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David Rodeback's Blog

Friday, July 17, 2009

Random (Mostly) Local Thoughts

Night life in downtown American Fork. Lawn chairs along tomorrow's parade route. Local candidates. Watering the lawn. Counting blog posts. Does God read blogs?

Night Life in American Fork and other (Mostly) Acute Phenomena

It's Steel Days in American Fork. There's a carnival downtown, along with an art show and other attractions. Suddenly, downtown American Fork has a night life -- but I don't think that would justify having a carnival every week.

Tomorrow's parade route is already lined with lawn chairs. It says something good about a city that its residents expect that all the chairs will still be there tomorrow morning.

I wonder how many of the recently-declared candidates for elected office in American Fork have actually attended more than two city council meetings so far this calendar year. I'm going to hazard a guess that two of the four mayoral candidates (one is the incumbent) and four of the ten city council candidates (two of which are incumbents) have done so. I believe I've attended five, and I'm not running for anything.

(Super)Dell Schanze is running for mayor of Saratoga Springs, along with about half of the rest of the adult population of the town. I figured he'd run for governor, since, from where Schanze sits on the political spectrum, noted Utah County conservative Gary Herbert is a flaming liberal.

I called the City to schedule my pressurized irrigation inspection, where they make sure I'm not hooking the irrigation system to my home's culinary system. The official letter warned that it could be two weeks, but they scheduled it for the following morning. The fellow actually came early. Now we're watering our lawn with pressurized irrigation water.

What's in a Number (of Blog Posts)?

Every so often I count my blog posts, just to see if the total is approaching some interesting, round number. I've been blogging since 2004; Monday, July 27, will be my five-year blogiversary. Here's what I learned the other day, but forgot to mention.

First, five posts ago, on July 6th, I posted my 666th blog, which would be ominous if I were superstitious, which I'm not.

(This reminds me of a tangential tale. Back in the previous century, when I was a graduate student in Russian literature at Cornell University, I had an assigned carrel near the Russian literature collection in the graduate library. One day I found that they had moved the collection to the sixth floor, so I requested a carrel on the sixth floor. They had only one available. "Are you a Christian?" they asked. I said that I was, and asked them why they wanted to know. They explained that the person to whom they had assigned carrel number 666 had turned out to be a Christian and refused to use the carrel. I told them that I was the non-superstitious sort of Christian, and three minutes later the carrel was mine. In retrospect, I think I should have suggested that they offer my old carrel to the superstitious Christian, but perhaps I was not a sufficiently charitable sort of non-superstitious Christian, so I didn't think of that until . . . well, just now.)

(On other tangent, I've blogged about Satan before -- it seems to happen when I go to Utah County Republican conventions -- but I've never blogged about the Antichrist, unless he's the same fellow. Had I not had something else to say in blog post 666, I might have toyed with that. It's too late now.)

The next post, on July 7, was my 667th. (That's a little trick I like to call arithmetic.) That's a hair over two-thirds of a thousand. Am I verbose or what? And if we conservatively estimate an average of 1000 words per post -- this one's already at 614 words right . . . now -- that's two-thirds of a million words.

How should one celebrate such milestones? Besides blogging about them, I mean. Any ideas?

Is This a Cheap Shot? And Does God Read Blogs?

Here's a thought. If I were a revisionist historian suitable for a George Orwell novel (think 1984) or for feeding President Obama's teleprompter (think Great Depression; think promises about that fast-acting stimulus package), I could go back and delete five posts, then claim that this is my 666th. Or if I were one of those White House economic advisors who think spin trumps arithmetic, and who resent the Congressional Budget Office for doing the Obamacare math anyway, I could simply claim that this is my 666th post and not bother deleting any. After all, you're not going to count my blog posts, are you? I'm pretty sure the CBO won't.

If I did that, who would ever know -- besides me, I mean? Do you think God reads blogs? I mean, of course He reads The Ornery American, Waiter Rant (if the language doesn't offend Him, which it Might), Joel on Software, and DaltonGirl  -- but I mean ordinary, small-time blogs like mine. And if He does read them, what browser does He use? Does He prefer an RSS feed, and is He pleased that I just made a couple of tweaks to my feed to conform to RSS best practices?

. . .

I've left myself speechless, so I'm going to bed. Will I see you at the parade tomorrow?

Heidi Rodeback comments (7/18/09):

He reads them from inside your head, as you write them. He who looks on the heart has no need for browsers. Silly boy.

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