Oddities and Humor

Harris County Clerk Beverly Kaufman this morning said she is confident of timely, clean elections in November, even as a fire that destroyed the county's entire inventory of 10,000 electronic voting machines still burned.

Kaufman urged voters to cast their ballots early to help the county cope with a possible shortage of equipment on election day.

"Because I don’t expect to have 10,000 pieces to work with, no matter what we do, I’m sure that we’re going to be putting on a full court press urging people to vote early," Kaufman said.

Kaufman said she expected that the fire in a county warehouse in the 600 block of Canino, in north Houston, has destroyed $30 million worth of equipment and caused another $10 million in damage to the building.

Kaufman hopes to cobble together a collection of voting machines through loans from other counties and replacement equipment from its vendor, she said. All five members of Commissioners Court contacted her this morning to pledge their support in helping her with the resources needed to stage a successful election in which early voting begins in just 52 days, she said.

Kaufman encouraged people to vote early in person or by mail.

"There is no doubt in my mind that we’re going to have a timely election here and that we’re going to take care of the voters," Kaufman said.

Houston Fire Department spokesman Patrick Trahan said arson investigators were at the scene of the fire, but no cause has been determined.

The three-alarm blaze started about 4:15 a.m. at the football field-size warehouse the county uses to store its election equipment. Firefighters extinguished the flames about four hours later.

No injuries were reported.

The county’s voting machines, including eSlate equipment, were stored at the nearly 27,000-square foot facility, county officials said.

Early voting begins Oct. 18. Election Day is Nov. 2.

Here's the odd part of the story. See below, the line in red, that has links to British Columbia.

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at 20:24 on August 27, 2010, EDT.

Foot found on West Coast beach

The Canadian Press

VANCOUVER - A human foot has washed up on another West Coast beach, but this time in Washington state.

Police Det. Ed Wallace says the foot, likely that of a woman or child, was found by a tourist on Whidbey Island on Friday morning.

He says the foot has likely been in the water for less than two months and was found without a shoe or sock.

Investigators are trying to match the foot with missing persons cases in the area.

Seven feet have been found on B.C. shores since August 2007.

Only one has been identified as belonging to a man believed to have committed suicide.

link to story

Texas Vows To Reclaim Title Of Most Regressive State From Arizona
onion.com
AUSTIN, TX—Following a series of embarrassingly backward laws recently enacted in Arizona, Texas governor Rick Perry pledged Wednesday to do everything in his power to reestablish his state as the most regressive in the nation.

As I started to open up my new word processor on Friday, I was presented with an information box that stated I would have to agree to the terms of use first. No problem -- Until I noticed further content that would also be a part of the experience. Namely, advertisements. So, in order to have a word processor with this machine, I was expected to allow myself to be inundated with advertising. Fortunately, I have Works on a disc. I put in the disk and I was able to delete the advertisers' version and install my own. The next day, my wife showed me a disc she had, but never used. Works! "I didn't know you had that. I payed $80 for my version of it." Turns out, it had come with her computer.

Does she not get impatient with you ed?

She loves me. What can I say?

Came home this afternoon. My wife had already left to sit with her mother in the hospital. But she left me a pan of brownies on the counter, with a message on the cover:
Happy 32ND Anniversary. And a little note extra. Something about love.

Aw....

New WNBA Promotion Lets First 100 Fans Leave Early
onion.com
NEW YORK—In an effort to increase attendance and reward the league's fans, WNBA president Donna Orender announced Wednesday that the first 100 ticket holders to arrive at the conference semifinal games would be allowed to leave extra early.

I didn't know it was quite that arousing ed.

OXNARD, Calif. – Police say a tow truck driver has been accused of hitting two young children as their mother pushed them across a street in a stroller then dragging the kids under the truck for about a quarter of a mile.

Oxnard Police Sgt. Randy Latimer says the truck struck 19-year-old Alma Lopez Tuesday morning in a crosswalk, knocking her to the ground.

The truck continued on, dragging the children — a 3-year-old girl and a 1-year-old boy — and the stroller until witnesses chased and flagged down the driver.

Latimer says the driver, Mehran Khamseh of Santa Barbara, was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence of drugs.

The children are hospitalized in critical condition. Lopez's injuries were described as moderate.

.Let's just say Axl Rose isn't too welcome in this jungle.

Twenty minutes into their concert in Dublin last night, Guns N' Roses cut short their set after fans—and we use that term extremely loosely—refused to stop throwing plastic bottles (not to mention all manner of invectives) at the band.

"Stop," Axl told his bandmates midsong before going on to address the rowdy crowd.

"All right, here's the deal. One more bottle, we go home. It's up to you. We would like to stay. You want us to stay? We want to stay. We want to have some fun. You want to have fun? If you don't want to have fun, all you gotta do is let us know, and we got no problem, we'll go on our way."

Apparently, the audience did not want to have fun. And let the group know by booing and, yes, throw yet more bottles with unknown liquids (any guesses? We're thinking the bathroom lines were short that evening) at the stage.

"Have a good evening," Axl said, leading the band offstage.

A venue worker who undoubtedly fell victim to the short straw then came onstage with the unenviable task of having to blame "technical difficulties" on the disruption.

As in technically, Axl's a douche?

"We're trying hard to get Axl to come back onstage," another worker announced a little later. "I would ask you please to refrain from throwing items at him. If you bear with us for five minutes…thank you for your patience, it's appreciated."

Well, five turned into nearly 60, but the group eventually—and contractually—returned to the stage. The promoter forced the volatile band to finish out its set, albeit to a much more scaled back (OK, nearly empty) venue.

Rose & Co. ultimately wrapped their set around 1 a.m. for the loyal few who remained and refrained from launching projectiles.

While Axl has yet to comment on the incident, the promoters and O2 venue joined together to defend their booking:

"No artist should be subjected to missiles and unknown substances being thrown at them," they said.

Incidentally, this isn't the first bit of concert trouble Guns N' Roses has endured this week. The band's sets were cut short at Britain's Leeds and Reading music festivals after the band started late and were not allowed to extend the cities' performance curfews to complete their entire set.

Axl responded to those incidents with a lengthy Twitter rant on Tuesday, calling the festivals a "cash grab" that had "no respect for the fans or the band."

Maybe he picked up a few pointers?



Read more: http://uk.eonline.com/uberblog/b198645_guns_roses_walk_off_stage_victory.html#ixzz0yPQMEOQF

oh, ok, that does it. I'm laughing.

All right, I sent that one to my cousins..

This time I'm on the diva Axl Rose's side. Even if the bottles were filled with ... say Mountain Dew ... instead of another repulsively humanly produced liquid I'd still agree the band had the right to leave the jerk crowd for not trying to remotely behave.

I don't understand where the animosity came from, but the crowd was extremely rude, it seems.

I know. I posted this on letty's radio thread.

That was so wundervoll! These guys are quite talented that this could actually be a hit single on the radio. What production values in the song (and yes the video as well).

I wonder if his Amish beard is real....

What with all the fuss over the safety of eggs these days, when I made breakfast today, I put the eggs in a bowl and then covered them with colloidal silver. Virtually any germ or virus making contact with colloidal silver is killed very quickly. Then, after the egg carton was safely stored, I washed my hands in the silver water. In fact, I washed my hands repeatedly, after each stage of preparation, using soap the final times. It was mighty good eating. Gave the last biscuit to Punky the dog, and she went out with it and buried it in the yard, as is her custom, when given any biscuits.

Or you can just thoroughly cook the bloody eggs and kill the salmonella that way. Runny eggs are a flip of the coin in this game of food poisoning even before this silly contaminated egg crisis du jour.