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  • LADWP,  The Land the Times Forgot

    Plastic, plastic, everywhere, and not a drop to drink.

    Ever wonder why water in bottles has an expiration date? It’s the plastic. It does bad things as it dissolves. Heard John and Ken talking about it this afternoon, while discussing emergency earthquake supplies. Not only do you have to keep checking the batteries and canned goods – should you go the nervous ant-like way of even having earthquake supplies – and I’m not saying which way I roll, cause maybe I’m a selfish ant – you gotta keep changing the water, too. Of course, this doesn’t concern the DWP, or the City of LA, or H. David Nahai, or Mayor V., as proven by the tons of HDPE plastic…

  • Fire Department 101

    Wrong trucks for the job; condors happy, anyway.

    You probably heard about the small fire in gp near the zoo yesterday. I couldn’t see it, but I knew something was up when helicopters started flying above our building and we started a-shaking. I live on a sort of crest, the tippy-top point between the park, the 5, and slk or downtown. I can understand why helicopters don’t want to waste fuel going higher than they need to, but this does give us, below, a rather intimate relationship with the bottoms of these flying things… Photo: Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times The news media online, mostly TV stations at first, but including Daily News (!) all had the…

  • Uncategorized

    Two good things about the LA Times, and one bad.

    I was going to write just the good things. I hate that German word that means happiness in the misfortune of others. And in general, I’m proud of living in a city with a well-regarded big paper. But something bad happened in the Sunday paper, so I’m including that, too. I’m sure the Times wouldn’t have it any other way. First off, I’ve noticed that in almost every issue now, they write something about animals or birds or the environment. They even had a Column One on the new director of the Humane Society, Wayne Pacelle! Ten years ago, if you picked up the paper, you would have thought we…

  • Compliment Corner,  Silver Lake

    The original lie by DWP about Silver Lake, and geeky stuff like Celcius.

    The last thing a blogger wants to do is write about him or herself, but sometimes it becomes necessary to use the “I” pronoun. For instance, last week I wrote about a press release that NSF issued about the bird balls in Ivanhoe. Because the manufacturer, Orange Products, emailed it to me, I thought that meant that they paid for the NSF release. Cat, but not LOLcat. However, in response to my inquiry, Cheryl Luptowski of NSF called me today to clarify that OP did not request or pay for the PR. (I corrected this.) She said they issued it because they have been getting an unusually high number of…