O frabjous day!

The first of July carries a lot of significance. It’s the 144^th Canada Day—celebrating nationhood for our neighbors to the north. Hurrah for the Canadians, eh?

It’s also marks the 95^th anniversary of first day of the Somme—the monstrous battle that cost the attacking British 60,000 casualties before sundown. And it’s been 148 years since the battle of Gettysburg opened.

George Sand was born on 1^st July in 1804, which Frédéric Chopin probably appreciated a whole lot.

But what makes today—1 July 2011—absolutely the finest kind day of this or many another year is that my BFF’s tumor markers have been so good for so long that this is her final chemotherapy treatment.

This is marvelous—not only because she’s doing so well against the cancer, but because it means an end to the god-awful nausea she’s been suffering for more than six months.

Champagne glasses at the ready, people: this is the best possible reason to celebrate the day.

Go, Terps!

The Big Apple just can’t seem to retain its reptiles. A few months ago it was the Egyptian cobra that went slither-about from the Bronx Zoo. Now it’s turtles running rampant at JFK airport.

Well, trudging rampant.

The airport closed one of its runways because of the annual inundation by diamondback terrapins headed for a nice sandy spot to lay their eggs. This year, however, in addition to trudging the turtles are tweeting.

Well, of course they are.

They’re not nearly as witty as BronxZoosCobra, but then she’s footloose (well, she is) & fancy free, & they’re focused on procreation.

So I cut them some slack.In fact, I give both serpent & terrapins major props for going digital without, you know, real digits.

A new kind of freakonomics

Following on my dismay at the local library systems cutting back on hours & charging fees, the NY Times reports that school districts around the country are choosing to close libraries they can’t afford to staff.

We are living in sad, sad times when administrators have to decide between offering kindergarten or libraries, while legislators at every level are falling all over themselves giving businesses & billionaires big tax breaks.

All on account of economy

I suppose this shouldn’t come as a surprise, what with governments cutting back every way they can (except for salaries and benefits of elected officials) these days. But on the 19^th I received an email from Santa Clara County Library informing me that, starting 1 July, I’m going to have to pay $80 a year for the privilege of checking out books from their system.

This is because I don’t live in unincorporated county areas or nine specific cities (the ones that have county library branches). I’m still “welcome to visit our libraries, attend programs, and use resources inside the library.  However, a card is required to check out materials, use the full service computers, and have remote access to online databases.”

(In a related story, the San Jose city library system announced that their branches are only going to be open four days a week. This is also a cost-saving measure.)

I understand the necessity, although I think there’s something really, really wrong about an economic system in which global businesses (lured to states and cities with all sorts of financial incentives) rake in billions and billions annually without paying corporate taxes while working stiffs have to pay $80 per year for access to information that’s been part of the social contract for a long time. An informed electorate is the sine qua non of any democracy, and information institutions are moving beyond the reach of the common folk. 


Yeah, yeah, yeah--you can get all the data you want over the Internet. But what if your only Web access was via the local library?

Anyway, what gets me is that SCCL sent out the notification less than two weeks before I have to fork over the money. They couldn’t have eased us into this?

Potty mouth

It’s not often that this happens, but words just fail me: The Smoking Gun reports that police in Boulder, Colo., arrested a man who was hiding in the tank of a port-a-potty at a yoga festival.

There are further reports that Luke Chrisco has made a habit of this sort of thing for quite some time.

“It takes all kinds” just doesn’t seem to cover this.

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.