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Let’s Call it Two Million Hundred Dollars

Maybe that would have been an easier PR sell for the UT Athletic Department. Then they’d only be dealing with hundreds of dollars instead of millions. That may be a little easier for people to swallow.

And this facility is used how many times a year? Seven? Let’s be generous and call it ten since the Knoxville Marathon finishes in the stadium and there’s a chance Kenny Chesney may play there. And let’s assume that the investment is stretched out over ten years, or 100 days of use.

That means these upgrades will only cost $2,000,000 for each day they are in service.

“We’re being as careful as we’ve always been to make sure we spend these dollars wisely that Tennessee fans and donors invest,” Currie said.

It must be nice to have money.  I’m just glad it’s not my money they’re spending.

Neyland face-lift: $200M.

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Rules of CoWorking

We’re putting together some structure and a website for our local coworking group, and were kicking the idea around about how to include people (or not). I’m a big fan of keeping rules as simple and minimal as possible. I figured eight rules were plenty…apologies to Chuck Palahniuk.

  1. The first rule of coworking is that you must talk about coworking
  2. The second rule of coworking is that you MUST TALK ABOUT COWORKING
  3. If someone brings in a box of donuts or pulls up a cool new website, work is over
  4. Any number of people can work at any time
  5. Any number of projects and businesses can be worked on at the same time
  6. No shirt, no shoes? Well, can you at least throw on a t-shirt and some flip flops?
  7. Work will go on as long as it has to
  8. If it’s your first day coworking, you have to work
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KTown’s New Slogan

Head over to KtownLowdown to cast your vote in SVD’s contest.  He’s listed the top 5 reader submitted entries for KTown’s new slogan. The winner of the contest gets a cool t-shirt and bumper sticker.  If you can’t afford gas, you probably can’t afford the luxury of a bumper sticker, so don’t pass up on an opportunity to get one for free!

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Everybody Goes to Cracker Barrel

Cracker Barrel is one of our favorite places to people watch, mostly because you can see every stage of life there. Our trip today did not disappoint. Saturdays usually have the best variety of people because Sundays are dominated by the after church crowd, and weekdays are not as busy and are filled mostly with travelers. Today we saw…

  • Teenagers who look like they’d just gotten their driver’s license and were out with friends
  • Hungover college students who were looking to cure their ailments with some southern food
  • Dating and shacking-up couples who’d probably slept stayed in bed late this morning and were just getting up
  • Couples like us with young children
  • People with older kids–one table looked like they were taking their daughter and her sleepover friend out.
  • People who looked like they may have teenagers who were somewhere besides Cracker Barrel
  • People who looked like their hungover college kids were eating at a different Cracker Barrel
  • Older people who would rather let someone else cool their Saturday breakfast for them
  • Really old people who were being taken out to eat by their middle-aged kids.

As always, there were fat and skinny people, black people, white people, brown people, yellow people, bruised people (for real), ugly people, pretty people, but mostly hungry people.  I should bring my camera everywhere-especially Cracker Barrel.

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This. I Love THIS!

SVD at KtownLowdown is running a contest to produce the best slogan for Knoxville in response to today’s MetroPulse article about KTown being a great place to do nothing.  Win a free t-shirt or bumper sticker just for being a smart ass!

KTown is notorious for stealing all the good ideas before I’ve had a chance to think of them, this contest and the domain name ktownlowdown.com being just a couple of examples.

Don’t even bother with “I Am Knoxville (And So Can You)”.  Apparently that idea has already been thought as well.

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Something Has to Be Done

This along with countless other things that never seem to end here in good ol’ East Tennessee make it really hard to keep up with all the idiotic things local politicians do. I could do what I normally do (complain or nothing), but I’ve decided instead to do something fun with it.

I’m starting the Carnival of Local Political Gaffes. You can submit an article for the carnival here.

Probably the biggest factor that keeps local politicians from being more than just local are the idiotic messes they get themselves into. The Carnival of Local Political Gaffes aims to shed light on these small timers and give them the credit they deserve.

There’s enough going on locally to make this Carnival fairly extensive. I can’t wait to find out what is going on in the rest of the country. Submissions are due by 6 pm on Sundays. If you’re interested in hosting the Carnival, contact me.

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You Can’t Say That On…Anywhere

So I haven’t posted for a couple of days because I’ve been in the land of damn-these-people-drive-like-maniacs, aka the ATL.

I’m also way behind on reading, but I just came across a post that is really disturbing. Apparently, it’s now considered bad form to use the phrase “life insurance policy” and “Barack Obama” in the same sentence–not because of what it says, but because someone may read it the wrong way. It reminds me of that fateful day when the word “niggardly” was stricken from the English language because people who didn’t know what it meant (I didn’t at the time) were too lazy to look it up.

It’s so much easier to just get offended first and ask questions later, no?

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Gas Prices Aren’t Too High

That got your attention, huh?

As evidence I submit my venture to Sundown in the City on Thursday.  Sundown in the City is a series of outdoor concerts put on each summer in Market Square.  There’s no charge for admission, and they draw insane crowds.  I haven’t been to Sundown in the City in a couple of years, but I went on Thursday to see Robert Earl Keen.  Huge crowd, and an unbelievable amount of smokers.

Before I go any further…I don’t care if you smoke.  You have every right to do so, and I think the ban on smoking inside is a bunch of crap.  It’s your body-trash it if you want to.  If I don’t want to be around it, I can (and do) choose not to be around it.  That problem is easily solved.

But I didn’t realize that so many people still smoke.  What is this, 1978?  Maybe they were smoking so much because they aren’t allowed to do it inside anymore?  Maybe they are all nervous about the fact that gas and food prices are so high?  Maybe they spent the money they would have spent on fuel for this years family vacation on cigarettes since they wouldn’t be able to go anywhere this year?

I don’t know.  But I started thinking that, while gases prices are high, they aren’t so high that people can’t afford the luxury of cooking themselves from the inside.  I mean, this is literally just burning money, and a lot of it.  To be fair, I didn’t hear anyone complaining about gas prices in between puffs, but I’d bet dollars to donuts that some of them had complained in the last 24 hours, probably the last time they filled up and bought a pack of smokes.

So as high as prices are, I think we’ll survive–at least long enough to demand in our old age that someone give us free health care to take care of all those problems caused by smoking.

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East Tennessee High Schools Among Best In Country!

From the KNS:

Three East Tennessee schools are among the top 1,300 U.S. public high schools, according to a 2008 ranking released this week by Newsweek.

Oak Ridge High School in Anderson County is ranked 892, Farragut and West high schools in Knox County are ranked 1,031 and 1,042 respectively, according to the listing.

3 out of 1300?

0 out of 891?

Umm…yay?

Is this article supposed to be a pat on the back for area schools or a hit piece?  Lots of people are asking about Maryville High School in the comments.  Why wasn’t it included on this list?  Supposedly it is the pinnacle of high school football education in this state.

Remember that girl in high school that everyone thought was hot, mostly because everyone else thought she was hot?  Did you ever go back and look at your yearbook and realize that she wasn’t all that pretty?

Just wondering…