Odds and ends.

[pecunium]

First the bad news. Tony Hillerman died. I was dreading it, with such dread as one can have for someone who is a removed personality. His mysteries made the Four Corners real to me.

In Memoriam


Shiprock

Then the good news Senator Ted Stevens (Crook, Alaska) was convicted on all counts. The jury seems to have not believed his saying "I paid all the bills they gave me. I assumed it was for everything". We'll see who else goes down.

Lastly, the really good news. Call center workers "strike" rather than read McCain ad

Some three dozen workers at a telemarketing call center in Indiana walked off the job rather than read an incendiary McCain campaign script attacking Barack Obama, according to two workers at the center and one of their parents....

Williams' daughter told her that up to 40 of her co-workers had refused to read the script, and had left the call center after supervisors told them that they would have to either read the call or leave, Williams says. The call center is called Americall, and it's located in Hobart, IN.

"They walked out," Williams says of her daughter and her co-workers, adding that they weren't fired but willingly sacrificed pay rather than read the lines. "They were told [by supervisors], `If you all leave, you're not gonna get paid for the rest of the day."

Comments

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

Mind you, I'd not call Hillerman a Great Writer -- he frequently piles in two or three horrible crimes when one would do, and after a while one notices a bit of Formula, so I have to revert to concentrating on the parts that are excellent.

One of his most enjoyable works, though different, and not at all Indian/cultural-connected, is The Great Taos Bank Robbery. Long difficult to find, it's recently been reprinted, and would make a superb script for a movie -- starring the Marx brothers.