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[Aug. 10th, 2006|07:23 am] |
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Need to get out more. Of these ten Austin coffee shops I've only been to one. And that was well over a year ago. And the last time my wife went there our stolen garden gnome was behind the counter. |
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| periplaneta americana |
[Aug. 10th, 2006|10:29 am] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | audience - scott walker | ] |
We had the Andy Howard guys around on Friday. If you lived in Austin up to a year or two ago, three words will be in your head after reading that. They used to have a commercial which mostly consisted of a sweaty close-up of someone who looked like a cross between Stephen King and your local serial killer. "Kill your bugs," he'd snarl with malignant contempt. "Kill your bugs," he'd continue, with the look of someone who enjoys his work a little too much. "Kill your bugs," he'd conclude through gritted teeth. Anyway, they came around, knocked down a giant hornets nest, filled the attic with boracic acid and did a few other things. Since then we haven't seen any live insects in the house, but a number of dead cockroaches the size of matchboxes have started to appear outside the front door. I don't know why they've chosen this spot to flip over and die -- maybe they're exhibitionists or want to ham up their death throes.
Oddly, if you go to the Andy Howard site and move your cursor just above the Welcome line, the words "Kill your bugs" appear white on white. Why? |
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| austin blues (pt 97) |
[Aug. 10th, 2006|12:41 pm] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | jake thackray - the little black foal | ] |
This is what I don't get. I'm a big fan of urban renewal, walkable cities, the revitalization of downtown and all that, but Austin seems to have gone apeshit over condos. Mayor Will Wynn has said something about wanting 20,000 new residents downtown and the new condo blocks (and for some reason, hideous, giant, generic chain hotels) are appears on every bit of empty and non-empty space. But what I haven't seen addressed is where these people will work and how they'll get there. I'm not sure about Austin but I read someone recently that 2/3rds of all new jobs in America are in the suburbs. It's probably worse here -- new employers of any size tend to be based out at wretched post-Ballardian nightmares like Tech Ridge, places where you need a Tahoe to get from one end of the SuperTarget to the other.... Are people are going to be living downtown and driving out to these places, a gallon of gas each way, stuck in gridlock on I-35 and grizzling about how this isn't the Austin they read about? Or maybe the 20,000 people who are going to be living downtown are going to be working in the hotels, bars and swanky furniture stores opening downtown, although some of those condos are a bit rich for minimum wages.... |
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| Oooyah! Donk. |
[Aug. 10th, 2006|02:58 pm] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | june tabor - reynardine | ] |
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