Atomictumor

Big Mike Silence lays it down for you, direct from the Knoxville News-Sentinel publisher:

I am pleased to announce that the Scripps BC Development Company (the same division of Scripps that bought the Shopper-News and started Skirt! magazine) is now acquiring Metro Pulse and Knoxville Magazine. This is effective July 1, 2007.

Metro Pulse will keep their editorial and advertising independence. At some point in the future, we will be printing our new weekly product.

Balls to that.

More opinions here.

Man, after seeing the possibilities that Knoxville has during the Saturday Night at the Square business, where it’s finally getting a downtown that can be something I’d be proud to almost call a town near me, its highly disappointing to see this.  Metro Pulse has been an institution I’ve respected the 12 or so years I’ve been living in the area, and the fact that it wasn’t beholden to corporations like freakin Scripps has been a big reason for that respect.

Welcome to a one paper town, Knoxville, hope you enjoy it.

Man, this news about blew my mind. To think little ol’ Tennessee, bring up the rear in damn near any survey of the 50 states, is manning up to the .gov, and telling em to stick the Real Id where the sun don’t shine. This is news that just reaffirms my faith in state goverment, man.

Real ID, for those who haven’t been around, was hidden in the back of a government war appropriations bill as a rider about 2 or 3 years ago, and by the time anybody noticed it, the bill passed (I mean, who’s gonna vote down a war appropriations bill, right? Not in this country). It says that all states must contribute to a national database by Dec 2009, essentially setting up a national ID card. The costs are passed down to the states, and the Real ID card would be required for passports, driving, and essentially all other identification in the country, bringing us further away from the whole “govern by state” thing that Washington (the dude, not the town) was all cool with (except that he was a federalist, so he probably wasn’t as cool as, say, Jefferson, or somebody like that. whatever)

Anyway, I’m proud to say I’m from Tennessee because of this, and lemme tell you, thats not usually the first thing I’m proud to say.

This morning I woke up with a king hell headache.  My neck wasn’t sore, my sinuses weren’t raging, just one of those kick-in-the-balls headaches that comes out of nowhere, punishing you for something heinous you’ve done in a past life, or the recent nights.

I racked my brain, trying to think of how I offended God so miserably as to afford being smote while my head’s still on the pillow.  I concluded that God probably isn’t pissed, so I ruled him out of my headache hit list, and let my mind wander.

It wandered out, and drifted around, and finally started settling on the election last night.

Now, I’m content with most aspects of the thing.  The only candidate race that went against my predictions were Ellen Smith’s ascension onto council, but, I still like that with my liberal Naderish thinking, and I think she might do well.  I would hope, based on seeing her speak a few times in the past, that she kinda ropes her long winded tendancies, but not her sensibilities.  Oak Ridge hasn’t had a hippie on the council before, so really she might just be the closest thing to direct representation for my sorry ass that I’ll ever have.

Additionally, she’s an online type, keeping and carrying a blog, as well as dealing with the circus down at the Oak Ridger Forums, which is a big plus in her favor.  I hope she keeps this internety accessibility into her coming job.

No, I think whats giving me a headache is the bond thing.  Oak Ridge decidedly smacked down the idea that the city will ever spend public money on any kind of private enterprise, and woe be to he that try.  I think we just saw ourselves relegated to a retirement community.  Or worse, a job farm, where 14000 federal employees head out and head home.

Now, as with the candidate thing, I’m trying to see the silver lining in something that I didn’t hope for, but I really don’t see it here.  I think we’ve neutered ourselves, stagnated any possibility of major growth on a retail side, and for what?  Claims of transparency?  Fear of debt?

Those are valid, but this thing appeared as transparent as any government endeavor, and folks, I don’t think debt is going anywhere in this town.  I’m afraid we’re looking forward to a nice future of property tax increases, which will start spiraling upwards as the elderly in this town die, and their kids (who left Oak Ridge, naturally) rent out the property, driving land values down, driving property taxes further up, until this town is squalor bordered by a big chimney, hills, and federal installations.

Maybe thats just the headache talking.

That said, I’m betting that GBT unveils this amazing new plan for putting retail elsewhere in town without city money, on a smaller scale.  Then again, Oak Ridge has roundly said that it doesn’t need retail, and with Harden Valley and Midtown growing, retails finding ways to make getting our dollars less effortlessly outside of Oak Ridge.

So, for the past two weeks Pigpen has been showing some aggression in the classroom.  He’s been complaining all year of one or two kids hitting him, as is their preschool wont, and during the course of the year his response has moved from going to the teacher, to hitting them back, to doing a GWB style pre-emptive strike, to now, when he “had (child X) in a cubby whaling on him with both hands”.  Now, child X has been a problem for the Pen all year, but its apparently getting to the point where the aggression that Pigpen seems to have found effective on this boy has spread out to other kids.

I’ve been working it as much as possible at home, initiating a bold new “no hitting while horseplaying with your brother” rule, curtailing television shows displaying violence for PP, and trying to drill in (in a 5 yr old manner) that other kids have feelings just like he does and it hurts them when he hits.

Today, tho, the teacher who loaded him up in the car told me that, apparently unprovoked, he spit on a kid in the car-riders line right before I picked him up.  He was on the defensive already, screaming at the teacher who put him in the car that “YOU DIDN’T SEE ANYTHING” and denying up and down what happened.  Through my powers of deductive questioning, however, I bested my 5 year old and got him to admit to doing it, at which point I set into him for:

a. spitting on some poor kid (Pigpen couldn’t tell me why he did it, or who the kid was)

b. lying to me about it (always a very serious offense in the Tumor house)

After calling and talking to his teacher, this is really setting it in for me that my little sweet Pigpen has been, for about the past two or three weeks, really becoming a little bastard of a bully.  Thats bad, because he’s a big ol’ kid, stubborn as hell, and will be a nasty bully if this keeps up.

Now, the problem is, with MastaG I always had discipline figured out, and I just don’t have my finger on what makes Pigpen tick.  BJ had more of it, but the boy was darn near as much a mystery to her as he is to me.  MastaG, at 5, got the soapy toothbrush when we busted him lying about something or other (he was never a hitter, it might have been when he was busted using foul language), but I don’t feel like that’d be the right tact with Pigpen.  In fact, he kinda likes the taste of soap, so I’m certain all it would do is waste a toothbrush.  I’m not adverse to spanking, but this isn’t a spanking situation.  Spanking is only really useful (in my opinion, and oh boy, is this going to start something) in situations when the kid is doing something that immediately threatens live or limb, and isn’t stopping when requested.

Something that needs a quick and brutal solution on a purely animalistic level.

I never use it anymore.  I digress tho, because this issue isn’t a spanking issue.

The boy sobbed all the way home because I was angry.  I didn’t even have to yell (but I did a bit anyway, just to hammer it in).  I put him in the bed, and he got up to pee about 30 minutes later.  He asked if I was still mad, and I said “Pigpen, you spit on a kid today.  Thats one of the rudest, meanest, nastiest things you can do, and you had no reason to do it.  Thats not something a sweet, good boy does.  Yes, I’m mad.  Go back to bed.”

Kids.

I’ve been kinda slacking in my job as part time .Gov hater here in town, I’m afraid.  Last night, Netmom liveblogged a council session that was to determine whether the council was going to man up and fund the school system enough so that they wouldn’t have to cut classes, which is damn near an annual event.  This year, tho, was the first time that the schools had a shot of getting some satisfaction.

In a backwards ass way.

See, the council saw the schools request for a 7 cent property tax increase, and then raised it to a 10 cent one, split 50-50 between the school board and the city budget, which up until now had not been complaining of a lack of funding.

So, the schools still didn’t fully get what they were after, and now shoulder the weight of having a larger property tax in the next year.

The architect for this?

Leonard F—in Abbatiello.

This guy has been bitching and moaning about the school board not answering his questions in the closed door meetings held by the Budget and Finance committee he is on to oversee the financial plans of this city, something thats already backwards, questions that have all been answered multiple times in multiple places (hell, I can answer em), and in the meeting last night he again took the floor to issue a diatribe against the school system and the board of education.

Good thing the jackal is leaving council this term.  If I had to sit and watch more of his obvious bias against the school system, it’d probably drive me crazy.  We get enough of that crap from elsewhere, we sure don’t need to vote it in.

Speaking of which, theres a lot of talk about a certain city council candidate trying to lowball the school board election.  Daco mentioned it, and I took him to task for not citing sources.  Since then, I’ve heard from about 7 or 8 pretty reliable sources, all telling me that there are several elderly folk in town who report being advised to only vote for one candidate in the two-seat school board election, and all needing anonymity for various reasons.

If I had a citation for it, I’d make it a huge deal, as it is, I’m still not sure how accurate it is, but if it is accurate, it totally affects my opinion of this candidate.  Frankly, it puts the candidate into the worse possible light, not only advising on a race she’s not running for, but advising people not to exercise constitutional rights.  Its backwards, its wrong, and if true, is going to have me looking for a rail to run this person out of town on.

See, I’m already all pissed off, and its only 7:30.