Now arriving in downtown St. Petersburg: the failtrain. Earthlink has officially tapped out, alerting the city that they can totally suck it.

Earthlink has pulled the plug on its plan to build a citywide Wi-Fi network. The company won the chance to build the network earlier this year, but is backing away from any projects where it has not signed contracts, says the city’s chief technology officer, Muslim Gadiwalla.

Haha, pulled the plug… wireless… get it? I think perhaps the most informative bit is buried in another quote:

Wi-Fi networks around the country are on hold or worse as companies discover the networks are harder and more expensive to deploy than expected, but city governments are unwilling to become the main paying users.

How does that even happen? Aren’t companies supposed to be, like, good at what they do? I mean, we give you money, you provide a service, if you do that relatively well then we keep coming back. How does a company like Earthlink totally screw the pooch this hard? Selecting one city as a testbed with no promises might have been smart, eh fellas? Instead they promised some seriously big-ass cities, and one lil’ one (St. Pete, represent!) that they had that shit under control and now it’s all aboard the failtrain, headed straight for the mofuggin’ pier… although, scratch that, the pier already has like 4 failtrain stations.

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Man, I’m totally repeating myself lately. Brandon Dunlap got a nice little write up in the Tampa Tribune a few days ago, which you should perhaps go read. I think it is pretty clear that I think he’s probably one of the best things going for art in the area, and the most shocking bit is that he is actually a nice dude. Imagine that! Point deduction for living in Tampa though, weak.

Check out his art | Consume some shit

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Keep the eye bleach handy for this one, kids. Earlier this week while scanning the Creative Loafing blogs, I noticed that food critic Brian Ries mentioned that he got a call from one Dave Hackett alerting him to the wonders of his new website gototell.com; namely, the part that allows you to search local restaurants that have been fined for health code violations. That reminded me that I was linked directly to the equally fun inmate search on that site a few weeks back, and, you know, I was entertained for fifteen minutes and thirty-seven seconds searching for your mom in the Pinellas County jail system (no dice, I’m sorry to say, but I’m sure she’s in jail somewhere).

The best part is that in the CL blurb, it’s clear that Hackett is pimping his site before it’s even done. Apparently, his dream of becoming rich off the Internets isn’t happening fast enough for him, so he figured he’d try to bang some traffic on his site all preview style. Now, when I was there, the site was totally bare. Between then and now, however, it looks like old Dave has been pretty busy; yes, busy making the baby jesus cry with horrible design.

Oh, the huge manatee.

Seriously dude, what the fuck are you doing over there? I think you jacked those animated menus from a site I did in 1998. No no, I insist; you keep them. That DHTML scroller at the top of everything is swell, too. I like the way it’s totally broken in your “forum.” Well, at least you learned enough HTML to find places for all those sweet ads to live. Oh, rad; one of them is inviting me to register on your most awesome website, which claims to be “the cure for corporate media.”

It appears that Dave knows a little about Corporate Media and is fully prepared to drop some knowledge about this thing the kids are calling “blogging.” You see, wait, come closer; the Man might be listening – corporate media doesn’t like it when people start to realize that on the Intarwebz, they control the means of production. Holy shit Dave, you did not just reference Marx 101 in a blog entry, did you? Hey, can I have your mini fridge when the semester’s over, bro? I’m thinking of moving out of the dorms and I need a place to keep my surplus weed. But right, Dave is fucking pissed because of the way that corporate media is starting to aggregate reader content and then use it on its websites and profit.

Wait, isn’t that exactly what’s happening on your site, Dave? I mean, all you’re really doing is culling a bunch of publicly available data in one place and then slapping a bunch of ads on it. Awww, you’re trying to be Web 2.0, aren’t you?

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Yeah, I know, go ahead, tell me to shut the fuck up. Interestingly, however, this time around is the “fair and balanced” edition. The Times ran a story today basically saying “dudes, chill out, it isn’t as bad as it seems.” Well, at least I think that’s what it said, I don’t actually read the things I post about.

After all of the fretting from local government leaders over the state-mandated budget cuts, it comes down this for city residents: St. Petersburg’s Main Library will be closed on Saturdays.

Now, I hate books so I really don’t care, but it does kinda suck for folks that work all week and actually dig going to the library on Saturday to get their bookin’ on. However, it isn’t the frightening cuts to police and fire service some expected. This is of course in addition to the rest of the cuts that already took place:

Of the nearly $14-million in cuts Baker proposed in June, about half came from stopping payments into two reserve funds and cutting subsidies to more than 200 arts and social service groups.

Now, I’m trying to be fair and balanced here, but I’m not going to let the Times completely off the hook without at least mentioning one fallacy. Calling this a “soft landing” does address the fact that city services won’t take a huge hit, but then casually mentioning the 70% cuts to 200 arts and social service groups is pretty weak. It appears as though we’ve already forgotten the impact those cuts have, and will continue to have on these programs. Here’s a suggestion: this Saturday, since you can’t go nerd out at the library, volunteer at any one of these fine organizations (PDF) that would appreciate and benefit from your time.

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This week in mind-boggingly lazy brought to you by local business, Doggy Sod. Those of you who pay attention to shit and were doing revolutionary things like reading the paper in 2005 might remember that the Times covered this when it was just a daring little startup in our own backyard. Ironically, the whole thing started because of one woman’s obsessive desire to avoid, at all costs, getting off her lazy ass at night to walk her new dogs in her own backyard.

Nadine Wadsworth had her dogs, Autumn and Winter, for only days when she realized things couldn’t go on as they had been.

‘I was walking them down two flights of stairs in my nightgown in the middle of the night’ so they could do their business, said Wadsworth, who lives on Treasure Island. ‘I thought, what can I do so that I don’t have to go out there?’

The rest, as they say, is history. That’s right, for a mere $45 - $55 a month, they’ll deliver a patch of sod to your house on which your dog is invited to do its various businesses. Twice a month they come with fresh sod. I know, the overwhelming strain of busting up your routine of uninterrupted inertia, sloth, immobility and Deal or no Deal, in order to attend to the minor needs of your pet can be too much. What are you, a martyr? Are you gunning for sainthood over here? Of course not. All you did was actively choose to be the owner of something that is more or less dependent on you. All those kids? You’re off the hook there. No one really knows how those things get here.

Now, of course, this is actually a pretty sensible service for people with a compelling reason that walking the dog is burdensome. I would love to believe that those people are the primary users of this service. I would also love to believe there’s a magical unicorn named Alexander who visits me at night and takes me to a land where pr0n grows on trees and pirates fight ninjas in hourly gladiator matches.

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Let’s get down to brass tacks here. When your feed-reader informs you that there’s a post somewhere on the interweb entitled “Threesome ends in bloodshed,” you stop what you’re doing and get more information. Delivering babies, curing cancer, splitting atoms — whatever — “threesome” and “bloodshed” guarantees you’re going to drop it immediately.

Such is the scenario laid before us all today thanks to the Breaking News blog on TampaBay.com:

They were drinking in an abandoned house, a woman and two men, and things got sexual, and wouldn’t you know it: complications.

It’s a story as old as time itself. Boy meets girl. Girl meets other boy. First boy watches other boy and girl have intercourse. Boy talks some shit. Boy gets nailed on the back of the head with bottle. Boy needs staples to close gash. Other boy arrested.

But that’s not what I’m here to rap at you about. At least not anymore. If you clicked through the link, you know what I’m talking about.

Gerald Cerveny, the guy who went from skank-banging to bottle-breaking, has got a severely awesome booking photo. Problem was, the original post only has a tiny thumbnail of it. That won’t do. I set out to find a larger size, but I ended up with so much more. Not one mugshot, but four.

Let’s travel through time with Gerald.

First up, 1999. Prison. It’s the “boy did I fuck up” look.

Next, booking photo from 2006. The “Jesus help me” face.

Then, January 2007. The classical “I be so fucked” look, and eerily similar to the previous one.

Finally, earlier this week after the threesome incident. Gerald has turned that attitude right around! Here we have nothing less than a full-blown “I’m goin’ to Disney World! Weeeeee!” You just got some action, made a dude watch you, and then busted his head open with a bottle. It’s Miller Time! Also, please note the similarity of shirts in the last two photos.

He’s been down on his luck. He’s made some terrible choices. But he’s still smiling like a fucking idiot. Gerald Cerveny, I hereby nominate you today’s Best Person in the World!

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So, we’ve already talked about Earthlink’s shuck and jive, leaving our citywide Wi-Fi project on permahold. In that story, the city’s CTO said:

“They’ve asked that we give them until fall, and they’ll have their game plan together,” said Muslim Gadiwalla, the city’s chief technology officer. “Other cities are in the same boat, including Atlanta,” where Earthlink is based.

Well, unfortunately the writing appears to be covering the fucking wall these days †. For instance, why don’t we throw San Francisco and Chicago on the pile of cities getting an awesome wireless anal swabbing courtesy of Earthlink.

On your right over there is schmuckass Don Berryman, looks like he is fixin’ to lose his job any second here. He was heading up Wi-Fi initiatives, meaning that most likely with his hasty exit and no plans to replace him, Earthlink is backing the fuck out of this whole zany free Wi-Fi network building debacle.

The PC Magazine article pretty much nails it:

However it seems that its negotiations with private-sector partners, including EarthLink, have stalled because any citywide Wi-Fi would require massive public financing. The city had hoped to provide only infrastructure for the network.

Ah yes, imagine that, these things cost money. In other words, don’t expect any mass Wi-Fi in St. Petersburg… well, don’t expect it ever.

† According to Daniel 5:1–31, a totally shit-hammered drunk King Belshazzar of Babylon takes sacred golden and silver vessels that were jacked from the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem and starts in on praising ‘the gods of gold and silver, bronze, iron, wood, and stone’. Doh, that’s a hell of a good way to piss off Old Testament God, you know, the really mean and spiteful one. Immediately, the disembodied fingers of a human hand (scary!) appear and write on the wall the words ופרסין ,תקל ,מנא ,מנא. Although usually left untranslated, these words basically say: God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end; you have been weighed on the scales and found wanting; your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians. In other words, bad fucking news for King Belshazzar. Just prior to bursting into flames he proclaimed: “fuck me, I should have read the writing on the wall” which is a phrase that sticks with us today - although most people leave off the “fuck me” part. Other fun reads in the book of Daniel include Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refusing to worship a golden idol of King Nebuchadnezzar, getting tossed into a flaming furnace, and rolling out without a scratch on account of God’s deliverance. Thanks God! Might also wanna check out Daniel being thrown into a den of lions who were all like “what up Daniel?” and Daniel was all like “chillin” and the lions were all like “werd.” He of course bails, also without a scratch. Chalk another one up to God’s deliverance.

And that, my friends, is the end of today’s religion lesson.

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Man, I wish I would have made that up myself, galactically stupid has a nice ring to it. The Times busted out a pretty sweet story on our boy Crist and his knack for overpromising. You know, it seems like dude forgets that people write this shit down and then fact check it later on - which leads to him, on August 17, saying things like:

I never promised anything. I’m not going to overpromise. I’m very careful about how I speak. What I’ve done is promise this administration’s best efforts to do everything we can to reduce the burden of property insurance and property taxes. I can’t say it will be a 30 percent reduction. I’d be a moron to say that. Why would I do that? That would be galactically stupid.

Right… except that whole March 21 speech where you might have said something along the lines of:

Don’t believe what you’re seeing in some of the papers — not all of them — that the rates aren’t going to go down as much as we would like. They are — I guarantee it — they’re going to keep going down.

Hmm, I’m certainly no scholar, and hell, I’m really not even that smart to begin with, but I’m seeing some conflict in these statements. Let’s hope that people are paying attention this time around, he currently has a 70% approval rating but the next poll is coming up next month. If that number doesn’t drop I’m throwing a damn rock, I guarantee it.

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I’m lazy, so I just got these pictures off my camera from Saturday night. Here is a full, unforced, total endorsement of St. Petersblog by the fine gentlemen of Auto!Automatic!!. First up is the sticker itself, followed by placement on pectoral and gluteul muscles which, without question, constitutes full endorsement.

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You may want to sit down before you read this. I just can’t hold it in any longer… My friends:

I’m in favor of urban gentrification.

Somebody hold me. It’s not easy for me to come to terms with either. I’m the guy who is more radically leftist than you on everything. That’s right, my Communist Party (USA) membership card is weeping red tears right now. What the hell is happening here? To say that my contemporaries and I aren’t on the same side of this issue is an understatement. People who side with the gentry can only quench their thirst with the blood of puppies, right?

Ugh. Okay, no. It actually tastes pretty nasty. So what’s the story?

Let’s define what we’re talking about here, courtesy of Wikipedia:

Gentrification, or urban gentrification, is a phenomenon in which low-cost, physically deteriorated neighborhoods undergo physical renovation and an increase in property values, along with an influx of wealthier residents who may displace the prior residents.

Balls! That fucking sucks! Who am I, Scrooge McDuck? No, of course I don’t want to see people getting evicted on Christmas Eve or any other time. That’s horrible. But let’s take a step back and look at this thing.

A community has needs which only the private sector can provide.
And the private sector won’t provide them if they can’t be sure they’ll make a profit. Hey, I don’t like it either, but it’s the way things are. The Times had it right: The 2005 opening of a Sweetbay Supermarket in Midtown was a big deal. Just as it was when a Publix finally opened downtown. It’s simple: even we downtowners require food, toothpaste, and the occasional roll of toilet paper. Do we need another Starbucks? No. Just like we don’t need Dew Cadillac & Hummer taking up 3 square blocks — like they used to before downtown had its resurgence. (Not to mention all the jobs that a grocery store provides. Oh, what about all the aspiring local car salesmen? If you want to sell cars for living then you’re probably an asshole. Sorry.)

Yet another condo is better than failed, dilapidated, empty commercial space.
I don’t know where all these rich condo-dwellers are going to magically apparate from either, and I’d rather have museums or farmer’s markets or homeless shelters or a root canal over another condo. But isn’t new development of any kind better than stagnant space? If you kids are that upset about the empty storefronts on Central Avenue being torn down for completely unaffordable lofts, where the fuck were you when those stores were actually open for business? Similarly, if you don’t like the stores they put in the street level of these high-rises, just exercise your economic power by withholding your almighty dollar from them, too.

A landowner has the right to sell property to the highest bidder.
Common sense, I know, but isn’t this the crux of the matter? I’m all for the richest nation on Earth (that’s still us, right?) providing all her citizens with affordable safe housing, a livable and realistic minimum wage, free quality health care, free quality college education, and all the rest. But until we as a society come to that, we’re stuck with relatively unchecked capitalism. What’s the solution to preventing lower-income families from becoming displaced? How about a law prohibiting property owners from selling to developers? I’d like to believe that’s feasible, or even remotely realistic, but I don’t.

I’m in my third downtown residence and counting. I recognize that I’m lucky, in that I can afford to live here, and that I stuck around after getting kicked out of two apartment complexes that both turned condo on me and a few hundred other people. It truly was a different downtown way back when I first moved in. Go ahead, tell me you liked it better when The Pier was the only thing to do.

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It’s currently spreading all over the interwebs that Senator Larry Craig (R-Idaho) was arrested in an airport restroom in Minnesota for, you know, doing that thing that seems to be all the rage among legislators these days, engaging in lewd conduct. If you read the article, you’ll learn that there’s apparently a very complicated hand and foot jive code that people trying to solicit sex in public restrooms use. It might be said that Craig had a high degree of fluency in said jive. Unfortunately for him, so did the undercover officer whom he was signaling. Aww, crap. I hate it when that happens.

You’ll note the striking similarities between this incident and that of Florida State legislator Bob Allen. Solicitation of sex in a public restroom? Check. Not so hot undercover cop action? Busted. Lame attempt to deflect the whole thing? Check. Except rather than freaking the fuck out and saying a scary black man made him do it, Craig is taking the much more noble approach by simply saying that his actions were misconstrued. Seriously, usually when I’m rubbing my leg up against the leg of the dude in the stall next to me and simulating doin’ it with my fingers, I am merely engaging in male bonding, thereby reaffirming the glowing purity of my heterosexuality and firmly entrenched family values.

Allen could probably learn a little bit about how to deflect these kinds of crises from Craig. That’s why we here at the Splog are willing to spring for their first date at a public restroom of their choosing. Hell, we’ll even throw in some nachos.

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Man, we never get invited anywhere… also, dude looks like hell. Fans and party people packed Flo Lounge in Clearwater for Backstreet Boy Howie Dorough’s birthday party along with fellow BSBer Nick Carter.

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Man, the nightlife scene in Ybor is just brimming with high order asshattery these days. Remind me to go there the next time I’m in the mood to get beat up at the club (or on the way to the club, or in the parking lot of the club, or for just thinking about being at the club). Allow me, for the record, to say well in advance – sort of as a boilerplate kind of thing meant to precede me should I ever, in fact, set foot in “the club” – dear sir or sirs, no, as a matter of fact, I:

1. was not looking at your girl.
2. did not just call your girl ugly.
3. do not have a problem.
4. was not talking to you.
5. have no immediate plans to do anything about it.
6. am also not presently inclined to make something of it.
7. did not bump into you.
8. did not bump into any member of your extended family (including bros, boys, hos, girls, cousins, dogs and homies).
9. am happy to purchase you a suitable replacement for the beverage of yours which I did not spill.
10. was not looking at you.
11. am reasonably certain that I have not engaged in any of the long list of behaviors that might fall under the general rubric of disrespecting.
12. ok, well I was probably talking shit, but there is no way you heard that. Who the fuck are you? Lee Majors?

I think that about covers it. My recommendation is that you print this out and have it laminated. Think of it as another great Splog service. I’d hate to introduce a new service, though, without giving you, dear club-going reader, some hint as to its effectiveness. Please see the attached flowchart for a list of event scenarios involving the handy dandy Ybor fight-avoidance disclaimer.

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Seriously, we’re not tolerating this shit any more. The bay area music scene sucks, and you know why? When you combine amateur hour with a complete lack of accountability, what the fuck do you expect? Show is advertised at 9, but you don’t want to start until midnight? No problem. Will call list not in alphabetical order, so your patrons wait an hour and a half outside? No problem. Want to change the order of bands at the last minute? No problem. Hell, go ahead and switch that shit around a couple of times so the bands don’t even know the order. No problem!

Let’s take a closer look via a case study: Saturday night at the New World Brewery.

1. How does this even qualify as a venue? Decent bar, yes, but a pretty shitty place to see a band. Why not book the Orpheum? Do people actually like lining up in a hallway outside to see bands play? Is that a Florida thing?
2. Um, which band is this now? We went to see Auto!Automatic!! who was supposed to be playing second. With a 9pm advertised show time we figured they’d be up around 10:30-10:45. Except, some brilliant motherfucker decided second wasn’t good, let’s shuffle things around a bit. In fact, let’s put the headliner up before A!A!!. Yeah, that seems good. In fact, let’s not tell the bands so that the band before the headliner actually introduces them as A!A!!, that seems like fun.
3. Hey guys, let’s pay $8 but not complain about it being amateur hour. OK, so I paid $8, which to me is a lot of money for a shitty venue. For this $8 I get to wait until 12:30 to see the band I came to see. In the meantime I get to watch an “acoustic” set by the Dark Romantics. If you’re not familiar with them, here’s the basics: they suck, but they have several hot chicks in the band that you can stare at. But guess what? “Acoustic” means it is only the two dudes, which means not only does it suck, you don’t even have the chicks to stare at. Ouch. I then have to sit through Unwed Sailor, who are apparently famous or some shit. Um, yeah… famous for being boring as shit? Fantastic, another round please so I can drown out the yawnfest. What time is it? Anyone? Am I in the right place?

So, here’s the problem: no one said shit. My guess is that the bands didn’t say shit. The fans sure as shit didn’t. And the bar probably didn’t even give the promoter shit. So it is one big jerkfest for another “successful show in the bay area, high five!” What the fuck? Is anyone even trying? And where can I read a totally bullshit review about this fine evening? Perhaps REAX, where resident fuckstick and head writer Michael “I only wear cheesedick reissue cowboy shirts that I bought from Urban Outfitters” Rabinowitz can write another brilliant piece on something we’ve already heard of and yet act like it is the new fucking hotness. Fail.

Seriously, people, this has to stop. Why do you think bands don’t ever come down here? Think about it, if you’re on tour and the bay area is way the hell out of your way it had better be worth the trip. So you start to review the local scene, check out the venues, read the local music rag. Do you see where I’m going with this? Focus the fuck up and start trying a little harder, there are fans willing to pay money, but if you keep fucking them over we’re all screwed.

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So, in case you haven’t heard there are even more brilliant cuts coming our way courtesy of Charlie Crist. These super homestead exemptions are poised to create even more chaos in the budgets of cities across the state.

“Recreation, law enforcement and fire services certainly won’t make this round of cuts,” Pinellas County Commissioner Ken Welch said. “More jobs, more services, everything. You can’t squeeze blood from a turnip and we’re at that point.”

The total hit for St. Petersburg would be about $10.4-million. In Clearwater, the hit is calculated at $3.6-million. Other totals include $2-million in Largo and $1.2-million in Dunedin.

OK, so the whole blood from a turnip thing is pretty lame, but our boy Ken has a point here - there is no way to make more cuts without services like law and fire taking a hit. And what does the brilliant Charlie Crist have to say about this?

Gov. Charlie Crist suggested voters fire local officials for engaging in scare tactics to defeat a property tax referendum in January.

“Unelect them,” Crist told a group of about a thousand Realtors. “They tried to use fear to influence you, your friends, and your family members.”

Please, God, tell me this fucking asshole is joking. Did he seriously just go on record saying to fire local officials who are being honest about what these cuts mean? Seriously? Is Crist fucking retarded? Did he forget that city budgets, and their cuts, are publicly available documents? Dude, you stupid motherfucker, we can look at the numbers and see what gets cut which means in just a few weeks time you’re going to look like even more of a tool.

I’ll tell you who I’d like to unelect, CHARLIE FUCKING CRIST. This vacation-taking, tax-cutting, fear-mongering assmonkey needs a new line of work… like, maybe gay pr0n. I didn’t think I’d ever say this, but man, I miss Jeb.

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