabe militarism. He's probably not actually driving troops into combat in San Francisco at rush hour. Don't the owners of these things know that everyone else assumes they're making up for deficiencies? Is that the image he wants to convey?

There. An outlet for my rage. I'll focus on that the next time I pull into a gas station.

Testing 1...2...3

My newest blog. Stay tuned.