Weekend

They should call it Ninja Crack. Bec, Jer and I are all developing habits here.

Escorting was fun, since I was working with Casey, and it was also incredibly odd, since the other escort has an absolutely eerie resemblance to lunatickle. It's so dramatic that another employee at Preterm commented on it, and this escort has apparently been mistaken for Lunatickle at least four other times within feminist circles in the Cleveland area. Since they also share a first name, and since lunatickle was very well-known and well-loved here in the same social and political circles before she moved (well, still well-known and well-loved, just also deeply missed), I suspect this poor girl is going to get more of the mistaken identity confusion in the future. The resemblance was more than just visual, though, although there were plenty of similarities there (most especially that they have the same smile), and the combination of mannerism similarities and such had me having to constantly remind myself not to automatically fall into interacting with her weirdly. And when my brain wasn't actively playing tricks on me, it was just making me miss K somethin' fierce.

Clevelanders!! New Bookstore!!

Yes, I'm really, really excited about this.

Visible Voice is a new independent bookstore only about a block and a half from my house. It's wonderful, and amazing, and I'm totally in love. It's about as close to my "perfect bookstore" as I've encountered in recent memory (ok, it could use more SF/F to be my perfect match, but it's still amazing), and it's even pet-friendly for well-behaved animals (Tarma got to go there with Bec and me on Saturday afternoon). They carry a combination of new and used books -- it's worth noting that they're all shelved together in their respective categories, so check the stickers. I found books I would've assumed to be new that had used prices. He's also looking for titles of more magazines to carry (preferably stuff that's a bit hard to find elsewhere). Also, they have a neat little reciprocal arrangement with Civilization, our local coffee shop, and $50 in bookstore purchases (at once or over time) gets you a $5 certificate for Civ.

Until they get their official site online in a little while, they're using a MySpace page. I haven't looked at it directly myself, since the site's blocked from work, but I figured I'd include it anyway.

If you're local come check it out! My motivations are two-fold: 1) I want them to make it for my own selfish purposes, and 2) I think a lot of people I know would really love them, and should know they exist.

Even a quiet day isn't enough...

*sigh* Still so very, very behind on email.

Here's one of the articles I'd meant to post about, though:

The Globalization of Electronic Election Theft

... Now the secretaries of state in Ohio and California are subjecting e-voting to still more official review. Ohio's Jennifer Brunner has announced she'll seek bids to conduct independent studies of both touch-screen machines, which record votes electronically, and optical scanners, which tabulate paper ballots electronically.

Brunner has already removed the entire board of elections of Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) in part because of a major fiasco caused by new electronic machines in the state's 2006 primary election. Voting rights activists vehemently opposed the $20 million purchase, but it was rammed through by Board Chair Robert Bennett and Executive Director Michael Vu.

The machines then caused long reporting delays. Vu resigned under pressure from the board. Bennett then resigned - along with the rest of the board - under pressure from Brunner. Bennett chairs the Ohio Republican Party, works closely with White House advisor Karl Rove, and was instrumental in delivering Ohio's decisive votes to George W. Bush in the 2004 presidential election. Two felony convictions have so far arisen from what prosecutors call a "rigged" recount that occurred that year in Cleveland, under Bennett's supervision. ...

(this was the Ohio-centric bit, but there's more about concerns in other countries. I wish there was more detail and sourcing in this article, though.)