Time to wipe away that winter depression - and
turn your glazed eyes to a tiny
local newspaper for an uplifting
bout of hilarity - the Sunriver Police Log,
published in the monthly
Sunriver Scene.
For any non-local readers, it first must be
explained that the town of Sunriver is a "Private
Planned Community" resort, roughly 18 miles south of Bend,
Central Oregon,
consisting mostly of part-time occupied vacation
homes, nestled amongst tall trees and grouped
around a maze of tightly wound streets and
round-abouts where cars share the roadway with
golf-carts (only during daylight hours though).
The town has its own administration,
fire and police force, but in essence they
are all privately-run. With all this
comes a stringent set of rules - such as what
color you may paint your house (anything outside
of dull browns and greens is taboo), no
parking your car, boat, golfcart or snowmobile
anywhere but in
strictly designated areas (least of all in
front of your own house), and of course
NO MAYHEM ANYWHERE - AT ALL.
This is all designed to keep the town a place
that's eerily placid, clean-looking, runs at the
golf-senior speed of 25 mph - and most of
all is completely devoid of any possible fun,
involving loud parties with lots of booze,
spinning donuts in your golf-cart at 2am in
your vacation rental's driveway, or similar
such activities. To this must also be added
however that the tiny Sunriver Liquor Store
is the top-selling non-exclusive liqour store
in the great State of Oregon.
So what you have here in essence is a
tranquil vacation town where people (including
a lot of college kids) come to
from all over the U.S. to pursue honorable and
clean-fun activities
such as golfing, skiing, snowboarding, snowmobiling,
hunting and fishing
- and to get totally liquored up and go fucking crazy.
This is very much in contrast to the carefully
crafted image of hushed carefreeness the Sunriver
Owners Association would like to project. But
what do they do to preserve their status? They
publish (in much detail) a log of the month's
police activites in the local newspaper,
available for free at every gas station and store in town.
So without further ado, here
are selected excerpts from the February issue of
the "Sunriver Scene", chronicling December activities
(and if you can't see the hilarious irony in
this, you need to get your head adjusted):
12/4: Occupants of a vehicle threw empty beer
bottle out onto main road and were given a choice
to either clean up the mess they made or face
a criminal citation. They chose to clean it up.
Officers stood by as traffic control while this occured.
12/4: Stopped vehicle for defective lighting. Consent
search of vehicle revealed two drug pipes and
an open container. Both occupants were cited for
Possession of Less Than An Ounce of Marijuana.
Driver was also cited for an Open Container.
12/6: Received several phone calls throughout the
evening about snowballs being thrown at passing
vehicles. Several attempts to locate suspects
were unsuccessful.
12/10: Report of a cold theft (prescription
drugs taken) from a vehicle.
12/13: Criminal Mischief to an illuminated
Christmas angel was reported by a homeowner.
12/19: Reporting party called to complain about
snowmobile trailers in a driveway. The homeowner
stated he would stop by the police department
in the morning to find out what was being done
about it.
12/25: Responded to a report of two juveniles
shooting air guns. A verbal warning was issued and
compliance was gained.
12/27: Responded to a report of a driver spinning
"cookies" in a parking lot. Contact was made
with the driver, who agreed to discontinue
current actions.
12/30: Responded to a Theft of a picnic table
from a home owner's property. The table was
located across the common area, in the backyard
of a rental home. Three juveniles were contacted
who admitted using the table as a snowboard
ramp. They returned the table to the owner with
an apology.
12/31: Received a complaint about noise and
vehicles driving badly in the area. When officers
arrived, there were several vehicles parked
on the roadway. We made contact with the renters
of the house and advised them of the regulations.
Officers required they use sober drivers to move
the vehicles.
12/31: Responded to a report of a verbal dispute
between a male and two females who had given
the male a ride home. The vehicle got stuck
in the snow while backing out of the driveway.
The females were upset because the male wouldn't
help them. The disagreement escalated when the
male began throwing snowballs at the females.
It was determined that there was no crime,
and a tow truck was contacted.
... and these are just excerpts. The list goes
on and on. I'm already looking forward to next
month's edition. Can't wait to read all the good
stuff that happened January 1st.
PS: Thanks to
Jake for the tip.
February 15, 2005
My recent tendency of just posting rants about
one thing or another got even too boring for me,
so in order to get some fresh stuff up here,
I'm posting some interesting links that have
accumulated over time:
Bendites - ever wonder what the new expansion
of the St. Charles Medical Center is going to
look like? Thanks to a local company called
Log Rhytms,
you now can. These guys do kick-ass 3-D animations
and have posted a very cool
fly-around animation on their site. It's a
large file, so the download may take a few minutes,
but if you're on anything but dial-up, it's
well worth the wait. As Log Rhytms specializes
in 3-D animation of log homes though, this
fly-around of
a thatched-roof log house in Russia is
also pretty fun to see.
People keep sending me cool photo-related links,
so I've posted those over
at my other blog.
I can't remember if I've ever posted this link,
but it's equally genius (by the Burger King
marketing people) as it is sick:
the Subservient Chicken.
And although I'm running danger of incessantly
(and unnecessarily) blanketing the internet
with useless links,
GIGOOZLE is just a little bit too much fun not
to mention. Don't try to Gigoozle this site
however - for some mysterious reason, it's not
working on my site (maybe cause I'm running Zope?).
February 2, 2005
With the
news of a yet another freaking Walmart being
built in Bend comes the inevitable question one
has to pose to one-self: Is it really worth saving those couple
of bucks, and supporting the Evil Empire of retail?
Or should one rather shell out the dough, knowing
that one can sleep at night with a sound conscience?
While I can't say that I've never shopped at
Walmart,
this most interesting article in the Seattle
Times shows that you don't have to pay minimum
wage and treat your employees like crap in order
be a successful big box store.
Quote: Economists will tell you there are
at least two reliable, legal ways to make
money in America.
One is to fleece the workers, taking not
only their wool but their skin. A proven
model resulting, the Economic Policy
Institute in Washington, D.C., tells us,
in CEOs earning in a day and a half what
took their beleaguered flock a year to earn
in 2003.
Or, there's the Henry Ford model: Pay people
well enough that they stick around, cutting
both turnover and training costs while boosting
efficiency. Better yet, pay them well enough
so they can even go out and buy something.
Amen to that!
Very few (too few!) companies indeed are seeing the
logic of this reasoning. I used to work for
one, before
they also turned the corner a few years ago
and adapted the Economy of Greed, paying their
executives huge salaries, while telling the
rest of the employees that raises just weren't
an option. During layoffs, they would even
reward the execs with bonuses - for having to
deal with the stress of this difficult time...
The article continues to cite an example of
how to do it right:
And Costco? Its overhead costs were lower,
its volume of sales per employee higher,
and its total sales bigger in 2003 than its
arch rival, Sam's Club, a subsidiary of
Wal-Mart.
Yet, Costco's health plan covers a larger
percentage of employees than Wal-Mart's does,
and workers pay less for it. Costco, in
fact, provides among the best wage-and-benefit
packages in hourly retail. And it pays the
same wage scale everywhere in the country.
A cashier at Costco can make more than
$40,000 annually within four years. The
average store manager makes $107,000, with a
crack at $40,000 in performance bonuses on
top. The company also pays hourly workers
annual bonuses from $4,000 to $7,000.
No wonder they stick around: Turnover at
Costco is less than a third the industry
average.
So my question is: Why can't Walmart adopt
similar policies? Maybe I will pose this
question at the public meeting Walmart is
supposed to hold next week ...
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