Archive for Asheville

Chad Nesbitt Goes Full Retard

February 20, 2012 Asheville 22 comments

 

It’s been a few weeks, and that means (just like a particularly scorching case of herpes) that Chad Nesbitt has managed to dipshit his way back onto my radar again with another series of stupid antics. This time Nesbitt has his own blog, and is attempting to ruffle local feathers by unleashing his own brand of typo-laden whit. Seeing as how this is my territory, I have to crush it before it begins.

For those of you who aren’t aware of who Chad is, besides being the paragon of manliness that you see pictured above he is also the former leader of the local Republican party, who under his watch managed to not field a single winning candidate in an election year that was a Republican sweep throughout the country. Chad is a guy who used 9/11 to try to raise money for his party, and then after causing the local party to be investigated by the state decided to rip off handicapped children instead.

Now Chad’s latest target is the remnants of the #OccupyAsheville camp, which was located in front of City-County Plaza in Asheville NC. According to Chad and a few of his friends – not the same ones he was investigated for having an illegal high-stakes gambling ring with – the cost of the clean up from people camping will amount to well over $10,000.  But that’s not all; in the blog post, Nesbitt mentions a random stranger passing along anecdotal evidence.

 

When I went down there to check it out a guy walked up to me and said he saw one of them drop 2 hypodermic needles in one of the trash cans then put trash on top of the needles.  So I walked over to the trash can and took the below picture.  It was full of mulch and trash and I wasn’t about to dig through it to find the needles.

 

So in other words, we’re supposed to take Chad’s word who took “a guy”’s word. That’s the equivalent to me saying that a guy approached me who saw Chad charging for blow jobs near the Hot Spot on Leicester Highway. It’s funny and salacious, but it doesn’t mean anything, but then again neither does Chad.

 

I had originally written a long diatribe about Chad’s blog posts. About how Chad is simply a moron and a bully, and now he doesn’t have a stationary target to bully. But instead I looked at his blog, which is just entry after entry, railing against “socialists” and vague calling-to-arms of “the taxpayers”. It was just sort of sad. His blog is just the work of some lonely asshole in Leicester who is scared that the world is passing him by. His daughter probably apologizes to her friends because of her father’s rather insipid behavior and his poor attempts to distract people from his obvious male pattern baldness.  What little relevancy Chad had was pissed away last year. Now, he’s just a pitiful guy begging for the meager spotlight local infamy offers.

 

But the problem is that Chad is the sort of idiot with a cell phone that won’t hesitate to make calls and make our elected officials miserable, and grind any actual meaningful work our local government is doing to a halt. So instead of railing against this idiot, let’s fix the problem.

This is a photo of the #OccupyAsheville site as it looked on Monday, February 20th at around 3:00 PM. There seems to be no contamination and nothing hazardous. Instead I see a lot of dead grass, probably the result of a lot of tents depriving them of much-needed sunlight. If it’s dead grass that Mr. Nesbitt is worried about, I say why not let The Bugg Blog and its readers attempt to offset the taxpayer’s burden and raise enough money to donate some grass seed to the city of Asheville?

 

For the next week I will be accepting donations to buy a bag of grass seed to give to the City of Asheville’s Parks Department. Any money that exceeds the cost of the seed will be donated to two causes that are close to Chad Nesbitt’s heart: the We Do Campaign and Cecil Bothwell’s Congressional Campaign. Those donations (should they happen) will be made in Nesbitt’s name, and the receipt will be posted on this blog.

 

So let’s follow Chad’s lead and try to fix this environmental catastrophe, and help out two causes that I know he cares about. What say ye?

Mrs. G

February 16, 2012 Asheville, family, friends 3 comments

Yesterday at one o’clock in the afternoon, the mother of a very good couple of friends died at a local hospice facility. She was sixty-eight years old.  Her name was Muriel Gomez, but I knew her as Mrs. G.

 

It’s hard writing about someone like Mrs. G because she was a complicated person. I’ve written far too much over the past six years about people in my family dying. I’ve written about how I never felt like I knew them, about how they left too soon and about how they influenced me. I’ve written about how they had simple and rather uncomplicated and rather insignificant lives, but Mrs. G didn’t have a simple, Protestant, work-and-then-die life. Instead she was a person who was involved, who lived a life of advocacy and caring that few people I’ve known have done.

 

When I sat down to write this, I wanted to write about her the way that I remember her: asking me to do favors for her, talking to me about Obama and the election in ’08 and wondering why the people of my generation weren’t rioting in the streets like hers did during the Vietnam and Civil Rights eras. She was a maddening complex woman who at times made you hate her, but would also tell you an anecdote that would give you an amazing amount of perspective on life.

 

If I had to think of one word to describe Mrs. G it’d be advocate. She was an advocate of so many things. A random Google search of her name directed me to a transcript from an oral history project that she participated in at UNC-A. It shows her as an advocate for Civil Rights, as someone who helped local crafters and artists get the recognition that they deserve, and as someone who helped modernize Mission Hospitals in the 1970s.

 

Mrs. G always expected more; more from the world, more from her children and more from the people around her. Sometimes those expectations and advocacy made her hard to be around, but in that sad and all-too-late perspective that comes when a person tries to sum up a person after they are gone you start to realize that her main goal was to make the world – both her own personal world and the larger outside world – a much better place.  That sounds sanctimonious and dew-eyed, but I really believe that Mrs. G saw the best in things and in her own belligerent way wanted the potential that she saw to arrive in front of her.

 

I don’t know an eloquent way to wrap this up, or a way to make this entry into my collection of record reviews, obituaries and Labrador Retriever photos matter to someone who didn’t know Mrs. G, but she mattered to me.  She was an advocate for so much, and I just wanted to say thank you to her.

Unbalanced Equations

January 21, 2012 Asheville, news No comments

Last week, I posted a story about Asheville’s incoming Chief of Police William Anderson’s past jobs, which includes charges of racism, a domineering management style and at least one instance of Anderson himself being negligent. At first, the only thing reported by both print media outlets were articles that read mostly like reprints of the city’s  own press release announcing the new hire. But in the last few days, the Asheville Citizen-Times has looked in to the allegations originally brought forth on this blog.  At first, I was okay with that. At least someone in the press is doing their job. But something is still not right with this entire matter.

Back in school when doing algebra homework, we were always told to make sure our equations balance – the problems on one side of the equal sign needed to match with the stuff on the other side in order for the problem to be correct. There’s something about the incoming Chief’s statements regarding his past to the local media and the statements that he’s made in the past not lining up that is making me a little uneasy.

In the Citizen-Times article, Anderson is quoted as saying this regarding the racism allegations. “There were no allegations of racism,” he said. “I don’t even recall any allegations of reverse discrimination or anything like that.”

But in an article from the Orlando Sentinel dated May 3, 2002 Anderson is quoted denying the allegations of racism leveled against him by two dispatchers:

            “I based my decision on the recommendations of the interview committee,” the chief said. “Race had no bearing on this whatsoever.”

In the complaint, [Deland dispatcher Wendy] Hargis also contends that the hiring committee was abruptly changed a week before interviews for the two open positions began. She claims that two Police Department employees were replaced by a city employee and a Police Department volunteer, neither of whom was qualified to interview candidates.

[Fellow dispatcher Mylan] Sessions said that change was a key reason many of their qualifications were overlooked.

Anderson said that simply isn’t true.

“This is a community-service officer position that mans our front desk,” Anderson explained, “with no specific requirements other than a high-school diploma. The goal was to get community input in the hiring process, and that is what took place.”

I’m sort of confused as to how Anderson says he doesn’t recall the allegations now, but in 2002 he gave an interview to the local press about the issue. It doesn’t add up.

At the present time, I’m trying to contact members of the Deland Police Department that served under Anderson in an attempt to find out for myself if these allegations are true or just the words of bitter ex-employees. I’ll have more information as it becomes available.

Drew Reisinger, Coward

January 18, 2012 Asheville, politics 11 comments

 

Just in time for the South Carolina Primary the Asheville-based “We Do” Campaign, an effort started by the Campaign for Southern Equality has been stopping at Register of Deeds offices all over the Palmetto State, drawing attention to the fact that committed, same-sex couples are not granted the same rights that heterosexual couples (such as my wife and I) are able to receive.  So far the effort has received a lot of local coverage and even some coverage in the UK.

Same-sex marriage is something that I support. I have no personal dog in the fight – I don’t really know a lot of gay people on anything more than a purely superficial level. I just believe that marriage as the government sees it is nothing more than a tax shelter and a binding contract, and that the powers-that-be have no right saying who can enter into that contract.

But the reason why I’m writing this isn’t because of my support of gay marriage or anything like that. In fact, it’s a months-old issue that I started to write about way back in October when the We Do Campaign began: the cowardice of Buncombe County Register of Deeds Drew Reisinger, and the absolute assholery of the Buncombe County Democratic intelligentsia that support him.

The Register of Deeds in Buncombe County is a pretty powerful dude. His office issues marriage licenses, birth and death certificates, and handles a lot of things to do with real estate. In short, Reisinger is one of the more powerful people west of Charlotte.  But prior to his job as Register of Deeds, Drew was also the head of the local Democratic Party. He helped run the progressive machine that put people in a lot of local government positions in the county.  So to call the guy influential and mover or shaker is a pretty apt description.

Now the We Do Campaign has started up, and their first target was Reisinger. I am of the opinion that Drew could and should do something about same-sex couples not being able to get a marriage license – whether it is him technically breaking the law or him doing something more benign, like joining Guilford County Register of Deeds Jeff Thigpen in his lawsuit against the State of North Carolina challenging the state’s requirement that marrying couples in North Carolina obtain a state-issued license. I’ve asked Drew about his stance on it in emails. A friend – and former mayoral candidate Shad Marsh has asked Reisinger about it on his Facebook page, and we’ve received no answer.

It’s not only that we’ve gotten the cold shoulder from Drew, who says that he is an ally of LBGT causes. It’s also to venom and rancor that we’ve been greeted with by Asheville City Councilman Gordon Smith. Smith has criticized both my comments and Marsh’s words as the words of “a couple of straight guys who aren’t out there doing the work”, as if him merely standing in the background with his sleeves rolled up (like a good politician) for the photo opportunity is him actually doing something.

As my friend Shad pointed out. Civil Rights aren’t won by making weepy Youtube videos and having photo ops, they are won in a courtroom. Either Reisinger cares enough to take some sort of stand or he doesn’t. This is an election year. Reisinger can do the right thing and side with the lawsuit or just issue the licenses, or he can take the safe rout, talking about how much money he’s save the locals. Guess which one he’s taking?

If a Republican was the person in charge of the Register of Deeds office, people like Gordon would be leading a charge for the local office to take a stand, calling them cowards and idiots. But instead, someone from his team is in the office, so Gordon pretends that everything is okay.

Congratulations homosexual couples seeking equal rights; you are officially on the same footing with the local Democratic Party as the people who are mad because Merry Christmas isn’t said at Target are to the Republican Party. Enjoy being a pawn.

Sitel Refuses to Unionize

January 16, 2012 Asheville, political No comments

Everybody knows that Call Centers are some of the worst low-impact jobs out there, and now there’s another reason why.

 

According to reports on the web, the female employees at Asheville call center Sitel are trying to unionize, citing horrible working conditions – namely, the two hundred-plus female employees having to share one bathroom and thus being punished for returning late from breaks. These punishments are cumulative, and cause employees to get poor performance reviews, which effect their pay raise and chances for advancement within the company.

 

Sitel is a pretty aggressively anti-union, and their actions against the employees who are attempting to organize has caused charges to be filed with the National Labor Relations Board.

 

 

Speaking as someone who worked early last year at another local call center, I can say from experience that these jobs are absolutely mind-numbing and awful jobs. I’ve never felt like more of a cog in a wheel than I did working at one of these places. I sat in a cubicle for eight-plus hours a day, facing forward and reciting the same script over and over again. My direct supervisor only knew of me from the number on my computer, and only spoke to me when there was an issue with productivity. I wouldn’t be so bold as to call it sweatshop-like work, but most of the stereotypes of a sweatshop apply, even tacitly, to a call center.

 

This story is obviously developing and I’ll devote more time on it as it progresses.

Asheville’s Newest Police Chief

January 14, 2012 Asheville, politics One comment

 

This afternoon, while I was busy firing off quips on the radio, actual news happened in Asheville. After a long search, the city announced that they had found a new Chief of Police – Greenville, North Carolina Police Chief William Anderson.

 

William Anderson is replacing the outgoing top cop Bill Hogan (who is no relation to Hulk Hogan), who retired under a swarm of rumors about missing guns, evidence and the department settling a Sexual Harassment lawsuit with a former employee. Anderson’s appointment to the Asheville Police Department is what the city hopes is the first step in rebuilding the tarnished image of their department.

 

These are admirable things for the city to do, and I hope that they can do it. After seeing firsthand how nasty the APD’s employees can be towards the citizens that they protect within the seemingly-private confines of the internet I truly hope that healing process can begin with between the department and the community.

 

With that being said, I wish that the city had done a simple Google search about our chief-to-be, Mr. Anderson.  According to numerous stories found on the internet, Anderson has a long history of causing disruption and controversy in his own departments, both in Greenville and at his previous job in Deland, Florida.

 

In 2001 while serving as Chief of Police in Deland, Florida, Anderson was reprimanded and forced to pay a fine for showing a lack of caution in a car accident that resulted in a damaged police vehicle and two people hurt. The couple had a few broken bones to show for the incident, and Anderson’s negligence cost the taxpayers of Deland $10,000 to replace the unmarked police car he was driving.

 

In late 2002, Anderson resigned amid charges of racism towards white officers and criticism of the department’s heavy-handed style of discipline.  None of these charges were ever brought to light in a court of law or in any official hearing, but there are a few newspaper articles written around the time of the Anderson’s resignation that illustrates Anderson presiding over a very frustrated and fractured department.

 

I want to stress that I don’t believe that Anderson’s history in Deland meana that he is going to come to Asheville and immediately fail. But I feel like the public deserves more from this story than just a hastily-rewritten press release that both local outlets have released as the story. From everything that I can find, Anderson’s record in Greenville (with the exception of the normal online petition with spurious charges of corruption that one would find for most public figures) seems like he performed his job adequately.

 

But Anderson’s time in Florida is the troubling thing to me. The thing is that even if Asheville asked about the driving incident and the charges of racism and that he let his own department get out of control, the city of Deland was legally obligated to not give a negative reference, according to this article: “The agreement stipulates that neither the city nor Anderson will make any ‘negative or disparaging statements’ toward each other.”  That’s the kicker. Asheville’s new police chief, who has been brought in to help the city repair the breaches of trust between law enforcement and the community, has a questionable background. Through legal protection the city wasn’t allowed to find out any of this unless they did their own digging.

 

I wish Anderson well in his new job. I hope that Asheville Police Department can become as awesome as the city they protect. But here, at the moment where they can say they are starting over to rebuild their relationship with the public, they’ve stumbled. Let’s hope for all of our sakes that this is a one-time thing and not the continuation of a long-standing tradition.

 

A thousand thanks to Twitter user @_tatuaje_ for digging up all of this information – I merely assembled it here. He did all of the heavy lifting.

Chad Nesbitt, bully.

January 4, 2012 Asheville 5 comments

For the first semester of my ninth grade year, my parents sent me to a different school. They worried for a while that I was going to end up getting into trouble and doing excessive amounts of drugs at Asheville High School, and so they used a different address and shipped me off to Erwin High School, which was located in the county .

 

To those of you who go to school now, I’m sure that there is relatively little difference between a school in the heart of Asheville and a school in the county, but back then it was a world of difference. Erwin had a reputation as a rural school full of rednecks and I was nervous about going there, but it was ninth grade. My high school years were beginning! I was almost done with school. I had a theory that I was going to keep my head down for four years, run off to college, start a band and be done with my hometown, but first I had to survive Erwin.

 

I remember going to the halls of Asheville High once as an eighth grader and it felt a lot like a city – the ceilings felt lower, the halls narrower and the lockers were old. Erwin felt a lot like the country. There weren’t halls so much as there were giant open areas. The classrooms branched off from those halls and a few classrooms were separated by giant accordion-like curtains that halved and sometimes quartered these big expanses into smaller classes. It was a strange place, sitting in a civics class and listening to a U.S. History lesson being taught right behind you.  The building made every classroom feel like it didn’t belong there, like the school was just a holdover until the real school was built.

 

If the actual building made me feel strange, the people didn’t help. I was advised by someone on my first day to define myself and do it quickly. There were a few groups and each one had its own corresponding caste system of cool kids and dorks. There were preppy kids with their sweaters and polo shirts, tightrolled jeans and sneakers, there were ROTC-types (or Rotsie Nazis as they were called) with their constant drilling and wearing of the Army uniform on Fridays, and there were the rednecks.  The rednecks were a frightening group to most people. They seemed to be more violent, more outwardly racist and a bit more uniform than anyone else in school. They all wore cowboy boots, skintight blue jeans that were so dark blue they almost looked black, button up shirts, and an ever-present baseball cap. Their hair was grown into a perfect mullet that was slightly curly in the back.

 

Those rednecks were a bit scary. They controlled one of the expanses of the school: the math hall. The math hall was an area that you avoided.  If you weren’t one of them, or at least friendly with them cries of faggot or something similar would echo out your way. Pennies were flicked from their fingers at an amazing velocity and found a home somewhere on your person.  Their bathroom on that hall was thick with cigarette smoke, the urinals clogged with spent chewing tobacco. The math hall was not a place to go, especially if you were a guy who was into punk rock and being different like I was.

 

I had no friends. I was miserable.  Almost weekly I looked for reasons to avoid being at that school. I learned to force myself through class for most of that first semester, but it wasn’t easy.  The final straw for me came one day when I actually was sick. I remember feeling horrible and deciding that I needed to go home. Since my family lived a little bit away from the school, I decided to place a call to my house to let my parents know that someone from the office would be calling and asking them to pick me up. I wasn’t worried about the reaction from my parents – I was sick, after all – instead, I worried about using the only pay phone in the school, which was located in the math hall.

 

I nervously walked into that hall and made my way towards the pay phone, which was located just beside the entrance to the library, which had a giant window looking out into the math hall.  There were a few rednecks sitting on a bench across from the window, but I figured that if I kept my head down and stayed in the corner everything would be fine.  I reached into my pocket and fumbled for a quarter. I knew that I had one, but it didn’t seem to be presenting itself to my hand immediately.

 

All of the sudden my ears focused upon a few snickers. At once I heard it; hey man do you need some change?

 

I turned towards the gang of Garth Brooks fans to my right and my eyes widened. In that split second I saw what seemed like about eighty-five cents in change flying towards me at a terrible velocity. I closed my eyes and turned my head.  The coins hit me, pinging as they bounced off of me and onto the ground. I heard them hit the giant window of the library and I just wanted to go home. A nickel bounced off of my head. I hung up the phone and walked out of the room. I was outnumbered and too small to do anything even if I wasn’t. I walked down the hall and headed towards the office to make the call to go home.

 

I guess in a way, I never forgave those people who frequented the math hall. A few years ago I ran into one of those guys whose name I remembered, and he was a pretty nice dude. Married, working in a decent job, and walking around downtown Asheville looking at the sites. He wasn’t threatened by outsiders or people different from him anymore; instead he just viewed it as being entertaining to him. People were a benign source of amusement for him.  In short, he’d grown up. Sure, he was still throwing money at people who were different than him, but a coin bouncing off of a person’s head feels a bit different than him leaving a dollar tip for an ice-cold Budweiser.

 

I thought about the math hall today because everyone’s favorite idiot, Chad Nesbitt, is flailing wildly and trying to get back into the news lately. Chad has decided that the appropriate response to the people of #OccupyAsheville using their Constitutional right to protest is driving by and honking his horn at night, or in his latest bit of brilliance coming by their camp at City-County Plaza and offering them Ice Cream late at night during sub-freezing temperatures.

 

I guess in a way Chad, a graduate of Erwin High School, has probably never left that math hall. He gets off on bullying people, and it’s probably the only thing that he has to do for fun, that is when he’s not being investigated for running a high-stakes poker ring out of his business, using 9/11 and county government property to attempt to raise money, ripped off sick kids, and posting really racist things about Asians on his Facebook page. He may not throw pennies anymore, but he does throw histrionic-laden press releases out for whatever his latest attempt to get on the local news is. It’s sad.

 

Pointing out what an idiot a local laughingstock is probably isn’t news. It’s actually sort of old hat, but someone has to do it. One day, Chad’s going to bully someone who will stand up to him and expose him for the lying, racist, homophobic pig that he is, but until then I’m going to keep documenting his dumbassery.

What Happens When You Schedule a Protest and Nobody Shows?

November 18, 2011 Asheville, being an asshole, politics 3 comments

 

Yesterday I was so excited.  I had seen all the hype for the #OccupyWallSt movement’s “Day of Action” and hoped to be involved with the local arm of the group’s planned demonstration and show of solidarity in the middle of downtown Asheville.  I spent the day getting ready, even calling a few friends to see if they wanted to take part in the protest with me. Soon enough, I was on my way to Asheville to meet up with my friends Robert (who by trade is a gigolo/miniature golf engineer) and Miguel (who is a history professor at a semi-local college of the community). We were eager to lend our voices to the movement beyond discussion of its merits online – instead of talking about it we were finally ready to be in the streets doing something.

 

We parked our cars in the rather spacious parking lot of a local bank – who despite being local was one of the more grievous participants in the Savings and Loan scandals of the late eighties/early nineties. This was an irony not lost upon us. We walked down to Pritchard Park, the park where the #OccupyAsheville website said that the protest was scheduled to happen at 5 PM and we stood there. It was five minutes before five and nobody was there in the park, save us.

 

Suddenly, hope arrived. Well, hope in the form of two women asking us if this was where the protest was scheduled to be. We confirmed the location of the event on my friend’s phone that is smarter than mine and stood waiting. Before long a few more people gathered together. By ten minutes past five the crowd had swollen to a staggering nine participants. Everyone huddled in a circle, weary from it being the first cold day in downtown Asheville. There were some cardboard signs being made, and despite the cold a bit of enthusiasm, and I’m not just referring to Robert’s enthusiasm for a beer after the protest.

 

But we waited. We heard rumors of another protest sponsored by MoveOn at a bridge in Biltmore, but we didn’t want to be moved. I had internal issues about part of a protest being sponsored by a 501(c) because I didn’t want people to say that the #Occupy movement was the same sort of Astroturf thing that Tea Parties were due to their sponsorship by FreedomWorks but I didn’t want to bring those up to my fellow cold and confused protestors. Instead we huddled together in the park, waiting.

Within another few minutes the press arrived in the form of Steve Shanafelt from the Mountain Xpress. I saw him carrying a camera and I thought that maybe they were going to get some video featuring people speaking about the real protests happening in New York City, but instead he was going to go videotape beer being poured for a podcast.

 

Another minute or three passed. A cop approached us. I waited for the police to step way out of line and infringe upon our rights to protest peacefully, but instead she got into her car and drove away.  Miguel snapped a picture and said that this said everything about today’s failure of a protest – the police officer driving away with a hot latte in her hand.

The nine of us stood together dejected.  I didn’t want to declare this protest a failure, but it was turning into that. I was quiet for a little while as Robert and Miguel tried to decide where we should eat dinner upon leaving the protest. I thought about the hordes of people in New York City declaring that business as usual was not going to happen today and thought about how I wanted to be in the middle of that. I thought about how magical I felt about myself and a cause that I believed in during the protest of Troy Davis’ execution. I looked at the people surrounding me, six of whom I didn’t know, and thought that it was nice that these people weren’t the familiar faces from Asheville’s protest culture that I despise, instead these were normal people who were supporting a cause.

 

Then I heard the drums. At first we thought they were car stereos off in the distance, but then the sound kept hitting us. A person can recognize the sound of live music versus the recorded variety, and this was live drums. Big drums. Awesome rhythms and the sound kept intensifying. I had visions in my head of the percussion protests that the Positive Force group in Washington DC had mounted in the eighties to protest apartheid. I envisioned them coming around the corner where College Street and Patton Avenue come together in downtown Asheville, and my heart pounded along with the drums. This was the big and dramatic moment that I was waiting on. We were no longer nine lonely people at a failed protest, instead we were the reconnaissance team awaiting the rest of the platoon who were on their way. Miguel, Robert and I grew excited and rounded the corner to meet what surely was a throng of drummers and passionate people. We kept walking while looking for them. Then we found them in the alley between Jack of the Wood and a Futon Store, only they weren’t protestors – instead they were members of the The Hillcrest High-Steppin’ Majorettes and Drum Corps practicing for this weekend’s Asheville Holiday Parade.

I’ve got to admit, those kids are good.

 

Collectively we smiled. These kids always do a good job at the parade and it was a nice reminder that some of the good parts of the holiday season are happening, but they weren’t what we were looking for. We walked back towards the park.

 

When we arrived back at the park we found no sign of our six fellow protestors.  We had no clue where they had disappeared to and really no interest in looking. We were cold and put off by the local wing of the movement. What sort of protest is it when nobody shows up?

 

Sitting alone in the trash can at Pritchard Park was a folded piece of cardboard. It had the beginnings of a sign with the ubiquitous “We are the 99%” written at the bottom then tossed into the garbage. I’m not sure if it was because the protestor had messed up or given up, but it didn’t really matter. They were gone and so were we.

I started to not write this blog entry. My worst fear is that some right-wing idiot takes what I’ve written here about this movement and the local wing of it and turns it into the punchline for whatever idiotic and untrue statement that they are trying to make. I don’t even know what happened to the six people who were in Pritchard Park that weren’t my friends.  For all I know they linked up with other protestors somewhere not in the park and had an amazing and inspiring experience. But I do know that the protest that #OccupyAsheville planned didn’t happen in the park yesterday. I felt ripped off and a little mad at whoever skipped out on the protest that they called for. I felt annoyed that people could see a group of people standing in solidarity with the amazing stuff that was happening in New York City yesterday, and I also felt that ball-shrinking cold for the first time last year and it made me quite angry that I wasted it on a non-event.

 

As I said a second ago, maybe there was a protest somewhere in Asheville yesterday and I am being ignorant about it here. If so, please let know and I’ll edit photos and information about it right into this post. I want to represent the truth here as much as I can, but at the same time I want to point out that yesterday’s scheduled protest, which brought me and a few other people who had never participated in anything that the occupiers have done up until this point was a big old pile of fail. It’s enough to make me worry about the movement on a local level.

Tonight! Also, today!

November 11, 2011 Asheville, Live Concerts, my music No comments

So this is happening tonight. I’m pretty excited/nervous.

Also, my band (NiceGuysHelpClub) is celebrating the release of our first digital single “the Nod” (which isn’t the title of either song on the single somehow). You can buy it here. It costs less than a dollar, but if you’d like to pay more you can.

Hope to see everyone tonight.

A thank you

November 9, 2011 Asheville, news, random 6 comments

This afternoon I received an email about my complaint with David Forbes from Mountain Xpress publisher Jeff Fobes. The email was in response to the timeline that I posted on my blog. It said this:

“Jason,
One minor typo in your last bulleted item. You say “Fobes” when you mean “Forbes.”

I can’t speak for David, but I know I did not see your tweets or your email to me until late in the afternoon, after David had posted his article. I was occupied with a meeting and then with filling in for Steve Shanafelt, doing his movie-editor work, and so did not check either Twitter feed or emails until late in the afternoon.

It is Xpress policy to credit the originators of news stories or significant content. And it is part of our mission to promote activism and engaged citizens, so we should be excited to credit those who actively contribute to the public discourse.

I believe David is telling the truth, and I do not have any knowledge that would lead me to disbelieve him. You say he’s lying and are angry. I don’t have any suggestions other than to look to the future when there’ll be opportunities for Xpress to credit you for your work — I believe we’ll do that.”

“Jeff-

 

I was (and still am) upset. I’ve always had a decent relationship with Jeff, but this was too much. So I replied with this email:

 

“Whatever.

I’ve laid out a timeline of everything that happened that day and you still want to stick beside him, so whatever.

Jeff, I’ve always been nice and taken your word, so when I say this let it be known that I mean this from the depths of my heart:

Fuck you, you weasle-y piece of shit.

I hope you enjoy treating me like this, because when the time comes and the Xpress wants to talk to me about something of note I’ve done, I’m going to take a warm piss on your desk.

Fuck you, Jeff.

I hope you enjoy the sinking ship you’re on, and don’t forget to sing the last chorus of “Nearer My God to Thee” with extra gusto as you close the door on the way out, you lying sack of shit.

With my warmest regards.

Jason Bugg”

The whole thing is infuriating and makes me never want to give a fuck about the news again. I saw someone in a position of power doing the wrong thing and I decided to call them out on it. The Xpress would have never known.

Thank to everyone who called, tweeted or emailed the Xpress. Even though my effort to get recognized for my work has failed, I appreciate everyone who did to try to help me. I appreciate being stood up for more than you’ll ever know. Thanks.

 

At the end of the day I have to realize that I was ripped off by this guy:

Credit on this image goes to the wonderful Ms. Jen Bowen and her Faces of Asheville Project, which I assure you is much easier on the eyes than Mr. Forbes’ bird chest.

Oh well, back to writing about obscure bands. It’s more fun to do that anyways. Be good.

« Older Entries  
Proudly using Dynamic Headers by Nicasio WordPress Design