Wednesday, November 30, 2011

The Pro, on the big screen

The Farrelly brothers are shooting a movie version of the Pro!

...

... Well, not exactly, but close enough for Chapin music.

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Supreme Court of British Columbia: Polygamy still illegal

theweaselking points to the British Columbia Supreme Court's ruling on its polygamy case.

-B.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice Robert Bauman rules that the ban against polygamy is constitutional
-The Judge says the law violates the religious freedom of fundamentalist Mormons, but the harm against women and children outweighs that concern.


Read it as you will:

- Expressing disapproval for the out-group was more important than respecting enumerated civil rights.

- Mormons are so evil that it's necessary to suppress unrelated minorities just to punish them.

- The Court decided that civil rights have to be ignored when a minority of people expressing them behave badly. For the children.

In any case, it's hard to think of a right as a right when your courts have a policy of ignoring it when they don't like its policy implications. C'est la vie. Maybe next time.

[For the record, I don't say this with any hint of superiority. In our recent Heller decision here in the US, all nine SCOTUS justices agreed that the Second Amendment protects a fundamental right to keep and bear arms, but four liberal justices still dissented from the final decision, claiming that something as trivial as a Constitutional right couldn't restrain D.C. from completely banning the possession of functional arms, even in the home. And that's just one example I happen to be particularly familiar with. I'm not about to go throwing any stones over the northern border.]

Countdown to Canada's polygamy ruling

It will be released at either 10:00am or 1:00pm today, depending on what source you're reading.

I wouldn't know how to begin to predict this one. I'm told that the polygamists have a very good claim under Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but that politically the Canadian establishment really wants to express its disapproval of the conservative Mormon out-group, while it simultaneously doesn't want to openly discriminate against liberal alternative families--but I have no way of assessing which parts of that statement are true, nor of whether the Supreme Court of Canada generally rules sociopolitically (as ours too often does), or based on an honest application of the law.

I'm very, very anxious to see how this goes.

Sleep no more! Macbeth does murder sleep.

Among my top ten search terms this week are:

- sleep no more new years
- sleep no more new years eve
- "sleep no more" "new year's"
- newly entitled thane of cawdor
- royal performance of sleep no more.


I guess not too many people are blogging about it.


There's also somebody hoping I can tell him about "pellet gun laws in wisconsin," for some reason.

The race of characters

Regarding that last post, I note a particular thread of comment. Here's the first one:

No, please - look, I know that the sex/race swap thing has creeped into the Doctor Who Hive Mind over the last decade or so - and when you're talking about a show with a thousand year old man flying around the universe in his magic phone booth, there's no logical reason why you should be able to do something as simple as flip a chromosome or tweak the skin color - but I don't like the the idea.

You wouldn't make James Bond a chick, would you? Or a black dude? How about Sherlock Holmes? They should just leave the Doctor as an English (or occasionally Scottish) white dude.


Every time a prominent character in pop culture has his race switched, this comes up. Some folks say it's offensive political correctness, and other folks call those folks racists. Who's right? It depends on whether it is offensive political correctness. Casting a black actor because you want to pander to people who think it's progressive is stupid and offensive. When the best actor who auditions for the job is black, casting him is the only reasonable thing to do.

The only time an actor's race should matter is when the script calls for the sociology of race to be an issue. So Othello, for example, should usually be chosen based on race.* But Bond? Unless you intend to do a self-aware revisionist Bond movie that comments on the sex and class assumptions of the Fleming stories, why the hell _not_ a black or female Bond? And for that matter, you can use a black or female actor to lampshade those themes or play it straight and focus on what makes Bond awesome without fixating on -isms. I've never felt the need to see a Bond movie in the theater, but if the next one stars Isaiah Mustafa or, say, an actress who can pull off a vibe like Jenette Goldstein's Vasquez in Aliens? I'll show up opening night.

Sherlock Holmes, though, is another story. Sherlock Holmes shouldn't be played by a black actor, because Robert Downey, Jr. is not black.


[* - And even then, it's not certain that he should be black--just that he should be a race apart in an otherwise unicolored environment. Patrick Stewart played Othello against an otherwise all-black cast, which is brilliant. Being the only white character in a black setting isn't identical to being the only black character in a white setting, but the differences between those scenarios can say interesting things about both.]

"Ejiofor. Doctor Ejiofor."

I never watched much Doctor Who before the 2005 revival, so I never had a favorite Doctor. In fact, if you'd asked, I probably couldn't have pictured anybody except that-guy-with-the-really-long-scarf-you-know-who-I-mean. So my first Doctor was Christopher Eccleston, who I thought was brilliant and left the series too soon. I was not a fan of David Tennant's spastic squinting, and stopped following the show after his first season.

But when Tennant was replaced by Matt Smith, I knew I could never be fair to him however good he was, because my friend Willow had ruined any future Doctor for me: she passed along a suggestion that the perfect Doctor would be played by Chiwetel Ejiofor. And it's absolutely true. Watch him back to back in Serenity and Kinky Boots to see him show the science fiction chops, the cool competence, and the utter love of humanity that need to spin together to make a proper Doctor, and it's hard to be excited about anybody else getting the role.

It looks like I'm not the only one who thinks so.

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

The Sleep No More New Year Soiree

We've known for a while that Sleep No More was going to have a special show for New Year's Eve. Their ticket schedule was updated a while back with another extension into January, and instead of the usual Saturday evening shows, it showed a single 7:00 show with no ordering info. There was just note to await word through their newsletter.

Today, I got a formal invitation from the assistant to the Newly Entitled Thane of Cawdor, to "a royal feast in the presence of the King in celebration of the new year," to be held in the grand ballroom of the McKittrick Hotel, elegant dress required.

I about broke a finger forwarding the email to the ladies.

We'd all been assuming that as soon as this email went out we'd have to make a quick decision and order, since Sleep No More shows sell out fast. I just didn't realize they'd make this decision so easy for us.

The cost to attend the "His Majesty's feast...followed by a royal performance of Sleep No More, succeeded by the new year soiree" is $600. Per person.

I wish them the best, hope that the attendees get their money's worth, and hope furthermore that they sell out the event and are persuaded to keep on extending this cash cow.

Bada-big boom.

The deal done, Forbin set out for Thebes, and Belzoni received another visitor to the consulate. He was a Major Moore, who was pausing in Cairo while carrying dispatches from India to London. To entertain him, Belzoni took the major to the top of the Great pyramid and while there discussed the enigma of the neighboring second pyramid. "What a pity it was," he said, "that in an intelligent age like the present, it had not been opened, so that the interior remained quite unknown." Others thought so too. Several Franks living in Cairo had proposed launching a subscription to raise [20,000 pounds sterling] to fund blasting into the pyramid with gunpowder...
--Ivor Noël Hume,
Belzoni: The Giant Archaeologists Love to Hate


Ho-ly crap.

It was a hell of a romantic age, but damn. They had very different ideas of how to do archaeology.

Friday, November 18, 2011

A Gizmodo article discusses the smell of the moon:

One of the things I loved about the AMNH's Beyond Planet Earth exhibition was a seemingly gimmicky, but quite surprising device: a machine that allows you to sniff what the Moon smells like! It was... weird.
Apollo 16's Charlie Duke and Apollo 17's Gene Cernan described the smell as "spent gunpowder". Duke said it was really strong. Talking to Mission Control, Cernan pointed out that it "smells like someone just fired a carbine in here", referring to the Lunar Module.
...
In any case, you have to try it yourself. You can visit
Beyond Planet Earth: The Future of Space Exploration at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

Or, I suppose, you could just fire a carbine.

Clearly, ancient Rome needed its own DOMA.

It was once the custom for senators to enter the senate-chamber with their sons dressed in their praetextae [a kind of toga worn by, among others, boys who had not yet come of age]. When some business of greater than usual importance was being discussed and it had to be put over until the following day, the senate resolved no one was to report the matter under discussion before a decree had been passed. The mother of young Papirius, who had been in the chamber with his father, asked her son what business the senate fathers had transacted. the boy replied that he had to keep silent and wasn't allowed to speak of it. The woman became yet more eager to hear: the matter's concealment and the boy's silence goaded her to press her inquiry, and so she asked with greater urgency and force. Pressed by his mother, the boy conceived a witty and playful lie: he said the senate was considering whether it would be judged more expedient and in the public interest for one man to have two wives or for one woman to be married to two men. Hearing this, his mother became panic-stricken, left the house all atremble, and brought the report to all the other married women: next day saw large contingents of matrons streaming to the senate. In tearful supplication they begged that one woman be married to two men rather than vice versa.

Macrobius, Saturnalia
Translation by Robert A. Kaster, from the excellent Loeb Classical Library edition.

This must be why the Empire fell. First this, then before they knew it the senate was debating a patrician's right to marry a clepsydra.

Thursday, November 17, 2011

HR 822 passes in the House!

HR 822, the concealed-carry reciprocity bill that would allow a permit holder to carry in every state that allows concealed carry, passed in the House, with an overwhelming vote of 272 for and 154 against.

Representatives from the handful of states that deny the rights of ordinary people but hand out permits "by discretion" to wealthy and politically connected cronies are predictably soiling themselves, and trying desperately to settle on some meme that makes their opposition look reasonable.

Now we continue the march into the Senate. Based on the yea votes from the last time this bill came through, plus the new commitments we've gotten, it should have enough votes to pass, but the politics are of course more complicated than that, and we can expect a lot of behind-the-scenes arm twisting over this vote.

The Obama administration really, really doesn't want this bill to come to his desk so close to the election, as the President will have no good options. He's put a decent amount of effort into telling people he's totally not anti-gun, and trying to preemptively undermine the NRA's effect on his reelection bid,* so vetoing a major piece of civil rights legislation like this would stand to do his campaign a whole lot more harm than good. We have a robust gun culture that will go to the polls in force against an anti-gun Chicago Democrat, an ever-growing number of American moderates who care about gun rights and an ever-dwindling number of American liberal voters who give a damn about gun control. The electoral math does not favor a veto.

On the other hand, the petulant children who run the political machines in the major liberal strongholds care quite a bit about gun control, in what I'm increasingly convinced is little more than a big "but they won't respect my authori-tah!" temper tantrum. And the President needs them to get their machines working to generate votes for him. Signing a bill that they'll consider a slap in the face won't turn the Bloombergs and the Emanuels into Republican boosters, but it just might make them less likely to help when he needs them.

Very interesting times. I wouldn't bet money on HR 822 passing the Senate, but if it does, it's really win-win for gun rights in this country. If President Obama signs it, we can finally do away with the perplexing (and expensive) web of reciprocity agreements, and put one more nail in the coffin of discriminatory "discretionary" licensing. If he vetoes it, he significantly hurts his chances of reelection, which may actually be better for gun rights in the long run than winning this issue at this time.

[* - Not that this has been difficult, given the NRA's public message. I get that they're reaching for a sound bite when the threat is too complex to express in a sound bite, but "OBAMA GUN BAN COMING" is childishly easy to mock, given that the only directly gun-related bills the President has signed have been pro-gun.]

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

The Neglected K-Frame

Over at Brigid's, Marko comments about Snith & Wessom K-frame revolvers:

You just don't see too many K-frames in CCW holsters anymore these days. Most folks who tote a wheelgun carry a small-frame snubbie, and most folks who carry a 30-ounce gun opt for higher capacity than a six-shooter.

The S&W K-frame revolvers were arguably the most popular handguns of the 20th century. The Military & Police model--now called the Model 10-- was extremely popular with cops and private citizens. They were the ultimate in "basic", with a bare minimum of features and controls, and a size and power perfectly suited to most people's needs and preferences. They were the Glocks of their time. I bought one a while back for our very small household battery, just because it was the Platonic ideal of the double-action revolver (a niche for which we didn't then have an example), and fit our hands nicely.

But today, they've gone badly out of fashion due to changes in the market. When Danielle and I went to the NRA convention last year, we asked at every holster booth in the seven acres of exhibitors, and not one of them was offering a holster for a K-frame. I was shocked. I knew they weren't popular any more, but none?

Danielle had a much easier time finding a shoulder holster for her snub-nosed J-frame, picking one up at a ridiculous last-hour-of-show don't-want-to-pack-it-up discount. She got it home, adjusted it for fit, holstered her snubbie... And it almost fell out. Because the holster was sized for a K-frame.

I gave her the revolver. It was probably the best thirty bucks she ever spent.

All linkey...

I sometimes get to feeling like all I do on this blog is quote Blunt Object, but come the hell on--this stuff is gold:

Okay, just informally, let’s have a show of hands: who thinks it’s a great idea that the Executive has

"...the power to target — in total secrecy and with no checks or due process — their fellow citizens for execution: specifically, assassination-by-CIA
and likes to use it?"

Mainstream progressive think-tank the Center for American Progress? Nice of you to stand up and be counted. Yes, I know; targeted killing without due process would be evil awful bad no-good totally wrong if Dubya was still in office, but like Communism it works if only the right people can be put in charge.

Republican Presidential nomination slate at the foreign policy debate? Well of course, all y’all probably creamed your pant-oh, Ron Paul, you’re such a kidder!

"It took Ron Paul — whom every Good Progressive will tell you is Completely Crazy and Insane — to point out to the GOP the rather glaring inconsistency between, on the one hand, distrusting government authorities to run health care, but on the other, wanting to empower the President to kill whomever he wants with no transparency or due process."

Seriously now, Dr. Paul, let’s get with the program of killing brown guys with scary ay-rab sounding names. No? Where’s your bipartisanship, Dr. Paul? Don’t you want to reach across the aisle to those CAP folks and show America that the Party of Lincoln is ready to compromise on important foreign-policy issues?


To be fair, I think we need a reevaluation of the legitimate rules of engagement in a world where warfare has changed to the point of being unrecognizable to, say, the participants in the Hague convention. But in the absence of an explicit consensus on those rules of engagement, I'm very reluctant to accept "the President can just kill folks he thinks need killing" as a substitute, and certainly not in total secrecy with no obligation to provide any evidence that the target is a legitimate one.

The Snow-lek

Today's Teefury shirt had better inspire thousands of snowsmiths this winter:

From General interwebs


RE-FRIDGE-ER-ATE!

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Weird stuff found in the woods

A few bloggers have pointed to a post on a Pacific Northwest outdoorsmen's forum about the weirdest things people have found in the wilderness.

Among the obvious corpses, illicit crops of recreational flora and, the, ah... artifacts you might expect a tool-using, sexually-reproducing species to leave behind, there's a surprising wealth of "we found an altar covered in animal heads in this backwoods region known for its shady locals who don't like outsiders" stories.

Good to see the Cult of Dagon is thriving on the west coast after the FBI drove it from the east.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it...

A group of professional burglars broke into a Brinks warehouse with great cinematic style.

They covertly imported a cellphone jammer (legal in the UK, but banned by the feds in the Land of the Free) and cut the building's phone lines to disable the alarm system, waiting nearly an hour to make sure the cops didn't show up. Wearing black jumpsuits and galoshes over street clothes, they cut holes in the roof and climbed in, disabling security cameras as they went. Opening the bay doors, they backed in a rented cargo truck disguised with the shell of an RV, and unloaded their gear, which included magnesium rods for cutting through the vault, plus their own ventilation equipment and a generator to make them independent of the building's power. They epoxied the exterior doors shut to delay discovery, scattered cigarette butts harvested from a local homeless shelter to send the police after false DNA leads, and set to work cutting through the vault door.

And promptly set the money on fire.

Monday, November 14, 2011

From that first day...

Yesterday, the ladies and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary.

Now, according to the Wiki page, the first anniversary is either the "paper" or "clock" anniversary, or "cotton" in metric.

Since our floors are already groaning under the weight of our books, and cotton and clocks are lame, I decided it would be more interesting if the first anniversary was the Rifle Anniversary:

From Firearms

[Two-cent piece for scale.]

Now all you ladies out there know what to ask for!

[For all the bullshit in the polyamory "debate", one thing is undeniable: it definitely makes anniversaries more expensive. Nota bene, before starting up that harem.]

Friday, November 11, 2011

A libertarian metaphor: Government is like

I've noticed the phrase "antipathy for government" being used a few times, specifically in reference to a particular Republican sideshow candidate. And I think we should take a moment to discuss what exactly libertarian-ey folks--and the politicians trying to court them--think about government and its proper role.

I don't hate government. If I did, I'd be an anarchist, not a libertarian. I'm about ninety percent sure we need some amount of government, and about ninety percent sure we need taxes to support that government.

The thing is, a government is like a rifle: there are certain tasks for which no other tool will do. There are certain tasks you can do with other tools, but the rifle does them better if used with care, so using it is wise. But there's a world of tasks out there that it's terrible for, and trying to use it for those purposes will end up breaking the thing you want to fix and catching your neighbors in the stray fire. So you keep careful track of where you point the thing, and keep your finger off the damn trigger.

So I don't hate government any more than I hate rifles, but I respect the damage both can do, and insist on keeping strict muzzle and trigger discipline. When you've built a government with a hundred-thousand employee strong bureau dedicated to regulating every aspect of agriculture and food, with an attitude of such pervasive, granular control that it thinks nothing of creating a "Christmas Tree Checkoff Task Force" to "strengthen the position of fresh cut Christmas trees in the marketplace and maintain and expand markets for Christmas trees within the United States", you're waving your damn rifle around with your booger-hook on the bang-switch, and other people on the firing line are right to be concerned.

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Poly rights in Canada... Maybe

Remember that polygamy case before Canada's Supreme Court?

The Court publishes its decision on November 23.

I've got my fingers crossed.

Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse the curtain'd sleep

Nota bene:

Playing Dead Rising 2 at night while obsessing about Sleep No More is a recipe for some really special dreams.

It doesn't help that we've been having a thick November fog roll in at night, making our apartment complex look like Silent Hill.

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Pro patria vigilans

Blunt Object discusses the similarities and divergence of liberalism and libertarianism, yadda-yadda.

The reply in the comments from perlhaqr demands reposting:

Blunt Object:
[The problem with this otherwise laudable motivation is,] liberalism sets up government specifically as the biggest kid on the block and assumes away the need for any other institution to hold power over it to keep it in line. The very existence of a sovereign regulatory body suggests that powerful actors (occasionally) need to be bullied into behaving themselves, but the only provision for bullying that sovereign body into behaving itself is a vague wave of the hand at "elections" and "democracy". Sure, that works well in this best of all possible worlds. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?


perlhaqr:
*contemplates a new t-shirt design*

"Ego custodiet, motherfucker."


...

[I happen to agree with the Object, BTW; the largest individual failing I generally identify when talking to liberals is the belief that voting is sufficient to keep abusive governments in line, no matter how hard it fails in the real world. "Sure, it's an abusable power we're handing government, but if they abuse it, we'll just vote them out in four years!" "Uh-huh. And how'd that work out for killing Bush's Patriot Act?" "..."]

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Irony, illustrated

I intend at some point to visit Lexington and Concord. It's where my country began, symbolically, and the difference between the historical fact of how those battles played out and our national mythology about them is vividly illustrative of who we are as a people. It's the kind of place I feel a need to stand in and soak up.

On a practical level, they're an inconvenient distance, sitting at about four and a half hours' drive away. It's too far for a day trip, and is much more the kind of thing we'd do as a day's stopover while heading further north for a longer vacation in Maine, Vermont, or New Hampshire. But we won't be doing it that way.

See, going on two and a half centuries ago, The people of Lexington and Concord were prepared to come out under arms by the thousands to violently repel a group of government employees intent on seizing their military weapons. That the majority of their small arms and ammunition had already been hidden away--leaving Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith only a few heavy siege cannon to dig up and destroy before withdrawing--doesn't seem to have discouraged them. The Colonials of Massachusetts had previously made it clear that attempts to disarm them would not be borne with good humor.

Today, though, Massachusetts requires licensing and registration of all firearms, prohibits possession of arms without such permission from the state, and the FOPA only protects us during nonstop transit. If we stop to see the ground where our forefathers fought a tyrant to retain their arms, we'll be in violation of Massachusetts' draconian gun control laws.

The European civilizations in America are very young in historical terms, and when you've been reading a lot about Rome, it's easy to get in the habit of thinking of the American Revolution as a very recent thing. The fact remains, though, that on the scale of human lives two hundred thirty-six years is a long time--time enough for a civilization to fall a very long way.

Friday, November 4, 2011

HUGS TIEM NAO

Gizmodo, discussing the naked mole-rat, expresses a common sentiment:

From General interwebs


This creature can live 30 years. Are you terrified? Me too.

I have to admit to an enthusiastic double standard about scary critters: mammals are okay.* I can know that hippos are filthy, vicious murderers, but they don't make my skin crawl like spindly-legged creeping insects. I can instinctively recoil at the thought of cephalopods or the milky-eyed, needle-toothed abominations of the deep ocean, which are generally tiny and live well outside my world, but this guy?

From General interwebs


That's a jaguar. A giant cat. House cats are arguably the most successful predators on the planet--our friends only because we're too big to be food. And this cat can grow to over 300 pounds.

They live in North America. They're strong enough to drag cows up into trees. They're ambush predators that can stalk in absolute silence before attacking with blinding speed, usually exploiting the victim's blind spots. And while they're capable of causing severe head and neck injuries with a paw swipe; or biting through your throat; or paralyzing you with a severing bite from behind to the cervical vertebrae; their preferred method for killing mammals is to use their impossibly strong jaw muscles to drive their teeth through their dinner's skull. This critter will sneak up and bite you in the brain.

It is death on mittens.

But it's a mammal. So who's-a-kitty-you-are-yes-you-are.

It's possible my threat assessment is less than ideal.

[* - Also my general rule for food.]

I see no reason

In preparation for Guy Fawkes Day, The Old Foodie shares this recipe from The lady's own cookery book, and new dinner-table director (1844) by Lady Charlotte Campbell Bury:

Tongues, to cure. No. 1.
Take two fine bullocks' tongues; wash them well in spring water; dry them thoroughly with a cloth, and salt them with common salt, a quarter of a pound of saltpetre, a quarter of a pound of treacle, and a quarter of a pound of gunpowder. Let them lie in this pickle for a month; turn and rub them every day; then take them out and dry them with a cloth; rub a little gunpowder over them, and hang them up for a month, when they will be fit to eat, previously soaking a few hours as customary.


I recall reading speculation once that black powder may have been accidentally invented in a Chinese kitchen due to each ingredient's historical use in culinary pursuits, but I expect Mr. Occam would have some words to say about that.

[h/t to Le Loup]

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

When the penny drops

Note this incident in Portland, Oregon, in which a mom down on her luck was hassled for trying to pay for her groceries with 32 bucks worth of quarters.

Comments and coverage vary from populist rage to "this is news?"

But it also illustrates one of my pet issues: the US coinage system, because it's gone unchanged despite serious inflation, is comically out of step with the value of the dollar.

The Portland woman racked up a modest 32 dollar grocery bill, or 128 quarters' worth of sundries. In 1950, according to the Westegg Inflation Calculator, those same groceries would have cost $3.57. or six half-dollars, two quarters, a nickel, and two pennies.

The lady's purchase was of a level traditionally paid for with coins--just not with our current ludicrously valueless coins.

They're the modern stone aged family

On Monday, LabRat pointed to an article on NPR blogs that sought to dismiss paleo dieting on a variety of collectivist all-seven-billion-of-us-are-in-this-together grounds, with a dash of anthropology thrown in for credibility. But the author--a doctor with some serious anthro training--seems to be going off a bit half cocked in her halfassed snark:

Our ancestors began to eat meat in large quantities around 2 million years ago, when the first Homo forms began regular use of stone tool technology. Before that, the diet of australopithecines and their relatives was overwhelmingly plant-based, judging from clues in teeth and bones. I could argue that the more genuine "paleo" diet was vegetarian.

Uh-huh...

"X predates stone tool use, and Y is only common after hominids started using stone tools. Therefore, X is more authentically paleolithic than Y."

Didn't think that statement through very carefully, did'jya, doc?

Who will bemoan her?

We all know the legend of the Trojan War, supposedly fought for Helen, the world's most beautiful woman.

It's not an uncommon trope in world mythology, and it turns out there's a similar story in Armenian legend. Around the ninth century BC, so it goes, the ruler of Nineveh demanded the hand in marriage of a pretty young thing called Ara the Beautiful. Denied the demand, Nineveh went to war to claim Ara, setting off a long story of war, gods, magic, diplomacy, and mistaken identity.

The things dudes will do to get chicks, amirite?

Ah, but in this story the ruler of Nineveh with the raging libido is the sorceress queen Semiramis, and Ara the Beautiful was the king of Armenia.

If this story isn't already a shojo manga series, there's definitely a buck to be made there.

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Walking in a fimbulvinter wonderland

Eight inches of snow is not a big deal for New Jersey.

Eight inches of snow in October, it turns out, is.

We're without water, and have to shovel snow into the toilet tanks to keep them flushing. This is a minor annoyance compared to the people all around us; we never lost power for more than a few seconds at a time.

On my way to work this morning the towns I drove through were dark and there were lanes closed from fallen trees and power lines. At one point four utility poles in a row had been dragged down into the right lane.

Thanks for the early reminder, nature.