Odds and ends, 9/10/07

An acquaintance submits a guest column in which he refers to himself as an old geezer. Hmm, I thought. How does a person geeze? Have I ever geezed? Is it something I should do in private or in public?

So I looked up "geezer" in my desktop dictionary. It said "geezer" comes from " guiser," which is a synonym for "mummer." Other than people who march in Philadelphia parades, what's a "mummer"? My dictionary has two definitions. One is a person who wears a mask or disguise for fun, or who travels about at Christmastime dressed in a costume. The second is "an actor."

I'll let my acquaintance tell me exactly how it is he geezes.

Yeah, it's Monday. I should be editing guest columns and letters to the editor, but I needed a 10-minute diversion, plus something for this blog.

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For people who enjoy learning about Ohio River bridges -- there has to be someone out there like me in this regard -- an engineering company called HNTB has published a short article on how the bridge it designed at Blennerhassett Island will have a different design to minimize stresses on the bridge arch in the event of a cable failure.

Yeah, it's Monday. I should be editing guest columns and letters to the editor, but I needed a 10-minute diversion, plus something for this blog.

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Taylor County, W.Va., wants to get rid of these newfangled electronic voting machines and go back to paper ballots. Meanwhile, in Ohio, officials in Cuyahoga County want that state to push back the presidential primary from March to May out of concerns over the reliability of touch-screen voting machines.

Pardon me if my memory is faulty, but didn't states go with these touch-screen machines because people in Florida couldn't figure out how to use the same punch-card ballot that folks in other states use, and the people who count the votes argued over the different varieties of chads? Isn't this something the feds mandated?

Gives a whole new meaning to "I'm from Washington; I'm here to help you," don't it?

On the other hand, when they used paper ballots in Kanawha County last month . . . well, who knows how many ballots weren't counted or were counted twice?

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One last thing. I'm not a Britney Spears fan. I used to like making fun of her. She's a new generation's Vanna White. And I didn't see her widely panned performance on TV last night. I don't want to make fun of her anymore. For a long time, I've just plain felt sorry for her. It's like her childhood was taken away in the quest for fame and fortune, and she never learned how to make decisions or act like regular people. Her learning curve is out there in public.

So I'll lay off. For a while.