What Cheer, Netop?

My mother was reelected with about 56% of the vote, 1123 to 852. (I believe there are 19,000 registered voters in District 4 of Worcester, so turnout was as pathetic as usual, unfortunately.)

Things heard by me while I was standing on sidewalks waving campaign signs:

"Daddy, does that sign say 'Barbara Haller'?" (said by a little girl to her father)

"I should take that sign home and light a fire with it." (The sign was plastic, so this seemed like a bad idea.)

Around 7:30 I was on Main Street in Worcester with my sign and a guy walking down the sidewalk yelled to me, "George Clinton! Vote for George Clinton, man!"

He got near to me and I said, "George Clinton, huh?"

"Look," he said, "are you getting a job or something? I mean, did they say that you'd get a job carrying these signs? Because, I mean, unless you're getting a job or something from doing this there's no reason you should be out here."

"Well," I said, "she is my mother."

This stopped him for a moment and he looked impressed. "You're blessed, man. You're blessed." I thanked him and he continued down the street.

After he'd gone ten feet or so, he paused and said, "That doesn't mean she's going to win, but you're blessed."

"Understood," I said, and he continued on his way.

George Clinton!

I finally got around to transferring many months' worth of photos off of my phone camera. (I have to reboot into Mac OS 9 and transfer the photos one at a time, so it tends to be something I put off.)

I'll be gradually labelling the pictures in the gallery I set up for them, but I'll also post to my livejournal about particularly notable ones.

Here are a couple I liked. They're pictures of signs I encountered in Worcester; I think that both of them were in a snack bar in Worcester State College, but I may not be remembering right.

I've been reading through my accumulated issues of Action Geek over the past couple of days. It's a tiny little comic book/zine put out by a guy in Worcester, Massachusetts (where my mother is a city councilor).

In its 24 small pages (16 in the earliest issues) it manages to touch on a lot of things I'm interested in, or have encountered recently, or have heard various Kibologists obsessing about ... things like old Hostess Fruit Pies ads, early and somewhat cheesy electronic music, Cowboy Bebop, ready.gov, etc.... he definitely seems to be plugged into the hivemind. (Heck, he even took pictures of bathrooms, something I did recently.) And of course the zine is free to robots, which I think is a policy everyone can support.

Probably my favorite issue so far is issue 4 (unfortunately not available online), which is about how he got in trouble for showing one of the previous issues to a coworker ...

Anyway, I think it's worth checking out. A year (= 6 issues) subscription is ten bucks, and you can read most of the already-published issues on the website.

If/when I finish putting together the long-awaited Interrobang Cartel CD, I'll probably send him a copy.