The Electron Pencil

Another Box

Oh great. The Herald Times this morning reports a new soulless downtown mixed-used building has been approved by the Bloomington Plan Commission.

The Proposed Building

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The structure will house three residential apartments with ground-floor commercial space. Acc’g to the HT, the proposed project has been granted six zoning waivers, thereby allowing it to violate that many not-so-sacred municipal commandments to preserve the treasured look and feel of central B-town.

The building will stand next to the equally anonymous and utilitarian Bloomington Transit Center at 3rd and Walnut streets.

[I’d provide a link but the HT has a paywall so you can either trust me or drop 75 cents on a copy of today’s paper.]

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Money For Nothin’!

I’ve been feeling down of late so this email really brightened my morning:

What A Lucky Guy I Am!

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I don’t know who Michael or Ira Curry are but as of now, they’re my Best Friends Forever.

Feel free to suggest what I should do with my fresh, crisp 600,000 USD in the Comments section. And, hey, if you find yourself short of cash over the next few weeks, you can count on me to help. I am, after all, rich now!

[UPDATE: I did a little googling and found out that Ira Curry won big in some regional lottery this past December. Michael Curry must be a relative. How nice of them to think of me.]

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Hitting It Big

Equally fortunate, it seems, is our town’s David Brent Johnson. He’s no newly-minted $600,000-aire but his weekly jazz program, Night Lights, has been picked up in the Chicago market by radio station WDCB.

David Brent Johnson

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DBJ’s show debuted in the big market last week. WFIU‘s Night Lights is syndicated on 17 stations in 14 states as well as one station in the Philippines. WDCB is trying to position itself as Chi.’s radio place for jazz. NPR affiliate WBEZ dumped its overnight jazz and blues programming in 2007. Music aficionados were up in arms but the decision stood, as opposed to last year’s brouhaha over a proposed elimination of opera programming at WFIU.

Slowly but surely the world is learning about Bloomington as a music capital.

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You Will Speak Correctly

How about that heretofore anonymous diplomatic bureaucrat’s street-talk dis of the European Union last week?

Victoria Nuland, who is the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, was phone chatting with the US ambassador to the Ukraine the other day. She and the ambassador, Geoffrey Pyatt, talked about the rebellion in that country. They speculated on the role of opposition leader Vitali Klitschko in any subsequent reorganization of the Ukraine gummint. Nuland pretty much told Pyatt that Klitschko ought not to be too big a shot because he’s essentially a babe in the woods.

Tough Negotiator

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Which makes perfect sense because the sum total of Klitschko’s life experience thus far has been his success at beating the bejesus out of men wearing shorts. See, Klitschko’s a boxer. He gained the world’s heavyweight boxing championship back in 1996. He retired from the Sweet Science last December still wearing one of the bazillion belts that the various international boxing authorities hand out. Experts say he was a powerful puncher and had strong chin.

These attributes stand a politician well only in a metaphorical sense. It’s been several millennia since we’ve asked our dear leaders to personally whack the crap out of each other for the good and glory of our respective peoples.

Still, Klitschko is popular in the Ukraine, the way, say, Peyton Manning would be in this holy land should he decide to chuck football and run for the United States Senate.

Nuland went on to tell Pyatt that the United Nations should try to broker an agreement between the Ukraine state and the opposition, not the European Union. Apparently, she doesn’t hold the Union in terribly high regard. “Fuck the E.U.,” she said.

The Money Shot Comment Is At 3:04

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Somehow, a recording of the phone conversation was made public. And, natch, European leaders are screaming bloody murder. Even German Chancellor Angela Merkel tut-tutted the comment. One of her PR flacks said Merkel considers the verbiage “absolutely unacceptable.”

I’m just wondering if the folks who gave the world the phrase deutschland über alles some 75 years ago have as yet earned the privilege to criticize other people’s lingo.

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