ThomStratton.com

As it got closer to Election Day I realized I really had no idea who was running and what they stood for. I don’t like to vote blindly, so I went to the state elections website where they have voter information on each race. You could click on each candidate to see information submitted by their campaign.

At least that was the idea. I was surprised by just how many didn’t submit any information at all. Okay, maybe not entirely surprised. I was the special sections editor for my college newspaper and found it was often like pulling teeth to get information from some candidates. Yes, I realize a college newspaper is hardly their biggest concern, but surely they had people working their campaign whose job it was to send information to someone who wanted it. Ten minutes to write an email is all it would have taken.

And the state elections website was even easier to please. They pretty much printed whatever they were sent. I find it hard to believe no one could figure out how to cut and paste the campaign boilerplate and email it in.

Granted my state tends to vote heavily in one direction, though there are notable exceptions. I imagine a certain amount of (not unjustified) cockiness could lead some to believe it doesn’t matter. There certainly are some areas where simply having the right letter after your name is all you need to win. But then I also live in a state where even the opposition is still hardly distinguishable from the dominant party. It probably won’t be the end of anyone’s world if the out-party candidate gets elected.

But I will say that in most cases where a candidate didn’t submit any information to the website I did not vote for them. There were a few cases where the other candidate submitted some rather frightening, extremist stuff. I worry about extremism on either side of the aisle, and I would rather take my chances on an unknown candidate in those situations.

I don’t know if I swayed any results. For all I know I’m the only person who went to that site looking for information. And perhaps I’m the only person stubborn enough to avoid voting for someone who couldn’t be bothered to submit information to the state voter website. But if not, there were quite a few campaigns who dropped the ball. If someone is giving you a free platform and actively informing people of that platform, why wouldn’t you take at least five minutes to submit something?

Go vote! It’s important! If you don’t, the bad guys win (whomever your personal bad guys may be)!

In the mean time, for those of us convinced that Daylight Saving is an evil plot, there is this:

I especially like the bit at the very end, trying to reset the clock on the VCR.

About a month ago I used a meme-pic of Benedict Cumberbatch as the launching-point do a discussion on rudeness in society. This weekend I saw some of Cumberbatch’s BBC series “Sherlock”, and now I know how he got to be the Dismissively Rude Poster-Boy. That’s what his character, Sherlock Holmes, is.

Granted, I saw only part of two episodes, so perhaps I didn’t get to watch far enough for the show to redeem itself, but I frankly found their take on Holmes to be insufferable. He’s not just rude, he’s cruel. The show creators describe him as “slightly Aspergerish”, but that’s perhaps an insult to people with Aspergers. Yes, Holmes is incredibly smart, but evidently not smart enough to realize that unless you are the main character in a TV series people will not put up with crap like he continually gets away with. He refuses to be kind or respectful to anyone (he shows up to an appointment to Buckingham Palace wearing only a bedsheet simply because he found it annoying to be invited before he was ready to go outside for the day), not even his supposed friend, Dr. Watson.

About the only enjoyable aspect of the series is the Holmesian “this is how I know” explanations, though in true (and annoying) Sir Arthur Conan Doyle style you’re not given the chance to see these same details and therefore prove yourself as smart as Holmes. In fact, it almost seems as though everyone in the show is written to act dumb so that Holmes and (sometimes) Watson can appear smart.

Perhaps had I been able to watch one episode to its conclusion I might feel differently. I sat down with my kids to watch (it was my daughter’s night to choose), since BBC’s standards are not always as strict as US network TV, nor do they give you the same warning. The first episode I quickly determined would likely not be suitable for my children, so we skipped out after the first 30 minutes or so. The second proved too frightening, so we bailed on it after 20-30 minutes. I never really got to see how the stories developed, but instead got to watch several times Holmes getting to be Holmes before settling in to really try and solve a case.

Maybe he gets to be more bearable once “the game is afoot.” But after those two doses of this “modern take” I have no desire to see more. I already encounter enough people who are so smart they feel the rules of decent behavior and tolerance don’t apply to them. I encounter significantly more people who simply think they are so smart they don’t need any measure of traditional courtesy. I’m not all that surprised that “Sherlock” has been most often recommended to me by teenagers.

Be glad you are a fictional character, Mr. Holmes, with writers on your side to run interference for you. In the real world when you actively insult and attack the people who are paying you, you soon find there are no more willing to pay for the “honor” of being savaged by you when someone significantly nicer, even if less brilliant, will still be able to get the job done.

My son is learning the trombone, and I suppose that means they’re also getting ready for a Christmas concert. In any case, I hear “Jolly Old Saint Nicholas” around my house frequently. Yesterday after my son stopped practicing, my daughter took up the song, applying the words. Several things occurred to me in short order:

1. The singer in the lyrics is excited about Christmas, but is rather humble. She wants Santa to be sure to know what to bring her siblings, but for her/himself? Well his/her stocking in the shortest one, and he/she really doesn’t know what to ask for, and leaves it up to Santa to bring what he thinks is best.
2. This song probably wouldn’t have been written today, when everything is about “me, me, me!” and “gimme gimme gimme!”
3. The song according to modern sentiments has been written. It’s called “Santa Baby”.

Of course “Santa Baby” was released back in 1953, performed by Eartha Kitt:

“Santa Baby” is a 1953 Christmas song written by Joan Javits and Philip Springer. The song is a tongue-in-cheek look at a Christmas list addressed to Santa Claus by a woman who wants extravagant gifts such as sables, yachts, and decorations from Tiffany’s.

I don’ t think it’s tongue-in-cheek any more.

I just finished listening to an audio presentation of Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”, read by an actor currently starring in a TV series called “Sleepy Hollow”, supposedly based on the story. I decided to go find out a bit more about it. Just how much of the original story did they retain? The answer? Not much.

They borrowed some of the names, and that’s about it. Ichabod Crane, instead of being a lanky schoolteacher, is a (no doubt good-looking) soldier and spy for General Washington. Brom Bones was Ichabod’s friend, betrothed to Katrina Van Tassel, who seeks revenge on Crane when Katrina breaks her betrothal to marry Crane. He becomes the Headless Horseman after Ichabod decapitates him in a fight, but nearly kills Crane in the process. Their blood mixes (I assume they’re compatible blood types?), and when Katrina, who is a witch, casts a spell to save Crane’s life she ends up inadvertently saving them both, who get resurrected in modern-day Sleepy Hollow. Crane is still himself, but Brom Bones is now one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

I’m not saying this is a bad premise for a series. And this is a common trope in literature these days, too. But when most writers set out to re-tell a familiar story they tend to keep the skeleton of the story and put new names and faces on it, not the other way around. From the preview available on YouTube the story seems to bear more resemblance to “National Treasure” than “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”. The only common element that goes beyond mere name is a headless horseman. What they’ve really done is take a lot of disparate elements of American history and folklore, mixed in some Biblical references and a heavy supernatural element, and slapped a bunch of familiar names on it. “Sleepy Hollow” could take place pretty much anywhere. It could just as easily–and accurately–been called “The Last of the Mohicans”. You could just as easily replace Ichabod Crane with Natty Bumppo/Hawkeye–and more realistically, too, since Ichabod Crane was about as far from being a heroic action figure as you can get.

Certainly the series trailer looks interesting, but it really doesn’t deserve to be called “Sleepy Hollow”, any more than putting a Porsche name plate on my Toyota makes it a Boxster. If you were to change all the names in the new series you would be hard pressed to identify to identify the supposed source material. It’s more influenced by “Terminator” than by “Sleepy Hollow” from what I can tell.

But I’m being nit-picky, I suppose. I have no intention of watching this, or any other, series out right now. I don’t have time for television, and barely have time for the occasional movie. My complaint hardly matters.

I wonder what my children will remember about Halloween in ten, twenty or thirty years. Hopefully their memory is better than mine, and hopefully they have better memories. I don’t particularly remember any Halloweens past. I do remember going to a spook alley in someone’s house and not being terribly impressed. Mostly I remember the time when I was eight or nine, and put on an old tape recorder with a neck strap, black pants and a long-sleeve yellow knit shirt and went as Spock.

Now, all of you die-hard Trekkies out there can see the problem immediately. But my only introduction to Star Trek at that point in my life had been on a black and white TV, or on those Colorforms toys where you get a bunch of re-usable stickers and can make your own scenes. I knew some had yellow, some had red, and some had blue, but I really had no definitive guide to go by for individual characters. Nevertheless I didn’t have a particularly good day at school from all the kids correcting me with varying degrees of kindness.

Of course it didn’t matter when I went trick or treating. Assuming I wasn’t wearing a coat so that no one could even tell what color my shirt was, the majority of the adults I would have seen that night wouldn’t have known Spock from a spork, and shoveled candy at me anyway.

But really, I can’t say that I have any truly great Halloween memories. Certainly not like my brother who met his wife at a Halloween party. Now that was a treat to be proud of!

It will be interesting to see what memories my kids carry forward from the various Halloweens. I think they’ve got a better shot at some memories than I did.

And this is why, when I do finally crack, no jury on earth will convict me. Or stop laughing, probably. It won’t be a hung jury so much as a doubled-over-laughing jury.