So, tomorrow is Election Day, which first and foremost means I earn a comp day for working, because it’s a holiday for we godless public employees here in NY State. I think the idea is (or at least was originally) that we’d be able to take this day off to make phone calls for candidates or drive people to the polls or whatever. I guess there are probably a lot of state, county, and municipal employees who still actually do that, though I’ve never been one of them. And it’s not because I’m lazy (I am, but that’s not it), but because I have a really hard time calling people on the phone (I hate even calling people I know or making appointments and stuff like that) – let alone going door-to-door. But I’m also not a veteran, and I’ll be earning a day off for 11/11, too.

As for tomorrow, it’s one of those off-year elections where in theory you can make a “real difference” by voting for local offices, but where, in reality, you can’t do shit. At least where I live. We’ve only got a handful of offices up for grabs, and of those, only two are actually contested. And I can pretty much guarantee you the Republicans will in those two because that’s just how it is up here.

Guess I’ll be writing some people in, again.

There are some more interesting races going on in Syracuse (like Mayor, Common Council, etc.) but I don’t get to vote for those.

Here in NY State, though, we have some propositions to vote on. One is on whether or not to hold a Constitutional Convention, which will hopefully get defeated, because if they manage to get one of those going, the rich people will get to buy delegates to it and fuck the people over (and by “the people” I mostly mean me).

The second one is whether or not elected officials who are convicted of a felony (we’ve got a lot of that going on here in NY) should be eligible to receive their pensions. I have a pretty good notion of how that one’s gonna go.

And the third prop eould make it easier for municipalities to fix a road, install public utility lines or add bicycle trails to the Adirondack Forest Preserve, which everybody (including the environmental groups, from what I can find) seems to be in favor of.

In my county, there’s also a proposition to transfer control of the County penitentiary from our County Executive to the Sherriff’s Department. Gee, I dunno. I haven’t been able to find the union’s position on this, which I guess means they at least don’t hate the idea. So, what the hell, I guess I’m in.

It’s a darn shame I can’t just get the ballot ahead of time so I can fill it out and drop it off. I guess I could go the absentee ballot route, but I have a sneaking suspicion they never even bother opening those. At least, not until the election’s long over.

Oh well, at least I know the lines won’t be long.

If your only exposure to Guy Fawkes Day is the movie V for Vendetta, you might think that this evening’s bonfires and fireworks in Great Britain are in celebration of a hero. Actually, it’s a celebration of a traitor to the Crown being caught and the plot to blow up the House of Lords and King James foiled. Fawkes was actually a disgruntled Catholic (a bit redundant) who, along with his 12 fellow plotters, was hoping to replace the Protestant James with James’ daughter Elizabeth, who was apparently a good Catholic girl. Or something. I don’t know – I really don’t get all the religious bullshit, never mind the post-Magna Carta British monarchy. Anyhow, on November 5, 1605, Fawkes was discovered underneath Parliament, hanging around with a match and a few dozen barrels of gunpowder. At which point, I’m sure he said something to the effect of “Gunpowder? Nope, that’s not my gunpowder. Just watching it for a friend.”

So, anyway, King James ordered everybody to light bonfires in celebration of his not being blown up, and after three or so days of torture (the Brits were rather good at that sort of thing – though I expect they referred to it as “enhanced interrogation”) Fawkes gave up his co-conspirators and he and the ones they captured were all convicted and sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered – which is a rather unpleasant way to die. Fawkes went last, and either managed to jump off the scaffold or he just fell, or maybe the rope was too long. At any rate, he managed to snap his neck and therefore escaped the really nasty bits (well, he escaped being alive for it – they did it anyway).

Rather a sick mind to come up with that punishment (apparently devised in the 13th Century – by a committee, no doubt) and not actually taken off the books until 1867, and I can’t imagine how twisted you’d have to be to actually be the person to carry it out. If you weren’t nuts when you started, you’d have to be by the time it was over.

Still, they may want to bring it back here in the US, for things like lying to Congress. But maybe only if you’re the Attorney General or something.

Just a thought.

On this day in 1825, the Erie Canal officially opened as Governor Dewitt Clinton began a voyage from Buffalo to New York City aboard a canal boat named the Seneca Chief. In the precursor to the modern Internet, cannons were lined up within earshot of each other along the route, and as the Seneca Chief departed, the first cannon was fired, then the next and so on until the folks in NYC found out the canal was officially open – some 81 minutes later. At the time, this was the fasted form of communication ever. Supposedly.

Most people don’t know it, but New York was kind of a minor city back then – Philly was the big port since it had access to routes on the western “frontier.” The Erie Canal connected the Atlantic Ocean (and NYC) to the Great Lakes, meaning people could ship their crap as far west as Duluth, by barge. A helluva lot cheaper than loading everything into wagons.

Thanks to Irish engineering (aka, “the shovel”), they managed to dig a 400 or so mile long ditch from roughly (as the song goes) Albany to Buffalo in only a couple of years. Rumor has it, they’d drop off a bunch of Irishmen and shovels in one spot (no doubt they picked them up from in front of Home Depot), and a barrel of Whisky a few miles away where they wanted them to finish for the day. That, and $10 a week was all the needed to get the job done.

Ah, those were the days.

Well, last one at our house, anyway. And I guess it hasn’t actually been summer for a while now, but it’s sure felt like it. Yesterday it got up to something like 80 degrees which, while not exactly unheard of in mid-October around here is almost as rare as Syracuse football beating the defending National Champions (actually that second thing is a lot more rare). There was a strong breeze all day, which made it feel absolutely perfect out there, and I was able to get the grass cut one last time (that’s gonna have to do it – shit started falling off the tractor, and I had to cobble things together because I didn’t have the right parts on hand).

Summer finally came to an end overnight, though, as a pretty strong storm front passed through with strong winds and heavy rains that got the dog all upset (his happy pills just aren’t getting the job done – next time maybe I’d be better off taking them myself), and this morning it was about 40 degrees cooler.

So, that’s that for that.

Not that we won’t get a few more decent days before winter settles in, but you can feel it in the air. Winter’s definitely coming (I just stepped out the door and walked about half a block, and, damn, it feels decidedly wintry out there).

Time to get the chains, plow, and cab on the tractor and see about mounting the little golf cart propane heater I bought (probably turn out to be a waste of money, but who knows – hopefully it’ll help at least a little). Fortunately, I have a 4WD truck now, so there won’t be quite the same sense of urgency to plow.

In other news…I don’t wanna talk about other news. At best it’s depressing and at worst it’s infuriating. Except for one item, and it’s only for those of you who actually “believe” in science.

We finally have an answer to that age-old question, “what is the sound of two neutron stars colliding.”

The outburst took place in a galaxy called NGC 4993, located roughly a thousand billion, billion km away in the Constellation Hydra.

It happened 130 million years ago – when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. It was so far away that the light and gravitational waves have only just reached us.

OK, so if you’re one of the fundie Kristian types, I guess we lost you right there, since as you know dinosaurs roamed the Earth just a couple thousand years ago. But as for the rest of us…

The stars themselves had masses 10-20% greater than our Sun – but they were no larger than 30km across.

They were the crushed leftover cores of massive stars that long ago exploded as supernovas.
They are called neutron stars because the process of crushing the star makes the charged protons and electrons in the atoms of the star combine – to form an object made entirely of neutrons.
Such remnants are incredibly dense – a teaspoonful would weigh a billion tonnes.

That’s nearly as dense as Sean Hannity. But at least something good comes out of neutron stars. Though Hannity might be something interesting for scientists to study – I mean, how cam something be so dense, and yet so vacuous at the same time?

Oh well, time to get on with killing Monday. Gotta kill a 5-day week this week (two in a row, in fact, and both on-call as well), and I’ve got a feeling it aint gonna be pretty.

Now that summer is officially over, summer has returned to Central New York, and procrastinators such as myself have been rewarded with the opportunity to recoup a couple of pool days that we lost out on during the joke of a summer that’s just ended, with temperatures expected to get near 90 on Sunday. It’s not often I get to thumb my nose at you guys with your perfect manicured lawns who got your pools closed right after Labor Day (yeah, I’m talking to you, Gary), this could be the weekend, and I’ll try and enjoy it while I can.

Of course, I’m not alone in my sun-revelry, as the streets here in Syracuse are filled with office workers who are normally held captive in our Dilbert land of cubicles. Most of us are shipped in from the ‘burbs, and you can see how unaccustomed (and uncomfortable) a lot of these folks are in an urban setting (as urban as things get around here, anyway). And yes, by “urban,” I mean exactly what you think I mean.

Just this morning on the shuttle down here, one woman was saying how she wasn’t very happy about having to wait for the bus with “all the drug dealers and panhandlers,” which I found to be a pretty stupid statement.

First off, while it wouldn’t surprise me if there were one or two people walking around who might have sold a controlled substance in their time (I personally plead the fifth), I haven’t noticed any “drug dealer” types. And I have a pretty good idea what to look for, too. Too bad, ‘cuz I could use a little something to get through the rest of the day.

Second, I fail to see why people get so darn irate because somebody asked them for some change. I mean, if somebody’s being menacing or threatening or something, it’s one thing. But there’s no harm in asking, right?

But, whatever.

One thing I will say is that back in the olden days, it was a lot easier to tell who the crazy people were, ‘cuz they were the ones talking to themselves – often rather loudly. Since cell phones and headsets and whatnot though, damn near everybody you see on the street is talking, laughing, or hollering at some unseen but very real to them entity.

Now the only way I can tell the crazy people is they tend to come up to me while I’m waiting for the bus and strike up a conversation. Why? I don’t know. I guess I’m not exactly a shining example of sanity myself.

Oh well, a few more hours to soldier through, and then it’s the weekend, which used to mean something to me, but now that I haven’t had a beer in over a year, about all it means is a trip to Costco and catching up on laundry. Better than working, but not a lot to look forward to.

But at least they aren’t predicting any earthquakes or hurricanes up my way, so there’s that.

If you live in Florida, you’re hopefully on the road to somewhere safe (or already there) and aren’t reading this right now. At the moment, Irma is whomping Cuba and getting ready to turn north to Florida. My brother and his life live down there (not in Miami, but in the West Palm Beach vicinity, I think), and his kids and grandkids are also in the area. It’s not the first hurricane they’ve gone through, but it looks like it’ll be the worst. They aren’t supposed to get the flooding that Texas got, and last I heard they weren’t evacuating. But I think they’re all pretty busy right now, and I expect once they lose power, it’ll be out for a while.

It’s the critters I worry about more than anything. Based on the continuous stream of puppies that get rescued from death in the Bible Belt and sent up here for adoption, they don’t seem to treat them all that well in that part of the world, even in the good times. So this kind of shit is really sad. Anyhow, good luck to everybody down that way – even to you Trump voters and climate change deniers. To paraphrase the Jesus people – it’s OK if you don’t believe in climate change, it believes in you. Or, actually, like your imaginary God, it doesn’t really give a shit about you either way. It just is. But if praying makes you feel better, by all means go for it. I’d pray for a standby generator, personally. But it might be a little late for this one.

So, it’s September now with Labor Day weekend almost upon us (or already upon a lot of us, judging by the lack of people in the office today). It was a rather crisp 41 degrees here this morning. I don’t know if that’s the coldest it’s been since our alleged “summer” began, but it felt pretty goddamn cold to me. So cold that, though I hated to do it, I decided to wear my dungaree jacket this morning. I thought I’d regret it as the day warmed up (which isn’t going to be by much), but it’s f*cking freezing (or I, at least, and freezing) here in the office, so I’m actually wearing it now. I just wish I had some mittens with me.

Unfortunately, I’m really not feeling so great today. Freezing to death is just one thing – I’ve had a headache for a couple of days now, and I’m just feeling not altogether right today. Hopefully that’ll get better when I leave, but my throat feels kind of scratchy and my nose has been drippy. And my head aint right (more – or maybe less – than usual).

It’s pretty astonishing what’s going on down there in Texas. Looks like we’re going to get some rain from it even all the way up here – though of course nothing near what those poor folks are dealing with.

And now hurricane Irma is on the way to the Atlantic Coast. Last I heard, it may or may not hit anywhere from the Caribbean, Florida, the Carolinas, or not at all. You never really know which way these things will head, so I’m sure everybody on the Atlantic Coast has one eye on the radar map at this point.

Again, up here, the worst we’ll ever get is a lot of rain (though it’ll be measured in inches, not feet). That’s one of the benefits of living in an inconsequential little town in the middle of nowhere – no hurricanes, rarely any tornadoes, and no earthquakes (maybe a little window rattler every 20 years or so, but nothing you’d notice if you’re asleep or in the shower). Yeah, it snows a little, which can be a pain in the ass, but is rarely destructive. And if it comes down to it, you can just hang out and watch teevee (or even read a book or two) until it melts.

Still, much as I prefer a little Lake Effect snow (or even a Nor’easter) to a hurricane, the chill in the air and the thought of winter coming (and everything it brings with it, like seemingly perpetual darkness and White Walkers) is kind of depressing. Especially knowing that (once again) I failed to accomplish even a fraction of my summer “must do” list, and now have to move on to thinking about (if not actually doing) accomplishing all my pre-winter chores.

Speaking of annoying but not particularly destructive (to anybody but themselves), it’s the season opener for SU football tonight. If you want tickets, don’t worry. There should be plenty available (cheap).

A rather long recent (and not so recent) history of losing seasons combined with what is not exactly a “name” opponent in Central Connecticut State, the start of Labor Day weekend, the NY State Fair, and the fact that the game is being broadcast on lo-cal teevee all combine for less than stellar ticket sales.

Sometimes I wonder why they even bother to open the season on this weekend (or at least at home). But if you believe all the experts, it should at least be an easy win (I’ve seen too many SU football games in my time to take much for granted, personally) and there aren’t likely to be many of those (easy or otherwise) this season. So maybe I’ll watch for a bit.

That is, if this crappy day ever ends.

Everybody stay dry and enjoy the weekend.

In a rather revoltin’ development, the NYS Fair opens today – a day early with a “preview” day, that I think they added in order to help pay for some of the money they’ve spent renovating the facilities. This is the beginning of the end of a summer that was a really shitty summer on multiple levels. I think I was in the pool maybe five times total this year, and when you spend nine months waiting for warm weather (as we do around here), it really kind of sucks when the season doesn’t live up to expectations. It’s kind of like Winterfell around here – winter is always coming. All we can hope for at this point is a warm fall that lasts until New Years or so (and maybe more than 4 wins from the football team, though that’s kind of doubtful). I’ve seen plenty of white Christmases in my time (and Halloweens, Election Days, Thanksgivings, etc.), and I don’t need to see any more.

Today is also 12th anniversary of the day (I think) that what would soon become known as Hurricane Katrina formed in the Atlantic. Ah, those were the days. Whatever happened to Ray Nagin, anyway? Oh, that’s right, he’s doing a 10-year stretch in a Federal prison. Just minimum security, though, so you probably don’t need to worry too much about him. Pretty sure no white folks went to prison for anything.

So, your President went to the land of the loonies (sorry, KP, wherever you are) and gave one of his patented, unhinged and full of shit speeches out there in the desert last night. I don’t have the intestinal fortitude to listen to him, but from what I’ve read, he was in good form.

Cheer up, folks, just another 7 or so years to go.

Hey, you didn’t think I’d leave you without a look at the butter sculpture, did you? Not sure what this one’s about, but I think these creepy guys are getting ready to make veal cutlets or something.

I’ve been trying to think of something to say about everything that’s been going on lately. I can’t think of anything – I guess I’m just too shocked to think that it’s come to this in this country. Or depressed, I guess. I don’t know – can you be both shocked and not in the least surprised? ‘Cuz none of this surprises me. Nobody was dumb enough to actually believe there wasn’t plenty of racism (and sexism, bagism, shagism, dragism, madism, ragism, tagism…) in this country, but the assholes used to keep it among themselves and not out there in polite company. Now, well, now all’s fair in hate and loathing, on and off the campaign trail. There seem to be a number of people who think that Trump is likely to resign or otherwise be removed from office in the not-too-distant future, but I don’t fucking believe that for a second. The entire Republican political infrastructure is now built upon the concept of survival of the shittiest (and, man, it’s a race to the bottom for the title of “shittiest Republican”), and changing that would be like trying to turn an aircraft carrier. And never forget that the Democrats don’t suck, too. Not to say they’re the equivalent of what the Republicans have become by any means, but, let’s face it, they suck. Can you imagine what it takes to be the Party that allows Donald Trump to be elected President?

And that’s not even getting into the whole nuclear holocaust with North Korea as a distraction thing. Oy.

So, anyhow, I decided to do what any self-respecting American does when times are tough and push comes to shove. I stimulated the economy. Or the economy of Japan, via San Antonio, TX. In other words, I bought a new Toyota Tacoma (aka, the US version of the terrorist’s choice for pickups, which would be the Toyota Hilux). So, the bad news is it’s a Japanese truck. The good news is that it was built in the US. The bad news is that it was built in a non-union plant in San Antonio TX.

Always a source of pride to know you spent about 2.5x more than your WWII veteran of the CBI Theater lifelong union member dad did on the house you grew up in for a Japanese vehicle built in a non-union factory by people who hate Yankees (not that my dad felt any animosity toward the Japanese – at least not by the time I came around – unlike my uncle, who held a bit of a grudge, but then he was on two ships that were sunk somewhere in the Pacific, and he never was quite right. I think the VA hd him on the wrong meds for about 30 years).

But I suppose since I traded in a Japanese car built in a non-union factory in Kentucky, it’s kind of a wash (at least the TX plant isn’t in “Georgetown” which we all know still sucks).

Of course, the big news for today is the total eclipse of the sun, which will of course be the best, most beautiful eclipse ever, thanks to Donald Trump. Until he was elected, the eclipse was going to be in Mexico, but the negotiator-in-chief made yet another one of his patented deals with God, and there you have it. Of course, since we didn’t vote for the fat asshole up here, we won’t get the full Monty. In fact, we’re only going to get about 68% totality, which I think means it’ll look a little weird, but not all that awesome. Plus, I’ll be at work anyway. Thank goodness I can watch it on the Internet, which is how I experience pretty much everything these days.

Oh well, time to get out there and seize the day. At least I’m not on call this week.

I know I’m a few days late on this, but, shit, it’s already August. And it’s been kind of shitty non-summer for the most part around here, so I’m not thrilled at the prospect of what little summer we get rapidly coming to an end. Although hearing that there will be pig racing at this year’s NY State Fair takes the edge off it a little bit. Each year, I get a little less tolerant of the cold weather. I probably wouldn’t mind so much if I didn’t have to go to work, but, well, that’s not gonna happen.

Ever since that awful day back in November, I’ve been more or less unable to watch the news – even the local news, with an occasional exception for sports and weather, neither of which have been particularly fun for me to pay attention to lately either – on the teevee. I can’t stand listening to NPR news (they’ve been pretty annoying for a long time now, but they way they bend over backwards to normalize what goes on in DC these days is nausea inducing), and if I’m going to listen to any news, it’s pretty much limited to the CBC and BBC News briefs every morning. Lots of wildfires in BC, if you didn’t know.

So today, because I’ve pretty much seen every episode of Law and Order and “How It’s Made,” I figured I’d give the lo-cal news a shot. What I learned in the brief time i could stand watching was that the local baseball team paid tribute to our local delicacy by calling themselves the Salt Potatoes for a day, and that there have been “dozens” of complaints of skunks in Oswego. It seems they’re coming up out of the storm sewers (really? Didn’t know they hung out there) and getting into people’s garbage and behaving in a skunk-like manner. So apparently the mayor is going to ask the City Council for some $8,000 in funding for skunk traps (humane ones, I hope, though I don’t even like getting a dead mouse out of a trap – pretty sure I wouldn’t want the job of collecting a live skunk).

That was when I gave up on the news and decided to do my breakfast dishes.

I then returned to the Internets, where I learned that Cynthia Nixon may run for NY State Governor. Really? I mean, nothing against her. She’s probably a wonderful person and I guess is an outspoken advocate and all that (and I’m sure she’d be better than Governor Snotball – not that he’s set the bar particularly high, even by NY standards, where the most competent Governor we’ve had in years had a rather unfortunate predilection for expensive prostitutes), but I honestly don’t think it’s a good idea to elect somebody with no experience trying to actually accomplish anything within the confines of our corrupt and dysfunctional government is an especially good idea. Plus in NY, with all its arcane election rules, you need a really good (well-financed) machine behind you just to get on the ballot, never mind win anything. And running a “celebrity” for Guv seems like an even bigger loser proposition than Caroline Kennedy for Senator was.

Besides, what’s her slogan gonna be – “Nixon. Now more than ever” (I guess you need to be of a certain age to understand that one).

But, whatever. As long as we don’t get Carl Paladino.

My brother hit the big Seven-Oh yesterday, which means he’s a mere four years younger then my dad was (his too) when he died. I find this thought disconcerting, to say the least. And not just because I really don’t wanna have to drive down to Long Island for his funeral (in addition to not wanting to drive, I have been to all the funerals I care to go to in the lifetime, and I’d prefer it if the next one was mine – let somebody else do the driving).

Well, I guess I better get my shit out of the dryer and continue to get ready to go back to work tomorrow while trying not to think about the fact that I have to go back to work tomorrow while I wait for it to be late enough to get out there on the tractor and cut the grass. Is ten o’clock late enough on a Sunday?