Potpourri

Sometimes it is hard to know to what to blog about. Ideas and thoughts pop into and then out of my head quite frequently. So rather than picking one topic, I’ll just bring up some things that have been on my mind.


Beautiful vs Ugly Dumpsters

I am stunned by a recent post over on Ypsi-Dixit about the city of Ypsilanti spending $150,000 for two dumpster enclosures. That seems like a pretty high cost for something apparently mostly for aesthetic purposes. Even under normal circumstances, I would probably question this amount. But here we are in a situation where the city is talking about stopping services that I would consider way more important than making sure our dumpsters look pretty. It is just little things like bus service and the like. Besides, the city has totally missed a golden opportunity to be hip (I mean, we are “Hipsilanti” after all). The city could have invited artists to paint the dumpsters. Even if some artist painted something ugly on it…it would wear off eventually anyways. I am sure there are artists who would be willing to do this gratis. Heck, *I* would do it pro bono if no one else wanted to although my artistic abilities are questionable. Basically, I am just saying that ugly dumpsters are the least of our city’s problems.


Narcissistic Musings about my Ass

I had another Doctor’s Appointment for my wound. It is still not healed. But it is getting there and the doctor told me that she thinks that it should be totally healed within the next week or two which means I should be ok to go swimming by Memorial Day weekend. That is, of course, of the utmost importance to me because I love swimming and I haven’t been swimming since I was in California in February. I just really want to go swimming.


Rising Fuel Costs

It is interesting to watch people’s reactions to the rising cost of gasoline. A friend sent me a petition that Jennifer Granholm is getting people to sign. Click Here My thoughts on this are mixed. I think it is nice that Granholm is trying to do something at all since this is obviously an issue the people who elected her care deeply about. But I don’t think this particular petition will do much good. And even if it did, I am not sure it would be good for the world at large for people in the United States to be encouraged to continue wasteful habits of fuel consumption. Also higher gasoline prices encourage a lot of good things in the long run…especially if they stay high and stable. High fuel prices encourage research into alternative technologies, they encourage dense populations. They encourage more public transportation. On the other hand, this particular transition will hit poor people more. High gasoline prices might lead to more public transportation sometime in the distant future but in the short term, it wont. It will just make it so that it costs poor people more money to get to work.