Jeepers, I'm Tired

That is all.

Indiana Primaries And Me

It's little known and unenforceable, but Indiana's primaries are, by law, for party members only; and they don't mean third parties, either. (Recognized third parties hold nominating conventions instead -- separate and supposedly equal, I guess).

Per State law, if you voted in the previous general election here, you may only vote in the primary of the party for which you cast the majority of your general-election votes; conversely, if you are a new voter when the primaries roll around, whichever party's primary you vote in, you're obliged to vote for a majority of their candidates come November.

Effectively, it means I can't vote in our primaries. I've come under mild criticism for this elsewhere, in part because, thanks to the secret ballot, compliance cannot be checked. Short of deliberate self-incrimination, there's no way to be caught.

Be that as it may, ever since I started voting again, I have found myself voting for Libertarian candidates. Last time I did blink at the last minute and voted for John McCain (wish I hadn't; but Barr didn't seem any better) and formerly perennial LP hopeful Andy Horning, who was running as a Republican that once-and-final time, but otherwise, color me Wookiee.

So I didn't vote Tuesday. I should have gone to the polls and asked for a School Board ballot; found out I could at the last minute.

There are those who think I should have voted a full ballot -- after all, who'd know, and perhaps I could push the GOP in a more libertarian direction. This pragmatic attitude overlooks two little items: 1) I'd know; 2) a party's actual members ought to be the ones influencing its direction and picking its candidates. I am not a fan of the "big tent" theory of political parties; too many issues get lost in the crowd. There's already a political party with a platform very close to what I believe and it's the Libertarian Party.

Mom X

Update: Mom X is doing much better. She will stay in hospital overnight and if she's doing as well in the morning, she'll be able to come home.

Seems the doc had diagnosed her increasing shortness of breath as "athsma" and "allergy," but more symptoms rang in and she headed for the hospital. Umm, it was not exactly caused by the pollen; she's had heart trouble for awhile now and things had gotten themselves in one of those situations where an adjustment in meds is called for. One of those situations one must not leave untreated, in fact.

So they've treated it and made the adjustments and (wary of the wrath of my niece the nurse!) are monitoring very carefully.

By sheer chance, she's under a mile from the specialist hospital. It was awfully nice of them to build it so close!
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So, I had a post of some sort mostly worked out and I'm pretty sure it was going to be interesting.

--Whatever it was about. I was only half-awake when the entire thing was dashed outta my head by a short phone call:

"Bobbi? This is Niece Nurse." (Eldest daughter of Sister X) "I'm calling from Heart Hospital. Gramma X went in last night--" (while I was only two miles away. What, my cell was on vacation, maybe?) "--she's okay now, sleeping, but they want to run some tests after she wakes up."

Nurse-talk for, "Your Mom maybe had a heart attack and I've been too busy riding herd on the nurses, doctors and anyone else within range at this hospital where I'm not on staff to call family members until just now; the docs wanna go poking around with a heart cath next." Given that my oldest niece is a Nurse-Practitioner with the soul of a Marine DI, a will of steel and a soft, soft heart, I have not the least doubt Mom X is getting the very best care that hospital can give -- or else!

Nevertheless, I hope y'all will 'scuse me while I zoom over there.

May BlogMeet

...I was a little sleepy when I wrote this originally, but that sleepy? I meant, Sunday, 16 May.

(Bumped to top)

How does 15 16 May sound? Yes, it's the Broad Ripple Art Fair weekend...but hey, that just gives us all someplace to hang out beforehand!

Weather and Art Farriers* permitting, I am leaning towards Brugge -- but I'm open to suggestions.
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* It is possible I've misinterpreted something here. Also I prolly ought not plan to bring a forge & anvil. NO MOTHER I AM NOT SWEARING. Sheesh.

Whuttimmeizzit?

I got to sleep in, having a late shift this evening, and went from alseep to gathering chives and scallions in about as long as it takes to put on sandals and a robe.

...And from there, directly to the kitchen, do not stop, do not pass Go, do not collect e-to-the-x dollars....

Because the end result is corned beef hash, touched with a little Montreal Steak seasoning, laced with green onions and cooked up with eggs atop, sprinkled with fresh-snipped chives and just a haunt of cheese: breakfast as it should be et!

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Noted In Passing, With Interest: prime suspect in the Times Square Idiot Bomb, a Pakistani-born U.S. citizen living in the Nutmeg State -- though he'd just come from a visit to (Our Good, Good Friends And Allies) Pakistan and was boarding a plane back there when nabbed. Fun as it is to gloat at the Gang-That-Couldn't-Shoot-Straight-ness of it all, I will quench it in order to point out that an ijit that wants to blow stuff up only needs to be lucky once to look like an evil mastermind.

On the other hand, much like the foiling of the Detroit Underpants Bomber, this is yet another example of J. Average Random Guy noticing something hinky and doing the right thing.

And on the other other hand, a string of even failed attempts has an effect on the aggregate mood of the citizenry; I just don't think it's quite the effect these fellows -- and the mullahs who maul their tiny minds -- are expecting. Y'keep on sowing the winds, sooner or later something gets spun up.

Issues?

Had trouble getting to Blogger this morning. Installing new warp drives? Using solvent to try to get Red Chinese censors out? Dunno.

Hasn't Babysat Recently

In a conversation in which an historic sniper came up, I remarked to Tam, "Sniper no sniping!" and was rewarded with a puzzled look. This sort of thing happens so rarely (usually I'm the one wondering wotthe..?) that I thought I'd better mark it.

One of us works with folks who have young children -- coworkers who will use the original phrase term in circumstances like the borrowing of a single-example tool. It has become an incantation.

A Tragedy

A teenager is arrested after (allegedly) shooting and killing his younger brother, possibly by mistake. It's a tragedy all around.

...But local police are not blaming the weapon: "Police say this is a wake-up call to many parents. Whether they're gun owners or not, they need to warn their kids that if they find a gun to tell an adult and leave it alone." Gosh, that sounds kind of familiar. Doesn't a large (N) national (R) organization (A) offer an education program with just that message at little or no cost?

Didn't happen in time here; the father says "he never thought to teach his kids gun safety because he never imagined they would get a hold of one. 'He shouldn't have had a gun in the first place. I just don't understand.'"

I don't want to downplay the situation; this is indeed terrible. But the shooter, "'...had taken a firearm from the home of an incarcerated relative and it was while this 16-year-old was handling this weapon that it discharged, striking his brother in the head,' said Sgt. Linda Jackson, IMPD." Shouldn't happen and won't happen are not the same.

Educate your kids. Please. And it wouldn't hurt to try to get Eddie Eagle in more schools; kids are exposed to careless, ignorant gun-handling all the time in films, in videos, sometimes even by friends and relatives. A little real information -- yes, even Eddie Eagle's basic, "IF YOU SEE A GUN: STOP! Don't Touch. Leave the Area. Tell an Adult." -- might help tip the scales.

I've read of opposition to the program from the antis, presumably on the basis that if the NRA is for it, they're agin' it. So here's the question: If it prevents even one tragedy, isn't it worth it?

The Times Square Idiot Bomb

(Latest news. Looks more and more like a setup -- "non-explosive fertilizer?" What is this, a supersized flaming bag of bulldoodle? I have really got to finish that foil-covered baseball cap).

Just in time for May Day -- well, they missed, but that's par for the course; even NYC's Mayor Bloomberg took time out from entrapment schemes for out of state gun shows to notice. After NYC's Finest (and in these situations, they are: here's a van an SUV slewed in, hazards on, smoke pouring out, going "pop" and "boom" with flashing light inside, and they run towards it!) and heroic NYC firefighters (bravery score, tied with NYPD) had cleared the area, they sent in a bomb-handling robot and popped a window for a look. Hizzonner reports,

Inside, they discovered three canisters of propane like those used for barbecue grills, two five-gallon cans of gasoline, consumer-grade fire works — the apparent source of the “pops” — and two clocks with batteries, the mayor said. He said the device “looked amateurish.”

Y'don't say.

It's practically a setup. There doesn't appear to have been any attempt to aerosolize the inflammables in advance, so you'd get more blowtorch than boom, more sound and light than fury. Oh, it would have hurt people dreadfully and might have sprayed burning gasoline over a wide area to horrific effect; but at this time, it looks more like the work of majorly delinquent juveniles than any terrorist, homegrown or imported. Whoever did it had seen enough movies that they'd swapped plates on the van SUV; but I wonder if they remembered the VIN? Assuming it was readable, there've got to be some interesting conversations going on about now. ...And that's before I get out my second-best tinfoil hat and commence theorizin', which I don't have to do 'cos the professionoids on the innerwebs are already doing it for me.

Oh, and for the Swiss tourist who wondered, "It makes me scared to know how close I was to being blown up. This is life in New York now?" Where have you been all your life? Leaving out muggers, footpads and vending machines that take your money but refuse to vend, didn't you ever hear about the way unoccupied vehicles had a tendency to go all 'splody in polite, civilized London for well over a decade? Nothing about WTC '93, sarin gas in Japanese subways or Timmy and Terry's OKC child-killing rental van truck bomb in '95? You are not safe and you never have been; it's a great big world, filled with great big powerful things and as long as you like central heating, travel by other than shank's mare, the wonders of electricity, plenty o' food and clean water, then bad guys and morons (lotta Venn diagram overlap there but let's not fool ourselves it's 100 percent) are gonna have ready means to do you -- and other innocents -- terrible harm. And what you can do about it is, keep your darned eyes open and know what you're looking at. Help when you can and know when to call for help -- like whoever it was (a freelance handbag vendor!) pointed out the Times Square Idiot Bomb did.

In Honor Of May Day

UPDATED!

Here's why you don't frikkin' throw bombs.* Made a right damned mess, didn't it? Empowered a lot of ijits, didn't it? And it was one of the first demonstrations of the now-old saw that in any movement, the informer is prolly the guy urging you to blow stuff up. (The preceding link is wrong; I probably intended this one).

Morally, one may respond to force with force. One does not initiate force.

(* 24 Aug 2010: This is totally the wrong link. I have no idea what I'm pretty sure the "Haymarket Riot" link in the update above is what it was supposed to be, but a link to ICC whinging about law-abiding citizens exercising a Constitutional right in all likelihood wasn't it.).

Pro-Freedom, Pro-Market, Pro-Business

All the same, what? Poe-tato, pah-tahto,...raspberry? Turns out there's a significant difference. H'mmm. That kind of explains the Indiana Chamber's deceitful* hatin' on the guns-in-your-own-car law, too.

I'd like to claim I found this all by myself, but 'twere Radley Balko pointed me there.
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* Their Prez, Big Cheese and head mouthpiece keeps talking about "guns in the workplace;" in this, he is, shall we say, shading the truth to the same degree an elderly stripper wears eye shadow and about as attractively. The law lets you keep your own personal firearm in your own personal vehicle; Mr. Employer has every right to insist it remain there as long as you're on his turf and his dime, same as he ever did. He can prolly even insist you keep it out of sight.

You Do What On The Weekends?

So, I wore my shiny-new Rocket Racing League T-shirt to work yesterday. (Thanks, M! You're the best!) One of the higher-ups noticed and was surprised anyone else was aware of it yet. He said, "You know, I'm very much involved in that..." and, skipping the details because it's pretty new and high-security, it turns out he's a critical member of the team that does them!

That discovery led, in turn, to being pointed at a number of fascinating links -- like this one:Pretty kewl, hey?