Katie Doyle, Girl About Town

Friday, Jun. 24, 2005 - 12:14 a.m.

Been busy job hunting :( , trying to figure out a mystery stone that's driving me crazy, and updating my jewelry site with new product...which I have also been making. Did some custom stuff, which was also nice. I like custom orders. :)

As a side note, do not open the lid on a bottle of glue (especially toxic acetone or silicon-based) with your mouth. Sure, you may have done so without mishap in the past, and yes, I realize you may have both hands full, one holding the bottle, and the other holding the thing to be glued. But trust me: on a hot day, where some heat and pressure may have built up inside the squeeze bottle, this is not a good plan.

It really, really isn't.

Also, I would like to say that while I absolutely love wirewrap rings, I can not make them to save my life. I think they're really nifty, so I sat down last night to try to make some...you know, since I already bought stones for that, and all.

They look really simple, so I'm all, "how hard can it be?"

Stupider words were never spoken.

Oh sure, they look simple. The first one I made was simple. Everything I looked up when I then proved to be utterly ring remedial says they're simple. I followed the directions and am doing it the right way, but for some reason, I just can't do it correctly to save my life. The very first one I made, before I bothered to educate myself and was operating in blissful ignorance, came out perfectly. I made it out of red copper wire and a pressed-glass ribbon heart bead. Cute and perfect and easy as pie. No problem, that was easy, lemme cut off 9" of 20 gauge sterling silver wire and make another, with a faceted pink jade cushion-cut bead. That one....not so much.

Things went horribly, horribly awry. 45" of sterling silver wire later, I threw my hands up in the air, cut the last attempt apart, and tossed the pieces onto the table in complete and utter frustration. Because while 24 gauge copper (which is about the same thickness as 20 guage silver) is fairly easy, silver? Silver sucks. And you know why? Because it costs a helluva lot more and is an expensive learning medium, that's why. I'm sure I will try again, but not today, my friends. Not. Today.

Is anyone else sick of the lip-biting insta-cuteness that is Katie Holmes? I was already sick of her by the second season of Dawson's Creek, but at least she wasn't everywhere I turned at that time, so all I had to do to avoid the ubiquitous head-tilting, lip-biting, little-girl-voiced adorable puppiness that had worn more than a little thin was to just not watch Dawson's Creek. Which was no hardship or sacrifice, so no problem. Now, however, the Cuteness of Katie Holmes has become this gigantic, crushing juggernaut I can not escape without giving up television once and for all, and I'm sorry, but that is sort of not an option.

I get that Katie is happy and In Love, people. I get that she is happy and In Love with that massive magnet for bright lights and cameras everywhere, Tom "I Could Play A Different Character, But I Choose Not To, And Oh, By The Way, Have You Considered How Scientology Could Make Every Single Aspect of Your Life Perfect?" Cruise. I get that Tom is In Love with the magnificent Cuteness of Katie Holmes. I don't need to be reminded of that every 15 minutes of my day.

Really. I'm good.

Lights, Camera, Action!
After my glowing review of The Comeback almost 2 weeks ago, I must step back a little. It could wear very thin, if they aren't careful. It's just a little hard to see Ms. Cherish constantly setting herself up for a big ol' slap in the face. The reality part could stand to be played up a little more, I think. That was what really worked for me in the premier.

I saw Veronica Mars and didn't really dig it. It's not that it's bad, but it's sort of like a vague Buffy clone, and that was really distracting and kind of irritating. I can hear the Director and Producers shouting "Get me a Sarah Michelle Geller type!" through the passage of time, from here. The quips are very Whedony, and in addition to the actress looking and sounding a LOT like SMG, she seems to have watched every episode of Buffy ever made at least 5 times and to be trying to emulate SMG's timing, pacing...everything. Had I not watched 7 seasons of Buffy, I'd probably really dig Veronica Mars, but I'm not sure I can take it, as is. Sorry, VMars fans. :( I'm not saying it's bad, I'm just saying it's misfiring with me.

Eminent Domain, Or How The Supreme Court Sold You Down the River to Big Business
What the hell is up with that eminent domain decision(pdf) today??? Don't get me wrong; I can see the city buying your land to make room to widen a highway; it sucks, but it happens. But to say it's completely okay for a city to seize your lands to make room for a commercial development???

That, my friends, is bullshit. Throughout the course of my life, I or my family have known several people who had to relocate their homes or businesses because a new highway was set to go through their living rooms or a street was being widened and the new width caused the building to not be set back far enough from the street, and not a single one of them ever got enough to cover the cost of relocating. In fact, in most of those cases, they were screwed. See, what the Supreme Court apparently feels more than comfortable ignoring is that most of the time, the places marked for demolition to make way for a shopping mall or luxury apartment complex are in rundown areas near major urban centers...the kinds of neighborhoods regularly marked for "gentrification".

You may have heard of gentrification. That's when they bulldoze the projects to make room for luxury condos, upscale shops, and houses that cost at least 3 times over what the average homeowner in the area makes in a year. Or ten. Without fail, gentrification takes place in lower income areas...near urban centers. And the beauty of gentrification - from the standpoint of the city and private developers - is that you get to move in and buy up property for cents on the dollar, then turn around and sell it for easily 5 to 10 or more times what you paid for it. Because when you only have to pay "fair market value," that means you only have to pay what it would cost you to buy that house in that neighborhood. It doesn't mean you have to pay what it will cost the family that lives there to relocate. It doesn't mean you have to pay enough for them to be able to buy another house in another part of town. It means that you have to pay what a shitty cardboard box in the slums costs, and we all know a cardboard box in the slums doesn't cost anywhere near what the new house built on top of it will cost, or what a house anywhere else in town will cost.

Almost without fail, the kinds of neighborhoods cities build interstates through or mark for gentrification are the kinds of neighborhoods that used to be wide open farmland and have been in families for decades, or where blue collar, working class people live. Often minorities. People who work hard for probably less money than they deserve, who are busting their asses to make a better life for their kids, and who managed to buy a house 20 years ago that they are planning to live in until they die. They can't afford to relocate, and they sure as hell can't afford a new house in some other part of town, because unlike the cost of housing, their paycheck hasn't gone up astronomically in the last 20 years. Paying someone like that "fair market value" or the "just compensation" called for in the 5th Amendment is the same thing as robber barons in the old west forcing people off of their farm land. Often times they end up having to rent an apartment or move far away from where they were living, sometimes completely across town or out of it altogether. It poses undue hardship and takes away from them that for which they have labored and saved, or in some cases, land which their grandfathers worked and built on and with which they make their living.

Case in point, the city of Ontario tried unsuccessfully to force my grandmother to sell to them the house my grandfather had grown up in and the farm land it was sitting on so that they could sell it to a commercial developer to put in an industrial office complex. When my grandfather died, the city had gone to court to try to force my grandmother to sell to them, for less than a fifth of what it was worth, and a sum that in no way would buy a comparable house and land. Had the Supreme Court's ruling today been in effect then, my ailing grandmother would have found herself without a home or the means to buy or rent other adequate housing for the remainder of her life. What the city felt was "fair market value" was nowhere near what that would have cost. But it would have been legal, and she would have had no choice but to take the money and figure out what to do. I hardly think this is what the Founding Fathers had in mind when they wrote "...nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." Public use means public. And it means the public should bear the burden and cost, not the homeowner whose lands are seized.

Government by its very nature will not act in the best interests of the individual, and the men who wrote the Bill of Rights knew that. It's why they amended the Constitution to set them forth in writing. I can not understand the 5 judges who failed to see that today, nor do I understand their acceptance and implementation of such a broad "definition" of the term "public purpose". (ie. a privately-owned hotel or office building fits the requirement of public use or public purpose, because members of the public may choose to stay in that hotel or to rent space in that office building. apparently, the fact that the public does not own and can not freely travel the lands used for the hotel and office space does not matter; as some members of the public could choose to utilize the space, it therefore benefits the entire public.)

And in case you're wondering, one of the 15 petitioners who lost their case today was Wilhelmina Dery. Ms. Dery was born in 1918, in the house the Supreme Court saw fit to force her out of so that the city of New London could buy her out and then sell the land to a private developer. She grew up in that house and has lived in it her entire life. None of the properties in question were rundown or in poor shape. The only reason any of the 15 were condemned is because the city wants them so they can sell the land to private developer(s) to build a hotel, shopping center, riverwalk, marina, and 80 new private residence homes, which the city claims will "revitalize" the area, now that the pharmaceutical company Pfizer has built a huge new complex nearby.

Ain't capitalism grand?

Peace out,
Katie

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Yesterday's News - Next Stop

In which Katie shares sad news - Wednesday, Apr. 01, 2015
In which Katie returns after a very long absence - Monday, Jun. 25, 2012
In which Katie pokes her head in and brushes some of the cobwebs away - Thursday, May. 06, 2010
In which Katie asks you to write your congressman again. - Monday, Jun. 02, 2008
In which Katie asks you to please click the link and send the message to protect the rights of artists - Wednesday, May. 21, 2008