I just returned from the St. Petersburg Main Library empty handed. I didn’t have the identification to get a library card. They require, in lieu of a properly addressed drivers’ license, a utility bill or lease, and silly me just took a paycheck and two other bills addressed to me.

Anyhow, something I saw there bothered me, and I wanted to vent. Thumbing through the newspapers, I found a copy of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution from this week. The centerpiece focused on the Little League World series.

(I would link to the article, but that’s a seperate rant. “Please tell us a little about yourself,” my butt. They could’ve gotten some ads in front of me - and whoever followed the link, but they chose to pry into my privacy and farm for my email address.)

The main photograph was a close-up of the face of a young Columbus, Ga., player. He was crying. It moved me, no doubt. It told the story of Columbus’ loss to a Japanese team. Fine. But was it really necessary? I’m not so sure.

I lay out pages for a living. I see a lot of photos, and this one had a candid power to it. But, as a designer, I might have tried to put myself in the cleats of this young man. How do you think his friends treated him after thousands of copies of him “fighting back tears,” as the caption put it, circulated. Do you think his friends consoled him? I doubt it. More likely, he got clowned. Big time.

Whether it’s right or not, tears equate with weakness for men. That’s just the way it is. I pity this young man, who was publicly humiliated at an age when kids are just learning what being a young man means.

Wait, it gets worse. The AJC, no doubt thinking it clever, put that quote from Tom Hanks’ character in A League of Their Own in prominent type about the photo.

“There’s no crying in baseball.”

I really can’t think of a more insensitive thing the newspaper could have done to this kid. He’s shattered after having lost a series that obviously meant the world to him. In his lowest depths of disappointment, they snap his photograph. Then, they top it with a snarky, taunting quote about crying from a movie about girls playing baseball, and print 300,000 copies for posterity.

How, as an 11- or 12-year-old boy, would you feel?

Men, believe it or not, are sensitive creatures. Their fragile, stoic façade means the world to them, and that should be respected.

When I moved into my current apartment, I held a bit of apprehension about living directly across from a fire station. Still, you’d be surprised how quickly one can adjust to tune out sirens at odd and even hours.

As an added bonus, whenever a major storm brews, this shows up. It’s an urban search and rescue unit semi. Even though forecasters expect Tropical Storm Ernesto to not have a major impact on the St. Petersburg area, I find it strangely comforting.

I read a lot of job boards as a matter of habit. Often, I find an item that offers a little unintended comedy.

This job is not for the faint of heart. We are a small, but hardy newsroom and expect our staff members to cover news, features and sports plus mulitiple special sections. We are looking for someone who likes to tear into a story and not let go until it is drained of facts.

Emphasis mine. I know what they meant, but what they wrote is something altogether different.

Ed. note: This is the latest in a when-I-feel-like-it series of meditations on “third places,” spots to spend time that aren’t home or work.

Starbucks takes a lot of flak, but I say cut it some slack. Of course, that attitude shows my bias toward coffee - if it’s hot and black, I’m down. Set aside for a second criticisms of the business model (e.g., they’re an evil globalhypermegacorp, they burn their coffee, they focus on marketing incidentals like CDs as much as coffee). Forget all that, and think about the atmosphere.

For today’s visit, I spent $2 on a grande “bold” coffee. If I had wanted to go sugar and fat hog-wild, I could’ve dropped $5 on a frilly drink. Either way, I’m still under the threshold of a 3rd dimension: about the cost of the ticket to a movie. And, as when I see a movie, I can tie myself up for a few hours in Starbucks. If I break down and get a second drink to fuel a particularly involved writing session, the out-of-pocket remains under the 3rd dimension bar.

Starbucks generally encourages patrons to come in, order an expensive drink and leave. That’s how they maximize the per-customer revenue. Yet, they don’t seem to mind people hanging out doing 3rd dimension activities. As I look around, I see people on their laptops (the wi-fi has it’s own, seperate price, unlike a lot of more “local” coffee joints), a couple playing cards, and others reading.

Unlike other locally-owned coffeehouses, I’ve never seen a Starbucks barista ask a patron to leave because that person spent more time than money. I don’t doubt it could happen, but I’ve never seen it. Starbucks makes too much money, I think, to worry about patrons lazing about. The important difference is that, as I laze about writing, I’ve seen perhaps two dozen other patrons walk through the door, and walk right back out with their Frappuccinos.

All in all, Starbucks makes a great 3rd dimension, provided you don’t mind the commercialism. You don’t have to buy a CD or the latest Tazo gift pack. Headphones easily drown out the self-promoting music, which is more than I can say for the locally-owned coffee spots here in St. Petersburg, The Globe and Cafe Bohemia (which has free wi-fi but, mysteriously, no Web site). Those places have their own charms, but I usually can’t hear myself think when I’m in them, particularly on weekends.

At times, I have attention-deficit troubles around the house. The TV needs babysitting (it’s not gonna watch itself), or the dishes need doing. My Starbucks is a short drive away, and it allows me to dodge distractions long enough to actually finish a blog post or an email to a friend, or whatever.

I tried checking out the new video from The Roots on Mr. Murdoch’s Web site MySpace this morning. This message greeted me:

MySpace.com Video Support

It appears that you are accessing Myspace.com from a location that is not authorized to view our licensed videos. Please go to the United States or its territories and try again.

It comfirms my long-held belief that Florida really does exist in a world of its own.

But seriously, folks. The referring site, now that I pay attention, says “sorry Mac users, we will have links for you shortly.” Great. I can play any Web video on my beat-up iBook, but only if I can get around the browser sniffers to actually get to the video. I had the same problem with the NCAA tournament last Spring. All of their video was in WMV format, which I have software to play. The software, however, isn’t built into my browser.

Sucks to be me. Damn, and I needed something to occupy my time while I’m tuning out coverage of a certain overblown 10-year-old murder investigation.

Ed. note: This is the latest in a when-I-feel-like-it series of meditations on “third places,” spots to spend time that aren’t home or work.

The best record store in St. Petersburg is Daddy Kool Records. Bananas Music has a better selection (actually an enormous selection), but something about Daddy Kool reminds me of record stores of my teens and twenties: dusty affairs with big selections of new and used CDs and vinyl.

What makes a record store a third dimension? As I wrote before, the barrier for entry falls at or under the cost of a movie ticket. In short, cheap, public ways to kill time.

A record store may not offer a lot of stimulus for the non-music fanatic. But, a person incline to purchase anything from jazz to country to hip-hop can spend hours thumbing through stacks. I fall into that category, and shudder to think how many weeks of my life I’ve spent digging through dusty crates of music. In college in East Lansing, Mich., I went to Flat, Black & Circular so much they could’ve charged me rent. After I moved to the Ann Arbor, Mich., area my disposable income went to Wazoo Records and PJ’s.

Wait, you keep talking about spending cash. That doesn’t sound like a viable third dimension.

Yes, I’ve dropped more than my share of ducats in record stores - and probably your share too. Just as often, I’d spend time but no money. The soft, dusty act of running my fingers through vinyl LPs offers a meditative comfort. The clacks of jewel cases as I speed through the used CD selection lends a sort of inspired energy.

Today, I spent $16 and two hours in Daddy Kool. If I hadn’t gotten greedy, I could’ve just as easily spent $8 (the theoretical threshold for a third dimension). The titles I bought today: The Coup’s fourth release
Party Music and The Replacements’ Don’t Tell a Soul.

A big-boxish mall store might have stocked both titles, but not for $8 a piece. A big-boxer also wouldn’t have offered the kind of personal service that a store like Daddy Kool can. The clerk at Daddy Kool gave honest, informed opinions on each. He also hipped me to a couple upcoming concerts he knew I’d want to know about. Of course, being on a first-name basis with the guy behind the counter helps.

Readers probably noticed that I opened this post with the term “record store,” even though vinyl long ago lapsed as the dominant format. Old habits are hard to break. As digital distribution grows into dominance, I hope iTunes Music Store and other sites don’t force me to give up the record story experience. It stands as one of my favorite third dimensions, and clicking through the tracks on a download site just doesn’t have the same feel.

P.S.: Daddy Kool will be moving from their Central Avenue location to a yet-to-be disclosed new storefront at the end of September. A developer plans to raze the whole block to put up yet another condo tower. I wish them luck with their move.

The AP has another story today on artist holdouts finally giving in to digital music distribution. From the article, this stuck in my craw:

“We’ve always thought certain artists put out albums that aren’t meant to be compilations with 50 other artists,” said Ed “Punch” Andrews, manager for both (Bob) Seger and Kid Rock. “We’re hoping at some point albums become important again like they were in the past 30 years.”

Wah!, people aren’t listening to our entire LP. Wah!, artists are only getting a dime per download. Almosts makes you want to toss your iPod. Oh, wait, did I say iPod? I meant cookies.

People haven’t been listening to entire releases since the creation of a) shitty songs that pad otherwise decent LPs

The extreme Islamist ideology surfaced again today with the arrest in Britain of 21 suspects in an ambitious plot to make yet another point through indiscriminate death. The only term that comes to mind: cowardice.

The quality I least understand about Islam’s dark side is its gift for finding recruits that will blow themselves up for it. It’s a world view, a religious system and a political force. Like any other ideology, Islam answers some questions and leaves others begging. Even if it came from the lips of the Prophet (PBUH), surely man’s interpretation and implementation falls short of perfect and godly.

I talk passionately about the Western world view, a sort of spiritualism I subscribe to and this cobbled-together democratic system we have in the United States. That doesn’t mean I’d self-immolate (and take hundreds with me whose only crime is one of bad circumstance) for those ideals.

Would you strap yourself with explosives and walk into a crowd of civilians for representative democracy? Want to sign up to take down an airplane full of innocents for capitalism? Even for the most rabid pro-U.S. hawks, I bet the answer is no. And I would also wager that the majority of Muslims would give the same reply if asked to die for Islam.

Suicidal evangelism smacks of cowardice and delusion. The broadest base of Islam needs to step up and forcefully condemn this wicked streak of extremism. Now. The U.S. and its allies can wage a war on terrorism until they run out of bullets, but they cannot win until Islam finishes this conversation within itself.

PS: This post focuses on Islam’s failings, but don’t for a minute think casualties at Western hands are ignored in the war on terrorism. Think of the thousands of Iraqi and U.S. lives we could have saved if Congress had authorized billions to solve U.S. energy dependency, instead of for launching a war (in part) to sustain it. Of course, then Saddam would still be in power…

Sharon’s a pica pole. For those unfamiliar with the term, imagine a ruler used by printers for detailed work and sizing up type. It measures in picas (six to an inch) and points (12 to a pica). A pair of edges hook from either side of one end, and the other end rounds to a blunt point. The metal shaft makes a satisfying clang when I drop it on a flat surface.

Sharon and her kind have lost their usefulness

Twenty-five years ago this month, two things happened to change the landscape of how we access and experience media: the first PCs took shape and MTV debuted.

Music Television’s breakneck editing rippled through broadcast media. Think of how fast even network news programs move now, with splashy graphics, quick cuts and a loud backbeat. The channel set the tone for a generation (or at least a marketing label for one).

Computers quickly permeated all parts of our lives. Of course, the computers we now live with no longer look like their early brethren. My two-year-old telephone has more computing power than the first PCs, and doesn’t need a tape drive. The PSP my nephew manages to walk and play at the same time takes graphics further than few imagined in the early Reagan era. I see commercials for Internet-enabled refrigerators.

The accelerations of pop culture and computing since the birth of MTV and the PC have set the scene for progressive, new ideas. In computing, witness the speed and vitality with which the Web has evolved. It offers a richness of experience full of video, audio and text, all on the device of our choosing. Its interactivity has touched fields as far-ranging as entertainment and medicine and politics.

Culturally, MySpace enjoys the same space as MTV shortly after its modest debut. Though it fills that space in a different mobbish-mentality way, it owes a debt to its cable TV progenitor. The lines have blurred between MTV, and the culture it represents, and computers, and the platform they offer.

That convergence has its downsides. People find it easy to withdraw from direct social interaction, preferring instead to blog, record video to share on YouTube or link to “friends” on MySpace. Our attention spans change and shorten as we get used to tuning out blinking banner ads, yet seek out short action-packed Web movies featuring the latest, hottest car model. An all-media all-the-time culture also emphasizes consumerism. That can crowd out other, more altruistic, instincts.

The growth and convergence of culture and computing now have an inevitability to them. As we grow into Web space, the braiding of the two becomes tighter. I guess we’ll have to wait 25 years for the hindsight to know whether that intertwining makes us better or worse.