So, here's a piece in The Guardian that explains a lot:
Ghost jobs: why do 40% of companies advertise positions that don’t exist?
"A survey has revealed that the practice is widespread, with many companies going as far as fake-interviewing too"
This syncs up with a lot of anecdotal accounts but places it within a context and rationale:
Thoroughly reprehensible, but no solution presents itself, at least in the short term.
--John R.
So, the past few days there have seen a few unrelated but similar events.
First up the Internet was down for the day, apparently due to theft rather than sabotage (that is, thieves cut the cables for the copper).
Second was the forty-five car smash-up on I-five between Seattle and Tacoma. No one killed, thank goodness, though there were a lot of cars that needed towed away (seventeen I fotget).
Third, and most sinister of the three, someone tried to set fire to two ballot boxes, one in Portland and the other in Vancouver, Washington. No one hurt and only minimal damage, but distressing nonetheless.
--John R.
So, today we traveled down to Tacoma to see a live preformance of DRACULA. We'd seen it before, this being our third time, but it's been a long time.
The first was in the Milwaukee Public Library: a staging of the original stage play famously filmed a few years later starring Lugosi. It was by far the best of the three. It cleverly had the heroes suspect Count Dracula but rule him out because they're in England: his 'native soil' wd be hundreds of miles away; it's a real breakthrough for them when they realize he brough the dirt with him. The mirror-smashing scene was also impressive.
The second was an amateur perforance in Elkhorn in which one actor --I think the one playing Van Helsing-- dominated the whole show, to its detriment.
And the third was this one in Tacoma, more than twenty years later. Renfield and Mina were really good, with Dr. Steward not far behind. Van Helsing, Jonathan Harker, and Miss Lucy did pretty well as well. In fact the only one I thought was lacking was Dracula himself. The actor had clealy seen LOVE AT FIRST BITE, and his slightly campy performance didn't fit particularly well with the rest of the cast.
So: well worth seeing, especially for the Renfield. Also, they combined Lucy's four suitors into one (Dr. Steward) and made her less the flirt in Stoker's novel and more the victim of fate.
--John R.
--current (re)reading: LADIES OF GRACE ADIEU by Suzanna Clarke
P.S.: and, I shd add, we were fortute on the drive up to avoid the forty-five car pile-up
So, our ballots have now arrived; just have to go through them, mark them up, and get them either into the dropbox or mail by the fifth. I already know who most of the people I'm voting for are (president /vice president, senator, Congressional seat, govenor, &c) because I've been paying attention.
But there are down-ballot candidates, such (as judgeships) and initiatives and the like --including our state Secretary of State, who's an avid D&D player (i.e., one of Our People).* There's the candidates' self-descriptions of who they are and their qualifications for the job. A lot of crackpots emerge at this stage, who can be interesting in a horrifying sort of way. But there are shortcuts that eliminate a lot of the not-worth-considering from the rest and shake some apples from the tree. It's my rule of thumb not to vote for anyone who boasts about his or her lack of qualification to do the job --e.g. anyone who's never held office before. Or tax deadbeasts (governments cost money to run; those who pretend otherwise need not be taken seriously). Those who wd mandate term limits also get the hairy eyeball. And so forth.
It's a lot to go thorough, but being able to vote is worth it.
--John R.
*I was invited to a meet-and-greet with Hobbs at a game store, but cdn't make it.
So, today we took a walk along the Cedar River in downtown Renton to see if the salmon run was underway. It's quite a sight, on years we get it right (the fish being unpredictable).
We've found a good spot last year, just down stream (north) of the Renton Library, which is right over the river. The viewing was even better this year. Whether the timing was right or this is just a better year for the fish I don't know. Maybe both.
I don't know how many fish there were --dozens and dozens--mostly grey with some golden, almost as bright as koi. A few were purple, which I suspect were either grey fish turning purple or contrarywise purple ones turning grey.
It helped that the day was beautiful, with sunbeams to shine right down to the river bottom (the Cedar being a fast, shallow little river).
All in all, a good outing. We'll see if we have such luck again next time.
--John R.
currrent reading: Tolkien's poem on Tea.
So, the Taproot Theatre, a local theatrical group we enjoy getting to occasionally, has announced they'll be staging a Tolkien / Lewis themed play, called simply LEWIS AND TOLKIEN.
Written by Dean Batoli, whose work I don't know (apparently BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER scripts figured in largely), it imagines a chance meeting between CSL and JRRT at some point after the Inklings towards the end of Lewis's life. Sounds like it has potential. At any rate, I plan to go, so here's hoping it's good.
DATE: January 22nd through February 22nd, 2025
THE SEASON: just to give a better idea of what Taproot's like, the four other plays that make up this season are
A RAISIN IN THE SUN (not my kind of thing),
The Patsy Cline Story (likewise),
MURDER ON THE LINKS (Poirot stories can be fun, but I'm doubtfull about their choice of a murder mystery play set on a golf course), and
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST (which I've seen more than once, and read several more times; the problem here is deciding how many times I want to see the same play).
I guess we'll find out
--John R
So, it's that time of year again when rare book sellers gather down at the Seattle Center (the old World's Fair fairgrounds) to offer up an amazing array of collectables --anything from a Kelmscott Chaucer or copies of WEIRD TALES through local-interest booths and first editions of THE LORD OF THE RINGS.
http://www.seattlebookfair.com/
These past few years I've been working at downsizing my collection, not adding to it, which calls for a whole different mindset. But it's still quite an experience just to browse. And I still occasionally at the end of the day carry away a book, particularly if it's something I'd been looking for a long time.
We'll see how it goes this time.
--John R.
So, yesterday I noticed that my tea plant (a kind of camelia) has put out its yearly flower. I'd just planted some pansies, which along with some violets (which if they flowered this year I missed it) make up my modest little flowers-in-pots minigarden for this year.
Possiblee adjustments include replacing the capnip, which died out at some point over the last few months. I'm also pleased to note the flourishing of the Italian shell beans' leafy greens so beloved of Hastur. Neither of our current cats show much interest, but Tyburn has taken some of some grass growing out of the side of one of the pots, so we'll let that stand for cat greens for now.
--JDR
P. S.: Thanks to JC for the photol
So, thanks to Ben Riggs, author of SLAYING THE DRAGON
(a highly entertaining account of the fall of TSR)
and Gareth Hanrahan, whose work I'm not familiar with
(his work on The One Ring rpg sounds particularly interesting), I got to enjoy an hour's online discussion of LotR. Ben has since posted the discussion in both audio/video form, complete with close captions:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sOa8nrmVxQ
I can see that I need to learn more about the One Ring rpg and see what the current license holders have done with the newest in a long line of Tolkien rpg. Sounds like the Shire starter set is a good place to start, if I can find it. More on this somewhere back the road.
--John R.*
*bonus points: Ben knows how to pronounce my name
So, it's October 7th, which I always celebrate as the day I was hired at TSR as an editor in their rpg department. Over the next five years I got to work on a lot of adventures and sourcebooks and boxed sets, most of them for core AD&D / D&D but also at one time or another on just about every game world they were publishing at the time.
I got to work on a lot of great game modules (didn't keep count, but at a guess, about three dozen releases) and with a lot of amazing people. That same week I was one of four new hires (whom Jim Ward, our boss who's hired us all, called 'new fish') that same month on sequential Mondays.
I arrived first on October 7th, followed by Rich Baker (designer) and Thomas Reid (editor), both on the 14th, with Wolfgang Baur (as part of the DRAGON / DUNGEON magazine team) on the 21st.
It was a great place to work, from the point of view of GETTING TO BE THE ONES WHO WORKED ON D&D (how cool is that?) and a terrible place to work from the point of working conditions and the cluelessness of management carried to a high degree.
Later there was coming and going, and coming, and going, for a total of ten years at three iterations of TSR / WotC / Hasbro and a lot more releases I worked on --events some of which I commemorate in turn. But that's the subject for another time.
--John R.
So, Jimmy Carter has just turned a hundred years old -- something no other President has achieved.
No one has ever done a better job of being Ex-President. An interesting legacy, and one that I doubt will be matched.
I met him at a book signing once (he was famous for his epic book-signing sessions), and I wonder if he might hold some king of record there as well.
He's also the first person I voted for in a presidential election.
