A Simple Way To Go Faster Than Light That Does Not Work

Some young punks have apparently been freely harassing Davis Square residents for some time now. That thread begins with someone describing how he was assaulted and slapped around by them, apparently in broad daylight and with people all around. The many comments that follow form a story about how this same group has been making trouble in the square for a while now, apparently trying to intimidate people into giving them money or valuables through insults, threats, and even chasing, shoving or hitting them. It sounds like the police frequently get involved (as they did during the OP's altercation) but so far they haven't been able to proactively do much about their presence.

Their anarchic behavior reminds me of how the PCs get through life in the Grand Theft Auto games. If nothing more interesting is going on, you can just wander around thumping people for the lulz, and if your star rating gets too high and a cop nabs you, you suffer a minor inconvenience for a minute before getting back into the action. (One comment seems to confirm that the kids were back to messing with people about 30 minutes after the OP's incident.) Meanwhile, everyone else in the game just sort of mills around. This makes me sad.

The online response is more heartening. Among the "hey I saw those guys too" comments are some pretty good suggestions about what to do next. (And a few eye-rolling blusters, but at least they're on the right side.) It makes me think more of the world described in Clay Shirky's recent opus, which opens with the tale of how, a couple of years ago, a spontaneous online community formed around the fact that a woman in New York had her lost cell phone found by a kid who, after being identified by their subsequent use of it, refused to give it back. Eventually the NYC cops capitulated under the insistent weight of the community and charged the kid with theft.

It would be nice to see that power turned on something that's actually a criminal threat to an entire local population. I hope that something like this is indeed ramping up. I see that the OP, initially not wanting to file a report for fear of reprisal from the hoodlums, has changed his mind and spoken with a detective after reading some 100 sympathetic and action-seeking comments. This is good.

After finishing some contract work at the Diesel, ducked into MacIntyre & Moore to wait out the rain, and bought some comics they had lying around.

* A 1970s collection of Howard Cruse's "Barefootz". I had heard of this strip, but hadn't actually seen it on paper before. I know it more as a contemporary of other cartoons from the era that I adore. Indeed, these early examples aren't very good, and the art style's a little creepy. A newcomer probably won't realize that the main character is not supposed to be a little boy, though if you read far enough in from any given point this will become clear soon enough. Think "Peanuts" with T&A and occasional bouts of graphic sex.

* "God's Bosom", a collection of strips about the post-Columbian history of Texas, by Jack Jackson. Published in 1995 but reprinting a lot of stuff from the 1970s through the 1990s. This guy's work is new to me! He's got the scratchy-scratchy style that marks him as a member of the R. Crumb underground school, but more specifically reminds me a lot of John Severin's work (in "Cracked" and elsewhere). A bit heavy on multi-panel layouts of stomach-churning depictions of atrocities, though. Barf.

* "40 Hour Man", a hefty 2006 memoir written by Stephen Beaupre, with comics-style illustrations on on every page by Steve Lafler. I think I'll like it; it's a chronicle of every job the writer had, from a stockboy in the 1970s through his layoff at Lycos. Oddly, folded into the front cover (I only now notice!) is a letter that makes it clear this was a review copy sent to The Dig, a Boston-area indie weekly. That it ended up in a used bookshop with the letter still there makes me a little sad. If I end up writing a proper review here, I'll point the authors at it. Shrug.

I mailed in health insurance paperwork and moneys yesterday. I had an indirect referral to the quality of the doctors at the Harvard Vanguard office in Davis Square, so went to their website and wrote down first name in the alphabetized list of docs currently accepting patients (one Dr. Angel, in fact). None of the docs have screaming warnings to stay away, according to Google, so I feel fine about it.

I am looking forward to getting a complete checkup. I'm at least a year overdue. For someone as interested in longevity as I, that's a bad habit to get into.

Hey guess what: I've also started to pay off my credit card debt. While I still would like to shift my debt away from a Bank of America card, I intend to eradicate it in short order either way; it's only $3,000 as of today. Once that's out of the way I'll commence carving away at my debt to a certain personal creditor, who has been quite patient with me indeed.

Edit I just got an email from BoA congratulating me on my "excellent history" and informing me that they've upped by limit. Wha? Dude I'd been late every month since they bought MBNA. They're insane

I would like to randomly note that I am really pleased and impressed with the davis_square community.

* Compared to certain 0ther c0mmunities I could name, this one has remained relatively free of fotoshop-fratboy snarkery. (Though to be fair I just peeked in on that other one and it doesn't look as obviously dopey as it has in the past. Dunno if that's a trend or not.)

* When trolls do attack, they catch like wet matches on damp wood.

* It's all-around drama-resistant. It did have a blowout a few months ago, but came out of it wiser, and maybe even improved.

There's no magic; it's the people in it that are great, and who have set down a culture that inspires continued coolness. As another school year starts and I see another round of young newcomers phasing themselves in fairly smoothly, I have to smile.

I have to put in a good word for the Grand Prix Cafe. Blogging on-location now. It's a new place on Mass Ave just south of Davis Square, between the Dover and Day street intersections.

The one staff d00d here is very friendly and insisted that I taste both the coffee blends they had before I ordered one. The house blend is actually their own and it's quite yummy.

It's also a nice bright space with a nice view of, um, traffic (but hey, it fits the vaguely automotive theme - according to a poster to davis_square the owner is a retired racer) and there's both free WiFi and plentiful power outlets. Thumbs up from me.

Oh, ha, someone else came in and asked the guy (who is not the owner) how business has been, which I thought about doing myself but then didn't. He said, "...Good. It's too early to really say, you know?" There is a sign behind the counter that says "Never, Never, Never Give Up!" and there are a handful of dollar bills tucked between it and the wall. Good thinkin.

Sunday was the day of two giant meals. The first occurred at Johnny D's, after N&M wanted to visit Davis again with me, and maybe hit some real estate offices together, since we declared an official start to our housing search last weekend. (They've fallen for the area, by all accounts, going there many times by themselves since I first introduced them to it a couple of months ago.) They weren't impressed by the crowdedness, and I started getting worried about overselling them on the oatmeal when M couldn't talk about anything except oatmeal impact anticipation. But the wait was shorter than they said, and all was good once we sat down and demanded giant plates of food like crazy anime characters, to the tune of mellow, live xylophone music.

And lo, the oatmeal was good. But everyone felt too bloated to talk to real estate people, so we just perambulated around the square despite the cold winds and looked at buildings and wrote down phone numbers, before dissolving to pursue our own tasks,

My central task this weekend involved crafting the outline to the first chapter or two of the new book. I was surprised at how long it took, but this was probably from the fact that it went almost to paragraph-depth, hundreds of lines long. It's all good.

(I used OmniOutliner for the job, which I have found useful enough to be worth my $21.12.)

Recent email suggests that I have something to learn about writing for this space; I gawped at my perception that the first chapter, as outlined in the proposal, would be enormous, and Chuck is all, "Naw, you can do that in 30 pages. This is a nutshell book, remember." I think this was before he saw my mega-outline, so he may be able to give me some advice there. (Update: he just mailed to say that his mail client autofiltered my outlines into his trash can, so he didn't see them until just now. Heh.)

The second Giant Meal happened at Buddha's Delight, a vegetarian (possibly even vegan) Chinese restaraunt, visited with part of a theatergoing party headed by magid. We agreed the food was yummy, but shared disappointment that the menu seemed to be mostly fake-meat dishes, instead of entrees that don't need meat of any level of veracity.

At dinner, while looking out the window at the Chinatown scenery, I was reminded of the strange person, place, or thing that cthulhia and queue once insisted I go see, somewhere in Boston proper, without telling me what it was. And now I cannot recall the location of this curious entity. My out-loud recollection sparked the interest of magid, who started listing random bizarre objects lying around Boston she knows about until I confessed that I really had no idea.

Then we went to see MacBeth but it was canceled because a lead actor was sick and without understudy. Next week, instead.