There is now a yellow, diamond-shaped "NOT A THROUGH STREET" sign affixed to a telephone pole just past the entrance to eastbound S. 14th Street (what little is left of it). This sign, unfortunately, is well above eye level even for passengers in a large pickup truck or SUV, as my brother and I discovered during our reconnaisance of the area last week.

But I suppose marginal progress has been made.

That's a nice response, and does promise some action; I'll have to go check out the area again to see whether the specified progress has been made. In any case, the highway lights she mentions definitely do not adequately light the area in question, especially not on an overcast, rainy night. And I never did hear back from any of the others I copied on the letter.

Instead, I quickly found myself on an unlit, half-paved drive, surrounded by overgrown brush. The drive narrowed as I crested a small rise—only to find myself at the edge of a vast expanse of muddy gravel. S. 14th Street, it seems, currently dead-ends in a vacant lot behind a currently under-construction Walgreens. The only way out, since S. 14th is a one-way street, appeared to be driving toward the already-constructed parking lot. I drove slowly across the gravel, headed for the parking lot—only to find myself stuck in the mud right next to what turned out to be a curb. After a series of fits and starts, I finally got my car unstuck—and came down with a big crunch on the other side of the curb.

Hyperventilating, I parked next to the building, where the light was better, and got out to check the car. Nothing creaked or popped or looked obviously broken, so after moving a traffic barrel to secure safe passage out of the lot, I made my way home on I-44.

Tomorrow, Alderwoman Phyllis Young is going to be hearing from me. I can't believe they don't have that street blocked off.

Edit 1: I moved my car the following morning and checked the street where I'd been parked, and saw several fresh oil spots. I took a flashlight and peered under the car, and it looked like the plastic housing over the oil-filter area had come partially dislodged. I couldn't see anything else that looked obviously damaged, but it was clear a visit to Dobbs was in my future. Thanks, Ward 7 and Koman Properties!

Edit 2: Read my letter to Alderwoman Young (which I addressed to her and a small selection of others by certified mail) here.

Edit 3: Read a transcript of Alderwoman Young's response here.

Further, the stock market only works the way it does because it's a closed system—the only way to make an investment in the companies that participate is to buy stock. Whereas my guess would be that not every media company is going to get on board with the idea of selling shares in the "content market"—thus desirable content, including content which "scoops" content market–based creators and distributors, will still be available elsewhere.

Not only that, but why the hell would independents creating their own content want to get involved with this? Without the middleman—the "distributor"—independent content creators could make a whole lot more money. The only reason to get involved with a distributor would be to get your content in front of more eyeballs—but people can already make their content available to the entire Internet via a number of other means.

And guess what—the content that's out there now is already subject to a "market" of sorts, competing with other content for eyeballs. The only thing this model does differently, as far as I can tell, is artificially inflate the role—and the profits—of distributors, regulatory bodies, and market-infrastructure providers.

I don't get it. Why the hell would we "content creators" want more infrastructure in our lives?

(Thanks to King Kaufman for the bizarre link.)

I'm down with his blog and Twitter feed—the latter of which truly is "best of the Web" material—but this had so many proper nouns my eyes were scarcely able to focus on any one phrase, sentence, or paragraph.

The conservative establishment has its own top-down talking-point distribution system—but where the Obama team emphasized decorum and patient discourse, these clowns are injecting angry displays of power and tone-deaf, ill-conceived spectacle. Guess which one earns people's respect?

Then again, I guess that's the point: These people aren't interested in earning our respect. They're trying to start a civil war.