Areas of Unrest

10 December 2007 - File Under "M"

I intended to resume writing about Jewish music, but I realized that about all I have to say about Sephardic music is that I like it. In general, it's closely related to early music and most performers either use early instruments or perform a capella. The group I particularly recommend is The Voice of the Turtle, though I don't think they are still together and recording.

Also for Chanukah, I stumbled across The Jewish Comics Blog today. Lots of interesting tidbits and links there - and I'm not even majorly into comics. I wonder why I never realized that Neil Gaiman is Jewish.

My top news story of the day involves my current favorite megalomaniac dictator. Hugo Chavez has taken over for the late Turkmenbashi in that respect. His latest act of dubious merit was to change the time zone, so Venezuela is now a half hour ahead of Eastern time. Actually, I think he missed the mark. Using a quarter hour or, even better, twenty-three minutes would have had some originality to it. And I bet one could even find a number with some significance to Venezuelan history.

I forgot to mention an incident at Dulles last night. While I was waiting for the bus, a policewoman came around asking people, "is that your bag?" in response to any bag that was not in actual physical contact with a person. Apparently, nobody claimed one that was a bit further down from where I was standing. So she radio'd for a K-9 unit. I couldn't tell anything from the dog's behavior, but they seem to have decided it was not a bomb. The dog and handler left and the policewoman wheeled the bag inside.

My final tidbit for the day also involves an animal. I opened a file drawer to put a document away - and a mouse climbed out. I told our building manager and she just said that there were mousetraps throughout the building. That wasn't exactly a helpful response. Our deputy operations director told me that the mouse used to eat her candy and, now that she seals it in a tin, it eats her vitamins instead. The only thing it will find in my office is a supply of teabags. I don't think it's gotten into those yet, but between them and the vitamins, we could have a pumped up, hyper-caffeinated mouse to deal with.