csammisrun

Yesterday Courtney and I went and voted for the 2008 general election. How is that possible? Did we travel forward in time??? No, we just used the magic of advance voting, which started in Johnson County on the 21st. Perhaps you are reading this on your computer machine now, sighing in envy and wishing that you too can go vote early to avoid what will probably be ridiculous lines on November 4th. Perhaps you can!

DuPage County, IL, advance voting started for you people two weeks ago but ends on the 30th! There are locations open this Saturday for people who might be registered in DuPage but not living there and maybe going back on some weekends.

Grundy County, IL has also got until the 30th to advance vote in the county courthouse in Morris.

Story County, IA, you’ve got one shot left if you don’t want to truck over to Nevada – get your ass to HyVee this Saturday!

Jackson County, MO, you’re plumb out of luck. No advance voting for you. Certain companies that work people ridiculously hard are, however, legally obligated to let you go vote – don’t let The Man keep you down.

I was looking up tour dates for Kamelot – a power metal band from Florida – and what a shock, their current tour doesn’t stop anywhere near Kansas City. Not even St. Louis. As near as I can figure the closest they get is Mokena, IL. It’s a southwest suburb of Chicago. This is not a town I’ve heard of before today, even having lived in the Chicago suburbs for eighteen years. I’m guessing that they’re playing there because of the Tinley Park amphitheater.

This keeps happening with metal bands, for reasons that I’m not completely clear on. I’d blame a perceived lack of listenership, but Gigantour ’06 went to Oklahoma City of all places. Come on guys, Kansas City has some places where a band can do a thing like play a song

Eight years ago John McCain was a pretty decent politician guy. I wouldn’t have voted for him (I didn’t vote in the 2000 primaries anyway, being 17 at the time) but he had a relatively sane head on his shoulders – he certainly wasn’t a democrat, but he was moderate. Chronicled here are a series of interviews Sen. McCain did on the Daily Show that showcase an eight year long buy-in into the sort of right-wing nuts that ridiculed him in his 2000 run at the GOP primaries.

• July 26, 2001: McCain has the NRA pissed at him for being involved in a bill to require background checks at gun shows. A decent sense of humor all around. “Maverick” was not a word that makes me grit my teeth.
• March 19, 2002: Gunning for campaign finance reform, seems very comfortable with himself, again with the sense of humor.
• May 10, 2004: McCain talks about his direct questioning of Rumsfeld about the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. He was one of the first Republicans to ask directly about the level of awareness that the Bush administration had on the subject.
• November 8, 2005: Talking about a war bill provision that McCain introduced to outlaw (for reals this time) physical torture of enemy combatants.
• April 4, 2006: Here’s where things start to get a bit upsetting for the man. He’s starting to pander to the far right base by paling around with Jerry Falwell – and he admits that he’s doing it.
• April 24, 2007 (part two): Looking very prickly and uncomfortable. McCain’s presidential campaign is going now and he’s talking about deadlines as “surrender” in Iraq, IED jokes, the whole deal. Sounds a lot like the terrorist fear-mongering we’ve been hearing nonstop out of the McCain/Palin campaign recently.

Also it’s pretty weird to look back four years and hear “Mission Accomplished lol” when that joke was only a year old :/

Thanks to Davish Krail on Something Awful for suggesting the method of this highly informal study.

Today I set up a Google Alert to tell me when someone talks about shaim. Not two hours later I got the first hit: “There is a chiyuv to speak out against r’shaim.” What?

The Hebrew r’shaim translates to wicked men.

?????)? – My spoon is too big!

A little while ago I realized something: with but a few exceptions, I rarely pay attention to the TV when I have it on. Most of the time it’s on for the noise factor. Here’s a summary of my TV watching habits:

• Four current shows with regularity: House, Stargate: Atlantis, Metalocalypse, and Battlestar Galactica.
• Something while I’m exercising, a half-hour a day.
• This is a lie, I need to exercise more
• The Weather Channel in the morning.
• Occasionally Adult Swim in the evenings as I’m falling asleep.

The rest of the time, it’s just tuned in to have something going on while I’m reading or programming or doing god knows what else to occupy my evenings.

Why am I paying for this?

Today I canceled my cable TV service, though of course I retained high speed internet – that’s as much a utility as water. It’s saving me around $30/mo. But whatever will I do about my current habits?

• Television networks are getting better and better about making their shows available on the Internet. House, Metalocalypse, and BSG are all confirmed available-within-a-day-of-broadcast. If SG: A isn’t already, I will survive.
• I have plenty of TV episodes on DVD and my computer to watch while I’m exercising, or I could do something drastic and listen to music.
• I hear they have the weather on the Internet these days!
• If I need some noise to fall asleep to, again with the computer.

Recently, my girlfriend has been thinking about getting a cartilage piercing in her ear. She did some research on the topic – as any good librarian does – and found a place in Waldo, MO called Irezumi. It’s evidently rated very highly among tattoo and piercing enthusiasts.

Last night around 9:30, we were sitting around debating what we should do. Bowling? Nah. Pool? We’ve done that recently. We wanted something new. Courtney started looking around online to see what Irezumi’s hours were, in case she wanted to get the piercing sometime soon. Turns out they were open until 11PM Saturday night. I suggested that she could go get it done now, and before either of us knew it we were heading to get a hole poked in her ear.

I don’t know anything about tattoo parlors or piercing establishments in general, but I have to say I was very impressed with Irezumi. The place is very clean, the staff is friendly, and the entire process was inexpensive and very fast. A++++++ would watch someone get needled again.

I made it back from Ames yesterday with my car completely unphased by the trip. This is unprecedented!

Wikipedia takes a lot of flak for being globally editable. It’s worthwhile to take that flak, exchange it for a grain of salt, then peruse Wikipedia at your leisure. That doesn’t mean it can’t ever be right in very bizarre ways.

This afternoon I had a case o’ the hiccups, and after about an hour I went to Wikipedia because I wondered how long I had to go before they were deemed incurable (about five weeks I guess?). Anyway, the article has a subsection called “Medical Treatment”, where I found this little gem:

Digital rectal massage[5] has also been effective in some long-term cases.

“Oh, a fine prank!” says I, “but I do think that fake reference must be funny. I shall click, now let’s see…”

Termination of intractable hiccups with digital rectal massage, courtesy of the Journal of Internal Medicine.

So there it is: the NIH would like you to know that you can cure hiccups by sticking your finger up your ass*. Amaze your friends, break the ice at parties!

* This only works for the person who owns the ass. Sticking your finger up your ass does not cure other people’s hiccups, which is too bad because talk about a great qualification for sainthood.

Last night I took quite a lot of pictures of my fishtank and its inhabitants. The entire set is on Flickr, but I have a couple pictures saved locally for those who do not have access to Flickr at work.

A small colony of zoanthids

The full-tank shot