"All aboard the FAIL bus!" with Henry Sloma, Kim Minkel, James Eagan and Eunice Lewin, to name a few...
Rather than raise the $1.75 fare, so that people who need transport to work can get to their jobs, the commssioners at the NFTA decided to make painful cuts to the local transit service, as The Buffalo News lays out.
Paladino speaks the the Central Library 12/20/2011
Tommunisms stepped into the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library Central location today, and entered “The Ring of Knowledge” to hear Carl Paladino speak there Tuesday afternoon as part of the “Imagining Buffalo Series: Why Preservation Matters” speaker series.
Yep, everybody's doing it. We're gonna jump off a bridge next!
North Korean state media reports that “Dear Leader” Kim Jong Il has passed. Reports are that he died of a massive heart attack, but I think we all know he died of a lonely, broken heart. Yes, like everybody else on the Internet (vague collective racism is fun when it’s about a bad guy, right?), time to snatch the low hanging fruit of this song:
It is widely speculated that one of his sons, Kim Jong-un, will succeed him as leader. Only in the last few years has his profile increased, but you may best recognize him as the fat kid from Pixar’s “Up”.
Kim Jong Up
What The Friday?!
This Friday marks the return of a Tommunisms feature called “WTF?! Newsbites”, which will now come out Fridays. So I guess it now means “What the Friday?!”. Stupid stuff from around the interwebs. Past articles can be found here.
NOT a Lebowski Achiever...
Time Magazine, struggling for relevance in the digital era, names their “Person of the Year” yesterday as “The Protester”. Unable (or unwilling) to make up their minds about over which singular person would get the honors, they went the route they have gone before (jumping the shark isn’t new to them) and went with the generic protester.
Citing the uprisings in the Middle East over tyranny, to the economic distress across Europe that has caused many a riot, and now the mixed bag of hippies, college students with student loans, bums and those who might actually be upset about the economic disparity that is happening in the U.S., it seems that if you’re a protester, then you made the list.
So… does that mean the protesters from Westboro Baptist Church who show up at people’s funerals with “God Hates Fags” and other horrible signs are also the “Persons of the Year?” What about those who protest them? Are they also “Person of the Year”, even if they are opposed to each other? Were the librarians who were picketing outside the downtown Buffalo Library earlier this year also “Person of the Year”? I guess anybody who doesn’t want to lose their job would also qualify (myself included). And speaking of “myself”…
Time Magazine’s choice this year is almost as bad as when they selected “You” in 2006 and made a cover with a shiny relective surface so you could see yourself in their makeshift mirror. At least “The Big Lebowski” got it right:
Anyways, back to me. I hearby protest Time Magazine’s selection of “Person of the Year”. And since I have protested it, I therefore become “Person of the Year”. I hereby lay claim to whatever credibility such an honor bestows on the recipient. I figure it’s somewhere in the vincinity of “jack” and “squat”.
Besides, next year should be the year of the protester. If the Euro collapses, watch society over there spiral into chaos. Our fragile economy won’t be insulated either, and calls for “greater sacrifice” on the little people’s part might actually awake the true sleeping giant of the States, the American citizenry. That will make the current “Occupy” movement look like a sleepover. But don’t worry, by that point, you can be labled a terrorist in your very country and be held under “indefinite detention” while local police forces are given surplus military drones to spy on us, or shoot bean bags at us.
But in the meantime, I’ll bask in my laurels… Excelsior!
"Somebody's gotta go back and git a shitload of dimes...."
Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown announced today an addendum to his plan to bring traffic back to downtown Main Street today. Citing the recent grant money received in the amount of $15 million dollars, he said today that not only will motor vehicle traffic be restored to the 500 block of Main Street (previously only accessible to Metro Fail Rail)but on-street parking will also be added. However, parking will be $3.00 per 15 minutes along that block, in an effort to replace some $200,000 or so in monies lost due to “circumstances beyond our control”.
To ensure this revenue stream won’t “disappear”, new state-of-the-art parking meters will be installed along Main Street. However, the cost of these new tamper and theft proof meters will result in 10.7 million of the 15 million in grant dollars to be used for this purpose. Further, the mayor added:
“These new meters will only accept dollar coins, and only the ones with the presidents on them, none of that Sacagawea bullshit…”
The mayor expects this move to bring jobs to the region, as stores catering in selling coin purses like the kind Granpa would pull out a half-dollar from on your birthday will proliferate the downtown area…
