A Bridge Too Scar: Whitewashing History
Kirk Reeves playing a trumpet on Hawthorne Bridge.
TriMet is the public agency that provides transportation services (commuter rail, light rail, bus and streetcar) for most of the Portland, Oregon, metropolitan area.
That opening line just screams excitement, right? Stay with me, intrepid reader. We are embarking on a torrid journey of governmental lunacy and polishing turds. Remember, it’s important for us lowly idiots to know how things really work.
This organization really got on my radar recently during the naming process for a new bridge spanning the mighty piranha-filled Willamette River that’s currently under construction. Because, as we all know, the most important characteristic about a bridge is its name. This is followed closely by how many years of neglect it takes before it fails with lots of people on it. Let’s face it. Maintenance is not exactly humanity’s strong suit.
The TriMet decided to enlist the public’s help in naming the bridge. And that’s where things decidedly jumped the rails. And I’m here to tell you about it because, amazingly, their own official website has whitewashed the whole thing from history. It’s almost like it never happened…
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Shut Down On This
Shall we play a game?
Before we can play, we need to know a few things. Like, what is a game? My attempt at a definition would be something like this:
Game – A competitive activity with participants, rules and objectives, and outcomes which are determined by strength, skill, or luck. A game is an activity severely perverted by the presence of humans.
Certain outcomes are deemed to be of value, others are not. The outcomes we like are known as winning. The ones we don’t are losing.
Too much emphasis on winning and losing can make the game unpleasant or even harmful, usually to the detriment of the “loser” but also, in many cases, to both sides.
I postulate that a game without rules is meaningless. If we sit down to a nice game of chess and you declare your opening move, “My pawn jetpacks above the board, whips out dual blasters and lazer-beams all your bitches” before sweeping my pieces to the floor, you have not won the game. At least not in terms of the defined rules.
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A Frisky Constitutional
I thought the headline was so hilarious until I found out “constitutional” is decidedly not a word that means “enema.” Dammit!
Still, ever since colonic times we Americans have clung to fiercely held beliefs that we know to be self-evident. (Whew, that was a close one. For a moment there I almost didn’t bring this article down to the proper level.)
I may still be gin treatment but allow me to raise up my Tom Colonic and propose a wee toast:
O say NSA spying on through the night,
And so proudly assailed with your eyesight’s fast scheming,
With broad swipes and little regard to what was right,
O’er the sheeple you watched, and the porn they were streaming?Source: Tom B. Taker, lyricist
As we all know, those rights our founders held so dear were elegantly immortalized in the U.S. Constitution. Except for the stuff they got wrong, of course, like those not “free” being counted as only three-fifths of a person and women not having the right to vote.
I don’t want to hit you with an elementary civics lesson, but we all know the primary function of the Supreme Court Of The United States (SCOTUS) is to chisel away at the rights enumerated in that great document.
In other words, it’s finally time for me to weigh in on NSA monitoring, PRISM and more.
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Shouts from the Abyss 
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