Crime and Punishment, Effective Advertising, and Huge Crowds

In yesterday's post, I referred you to a news story about the use of very loud music as an interrogation tactic - after a few hours of listening to Barney, Sesame Street, or Nine Inch Nails, even the most hardened terrorists were ready to cooperate with their questioners. In that post, I misremembered (is that a word?) a related story about teens being punished for playing their music too loudly by being made to listen to Barry Manilow. The actual story can be found here. It seems the offender was offered the choice of paying a $150 fine or spending 20 hours listening to classical music...he was only able to survive 15 minutes of Bach, Beethoven, and Chopin before giving in and paying the fine. What a dumbass.

And from the intersecting worlds of Why Didn't I Think of That and Hey, Buddy, My Eyes Are Up Here comes this interesting story of a lady named Kelly Kinney who printed her resume on the front of a t-shirt and spends her days hanging around upscale coffee shops and major intersections, hoping to be noticed (according to the article, Ms Kinney said she chooses coffee bars and intersections because they offer captive audiences where prospective employers are stuck waiting for lattes or for lights to change). Yes, the story's dateline is Los Angeles...where else could it have been?

Closer to home, here in the so-called National Capitol Region, local governments are trying to gear up for crowds estimated in the millions for the historic inauguration of President-elect Obama on January 20th. Some of the problems the planners are facing include:

- Where do you park 10,000 (yes, that's ten thousand) tour buses?

- Where do all those out-of-town people stay? (enterprising people as far away as Gettysburg and Richmond are renting spare bedrooms for hundreds of dollars per night).

- Where do you find enough porta-potties to accommodate 5 million people?

- How do you move crowds this size on a subway system that is notorious for choking on its normal daily ridership, much less heavy tourist days, much less 5 million people? Those of you who want to attend the festivities and live within walking distance (now defined as suburban Cincinnati) of the National Mall should start walking now.

- What...and where...do they all eat?

And...

- Who cleans up all the debris when everything's over? Actually, this last one is probably not a problem, because the incoming administration will already be so busy cleaning up the wreckage of the current one that a few hundred more tons of reeking caca won't make much difference.

I'm sure glad somebody else has to worry about all that. Me, I have enough to worry about, like not drowing in the rain as I hike to the bus stop this morning, and making sure the bus actually stops to pick me up (unlike the other day). By the way, Twinkie, your mental image of Bilbo as homicidal Mary Poppins was not all that far off the mark.

But now it's time to get ready to face another day. At least tonight I can go dancing...the opportunity to hold lots of different ladies close (Agnes first, of course) and move to the music is always a good way to end a tough week.

Eat your heart out, guys.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo