What will it take for you people to learn?

ST. LOUIS • Police have made no arrests in the death of a man who was gunned down late Tuesday on a porch of a St. Louis home.

Police say the 39-year-old victim was fatally shot in the 8000 block of Church Street. Police got the call at about 11:40 p.m. Tuesday.

On Friday morning, police say the man had been shot once in the arm and once in the back. He was taken to a local hospital, where he died.

The victim’s name will be released once his relatives are notified.

Check back for updates.

Read more: http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/article_1afd4092-0550-11e1-b459-001a4bcf6878.html#ixzz1cYXrFzVl

Stay off the Porch! I done warned you!

ST. LOUIS • Police say a St. Louis man was found shot to death Thursday afternoon on the back porch of a home.

Demetrius A. Clark, 38, of the 3200 block of Chippewa Street, was found dead with several gunshot wounds about 2:45 p.m., police said. Officers found Clark after responding to a report of a shooting in the 3800 block of Ashland Avenue, a few blocks south of Fairground Park.

Police released no other information about the killing.

Read more: http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/article_47d77720-fc0b-11e0-8bf2-001a4bcf6878.html#ixzz1bRgK9NqQ

Wrong Way to Go About it, Really

So, I think the United Way totally sucks, for reasons I don’t have the patience to go into at the moment. (One of them is that I don’t think they focus enough on the end recipients of their funds, and the whole thing is just an upper-crust and CEO circle-jerk.) But I am totally dumbfounded at the promo picture being used to advertise their upcoming event.

Behold:

Nothing encourages me to donate like a lady in furs!

I just… I don’t even…

Really United Way? This is apparently Dave and Mary Steward, co-chairs of the committee for the event. This is the kind of separation of support from mission that turns me off the whole St. Louis non-profit scene. This is “charity” at its most nauseating. Blah. United Way, you suck. Can’t wait to get my yearly “demand” letter from my employer, attempting to press-gang me into giving them my money. And I can’t wait to refuse to do so.

Endangered Wolf Center

Went to the Endangered Wolf Center in Eureka, Missouri today. Had no idea they were even there until some friends posted online a few weeks ago that they were going.

They have other things than Mexican Gray Wolves, some African Wild Dogs, Swift Foxes and some other kind of adorable “fox on stilts” wolf (South American Maned Wolf) that was gangly and awesome. I didn’t bother taking many pictures because even though you could see the animals (frequently in motion and in some cases quite close up) the double-fence enclosure just did not lend itself to photography and I would have rather experienced it while I was there than spend all my time trying to get a decent picture and not focusing on what was in front of me.

The center has been there for quite a while. Founded in the year of my birth, actually, 1971. I had no idea it was out there, nor do most St. Louisans, it turns out. They seem like they’re experimenting with some different marketing/PR tactics, including an enhanced online presence, that seem to be working.

There were about 10 people in our tour group (Including kids. Ugh. Why do people take their kids out of the house again?) and our tour guide was really informative. She’d been there nine years and so had a lot of great history about the wolves and the center itself. The tour lasted an hour and cost $8, with a short pitch for becoming a member at the end, which was extremely low pressure.

Anyway, it was an absolutely perfect day for it and the surrounding area is just gorgeous. If left on my own I would have wandered around taking pictures of the ground most of the day, I think. They had the best moss growing everywhere on their stone paths. And while I was fearful I was going to totally wipe out on the loose gravel, the moss growth it encouraged was really cool. Awesome textures wherever you looked. So, no great pictures, but go look at it yourself! October is a great month for it.

Why MSD might have issues collecting funds

When I moved into this house four years ago, I set up an auto-pay account with MSD (St. Louis’s Metropolitan Sewer District, for those lucky enough to have never heard of them before.) I have pretty much ignored it ever since. Periodically they take some money out of my account, my sewer continues to work, and that’s about how much thought I want to put into the whole affair.

A few months ago they sent me a letter, saying that all the old recurring bill payments were being discontinued, due to “maintenance.” Which, that’s a pretty shitty maintenance if you ask me. The kind of maintenance you do that means money stops coming at you automatically is stupid fucking “maintenance.”

I noticed lately in my MS Money register that I had a bill coming up from MSD. So I assumed they’d, you know, BILL me, since they’d discontinued the way that I used to send them money. But no. They did not. So now I start to worry that they’re going to try to not bill me, then charge me a late fee. That sounds about their speed, given the level of ineptitude they’ve evinced so far. So I go online and try to log into my old account. No dice – discontinued. I try to set up a new account as they’ve asked me to do. I come up with a new user id (TEN characters? That’s really long. Isn’t the standard six? Perversely, the password only has to be four characters. Don’t ask me, it makes no sense.) and give them my email address. But no, want to set up new online profile, but can’t do it. To set up a new online account, you need your account number. I have no idea what that might be, as I do not have any old bills (do I even GET mailed bills which would have my account number on them? I don’t remember getting them. I would hope I don’t get mailed bills even though I pay online, but who knows.) and naturally they have helpfully NOT INCLUDED MY ACCOUNT NUMBER IN THE LETTER THEY SENT TO MY HOUSE.

They HAVE included a customer service number, which I call. It has an option for online bill pay setup. It tells me to go online and set that shit up. Helpful! Thanks! The other option is to request a form be mailed to me for online signup. Since I am not my own grandma, I skipped having them mail me the online signup form. Those being the only two options, I tried to back out of that part of their phone system. Helpfully, at this point they disconnected me. Not to be daunted by this, I called them again. This time I pressed the options that would lead me to a customer service worker with whom, it was promised, I could discuss my bill. I thought that I could at least pay by phone this time, and then get the online bill pay set up. Or maybe she could give me my account number. Nope! Their call center is only open from 9-5 on Monday thru Friday! That is SO HELPFUL OH MY HOLY JESUS.

So I give up for today, thinking I will call them on Monday and get this sorted, and that they are assholes. Then five minutes later I get an email from MSD congratulating me on setting up my new online account! :-/

What the fuck MSD, you totally fail at taking my money.

Stay Off the Damn Front Porch

Gunmen on bicycles shoot two, kill one in St. Louis

ST. LOUIS – A St. Louis man was fatally shot early Sunday morning by gunmen on bicycles, police said.

Juan Almanza, 37, of the 4000 block of Dryden Avenue, was shot multiple times about 1:30 a.m. after an argument with two men, police said.

Almanza and another man, 35, were sitting on a porch in the 3100 block of Utah Avenue when two men rode by on bicycles, stopped and began arguing, police said.

One of the bicyclists then pulled out a gun and shot the two men, police said. Almanza collapsed and died at the scene. The second victim was shot in his leg and ran off.

Police had made no arrests Sunday.

The Police Have Their Ways

This is weird:

ST. LOUIS: Man is fatally shot
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
06/21/2010

Darvin Love, 31, of the 5700 block of Lillian Avenue, was shot to death early Sunday.

Police said Love was sitting in a vehicle when someone approached and shot him in the chest.

Police said there were no witnesses or suspects.

If there were no witnesses, how do they know someone approached and shot him in the chest? Someone could have shot him from afar, perhaps. Someone could have strolled by and shot him in the chest.

Second most hazardous place to sit (after your front porch) is in your car. Don’t just be sitting in your car for no reason, you are likely to get shot. Move along, people.

Further Adventures in City Living, Pt. Eleventy Seven Thousand

Yeah, so my license plates got stolen last weekend. And because everything about my life is required to result in some sort of saga of ridiculousness and aggravation, I still don’t have any license plates now. The nice part is that no one, including law enforcement, seems to give two shits if I drive my unlicensed vehicle all over town, so I am not too bothered about it either. (It makes sense that they don’t care if I have plates, actually, as they really don’t seem to give even half a shit if someone’s stealing my wheels or fucking a hooker up against the side of my car or popping the passenger side door handle off with a screwdriver or whatever. I presume they have more important things to do. Like direct traffic and… well I’ve really ever only seen them directing traffic, mostly. Anyway.)

So last Friday night I went out to the bar and then to another place to see a friend’s band play, and that was all really fun until my other friend got maced by a third friend. And that’s another story entirely, and I don’t even know if I can do it justice, so I really won’t try. So anyway, I am sure I had license plates when I left that place, and here’s how I know: last year when I had to get new plates my dad sheared off one of the bolts on the back plate holder thing when he was trying to change them, and then w/o asking he strung the license up on one side with wire, so it hung down at a jaunty angle. And every single time I’ve approached my car since then I’ve though “Jesus Christ, I am a hoosier.” and then I’ve gotten in my car and driven away contentedly, because I hope my car looks extremely hoosier, to keep these ghetto motherfuckers from wanting to mess with it. So I remember seeing my dangling plate late Friday night/early Saturday morning when I got in the car to drive my friends back to their cars. Continue reading »

Can anyone predict what the next corruption scandal will be in St. Louis?

So it’s getting more expensive to park in St. Louis.

Downtown parking meters cost more today in St. Louis – STLtoday.com.

The cost to park at meters in the city of St. Louis goes up today, including a 33 percent jump downtown…

But no one knows why…

The exact reason for the parking increases has not been publicly stated. Parking meters are controlled by the office of City Treasurer Larry Williams, and he is not commenting.

Or how much money it will generate for the city…

How much revenue the increase in parking fees will create remains unknown. Green would not provide an estimate.

In fact, there’s a lot this guy doesnt seem to know..

He also would not say when the last increases occurred or how many parking meters there are in the city.

But I bet I know why we suddenly needed an increase, and where the money from the increase went…

Green did say his office hired a consultant, Performance Management Group, to review department operations.

I find all this ridiculous. Not because I don’t have $1 to pay the parking meter, but because I know from dealing with them in any capacity just how ineffective the St. Louis city government is. It’s full of people in jobs they’re not qualified for doing whatever they want with no oversight and a bad attitude, and only later do we ever learn the full extent of what “shocking” things were going on behind the scenes.

So whatever this scandal turns out to be: someone with their hand in the till to pay for gambling debts or coke addictions or mistresses or underage boys or giant shopping sprees or whatever the heck, I am willing to bet that this whole Office of Unanswered Questions the Treasurer will never stand up to any intense scrutiny/investigation.

Can’t wait to see what happens.

The Grand Conspiracy

A few months ago, some of the local St. Louisans I’ve met via Twitter told me about a project of theirs, known as The Grand Conspiracy*. Since they’re almost all artists and writers—and many are both—they wanted a collective place/way to share their work.

The Conspiracy was apparently originally conceived as a one-sheet of short fiction and artwork to be distributed in local bars and shops.  Since then the project has morphed into an electronic one, centered around a collectively updated blog, with a print version to eventually be taken from the best of its posts. The other Conspirators kindly invited me to play along, and I was really happy to accept. It’s much easier to write when you have an intended outlet in mind, and it’s easier to keep to a deadline if you know someone else is depending on you to do so.

Of course, people and their schedules being what they are, the blog has taken quite some time to get off the ground, but I am excited to announce that we’ve got our collective asses in gear, and will begin (hopefully daily) posting at The Grand Conspiracy today!

As luck would have it, Thursdays are my posting day, so there’s a new piece of mine “Make Your Selection” up now. I’d love for you to have a look and let me know what you think of the blog overall, and of course any critiques of my work are always welcome.

(I mean, I am not saying I won’t punch you in the face for daring to dislike my writing, but I certainly welcome the opportunity to punch you in the face.)

Anyway, have a look, add it to your feed reader, check it every day. If I know these people at all, there will be some stellar work there for your edification and delight.

*For those of you who are not St. Louis natives, this name refers to the the street, South Grand, where all our favorite bars are located. Not that this is a group which centers itself on drinking at all. *ahem*

Conspirabust

Headed out to Conspiracy last night – went for a full-on goth whore look, with an impressive display of boob and a thick coating of cosmetics applied around the appropriate facial areas. (Had a weird hair night, but that’s what headbands are for.) Got there, met up with hotpants and her BF and a few other people, was fixing to have myself a nice time. However, apparently someone didn’t remember to pay the light bill, clear it with their mom, invite the cool kids, oh yeah procure a liquor license, so the cops showed up around 1 a.m. and shut the whole thing down.

I have evidence in the form of a typically shitty cell phone pic that I snapped of the proprietress being hassled by the man. Since this event has been going on for what, four or five months now? you’d think these trifling little paperwork technicalities would have been straightened out, but apparently not so much.

You can't pin nothin' on me, coppa!

Anyway, it’s a shame. Not just because I wasted so much cleavage and lipstick, but also because it looked to be shaping up as one of their more successful events so far. They’d moved some of the vendors upstairs, opened the front entrance to the club and they really had a good crowd there. People seemed to be having fun upstairs, and it was the first time I’ve seen the dance floor up there really packed. In the fetish/play room I still think they need some kind of ringleader. You walk in and there’s just a room of gear and some random people tying each other up or looking like they’re getting ready do something. But with no explanation you don’t know who these people are, what they’re doing, or why. You don’t know if there’s going to be some kind of show, if audience participation is encouraged, or what. It’s not a skeevy vibe, it’s more of a confused/unorganized vibe. Just random chicks being tied up by random guys with no rhyme or reason for it. That does need some work. Also, they really need to enforce the “NO PHOTOS” signs they have in that room. The girl taking pictures of the “NO PHOTOS” sign being a case in point.

But on the plus side the bartenders seemed to have everything under control, with no huge lines or people ordering 27 drinks at a time, and that was a huge improvement over last time. Even at $15 instead of the previous $10 (for a girl who’s mostly going to be drinking water) this is not a bad bargain. This has the potential to be a really neat and successful event, it just seems as if they need a professional event planner to advise them*. I’ve heard rumors that there might be a change in venue – and I for one would love something closer to home with actual parking that doesn’t leave my car dropping gravel out of the undercarriage for the next two weeks.

Better luck next month, Conspiracy!

EDIT: Heard a rumor from a reliable source today that there was, in fact, no problem with the licensure of the venue, only something that was not posted that should have been. Apparently the building’s owners showed up with the correct documents after we were all gone. Interesting. There’re also rumors aswirl about who might have called in a tip about this issue and/or caused the booze cops to check into the place.

Apparently St. Louis’ Tired Old Goths aren’t too tired for a little intrigue.

*another case in point, their main website is not developed yet, so their URL currently resolves to their mySpace page. That’s fine, except the profile is set to “private.” Doh! For someone like me who wants more information or to see pictures of what the event looks like, but doesn’t use mySpace, this is nonsensical. You can’t encourage people to attend your event by preventing them getting information about it.

Need your voting powers, people!

My friends Dave and Amy are finalists in Apartment Therapy’s “Small Cool Contest 2009″.

They could win $10,000 just for having a really cool house! Please go vote for them – there’s a simple registration in order to be able to vote, but it’s painless, I swear! And check out the pictures of their house, which incorporates a giant log. Log = automatic WIN.

Who is good?

St. Louis couple has a place to call their own, at least for now.

J.B.Forbes P-D

BY Denise Hollinshed

ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

04/09/2009

ST. LOUIS  Julius and Hazel Watkins are expecting to be in their own place this weekend.

While it isn’t exactly their place, it beats moving among relatives’ homes. That’s what they have been doing in the month since fire heavily damaged their home.

The new quarters, in Hillsdale, have been offered free by Garry Session of Florissant, who read of the Watkinses’ plight last week in the Post-Dispatch. A construction firm has offered to repair their damaged home for free, and a fund set up to help the Watkinses now contains $2,000.

“It’s wonderful,” Julius Watkins, 84, said Wednesday. “I just think it is wonderful, and like I said, ‘God is good.’”

via 04/09/2009 – St. Louis couple has a place to call their own, at least for now – STLtoday.com.

Whatever. By your logic “God” burned your house down, too. So now he’s given you somewhere to stay and $2,000? What a guy.

No. Random chance burned your house down. Poverty or carelessness or both meant you had no insurance. PEOPLE are helping you. PEOPLE gave you a place to live. PEOPLE are repairing your home, and donating money to your little fund. Imaginary omniscient beings had nothing to do with it.

And even if there was a “god” who had something to do with burning down an 84 year-old woman’s house – he’d kind of be a cocksucker, wouldn’t he?

Burrough’s Invite Controversy (+ poss. artwork thievery?)

Burroughs Prom Invite Pushes Envelope.

So those wacky over-privileged kids at Burrough’s created this over-the-top invite to an after-prom party.

With a theme of either “Lust” or “Sin” (I really can’t tell – maybe the theme is just “debauchery” or “we have no sense”) it features “satanic” imagery (a pentagram) and invites all “sinners” to come enjoy the fun. There was a minor brouhaha over the invite, and I think any reasonable observer would say that it really was not appropriate for a high-school audience, no matter the school in question.(I do love the defenders who say it’s more OK for Burroughs’ kids to do this, since they’re so smart and special and elite and need to blow off steam, darnit.)

But what really caught my eye was this cover image, which I recognized immediately as belonging to Marta Dahlig. Marta is a prolific Polish digital artist who contributes digital painting training materials & tutorials to many of the art magazines I read. This image belongs to a series of “Seven Deadly Sins” that she completed a few years ago, and I actually own a print of her image Vanity.

Marta’s popularity has skyrocketed in the last few years, and so I doubt that these kids could have afforded to license her work for use on this invitation (of course, they’re Burroughs’ kids, so who knows?)

If they didn’t license the work then they’ve stolen it. Is art thievery all part of the “sinners” theme of their prom? Perhaps there could be a few lessons learned here  – one on using discretion in party-planning and in thinking things through before we go to print with them, and one on respect for copyright and other people’s artwork.

I’ve emailed a link to the PD story to Marta, and am interested to hear back from her whether the work is, in fact, licensed.

Weekend Wrapup – Gastronomical Delights Edition

You know, my weekend did actually improve after my whole misery-guts Friday experience. It was a struggle, and took some epic willpower on my part (plus a lot of patience on the part of my friends who are really sick of hearing my stories) but I managed to hoist my broken carcass out of the depths of resentful misery and into a better, more productive place. Yay me.

Friday was errand-running during the day, with a surprise appearance by MyTodd™. I bought a new jacket, which cheered me. Then Friday evening was drinking and being irritated. Saturday morning was getting over myself and then some errand-running. I had to run to the grocery store and pick up about 62lbs of meat and seafood for Sunday dinner. Later, Todd and I ended up going out to dinner at Franco in Soulard, which was delicious. I had the mixed greens to start, Todd had the onion soup. We both had the wood grilled bistro steak for our entree, with raito, green beans and pomme frites. I had peanut butter ice cream for dessert, he had an apple tart/vanilla ice cream combo. We loved everything. I especially enjoyed the green beans, since I spent most of my life hating them until once I had them prepared correctly, so now every time I can find good green beans I get all excited. The interior of the restaurant was very nice, low-key, calm and modern. The staff were extremely friendly, to the point of an almost obscenely cheerful obsequiousness. When Todd got up to use the restroom, our server rushed over and refolded his napkin into a fancy shape. That’s a little OTT for me, but it never crossed the line to truly disturbing/offensive. Continue reading »