Beaver Bus starts up tonight

Thanks to the ASOSU and the City of Corvallis, a new service will be available for both OSU students and residents of Corvallis who are out and about late at night. The Beaver Bus will provide rides Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights from 9 p.m. to 3 a.m. The service is free for OSU students; other Corvallis citizens will pay 75 cents per ride.

Obviously, this is aimed toward preventing drunk driving and providing safe rides home for those who need 'em. But this is also very convenient for those residents who work non-traditional hours (like yours truly) and haven't been able to use public transportation because regular city bus hours end at 6 p.m.

For more information on where the bus stops, call 737-9147. There are orange signs up for the official Beaver Bus stops, but the bus will also stop at regular CTS stops as needed.

Canned Film Festival

Tomorrow night (Thursday 9/28), for the admission price of three cans of food, you can see any movie at the Regal Cinemas here in town on NW 9th Street or in Albany. Except the "starred attractions," which means you can't see anything new. Which rules out two (out of four) of the movies at the Regal here in Corvallis, although one of them is the Jackass sequel, so that may be a blessing.

Come to think of it, there really isn't much playing these days, at least not at the typical cineplexes with their $4 bottles of water and $6 nachos. But here in Corvallis, we always have the option of going to the Darkside Cinema (and hopefully the Avalon Theater will reopen soon).

You can dig out three cans of pork and beans from your cupboard and watch something called the Gridiron Gang, or you can just give those three cans away to any number of food drives coming up for the fall season and just go ahead and pay $5 or $7 to see An Inconvenient Truth, or even better... Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas on the big screen. Plus, the lovely folks at Darkside will let you bring in your own bottles of water and nachos, as long as you take care of the trash properly. Most people seem to be fairly conscientious, at least from the relatively stick-free floors. (You should still buy their popcorn or something, though. These theaters are labors of love, not charity work.)

Oops. Sorry, Regal. Here I thought I was plugging the canned food drive, but I'd really just rather plug Darkside again.

SLABs of soap

How often does anyone get to say, "There's a new soap shop in town!" these days? Not often. But hey, there's a new soap shop in town!

S.L.A.B. Handcrafted Soap Company has just opened a store in the Madison Plaza (the building with Noah's Bagels and Starbucks). I'm not sure how noteworthy soap shops generally are, but I love this soap. It's all natural, not tested on animals, and smells delicious. My favorites are the orange oatmeal and cinammon oatmeal. (Yeah, I like oatmeal soaps, so what?)

They have something for everyone, including guy-friendly soaps scented like bay rum and lime and even unscented soaps for those who just want a good clean, sans froufrou scents.

Yeah, you can get Crabtree & Evelyn at Rice's Pharmacy, but these bars of soap actually smell better, are functional enough to use every day, and cost $4 or $5 per bar instead of three times that. Plus, you can grab a bagel and latte after you buy a couple bars.

Corvallis condoms hit the big time

It's not that often that Corvallis makes national news (except for OSU sports on occasion), so I was surprised to see that Corvallis was mentioned in the New York Times today.

However, the article is not really about Corvallis. The article is about promoting condom usage and safe sex on college campuses as students return to school for fall term. Readers of the illustrious NY Times will not learn about Corvallis consistently earning high marks on livability surveys, no... they will learn only that Oregon State University supplies "safer sex kits...filled with condoms, lubricant and Hershey’s Kisses" and apparently there are baskets of free condoms just lying around willy nilly!

Actually, I think these campaigns are fantastic. Promoting condom usage to the student population is smart and all universities should take the hint. I just would've preferred that Corvallis make the pages of the NY Times for something really cool, like the mayor being abducted by aliens, or the water in the Willamette River suddenly converting to pinot noir.

Tackling for flower baskets

The Corvallis Fall Festival returns to town this weekend, the last of the big town parties for a while. There will be wine tasting, performances by a wide range of musicians, a teen film festival, activities for kids, food booths, tons of artistic goodies for sale, and a street dance featuring local Led Zeppelin cover band Stairway Denied. Good clean fun, entirely free, until you realize you simply must have that copper birdbath at once.

For me, it's all about the flower baskets. One of my favorite things about Corvallis is that the downtown streets are decorated with these glorious flower baskets all summer. It's one of those little touches that doesn't serve any purpose other than to make the town a wee bit prettier. Stand on any corner downtown and take a picture of the courthouse or quaint historic storefront, and you're bound to end up with this wild basket of flowers somewhere in the picture (like the rather poor shot below from 2004 or so).

On the first day of the Fall Festival, those flower baskets are sold on a first come, first served basis, to raise funds for the following year's flower baskets. I have tried three times in the past to make it downtown in time to buy one of these babies, but they are always sold out before I get there. I have been chided for not arriving earlier, but it's like a clearance sale at Macy's... you've got to be there early and willing to wrestle.

This year, I'm ready. Get out of my way, Granny... I'm bringing my wallet and a baseball bat.

If you feel like rumbling, meet me at the corner of 6th and Madison downtown. The festival opens at 10 a.m. The baskets will probably be sold by 11. May the best flower junkie win.

Sandwiched between Pirates and Peace

Ahoy, mateys. Yesterday was International Talk Like a Pirate Day, started several years ago by local residents Ol' Chumbucket and Cap'n Slappy. This year, Cap'n Slappy and his wife, Mad Sally, were featured on the reality show "Wife Swap," changed to "Wench Swap" for the occasion. I am not a reality TV fan, but I am definitely a fan of plundering. And rum.

Just for fun, here is Mad Sally's account of her experience on the show.

Tomorrow is the International Day of Peace, which isn't nearly as much fun, but is probably more important in the scheme of things. Mayor Berg proclaimed tomorrow as a day of peace in Corvallis, too, and there will be a gathering in front of the Benton County Courthouse at 5 p.m. This will be a much larther gathering than the usual handful of folks who keep the daily vigil going strong day after day.

And no, it's not a partisan thing, nor does it show a lack of support for the people serving in the military. Unless you actually like war and think it's the natural order of things, or believe that striving for peace is an utter waste of time, this day applies to you too.

It's Update Tuesday!

Here are some updates to previous posts:

• In addition to Rich Riffle, two more gentlemen have announced that they will be waging write-in campaigns in the race to see who will be our next sheriff. Animal control officer Randy Hiner and retired Army officer Dana McAvoy have decided that the best way to show their support for a change in leadership at the Benton County Sheriff Dept. is to split the vote, virtually guaranteeing an easy win for Diana Simpson.

• The Willamette Week published an article last week about Cevelino Capuia that made him sound like a charming young man from a good Christian family led astray by Shawn Womack, "a tough kid" who used "New York slang." Except that Womack is also from a good Christian family and used to live in a suburb of Watertown, NY... more than a 6-hour drive from New York City, more Canada than "the hood." These boys have both freely confessed their roles in a triple homicide. Let's not paint an overly rosy picture of them, but let's not slander their families, either.

• Arkhold Endowed Websites seems to be offline. Hope that's not an indicator of their ability to preserve websites for posterity!

• A friend with connections sent me the complete S. M. Stirling trilogy set in a semi-apocalyptic Willamette Valley (thank you, J!) and I burned through most of the first book, Dies the Fire, this afternoon. At first, I found myself nitpicking some of the details that only locals would know (example: locals just don't refer to Squirrel's Tavern as "the Squirrel" the way the book's heroine does), but soon found myself enjoying the story and looking forward to the other books. You see, the Bible had it wrong. It's the geeks who inherit the earth.

• Last, but not least, the Beastmaster is still spreading his message of... whatever.

There's still time to vote...

Tomorrow (Tuesday) is the deadline to turn in ballots for Measure 02-54, the cell phone tax. It's obviously too late to mail in your ballot, but you have until 8 p.m. to drop them off. Drop boxes are located at the courthouse, the library, LBCC and the Wells Fargo branch at Winco, near the Pizza Hut. Turnout is currently looking low, with only a third of registered voters turning in ballots to date.

Large telecommunications companies donated $100,000 to the anti-tax group in town, compared to the paltry $8,000 or so raised by the pro-tax folks. The disparity wouldn't bother me so much, except that the $100,000 paid for a campaign of outright lies. Every single mailing we have received (and we have received several) has included the claim that internet services will be taxed (not true) and that the 5% tax will be added to our residential land line service (also not true).

If you don't think the tax is right or fair, then by all means, vote against it. But at the very least, know what it is you're voting against.

Brainwashing your kids for free! And not so free.

This Saturday, the Kids Day for Conservation event will be held from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Benton County Fairgrounds. It's a worthy event, geared toward raising good little environmental stewards. Plus, it's fun and absolutely free. Kids can try their hands at rock-climbing, snake-handling, archery and so on, all the while soaking up knowledge about good environmental practices through osmosis.

In addition, the new fall class offerings from Oregon State's Saturday Academy for junior high and high school kids have been announced. That's definitely not free, but with classes like Drawing Cartoon Characters and Fish Printing and Dissection Lab, there's bound to be something for everyone. Scholarships are available for those who need 'em.

Dodgeball? Really?

I watched the movie Dodgeball last year on a dare and it was about what I expected. Maybe I was underwhelmed because I loathed dodgeball as a kid. It always just seemed sort of cruel to cheer on kids beaning each other in the head at school. Or maybe I'm just sick of Ben Stiller.

But apparently, there really is a National Dodgeball League for adults suffering from some sort of masochistic nostalgia. And earlier this year, some kids at Oregon State University created their very own dodgeball team. The team left for Las Vegas yesterday, in preparation for the 2006 Dodgeball World Championship and Convention being held this coming weekend.

On a whim, I checked the OSU intramural sports website and found that they've also resurrected kickball for adults, or at least they tried to last year. The page hasn't been updated since October 2005. Meanwhile, I'm holding out for four-square.

Does this mean we're winning?

The Harvard Initiative for Global Health has just published a study showing the range of life expectancy across the United States. Out of more than 3,000 counties, Benton county is 15th in the nation, with a life expectancy of 80.9 years.

Life expectancy in the U. S. ranges from a low of 66.6 years in a smattering of counties in North Dakota to a high of 81.3 years in a few places in Colorado, Maryland and Iowa. The longest-living sub-group in the country is a group of Asian American women in Bergen County, New Jersey, who tend to live to the dangerously ripe age of 91.

The article touches on several possible reasons for the disparity in life expectancy from county to county and state to state, but points out a couple of specific factors that help explain Benton County residents' longevity. We have lower than average levels of smoking and obesity, arguably the two major controllable health risks. I chalk it up to all these tree-hugging, farmers-market-shopping, bicycle-riding, Birkenstock-wearing, peacenik hippies. Corvallis is chock full of people living healthfully.

Now we just need to pour a few more wheatgrass smoothies for the residents of our assisted living facilities and bump that number up a tiny bit. Colorado? You're going down.

A Tale of Two Vigils

There will be a candlelight vigil tonight at 7:30 p.m. at the Benton County Veterans' Memorial (at the National Guard Armory on Kings Boulevard) to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. There will be patriotic music, singalongs, and Mayor Helen Berg will say a few words.

There will also be an hour-long peace vigil in front of the Benton County Courthouse from 5 to 6 p.m., as there has been every single night since October 2001. There won't be any singalongs, and the mayor probably won't show up. But there will be continuing resolve and dedication by people who have spent the past five years putting in their time, day after day, week after week. My visits there have dwindled, but those who continue to show up have my utmost respect.

This does not pertain to Corvallis, but I think it's important enough to mention anyway. A recent Zogby poll has shown that 46% of Americans still believe that there was some link between Saddam Hussein and the terrorist attacks on 9/11. An astonishing 65% of Republicans believe this link existed.

Just for the record, if you believe this link existed, you need to stop watching Fox News. There was no link.

A Meeting in Corvallis

S. M. Stirling's new book "A Meeting in Corvallis" will be released this coming Tuesday. This is the final book in the "Emberverse" trilogy, which is set in the Willamette Valley ten years after an event called "The Change" renders electricity, explosives and firearms inoperable. In a blink, technology fails.

There is actually another trilogy planned as a sequel to this one, set 25 years after "Meeting in Corvallis." For now, I'm going to have to find a copy of the first book, "Dies the Fire," simply out of curiosity. Not many fiction books are set right here in little ol' Corvallis.

S. M. Stirling's website actually has resource material for readers of the trilogy, including maps and flags of the local area and other parts of Oregon. I find it hilarious that Silver Creek Falls has been renamed "Mithrilwood," now occupied by the Dunedain Rangers (guess the diehard Tolkien fans survive this Change intact), and that the Corvallis flag has good old Benny Beaver.

I'm always being badgered by well-meaning (and geeky) friends to read more sci-fi and fantasy, so I was a bit surprised that I'd heard nothing about this author or series previously. A glance at Wikipedia shows an odd dichotomy: Stirling says the world would be better off if Islam vanished entirely, but he doesn't want to be lumped in the same category as the neocons, and his books tend to be more liberal in content.

Who knows? Who cares? It's fiction, not an autobiography. I'm going to have to read the series, just because I'm curious to see the Willamette Valley is depicted in this dystopian manner.

Taming the Shrewsbury Faire

September in (or near) Corvallis is an event-ridden month. I don't mean for this blog to be little more than a calendar of festivals, but this is just one of those weekends. In addition to the Rhapsody in the Vineyard wine walk tomorrow night, this is the weekend of the Shrewsbury Renaissance Faire in Kings Valley.

If you haven't been to a ren faire before, it's worth the half-hour drive and the $9 admission fee ($8 with this coupon) just for the people-watching opportunities. Either you will find yourself renting a corset and dropping phrases like, "Hail, well met!" or you will clutch your giant turkey leg and giggle at the bawdy pickle vendor. Either way, it isn't a dull experience. And I haven't been to a faire yet where there hasn't been at least one lost Star Trek crew member or Klingon. Guess they're short on conventions these days and figure a geek fest is a geek fest.

I happily put myself into the geek category for this one. My favorite exhibit last time around was the trebuchet demonstration, although I was disappointed that they were so tiny. I also discovered that my archery skills are still intact, which will serve me well if we decide to bomb ourselves back into the iron age, I suppose. It's also great fun to peruse the "fyne shoppes" with hand-crafted weapons and clothing. I always end up picking up a piece of chainmail and trying to convince myself that I could actually use it for something, but really, I know better.

If you're interested in taking the wayback machine back to the latter half of the 16th century, the Shrewsbury Faire will be open from 10 to 6 both Saturday and Sunday. To get you started, here's a ren faire glossary complete with insult generator.

Yours truly,

A frothy, hedge-born gudgeon.

Rhapture

My favorite Corvallis party returns this Saturday, September 9th, from 4 to 7 p.m. Rhapsody in the Vineyard is a wine-tasting event hosted by the Downtown Corvallis Association and it is wonderful.

Five bucks (and a quick flash of your ID, if you look young enough) will buy you a wrist bracelet and a souvenir wine glass. Another fiver buys you 10 scrip tickets, each worth a taste of whatever wine you'd like to try. Almost any wine, anyway, as one stingy winery last spring charged two tickets per taste and it wasn't particularly special wine.

Once you are fully equipped, you can wander through downtown and into various shops, each hosting a different winery. You do have to remain in the shop while having your glass of wine, but that's part of the fun. The first time we went, we spent 15 minutes wandering through Robnett's Hardware store sipping pinot noir and giggling over police tape and power tools. Robnett's apparently no longer participates, but so many of the participating shops are worth your time anyway, like the fantastic Grass Roots Bookstore and Botticelli's.

Sadly, I will have to miss the wine walk this weekend. So please, go have a glass of Pioneer Hopyard's pinot noir for me. That winery is owned by the same people who own Coleman's Jewelers, so that's where you'll find the wine.

Couldn't this have waited two months?

I just received my "special election" ballot in the mail regarding Measure 02-54, the cell phone tax that will apparently cause the decline of western civilization. Or so the opponents of the tax would have you believe.

It's a fairly simple measure. Since the city has lost franchise fee revenue as more and more people switch from land lines to cell phones, the city council came up with this tax as a way to even out the cost burden to basically anyone with a phone. This measure calls for a 5% flat tax on all landline and cell phone calls. This is the same franchise fee already found on our electric, cable, water and garbage utility bills. It is not 5% of the total wireless bill; extras like ringtones, email and downloads will not be taxed.

The opponents of the tax are making claims that are intentionally misleading. The first is that this tax will affect landline service in addition to the 7% franchise fee already billed by the company. This is absolutely false. This 5% tax will replace the existing 7% fee. If you only have a landline, your bill will actually decrease a smidge. The revenue from this tax will go into the general fund, but initially, the funds will be diverted to the fire department.

Opponents also state that internet phone service (Skype, Vonage, etc.) will be taxed. Wrong again. The measure clearly states that this tax will not apply to any internet-based services whatsoever.

The same letter expressed concern that this measure would cause great hardship to lower income residents of Corvallis. While an argument could be made that having no phone service whatsoever is, indeed, a hardship, the same cannot be said for wireless service. If someone is in a position where they need to really scrimp and save, then cell phones (and cable TV and DSL and so on) should be eschewed in favor of cheaper alternatives.

Most irritating is the voters' pamphlet argument by the Taxpayers Association of Oregon that suggests "Cell phone tax hurts senior citizens and the disabled." The paragraph states that seniors and disabled citizens use cell phones as an emergency device for when they need to call for help. Well, there's no reason for them to stop carrying cell phones for emergencies. Even without any wireless service at all, any cell phone with a charged battery can be used to dial 911. It doesn't matter if you picked it out of the trash and can't afford the cheapest Verizon plan out there; 911 is always available.

The taxpayers of Corvallis may or may not have to shell out this wireless tax, but either way, we all have to foot the bill for this $25,000 special election. So you might as well vote, right? The deadline is September 19th. Consider it practice for November.

We're ugly, but not THAT ugly.

The State, a newspaper in South Carolina, has just published a list of the best and worst college football uniforms. And guess what! We're number one!

Okay, so Oregon State is number one on the "Bad" list. They even provided the snarky little comment, "Every day is Halloween in Corvallis!" You know what? It's true. Orange and black is not a fantastic combination.

But there's one reason to gloat about making the "Bad" list. It could've been worse. After printing the Good and the Bad, the State also set aside a special category for "The Really Ugly." Number one on that list? The Oregon Ducks. Their Nike uniform redesign has not been particularly popular. Or redesigns, rather, since they can't seem to stop retooling their uniforms.

Who's your favorite Beatle?

That's not one of the questions asked in the Top of the Valley survey published in both the Gazette-Times and Democrat-Herald. But they do want to know your favorite restaurants, parks, stores, political figures and so on. The easiest way to participate is to click the link and fill out the answers online.

My goal is to convince enough Corvallis residents to vote so that we dominate most, if not all, categories over Albany. Albany is larger and the DH has a higher circulation, so this may be a challenge. Novak's Hungarian Restaurant has great gulyas, but should it really rank higher in "Best International Restaurant" over Evergreen Indian Cuisine or Magenta? Do we want to let Heritage Mall stores win over our lovely downtown Corvallis boutiques? I think not.

(What? This is the Corvallist, after all, not the Albanist.)