The Observer's Blog

Bizarro Lara Hanson

This one goes out specifically to the Bigwhoop community (don't think I abandoned you just because I don't post as often any more). Tonight I finally asked the guy at church I once saw wearing a Bucknell shirt whether he knew any of my Bucknell connections while he was at school there. Not only did I confirm that he is indeed a Bucknell alum (graduated '02), but he is in fact also now a computer science graduate student at UH. Well, no, he hadn't heard of Eric Furst, but Lara Hanson? Yeah, I knew that girl, he said with a smirk. She used to date a lot of the guys in my fraternity. She sort o had a reputation. Now, when a guy says a girl has a reputation, he doesn't mean she has a reputation for wearing pink and being a good Christian, he means something else (in case you didn't know). I didn't try to test his memory of whether she was blonde, what year she would have graduated, whether he was actually referring to a Laura or Lara (c.f., the real Miss Hanson's recent post); I just let the matter drop because loose women are not really the subject of choice at a church dinner. I seem to remember the real Lara Hanson telling me that there was in fact someone with her name at Bucknell, but I don't know if she ever met this doppelganger or even heard tales of her. Apparently this other Lara is the exact opposite of the one we all know and love. She's probably even brunette, and recently dyed her hair blonde.

P.S. - I have spent like forever since I posted this entry looking for one of my favorite websites. It was essentially a blog composed by Miss Bess Jankowski and dealt with cosmetics and fashion. But somehow it may have been erased from existence as the link on Eric's page has disappeared, and I can find no other Bigwhoop portal to this gem of weblogging. Having recently seen my first images of Miss Jankowski I was hoping to glean more from her discussions on clothes and makeup as it often required some knowledge of her physical features. Where is the Apparelog??

The Dallas Phallus

The hinky pinky to end all hinky pinkies. Can you find it?

Voter Fraud In Hawaii?

I'm not sure if it's illegal to take photographs inside the polling booth, but a graduate student at the University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy recently captured this on silicon.

It appears that Nadia of AMN's Mini-Me (or maybe Mini-Me 2) is about to cast a vote for John Kerry in the county of Honolulu! As long as she's not still registered to vote in Austin, TX, I guess . . .

2004 Election Mania

Here in Hawaii, we get Election Day off. I'm not sure why this is, but it's nice, and the students of UH-Manoa actually get a four-day weekend thanks to a huge flood on Sunday. Anyway, tonight election fever has set in. My housemate and I have been making election type things out of giant pieces of cardboard leftover from boxes that contained items from our recent move in. (Yes, there are now seven astronomy graduate students coming from four countries living in one house. Astro Haus, Hale Hoku, Hale Hoale, etc.)

I have constructed a giant chart on Senate races, and we are drawing our own map of the United States so that we can mark off the states as they are won until the polls close in Alaska (at 8 pm Hawaii Standard Time). Just about the only thing we have left to do is pour the blue and red Jello shots. I'm not joking, our mathematician from Caltech has not devised a scheme by which these will be consumed, but I have no doubt it will be creative and enlightened.

So keep an eye on the wacky Louisiana election, and I'll keep an eye on the roughly ten other close Senate races. Belarus is strong!