Someone’s Been Shitting in My Toilet!

Several times over the past week I've come home to a toilet full of poo. Not really full of poo, I guess, just a little floater and some yellow, but still someone else's poo in my toilet.

Having lived in the dorms with some truly disgusting people, I'm not overly grossed out by this. My current toilet at least has a lid to put down while I flush away the discovery, and somehow that makes everything seem so much more sanitary. It's just a grody mystery - after all, I know my roommates, and they're both hygenic people, much cleaner than I am in all respects. I have been feeling guilty lately, because my crumbs left on the kitchen counter and my boil-over burn marks left on the oven have entailed some sarcastic refrigerator notes. The crumbs I can understand, though I'm not overly fond of the sarcastic note as a means of adult problem-solving; we do have an ant problem. The oven I think is a bit much to be scrubbing every day, as ants don't eat discoloration or flakes of charcoal, but I try not to be insubordinate once the apartment-majority has ruled. At any rate, it is well established that my roommates are much cleaner than I, and at first I wondered if one of them had indulged in an absurd fit of passive-aggressive pique. Uncharitable of me. Then I wondered if I had gone mad, or the toilet had broken. Not the case; I eat too much fiber and the toilet works just fine.

Tonight I realized that it must be one of my roommate's stoner basketball friends. I almost never interact with these people; I think I've exchanged possibly three words with them on two separate occasions spread several weeks apart, one of which was tonight when I said "hello" and "hey". They seem nice enough but one of them doesn't flush.

The obvious choices are 1) offer up some bran muffins next time they come over and get the munchies or 2) move out, which I shall do this weekend.

yami · 22:23 · 25 Aug 2020 · #
Filed under: Personal

Things I’ve Never Done

  1. I have never laughed so hard and so unexpectedly that stuff spurted out of my nose. This is a problem with a) my sinuses or b) my sense of humor, but which? Tell me, I implore you.
  2. I've never been to Burning Man. I'd list that as a reason to quit my job, but tickets are pricey, so I'd need to have money (ergo job) to go. Meanwhile, the list of reasons to build a hydrograph-producing Yami-droid is outgrowing its humble Post-It.
  3. I've never felt so compellet to make up an offensive joke as I did right after reading this post. What's the difference between a homosexual and a Hindu?
yami · 20:44 · 25 Aug 2020 · #
Filed under: Personal

But You Still Have Two Kidneys, Scott!

Some people just don't know how to run a press campaign, or something - Scott Davis has withdrawn his candidacy because in a race composed of equal parts serious budget difficulty and circus hijinks, with a dash of 100 or so candidates' pet issues thrown in, the media were not paying enough attention to his pet issue. Quitter!

Scott Davis's pet issue was organ donation - a nice pet issue, one that is hard to argue against without being a jerk-o religious nutcase (what? the god that made your heart in the first place won't be able to make you a new one for the afterlife? hahaha! jerkface. gimme those corneas.) but it's hardly an issue of immediate political need in the state of California. All the serious pundits are talking about the budget, which will soon end up in a morass of un-money and no way to fund anyone's pet issues, and all the non-serious pundits are talking about a) things that are funny, or b) things that have juicy human interest stories behind them. I have no idea if there was a juicy human interest story behind this campaign or not, and Scott Davis has "stopped giving interviews" so I may never find out.

Then again, this may be a last-ditch publicity effort, to be followed by a "why I dropped out so early, O, my crushed ideals, like kneecaps!" interview in some worthy medium.

Update, 8/24: Looks like Davis's withdrawl is doomed to be overshadowed by Bill Simon's selfless party line toeing. Sometimes, events happen faster than we can demand media coverage for them.

yami · 19:23 · 22 Aug 2020 · #
Filed under: Politics, California Politics

Nonviolent Toyotas?

I ran a stop sign today because the man driving the car behind me looked like Gandhi. I drove under the freeway thinking "gee, that man looks like Gandhi, but why would Gandhi drive a red Toyota Jeep-like vehicle?" and just kept going until I noticed I was halfway through the feeder road on the other side. Oops.

Heaven help us all if I ever drive by someone who looks like Buddha.

yami · 17:35 · 22 Aug 2020 · #
Filed under: Diary

Den Danskevalgen?

Ekstra Bladet has an interview with "Ketchup" Carl Mehr, wherein the Danish-born candidate drinks morgenkaffe and reveals himself to be a Republikaner, ligesom The Terminator. Assuredly not to be missed! This man may well garner several percent of the vote in Solvang.

yami · 19:59 · 14 Aug 2020 · #
Filed under: California Politics

135

See the Certified List of Candidates! Ooooh. Aaah.

I woke up late last night slash early this morning, believing for a good fifteen seconds that civilization was over. Kaput. Dying a hissing, steaming death like the sounds of distant bombs, ruptured dams, and street cleaning machines.

yami · 19:22 · 14 Aug 2020 · #
Filed under: California Politics

Read the Kibble Entrails and Weep

While I'm posting (I need one more post to fill up gaps in my entry numbers, so my re-entered archives will be in harmony with the universe) I should mention that psychic dogs have said signs point to Arnold this election.

yami · 21:30 · 12 Aug 2020 · #
Filed under: California Politics

Recall Candidate Blogs

Howard Dean's got a blog. It's trendy. There should be multiple gubernatorial recall candidates with blogs; so far, I've only found William Tsangares, who is running on a "Recall Arnold" platform and selling goofy Republican T-shirts. Readers actually interested in democracy, as opposed to the tabloid circus coverage I intend to provide, should scroll down to August 9th or so and read his thoughts on signature collection requirements. He points out some practical barriers to candidacy, most notably the fact that all signatures must be turned in to the signer's county of residence, rather than the county in which the signature was collected, which can make for a fuck-ton of driving around.

Speaking from my butt, I suspect that this requirement is in place because the various County Recorders are not on efficient speaking terms. However, this doesn't seem like a serious barrier to any candidate with real grassroots support, so there'll be no thoughts on restructuring the voter registration system from me today.

yami · 20:58 · 12 Aug 2020 · #
Filed under: California Politics

Erasing Time

Water flows under bridges, leaves fall off trees, I hork my database with no recent backups, life goes on. I'll replace the past two months in the time-stream as quickly as I can, given that I've finally found a house to move into, they've started handing me actual responsibilities at work that make blogging under the spreadsheets a less enticing thought, and I've been infected with recall mania that requires a greatly stepped-up news reading schedule.

It's funny. I hate the recall - it's money bleeding through a weird loophole in California elections law, and all possible outcomes are ruinous. But there's a sense of exuberance about it. The minor candidate profiles are full of people running to satisfy quirky, pop-post-modern democratic ideals: providing a common-man alternative to Your Favorite Political Evil, fixing California's broken chi, getting increased exposure for the concerns of structural engineers, making self-referential documentaries about minor candidates in the California recall election. There are at least eight Ph.D. theses on political culture to be written, and enough human interest stories to fuel all the high school journalists in the state.

In my rational hours, I know we're all just relieved to tell "What'ch'oo talkin' 'bout?" political midget jokes, instead of "How many rocks can a one-armed Iraqi teenager fit in his pocket?" jokes. Other times, I think we're moving from bitter angry isolated cynicism, to happy participatory cynicism, to some baseball games and apple pie or something.

yami · 20:22 · 12 Aug 2020 · #
Filed under: California Politics, Announcements

D’OH! System halt.

My web host has done more reconfiguring. From this point forward, the server will choke and refuse to parse any world-writable script it sees. Which is fine and sensible; however, Movable Type as I have it set up likes to output world-writable files, and I am not going to run around manually changing permissions on hundreds of archive entries.

I wish they'd tell me before doing things like this.

If you've encountered a similar problem (maybe you're just more security-conscious than I?) or you have a deep understanding of MT's file system arrangements for whatever other reason, please please email me. DO NOT attempt to leave a comment here, it will explode my tenuous band-aid.

Update: Things are sort of mostly working again, I think, after putting MT into a secure little wrapper. And breaking some stuff along the way, and fixing it again.

yami · 23:02 · 10 Aug 2020 · #
Filed under: Announcements