Ron's Log

The Candy Report

My neighborhood is just thick with kids. So far, all nice. But ya can't swing a dead cat...etc.

How much do I stock up for the Halloween hordes? Laid in a couple of bags of Costco's finest. And so far it's been...mmmmmm...medium. Like once every half hour a big gaggle of kids will show up. Always with parental units lurking along...except for one group that looked rather teenager-ish and uncostumed. Every kid gets handsful of chocolate from me, because I seem to have over-shopped.

Mt. San Jacinto this Morning

This is the view from Varner Road, just across the line into Cathedral City, as the sun came over the horizon this morning.

Downtown L.A.

IKEA

An account of shopping at the two New Jersey IKEAs. The one close by the Newark airport has tempted me several times during long layovers.

This past week I had run an errand into West Hollywood, and stopped at the IKEA in West Covina on my way back. I considered this my orientation run, as it's the first time I've been to one since I visited the Long Beach store back in like 1997 on the occasion of my first touristy visit to L.A. which eventually included my first-ever visit to Palm Springs.

They've got some nice stuff at some nice prices. It was pleasant seeing the young and pretty L.A. people shopping. The only thing I bought was some ginger snaps and a water for the drive home.

Sorcerer

I'm currently watching Sorcerer which is a 1977 remake of the 5-star Le Salaire de la peur (1953) and it's good (Sorcerer, I mean). But it requires suspension of disbelief. In the limited technology of 1953 it made sense to be transporting nitroglycerine over dirt roads in bad trucks, but not in 1977. A helicopter is the obvious alternative, but the helicopter pilot cites vibration and turbulence as absolute barriers, so the explosives must go by land. Okay, we'll give 'em that. But why is the only supply of explosives this nasty old pile of dynamite (or is it TNT?) 200 miles from the oil fire? Once they see that the explosive is unstable, why not use the helicopter to fly in stable explosives? If that can't be done, then why not helicopter in some decent vehicles? Why do they have to build up a pair of trucks from junk? And for that matter, why trucks? They need 4-wheel drive vehicles to negotiate the bad roads, but a Jeep would have done as well, and (being lighter) would have traversed the delicate spots better. And, since this is seems to be the only road to the oil well, and is the road used by trucks to carry workers in and out, why does it seem so inadequate when our guys drive it in their trucks? And why do the speedometers show miles? What Latin American colony of America uses miles? Not even Panama. Puerto Rico does, but they don't drill oil there, and it's not some godawful third-world country without sewers but with a corrupt dictator for President.

If they felt the need to remake, they should have set it in the early 1950s, and things would have gone swimmingly.

Star Graves

Heather O'Rourke

Jack Lemmon

Voting Tuesday

If you're all registered to vote, but just don't know where your polling place is, go to MyPollingPlace.com, enter your address and it should come back with the location of your polling place. Worked for me.

Then, if you show up at your polling place and encounter some shenanigans that prevent you from voting, you may want to call 866-OURVOTE which is a non-partisan organization with a bunch o' lawyers standing by to help.

Measure U

I got one of these ridiculous mailers yesterday, purporting to be from the Environmental Protection Agency. It would fool only the very stupid. Nonetheless, there are federal laws against this sort of falsehood. And then there are laws about using the postal service to spread this fraud around. I look forward to some Homeland Security agents showing up on someone's doorstep soon.

Segways

A Segway dealership has opened in Palm Desert.

We Are But Cockroaches

Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan of Mexico, the Vatican health secretary, has compared gay families to cockroaches.