Coffee Klatch

While the 2008 presidential election is still a ways off, we can honestly say that it appears that the field of contenders is down to three: Clinton, McCain, and Obama (in alphabetical order–no preference intended). Do you know who you will/would vote for? Do you know the candidates’ positions on various topics?

Here are a couple political quizzes that determine your position on a variety of topics and compare it with those of the candidates.

The VoteMatch Quiz is the simplest and when you’ve answered the questions shows how all the candidates compare with your perspective. Also included are links to more information about the candidates.

Another similar one, but more in depth, is The Political Compass. This one is interesting because they use a spectrum for the economic scale and another for the social scale, resulting in a grid that is a little different from some other political quizzes. After you’ve taken the quiz there, you can click on U.S. Primaries 2008 to see how the candidates have positioned themselves and then compare your spot on the grid with theirs. Presumably the one closest to your dot on the grid is who you’d prefer to vote for.

HTH! (Hope that helps!)

Top Ten Reasons for Being a Bass

10 ) You don’t have to tighten your shorts to reach your note.

9 ) You don’t have to worry about a woman stealing your job.

8 ) Or a pre-adolescent boy.

7 ) Action heroes are always Basses. That is, if they ever sang, they would sing bass.

6 ) You get great memorable lyrics like “bop, bop, bop, bop.”

5 ) If the singing job doesn’t work out, there’s always broadcasting.

4 ) You never need to learn to read the treble clef.

3 ) If you get a cold, so what?

2 ) For fun, you can sing at the bottom of your range and fool people into thinking there’s an earthquake.

1 ) If you belch while you’re singing, the audience just thinks it’s part of the score.

Top Ten Reasons for Being a Tenor

10 ) Tenors get high–without drugs.

9 ) Name a musical where the Bass got the girl.

8 ) You can show the Sopranos how it SHOULD be sung.

7 ) Did you ever hear of anyone paying $1000 for a ticket to see “The Three Basses?”

6 ) Who needs brains when you’ve got resonance?

5 ) Tenors never have to waste time looking through the self-improvement section of the bookstore.

4 ) You get to sing along with John Denver singing High Calypso.

3 ) When you get really good at falsetto, you can make tons of money doing voice-overs for cartoon characters.

2 ) Gregorian chant was practically invented for Tenors. Nobody invented a genre for Basses.

1 ) You can entertain your friends by impersonating Julia Child.

Top Ten Reasons for Being an Alto

10 ) You get really good at singing E flat.

9 ) You get to sing the same note for 12 consecutive measures.

8 ) You don’t really need to warm up to sing 12 consecutive bars of E-flat.

7 ) If the choir really sucks, it’s unlikely the Altos will be blamed.

6 ) You have lots of time to chat during Soprano solos.

5 ) You get to pretend that you are better than the Sopranos, because everybody knows that women only sing Soprano so they don’t have to learn to read music.

4 ) You can sometimes find part-time work singing Tenor.

3 ) Altos get all the great intervals.

2 ) When the Sopranos are holding some outrageously high note at the end of an anthem, the Altos always get the last words.

1 ) When the Altos miss a note, nobody gets hurt.

Top Ten Reasons for Being a Soprano
10 ) The rest of the choir exists just to make you look good.

9 ) You can entertain your friends by breaking their wine glasses.

8 ) Can you name an opera where an Alto got the man?

7 ) When Sopranos want to sing in the shower, they know the tune.

6 ) It’s not like you are ever going to sing the Alto part by accident.

5 ) Great costumes–like the hat with the horns on it!

4 ) How many world famous Altos can you name?

3 ) When the fat lady sings, she’s usually singing Soprano.

2 ) When you get tired of singing the tune, you can sing the descant.

1 ) You can sing along with Michael Jackson.

Being an Evil Overlord seems to be a good career choice. It pays well, there are all sorts of perks, and you can set your own hours. However, every Evil Overlord I’ve read about in books or seen in movies invariably gets overthrown and destroyed in the end. I’ve noticed that no matter whether they are barbarian lords, deranged wizards, mad scientists, or alien invaders, they always seem to make the same basic mistakes every single time. Therefore, if I ever happen to become an Evil Overlord:

1. My legions of terror will have helmets with clear Plexiglas visors, not face-concealing ones.

2. My ventilation ducts will be too small to crawl through.

3. My noble half-brother whose throne I usurped will be killed, not kept anonymously imprisoned in a forgotten cell of my dungeon.

4. Shooting is not too good for my enemies.

5. The artifact which is the source of my power will not be kept on the Mountain of Despair beyond the River of Fire guarded by the Dragons of Eternity. It will be in my safe-deposit box.

6. I will not gloat over my enemies’ predicament before killing them.

7. When the rebel leader challenges me to fight one-on-one and asks, “Or are you afraid without your armies to back you up?” My reply will be, “No, just sensible.”

8. When I’ve captured my adversary and he says, “Look, before you kill me, will you at least tell me what this is all about?” I’ll say, “No” and shoot him.

9. After I kidnap the beautiful princess, we will be married immediately in a quiet civil ceremony, not a lavish spectacle in three weeks’ time during which the final phase of my plan will be carried out.

10. I will not interrogate my enemies in the inner sanctum — a small hotel well outside my borders will work just as well.

11. I will be secure in my superiority. Therefore, I will feel no need to prove it by leaving clues in the form of riddles or leaving my weaker enemies alive to show they pose no threat.

12. One of my advisors will be an average five-year-old child. Any flaws in my plan that he is able to spot will be corrected before implementation.

13. The hero is not entitled to a last kiss, a last cigarette, or any other form of last request.

14. I will never employ any device with a digital countdown. If I find that such a device is absolutely unavoidable, I will set it to activate when the counter reaches 117 and the hero is just putting his plan into operation.

15. I will design all doomsday machines myself. If I must hire a mad scientist to assist me, I will make sure that he is sufficiently twisted to never regret his evil ways and seek to undo the damage he’s caused.

16. I will not have a son. Although his laughably under-planned attempt to usurp power would easily fail, it would provide a fatal distraction at a crucial point in time.

17. I will not have a daughter. She would be as beautiful as she was evil, but one look at the hero’s rugged countenance and she’d betray her own father.

18. Despite its proven stress-relieving effect, I will not indulge in maniacal laughter. When so occupied, it’s too easy to miss unexpected developments that a more attentive individual could adjust to accordingly.

19. I will hire a talented fashion designer to create original uniforms for my legions of terror, as opposed to some cheap knock-offs that make them look like Nazi stormtroopers, Roman footsoldiers, or savage Mongol hordes. All were eventually defeated and I want my troops to have a more positive mind-set.

20. I will keep a special cache of low-tech weapons and train my troops in their use. That way — even if the heroes manage to neutralize my power generator and/or render the standard-issue energy weapons useless — my troops will not be overrun by a handful of savages armed with spears and rocks.

21. I will maintain a realistic assessment of my strengths and weaknesses. Even though this takes some of the fun out of the job, at least I will never utter the line “No, this cannot be! I AM INVINCIBLE!!!” (After that, death is usually instantaneous.)

22. No matter how well it would perform, I will never construct any sort of machinery which is completely indestructible except for one small and virtually inaccessible vulnerable spot.

23. My pet monster will be kept in a secure cage from which it cannot escape and into which I could not accidentally stumble.

24. I will dress in bright and cheery colors, and so throw my enemies into confusion.

25. I will not fly into a rage and kill a messenger who brings me bad news just to illustrate how evil I really am. Good messengers are hard to come by.

26. I will not turn into a snake. It never helps.

27. I will not imprison members of the same party in the same cell block, let alone the same cell. If they are important prisoners, I will keep the only key to the cell door on my person instead of handing out copies to every bottom-rung guard in the prison.

28. I will be neither chivalrous nor sporting. If I have an unstoppable superweapon, I will use it as early and as often as possible instead of keeping it in reserve.

29. Once my power is secure, I will destroy all those pesky time-travel devices.

30. When I capture the hero, I will make sure I also shoot his dog, monkey, ferret, or whatever sickeningly cute little animal capable of untying ropes and filching keys happens to follow him around.

31. I will maintain a healthy amount of skepticism when I capture the beautiful rebel and she claims she is attracted to my power and good looks and will gladly betray her companions if I just let her in on my plans.

32. I will only employ bounty hunters who work for money. Those who work for the pleasure of the hunt tend to do dumb things like even the odds to give the other guy a sporting chance.

33. My main computers will have their own special operating system that will be completely incompatible with standard IBM and Macintosh powerbooks.

34. I will make the main entrance to my fortress standard-sized. While elaborate 60-foot high double-doors definitely impress the masses, they are hard to close quickly in an emergency.

35. I will hire a team of board-certified architects and surveyors to examine my castle and inform me of any secret passages and abandoned tunnels that I might not know about.

36. If the beautiful princess that I capture says, “I’ll never marry you! Never, do you hear me, NEVER!!!”, I will say “Oh well” and kill her.

37. I will not employ devious schemes that involve the hero’s party getting into my inner sanctum before the trap is sprung.

38. If I learn the whereabouts of the one artifact which can destroy me, I will not send all my troops out to seize it. Instead I will send them out to seize something else and quietly put a Want-Ad in the local paper.

39. I will not grow a goatee. In the old days they made you look diabolic. Now they just make you look like a disaffected member of Generation X.

40. Finally, to keep my subjects permanently locked in a mindless trance, I will provide each of them with free unlimited high-speed Internet access.

AN ANNOTATED THERMOMETER (in degrees Fahrenheit)

+50
~ New York tenants turn on the heat
~ Minnesotans plant gardens

+40
~ Californians shiver uncontrollably
~ Minnesotans sunbathe

+35
~ Italian cars don’t start

+32
~ Distilled water freezes

+30
~ You can see your breath
~ You plan a vacation in Florida
~ Politicians begin to worry about the homeless
~ Minnesotans eat ice cream

+25
~ Boston water freezes
~ Californians weep pitiably
~ Cat insists on sleeping on your bed with you

+20
~ Cleveland water freezes
~ San Franciscans start thinking favorably of LA
~ Green Bay Packers fans put on T-shirts

+15
~ You plan a vacation in CANCUN!!!!!
~ Minnesotans go swimming

+10
~ Too cold to snow
~ You need jumper cables to get the car going

0
~ New York landlords turn on the heat

-5
~ You can hear your breath
~ You plan a vacation to Hawaii

-10
~ American cars don’t start
~ Too cold to skate

-15
~ You can cut your breath and use it to build an igloo
~ Miamians cease to exist
~ Minnesotans lick flagpoles

-20
~ Cat insists on sleeping in your pajamas with you
~ People in LaCrosse think about taking down screens

-25
~ Too cold to kiss
~ You need jumper cables to get the driver going
~ Japanese cars don’t start
~ Minnesota Twins head for spring training

-30
~ You plan a two-week hot bath
~ Minnesotans shovel snow off roof

-38
~ Mercury freezes
~ Too cold to think
~ Minnesotans button top button

-40
~ Californians disappear
~ Car insists on sleeping in your bed with you
~ Minnesotans put on sweaters

-50
~ Congressional hot air freezes
~ Alaskans close the bathroom window
~ Green Bay Packers practice indoors

-60
~ Walruses abandon Aleutians
~ Minnesotans put gloves away, take out mittens
~ Boy Scouts in Eau Claire start Klondike Derby

-70
~ Minneapolis residents replace diving boards with hockey nets
~ Ridgeway snowmobilers organize trans-river race to Buffalo, WI

-80
~ Polar bears abandon Baffin Island
~ Girl Scouts in Eau Claire start Klondike Derby

-90
~ Lawyers chase ambulances for no more than 10 miles
~ Wisconsinites migrate to Minnesota thinking it MUST be warmer

-100
~ Santa Claus abandons North Pole
~ Minnesotans pull down earflaps

-173
~ Ethyl alcohol freezes

-445
~ Superconductivity

-452
~ Helium becomes a liquid

-454
~ Hell freezes over

-456
~ Illinois drivers drop below 85 MPH on I-90

-458
~ Incumbent politician renounces a campaign contribution

-460 (Absolute Zero)
~ All atomic motion ceases
~ Minnesotans agree as to how it’s getting a “mite nippy”

A middle school in Oregon was faced with a unique problem.

A number of girls were beginning to use lipstick and would put it on in the bathroom. That was fine, but after they put on their lipstick they would press their lips to the mirror leaving dozens of little lip prints.

Finally the principal decided that something had to be done. She called all the girls to the bathroom and met them there with the
maintenance man. She explained that all these lip prints were causing a major problem for the custodian who had to clean the mirrors every night.

To demonstrate how difficult it was to clean the mirrors, she asked the maintenance guy to clean one of the mirrors. He took out a long-handled squeegee, dipped it into the toilet and then cleaned the mirror. Since then, there have been no lip prints on the mirror.

There are teachers and then there are Teachers!

Today I officially purchased my first tuxedo. I’ve had to wear them before for, for concerts and things, but never actually owned one. Since I’m singing with the Butler University Chorale this semester and there are THREE concerts, that means there are THREE times that I’ll have to wear a tux. Renting a tux costs between $100 and $160 per day, so it was cheaper to just get my own. Probably half the price of renting one three times. Plus now I’ll also have one for any future occasions where I may need one.

I went to a place here in town that is where we get the vests for our Music Dept. I figured I might as well just get the whole tux there since they’ve got a relationship with Butler already. Turns out it was a VERY good idea. They definitely knew what they were doing and they gave me a great deal. When I went in today to pick it up and tried on the pants, the guy didn’t even ask me to put shoes on. He just folded the end of the pants, made ONE chalk mark and that was enough. Then after I took them off he marked, cut, and hemmed them right there, sent them to the back room to be pressed, and there we were: DONE!

I ended up getting a tux jacket, tux pants, wing-collar shirt, shoes, vest, cummerbund, bow tie, and cuff links and studs. The whole shebang! And now I’m set for any black-tie-optional events or for when I have to attend a world premiere of one of my compositions!

By the way, the tux place was WorldWide Tuxedos and I highly recommend them. If you’re in the Indianapolis area, you can go there and be fitted. Otherwise, you can still get a really good deal online. Of course, it helps if you know your measurements. But visit their website if you’re in the market for tux-type stuff and see what they’ve got for selection and prices! They also offer “career apparel,” so they’re not just tuxes. Plus they advertise that they’re the “largest selection on the net” and they have the “lowest prices or we’ll take an additional 10% off.” Pretty good deal!

In an ancient monastery, a new monk arrived to dedicate his life to God and to join the others copying ancient records. The first thing he noticed was that they were copying by hand books that had already been copied by hand.

He had to speak up. “Forgive me, Father Justinian, but copying other copies by hand allows many chances for error. How do we know we aren’t copying someone else’s mistakes? Are they ever checked against the originals?”

Father Justinian was startled. No one had ever suggested that before. “Well, that is a good point, my son. I will take one of these latest books down to the vault and study it against its original document.”

He went deep into the vault where no one else was allowed to enter and started to study. The day passed, and it was getting late in the evening.

The monks were getting worried about Father Justinian. Finally one monk started making his way through the old vault, and as he began to think he might get lost, he heard sobbing. “Father Justinian,” he called.

The sobbing grew louder as he came closer. He finally found the old priest sitting at a table with the new copy and the original ancient book in front of him. It was obvious that Father Justinian had been crying for a long time.

“Oh, my Lord,” sobbed Father Justinian. “The word is ‘celebrate’!”