At five o'clock yesterday afternoon, I was one signature short of gubernatorial candidacy. Though I stood on the steps of the County Recorder's office begging passers-by to please give me a chance at high office, and maybe a dollar for beer, I was cruelly denied on both counts.

I know you're all disappointed, but there's lots of good fish in the sea. Some of the
candidate bios are priceless; many are mind-bogglingly idealistic, especially for an election that clearly comes from the dark soul of a Tom Stoppard play.

Read Kevin Drum's annotated sampling. I was going to do my own, but really, it's not necessary.

The U.S. Office of Surface Mining has produced a very classy-looking educational poster on the aesthetic benefits of strip mines. It is available for free, while supplies last - the request form even has a place for "Country, if not U.S."

I'm having one sent to my cubicle. Fridays are so productive.

So my host server was apparently reconfigured somehow, by nefarious forces in the middle of the night (or perhaps in the middle of the afternoon). Archives and miscellaneous features are all broken until I can make them work again. Boo.

Attention, residents of Tempe AZ, Albuquerque NM, Somewhere-In-OK, and Lavalia IL: you are required to locate and attend a show with the Indecisives in your area, starting immediately and vanishing soon. They will rock your socks into a box with a fox!

Jumping around last night in a kiddie pool at vigorous ska-tempo was not a great way to put myself to sleep; it's a sad, early bedtime for me now.

A momentous event, which I have negelectfully not recorded until now: my very first hate mail! Hoorah!

you and your blog both suck. I'm taking you out of my bookmarks and never, I swear to jeebus almighty, am going to visit this dreadfully boring blog again. good day to you sir.

Ah, and what a good day it is, to be recognized with hate mail! I do suspect its veracity, but it's the thought that counts. And there's also an insightful comment at the bottom of this entry. The rest of the chatter is more mundane:

i hate bugs

Even bugs with green eyes? I hate them too. Hideously fun-colored things.

A monkey is a fallen angel. A monkey is a fallen soldier. A monkey is a monkey pirate.

Monkey pirates! Walk the plank, arr!

So now that I'm a yuppie, I need a Yuppie House. My job is far away from all the trendy neighborhoods (unless you count San Dimas, which won't be trendy for another couple thousand years) so the ultra-tiny, ultra-expensive IKEA studio is not an option. I'm going for more of an obscure, trendy houseplants and pretentious jazz in the living room type of thing anyway.

Apartment hunting is always a huge pain in the ass, no matter where you live; but of course, it's always the worst pain in the ass wherever you happen to live, and L.A. is no exception. The rental scene is dominated by shady outfits who charge $85 for a list of addresses, which may or may not be cockroach-ridden dumps. If you cannot obtain any of the dumps on the list, you usually get your money back; but if you happen to not want to live in a cockroach-ridden dump you are fucked.

I haven't given money to any of these places yet; the Caltech listings have turned up one likely prospect, and I'm crossing my fingers. But apparently, tons and tons of people buy into the deal. Talking to my prospective landlord, he mentioned that the last time he tried to rent the place, he listed it with one such agency; after a few days of near-constant response, he asked to be removed. Should this prospect fail, I may well be forced to buy in to the system; nearly all the classified ads in the paper are placed by such agencies, and it's all kinds of frustrating.
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