Still Laboring Under That?

I've started dreaming about eating chocolate kitties, so I thought I would write about something world shaking today...the guys at city hall who have the jobs I dream of closing down the City Market Building again. I always thought being a first class paper pusher was an art in it's own right. But for the City of Roanoke to pay for people to smoke pot all day and come up with these first class ideas...it would be like having that job at Mattel, or Hasbro, designing matchbox cars and playing with them in the aisles. Or getting paid to play with Lincoln Logs or Tinker Toys all day.

I agree with the decision to let those who cared to, drop acid and bring us the Art Museum...it is a truly beautiful building. But Roanoke, we should have known something was up when the City 'redesigned' the Market Building the FIRST time and left the upper floor looking like Spike's on a Saturday night. It always made me think of a friend's basement where 'XYZ' practiced in high school. I wasn't sure it was ok to wander around up there without a tetanus shot.

Then, They blew more money replacing the tables, chairs and floors without addressing any of the essentials: the colonies of rodentia living it up in there. (They voted FOR the new decor.) What's more cheerful than hard, metal chairs and a floor the color of mud?

It was my impression that the Center in the Square remade Roanoke's City Market to attract people downtown. In 1982 one only went downtown to look at real, live hookers and paper blowing down the sidewalk, a bit like a mini-Chicago on vacation. Since then, A Vibrant Downtown has grown up, attracting people, festivals, money, enthusiasm, admiration.

The City of Roanoke has consistently tried to fuck that up by messing with the Market Building and the lovely people who work and own businesses there. What would the successful merchants on the Market know about business and the Art of Charm?

But then, I am still laboring under the impression that Roanoke would like to look as nice as it really is: City Government excepted.


The only cure for this is a 'Jamaica Joe's' and a Hissee Fit.

And a Patridge in a Pear Tree

I came home yesterday, and there was a pack of Oreos on the kitchen counter. I've known for quite some time that Echo, one of the orphans, could draw a passable imitation of my signature, and that Ratty likes to curl up in the car if the windows are left open. But I was shaken to discover the extent of their talents. Chocolate sends me into a coma: what were they going to do with that time?

Eventually, I will write about something besides cats and my eating obsessions; when the state of the world changes enough to be noticed above these catastrophes (no pun intended.) Do any of You really think that the Gulf oil spill has been cleaned up? That our politicians are doing something about the economy besides checking their shares in Citi Bank? That a diamond sold today has been interrogated by de Beers and has sworn it is not from Sierra Leone?  No, my Dears, these are all fictional stories and much less interesting than wondering what the cats need to do with me at home that they can't get accomplished while I am gone