After a long, long week, it’s finally (and suddenly) Friday. One of the great enigmas in life is how each day (non weekend day, anyway) can be so unbearably long, yet the days, weeks, months, and years fly by in what seems like an instant (once they’re over). Must be something to do with the extreme time compression that occurs whenever I leave the stasis field known as “work.” If I’m ever exposed to some fast-acting, flesh-eating virus or something, all I’ll need to do is go to my office and sit at my desk while they work on a cure. That’s why so many people croak right after they retire; as soon as you leave the work time bubble you experience massive temporal acceleration and begin aging at a 67% faster rate (retired teachers are exempt from this particular phenomenon).

I keep getting these e-mails from Democrats.com with the subject of “Clarence Thomas is not above the law.” Uh, yeah he is. Have you not been paying attention the past 20 or whatever years? Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bush, Scalia, Bybee, Yoo – all these people are above the law, and Thomas is least of them (in more ways than one). He’s just your basic token pizza delivery dude, but he still gets to be above the law. It’s his reward for playing along.

Did you know there’s an international agreement on how to compute “average” snowfall? Of course not – why would you? Turns out there is, though, and the agreement is to use 30 years of data from the three most recent previously completed decades. And don’t start arguing about what constitutes a “decade” either.

Anyhow, turns out that means the “average” snowfall for Syracuse just got revised up. From 1971-2000 (yeah, I agree, it should be 1970-1999 for reasons I’ve mentioned before, but we agreed not to argue), the average was 121.1″, but now we’re going with the 1981-2010 number: 123.8″. Suck on that, Buffalo, with your paltry 94.7″ (down from 97″). In fact, none of the other NYS Golden Snowball competitors even crack 100″ (Rochester comes in a distant 2nd at 99.5″). Of course, out here in the boonies where I live, you can probably tack on another couple of feet, at least.

Who cares? Well, nobody, really. But when you’re facing six months of dark, cold winter, you either embrace it or go nuts. Or – my personal preference – both. And winter is actually beautiful when you get a chance to get out there and enjoy it. It’s the struggling to get back and forth to work that gets tedious.

Syracuse Beer Week starts this weekend. There are some 100 events scheduled, and I’ll be attending none of them (though I’m looking forward to a private celebration when I get home from work tonight). I just don’t understand how one can enjoy beer when one has to drive back home. There are those who can have a beer or two and be satisfied, I guess, but I’ve never been one of them.

Last week, I thought I saw that one of Bill Maher’s guests this week will be Darrell Issa. I hope he cancelled or something, because otherwise it’ll be tough to watch. As you know, I’m not one to be disparaging (if you can’t say something nice about somebody, don’t say anything at all is my motto), and I’m not one to talk, but, to put it politely, I find Issa to be a disingenuous, lying (is that redundant?) piece of shit. I’d say he lies through his teeth, but I think that’s a set of fake choppers he’s got in there. God know that looks like Kiwi® Parade Gloss Black he rubs on his head.

This may be one of those shows I have to “watch” from the other room to avoid damaging the teevee.

I also have some sort of family obligation this weekend. I’d mostly prefer to hang out and get stuff done around the house (or put in some seat time on the tractor), but that’s what family is all about, I guess. Doing things you don’t really want to, be feel you must.

Speaking of which, one more day to get through.

In an effort to find some sort of motivation to actually go and vote next week (it will take a substantial effort, as I have to overcome both apathy and the anxiety of walking into and finding my way around a new polling place I’m not familiar with; I hate being a newbie), I was perusing the candidates for office where I live. It was rather depressing (though unsurprising) to see that many people are running unopposed. But then I got excited to see that one woman was running for town councillor (or something) on the Communist Party line! Well, shit, if I can help put a commie in office, that’s motivation enough for me. Sadly, upon further review, it turned out she was on the “Community Party” line. Oh, lysdexia, how can you be so cruel?

Some good news, though. One of the questions they put to candidates running for a judgeship was “would you preside over a gay marriage ceremony if asked?” There wasn’t one candidate who said, “no.” Most said the law’s the law, and they weren’t about to pick and choose the ones they’d follow. A couple of them said they were looking forward to it – and that marrying people was a lot more fun than putting them in prison (one might argue that that’s a rather fuzzy distinction). And a few “conservatives” said the law didn’t require them to perform any marriages, and, since they had better shit to do on weekends, they weren’t gonna perform marriages of any kind – gay, straight, or, um, whatever alternatives there are to gay and straight. I took these to be weasel words, so they won’t get my vote. If I vote. Still undecided on the whole thing.

I seem to have developed a new foot-related malady (who knew the feet would be the first to go – assuming you don’t count the knees, shoulders, and back). For the past couple of days, I’ve had a sore toe on my left foot. The “index” toe – if there is such a thing. Which makes wonder why they call your index finger the index finger. Is it the one they use when they index you? Or is it because it’s the one you use when you “thumb through” the index of a book? Which of course makes you wonder why they say “thumb through” a book. I don’t know about you, but I don’t use my thumb. Seems like using your thumb to turn pages would be kind of awkward. Except maybe to grab a stack of pages and use your thumb to regulate the “flow” rate. Like, say, using a flip book.

But anyway, the damn toe is sore for no apparent reason, but now the achilles tendon on my right foot hurts like hell. Again, no apparent reason for that. So I’m kind of walking around like Mr. Tudball.

Ah, the Golden Years. Gotta love ’em.

I now feel camaraderie with Herman Cain. Yes, it’s true: my wife comes up to my chin, too. Also, I like pizza (though it’s been quite some time since I’ve had a slice – wink, wink, nudge, nudge). As if that weren’t coincidence enough, Herman is the brother who ran Godfather Pizza, and my brother is my godfather. Pretty eerie, eh?

In other Cain awesomeness, Herm has broken the story on the Chinese nuclear program. Turns out they have aspirations of developing nuclear capability. This is disturbing news, made even more shocking by the fact that, in their pursuit of nukes, the Chinese have apparently developed a time machine and gone back into time to 1964, allowing them to develop and create a 47 year old stockpile of nuclear weapons.

Now we know why Chinese scientists earlier this year claimed to “prove” that time travel was impossible: they were trying to throw the rest of us off track. Of course, I knew that was bullshit at the time, because anybody who’s ever watched Star Trek knows that tachyons travel faster than the speed of light.

Clearly, Herman Cain has what it takes to be President: brains, courage, vision, and a short wife. Or, as Ann Coulter would say,

…our blacks are so much better than their blacks

Yes, it’s true. In fact – ashamed as I am to admit it – I don’t even have any blacks. Damn crappy economy.

So, as Ann says, you goddamn liberal racists (like Jon Stewart. If you don’t believe me – or Ann – just ask civil rights champion Donald Trump) better knock it off with your high-tech lynching.

Appearing on Hannity’s show Monday night, Coulter agreed that the Cain story is a “high-tech lynching,” adding that “it’s coming from the exact same people who used to do the lynching with ropes, now they do it with a word processor.”

Yes. One of those high-tech word processor thingies. Most likely a Radio Shack TRS-80. Or maybe a Commodore Plus/4.

Bad news for you women winos out there. A new study says drinking – even in moderation – increases your risk of breast cancer. Of course, drinking in moderation is good for your heart. But, hey, you need to set your priorities (besides, their definition of “moderation” is about two cases of beer less than mine).

Hard to believe, but it’s been two whole weeks since our last biweekly meeting at work. Exciting as these meetings are in general, today’s will be even more thrilling as it’s being held in – get this – not only a different conference room than usual, but actually on a whole different floor! And on a floor I don’t normally go to (the first floor; we only actually have two in my building), except occasionally the mens room down there, but only if I have something particularly nasty to work on.

Anyhow, I better get going a bit earlier than usual so I can make myself beautiful.

I hope you all survived Halloween last night (nobody rang our bell, but it’s not light enough out yet to see if any tricksters were about). Like me, I’m sure you’ll start your day with an early morning mass (just in case you were wondering, yes, it is, indeed, a Holy Day of Obligation – though if it had fallen on Saturday or Monday, the obligation to attend mass would have been abrogated – but only in the US, so no loopholes for you foreigners). The lo-cal weather dork just expressed amazement that “just like that” it goes from October to November. Yep. That’s amazing alright. So, yeah, it’s November now, which means election day is almost here. A week from today, if my calculations are accurate (next Tuesday is either Election Day or the Rapture; I need to crunch the numbers one more time).

This my first (Election Day; we’ve had two raptures so far) where I live now, and, what with it being a strictly local election and what with me not knowing any of the players, I’m not sure I’ll even vote. If not, it’ll be the first one I’ve missed in longer than I can remember. Since I voted for Truman or something.

The political signs are out in force, of course, for exciting races like Town Council and Village Supervisor and stuff like that. There’s some woman named Erin Gall who’s running for some sort of Judgeship – State Supreme Court, I think. She’s not bad looking – in a Michele Bachmann crazy-eyes kinda way. She has tons of very large signs around with her picture on it (“Gall for Justice”), so I assumed she’s gots lots of money behind her, and is therefore a f*cking Republican. Just looked her up, and on her Facebook page she “likes” our teabagger, anti-Planned Parenthood abortion crusading Congressbitch, so I reckon I was right about that. Reason enough to go and vote against her, I guess. Too bad, nice Irish girl and all. The odd thing is that she appears to be running for a seat that’s in a different county than where I live. Must be one of those odd gerrymandering things.

It’s not in my district, but I’ve seen signs imploring me to vote for “Pigula for Highway Superintendent.” Now him, I’d vote for, just ‘cuz I respect him for getting through life with a name like Pigula. It conjures up an image of some insane, syphilitic, porcine-looking Roman emperor (no doubt played by Clint Howard in the movie version).

I suppose I should get more interested and involved in the little pissant Town politics. It’s really the only thing you have a prayer of influencing with your vote, and it would probably be good to get out there and schmooze with the local yokel power brokers, in case I ever want to put up a pole barn or get them to plow my street first or something.

In much more important news, though, is the start of basketball season, with SU opening up in an exhibition game against Cal State LA tonight. They’re coached by an SU alum, so we do them a favor and let them come across the country and lose to us in a meaningless game. Because what’s more exciting for a kid from LA than a November trip to Upstate NY?

As usual, there are high expectations for the hoops team this year, which ordinarily means I need to prepare for severe disappointment come March. Hopefully they’ll at least be fun to watch between now and then. Otherwise, it’ll get awfully cold and dark awfully quick around here.

Speaking of getting cold and dark quickly, enjoy the last week of Daylight Saving Time ‘cuz come next weekend we go back to Standard Time, which means that on Sunday night the sun will set before 5:00, and it only gets worse from there.

Sometimes I wish I could just hibernate.