Its been a while

well its been a while - life doesnt allways lend me the time to sit down and get any writing in. Im at work right now, and it is very very slow. I suppose its that way everywhere these days.

Apartment Hunt!

I am fully convinced that there is no greater pain in life than moving. It is worse than giving birth, at least pregnancy is something you can prepare for ahead of time. Sure, expectant mothers will disagree, brandishing that same cross of pain and sacrifice that has been called upon since they were given the right to speak without being spoken to, but with today's drugs, I think it is really a dead issue. I have no sympathy, I will care again when some woman moves my couch and dresser across town.

If they had a pill that could eliminate the chance that I would ever have to move again, believe me it would be taken with absolute regularity, and without a peep of malcontent - I don't even care about the side effects. I smoke cigarettes.

Enough about pregnancy though, moving is the issue of the day.

I have two months left on my lease, and I am already stressing, spending my days, listlessly roaming the streets of Atlanta, finding perfect apartments that are promised to not be available in that final stretch of my search, when I will be forced to move into a $900 a month shit hole where my crack dealing neighbors will undoubtedly defecate in my mailbox every time I go to work.

I am done with this, even though I technically haven't even begun. It is odd that rent prices are soaring at the same time real estate prices have fallen through the floor. I am the type of person who likes to have things sorted out ahead of time, and this doesn't appear to be the kind of issue that the world is going to let me have sorted out ahead of time.

I understand that the property managers are not willing to hold on to the properties two months in advance, I suppose it is time to put my search on hold, as all I am succeeding in doing is torturing myself while wasting time and gas.

I'm sure it will all work out in the end, but it is just so frustrating right now.

Tornadoes in my Neighborhood

The building shook, the customers panicked, it was an interesting evening at my job. Last Friday night, tornadoes ripped through downtown Atlanta, then careened up I-20 to strike near enough to my place of employment that the windows in the condos above my job exploded, sending terrified residents into Vickery's with tears streaming from their eyes.

Then it travelled up the hill to my neighborhood, an aging East Atlanta neighborhood, one where the houses are small, and built on the cheap, with trees towering over them, their large branches looming low above the rooftops.



Thankfully, my house was spared. Many were not. I did not discover this until the next day, as there were massive power outs all over the city as well as reports of more storms heading our way. I did not think it would be in my best interests to brave the elements that night.



There were even rumors of looters in my East Atlanta neighborhood, although I am skeptical as to the validity of these statements. There are a lot of people who think any roaming band of teenagers are out looting, when there is a legitimate case to be made for the idea that people were simply curious to investigate the damage that had been caused bu the storm.



The neighborhood is still in shambles, but we have power which is more than I can say for some of my friends, who are not expected to have power for several more days. All in all, the city has returned to normal, and the clean up process is moving along very quickly.



I still haven't been to the Cotton Mill Lofts, a huge loft complex close to my home that sustained a direct hit by the tornado.

It is amazing that no-one was killed that night. Especially in the lofts, or by the Dome, which was reportedly still full of fans who would have otherwise been piling out of the building at the time of the storm had it not been for the fact that one of the games had gone into overtime.

Back to School

It is time for me to do the unthinkable. I am actually returning to school. For the greater portion of my two year, unsuccessful job hunt, i had been staunchly against the idea of going back to school. I was positive that a B.A. in journalism would be enough to procure a nice job for myself.

Maybe it would have been, maybe my interview skills aren't that good. I know i have progressed by leaps and bounds since i started my job hunt. Ultimately however, i have found myself constantly applying and subsequently being rejected from jobs i am not even honestly interested in working. This kind of experience causes a man to start thinking about the future again.

I need to learn a trade, and i have chosen one. To be honest i always wanted to be a teacher, before i decided i should toss my hat into the journalism ring.

Hopefully I can get into the GSU school of education. I don't think it should be that difficult for me, it will just take some hard work, and that is exactly what I plan to give.

I found a lot of inspiration while watching my room-mates journey through the Emory college of medicine in order to become a nurse. There is a shortage of nurses, and he should basically walk onto a nice career once he is graduated. He is going to see an immediate return on all of his hard work.

I am very excited to be entering this new phase of my life. It is one that I think will work out very well for me in several different ways. The simple mental stimulation that one acquires in school has become attractive to me again.

I think going to get an advanced degree is the kind of thing a person must be truly inspired to do. I intend to take out student loans as opposed to working a job, granted the thought of massive debt is not the most attractive to me, but I think I will allow me a much more concise experience in graduate school. I want to glean every morsel of knowledge and expertise that can be offered to a person with an advanced degree.

This time I am really going to to this correctly.

Cohiba Time?

I’ve had a Cuban cigar before. It was wholly unremarkable. It was a Cohiba. I had to go to Mexico to get it, and I want another one. I am going to assume that my lack of enthusiasm about the forbidden tobacco product was a result of my ignorance in dealings with cigars. I can tell you a lot about red wine, but when it comes to cigars, I am a bit of a peon.

Nonetheless, I want another one, primarily because they are just so damn complicated to attain. I think all of this could change soon, now that Fidel has gone and kicked the administrative bucket just shy of the half century mark.

I’m going to need an education before this goes down though. It is my firm belief that education enhances all of life’s pleasures. At this point, it is the difficulty that one must endure in order to acquire one of the coveted Cuban cigars that fuels my lust for the carcinogenic wad of dried plant life. If this hurdle is removed before I have an understanding of what characteristics typify a good cigar, smoking a Cuban would simply be a waste of my time, health, and cologne.

Raul, Raul, Raul, what are you going to do? They say he is more of a pragmatist than Fidel. That’s what they say, but I think one probably needs to be pretty politically pragmatic to survive the pressure placed on his nation by ten consecutive American administrations, not to mention countless alleged assassination attempts by a little gaggle of folks known as the CIA.



Once they set their sights on him, Saddam only survived three administrations. Apparently he was not as pragmatic as Fidel. They say Raul is more pragmatic than Fidel, America likes pragmatism in its enemies. It seems to increase their longevity.

Will the Cuban revolutionary relics have that same gusto without their long winded luminary? Will they have that same nuclear bravado that led them to decide it was a good idea to point Atomic bombs at millions of elderly Americans living in Miami? I sure hope not. Another snafu like that would crush my soot filled dreams for certain.

Atlanta Beltline Health Impact Assessment

First of all, we have to applaud the City of Atlanta for mustering the foresight to even bother with a Health Impact Assessment. For a city where insightful funding and conscientious planning for any public projects are about as tangible as the bigfoot, it is a huge step forward that Georgia Tech's Center for Quality Growth and Regional Development managed to team up with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the CDC to conduct one of the United States first HIA's.

Let me begin by explaining what the purpose of an HIA is. HIA's are reports that are beginning to create new relationships and strings of dialogue between public health experts and city planners. They seek to understand the relationship that new projects will have with the citizens of a city in terms of their health and quality of life.

According to the HIA report dealing with the proposed Beltline project in Atlanta, the Beltline would greatly increase the health and quality of life of the citizens of Atlanta. It would do this by enhancing air quality and increasing access to parks and healthy foods for many of Atlanta’s residents who rely on public transportation, among other things. The Beltline will also add over 1200 acres of parks and trails for the people of Atlanta.

All of this good however, may not be seen by the current generation of Beltline supporters, as the Beltway funding plan is operating on a 25 year timeframe. This is far too long for the city to take to build a project that could do so much good for the people of Atlanta.

Make no mistake, attention spans are very short in Atlanta politics, if you need evidence of this, one needs to go no further than to look into the all but forgotten plans for the city to help build a new world-class symphony center for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. When it comes to large scale public projects in this city, it seems that the attention spans of our legislatures and officials directly coincide with the election campaign cycle.

The attention span of the people is not significantly better either. If, in say 10 or 15 years, the people can still not see the full benefits of the Beltline, will they still be voting for the candidate who is pledging to continue to spend their tax money on a project that has, as of yet yielded little return for their investment? This is Doubtful. It should also be taken into serious consideration that Atlanta is a rapidly growing city, and 25 years from now, there may be obstacles to the creation of many of the parks and green spaces that simply cannot be removed.

Hopefully, the recommendations offered in the report will be taken seriously, and the officials and city planners involved with the creation of the Beltline will implement these very recommendations. There is a very real possibility that the existence of this report is in fact a symptom of a cultural sea change in the city, where ideals like health and quality of life will be taken more seriously in the future planning of a city that is rapidly growing and in need of many of the amenities that the Beltline can provide.

The Wayward Satellite

Now this is an interesting story. The Pentagon is planning to shoot an American "secret spy satellite" out of the heavens.

The rational that has been offered up to the public is that the satellite is filled with a fuel known as "hydrazine" which can cause injury or death to humans who may be exposed to it. There are also obvious concerns related to the fact that this is indeed a spy satellite. It may well carry with it sensitive information and/or technology.

Since the beginning of space exploration, thousands of man made objects have fallen from the heavens, including the 78 ton Skylab space station. Never before has the Pentagon decided that any of these objects warranted the use of a missile to destroy.

There are many factors to include when pondering the significance of the way this satellite is being treated by the government. First of all, the likelihood of the object landing in or around any population centers is negligible. There are also several international ramifications involved with the shooting down of man made space objects.

It was just last year when the Chinese shot down one of their own satellites, to heavy international critisism. This act was seen as a show of force. They were effectively demonstrating to the United States their ability to shoot down not only their own, but the satellites of other nations as well. No other nation so heavily relies on satellite power as the United States.

The entire American military war machine is guided by satellites. Therefore, a "near-peer" military force such as Russia or China could "poke out the eyes" of the American military apparatus by removing satellites from the sky. The Chinese have also been known to routinely point lasers at American satellites, these lasers often time are powerful enough to blind the satellites.

There are considerations with the logistics of destroying a man made space vehicle in orbit as well. The pieces of the satellite can enter orbit, and cause a debris field that could very possibly cause damage to other satellites. This was seen in the wake of the Chinese satellite destruction, which now accounts for 29% of the man-made space debris that is currently in orbit.

It is very possible that the loss of this American space satellite has provided for the Pentagon a convenient excuse for a retaliatory display of American military prowess in the wake of the Chinese satellite controversy. It is also possible that this satellite was efectively "blinded" by another military force which was not comfortable with the intended purposes of this satellite, which reportedly utilizes some very powerful spy technology. Whatever the case, this satellite is being treated with a level of attention that has not been seen before in regards to man-made objects falling out of orbit.