greetings from pipe land (and political news bits)

happy holidays, everyone! i must apologize for my absence from the blog, but i've been vacationing with my old friend mario. we spent the last couple days in ice land, but thankfully we've now moved on to pipe land, as i got tired of my feet slipping everywhere i walked. while i've been out running around, virago has been diligently improving her cooking skills.

back home in indiana, mayor-elect ballard has finally gotten around to naming some appointments to his administration. his first appointee, olgen williams, has some financial problems and mysteriously doesn't pay property taxes. also, some people aren't happy about his troubled past. his other six appointees so far include various republican hacks—at least one of them doesn't live in marion county as required by statute. ballard will name his public safety director today at 2: if it's ike randolph, many a head will explode.

meanwhile, abdul has brushed off his best "nothing to see here" routine, doing his damnedest to minimize any criticism of ballard or his appointments. but nobody is listening to adbul, as his credibility in the blogosphere has been shattered now that everyone knows he was indyu. (sadly, varangianguard totally stole the official ballard apologist joke i was going to make, all because he was awake a mere four hours before i was.) abdul's definitely gone through a major attitude adjustment—he never used to miss a chance to criticize mayor peterson, and now he never skips an opportunity to defend mayor-elect ballard. maybe that has something to do with the fact that abdul is a GOP insider: he works for the law firm of local GOP chair tom john.

in other news: have you been waiting for the special election to replace the late julia carson in congress? if so, governor daniels wants to prolong your wait until primary day. ostensibly, he wants to wait in order to save taxpayer money, which i guess is a good reason, but it would leave those of us in the 7th district without congressional representation for another five months.

the principal of fishers high school got pulled over for a DUI, but after he blew a .18, failing the sobriety test, he wasn't arrested like you or i would be. instead, the cops politely drove him home. that's indiana's finest taxi service. but now that the story has hit the media, the hamilton county prosecutor says he might be charged after all. at any rate, principal syverson has surely lost the respect of his students.

the star did a couple stories about the local rollout of google street view. the second story begins with an anecdote about friend-of-the-blog steph mineart. of course, if you've been reading the way, then you knew about google street view a week before the star's readers did.

well, it's almost time for me to get back to killing koopas, but no worries: there'll still be lolcolts tomorrow, and i'll be back in plenty of time to play that show on jan 3 at locals only.

update: according to wish-tv, ballard is appointing former prosecutor scott newman as his public safety director. here's an old indy men's magazine interview with newman as he left that office in 2002.

gary notes that the new job opens up newman to a potential conflict of interest, as newman founded a DNA analysis firm in 2004 that could stand to benefit quite a bit from his new authority.¶