I am the shadow of the waxwing slain

I’m all about the little things. They’re just too easy to do. And here’s one that I insist upon: I always ask what comes with my plate. I used to just ask for everything on the side. Let’s say my burger comes with onions. I’d just discard the onions. The problem with this is that it wastes some onion. I may not want them, but certainly someone else will. It might be a bit of a hassle, but I alway ask the waitress what comes on my plate, and tell her what not to bring me. As is, restaurants produce  a lot of organic waste. This is my way to help cut down on that.

This summer, I’m all about volunteering. Helping out in areas I should be already (Pride Week ’09), areas I always try to help out in (Democratic Candidates), and other random things I can do to help out the city of Fayetteville. A friend told me that it’s awesome that I care that much about Fayetteville to want to make it better, but to me it’s just the no-nonsense obvious choice. I really do love Fayetteville and want to give back to the town as much as I get.

The whole ‘darker side’ of Dickson comment really upset me, and a whole bunch of other people, too. One of them is Heather Kendrick-Gerlaugh, who, unlike me, did something about being mad, and organized the first annual Take Your Kids to Dickson. Last night, because of a tweet she made, I had the opportunity to help her out in the final planning stages, and I sure am glad that I did. I helped paint a few signs for the event, and it was worth it to see into the planning behind the event.

It’s just her, a few of her friends, and her mom doing it. It’s so inspiring to see it happen, too. I love Fayetteville to the extent that it pains me to be in any other town in Arkansas. Most of my volunteering has been orchestrated through twitter, and all of it through social media. People complain that social networking sites divorce us from the real world, but for me, they’ve been a tool that has helped me make lots of new contacts in town, and helped my drive to make Fayetteville a better place.

I’ve got an idea for something big, hopefully, and I’ve met with a few people about it so far. Here’s hoping it works out. And for all of you with kids, make sure to take them to Dickson Street at 3 pm today.

Last week, I blogged about how the City of Fayetteville is warming up to social media in at least some respects. Really I was just happy to see those Facebook and Twitter buttons up there in the corner of the site.

Well, I saw this banner in the union yesterday. I guess someone doesn’t understand the idea behind hyperlinking.

I don't think you can click these buttons.

MGMT. June 9th. The Village. I drove down to Little Rock for this one.

I’ll keep it short and sweet:

• Their sound live is too guitar-driven. Not enough of their trademark synth breaks.
• The Village is the worst venue I’ve ever been too. Hot, horribly managed, dirty, awful light show. Rude staff. Show started two hours late.
• MGMT acted like they were better than their audience. They gave themselves an encore featuring one semi-popular and one new song. They ignored their single, “Kids,” which the crowd was chanting for, in unison. Advice: when you’ve got one album with two singles and fans cheering for one of them, you should play it. 

I can’t wait to get out of Little Rock and back to Fayetteville. I’d leave tomorrow morning were I not seeing friends all day, though that is a good enough reason to stay.

So its no big secret that I’m starting a new radio show over at KXUA. My pitch for the show was something like “interview people on campus and off. Get all sorts of people in on it—students, business owners, etc…. Just showcase Fayetteville.”

That’s a pretty big plan, though. Not to say that I’m daunted. Excited, really. But it’s still a lot a lot of work to go through. I’m sitting on about two hours worth of interviews with the Mayor, Alderman Petty, and Alderwoman Lewis. I’m not quite sure how to edit it together, though. I’ve come up with a rough plan for how it should be organized.

I’m assuming that I’ll get a standard 2-hour KXUA slot. I want to try to fill this with two hour-long shows. They’ll be hard to produce but if I can get 5 or 6 done this summer then I can rotate those out as I make new ones periodically during the semester.

3 sections per episode:

What I’m debating is the order that these things should take. 20 minutes of Section 1, then Sections 2 and 3, then back to Section 1? 15, 10, 10, 10, 15? 40, 10, 10?

Photo by Jon Schleuss

Header on accessfayetteville.org

I was looking at a map of the city parks system tonight when I noticed something praiseworthy about http://accessfayetteville.org. In the upper right-hand corner of the header is a link to the city’s respective pages on Twitter and Facebook.

If you read this post, I detail a bit of the controversy about the city of Fayetteville adopting social media as a technique for information distribution. It’s nice to see those links there, even if the matter is a bit undecided as of yet. If I were planning on visiting Fayetteville, I would definitely check out those links to see what was up in the area.

Supermarkets in Italy are very different from supermarkets in America. My supermercato in Italy would fit inside of one of the main aisles of Walmart. I would go every day, and buy, at most, 5 things. It was located down three flights of steps and across the street from where I lived. And at the end of every transaction, the son of the elderly couple who ran it would ask me the same question: “borsa?” And every day, my response was the same: “no.”

“Borsa” is Italian for “bag,” and the reason why they ask you is because the bags aren’t free. Usually they cost €0.05. They were almost always unnecessary because my carton of blood orange juice, bottle of chianti, box of penne, jar of sauce, and can of Fanta (my splurge—European Fanta is to die for) would always fit in my messenger bag, and, even if I didn’t have it on me, would balance in my arms for the one minute walk back upstairs.

Beginning January 1st of this year, Seattle enacted a bag fee of 20¢ per bag. They also banned styrofoam take-out products. Los Angeles is banning all plastic bags in 2010, and charging 25¢ for paper ones. These approaches are slightly different from in Italy—there the bags are a luxury, here they’re a taxed commodity—but they both have the same net goal of reducing the amount of bags that get used and wasted. I’d argue that, in Seattle’s case, it’s even more beneficial, as it is a tax and not a store charge—the stores gain nothing by selling the bags, so they’re inclined to convince you to not use bags, you don’t want to use the bags, because they’re a financial waste, and, when you do use the bags, the money goes to the city, who hopefully will use it for enhancing their recycling programs.

Such a program could be enacted in Fayetteville, though I’m sure it would cause ire. I would support it. Hopefully the city council would, too. Seattle and Los Angeles are much bigger cities than Fayetteville, and they’ve enacted these regulations without fear of being voted out. I hope that Fayetteville can, too.

Last night, after the preview of MacHomer, a friend and I walked to Kosmos for a late dinner. Operating on the promise I received earlier in the day on free lunch today, I used the last of the money in my wallet to make my stomach very happy—I purchased a Kosmos gyro, with fries and a drink. Those Kosmos fries, man. They deserve all the acclaim they get.