To assist have a good time our twenty-fifth 12 months of being on the data superhighway, we now have reached out to a few of our present and former columnists for check-ins and updates. Immediately’s columnist, John Moe, is a long-time, hall-of-fame contributor to the Web Tendency. His Pop Track Correspondences first appeared on our website in 2004. In 2014, he put out a whole (and hilarious) guide of them. We’re glad to have John again on the location at the moment with a brand-new letter.
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Expensive Mayor Slick,
The Indiana Division of Security has contracted my agency to judge the causes of the ineffective metropolis authorities and crumbling infrastructure in and across the metropolis of Rocknrollsburg (previously Fort Wayne). We’ve got been performing inspections and attending metropolis authorities conferences or “concert events” for a number of months, and we current right here a abstract of our findings.
We’re nonetheless unclear as to why the state ceded the town to a rock band from California, however that’s not ours to guage. The situation of the town, nevertheless, is ours to guage, and the situation may be very unhealthy.
In our skilled opinion, the issue stems from the truth that you constructed, or somewhat reconstructed this metropolis on rock and roll. Not on dependable public works tasks, not on sound fiscal administration, not on neighborhood consensus and engagement, however on rock and roll, which is a musical kind and never a respectable methodology of metropolis planning and administration.
Listed below are a number of the issues we seen:
- The overpass collapse on Aboite Middle Street, out by Lutheran Hospital, was positively attributable to it being constructed fully out of electrical guitars. These usually are not efficient load-bearing guitars, Mayor Slick. They’re common guitars and can’t maintain up automobiles. Individuals might have died.
- We’ve got a time period we use in our business: “hoopla.” It means uncooked sewage. And it’s an enormous downside in Rocknrollsburg. Massive sections of the sewers have been rebuilt out of drum kits and amplifiers, which was simply an enormous mistake. So now, we’re preventing a dropping battle in opposition to hoopla. When the musical gear fails, because it inevitably does, lower-elevation components of the town are ankle-deep in hoopla. And typically it’s worse than that.
- Guitar Middle has neither the expertise nor experience to meet the civic infrastructure contracts it was awarded with out a bidding course of. Plus, have you ever met the blokes who work at Guitar Middle? You don’t need them answerable for issues.
- The IT methods have all been built-in with synthesizers and drum machines, a step that needlessly complicates the town’s on-line efforts. Metropolis workers all wanted to be educated on find out how to use the brand new gear, and that was an extended studying curve to no clear helpful finish. The pc networks don’t run any higher; they’ve a sort of hole, new wave, mushy rock sound to them now that, frankly, sucks.
- In your current handle to the town, you implored folks to “take heed to the radio,” however given your edict to blare basic rock radio from massive audio system across the metropolis, your residents haven’t any selection.
Now, the excellent news is that most of the points within the metropolis could be fastened. As I’ve defined, exasperated, at numerous metropolis council conferences, we will usher in firms to undo the injury you will have brought on. Dependable and revered firms. However my entreaties fall on deaf ears, each figuratively and actually, due to, once more, the blaring rock and roll music you insist on enjoying always on huge audio system. Whenever you do reply to the company concept, you declare that I’m enjoying “company video games.” And I’m not. I’m merely making an attempt to save lots of the town you recklessly constructed on rock and roll. As on your declare that my place is irrelevant as a result of firms are all the time altering names, properly, that’s immaterial, and I believe you have been simply going for a rhyme.
Jeff Marconi
Marconi Civic Engineering Consultants
P.S. We have been particularly aggravated once we realized that you simply ordered all airplanes at Rocknrollsburg Worldwide Airport to be known as starships. “Airplane” is a superbly good title for this stuff, however “starship” simply sounds silly.
