Rottenchester

Back in the old days, fake titties were a rarity. They were generally confined to the extremely rich, the hopelessly vain, or residents of California. (I realize that most Californicators are rich and/or vain, but I include them in the list because they're the root of all stupid trends and deserve a tweak.)

Unfortunately, in the past few years, plastic boobs have become a middle-class status symbol. This means two things: First, they're getting to Rochester ten years after they arrived everywhere else. Second, like the hood ornament on an Escalade, "the bigger the better."

Now, your pal Rottenchester doesn't get out that much, and I hang with an over-30-with-kids crowd, so I'm probably late to this party. But I saw my first obvious set of fake titties on a friend the other day and, ladies, let me tell you, it was a true waste of $10K. They were wrong in so many ways:

Let's start with proportion. If you're barely an A cup before the operation, getting to a C is going to be a stretch, literally. Realize this: until your body accommodates these large foreign bodies which have been shoved deep into your chest, you will look like you're wearing two inverted soup bowls topped with maraschino cherries. In other words, you will look almost comical if you wear anything but a loose sweater. Even after you skin stretches to accommodate those implants, you'll probably have lines, ripples and boobs up to your
collarbones.

A byproduct of stretching is that your nipples are being pushed up, hard. You're going to be popping out all over. I'll definitely enjoy it, but you don't want a pervert like me staring at your erect nipples, do you?

Perhaps appearance doesn't bother you - maybe you want to have obviously fake hooters. Lets move on to the skill of your surgeon and the money you have to spend on this project. That $10K you spent on the surgery was probably your tittie budget for life. In fact, you probably financed the operation. What happens if you're not happy with the result? There's no money-back guarantee in plastic surgery. You could be in for more operations at $5 or $10 K a pop.

A side note - I'm using $10K as the price for your boob job, and you might think that's high. You might point to some local general surgeon or shaman who will do it for much less in his grimy office. Believe me, this is one area in life where you get what you pay for - have it done in a hospital by a board-certified plastic surgeon who does a lot of boob jobs.

Finally, one question: Why are you indulging your husband this way? And don't tell me it is "for you". You're not enduring a painful operation and adding extra weight to your chest because it feels good. You're doing it for men. That makes you a sap, and therefore less attractive to discerning men. Of course, most men are pigs and like fake tits, but why cater to them. Just like the beer is never cold enough for them, the tits are never big enough. Your body will never meet their expectations, so why try? (At least make him lipo his fat gut first.)

Look, I'm a man, I like tits, and I'm all for doing what makes a relationship work. But, really, you're the mother of children. You want to go through general anesthetic (risking death) and implantation of a foreign object (risking disfigurement, infection and death), all for fake titties? Just blow the guy a few more times a month and he'll forget all about your boobs. Better that than motherless children.

People bitch and moan about how Rochester is "unhip" and "behind the times". I'd like to think that people in our fair city don't feel a slavish need to follow every silly trend. Please, ladies, help make Rochester a better place, and keep those titties real.

Though I do agree that there's far too little hairy clam in the D&C, I think a lot of the criticism it receives is unfair. The D&C is a run-of-the-mill mid-market daily paper. In my view, they are doing well by just reprinting national, international, sports and business wire reports.

I don't even expect really thorough local coverage of minor issues. Let's face it: most of what happens in Rochester is pretty dull stuff, and spending more time and effort to cover it would be akin to gilding a turd.

No, my beef with the D&C is that they consistently fumble the big local and regional stories.

Let's start with the ferry. I know we're all sick of it, but if the D&C had been on the job, perhaps we wouldn't have been so surprised when it collapsed.

In the past few months, the D&C has been full of "newly discovered" facts about the complete rimjob that the city, county and state gave CATS. After this mother of all sweetheart deals blew up, and after auditors and politicians weighed in on the fuckup, the D&C was finally able to report a couple of choice facts about the financing and terminal deals.

Hey, Karen Magnuson (D&C Editor), where were you when these deals went down? Oh, that's right, you were on your knees blowing Bill Johnson and his political cronies.

Look, Karen, it is one thing to blow politicians on the editorial page - that's your right and you're welcome to it. But your bj shouldn't slobber over to the news pages the way it did during the run-up to the ferry. Why is everything being discovered now - two years after it happened? Because your reporters didn't do any digging! They didn't ask any tough questions, they didn't look through the filings, and they didn't talk to fast ferry operators around the world to judge if what they were being told by the politicians and CATS made sense.

Kodak coverage is the second place where the D&C shits the bed. You'd think that Kodak's hometown paper would have a little insight into the big yellow box. Perhaps, over the years, the reporters on the business beat would have cultivated a few sources who would give them a heads-up on how Kodak works. You might expect the D&C's coverage of Kodak to be just a tiny bit better than Times or the Wall Street Journal.

But you'd be wrong. I had to laugh at the coverage of Dan Carp's retirement. It might as well have been a reprint of the Kodak press release. Oh, what's that? The stock price went up a couple of bucks with the announcement? Total surprise! The D&C has no idea why that happened: Dan Carp was great, just ask all of the local stock "experts" that they interviewed.

I'm not passing judgment on Carp: maybe he was great and the stock market was wrong. My point was that there was that the story covering his retirement was superficial and no better (actually worse) than the coverage in the national dailies (WSJ and NYT).

Carp's retirement is one small example. The whole coverage of Kodak's "digital turnaround" just skims the surface. The last story I saw on this topic, which heralded the news that Kodak is #1 in digital, was again no better than a press release. Does this mean that the digital turnaround is happening? Or is Kodak losing money on digital and doing anything to gain market share? Who knows? Not the D&C. They didn't bother to do a little analysis, they just cranked out a few easy paragraphs and moved on.

Hey, Karen and the rest of you slackers at the D&C: I'm not asking you to do something hard or expensive. Pick a couple of major stories that only you can report well, and dig a little bit. Put a couple of bulldogs on the fast ferry and double-check the bullshit that the politicians are feeding you. Cultivate some inside sources at Kodak who can give you the straight skinny about the place.

Even the stinky hippies over at City are writing circles around you. Don't you have any pride left?

Sunday is the Lord's day and I kept it holy by having a hippie suck me off (thanks for the tip, Park Ave), drinking beer, and staying away from the devil that is Craigslist. Amen.

But now it is Monday morning, and today's rave is gonna have to be quick, because someone else is waiting for my stall, and the guy two crappers over must have eaten at Don Pablo's last night.

My topic is movie reviews. I love the movies, and I love reading about movies, thinking about movies, and talking about movies.

That's why I'm no fan of Jack Garner. His reviews are soothing and bland. Now there's nothing wrong with bland reviews, if that's your thing. Like bland food, which is good for folks with geriatric colons (for example, my friend a couple of stalls over), bland reviews are good for folks who want to go to a movie to enjoy the popcorn. If you have a geriatric mind, Jack's your man, but if you love movies, he's a buzz-kill.

The dirty hippies over at City are no better. Some of their reviews are longer than the scripts of the "films" (not movies, "films") themselves. And all of their reviews smack of self-importance and navel-gazing. A word to George Grella: if you were really as smart and literate as you think you are, perhaps you'd be writing the movie rather than writing about it.

The good news is that there's an alternative, and it is Rochester-based. Planet Sick-Boy is a site run by a local guy, Jon Popick, who writes great reviews. If you don't like to read, you can listen to him on WBER Friday mornings at 8:15.

Popick used to write for City, but apparently he was too good for them and his reviews aren't published there anymore. My guess is that Grella was intimidated and got Popick fired.

Unlike the pablum published under the Jack Garner™ brand, Popick's reviews are willing to call crap by its real name.

Lest this sound like a plug from a shill, I've got nothing to do with Popick. For all I know, he's a stinky hippie. I just wanted to send out a rave to a Rochester original who does it out of love.

The good news is that there are plenty of places in Rochester to get great beer. Here are some of my favorites:

MacGregor's is a paradise made of beer. German beer, Belgian Beer, American Beer, Irish Beer, English Beer: it is all there for the taking. The taps are clean, and the bartenders know the right way to serve each type of beer, so you get your Dunkel in a tall glass with a lemon, and they use a knife to cut the head off of your Belgian wheat beer. The food is greasy bar food, but it comes to your table hot and fresh. Oh, MacGregor's, you are a sweet little slice of heaven.

Beers of the World is the round-the-world of beer: no mere beer bj here. Sweet Jesus, there is a lot of beer in this place. There are also brewing supplies and beer paraphernalia crowding the shelves. This is a destination worthy of a pilgrimage from far-off lands, yet those of us who live in Rochester can get there in 20 minutes or less. Truly, we are blessed by its presence.

Rohrbachs in Gates makes some wonderful beer, and the restaurant serves good German food. They also supply Frontier Field, and if there is a more pleasant way to spend a sunny afternoon than watching a Red Wings game while drinking Rohrbach's beer, I have yet to find it.

Custom Brewcrafters in Honeyoye Falls is a hidden treasure: a little hole-in-the wall tasting room where you can sample their brews before filling your growler. CBC also supplies a number of area bars with custom beers on tap, and they're a welcome alternative to the
major labels.

There's also The Old Toad, Bru, and probably a bunch of others that I've forgotten. This town is swimming in good beer for you to toast your hero or drown your sorrows.

I think the media has tired of this story: the Jackson trial occupies their entire quota of attention paid to child molestation. But, while the media looks the other way, there are more developments. Here's one you might not have heard about:

Fr. Marcial Maciel Degollado is the founder of the Legionaires of Christ, a conservative order based in Mexico. In the '90s, eight former students of Fr. Maciel lodged a formal complaint with the Vatican, alleging that he had sexually abused them when they were between 10 and 16 years old. The group of former students lodged their complaint after hearing Pope John Paul II praise Maciel as "an efficacious guide to youth".

Little was heard from the Vatican about the charges until late last year, when Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict) "reopened" the investigation. Under Canon Law, reopening an investigation requires that all facts of the investigation be kept under seal.

The speculation at the time was that Ratzinger was trying to make sure that no embarrassing facts about Maciel came to light while a new pope was being chosen. On Monday, the Mexican press reported that the investigation is, in essence, over.

According to one of Maciel's accusers, an ex-cleric who now teaches in a college in NY, the monsignor investigating the claim believed the charges brought against Maciel were true and that the accusers deserved an apology from the church.

Of course the charges are true: most of them are. This is yet another whitewash in a long series of coverups.

The Maciel case occurred in Mexico, so who knows what effect it will have on the church in that country. My guess is precious little. In this country, a number of Catholic Dioceses are on the verge of bankruptcy from pending and successful lawsuits, and I'll bet that most of them will be in the near future.

So here, at long-last, is the Rochester-related component of my rant: Why on earth would anyone want to give a penny to your local Catholic church or the Diocese of Rochester?

Do you really want to lend financial support an institution that hides (and in some cases was proven to foster) evil. From the pope on down, the church has made it clear that he has little interest in a full accounting of the abuse that occurred in the past. Last year, Benedict (then Ratzinger) said that the abuse scandal was a "planned campaign" by the news media to "discredit" the church. Someone laboring under this delusion is not going to step far out of his way to do the hard and embarrassing work needed to right the shameful wrongs of the past.

So, Rochester Catholics, send your money someplace else. There are many worthy charities who don't have a long history of hiding pederasts in their midst. The only way to get Benedict's attention is through the church's pocketbook, and this thick-headed old man is going need a big wakeup call before he'll make any changes.

Dibella's makes good subs. The rolls are fresh, the ingredients are good, the portions are big, and the service is outstanding. What's not to like about this place?

Abbott's custard is uncommonly good. Here's a Rochester original that is worth bragging about.

Great Northern Pizza Kitchen doesn't have as many locations as Dibella's or Abbott's, but their pizza is a far cry from your average pie. And it ain't bland.

Tom Wahl's is a good place to get a burger when you're craving one, and you can get red-hots and white-hots there, too. They'll also serve you Wahl's root beer in a frosty mug - tasty.

The Dinosaur isn't technically a Rochester original but they put out some great BBQ at a cool location.

So, there you are: five places in Rochester where you can get food that you won't find on every street corner in America, and none of them have anything to do with those gut-churning placas de la basura.

Mandatory Fatass Disclaimer®: Eating a lot of this food will guarantee a fat ass, but in moderation it is all good stuff.

Let's start with traffic: I've lived in the "big city" and had a one-hour car commute each way. That's two hours out of every day spent crawling down an expressway jammed with thousands of anxious, pissed-off people. The cliche is right: in Rochester, everything is 20 minutes away, and the traffic runs smoothly most of the time. Spending 25 low-stress minutes per day driving to and from work, rather than 120 white-knuckle soul-sapping minutes in the big city, is reason enough to love Rochester. I don't have to change my schedule to accomodate the traffic, dwell on alternate routes or listen to traffic reports.

Unlike some big cities, Rochester's people and government go out of their way to make the city and surrounding towns look nice. During the spring and summer, there are tons of flower plantings maintained by the city and towns, and most people have planted a few flowers in their yard or maintain some flowering trees or shrubs. The net result is that there's something beautiful on every block, which just adds a little bit to my day.

Finally, the people in Rochester are generally courteous and friendly. In stores, there's usually a smile on the clerk's face as well as a friendly word. Service in restaurants is pleasant. People will return your greeting on the street. Most people in Rochester aren't so hung up on themselves that they've forgotten basic human courtesy.

So, on this Memorial Day weekend, go out and enjoy this town. Smell the flowers, smile and nod when someone passes you on the street, and appreciate the time you're not spending sitting in a car in traffic.

The coolest thing that you'll see today is a totally-Rochester video, created by a Rochester guy named Kinsman. It is a video of time-lapse photography, backed by music by a local band called the Atomic Swindlers.

I've got nothing to do with these folks. In fact, Kinsman will probably be pissed if all of you slacking Craigslisters use up his bandwith watching this movie. But this is what I love about Rochester - there are some really interesting and accomplished people living here doing things you would never imagine. And, as you can plainly see by visiting the Swindlers' site, some of them are blonde and female.

Boy, was I wrong.

The recent warm, dry spell we've been having has turned my neighbors' lawns brown and crispy. Yes, the poison that they've been spraying, including the extra load of fertilizer that it contains, has overstimulated their lawns.

That smack was good for a while, but now it is time for those lawns to curl up in a ball and moan for the pusherman. And the lawn services just make it worse by cutting lawns way too short. Short grass just doesn't have any reserve to recover from dry weather.

My lawn doesn't look like a fairway, but it is still green. That's because we fertilize it sparingly and cut it high.

So, burb-dwellers, take a lesson home from this hot summer. Chemlawn is the suburban equivalent of a crack dealer for your yard.

• Hardly anybody rides a bike in the 'burbs during commute hours. So, like any foreign substance, the host organism is going to want to expel you. Keep your head on a swivel and ride defensively.
• Turn the Ipod off - next to your eyes, your ears are your most important asset in avoiding the soccer mom who wants to embed her Escalade's grill logo into your forehead.
• Bury your ego and get a bike that affords some visibility and stability. Road bikes keep your head down too far and the wheels are too thin. Visibility from a mountain bike isn't much better. Get a multitrack with old-fashioned handlebars. Yes, you'll look like an old man or woman, but you will be able to see what's around you, like the testosterone-laden teenager squealing around the corner and into your backside.
• Get a mirror and use it. Otherwise, while you turn your head to see what's behind you, Grandma's Buick Century will cross into your lane and squash you flatter than the pantsload marinating in her Depends.
• Helmet technology is getting better every year. Throw away your helmet if it is more than five years old and get a new one. It will fit better and protect your precious cabeza from impact with the school bus whose driver is distractedly telling little Johnny to shut his piehole.
• Come up with a route that avoids major highways and uses trails and sidewalks as much as possible. You won't go as fast, but trails and sidewalks are rarely used in the daytime.

So, if RS were simply a plan to demolish Midtown, create storefronts, build a bus station and theater, I'd be happy, because I think all of those things can stand on their own downtown. Even though Midtown is a ghost town, some small businesses are making it there today, so we know there's a demand for what they offer. Mass transit is good for everyone, and a nice theater is also a general benefit.

Unfortunately, much of what I hear about this project is crazy talk. For example, the D&C's Friday coverage mentioned that the urban renewal panel suggested a need to attract businesses like Best Buy and Trader Joes.

Best Buy is going to locate in an urban area only if there is a huge amount of traffic in a prized location. RS might be that place in 10 or 20 years, if everything goes perfectly. Even then, this town will still have tons of big-box electronic stores in the easily accessible suburbs. Why would BB build an expensive store downtown on a wish and a prayer, when they know this store would compete with cheaper, more accessible suburban locations? Ditto for Trader Joes - an upscale grocery chain. If Wegmans can't (or won't) make it in the city, Trader Joes certainly can't. In fact, Trader Joes probably doesn't have any Rochester locations because they can't compete with Wegmans, in the city or the 'burbs.

The only businesses that will be economically viable in this area for the near- and mid-term are the small businesses that exist there today, along with a few more restaurants and shops that cater to theater-goers or bus riders. Anybody thinking otherwise is a fool spending other people's money: in other words, a politician.

Unfortunately, the fiscally retarded politicians involved in this project want a big splash. A small, rational development project with a long-term plan for sustainable growth just isn't sexy enough for them. Only a big-money project with the cash to grease a lot of palms will do. This is the reason that we got the largest fast ferry in the world - a regular-size ferry, like the one that has been operating successfully in Michigan for the past couple of years, just wouldn't have created the same number of photo ops and headlines.

The trick for the unholy alliance of Brooks, Pataki, Clinton and Johnson is to conjure up a project that won't fail until after they're out of office. And when it does fail, it should fail gradually and quietly. In other words, they don't want another ferry. Instead, they want another High Falls.

High Falls was developed with a massive injection of government money. The opportunistic owners of the Empire and Jillian's took the low-interest, low-risk loans offered at the time and built huge edifices which have since gone bankrupt. For them, it was a no-brainer: they got an essentially risk-free loan and access to the cash flow of the restaurants they built. The politicians also got their "big splash" -- at the time, Jillian's and the Empire were one-of-a-kind venues worthy of press coverage.

Today, we have Bru and a big empty white elephant that used to be Jillian's. The High Falls/Frontier Field area is a nice place, but a more modest development project would have achieved the same goal. Millions of dollars went down a rathole on that one. I'm betting the same will be true of Renaissance Square. The benefit derived will be completely out of proportion to the cost, and much of the money will end up lining the pockets of business people who are doing just fine without a government handout.

For my money, Forster's best movies are "Jackie Brown" & "Diamond Men".

"Jackie Brown: is the role that re-started his career, and deservedly so. He has the perfect touch playing Max Cherry, a middle-aged bail bondsman.

What's great about Forster is how much he can convey in a single look. His last scene in "Jackie Brown" is one example of his ability to say a lot while saying nothing at all.

"Diamond Men" is a little indy production that starts Forster and Donnie Wahlberg. Forster delivers a subtle, understated performance that is the linchpin of this movie. Too bad it was a box office failure, but I suppose not everything can be "Spiderman II".

For Hoffman, the two movies that I'd see again are "Love Liza" and "Owning Mahoney". He plays a shambolic failure in both of them, a role that he has perfected over the years.

"Love Liza", written by Hoffman's brother Gordy, is a about a man whose wife has committed suicide. It is also about huffing gasoline and hitting bottom. Hoffman is great, as is his brother's script: "Liza" is a Rochester two-fer.

"Owing Mahoney" is about the biggest bank fraud in Canada, perpetrated by a young bank manager in Toronto. Hoffman captures the strange mix of dullness and obsession of this guy. Minnie Driver is excellent as his wife.

So, there are four movies that showcase the talents of two great Rochester actors. If you have problems finding them behind the 1,000 copies of "Spiderman II" at Blockbuster, you could try Video Barn in Henrietta.

Both can be changed by voting.

Yesterday, someone asked a good question about the Afghanistan War:

So, do you think Georgey boy is reading Rochesters CL R&R? I doubt it, I don't think he knows how to use the internets. Again, what do you suggest we do about it?

Let's take a concrete example: Randy Kuhl, the new representative for some of us who live in Southern Monroe County. Project Vote Smart has his record here. He replaced Emo Houghton, the last of the moderate Rockefeller Republicans in the House. Check out Kuhl's record in the House. Is he the kind of politician you want representing you? My take is that he's a Bush rubber stamp, and we deserve better.

As a first-term rep, Kuhl is more vulnerable than Emo. If the Democrats field a viable alternate candidate, contribute and work like hell to get that person elected. It isn't simple, sexy or easy, but it is the only road to change.

Now, WBER. Today, someone mentioned that they thought that 'BER was playing more thrash metal and less alt acoustic (or however you want to classify it). I hadn't noticed, but they offer a lot of latitude to their DJ's, so it might be that the DJ who's working while you're listening likes that kind of music.

That said, WBER is highly responsive to listener feedback, and they have a page on their website devoted to prospect song polls. I run through the list a couple of times a month and vote for the songs I like. Your vote really counts here, so give it a shot.

Flying from ROC is as hassle-free as possible in the world of post-9/11 security theater. The airport is centrally located and easy to reach. It has a relatively good selection of airlines and flights, especially with the arrival of JetBlue and AirTran. Parking's a snap, and reasonably priced.

As with most of Rochester's transportation infrastructure, the airport is overbuilt and underused. In the '80's, someone apparently thought that ROC was going to become an international hub, and added a whole bunch of space, gates and parking. Before 9/11, it was really a breeze to travel in and out of ROC. Today, there are sometimes long lines at security, but it is still better than what I've endured at a lot of other airports.

Once you get through security, there's a free business center, a couple of OK (by airport standards) restaurants, and plenty of room to stretch out and wait for your plane. When landing or taking off, your plane usually goes straight to the runway - no takeoff lines, holding patterns or other "traffic management" horseshit makes your plane late.

Flying on an airplane has become one of the most stressful and demeaning experiences in this country. The new security measures defy reason. Does anybody really think that a set of hijackers will use nail clippers to overpower the flight crew without setting off a massive fight with the passengers? Our beloved ROC still makes us stand in line and act like meek, stupid sheep, relinquishing penknives and carkeys, but at least it keeps the other bullshit to a minimum.

I must respectfully disagree with "again and again".  I think this is quite an interesting subject, and I plan on discussing it ad infinitum. 

I spent some time this weekend downloading and watching the Chicken Crusaders' video and reading every word on their website (http://wegmanscruelty.com).   I came away with three impressions:

1.  These are some well-organized, brave and smart people.  Anyone who is trying to advance a cause or agenda would do well to take a good look at their site and use it as a model.  Whether you agree or disagree with them, they deserve respect.  Four Rochester residents have worked hard and taken serious personal risk to speak out about what they view as an injustice.  They've accomplished a lot with very limited resources.  Anyone who whines about Rochester and how nothing happens here can take this as an object lesson on how some of your neighbors spend their time working hard to make the world a better place.

2. Wegmans was caught out fair and square.  A lot of their claims, both on their website and those made by their PR flack, are false.  Wegmans owes their customers a solid, verifiable plan to bring their egg operation up to their own (low) standard.   Wegmans has lost some of my trust, and from now on I will look at their food safety claims with heightened skepticism.  In business terms, this means that I will be reluctant to pay extra for Wegmans-branded "especially good" products like "Angus Beef", and I'll also mistrust the Wegmans store brand.  Wegmans response to-date, which is essentially stonewalling, isn't the behavior I'd expect from a Forbes #1 company.

3.  The Chicken Crusaders need to broaden their focus to interest the average egg eater.  The main focus of their video, and the materials on their site, is how cruelly the chickens are treated at the egg farm.  But there's a lot more that should upset the carnivores among us.

Here's some of the alleged cruelty:  Baby chicks have the tips of their beaks trimmed off so they won't peck out they eyes of other chickens when they grow up.  Hens are packed tightly into cages and their shit falls on the chickens below them.  Some hens get tangled up in those cages and sometimes starve to death. 

At the end of their movie, a montage of chicken abuse pictures are shown while a folk singer drones on. At the end of this montage, a few of the chickens rescued by the Crusaders are shown pecking around in a field of grass.  Immediately before the montage, a Humane Society representative claims that the only humane way to raise chickens is "free range".

Frankly, I could care less about the fate of the chickens. I'm sorry, but the term "dumb cluck" didn't get coined out of thin air.  I don't think that we owe chickens a "free range" lifestyle, and I think the average egg consumer agrees. 

The Crusaders were so focused on the cruelty angle  that they forgot to mention a number of good reasons why every consumer of eggs should be pissed that Wegmans' farm is considered a "model operation".

Lets begin with the chickens shitting on other chickens.  The Crusaders seem upset about this because the chickens are losing some essential dignity by being shat upon.  Not true - they have no dignity in the first place, because they are goddamn chickens.

The second "horrible" thing that was happening in the egg barn was that the carcasses of dead chickens were left to decay along with the live chickens  A lot of these carcasses were caused by chickens getting tangled up in the wire of their cages.  Again, the Crusaders concentrated on how "gross" this was and how terrible it was that the living chickens had to spend time with dead chickens.  I didn't see any mourning chickens in the video, so I'm not worried about their grieving process.

Finally, the Crusaders were offended that the chickens were packed together so tightly.  Again, the basis for offense was how uncomfortable this made the hens, and, again, I don't really give a shit if they're comfortable, as long as they're grunting out a nice, white, Grade AA oueves.

In each of these cases (shit, dead chickens, and tight packing), my real concern is the health ramifications of the confinement operation.  By letting the chickens live in filth, by letting dead chickens rot in cages with the live chickens, and by packing them so tightly, the Wegmans' egg farm has introduced the risk of disease. 

To counteract this risk, they dose the chickens with antibiotics.  It is no coincidence that confinement farming is a late 20th century innovation, because it would be impossible to accomplish without high doses of antibiotics.  By introducing huge amounts of antibiotics into the ecosystem, these confinement farms are hastening the development of antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria.  And that has a direct impact on me, because the number of effective antibiotics has grown smaller over the past few years.  This is a real, serious issue that wasn't even mentioned by the Crusaders. When I get an infection, I want the antibiotic to work, and the filth of these egg confinement operations is endangering my life, and the lives of you and your children, in ways that are non-obvious but real.

The second issue with the filth of confinement farming is the possiblity that the eggs will be dirty.  In the past few years, we've been taught to treat a fresh egg like a radioactive isotope or armed bomb.  I remember when Caesar Salad dressing contained -gasp- raw eggs!  Inconceivable as this is today, people regularly consumed raw eggs in previous generations without dropping dead. I've got to believe that the filth of the confinement farm has something to do with the food safety issues we're facing today.

So, I'm with the Crusaders:  Wegmans needs to clean up.  They need to stop letting chickens shit on other chickens, they must remove dead chickens quickly, and they need to move out the chickenshit more often.   But I come to this conclusion because confinement farming is a direct risk to me and my family, not because of some romantic views about the rights of chickens. 

The Crusaders have done a great thing by exposing Wegmans' egg operation as a dirty hellhole.  Now they need to find common ground with non-Vegan, reasonable people who are upset with the risks that confinement farming poses to our health.

Here's my challenge to anyone defending the Shitty News: When's the last time you got a good laugh out of that rag? Think hard, now. I'll bet the answer for most of you is "never".

That's because Shitty News is the oracle for the slightly-out-of-mainstream but still comfortably liberal point of view. And, whatever else it might be, that viewpoint is politically correct and exceedingly humorless.

Let's take a recent cover story by Rochacha's heroine, Jennifer Loviglio: New battleground for human rights: the bathroom / Transgendered employees, acceptance, and corporate America.

That headline sounds like a Masters' Thesis, not a newspaper article.

ZZZZZZZZ.

Oops, I feel asleep at the keyboard reading it. Sorry. The jist of the story is apparently that boys who want to dress up like girls have a hard time choosing which toilet to squat on, people make fun of them, and some homophobes even attack them at work.

In the immortal words of Homer Simpson: Doh!

In addition to belaboring the painfully obvious, the story contains paragraph after paragraph of quotes from corporate flacks talking about how their beloved corporations are struggling mightily to overcome the tide of discrimination against transgendered folks, blah-blah-fucking-blah.

Look, Shitty News, you gotta realize something: the topics of your stories have been done to death. If you're going to cover a done-to-death topic, you need two things: an angle, and some humor.

Being an alternative newspaper should set you free! Every alternative newspaper I've seen in other cities come across like the writers had some fun producing that week's issue. Take a look at this week's edition of Seattle's alt-weekly, The Stranger. The cover story is on military recruitment, but the headline asks whether the promise of new dinette sets will make a difference. That's at least a different angle, and a bit funny. I'm intrigued. If Shitty News did the same story, the headline would be something like "The Shameful Come-On / Deceit, Deception and Military Recruitment".

The Stranger also has some great columnists, such as Dan Savage, who writes the sex column Savage Love. Savage is gay and has a sense of humor. He's also a liberal who isn't stifled by political correctness. For example, he used to ask everyone who wrote to him to begin their letter with the salutation "Hey, Faggot!" He did it to take the bite out of that word. Whether or not you agree with him, he's always interesting and usually funnier than hell. I could not imagine the current Shitty News having a sex column, much less one written by an irreverant guy like Savage.

Shitty News, you take yourself way, way too seriously. Loosen up and have some fun, for the love of Jebus. Start some fucking controversy! You'll know that you're successful when you piss off some of your readers. Right now, you're just boring them to tears.

I thought the article was hi-fucking-larious, for a number of reasons.

First, Shitty had to acknowledge their situation. For those of you who don't want to read the article (I sympathize), let me summarize: they're fucked. Not only do they have the Outsider (oops, I mean Insider) sucking away all of their ad revenue, now they have CL giving away want-ads. Poor little Shitty, getting it from both ends. It would make me sad, if it weren't a fate so richly deserved.

Funny that they chose to illustrate this point with Dan Savage's t-shirt. He's a columnist from Seattles' alt-weekly The Stranger. Apparently they never considered printing a column that was 10% as good as Savage Love and thereby gaining some readership. They'd rather print a pic of his t-shirt than emulate his success.

The second laugh-out-loud moment was the treatment of CL as some kind of new phenomenon: "Gawsh, we were looking on the big-ole Internet and stumbled on this new fangled Craig's List. What's that all about?" Why, Shitty News, aren't you just right out on the cutting edge! Craig has only been in Roch for what, four whole fucking months? Nice of you to wake up to the fact.

Of course, in typical Shitty style, they saved the best for last:

Rochacha and Rottenchester got into it a couple of weeks ago over City Newspaper and the D&C's Insider. They spoke to us. They advised us. It was weird. Not as weird as it could have been, considering we are a newspaper and get anonymous comments all the time. But weird to just be surfing the whole wide anonymous Web and see a big old "HEY YOU" that's actually addressed to you. And it was just luck. These people have no reason to believe we'd actually be reading. They just wanted to say it out loud, I guess.

That said, I still think Craig's impact on Rochester will be huge. He's only been in town for 4 months, but there are parts of CL that are already becoming useful. The housing section is reaching critical mass for "trendy" city neighborhoods like Park Ave. The "for sale" sections actually have some real items for sale. Even the jobs section is starting to contain some real jobs (mostly in the tech sector).

Craigslist has around 20 employees, and is funded from operational profit. In other words, Craig can stick around Rochester as long as he wants. Craig has a long-term, sustainable business model that provides services at a tiny fraction of the cost of the incumbent.

If you're one of Craig's competitors, using the Craigslist of today to judge the Craig of tomorrow is extremely dangerous. Craigslist is a bottom-up phenomenon. In San Francisco, it started small and grew by word of mouth. Today, in the largest cities in the country, Craigslist is the place for classified ads for 18-40 year olds living in the urban core. That's huge for a 20 person operation.

When Craig reaches critical mass in Rochester, the Insider will be half of its current size, and Shitty News will no longer run classified ads and personals. The target demographic of both of those publications will use Craig for most of their advertising needs, because it is cheaper (mainly free), faster and more convenient.

As for Rants & Raves: I think it is underappreciated. On the Internet, people with shared interests have a number of places to congregate. Yahoo Groups is a good example of a special-interest gathering place. But general interest forums just don't work - they tend to be clogged with trolls or full of flamewars. RNR is one of the few general-interest forums that works about as well as such a forum can work. The lag in posting keeps it from being flooded by trolls, spam is removed pretty efficiently, and the topics are varied enough that it is usually worth a look every day.

Craig is the one of the few successful hippie/capitalists, and, yes, Craigslist is Godzilla.

Broadband Internet: Frontier DSL. I had RoadRunner for five years, but it just got worse every year. I switched to DSL a few months ago, and I'm surprised at how much better it is. Frontier has cleaned up their act in the last few years, and RoadRunner has never been as good as it was during its first few years in Roch.

Cell Phone: Verizon, unfortunately. Sprint's coverage fades outside of cities. The Cingular people I talk with are always breaking up. T Mobile is worse. The downside of Verizion is the limited phone selection and their desire to charge a lot extra for bandwidth that isn't used for voice calls.

Residential Phone: Frontier - I still can't see disconnecting my land line, and how could you use Time Warner when their service goes off whenever the power does?

TV: Dish Network. Time Warner's DVR (tivo) is a miserable device, and their "digital" cable is a bit clearer but still not nearly as good as Dish. Dish makes their own DVRs and they're pretty decent. The reception on Dish is noticeably better than Time Warner's cable, and Dish is cheaper. The downside is that you're at the mercy of the installer, but there are some good ones out there.

The ship itself is an awesome vessel, and the ferry operators make the trip a wonderful ride. Enough virtual and real ink has been spilled describing this boat, so suffice it to say that the trip lives up to the hype. The boat is gorgeous, it seems to glide effortlessly across Lake Ontario at 50 MPH, and the staff is friendly and capable. As an experience, the ferry is first-rate, and I was glad that I tried it.

But will I do it again soon? Probably not, for a number of reasons.

First, let's look at value for money spent. It costs $70 per person for a walk-on round-trip on the ferry, and the whole experience takes a minimum of 7.5 hours*. So, at best, taking the ferry is no faster than driving from Rochester to Toronto, and, unless you drive a tank, it is probably not much cheaper. If you have a family or take a car, the economics just get worse: it will cost you a heck of a lot more to take the ferry than it will to drive.

So, taking a trip on the ferry is a luxury. There's no traffic, and you get to relax and enjoy the view, but you pay for the privilege. With the exchange rate at $.89 (versus the $.75-79 of years past), a trip to Toronto is already an expensive proposition - I wonder how many of us will want to add the luxury of a ferry ride to that cost.

Now let's look at the schedule. A lot of the people going over on Friday morning were going to the Blue Jays game that evening. I overheard a couple of them say that they were driving back that night. In the summer, the ferry departs at 8 a.m. and 3 p.m., and returns at 11:30 a.m. and 7 p.m. This schedule rules out a lot of day trip scenarios. A Sunday afternoon Blue Jays game or musical matinee would work, but most of the rest of your trips aren't going to fit that schedule. This means that you must take your car and drive back (which adds the expense and hassle of parking), or your one-day car trip just became an overnight walking trip.

My overall impression is that the ferry is neat, but it isn't a compelling alternative to driving to Toronto. If I have friends or family in town, I might take another ride with them just to show them "what's new" in Rochester. But I probably won't take more trips to Toronto because of the ferry, nor will I take the ferry every time I want to go to Canada.

If the ferry makes it here, my guess is that it will operate during the "warm months" (say May-September/October) as a tourist boat. Much of the traffic will be bus tours, because taking the ferry adds another interesting element that will be appreciated by the old folks who like those tours. In the Winter, it will be rented to someplace warm that needs additional ferry capacity.

I'm guessing Toronto's city government thinks the same thing, because their port is the bare minimum needed to handle the ferry. Unlike our palatial port, Toronto's is a bare-bones affair, with a couple of vending machines and a too-small waiting room.

Whether or not you think government support of the ferry was a good idea, I recommend it as an experience.

Karen, I understand: your paper fucked up like the rest of them. You didn't need to print a picture of 20 other newspapers' headlines to prove your point. And you sure didn't need to compare your paper to the Los Angeles Times - that made me snort OJ through my nose because I was laughing so hard. (I'm still feeling the burn, btw.)

But, Karen, if you really want to do something to make up for your mistake, let me suggest a different course of action. Call up the Associated Press and ask them to write a story that answers these questions:

• Have mine accident rates gone up in the past five years, while the number of citations for mine safety violations have gone down?


• How many other mines have received a huge number of citations like the Sago mine? If there are a lot of them, are the feds going to do something like, say, shut them down until they improve?

And don't call your readers "news consumers" like you did today. That's both awful prose and condescending. We're readers, with brains, who think. We're not baby birds, waiting patiently with mouths open, willing to choke down whatever pap you choose to regurgitate.