Asparagus pee, Gooblek & Other Neat stuff

So I’m talking with The Lady Janet this morning about my campaign for the local school board, and I said, “You know, maybe we should both just vote for these other two people and forget it,” and she said, “Let’s wait and see. I’m still planning to vote for you unless you’re splitting off this other person’s vote and you’re a Nader.” (Heh, heh, heh. She said “urinator.”)

At my office, I subscribe to a moderated listserv forum hosted by the Audio Publishers Association. There was a thread going about abridgement, and one of the participants, Barry Marks, wrote a broad response about art and the realities of the marketplace that I found surprisingly insightful, so I’ve asked Barry’s permission to use his essay as a guest column. Please take a moment to read But Is It Art?.

This just in from today’s Excite.com Poll:

Results of a poll conducted by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland released on Friday indicate that 54% of Americans believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Evidence of such weapons has not been found. (AP) Do you think that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, or a program to develop WMD, before the United States invaded last year?

Yes 62% => 8296 votes

No 33% => 4423 votes

I’m not sure 3% => 475 votes

I don’t care 0% => 93 votes

Current number of voters: 13287

© *The Excite Poll is provided by Rosner Interactive Services. It is a voluntary poll for our users, and is not scientifically projectable to any other population. We present these polls to give Excite users an opportunity to share their opinions on particular topics. Individual answers are not collected.

I wasn’t aware that this was a trick question – did 62% of the people who took this poll overlook that last line that says “Evidence of such weapons has not been found.”? If the Bush Administration could find even a shred of evidence, they’d be all over it. Is this mass hysteria, mass hypnosis, or am I missing something?

This is the amazing mailbox that The Lady Janet constructed for us to hold all the big stacks of mail and catalogs we get almost every day. It’s been our mailbox for over 8 years now, and it’s perfect – it almost always holds it all, it matches our house perfectly, it’s very sturdy, it’s well-made, and it’s cuter than a bug’s ear, even if the bug’s crawling on a kitten who looks perplexed.

But now our new mailman has decided that despite years of flawlessly enjoyable mail delivery and receipt, it comes up short on several counts of USPS standards for what constitutes a mailbox, and we’ve received a form asking us to correct the problems. Brother.

If we don’t ignore it, or they pursue it, we need to provide a door and a flag and make it waterproof. Stay tuned…

OK, I’m jazzed, I admit it. I’m a huge Jason Mraz fan, and on August 31st, Dave Matthews Band is closing for Jason Mraz at the Sleeptrain Amphitheater, and we’re going. It’s been a bit of a challenge already because our only child started kindergarten last week, so it’s the first time we’ve had to deal with “going out on a school night.” This is also the first “real” concert we’ve tried to go to since we got stuck in traffic and missed the first half of Pink Floyd at the Oakland Colliseum, circa 1991, so I’m gonna be there and heaven help anyone who tries to stand in our way.

I’m also a bit peeved at Ticketmaster or Sleeptrain or Dave Matthews.com or whoever is responsible for the fact that when I ordered tickets a month ago, they didn’t have any good seats, so I paid less for crappy seats up behind “Nosebleed” in the “Egypt” section of the lawn, and now they have a block of good seats up in the “Behind the People with Connections” section but there’s no way to trade up now that they’re bought and paid for.

If you’ve got Winamp, there are some great live videos of Jason Mraz in their media library, like this live solo version of You and I Both. If you don’t have Winamp, it’s non-evil and free, so it’s probably worth your while to download it now.

Last week I had some work done on my car that involved removing the battery, so I lost the programming for my radio buttons. Rather than trying to remember or look up all of the frequencies, I’m experimenting with a new system – natural selection.

Here’s how it works:

There are six buttons. The last button never changes because I’m too aware that 107.9 “The End” is the best station in Sacramento for a compromise between my tastes, what I can tolerate, and the crap that actually gets played, and since it’s really the last station before it cycles around, it makes sense to keep it the last button. It’s been there for years, and it just feels like “home.”

The other five buttons are completely flexible – if they play something I hate, or they talk too long, or too many DJ’s are talking at once, I just hit scan until I hear something I like and I reprogram that button. I don’t even try to determine what the station is or whether it already exists on another button.

Using this system, I’ve already been pleasantly surprised a couple of times by what came up. One day in a freak accident, I actually programmed a button for the local Christian Rock station, but that was quickly corrected by stations higher up the food chain. By the way, I don’t think “Christian Rock” is an oxymoron. People like Phil Keaggy and Larry Norman have done some really fantastic stuff.

This is a quick update on my campaign for a seat as a Governing Board Member for the local elementary school district. I’m really doing this. My name will be on the same ballot as Bush and Kerry when we go to the polls here in Auburn this November. It cost $330 to give myself a “shout-out” in the back of the sample ballot, and I had to swear before a notary public that I’d uphold the constitutions of the United States and the state of California, forsaking all enemies.

As it happens, there are seven people vying for two seats in this race, which is pretty much unprecedented. You can read all about it in this article from the local paper that appeared yesterday: Financial Issues Key in Auburn Union Race. In this article, I play the part of Christopher Benson.

Here at Asparagus Pee, we’ve been aware for some time now that Fox is planning to bring back Family Guy next year, but they’re really bringing it home now with Family Guy “mini-marathons,” so tonight I get to watch 4 old episodes back-to-back! See, Fox isn’t totally evil. Here’s the official scoop: Family Guy on Fox.

By the way, it’s OK that I’m falling for their evil plot to lure us away from the Olympics – we’ll most likely be taping both networks on our two VCRs anyway.

I’m curious… can you do that with a TiVo?

Got a bunch of old links piled up, so I won’t give sources – just assume the usual suspects…

• John Kerry sites: The Classic, A New Wannabe, and The Horse’s Mouth.
• Cool Reverse Dictionary.
• Here’s a brand new Kurt Vonnegut article, I Love You Madame Librarian.
• Kodak’s Photo Composition Tutorial
• How to be creative.
• How to have a successful blog, Part 1 and Part 2
• Office Space movie fans, go here for a full update
• Should these commercials be on TV?

There’s a cute article based on Lynne Truss’s book Eats, Shoots & Leaves over on the Blogger Knowledge site called Eats, Blogs & Leaves.