I won’t be here tonight to personally hear your requests for treats and your threats of tricks, so I’m just leaving a few things out on the honor system.  Indulge your need for eye candy, and let the scary tigers (Princetonian and Malayan respectively) make your hearts race.

Now that I’ve given you your treats, my trick: a reminder that the temperatures here will be in the 80s today and I’m headed out for a swim in a few minutes.  Happy Halloween, especially to those of you in the midwest and plains states.

From an interview of Gore Vidal published in The Atlantic

Have you met President Clinton?

Yes – and I like Bill. My family is Southern. I’m used to Bill Clintons. The country apparently wasn’t, though. At the time of his impeachment trial, I wrote a defense of him. When he claimed, “I didn’t have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky,” he was totally accurate.

You believe him?

He was talking Southern. In the South, sex is when you put it in and pump away and there’s a danger of a baby. That’s “sexual relations.” Anything else is what we called in school “messing around.” And all Southern boys messed around.

[via Jonno]

Spent the morning at BorgHealth getting scoped. I’d hoped to have some photos to share – some frontal organs to match the images from the rear in 2003.  Alas, it was not to be.

The procedure (a cystoscopy for you technical types) was not fun.  Flat on my back in a stylish little gown, fiber optics were run up the urethra (yes, inserted through that little hole there) and my amazing doctor took a little virtual tour of my urinary tract all the way up to the bladder.  While touring the bladder he grabbed a little souvenir – something to remember me by, and study and test and such.  Then in a flash, both in sense of time and the blazing pain, the fiber optics were removed and I was free to clean myself up and skedaddle.  Which I quickly did before they could change their minds and run that camera anywhere else.

I have no idea what, if anything, is wrong.  Due to the history of prostate cancer and the diverticulitis my great doctors are opting for that ‘abundance of caution’ thing, and I let them do their thing.  Failing lab tests is nothing new.  It’s the reason I was a liberal arts major.  BorgHealth takes it seriously though, and I like that they have a purpose.  I was just hoping to get some photos out of the procedure to use for this year’s holiday cards.  Now we’re going to have to go with ‘puppy on the beach’ and be like every other couple.

Eye candy for the Howling Point trick or treaters!

Take all you need, there’s plenty more.

Yes, I’ve been a little busy. Yes, that’s distracted me a bit from this site. Not just work and having a life, but Facebook and Twitter and texting with real-life people all leave the fingers a bit sore and the brain a bit fried. I should be generating billables, but I’m hanging out with y’all for a few minutes. Why?  Because I miss it here. Facebook and Twitter both started off cool, but now they spend all their time trying to introduce you to new people and products rather than just letting you hang out with the cool kids that brought you there in the first place. So I’m hanging here today. Me, iTunes, and a pile of dead tree pleadings that need to be highlighted and stickied and generally digested.  And when the fingers get tired and the eyes start glazing I’ll try and dig up some orange to make the place a little more presentable for the holidays.

Vic Mizzy, RIP

[H]is most famous work was the theme to “The Addams Family,” a tune accented by finger snaps and opening with the cleverly quirky lyrics: “They’re creepy and they’re kooky, mysterious and spooky, they’re altogether ooky: the Addams family.”

Mizzy sang the song himself and overdubbed it three times to give the impression of multiple vocalists. He also directed the title sequence where he asked actors who played members of the Addams family to snap their fingers in a bored way.

[via Jay Howard Cook]

Two good, one bad for the Bears:

• Cal water polo took three out of four games at the tournament I should have gone to see in Irvine, coming in second to U$¢.
• Cal professor Oliver Williamson was one of two Americans to take the annual Nobel prize for economics this weekend.
• UC management is now reportedly looking at major-by-major surcharges for different undergraduate programs.

Dog park beats a walk,

Open space and lots to sniff,

Diego runs wild.

Buttermilk pancakes.

Good swim, even though I did

double-knot my suit.

Wanted to go up to Irvine this weekend to catch #4 Cal water polo in action, but alas, it is not to be.  C’est la vie.

Going to have to let my alumni spirit be pumped by last night’s high school outreach session.  These college fairs are always fun events, with the alums working the table to talk to high school students about Cal, what it means to be a Bear, and why Cal is Cal and not just another UC[FillInTheBlank].  There were three of us at it last night: an attorney, a banker and a Marine officer with graduation years from 1984 to 2001, and it was a blast.  As always, there were just enough kids that had the right attitude and class that I can really hope to be seeing them at alumni events in six years or so.   There were a lot of others too, mostly being towed around by their parents, but I’m just tuning them out.  Looking for leaders and hope, not more sheep.

Need more positive thinking and hope for the future.  California, and Cal, have huge problems facing them.  Years and years of chronic mismanagement have led to a state so gridlocked that it can’t keep office doors open for forty-hour workweeks and courts have to take furlough days to keep their budget balanced (and it’s not like they were providing timely services in the first place).  Really having a lot of doubts about the future of this state, and not yet seeing a light at the end of the tunnel.

Maybe one of these kids will have the answer.  Unfortunately I think they’ll have a shot at solving the problem.  I don’t see the current officials in Sacramento (or the self-proclaimed outsiders positioning for office) having the answers, and certainly don’t see anyone paying down the massive public debts before these kids graduate and enter the work force.

Sorry this is turning so serious.  Maybe I should’ve been irresponsible and headed up to Irvine anyways.  Fiscal extravagance is the California way.  Then I could be sitting back in the bleachers saying ‘oh, that’s pretty‘ and watched Cal dominate the way Bears should.

It’s been a long week.  I’m ready for the weekend.  Big thoughts are just depressing me, so, to paraphrase Buffy “fire pretty.”  If I remember right she meant fire literally, but I’m just thinking of the hotness and the glistening light.