Photo taken at last week's BART protest
Back in the Sixties, the New York Times had a daily box listing the books that were officially being published on that particular day. When the Internets were younger, this columnist made some feeble efforts to contact Amazon and see if he could interest them in paying him to provide an online version of the newspaper's daily listing. One of the joys of a bookstore is the serendipity factor when a buyer stumbles across an item that makes a strong case for indulging in an impulse purchase. Since Amazon seems to lack a method of making a direct approach to impulse buys, we thought a listing of new books could be a strong unique, drawing feature for the online firm. Our efforts to be the Internets pioneer who started such a daily draw for the book selling firm were for naught. They didn't hire this columnist and they still don't offer such a listing.
Since everyone loves the idea of winning free stuff in a contest, we also assessed the potential for doing the work necessary for starting a web site where contest fans could find a daily resource for news and information about exciting (isn't there a law that requires that adjective to be attached to all contest announcements?) new contests.
One of the negative aspects for both these ventures was the large potential for ultimate boredom. If we had undertaken (pun alert here?) either of these monumental tasks, it seems likely that we would have eventually used up our initial adrenaline burst of enthusiasm and energy and then be forced to rely on the all American motivation of greed to carry the task to completion. Only large gobs of money can cure boredom and inertia, eh?
When we got a gig being a columnist errant for Delusions of Adequacy online magazine, we envisioned it as a chance to help that magazine duplicate the Rolling Stone magazine success story by becoming the digital version of an ersatz Hunter S. Thompson. The web site's management (AKA el jefe) decided to concentrate their editorial content exclusively on music and we had to move our Don Quixote efforts elsewhere.
In the process of providing book and film reviews, photos, and political punditry to the management at Just Above Sunset online magazine, we were able to scratch two items off our bucket list: a ride in the Goodyear blimp and a ride on a B-17 G bomber. Soon, we were cross-posting our political punditry efforts on both Just Above Sunset and Smirking Chimp. Later we added cross posting on Op Ed News and Bartcop to our online "to do" list.
It seemed to the World's Laziest Journalist that, in an era of specialization, an effort to imitate online what columnist Herb Caen had done for San Francisco for almost six decades by providing a string of rather short snarky tidbits about one particular city could be expanded to appeal to a more geographically diverse audience, and that it would work well in the digital era because skimming has become ubiquitous.
Last week, this columnist took some photos and did an item on a group of protesters in People's Park who were conducting their efforts while living up in one of the park's trees. The day after Labor Day their efforts had vanished. We learned that one of the protester's had fallen out of the tree during the night (Monday to Tuesday morning). The Cal Berkeley student newspaper reported that other park residents had said that the girl broke her back in the fall. We should do a Google news search for a more authoritative update.
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