scott_sanford

So I noticed that today is the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Puebla, which I hope has been pointed out by many people in the media - I only knew because I read up on it, but it's the sort of thing which could pad out a news broadcast or newspaper article. And most of us are aware that Cinco de Mayo is a bigger deal in the US than in most parts of Mexico.

But the US has a neighbor to the north, too; why don't we have a Canadian holiday? This may bear pondering.

While waiting for the bus today (in the rain) I watched some fellows try to extract a large four-wheel drive SUV which had gotten stuck in a mud puddle. Okay, it was a big puddle...but still, come on. This isn't even out in the middle of nowhere, but in a suburban part of a major city. Someone had hooked a tow strap to a little four wheel ATV, but the thing just didn't have the weight to extract a full size Dodge Ram, although it spun its wheels mightily. Eventually somebody found another excessively large SUV and extracted the first one.

I just found out someone I knew passed away suddenly; we weren't very close, but I enjoyed seeing her and talking. We saw each other Saturday night and she was doing fine. It's hard to imagine she's not going to be around any more.

I'm feeling pleased with myself today. After kicking around a story idea in my head, I blew all of Saturday evening scribbling down prose and filling up pages with handwriting. (It turns out I'm quite productive when deprived of the internet.) I went in to this uncertainly, as my concept seemed to require some exotic framing techniques and two narrative voices, which meant I wasn't at all sure my writing skill was up to it, but in one burst of work I'm within sight of the ending and the first draft seems...readable. Yay, me.

And an update on Sunday night: the first draft is done; one story from concept to finished first draft in under 36 hours (only about 2800 words, but a functional story). Damn, this has been a productive weekend. I rock!

In which my ego explodes with delight – and pops like a balloon.

Like many of us, my fandom includes both mainstream and tiny niche fandoms. Another person active in one of the latter thought that it would be worthwhile to interview me about my history and activities. (“Hooray! I'm liked! I'm validated as a human being!”) So we spent an hour or so exchanging words, covering the usual fan things...and then discovered that the recording program had not, in fact, recorded anything. (“Damn piece of junk! Who programs this crap? Why didn't it say so?”) This installment of my 15 minutes of fame will have to wait.

While googling I stumbled upon thessalian; I knew this name due to reading Daria fanfic...and she'd just posted some commentary about Charles Stross's blog, where I often contribute. Cool.

My original quest was to see if anyone had written anything clever linking the cartoon Daria to the Sandman character Thessaly; for no reason I can see this has yet to happen...

Remember last week when I wrote up the story of three different groups of antisocial teenagers at Denny's?

Well...here I am at the same Denny's - where most nights are not like this, really! - and a few minutes ago a kid who'd kept his hood up while he ate grabbed his skateboard and ran out. This was not a total surprise, as you'd imagine. Alas, he had that skateboard and a gentle downhill slope in his chosen direction; he vanished into the night all too efficiently, despite the restaurant manager and I chasing after him on foot - without a lucky break, it was a lost cause. But a few minutes later two people who'd left at about the same time came back bearing some pieces of paper. It seems our friend had dropped two things: his birth certificate and a court document about his arrest for a previous misdemeanor. I suspect this is going to be a rather easy case for the police.

You hear these 'Stupid Criminal' stories all the time, but you never really expect to see one unfold in front of your face.

Oh, you may think your government is full of crazies and drunkards but...um, you know, never mind. The point is you're not alone. (Okay, if you've been following our Republican primaries you already knew that.) But did you know the State of Arizona sold off its own capitol building?

Now, I'm not sure how it occurs to somebody to think this is a good idea. For that matter, I'm not sure who'd buy such a thing. What would you do with it? Rent it out to a new and upcoming state government? Haul it off to another state so they can have two capitol buildings? In Arizona, the answer was to lease it back to the original tenants - you know, the people who'd been there in the first place, only now the government had to pay money to occupy the building they'd constructed for themselves. Arizona now wants to buy it back, and if I'm reading the article right someone's pocketing over twenty million dollars in this little caper, and it's not the taxpayers.

Okay, so we all know there are stupid people on the internet. But sometimes we hear about exceptional folks like this guy, who upon being caught with naughty pictures on his computer claimed, "My cat downloaded those!" So far no humans have believed him.

Or, "Oy, did I have an evening!" ( Read more... )