Geoff Duncan

Chin Up, Pugs

A sick or injured pet can make you feel uniquely helpless. Most sick or injured people can at least be reasoned with: the ailment or problem can be described and explained, treatment strategies can be outlined, ointments, medications, bandages, and treatment regimens can be applied; a certain amount of self-diagnosis and monitoring can be reasonably expected.

It's not quite that way with cats. Cats normally have good instincts about taking care of themselves, usually being fastidious groomers, quick healers, and unusually resistent to infection and food-borne illness. (Why do you think cats throw up with such non-chalance?) But sometimes those instincts wind up hurting rather than helping. Pugsley's had a little bit of kitty acne for the last few years—ever since bringing Abhi into the household, really. But a few weeks ago he started scratching and scraping at his chin, pulling away fur, and eventually worked himself into bloody, infected, listless mess. He responded well to the first round of antibiotics and began rapidly reclaiming most of his normal personality, appetite, and demeanor. And twice daily he's getting oral antibiotics, an antibiotic ointment (which, despite my efforts to distract him, he usually grooms off within half an hour), and thorough cleanings. But his chin... well, he's no longer bleeding all over everything, but his chin is still a swollen, semi-infected mess, and I feel awful for him. It's amazing how much sleep one can lose over this stuff.

Mad Props to craigslist

For years I pooh-poohed the utility of the largely non-commercial classified advertising site craigslist, not for its skeletal text-only design (of which I've always approved!), but instead characterizing it as a SF-only phenomenon which had little bearing on the real world. And for years I was right! If you lived in the Bay Area—where craigslist got its start— the site could potentially be useful, but for the rest of us it wasn't even a curiosity.

Time for a retraction. In the last few years, craigslist has set up sub-sites focussing on other metropolitan areas around the U.S. and the world (even my hometown of Reno, Nevada has its own craigslist, which, OK, sorta pushes the idea of metropolitan area). And these days, if there's enough activity within a particular region, craigslist can actually be useful.

Craigslist started as a mailing list, to provide a simple, inclusive, community-oriented forum where folks can chat, help each other out, and post announcements. The sites follow the same idea, without having converted to being a big-media, commercial operation festooned with ads. The busiest areas are job postings (which are a paid service in some areas), classified ads, and personals, but by eschewing standard means of commercial support, not trying to act as an intermediary on transactions (buyer beware!), and encouraging oddball, unique postings, craigslist boards can be more reflective of a real, physical community than, say, something like the monstrosity which is eBay. eBay is very much a seller's market these days: with a few exceptions, items tend to command the same or higher prices than they would get in real-world commercial establishments (plus the site is rife with scams, fakes, stolen merchandise, etc.). Craigslist still has the feel of a flea market or community garage sale: sure, there are arguments, flame wars, and (I'm sure) the odd swindle, but by staying regionally focussed, craigslist seems to be avoiding some of the darker underbelly of the Internet, while gaining a reputation as a place where some genuine deals, bargains, and connections can be found.

So, kinda on a lark, I posted a for-sale ad for my old Roland A-33 MIDI controller on the musical instruments area of Seattle's craigslist. I'd used the keyboard for MIDI sequencing and talking to some external synths when I first set up my little micro project studio back in 2000 (a number of the tracks on the Tunes page used it), but I outgrew a couple of its capabilities about a year and a half ago, and since then it had just been leaning in the corner, glaring at me balefully. Within a couple hours I'd received a badly written inquiry, apparently from Amsterdam. It never named the item, demanded I not entertain any other offers, asked for a picture (one was in the posting!) and asked the final price (also in the posting!). The clincher was an offer to pay by postal money order or cashiers' check, which are favorite vehicles of forgers and scammers. This served to re-kindle my long-polished craiglist is useless meme and I made a mental note to delete the ad the next morning, when I got not one, not two, but three serious inquiries and two legitimate questions, all from seemingly real people in the Seattle area. And you know what? First come, first served: last Tuesday, my A-33 left with its new daddy. I hope they make beautiful music together!

PIRGatory

I put the No Advertisements, No Solicitors sign on the front door this week. Not because of the muttering, vaguely-crazy, vaguely-threatening bucket-carrying man who comes by about once a week offering to wash the windows and clean the gutters. No: because of WashPIRG.

I have an idea how the street-canvasser-for-a-PIRG thing works. (Or, at least, how it used to work back in the early ’90s, anyway.) PIRG door-to-door canvassers are generally paid (badly), but they have to earn their keep by bringing in more donations and contributions than they cost to put on the street going door-to-door. In capitalist terms, I think that's called incentivizing the canvassers: motivate them to bring in the money or zing! they're out of a crappy, thankless job. (I mean, unless you're someone who can really get behind those motivational team-building get-togethers they hold at PIRG offices. >Shudder<)

Well, one of the PIRGers who came to my door moaning about Hanford, cruise ships dumping toxic sewage into Puget Sound, decimated orca populations, declining air quality, and a push for stricter emissions standards

1. wasn't even from Washington, considering how he mispronounced several local names (Juan de FOO-cha, SEE-kwim, and yuh-KEY-muh were particularly amusing), and
2. was incentivized to the point of seriously incensing me.

He was worse than one of those telemarketers who pretends not to hear you when you say "place this number on your do-not-call list"—he rattled on right over me every time I tried to say I'd be happy to look over their material, but I wasn't going to be giving them any money or signing up for anything right then and there. He particularly liked the terms crisis, environmental responsibility, and legislative backwash.

Talk about backwash. The sad part is that, while I wouldn't believe much promulgated by a PIRG no-questions-asked, I'm generally sympathetic to many of WashPIRG's efforts. At least, I was until they came to meet me face-to-face. Now I'll probably have to do that whole does one bad apple spoil the bunch? internal monologue for a while.