Why We Hate The New York Times Part 3 or 4

The New York TImes will never learn. Look at this profile in T-Bone Magazine on my favorite slicko-French architect. Rudy Riccotti (above), and his new cultural center in Marseilles, a city which is described in the article as that "simmering bouillabaisse of Mediterranean cultures".

Rudy had my friend David Cohn simmering too this summer when he reviewed his Jean Cocteau Museum for Architectural Record. And they hired this guy for the Islamic wing of the Louvre? The French are really hard up for architects these days.

Here's more of that T-Bone prose I just can't get enough of:

"Dressed in a faded navy tank top, khaki jeans and espadrilles, Ricciotti conjures the casual nonchalance and swagger of a Rolling Stones-generation rock star. This is no accident. At 60, the French architect has earned a reputation as a tempestuous and provocative iconoclast with a sly sense of humor, a thick-as-olive-paste southern accent and an effusively gesticulating manner....."

 Isn't he just yummy?

Obstructed Voter

Take a look at the New York absentee voter ballot package I received here in Spain. If you can make heads or tails of it. Beats me.

First, try sizing the PDF ballot (above) to print on letter paper, as per instructions. It doesn't print correctly, the names don't come out, and it's full of black streaks -- I tried 4 different ways and downloaded it twice.

Then all the nonsense about cutting and pasting the two envelopes they want you to print out. "Fold on the dotted line": I remember that joke from third grade. Haven't they heard about labels? You know, cut it out, tape it on an envelope, vazoom.

 Or why not vote on the web? We do out banking on the web, pay our taxes on the web, so why not?

Seems designed by idiots, or people who don't want absentees to vote.

And then of course being digital, I can print and fill out as many ballots as I want and send the forms to all my friends so they can do the same. If any of us can manage to assemble it correctly and not have our ballots thrown out as unreadable.

 It is so bad it should be denounced. Will try to do so. Please help!

Meanwhile,  how am I supposed to vote?

Guisqui a Go-Go

While Madrid seethes with battle-frenzied protestors and politicians, and Catalunya plots  sedition, a Spanish magazine has found the receipts for Spanish President Mariano Rajoy's 1000 euro dinners aboard government planes. 

And all this, absolutely all of it, is designed simply to distract us from the fact that there is no ready solution for the problem at hand, and we are all going to hell in a basket. 

Article thanks to Jeff English. 

Text in Spanish.

 

Rajoy: “Extra de whisky y vino”
Interviu, 24 Sept. 2012