KRAD's Inaccurate Guide to Life

So, the Census...

After my training was completed, I was sent to a different group. Each region is broken down into neighborhoods, and my neighborhood in the Bronx had too many people, and another area had too few, so I was sent there (along with a few other fellow travellers). After working with them for a bit, I was transferred to another area -- this one including the neighborhood I grew up in (which I haven't spent any time walking around in 15 years; in some ways it's totally different, and in others it's exactly the same).

The address canvassing was originally supposed to be an eight-week job, but after three weeks it became obvious that we didn't need that long. We're apparently too efficient. *laughs* (I'm guessing that doing this with a handheld computer is much faster than anyone anticipated.)

So the term ends tomorrow, and all the canvassing has to be done by then. I've done all the stuff I was supposed to do, so I'm set.

The next stage is Quality Control, and I'm told that I'm likely to be hired back to do that, so that's good. I guess they liked my work. *grin* Certainly being hired to do QC will take the sting out of losing four weeks' work......

Watched the Yankees lose a heartbreaker of an extra-inning game to the Red Sox, including a rare blown save by Mariano Rivera. Sigh.

Plan for tomorrow is to go to karate. Shihan is going on vacation starting this weekend for two weeks, so the black belts will be teaching classes for the upcoming fortnight. I plan to get there early tomorrow and volunteer to help with the kids' color-belt class that's right before the adult color-belt class.

After that, I'll be spending a lot of time at the Starbucks working on Chapters 4-5 of StarCraft: Ghost Academy Volume 1. Ditto Sunday.

The French national anthem, "La Marseillaise," was composed by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle (1792)

NINE POINTS OF THE LAW

The phrase "possession is nine points of the law," which from the 1500s was employed to assert squatters' rights, is said to derive from the nine requirements for a successful lawsuit:

A good deal of money
A good deal of patience
A good cause
A good lawyer
A good counsel
Good witnesses
A good jury
A good judge
Good luck


Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008)

On 29 April, the final of the four comics I wrote being released in the calendar month of April 2009 will be released: Farscape: D'Argo's Lament #1, which is a third-sesason-era miniseries that I wrote all by my lonesome (albeit with Unca Rockne looking over my shoulder), with fantastic artwork by Neil Edwards.

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The first issue is entitled "If You Can Be an Idiot, I Can Be an Idiot" -- all four issues will have titles that are lines of dialogue spoken by D'Argo in the series. The other titles are "I Spit on Your Grave" for #2, "I Would Rather Go Down on a Swing" for #3, and, of course, "I'm Your Daddy" for #4. *grin*

I haven't said much about the recent revelations that the Bush Administration had torture on their minds loooooooooooooong before we thought they did -- which means, amazingly, that the previous president's administration was even more venal and corrupt than I thought, which is impressive, as I didn't think they could stoop any lower -- but terri_osborne just pointed out this particular WTF from Pat Buchanan when he was on Hardball, as reported by Jason Linkins at Huffington Post:

Pat Buchanan: Hiroshima Makes Torture Okay

Obviously Pat's Mom never told him that two wrongs don't make a right..................

Bea Arthur, the brilliant comic actor who had a lengthy and magnificent theatre career before taking on the role of Maude on All in the Family and her eponymous spinoff, and later played Dorthy Zbornak on The Golden Girls, died today of cancer at the age of 86.

She was one of the finest. Nobody glared better than Bea Arthur, whether the target was Archie Bunker or Sophia Petrillo. And, of course, she was one of the few high points of the otherwise dismal Star Wars Holiday Special. (Funny how none of her obits have mentioned that....)

*raises glass*

Woke up and went to the dojo early to help out with the kids' color-belt class, since Shihan is on vacation. It was fun -- Senpai Gustavo put me in charge of the blue belts, the lowest of the color-belt students, and they struggled a bit -- and then we had the regular class.

That was a sweaty time -- next time I do this, I'm changing gis between classes, because I was pretty stinky at the start of the adult class -- and then I came home, watched some of the Yankee game. I turned it off when the Yankees were (I thought) safely ahead 6-0, and went to the Starbucks to work. The Yankees coughed it back up while I toiled, losing 16-11, while I revised "Three Sides to Every Story," the Classic BattleTech story that will be appearing in their 25th anniversary anthology, and Chapter 3 of Ghost Academy Volume 1. Tomorrow, I write (at least) Chapter 4.

Came home, and then watched Primeval with terri_osborne. God, I love that show. Lester so rocks....