Pay or play

Interesting turn of events in state politics—one I fervently wish would transfer up the chain to our Congressmorons:

Evidently the California legislature has had a hard time passing a budget for a lotta years. So last year the good people of the Golden State passed an initiative that docks the pay of Assemblymen and Representatives for every day the budget is late.

I’m sure this is what the Lege (as Molly Ivins used to refer to the morons in Austin) had in mind when, at the very last minute possible on the due date, they passed a budget that Governor Jerry Brown had no problem in vetoing. I mean to say, he had his pen ready when the budget was still in transit.

The state morons obviously thought they’d fulfilled the letter of the law and would keep on getting paid. They practically broke their self-congratulating hands patting themselves on the back.

But they thought wrong. State Controller John Chiang has ruled that the Lege did not in fact pass a real budget, so they don’t get their pay.

Naturally the Assembly- and Rep-morons are posturing about the End of Civilization inherent in Chiang’s action. But I have to think that millions of Californians are feeling a little bit better because the irresponsible idiots who pass laws pandering to the highest bidders are at least unable to collect the pay from their day jobs until they actually, you know, do their day job.

Now—if we could just get this sort of thing to apply to Congress: they don’t get their salaries or expense money until they pass a budget on time, every damned year.

Well, a girl can dream.

Boxing day

The week has been heavy on funny felines. This time it’s the classic cat & box.

I don’t know of anything cats love more than a good box. Unless it’s a bag—of any sort, plastic, paper, Neiman-Marcus, whatever.

If you need a bit of a laugh, watch Maru triumph over the arrogant box that has the nerve to be a bit too small for a kitty-of-substance’s butt.

Speaking in scratchy tongues

I did not know this: cats can speak foreign languages. The evidence is in this YouTube video.

The guile of this feline is obviously much practiced. As soon as it realizes it’s been nicked, it shifts into its usual language. “Barking? Did you think I was barking? Oh, nononono. You were mistaken. How about some tuna?"

What I’d like to know is what fresh hell was it trying to stir up?

Just a quick Swype

I got one of the Dreaded Upgrade Emails from Swype at the weekend. I suppose I should be grateful that they at least sent me an email—several times it’s happened that Swype just doesn’t work and I have to go to an Android forum to find out that they’ve put out a newer version and made it so the current one won’t work. At least this time they announced it, which I suppose is a Big Thing for a company that's obviously run completely by software engineers.

(Swype is in beta; which means it doesn’t always operate as expected. As it is, every time I turn the phone off and then on, it won’t boot up. You have to change the input method to regular, then back to Swype. And none of the upgrades I’ve downloaded in the past year have fixed that. Do they not notice? Do they just think that’s good engineering?)

What I hate about this is that every time I upgrade I have to look up how to uninstall the installer, then download a new installer and finally download and install the application. And every time I haven’t noticed any advance in the user interface.

Hello, Swypers? Get this product out of beta and stop making me uninstall and reinstall both the installer and the app. I'm ready to pay for a real product; get yourself a product manager and get with the program!

Absolutely smashing

Last Thursday was Ladies Day at Royal Ascot. That’s the day when women traditionally dress to the nines and carry the British custom of fantastic hats to extremes.

You’ll have got a taste for the millinery arts at the Royal Wedding in April. I think it must be in the unwritten British constitution that a wedding isn’t official unless every female attending wears a hat. But Ladies Day is when the chapeaux turn into confections.

Don’t believe me? Look here.

But click through all the way to picture 15, of Queen Elizabeth II, who always arrives in a carriage. Even her hat (which of course matches her outfit in color) is a bit whimsical. However, what I love is the, er, hand gesture of one of her footmen, which stands out on account of his white gloves.

Of course, in the UK that’s not an obscene gesture; the Brits need two fingers for what Americans get done with one. But still, kind of funny.

Alas, all was not sheer amusement this year. A drunken brawl broke out that sent bystanders scurrying. Kind of made it look like the NHL: there you are, in the midst of a fracas and someone starts a horse race.

I went to Royal Ascot in 2000—not Ladies Day; the tickets for that were just too expensive. But even so, pretty much every woman there was hatted (including me), some quite elaborately so. And, as with many events in Britain, a main focus was drinking. I’d say a considerable percentage (maybe a third) only wandered out to the race course for one or two of the races.

And on my way back to the train station, I passed at least one couple to whom one might well have said, “Get a room!” If you catch my drift. Dunno whether it was the heat, the alcohol or what, but you’d have thought we were in the midst of war and there might never be an opportunity to shag again.

Well—I hope the fight didn’t damage any of the hats. Those things cost the earth, and getting one of them squashed would really put a damper on the day.