good day.

Didn’t have to do much work. salome_st_john took me to dinner at Lido Diner for my birthday and I ate chicken fried snake steak. Went to D’s and saw changeng‘s holiday show including audience participation craziness as documented in the last entry. bruisedhips, klikitak, and the_angelmoroni were… …entertaining as a singing group.

I saw people I hadn’t seen in forever and met some nice new people. Hi there mcpino! Also, people I hadn’t seen happy for months were practically glowing, which was awesome.

There was a fair amount of Six Degrees of WTF as people from different bits of my life recognized each other. “Oh, he’s the one in the motorcycle crash picture!” etc. There was some high-quality storytelling also, including: the awkwardness of a first BDSM date; a sweaty guy who brought a scorpion into the coffeehouse today just sitting on his hand; Jonathan Richman; and other stuff I forgot.

There was a guy with long grey hair and a leather jacket and a pockmarked face and he looked exactly like Bob Forrest from Thelonious Monster if Bob had aged normally since 1985. I wonder.

Stuart played really well, including a version of the Twelve Days of Christmas that sounded like it was done by the Curse Pirate on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride.

Now I’m having an ’01 Mondavi Merlot in my house that has the heater fixed finally. Life is good tonight.

Look out mama there’s a white boat comin’ up the river

  1. We’re off to see the wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Oil! Dear God this is worse than that Aphex Twin video or the dubbya girls site.
  2. “A woman heard about the rabid raccoon in her Dickeyville neighborhood soon
    after the animal attacked and bit a friend, on 2 Dec 2005. Even so, she was
    surprised when, a few hours later, a raccoon appeared out of nowhere as she
    walked her mixed spaniel. The crazed animal charged her and clamped its
    jaws on the leg of her corduroy pants.” Via ProMed.

  3. Anyone local know a Sean Pierce or Randy Spizer? They got busted for fraud hijinks with the new XBOX 360.
  4. Robot Wisdom links us to a neato, not expensive Muppet Chess Set.
  5. Reason has a good follow-up on that guy who got capped by marshals in Miami. Poor bastard didn’t have a chance, Nor do we, in a police state.
  6. Make your own Chinese Restaurant Sign. (Thanks, ‘Vark!)

41st

Birthday:

Nice presents including a small friendly wide angle lens for my camera and a good book. Really good dinner at Onotria, a newish high class italian restaurant. The pasta sauce had WILD BOAR in it. I somehow imagined the chef taking the boat over to Catalina and chasing one around with a spear, then bringing it back in a suspiciously lumpy duffel bag and scaring the other customers.

The cannoli was good but not quite as good as the home made stuff redmaenad fed me once. The owner was wandering about and occasionally singing. There were lots of people there having wine events of some kind where they had those balloon glasses the size of their heads, which was comic.

My brother gave me a Skype phone but it’s windows only, so back to Amazon it goes.

Today, I got the spam below, which pleased me to no end:

From: Bugger C. Displeasing (Williams@vflock.com)
Subject: popular programs for everyday use.

http://www.2qqn89qipp86lkkx722xp2kk.catodonnf.com

o/~ ‘Cause heeee loooooves traaaaaaaash o/~

This was sent to me by jonpants who then couldn’t take his own medicine:

jonpants: he killed snuffy.
substitute: And made a Snuffy Film of it, no doubt.
jonpants: oh man that was just bad.

Woman’s Body Found On Big Bird Actor’s Conn. Property

POSTED: 8:23 pm EST December 13, 2005
UPDATED: 8:27 pm EST December 13, 2005

WOODSTOCK, Conn. — The body of a woman who disappeared while jogging was found Tuesday on property owned by the performer who plays Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch on the popular children’s television show “Sesame Street,” a town official said.

Woodstock First Selectwoman Delpha Mae Very cautioned against drawing conclusions, saying the property owned by Caroll Spinney is a very large tract of remote wooded land.

State police did not release information on any suspects. A message seeking comment was left at Spinney’s home.

The body of Judith Nilan, 44, was found in a storage building on the Massachusetts border at about 10:30 a.m. during a search by state police, tracking dogs, volunteers and a helicopter. State police said her death was a homicide.

“You just don’t think of those type of things happening in Woodstock,” Very said. “We consider it extremely safe.”

Woodstock, home to about 8,000 people, is about 40 miles northeast of Hartford and about 30 miles southwest of Worcester, Mass.

Nilan, a middle school social worker, was reported missing Monday night by her husband, who said she went jogging about 4:30 p.m. and never returned.

Her husband, Jon Baker, told police he searched his wife’s normal jogging route after she failed to return to their Woodstock home three hours after going out for her daily run. He called police after failing to find her, said Sgt. J. Paul Vance, a state police spokesman.

Vance said he didn’t know if the storage building, which is about 6 miles from Nilan’s home, was near her jogging route. He would not say what led police to the body.

“There were leads and evidence that was discovered by investigators that were significant in moving this case ahead on a continuous basis late last night and early this morning,” he said.

No suspects were in custody Tuesday afternoon, but police had solid leads, Vance said.

“I don’t want to tell people not to lock their doors or anything, but I’ll say we’ve made some very good headway on this investigation and leave it at that,” he said.

The storage building is located off the road and straddles the state line.

Connecticut and Massachusetts authorities were working jointly on the investigation, Vance said.

The crime scene was still being processed and authorities had not determined which state’s medical examiner would perform the autopsy, Vance said.

Benedict Arnold Slept Here

Current list of things broken in my house:

  • Water pipe inside slab (repaired)
  • Drywall and paint damaged by flood (repaired)
  • Vanity in bathroom destroyed
  • Carpet in hallway, living room, one bedroom destroyed
  • Thermostat for heater working only intermittently status post handyman “looking at it”. (new one just installed)
  • Forced-air natural gas heater dead even when started manually; fan motor broken; entire heater needs replacement. (Heater may be as much as 40 years old.) (installed as of this moment)
  • Front door deadbolt won’t close status post handyman “fixing” doorknob/lock issues.
  • Toilet flush mechanism does not stop unless you “do it right”.
  • Cover on fluorescent light over kitchen counter falls off periodically with a loud bang.
  • Slab under house is “efflorescing”, which will inevitably require slab replacement at some future date.