Selkie
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Posts posted by Selkie
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I am absolutely smoking mad about these ordinances, which are right next to communities friends and I live in. Emphases are mine.
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Crime-free apartment law eyed
Landlords liable: Owners to evict criminals in R.L. Beach
By Alec Junge
SPECIAL TO THE NEWS SUN
ROUND LAKE BEACH — A new ordinance will help move criminals out of town with the cooperation of landlords, officials believe.
At Monday night's Village Board meeting, policeman Paul Grace outlined the vision of the crime-free multifamily housing ordinance. The goal is to prevent crime from getting a foothold in the community by using landlords to help kick out people who are charged with crimes.
"You want to eradicate it when it is an egg rather then when it is monster," Grace told trustees.
He noted that currently police are arresting people, but offenders continue to cause problems throughout the community if their crimes are not deemed serious enough to keep them jailed.
The key element of the proposed ordinance is to have landlords evict tenants if there is any person residing in the household who has been charged with two or more nuisance crimes in a six-month period, according to Mayor Richard Hill.
(Selkie's note: Note that it's charges rather than convictions that are the deciding factor. Reprehensible even if it were convictions, but doubly so if all it takes are charges which could later be proven baseless).
The examples of nuisance crimes include battery, disorderly conduct, theft and other felony or misdemeanor offenses, Grace said.
Hill noted that the village has approximately 600 to 700 rental properties. Most of them are single-family homes rented out by homeowners.
"A lot of people who are criminal types come disproportional from rental properties" Hill said.
The village is basing the ordinance on what is currently being enforced and successfully implemented in Schaumburg.
"It has shown to be enforceable and we are not concerned with the legality," Hill said.
The ordinance is to be gradually phased in this year as individual landlords and property management companies will be required to take an eight-hour course on the ordinance and how the landlord can assist the process.
Hill stressed the move will aid landlords in that they will learn about techniques they can use to determine if a potential renter is criminal risk using such tools as background checks. He also noted that the meetings will be mandatory.
The village will use the rental inspection as way to track the program and help fund it as well, according to Hill.
One of the strongest measures of the proposed ordinance is enabling the village the power to red tag a property and force removal of the occupants if the tenant or the landlord refuse to cooperate.
Hill said the proposed ordinance was previously discussed in two committee meetings and is expected to come up for a vote at the Jan. 9 meeting at Village Hall.
Original article here:
http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/newssun...w14roundlak.htm
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Lookie what Santa K sent me - my very own customized House of the Dead II creature! He'll fit in perfectly amongst the various demons infesting my toy shelf, once I can bear to take him away from my desktop and move him onto the toy shelf. The paint job is amazing on it - this photo does it no justice, but it's the best I could do on this cold and wet Chicago morn:
Thanks, Santa K! I love him!
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Kris, we'll miss you. Best of wishes in your future endeavors!
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I know what you mean, Selkie. Isnt there a line that goes "Art is a jealous mistress" and will therefore stand for no other.
A most appropriate quote, under the circumstances. My mistress is very jealous, and I'm trying hard not to think about the ominous noises emanating from the kiln during tonight's firing. There are no possible good outcomes from sounds like those - only bad, very bad, and less bad. Either the cone broke (a sign the kiln sitter is misbehaving), the kiln elements jumped out of their grooves (in light of other problems, a sign that electrical maintenance is required), or the ceramics exploded (which is what it sounded like, and in which case I get to chisel out large sections of the kiln walls and floor). The fact that I accidentally turned the kiln up too far too fast is yet another Sign that I'm out of sync with it, which is not comforting. Normally I can do an entire firing flawlessly just by watching the color of the light it emits and trusting my instincts. Not any more, it seems. Time to get out the porcupine quills and start bleeding....
And I understand about the blood remark, too - in some cultures, blood neednt flow, but pain there must be.The KG requires both, it seems, but above all blood - and always the blood of the artist, not a substitute. Bone, too, if one can spare it, but above all, blood. My kiln may be small, electric, and not much larger than a toaster, but neither it nor the mistress it serves have forgotten the connection to the primal forces it houses.
But perhaps if you dance around it (I forget where I came across this idea), it may do. After all, dancing can be difficult.He he he he. My mentor and I have often joked about - but never performed - a "naked kiln dance." Perhaps now is the time to start.
Sorry to hear you're not feeling well, but still having to slave away. Hope all goes well for you.
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Thanks for the reminder as to why I haven't gone to the DC Boards in ages. Yikes. Even if I could get past the eye-bleedingly awful design, there's no content to justify the wear and tear on my eyes and brain.
A shame, because I remember the heyday of the Authority board, and I have many warm, fuzzy memories about it.
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Hmm, I wonder if there are DVDs of Eerie, Indiana about...?
Yes. I think the set contains an unaired episode or two, but don't quote me on that.
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Feel for me. I do custom action figures for a friend who is the biggest Blue Beetle fan imaginable. Looking at that costume, all I can say is that it's a good thing he's a very dear friend....
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My jealousy knows no bounds, Shawn. That's an awesome figure and a great price.
All these holiday sales are killing my wallet, and causing my toy shelf to groan. I ordered that Cthulhu from Tower without searching through their other listings, and already regret it. I *should* have bought that Abe Sapien....
Oh, the things I want to buy, but I've been a Very Bad Girl this season. :ph34r: 'd already bought presents for everyone on my list weeks ago, so it's been easier than usual to justify spending on my own collection. And spend, and spend, and spend. Then a friend called yesterday to say that an out of the way comic shop he visited occasionally had put all their 12" Sideshow BtVS figures on sale for $10/ea. I swore I was going to resist temptation, but at that price, my self-control weakened. At least I didn't tell him to buy one of each....
Where I'm going to store this stuff, I have no earthly clue. I can't imagine how you guys with your 18" Hellboys do it.
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lyra, words can not convey how appreciative I am of your post. I dutifully trotted over to Amazon to order Mad Man's Drum, because one look at the cover convinced me I need to own it. That alone would make my happy, but it wouldn't be enough to make me cry like a baby.
When I was a child, one of THE seminal events of my childhood was reading a wordless illustrated book about a child and a flying horse. I loved that book. No, more than that - I treasured it. I couldn't even explain why, exactly. I felt this weird and powerful connection to it, and carried it around with me. I had to have been a little thing at the time - old enough that I was reading regular prose books, but not so old that carrying around an illustrated one felt odd, even though it felt a little strange - and somehow more magical - that it contained no words at all. As so often happens to childhood totems, it disappeared some time along my path to adulthood.
Over the years I've tried everyone, and every place, I could think of to identify it. Even a close friend who possesses a startling knowledge of children's books featuring animals, hadn't the foggiest clue. Absolutely no dice. No one I contacted had even heard of such a thing, let alone had the first clue about where to start looking.
Lo and behold, under "Customers Who Bought This Book" there it was - "The Silver Pony: A Story in Pictures", by the same author. That's the book. I can feel it in my bones, just from looking at the cover image. I was even able to buy a used copy of the old hardcover, just like I had when I was a child. Shipped, it's under $6.
A thousand thanks.
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Where's the poll option "Doing whatever it takes to hide from my crazy family"?
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I want my mother to regain her mind.
I want my father to find the happiness that has eluded him his entire life.
I want my best friend to achieve all the success in the world as he works to reinvent himself.
I want Conejo - the god who watches over hounds - to make Cally's passage to rejoin her brother a peaceful one.
I want a new body. Barring that, a brain jar with functioning eyes and robotic arms will suffice.
I want independence.
I want Frog-goroth to rise.
I want the sculptures rattling around in my brain to take physical form in some reasonably approximation of the way they look in my head.
Is all this too much to ask for? :o
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The actual death/resurrection of Jesus (I don't have to spoiler tag that, do I?) is one of the more emotionally-resonant, powerful pieces of the Christian mythos anyway, so the use of aspects of it in the book never offended me at all, even as a reasonably dedicated non-Christian <snip>
Is tonight "Agree with Mark" night, or what?! I agree about the power of the Jesus resurrection even to a Cranky Ol Atheist such as myself. It's aspects like the rampant misogyny, I find troubling, whether on a superficial or metaphorical level. How present or obvious they were in the books, I don't recall. I suspect that they're the reasons I didn't like the book as a child, even if I couldn't articulate what it was about them that bothered me.
I recognize that the movie is well-crafted, but its message is not for me, and without its message, it's a visually ambitious but flawed high fantasy - and that's a genre that doesn't do a whole lot for me most of the time. I'm the heretic who didn't even like the Lord of the Rings books, after all.
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But now you mention it, fuck aye. The very very end of the final Dark Tower book worked for me - rather satisfying in its inevitability.
A resounding Yes. I thought the very, very end was exactly right. I loved it so much that I tend to look somewhat more kindly on even the messy parts of the series that preceded it.
But almost everything else between the end of Wizard And Glass and that point was absolutely shit - either badly-written, horribly-conceived, or, more frequently, some ghastly combination of the two.I think there would have been hope for Wolves of the Calla (at least up until the point it All Went Horribly Wrong, and I'm sure you know exactly what I'm talking about), especially if a brave editor had hacked out a good 2/3 of it. As it was published, I again am forced to agree with your assessment about everything between W&G and the so-called epilogue.
I understand your venom. There's so much that's right about the earlier books that the series had a real chance at being a landmark in the genre and even, if I may be so bold, American literature. The frustration comes from potential wasted.
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Cool, Lovecraft is most excellent. I like how sometimes in his stories he makes it a definite point to tell you that it is at that precise moment where our protagonist loses his fucking mind.
:lol: :lol: :lol:
I dunno. We'll see what mood strikes me next. And with AG being over 500 pages I'm sure we'll have some time before I have to make that decision.FWIW, while I think American Gods is the better of the two, it's Neverwhere I return to like a comfortable set of slippers.
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Tower Records is having a 50% off sale on toys, and code USCL1JF55 will yield you another 10% off! That Cthulhu bust will finally be mine! Everything's coming up Lovecraft! Bwa ha ha ha ha!
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Lou, glad you're reading American Gods. It's an amazing work. Going to follow it with Neverwhere?
Mark, my opinion of the later Dark Tower books almost exactly mirrors yours. I'd be a bit harsher in my criticism, but fundamentally we agree.
<clutches book, and looks about furtively>
The volume of Lovecraft short stories I ordered from Amazon just arrived. Don't expect to see or hear from me for a good, long while. I'm forever giving away my Lovecraft books to gain more converts, so I've been without for a while. My only regret is that I didn't order the companion volume to go with it!
<scuttles into the darkness for a dose of madness and mayhem>
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Just returned from seeing Narnia with my mother. She saw a charming children's action-adventure fantasy. I saw a very heavy-handed, misogynist Christian allegory. I suspect viewer reactions will depend heavily on which movie they saw, and which they would prefer to see.
So if you're wondering whether the Christian allegory was watered down or removed, I can resoundingly say no. My memories of the book are too foggy to say how faithful it was to the book, but I can't imagine the allegory being made any more obvious than what we saw on screen. I'm actually glad of that, in general principle. I hate when movies strip layers of meaning from the books they're based on, even if I might have enjoyed this specific movie more without the subtext.
Aslan looks marvelous most of the time. Really, really marvelous in the close-ups. Most of the rest of the creatures were far less convincing, although not bad. Far too much felt artificial for me to buy into the surface level fantasy adventure aspects.
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"The store-bought components in the outer box . . ." A LeapPad Learning System!
". . . closed inner box contains something that could unleash chaos . . ." A LeapPad-enabled version of the Necronomicon?!?!
<wipes tears of laughter from her face>
Oh, wolfram, that idea is all kinds of brilliant. If ever there were a product that this consumerist culture still "needs", it's a LeapPad Necronomicon. Start those kiddies on the path to chaos, destruction, and misery early, I say. OTOH, if such a device had been created, there's no way my recipient would have gotten it. I would have ended the world long before the Secret Santa exchange!
Thanks for the giggles.
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You've been having to stay up all night killing demons to prevent the end of civilization as we know it, too, eh? Funny, thought it was just me....
2005 was the year in which I joined the undead(*) without any of the peripheral benefits(**). My mother became infected by a demon who periodically turns her into a clone of Drusilla without the fashion sense. My father became invisible. My ex decided to give up his dreams of becoming a superhero and become a Watcher (really). The direction of my life can be summed up by a song title from "Once More, With Feeling." My views on religion and self are elucidated in a brief exchange from "Becoming." If I still possess a soul - something which has been called into doubt - Joss Whedon owns it.
Toss in some Lovecraftian beasties periodically taking over my brain and hands to use my body to create their physical forms in clay, and my playing host to a part of Dead Men, and the inescapable conclusion is that my life has taken a turn into the horror genre.
I said I'd like House to be my physician but would rather not need his services. Same sentiments?I wish. Unfortunately, I need his services, but alas, his being fictional is something of a impediment.
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(*) I'm ice cold, so pale skinned as to be translucent, nocturnal, allergic to sunlight, drink most of my nutrition, possessed of a spookily heightened sense of smell, and now no longer bleed even when a needle is inserted into my veins (seriously - it's a great way to freak out lab techs). What other conclusion is there? I even wear black most of the time, and my brooding skills would put Angel to shame!
Ironically, in the real world one of the best ways to alleviate many of the physical symptoms would be to consume blood, but I can't bear the taste.
(**) Where's my immortality and super-strength, to say nothing of the power of flight and a pet pack of wolves? I want the WHOLE vampire package, not just the unpleasant parts! I'll miss garlic, I will, but at this point that would be a small price to pay to get the good stuff.
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Red's guess is closer than Kinki's, but neither of you have got it yet. The choice will be blindingly obvious in retrospect. If I give out any additional clues, someone will figure it out and blow the surprise. I was really stuck for what to give this individual, but searching through old posts yielded one message that left me gasping at the perfection of sending something I had completed two days before we learned to whom we were giving. Clearly forces even higher than our esteemed forum host had a hand in the selection process.
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Mailed my yesterday. If the world ends in the next couple of days, we'll know its recipient opened it before the holiday. :o
The store-bought components in the outer box are safe enough to open early, but the closed inner box contains something that could unleash chaos if opened before the solstice at the earliest.... -
I disqualified Rome on the grounds that it's a miniseries
Unless your definition of "miniseries" differs considerably from the one I'm familiar with (the definition used here is as good as any), no it isn't. Season 2 has already been confirmed, and will be in production early next year.
At the time it was released, it was a miniseries. Besides, season 2 isn't being broadcast until 2007, which is sufficient time for me to consider it a sequel rather than a continuation. Given that I wanted to declare it a miniseries, that's good enough for me. :D
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The formal quiz doesn't seem to work with NN, but I'm sure my pet serpent can confirm that I'm a Slytherin all the way.
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It was the best of years, it was the worst of .... No, wait. It was the worst of years, period. 2005 was the year when I discovered my life is too close to Buffy the Vampire Slayer for comfort, and wished against all logic that Dr. House were a real person. You guys are probably sick of hearing about the specifices, and I know I'm stick of hearing myself talk about it, so let's head straight to the parts that were good and forget the rest, 'k?
Best Movie: For once, a hands down winner in Layer Cake, although The Constant Gardener, Good night, and Good Luck, and Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Wererabbit deserve honorable mentions. Where was Daniel Craig when Hollywood was casting Constantine?!
Best Play: Didn't get out much this year, but even if I had I doubt that anything would have been able to top Wicked. i was skeptical but hopeful when I set foot in the theater to see a musical about the untold story of the witches of Oz, but I was utterly and thoroughly won over by what appeared on stage. Anyone who can see "Defying Gravity" and not want to stand up and cheer has no soul.
Best New Television Series: Prison Break. It's every bit as cheesy, hokey, and contrived as 24, but it's a fun way to spend an hour each week.
(In case you're wondering, I disqualified Rome on the grounds that it's a miniseries).
Best New Television Series .... To Mock! Bones. There's a good, solid idea at the core of this show, but thus far it's been buried under atrocious writing, ill-thought out character development, fX so bad it belongs in the 1950's, and some "what were they think!" acting. When David Boreanaz is hands-down the best actor on the show, you know it's in trouble. This is one I can't miss.
Best Returning Television Series: Arrested Development, with honorable mentions to The Shield and House.
Best Comic or GN: Epileptic is as good as the hype would have one believe. Who'd'a'thunk it?
Best Music. I'm feeling :icon_redface: to admit that I hadn't listened to Nick Cave until this year. Omission rectified, with gusto.
News for fools
in Bring the Noise
Posted
What terrifies me is that Schaumburg, a town with a similar ordinance already on the books is adjacent to where I live. Schaumburg is a wealthy (not super-rich, but very comfortable) suburb whose tax base is supported by several of the largest shopping malls in America. It is not a crime-ridden community trying desperately to rid itself of violence. Round Lake Beach, from what I've seen of it, is a sleepy little semi-rural community in northern Illinois that doesn't exactly strike me as the hood. It's a few towns away from where some friends of mine live.
Doesn't it just? There've been plenty of studies indicating how disproportionately minorities are charged with crimes, many of which are later dismissed. I'd be suitably appalled even if convictions were the basis for evictions, but charges? Even worse. Trumping up grounds for charges is way, way too easy for me not to think that people wouldn't try it to get rid of "undesireable" neighbors. There's been a heavy wave of immigrants from Mexico over the last few years, and I can't help but believe that's what's sparking these "oh, we're protecting our residents" ordinances. :icon_evil:
I don't know, because it sounds absolutely illegal to me, and I can't imagine how it has survived court challenge. Of course, as I bolded in the original article, apparently Round Lake Beach doesn't even care if their actions are legal.
Check out this little blurb about Schaumburg's ordinance. Exactly who determines what constitutes "an unreasonably high" number of police calls?
http://www.lcaril.com/news/news¬es/It...204-21-2003.htm