This week is certainly not consistent with regular or sane blogging. I have spent the entire day feebly trying to catch up with deferred maintenance on my place here, and Puff and I are both discombobulated. Blogging will be light for the next couple of days, although I'll try to check in. (Much obligatory social stuff!)

In local Berkeley news which might be of interest, Berkeley too has had an extremely close cliffhanger of an election:

The recount of Berkeley’s Measure R has left the medical marijuana initiative 166 votes short of victory, and supporters still dissatisfied with the count hoping that legal action would overturn the outcome.

Measure R spokesperson Debbie Goldsberry said that the recount uncovered hundreds of Berkeley voters whose votes were not counted because of improperly filled-out provisional ballot forms, and a thousand UC Berkeley students whose votes were not counted because their names could not be found in the Alameda County Registrar of Voters registration database.

The measure sought to end limits on the number of plants allowed to medical marijuana users and would have allowed Berkeley’s three medical marijuana institutions to move anywhere within the city’s commercial zone.

“I’m convinced that if we had properly counted all of the actual votes in Berkeley, Measure R would have won,” Goldsberry said. “But the decision of the registrar’s office is final.”

Alameda County Assistant Registrar of Voters Elaine Ginnold said that while there were small discrepancies in the Measure R count “they had no material impact on the results of the election.”

Ginnold said that one of those discrepancies was 20 fewer ballots than the number of voters who signed in on election day at the Side B precinct station at the Northbrae Community Church on The Alameda in Berkeley. Despite a search by registrar’s office workers during the recounts, those ballots were never recovered. In addition, the voter count and actual ballots were off “by one or two votes” in a number of other Berkeley precincts. “But there will always be that type of discrepancy in any election,” Ginnold said.

Hmmmm.......

Maybe they should send in Stefan Sharkansky! (Latter link via InstaPundit.)

In other news, I overheard a conversation between a Berkeley landlord and a contractor, involving a tenant who happened to be an "animal hoarder." (This is the psychologists' label for people who take in more animals than they can handle.) Obviously, this woman's disorder causes the landlord untold grief, as he was carrying on about how he didn't know what to do, was afraid he might be sued, he couldn't evict the tenant, etc. I am quite familiar with the pattern; in Berkeley it is almost impossible to evict anyone for any reason.

But what really got me was to hear that the woman is allergic to all her animals -- and she's complaining to the landlord about it!

(Discrimination against the mentally ill is illegal in Berkeley, of course.)

Anyway, it's a typical "only in Berkeley" story, but I'm sure glad not to be the landlord!