If you're reading this, I need to borrow some money

Gizmodo: The Tim Burton Batmobile is for sale

Quiz time!

Why is the LOVE Park fountain green?

1. To commemorate Earth Day by showing Philadelphians how much we pollute
   
2. Its green for "Go", as in "Go For It!", the marketing slogan for the 2008 Phillies. It narrowly beat out two of my submissions to the Fightin's, which were: "Fucking Go For It" and "Hurray Phillies!"
3. To symbolize the blood of innocent Iraqis on our hands
4. Cute ploy for our attention by the Eagles, who are cranky because the Sixers, Flyers and Phillies are all winning and thus no one is paying attention to the draft this year.
5. Ecto Cooler is making a comeback
   

Correct answer: fuck this quiz, I just got thirsty for Hi-C

Blogger, schmogger

Random thought: WordPress kicks the shit out of Blogger AND Joomla.

I've been using both for years, and I finally gave WordPress a go just to see what I was missing out on. Answer: a lot. I'll let fly what I'm working on in a few days, but I am now seriously considering moving this blog to sunnier locales because of this software.

The Overthrow of Everything

I'm currently engrossed in a book written by Howard Dean's 2004 campaign manager, Joe Trippi. I remembered Dean as being the first candidate for any office that I was really excited about, and it's one of the things that led me to follow politics as closely as I used to follow insignificant shit like the NFL off-season. The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Democracy, the Internet, and the Overthrow of Everything is a chronicle of Trippi's career, technology in politics, and everything that went right and wrong on the failed Dean for America campaign. Someone recommended this book to me in a message board thread for Barack Obama volunteers, and the words they used to do that keep echoing in my head as I work through it each day on the train: Howard Dean's campaign pioneered the use of the internet to organize and fundraise for a presidential campaign, but we are witnessing the perfection of those methods in Obama's run.

Indeed, the parallels between the campaigns are incredible. I feel like I'm experiencing a second edition of Trippi's book being written in realtime by Senator Obama. In the book, for example, Trippi discusses the use of the website Meetup.com that allowed supporters of Governor Dean to organize rallies for the candidate by themselves, and how those in attendance at those rallies grew exponentially throughout spring and summer 2003. As I'm reading this, I keep refreshing the Facebook event I launched to notify WCU students about the episode of MSNBC's Hardball being aired live here with Senator Obama next week - and that number is growing just as quickly in front of my own eyes now. Although it's not a truly supporter-organized event open to the public, 500 people had jumped on this shit in the first 24 hours after it was posted. People continue to subscribe for updates even though it's open to current WCU students only.

It's long been my firm belief that the Internet will change the way our democracy works, but witnessing little stuff like this firsthand makes Joe Trippi some kind of Internet prophet to me. His articulation of these ideas are now four years old and are just starting to manifest themselves in the public sphere. The same concepts that propelled Dean to front-runner status in 2004 now allow me to help recruit hundreds of new volunteers and raise thousands of dollars for my candidate in 2008 as effortlessly as if I were just updating my list of favorite music on Facebook.

My recommendation: read Trippi's book, and set your TiVo to record Hardball live at West Chester University on Wednesday, April 2nd to see just one of the tangible results of his Open-Source Politics concept that will change the way government works for us.

Dumbest tip ever + music post

I brought 2 dead fourth-generation iPods back to life this week using this method, and taught another person to do the same with theirs. I feel like a genius for getting them to work, and at the same time I feel like quite the dope for letting these things sit on a shelf for months without trying anything. Three iPods that were as good as trash yesterday are now working just fine.

APPARENTLY, if you have an iPod with a clicking hard drive that gives you the sad face icon, the best course of action is to slam the shit out of it on a flat surface until it either breaks completely or it magically starts working again. If you kill it the rest of the way - oh well, it was garbage anyway, right? BUT, if you are successful, it will actually un-stick some of the moving parts in the hard disk and get it to stop clicking. No update yet on how effective this is in the long-term, but my plans are to repeat the fix as many times as necessary until I either kill it for good or help it achieve immorality.

A few other items that can be filed under the "music" category: my station, Y-Rock on XPN, is having their annual Modern Rock Madness (March Madness rip-off) this week. This one they've been doing since they were Y-100, and I remember it fondly - the only difference now is that bands like Weezer and Nirvana are killing other bands like Bloc Party and Rilo Kiley instead of Linkin Park and Creed. It's a lot of fun, and if you correctly fill in the blanks on one of our brackets, you have a chance to win a Wii. Wiis are fun - Wiis are part of the reason I only post in this blog once a month now. So you should listen and play along, I think. You can also vote, which makes it interactive. Round 2 matchups later today include: Nine Inch Nails vs. David Bowie, Flaming Lips vs. Smashing Pumpkins, Joy Division vs. RHCP, and Muse vs. Beck.

Also, I've resolved to burn some vacation time to visit one of these giant music festivals next year. It makes sense, when you think about it - I loved going to CMJ and MacRock while I was a member in good standing of WCUR. They're a great way to soak in a shitload of music in just a few short days, and some of my favorite all-time performances were seen while bumming around with my good college radio buddies.

However, I've decided that I want to up the ante next year, and go see one of these HUGE festivals - the kind that all the blogs go crazy over for a week. Lauren was surprised by this, as it seems that I've never expressed a genuine desire to travel before. But yeah - next year, I'd like to fly to Austin for SXSW, or maybe Austin City Limits. Perhaps we'll go to Coachella? We might go alone, or we might get a group together. Who knows? Anyway, if you've been to one of these big festivals, let me know. Do you have a preference between those three, or is there another big one that I should go to that I'm missing? Consider this post a solicitation of your sage advice here. I want to leave this area for a week to explore another city and see dozens of bands all at once.

Regional rail (and baseball!) to come to West Chester?

Came across this little item, buried in the middle of the latest entry on SEPTA Watch:

The suburbs turning to transit oriented development?
In a sign that suburban communities are getting more serious about transit oriented development, there have been several recent reports about communities looking to improve their regional rail stations.
...
Meanwhile, West Chester University, which last saw trains come to town in 1986, is begging SEPTA to restore service back to its town.

What? That would be awesome! I've spent many hours staring out the R5 window, concentrating my envy on little villages like Malvern that seem to be constructed around their train stations. I would kill to be able to walk or bicycle to a stop in West Chester, and it seems like there are plenty other people like me. Check out the petition going around WCU (via the Quad):

A petition has been started in hopes of convincing SEPTA to restore rail service to the West Chester area, a means of transportation that could change student commutes to campus and into Philadelphia.

Service was discontinued in 1986, a tough period for SEPTA economically, when rail maintenance was impossible to upkeep. However, over 20 years later, John Mckinstry, a faculty member of the Westtown Friends School, has begun a project to urge SEPTA to restore their rail service as times have changed since the 80s.
...
SEPTA is aware of the petition and the desire for rail service to be restored to West Chester and the surrounding area, but they are not the decision-maker in the situation. It is the county that needs to have the interest and therefore make a deal with Septa as the agent, according to Mckinstry.

Okay, fair enough. If we want the R3 to come back to West Chester, we've got to do it as a community. Personally, I'm down for however many borough council and town meetings that are needed to get this project off the ground. But wait, what's this other pressing tidbit of local gossip?

Mayor Richard Yoder of West Chester has interest in the petition, even as a part of making West Chester the home of a new minor league baseball team, and rail service would help in allowing fans to come to the games.

Zuh? Minor league baseball? Like, as in a Phillies affiliate playing down the street from me? Holy crap, I seldom agree with anything Mr. Yoder has done as mayor of this town, but if this is true, then allow me to be the first to jump on board this bandwagon. Hopefully, this is more than just a throwaway comment by Yoder to that Quad reporter, because it's the only place on the Internet that I can find mention of such a venture.

R3 stations and minor league baseball stadiums - if you build it, they will come!

Sign the petition!

Teddy Bear with Brass Balls

Unless you live in another area or you're living under a rock, you've probably heard quite a bit about the guy that shot and killed Philadelphia police officer Chuck Cassidy during a botched armed robbery last Tuesday. His name, they found out last week, is John Lewis, and they found him in a homeless shelter in Miami this morning.

I wouldn't have written anything about this, save for the revelation that Lewis was in the city as recently as Friday. With the largest police manhunt in Philadelphia history looking for him. Where was he before he hopped a bus for sunny Florida? Oh, hanging out in the Criminal Justice Center.

Wait, what? The Criminal Justice Center located two blocks away from LOVE Park? The same LOVE Park where Matt and I spent our lunch hour watching every politician in the city rain fire and brimstone down on this guy, imploring him to surrender himself to police. In what was supposed to have been an election rally, they instead spoke for roughly an hour about the shooting, the manhunt, and the level of violence in the city of Philadelphia. Meanwhile, every cop is combing the area, taking the wrong people into custody, harassing potential suspects three or four times a day, all while Lewis was hanging out picking his nose in the Criminal Justice Center down the street. Every description I've read about this guy in the newspaper and online has been that he's a big teddy bear - which means that either he has split personalities and one of them is this hard-ass killer that few people have met before last week, or else he's some super law-abiding citizen that shows up for his court dates even when everyone in the courthouse is out to arrest him.

Of course, that's not as ironic as this part: the commissioner of the Miami-Dade police department is former Philly commish and crime crusher John Timoney. His mug is on Philly.com now as his department looks quite good compared to that of current Philly P.D. Commissioner Sylvester Johnson's. Philadelphia cops didn't even know Lewis was on the bus to Miami until he was already halfway down the Eastern seaboard - and yet, Timoney's boys had the cuffs on Lewis within 48 hours of his arrival (yes, they were tipped by an employee at the shelter, but still.) A lot of people would like to see Timoney take his old job back here when Nutter takes office, and I can see that happening unless John is too attached to that warm weather to come back up north in January. Whatever the case, it's probably not good that a "teddy bear" like John Lewis was able to elude the largest manhunt ever administered by the Philadelphia Police Department last week, and one hopes that some sweeping changes will take place if they have a prayer of dealing with the crime problem around here in the near future.