He recently reinforced his position that all black people should support him because he’s black with this moving commentary:

If any African American stood with Cohen today as an endorsement, they ought to feel embarrassed

I agree! How dare they associate with a white jew! What we should do is split the seat, and have separate but equal representation based solely on skin tone! I mean, there’s no way that a black guy could ever represent my positions, so there’s no point in talking about any issues or anything, I’ll just vote for the guy that looks the most like me! In fact, can anyone tell me which candidate for Sheriff is taller? I’m about 5’7″, so I can’t imagine a tall guy representing me. I’ll just vote for whomever happens to be shorter. Even better, are any of the candidates named “Mike”? My name is Mike, so I can’t imagine better representation than someone else named Mike.

What a fucking idiot.

Memphis has a long and painful past of racial conflict. While I don’t at all feel that we should ignore our history, I also don’t feel that segregation and racial division was the answer in 1960, and it’s not the answer 50 years later. With all due respect to those who fought for their civil rights as a person, not a black person, not a white person, not a jewish person, but as a human being; I don’t find any difference between “Don’t vote for the white guy” and “Don’t serve coloreds”.

Mr. Herenton – Leave your inflammatory racist rhetoric in the past with Jim Crow. Oliver Brown would appreciate it.

Summer is definitely coming back. Funny how you forget exactly how oppressively hot it is.

Also, I’m gonna try to capture as many of the insanely stupid cars around memphis when I can and post it. It likely won’t be “o the day”, but it sounds cool, so I’m going with it. First lesson learned, try to find them in daylight.

That’s it for now, if anyone needs me I’ll be sitting here hoping this sore throat doesn’t turn out to be strep.

I started at Bardog in the early afternoon, meeting Gross (of Kooky Canuck) and Tony (of lots of places he no longer works due to physical altercations involving people who mostly deserved it) for a few drinks to discuss a project we’re working on (more on that when we get it off the ground). While we were there, an annoying guy proceeded to run up the biggest tab humanly possible, buying all kinds of shit at random, including food for the odd homeless guy that happened by. He managed to get his tab up to about $200, then his card got declined, lol. He of course was “Good for it” and just needed to go meet his brother somewhere else to get the money. They wisely called the cops.

(Our humanitarian is in the brown)

After a short discussion about the pitfalls of ordering an insane amount of shit you can’t pay for, the cops escorted him to jail.

After another hour or so of heavy drinking, we stopped by my place so I could drop my Macbook off, and Gross attempted to attack me with my own antique rifle

(No, I’m still not unpacked, suck it.) Being a ninja, I deftly disarmed him and we headed down to Beale.

After a one beer stop at BB’s, we headed to Blues hall to annoy Jon

and catch some Delta Highway:

Pretty cool show btw. Delta Highway that is, not Jon, he’s a freakshow.

The pictures stopped after that, as my vision was blurry, so I doubt the pictures would have been any good, but I vaguely recall throwing Gross in a cab bound for midtown, having another beer at Blues Hall, and walking home. I stopped in a completely deserted (at midnight or so) Huey’s to grab some takeout, since I hadn’t eaten much of anything all day. Weird seeing Huey’s completely empty at midnight, even on a Tuesday. After a couple of minutes at the bar, it was pretty clear why no one was sitting there, the bartender was a jackass. Oh well, the french dip was good, fuck him.

Overall, an entertaining, if not particularly out of the ordinary night out.

TheoGeo mentioned Herenton’s website being terrible, and I finally checked it out. Wow. The Angelfire style website is pretty impressive in it’s own right, but you really have to get down to the content to make a judgment. I mean, “Catch-22” would still be a great book if it were scrawled on McDonald’s napkins, so let’s get down to brass tacks.

First, we’re immediately reminded that this is a grassroots effort, no copywriters here!

The headline I understand, no problems there. The subheading is less than clear to me. I’m not sure if I’m volunteering information or what, but I do know that nothing says “classy” like an ISP email. TO CONTRIBUTE TO MY POLITICAL CAMPAIGN EMAIL ME AT HOTBOI4U@AOL.COM!!11

Ok, we’ve established that it’s fairly low budget, let’s get to the facts…

Ok, I don’t see how this is relevant, but I guess I’m in for the long haul. Let’s click the “NEXT” button.

(I cut off the last row, but trust me, all of them were white. It doesn’t really matter, it’s probably the wrong picture anyway.) I particularly like the heading; “What’s wrong with this picture?”.  Good question.

What’s wrong with THIS picture?

Nothing, fuck face, that’s why I voted for him. To suggest that people vote based solely on race is just utterly insulting to a nation that elected a minority president. Using Herenton’s idiotic “position”, McCain would have won in a landslide and that waterhead Palin would be vice president of the United States  (*douche chills*). The idea of a modern society is not to vote for the guy that looks most like you, but for the guy that best represents your political positions. If a black guy comes closest to my positions on most issues, I’ll vote for him. If a Hispanic guy is the best fit, he gets my vote. If an Arab woman best fits my ideals, she gets my vote. To suggest people vote along racial lines is, in typical Herenton fashion, a fantastic way to further divide this already divided city.

I would make a case on Herenton’s positions, but he doesn’t have any, other than being black. I can’t believe someone would actually make such a blatant, transparent attempt at racial pandering. I can only hope that it doesn’t actually work.

For those not familiar, the gist is that the CCC is attempting to ban the sale of single beers in stores in the downtown core area in an attempt to stop panhandling. Yeah, it’s just as stupid as it sounds.

I’ll take the purely logical route here. The area of the ban would be laughably small, so that basically it would just mean a slightly longer walk. Single beer sales on Beale wouldn’t be effected, so they could always just buy a big ass beer on Beale, they could always pool money and buy a six pack, getting more beer for less money in the long run, and it wouldn’t apply to liquor, so they could still go buy a small bottle of cheap liquor for the same money, which contains a lot more alcohol.

What the fuck is the point again? It seems this would just serve to fuck over a handful of small neighborhood stores, and very little else.

I don’t understand how seemingly intelligent people keep looking for a “Silver Bullet” to rid the area of bums while making little to no effort to address the root causes and make a commitment to long term change. Want to get rid of the panhandlers? I’ll tell you how.

1. Make panhandling illegal. Across the board. And actually arrest everyone asking people for money.

But in order for that to do anything other than keep 201 full, you’re gonna have to do

2. Set up a real public shelter and rehab program. This is a pretty tall order for a city that seemingly can’t run an animal shelter, but I digress. The only way you’re going to solve the panhandling problem is to give people a real chance to do something else. Give repeat offenders a choice between rehab and prison. Make the rehab program a real fucking rehabilitation program, not a class in Crime 101. Set up vocational courses with local businesses in which people in the program can “intern” and learn a trade with a portion of their pay going to the program to cover room and board. Be proactive.

Fuck, that’s right, I’m in Memphis. What was I thinking? Yeah, just force them to drink in the entertainment district or buy liquor instead of beer. That’s clearly a better idea.

At least I haven’t had a bill for months. This happened in July, here’s my most recent bill.