I’d have noted that it was 12/12/12 12:12:12.
Then again, my lunch was more important than that coincidence.
If I’d remembered at lunchtime …
December 12th, 2012It’s a mystery
November 27th, 2012I won’t say that I live and die by 3×5 cards, but I use a fair number of them. I take notes, copy recipes, write down dance steps, save web pages, contact information, and so on. Every now and then, I find some cards I haven’t seen in a while. A few days ago, I found a stack of cards I hadn’t seen in a while. Probably a long while, but there’s no date information on the card.
Beside the URL of a defunct website and the title and author of a book that I thought I might want to acquire, the card contains the following list:
- Shipbuilding
- Prevention
- Bourbon
- Naval Mine Warfare
- Pollinator Protection
- Hockey
- Friends of Liechtenstein
- Contaminated Drywall
I’m pretty certain that there’s no common thread there, but there’s nothing else on the card to let me know why I copied these topics down, or from where. Still, I can tell that I wrote the list as a single entity – it wasn’t something I added to over a period of time – so I’m intrigued by the possibility that there is a common thread, if I can just remember or deduce it.
It’s Veteran’s Day
November 11th, 2012I’ve put a lot of my service time out of my mind, for various reasons, and I haven’t kept up with my old buddies that much, either. Still, if you’re a veteran, you have my thanks. And my sympathies, given the election results. I remember how things were under Carter, and they have to be worse now.
Voting Irregularities
November 6th, 2012I voted this morning – at least, I tried to. I’ve been a registered voter here in Colorado since I moved here in the early 1980s. I’ve been registered at my current address for the last few election cycles. I received my voter registration card in the mail some time ago. I always vote in person, because I’m leery of having my ballot mailed to me. I was not anticipating problems.
I was eighth in line when the polls opened this morning, but the line moved slowly. Where I vote, they have printed lists (small books, really) showing everyone who is registered and assigned to that polling station. Each name indicates whether the person already voted by mail, already voted in early voting, or was eligible to vote in person today. It turned out that the first twelve of us in line were not even listed in the books or the supplemental lists. I’m hoping that this was just a glitch, but I’m not even going to be able to verify whether my provisional ballot was counted for two and a half weeks.
I’ve been registered as an independent most of my voting life. I was registered Republican in the early 1970s for a few years, then independent for several years, Democrat during the 1992 election season, and independent (referred to as “unaffiliated” in Colorado) since. I’m hoping that this is just a glitch, but I fear that it may not be. I was getting two or three political calls a day for a while, mostly from Obama for America, but they pretty much stopped after I told them that there was no way I would vote to reelect him. I’m hoping that there’s no connection.
My polling station isn’t the only one where things have been occurring. During early voting, there were enough cases of voting machines registering Obama votes when the Romney button was pressed (“calibration problems,” everyone was told) that the Republicans wrote to the AGs of six states asking that the issue be looked into. You aren’t allowed to campaign near a polling station, but some people don’t believe that. Some people don’t believe that. Some people don’t believe that. Some people don’t believe that. Some people don’t believe that. Some people don’t believe that.
There are other problems as well. Besides the Philadelphia Republican poll watchers being evicted noted at one of the links above, we have New Black Panthers patrolling at polling stations again, armed threats in Detroit, trashed ballots in California, shredded registrations of Republicans, suppression of military voting, non-citizens voting in Nevada, only Spanish-language provisional ballots in parts of New Mexico (Why is this even allowed? You can’t vote unless you’re a citizen, and you can’t become naturalized without demonstrating proficiency in English.), fraudulent flyers, and preemptive attacks on vote fraud watchdog efforts.
Not to mention vote fraud. And conspiracy to commit vote fraud. Did I mention vote fraud?
Is it any wonder I’m concerned?
Update: Local TV news is saying that what I experienced is apparently a pretty widespread problem caused by election officials “misreading” the lists. They’ve asked people to contact their reporter via Twitter or Facebook, neither of which I use.
Song of the day (or two)
November 5th, 2012Here’s the full version:
This one is missing a verse, but you can’t beat the classic 60s “look.” Note also that this is apparently before Johnny became “The Man in Black.” I must admit, I love the peasant shirt, but I’m not too keen on the frock vest.
Activity for the month?
November 1st, 2012Happy Halloween
October 31st, 2012And, to start off happy, we’ll begin with music. I was hoping to cover all of the classic monsters with songs I’m familiar with, but I couldn’t find “Mummy Shuffle” or “Truck-Driving Vampire” on YouTube. I don’t intend this to be a comprehensive playlist; it’s only a few songs for the theme.
We’ll start with werewolves, with the song “Silver Bullet Blues,” by Michael Longcor:
Next, we’ll play “Frankenstein,” by the Edgar Winter Group (one of my favorite highway songs):
No vampire or mummy songs, so we’ll move into zombies with the Kingston Trio’s “Zombie Jamboree:”
We’ll follow that with a ghost song – Red Sovine singing about “Big Joe and Phantom 309”:
And, staying with the dead for a moment, we’ll finish with “Dead Man’s Party,” by Oingo Boingo:
Moving on, Eleanor Barkhorn has a problem with the idea of “sexy Halloween costumes,” particularly with respect to younger women and girls. Given my glandular bias, I have little problem with them, although I might make an exception for this one.
This, on the other hand, is one impressive costume.
Metafilter had a number of links to appropriate reading material yesterday. I’m giving the Metafilter links in all cases rather than directly linking to the stories, because at least one of the target websites is trashing the link and going to a generic backup site because of the aftermath of Sandy. Also, the commenters often have interesting additions to the topics.
First, a scientific paper on the feasibility of the events in The Call of Cthulhu.
Next, a pointer to an io9 article on spooky webcomics.
There was apparently a horror and fantasy radio series in the early 1980s.
Another link to io9, this one to the 55 scariest scenes from fantasy, SF, and horror films. I don’t know about “the” as the modifier, because these lists are always subjective, but they’re usually interesting, anyway. Besides, I’m not much of an aficionado of being scared, so I’m not one to make such a list myself.
Here’s one to scary stories selected by writers at The Guardian. When it comes to Crawford, who wrote the first story listed, I’m more inclined to select “The Upper Berth.” Another story from that era that I like is, “Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come To You, My Lad,” by M. R. James.
Don’t forget to make all appropriate preparations for the evening.
Finally, I haven’t carved a pumpkin for this year, but I did run across these instructions that I like. The last one I did came out quite well – not only did my daughter like it, she took it to a party and it was stolen. These earlier ones also came out pretty well.
UPDATE: Some interesting anatomical concept art here.
I am a mouth-breather
October 20th, 2012I don’t mean that in any derogatory way; I’m somewhat under the weather and have suffered from congestion for most of a week. Enough that it’s not worth using my CPAP at night, which doesn’t help my rest, either. It built into some kind of full-blown cold this morning, with coughing and sneezing jags.
Ah, well. Has to happen now and then, I suppose.
Music Time
October 12th, 2012Off to an Aldrine Guerrero concert tonight. Maybe tomorrow or Sunday I’ll be able to clean out some links I’ve been accumulating.