Asymptomatic

There must be intelligent life down here

NYC WordPress Meetup?

Ja wrote me to ask if there were any meetups closer to him in North Jersey than having to trek the whole way down to ours in Philly. I told him that there were a lot of people who were interested in such a thing, but that there wasn’t an official organizer yet, and so there was no meetup.

Well, apparently, he’s trying to get something going, and I figured I would give him a boost by posting some details about what you need to do where it would get some good exposure.

Slave Day

I see that my highschool is still being draconian with its ideas on free speech. I suppose their policy is to do as they say, but not as they do. For me, there is a deeper story than what is currently taking place with this “Bible Club”.

One of the rights of passage at Downingtown High School in the years leading up to my graduation was experiencing spirit week. I’m sure that most schools have these weeks, where for some reason the student body is encouraged to show its pride in the school by participating in various strange school-hour activities, usually culminating in the homecoming parade, dance, bonfire, football game, etc.

Some of the activities included “Blue and Gold Day”, where you wear your school colors on your clothes or in body paint. There were also odd ones like “Pajama Day”. These days were voted on by student council and approved by the “spirit commissioner” and faculty.

My senior year included an day-long spirit event called “Rent an Underclassman Day”. The premise is basically this: You buy a ticket from the student council that has a blank for your name and that of an underclassman. With both names filled out and signed, the ticket is returned to student council, and you become registered. On Rent an Underclassman Day, the underclassman (who has agreed to all of this) can be ordered to perform some services for you, like carrying your books to class (which is a big deal in the quarter-mile long hallways of my high school, where you locker is at one end and your books weigh 80 lbs.) wearing humiliating costumes, all in the name of fun and, of course, school spirit.

In the years when my mom was in school, this day was not called “Rent an Underclassman Day”. In fact, only a year or two prior to my graduation, it was still known by the name that my mom called it in her day, “Slave Day”.

Sadly for everyone involved, I was an altruistic teenager, and also editor of my school newspaper.

August 10

August 10th. That’s the settlement date for our new house, assuming they accept the offer we made last night and everything goes smoothly.

After work yesterday, Berta and I went over to Keller Williams to meet with Judy, our buyer’s agent, and fill out all the paperwork to make an offer on the house at Quail Way. It wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Really, there was a lot of paperwork involved when we bought the house we’re living in, but it wasn’t as bad as everyone had made it out to be.

Fluke

On Ken’s recommendation, I picked up a book by Christopher Moore. Not familiar enough with his work to spend all the money on the hardback edition of his new book, I settled on one of his many other books, Fluke. It was a bestseller afterall, so even if it wasn’t “good” it would still be palatable, as are other mainstream bestseller books.

Fluke is about this whale researcher, Nathan Quinn, and his photographer partner, Clay Democodus, and their adventures in researching the meaning of the songs of the humpback whale.

Ok, if you’ve read the book, you know that that description is a load of crap, but I can’t very well tell you what the book is really about without giving too much away, can I? Well, let’s see…