A real classic

It’s hard to know whether this UK registration plate is by design, or because the vehicle was registered in Inverness between September of 2001 and February of 2002, but either way it’s amusing.

Frozen surprise

On Wednesdays, the Washington Post’s food writers moderate an online chat session (called Free Range) with readers. They typically invite questions/comments on stories that have run either that day or recently, and take general cookery-related questions.

So, you’ll find exchanges around how to adapt to modern food availability:

Or recommendations on cooking equipment:

Or even the occasional…outlier:

Yesterday there were comments and questions about freezer management—inventory, safety, decluttering, etc.—with helpful responses.

And then there was this:

GIGO

Fairfax County is in the midst of trying to figure out how to pile more taxpayers into already well-populated areas while protecting the space of the wealthy in places that have a density of about three people per acre. Toward that end, there are a lot of initiatives aimed at handing over my community to developers to turn it into another Ballston: basically, a faux city with over-priced high-rises unencumbered by things like improved roads, schools or other amenities that go along with real cities.

They try to obscure this, of course, which was the point of a recent survey pushed out on social media.

This survey pretends to ask residents what our priorities are, but that there’s no intent of paying attention to our responses was clear because it served up multiple screens without any explanation of what the individual choices were. (Also—the fact that people only know about the survey if they have Internet access and are on a neighborhood social media site is telling.) Either we’re already supposed to know every potential road project across a county that covers 406 square miles, or we’re meant to give it up as a bad job.

It was also clear to me that they didn’t bother having anyone even remotely versed in survey design (or, even, logic, tbh). I often test surveys to see how tightly they’re controlled to not return useless data, and when I messed with some of the answers, here’s what I got by way of an error message. Which did not comport with the instructions on how to respond to the choices on each screen.

Like I said: just political theatre. As with developing the hell out of the People’s Republic of Reston, the Board of Supervisors is going to do whatever makes their big donors happiest.

Not a pretty picture

You might have gathered that I’m more of a words-and-pictures girl, rather than a numbers one. But in the wake of Sunday’s mass murder-by-AR-15—and the completely predictable outpouring of platitudinous “thoughts-and-prayers” from our spineless Congressmorons—I thought I’d lay a few figures on you.

These are cumulative totals of top ten recipients of NRA largess in the House and the Senate, both cash contributions and other monetary support. They were collated by the New York Times in the wake of the last mass shooting—hey, only a few weeks ago—in Las Vegas.

You’ll note that the platitudes vomited forth last month are interchangeable with those spouted since Sunday; just swap out Las Vegas for Sutherland Springs.

The Times notes that (as you can see) the top trough-snorters are all Repugnants; no surprises there, eh? The highest recipient in the House is Sanford Bishop (Georgia); he ranks 43^rd on the list. The top two Democrats in the Senate are Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Patrick Leahy of Vermont. They are 52^nd and 53^rd, respectively; that’s to say—behind every Republican except for Alaska’s Dan Sullivan.

So, you can plainly see why a Replicant-controlled Congress will never pass reasonable gun control legislation. They even get twisted up in the surreal world of writing off white men shooting scores of civilians not as terrorism, but as acts of the mentally-ill—even as they pass legislation that makes it easy for the mentally ill to buy assault weapons.

The most we’ll ever get out of this lot is thoughts and prayers, which cost them nothing, while they deposit the next round of NRA checks.

Gratitude Monday: Coo beans

Yes, today’s gratitude contains some element of schadenfreude, which may vitiate some of the intent of Gratitude Monday, but hear me out.

Given the fact that social media has become the battleground in the struggle between light and darkness, good and evil, tolerance and bigotry, left and right, I personally give thanks for every victory—no matter how small or impermanent. And the one I came across yesterday was sweet.

You may or may not be aware that there’s a gigantic empty husk of an alt-Reich troll who calls himself Baked Alaska. I’m not going to give him any Web space; you can Google him, if you like. But be sure to append “milk” to the search term, and you’ll get a load of him displaying his Nazi husk status as he cried like a baby during what was to have been a supreme moment in Charlottesville last August.

Anyhow, our easily-melted fluffy dessert troll tweeted something I’m sure he meant to be provocative, but quickly slid off the high ground like a slab of Lucerne Neapolitan ice milk in summer, due to his confusion on how to spell coup. I mean, sure—it’s an immigrant word and all, but still.

And he quickly came under the non-culinary blow torch of everyone on Twitter. Especially this guy, who invoked the RWNJ site "The Federalist" to troll him:

The entire thread—which is well worth reading—is here, at least at time of writing. If half-baked had half a brain, he’d delete his tweet. But I’m betting he’s too greedy for the attention to do that.

And whether he does or doesn’t, he’s still been had. For which I give thanks.

Sic semper insulsi.

And now for the real horror

Rounding out the week’s Halloween report, horror and terror would not be complete without an update on the saga of the ladies room. If you need, ah, refreshing, look here.

Anyhow, Tuesday morning I barreled into the loo to find this sitting on the shelf at the mirror:

But then, later in the morning, a couple of additions were made, to the stall that was the scene of what some of my colleagues apparently referred to as “looking like a crime scene”. (I won’t go into details.)

Whew—and with that, I’m closing out Halloween 2017.

Probably.

A higher form of scary

Continuing the Halloween theme, this year our colleagues on the executive floor decided to step up to the challenge thrown down by IT. Their schtick was 22 rooms/occupants tricked out to look (to a greater or lesser extent) like horror films. Visitors to the floor got a list of 22 horror films, and we had to match the numbered room against a movie title to win a (low value) prize.

Their definition of horror was fairly loose, as witnessed by the titles:

2001: A Space Odyssey

Addams Family

Batman

Beetlejuice

Cheetah

Coraline

Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde

Harry Potter

IT

Jurassic Park

Sneak Preview: Justice League

Little Shop of Horrors

Lord of the Rings

Lumberjanes Sneak Preview

Monty Python’s Meaning of Life

Mummy Returns

Rocky Horror Picture Show

Stranger Things Special Showing

The Birds

The Day the Earth Stood Still

The Dolls

The Nightmare Before Christmas

The Ring

The Shining

And here are a few of the rooms:

I totally tanked, tbh, because I’ve actually seen seven of those movies, although I could guess a couple more just from having been alive for the past decade or so.

I will say that some of the motifs were very well executed. I wonder how people got all that stuff to the downtown DC office? I should think that schlepping it in via Metro would be a challenge.

A surfeit of scariness

Oh, my ears and whiskers, I believe that my colleagues in IT have absolutely outdone themselves this year. I mean—where do I even start?

Okay, well, just a sampling of the additions since my last post.

And then there was a spooky sound machine and fog (although of course you can’t hear the former, and the latter had dissipated some by the time I fetched my camera).

I’m not really counting the pumpkins—they’re part of HR’s attempt to look with-it; a company-wide carving competition. There were only 11, which isn’t a good turnout for an organization of 450 or thereabouts. Even so, there were a couple that struck my fancy:

This was really impressive.

This whimsical.

And this—well, yes.

However, my personal favorites were the tombstones that appeared along the corridors, speaking to IT technologies that came and, er, went. They range from practically the telegraph to an early next-big-thing startup; some of the hardware memories are evocative. (Samsung Note 7?) And I’m so old, I’ve used most of them (except for the applications that were specific to this place before my time). How many do you recognize?

This one was particularly poignant: