Letters to Sg

Like the paper boy in the 80's classic "Better Off Dead", PARKatlanta "wants its two dollars".

When it was announced last year that the City of Atlanta was bringing in a private contractor to handle parking enforcement, the story may have been lost on many Atlantans. For starters, when the word “parking” is in the headline, most people probably skip whatever follows (this means, by the way, that if you are still reading this post you are either a friend, family member, or someone that resents being referred to as “most people”). Just look at today’s local paper: popular stories include an escaping circus Zebras, Prince William’s hair, and analysis on whether or not Tiger Woods has a meaningful relationship with the concept most of us know as “reality”. News about parking, I’m afraid, just doesn’t move the meter.

Eventually, all good press releases translate in to some sort of action, and inevitably a new parking enforcement program was launched. Under the new system, the City of Atlanta is no longer in the business of writing parking tickets. Instead, the City receives a guaranteed $5.5 million dollars per year and their new private partner- known affectionately as PARKatlanta, has the ability to write as many parking tickets as they legally can. And let’s face it: if you wrote a $5.5 million dollar check, you too would be eager to write a bunch of $45 parking tickets to recoup your investment.

The moral of my story? Park with care. PARKatlanta isn’t going anywhere, and they’re definitely going to be meter-maiding us all to oblivion in an effort to make some money on their investment. If a sign says no parking, it means that you shouldn’t park there. If there’s a meter, you need to feed it. Two hour parking means, sadly, two hour parking. One giant parking bummer, I know.

And, of course, you could always take MARTA.

We’ve been meaning to try this for a while. Last night we grabbed a quick dinner out before hitting the Plaza to see The Fantastic Mr. Fox. It went well, but this morning didn’t and I think we may wait a while before trying a weeknight movie again. I enjoyed the movie more on the first viewing that I have any other Wes Anderson movie since Rushmore.

Whew. It’s been a crazy week. Your mother and I have been taking turns for a couple of weeks now, one of us picking you up and bringing you home, the other staying at work until 10, 11, 12…. On Thursday you went to spend the night at Maddie’s house so we could both work. (We ended up being at our respective offices until about 1:30am.) You’ve been a champ about it, and we appreciate it.

You’re such a big kid these days. There’s a lot I’d like to describe for the record, and I’m having a hard time knowing where to start. We’ll come back to that.

Music. We have been listening to music in the car lately. Via last.fm, here are the most-played artists in the past week:

1. David Bowie
2. The Knife
3. Iggy Pop
4. Air
5. Boards of Canada
6. Queen
7. Portishead
8. Sufjan Stevens
9. Van Halen
10. Massive Attack

News. President Obama canceled the space program. Or something. I’m sure that you’ll know all of this by the time you read it here, but I think this is a good time for a brief recap. Our nation first went to space in the 1960s. We were having some insecurity about whether we were the superest superpower, and we were worried that the U.S.S.R. would get into space first and either drop bombs on us or else just make us look like jerks. So we rounded up all of our top Nazi scientists and made the space program. And it was good.

Since the 60s, we’ve been kind of goofing around. We landed some people on the Moon (and brought them back home), made a space station in orbit with international partners, and put up some very useful satellites. The best of these satellites are part of the Global Positioning System, which lets me search for nearby Starbucks locations when I’m in a strange neighborhood.

But the central point is that space so far has been a huge disappointment. There have been no sexy aliens, no quirky parallel universes and absolutely zero pitched laser battles. And over the same time period, we have done a really good job of making these things up in the forms of TV shows and major motion pictures. Until we have reached the point where the space program is really not necessary.

Floridians and fanboys are going to be upset about the funding cut. But Floridians and fanboys are always upset about something. They’ll have to face the facts, and the facts are: (i) space is not actually cool; (ii) the space program is lousy economic stimulus; and (iii) our economy is about to do one of those numbers where the stuffy university dean climbs sputtering out of the swimming pool, sees something shocking and then loses his balance, arms pinwheeling, his mouth and eyes comically wide, as his center of gravity moves slowly back, back, back until he’s back in the pool again.

Gotta run.

However it is that your culture/religion/workplace celebrates the winter solstice, I hope it’s merry and bright. (Unless that’s a bad thing in your neighborhood/cult/whatevs, in which case I wish you luck with that.) Here’s some holiday music.

[Reader’s Tip: Exhibit C is the best Exhibit.]

Exhibit A: The other day, while walking down the sidewalk, you told me that you only wanted to hold my hand while we were crossing streets. When I dropped your hand after we crossed the next street, you said “thank you for listening to my conscience, dad.”

Exhibit B: Later that night, I was going for a glass of water before bed, having just finished reading “The Call of Cthulhu”. As my foot hit the squeaky spot in the darkened hall outside your room, you let out one, fully unrestrained “yeargh!” It wasn’t a scared sound. It sounded like adrenaline, and it got my heart racing. Nothing followed.

So I’m settling back into bed after having some water and I think maybe I hear the sounds of little feet hitting the floor. The following internal colloquy ensues:

Ok, maybe that’s evidence that I’m weird.

Exhibit C:

Sg,

That sound sampled in that one song is the sound of a dial-up modem connecting. “Dial up” was a way of… You know what — nevermind. This will not be on the test.