Yes, it’s time once again for the Okie Blog Awards, which, says its creator, recognize “the excellence and diversity of Oklahoma bloggers through popular nominating and voting.”

Nominations will begin New Year’s Day and will continue through the 20th; the actual voting starts the following day. It doesn’t look like there are any new categories this year, so I can concentrate on losing the same two I lost last year.

I’m guessing that there will be some sort of awards ceremony, probably around Oklahoma City, since the ‘07 awards were presented in Tulsa.

The neatest aspect of the annual awards by the Oklahoma Film Critics Circle, I think, is the bifurcated raspberry: there’s an Obviously Worst Film of the Year and a Not-So-Obviously Worst Film of the Year. This year, OWFOTY is The Love Guru, and NSOWFOTY is Mamma Mia!

Oh, you wanted the best film? Try Slumdog Millionaire.

The town of West Siloam Springs, population 900, hard by the Arkansas border, has been having trouble paying for its ambulance service, which runs around $200,000 a year. The mayor has scheduled a sales-tax election for spring in the hopes of covering some of the tab, but in the meantime, she says she’s been praying.

And she’s gotten an answer:

An anonymous donor will pay for ambulance service until the town finds its own funding, Mayor Elaine Carr said.

One week ago, the deal had all but fallen through because the town didn’t have the money to pay the bill.

And if the tax doesn’t cover the entire cost, says Carr, the donor has offered to make up the difference.

Cancel that order of hakuna matata and get a load of Ché as Top Cat:

“Since when,” wonders Michael Bates, “is it OK to use an image honoring a murderous, totalitarian thug to advertise a city-owned, family-oriented tourist attraction?”

Being unwilling by nature to believe the worst about people until given good reason to, I’m going to assume that this picture came about because they couldn’t get any of the weasels to sit still with a beret.

I got my new 2009 plate yesterday, about two weeks ahead of the date promised. It does look pretty nice, and it weighs about half as much as the old one, so I expect my gas mileage to go up as a result.

Now that I think about it, I hadn’t seen any of the new plates before this one arrived on my doorstep. I suppose I got my order in early. (My old plate didn’t expire until June ‘09, but if you want to keep your old number, you have to request it in advance.)

Tom the Impaler gets on the horn:

Today I called Coburn, Cole, and Inhofe to state that I did not wish to be billed to bail out GM, Ford, and Chrysler. If they choose to do so anyway I want a Ford F150 delivered to my apartment by Christmas.

Hope he’s got a place to park it.

Given the unfortunate quantity of freezing drizzle today, I spent rather a lot of time checking the Department of Public Safety’s Road Conditions page, and while it displays correctly in Safari and (gag) Internet Explorer, it looks like hell in Firefox 3.

You may remember Donald Thompson from the following lojinks:

Attorney General Drew Edmondson has filed an official complaint against Judge Thompson, charging him with, um, banging his gavel, so to speak.

Or this:

Thompson came under fire for sending Johnson up for a long stretch, so to speak, and gave up his bench; he has entered a plea of Not Guilty to three counts of indecent exposure.

Or this:

Former judge Donald Thompson, who resigned from office after charges of manually-operated sexual misconduct were brought against him, is facing new charges: improper use (or, more precisely, non-use) of briefs during trials, and storage of inappropriate materials on his office computer.

I guess the man truly loves the limelight:

A former Creek County judge convicted of indecent exposure was arrested early this morning on a drunken driving complaint.

Donald Thompson, 62, was arrested by an Oklahoma Highway Patrol trooper about 3 a.m. on a complaint of driving under the influence of alcohol. He was taken to the Tulsa County jail.

Thompson served two years in prison for indecent exposure for using a penis pump while he was on the bench during court proceedings. Thompson lost his law license by [order of] the Oklahoma Supreme Court earlier this year.

I suppose it’s a good thing he actually had pants on for once.

One more incident, though, and I’ll probably have to give Thompson his own farging category.

Okay, I really don’t. Happy now?

Apparently we had an exceedingly minor earthquake last night, magnitude 2.7, although to me it doesn’t look so damn minor.

The epicenter seems to have been just east of Mercy Health Center. The Oklahoma Geological Survey would like reports from people who noticed it.

As prices for natural gas drop, Oklahoma City-based Chesapeake Energy, the nation’s largest independent producer of the stuff, is feeling the pinch.

Their response: issue new stock, and lots of it.

In two filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission late Wednesday, the company said it will issue shares worth as much as $1 billion before fees and also registered 50 million shares worth at most $791 million for potential sale.

CHK is selling for around $20 these days, versus $74 during the summer when gas and oil prices were peaking. The dilution of existing shares by the new issue will presumably drive the stock price down a buck or three.

If you keep a window open for the State Election Board’s Web site as the votes are counted, the number that’s drilled into your head is 2,231: the number of individual precincts in the state. Much has been made of the fact that the McCain/Palin ticket carried every single county in Oklahoma; the Oklahoman has now looked into the individual precinct numbers, and has found 198 where Obama/Biden drew the majority of the votes.

The explanation, says OU political-science professor Keith Gaddie, is in line with conventional wisdom:

If you look at the urban areas, these are classic urban voting patterns. The Democratic concentrations were in minority precincts and in both older working class suburbs and older affluent suburbs.

Newer ‘burbs and rural areas, by contrast, went staunchly Republican.

My own precinct (Oklahoma County 453) was, I suspected, about evenly divided. It turned out to have a bit of a McCain tilt: 52.4 percent to 47.6 for Obama.

State Insurance Commissioner Kim Holland notes that rather a lot of Oklahomans don’t have health insurance, and it may be necessary to force the issue:

Barring a law requiring the purchase of health insurance, which Holland concedes would be a political long shot, “inducements” that penalize those who fail to insure themselves would help, she said.

Among the possible inducements Holland proposed was forfeiture of football season tickets to University of Oklahoma or Oklahoma State University games, forfeiture of lottery or gaming winnings, loss of state income tax deductions or licenses to drive, hunt or fish.

“None of those are very pleasant, but there needs to be a consequence,” Holland said.

Depending on whose numbers you want to believe, somewhere between a sixth and a third of Oklahomans have no health coverage, and there’s this little cultural factor getting in the way:

“We have developed this culture over the years that some don’t feel like they have to pay their medical bills,” [Holland] said.

Imagine that.

Rep. Tom Cole, who represents Oklahoma’s 4th Congressional district, has withdrawn from the race for chair of the National Republican Campaign Committee, yielding to Texan Pete Sessions. Sessions apparently was the choice of House Minority Leader John Boehner.

Cole had served two years as chairman, and the GOP wound up losing about 20 seats in the House, so this isn’t what you’d call a surprise. Earlier in the week, Cole had claimed that his management had helped minimize those losses despite what he called a “toxic” political environment.

There wasn’t anything in the Oklahoman about Saturday’s Join the Impact! march, about which Rena complains:

[T]he 300 that attended the … rally in Oklahoma City (not to mention the thousands across the country) were ignored by the city’s paper — I no longer will incorrectly call it a “newspaper” but it is printed on paper, so at least that part’s true. Again, no surprise, because the Oklahoman habitually refuses to cover the news and events that come from the liberal or progressive end of the political spectrum. “Habitually refuses” is a nice way of saying they have conspired and are conspiring to erase our existence from their pages.

(The Tulsa World did send a reporter to the T-Town event.)

The Oklahoman did have an AP story on a decidedly-smaller gathering today at the Courthouse to protest the treatment of the “Oklahoma 3″. Go figure.

Numenorean at Kick the Anthill has read over my recommendations for this year’s State Questions, and she agrees with three out of four.

On SQ 735, though, she takes exception:

My concern with this tax exemption is the same concern that I had on the last one we voted for. I have a problem with making an exemption for one group of people. Veterans are not the only people who serve us sacrificially. What about teachers? Firefighters? Law enforcement? Nurses? I am concerned that when we begin making this kind of exemption it only snowballs. I honestly have no idea what the figures are for what funds the state is declining to receive from veterans, but something tells me that it’s going to start to add up.

Qualifying for this particular exemption requires 100-percent disability, which suggests that relatively few people will actually get it. And this isn’t the property tax, which hits all of us who own real estate; this is the personal-property tax, which is applied only to specific, and usually business-related, possessions. I expect the dollar impact of passage would be vanishingly small.

Still, it’s a reasonable point being raised: if Group A gets a tax break, why not Groups B through V inclusive? There’s only one answer: the state Constitution would have to be amended for each of them, so if someone wants to circulate a petition granting a tax exemption to a group, that option is available, and the voters can decide for themselves.

Update: Incorrect personal pronoun corrected.

According to the title of the Kevin Smith film, they made a porno.

Weirdly, while the Oklahoman did carry a wire-service review (2½ stars out of 4) which left the title intact, the paper’s ad for the film clips the title to just Zack and Miri. It doesn’t look Photoshopped, so I’m guessing that the Weinstein Company, the US distributor, offered the alternate ad to squeamish papers.

Have any of you in other markets encountered the expurgated advertisement? (I haven’t seen the Tulsa World, but at least they had someone from the paper actually do the review rather than rely on the AP.)

The title of the piece in Oklahoma Magazine is deceptively simple: “75 Great Oklahoma Websites”. Apart from the lamentable lack of clickable links in the Web version, it’s a pretty good overview of blogs worth reading in these parts, though apparently not everyone is thrilled with the choices. Says The Lost Ogle’s Patrick:

I’m also not too sure how I feel about this site being named to a list of great Oklahoma websites that includes Wimgo, yet somehow omits Dustbury. That would be like leaving Ashlynn Brooke off a list of great Oklahomans but somehow including Sally Kern. But oh well, it does appease our massive egos, so we’re okay with it.

Not having a particularly massive ego, I figure this is the time to point out something I thought was perfectly obvious: I first hung out this shingle more than a decade ago. By Internet standards, this is pre-Cambrian; certainly I can’t boast of newness, a characteristic much prized on the Web, while still purveying this by-now old-hat shtick.

But being a known quantity does help to clarify my perspective. By now, just about anyone who is interested in Oklahoma blogs is either reading me already or has made a conscious decision not to read me. And I’m fine with that: differences of opinion, with a little help from gravity, make the world go round.

That said, the spiffiest commentary on “75 Great Oklahoma Websites” comes from Mike at Okiedoke:

I steer you to a list of 73 Oklahoma websites better than this one.

Emphasis added, just to show you how diabolically clever that statement really is.

Tulsa’s Holland Hall School once again has a copy of the 1921 version of William Swinton’s New-Word Analysis: Or, School Etymology of English Derivative Words, which was checked out of the school library in 1947 and returned this week by mail, along with a check for $250.

Martha McCabe Jarrett, who now lives in Florida, signed out [the] book 61 years ago when she was a student at Holland Hall.

Last week, she found the book and sent it back. “To take the time to return it after all these years, and to write such a gracious note was inspiring,” said Librarian Betty Niver. And she says it validates the kind of character and sense of responsibility they are teaching at Holland Hall.

The school’s not sure what it will do with the $250 since they have no specific overdue book fund. They think they might put it toward student scholarships.

Swinton’s first edition of New Word-Analysis was published in 1879; he wrote several other textbooks, including New Language Lessons and the Harper’s Language Series. If you’re curious about New Word-Analysis, Project Gutenberg has made it available online.

Well, not exactly, but I’ll take it.

The millage for property taxes in my section of the county actually dropped this year, from 110.42 to 106.08, a decrease of nearly four percent.

Now the bad news: the county assessor’s figure for market value on the palatial estate at Surlywood went up 5.9 percent. By law, they can only increase the value on which the tax is based by 5.0 percent, so while my tax bill will be up from last year, the increase will be a mere $12.99.

I note that this is the lowest millage since 2001, when it was 100.99. The highest was 2002: a startling 113.33.

How this works: Median-priced home in 73112, per Zillow.com, is $112,900. Under state law, the taxable market value is 11 percent of that, or $12,419; at a millage of 106.08, the tax is $12419 x 0.10608 = $1317.41, not counting any exemptions. Just for the record, I live in a smaller-than-average (albeit still palatial) house.

(Last year’s property-tax discussion here.)

Forget what you may have heard. Oklahoma Christian University is not changing its name:

First, it is the overwhelming desire of the university’s alumni, students, faculty and staff to extend OC’s impact throughout the world through its excellent, faith-permeated education. Second, the vast majority of those from whom he heard believe the current name enjoys considerable goodwill, is highly regarded in the local and national community, and aptly identifies its location and core mission. It is also a name in which the university can build increasing brand value. For these reasons, [OC President Mike] O’Neal decided not to pursue additional study about a possible name change and will retain Oklahoma Christian University as the school’s name and OC as its nickname.

About the only people who will be upset by this, I predict, are those few folks who somehow are constantly confusing OC, OCU [Oklahoma City University] and UCO [University of Central Oklahoma].

Besides, the discharge was well-deserved:

Oklahoma County District Attorney David Prater has announced that he won’t file charges against the electric company or an apartment complex where Damon Patrick Schmidt died. Schmidt died on 26 August when he was hit with seven kilovolts while trying to steal copper wire.

Del City police, for some reason, thought charges should have been filed:

Del City police wanted Prater to consider filing negligent homicide or manslaughter charges against either Oklahoma Gas and Electric or the complex’s owner.

Police Lt. Jody Suit says that because the area was condemned, it should have been secured and patrolled. He also says OG&E had not cut power to the area completely as the city had requested.

And what was going through their heads at the DCPD? “Well, yes, he is thieving scum, but you know, someday he might have been hailed as a great educator.”

I’m more likely to believe Tam’s assessment:

Until Gaia evolves us a twenty-foot-long flying predator to bring the dimwit population back into check, it’s nice to see that the gene pool occasionally finds ways to self-chlorinate.

Which might actually do the trick, since there will almost certainly be laws forbidding the capture and barbecue of said predator.

You have to follow it with “Or else”:

Recalling a run-in 25 years ago with a group accused of voter registration irregularities, U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe says protesters scattered when he warned them to leave his home in one minute or “I’ll kill all of you.”

The Tulsa Republican made the comment in an interview published Thursday by the Alva Review-Courier.

Inhofe says he was mayor of Tulsa at the time and the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now, known as ACORN, was mad at him over a housing issue involving Cuban refugees.

When his wife called frantically to say a group of Cuban protestors were at his house, Inhofe says he confronted them and threatened to kill them if they didn’t get off his property.

(From AoSHQ via BatesLine.)

Seen under the title “Holy Crap (literally)” at the Democrats of Oklahoma forum:

Apparently, without much going on, the Westboro Baptist Cult is going to picket the Oklahoma vs. Kansas State football game this weekend. If it wasn’t on their hate-site, I would have thought it was a joke.

10/25/2008, 09:30 am-11:30 am: Bill Snyder Family Stadium — K-State Football LOSERS! Kimball & College

We will picket your stinking, rotten awful football game. You guys are not good football players, I’m just saying. And that is because you try to throw that ball with limp wrists. More importantly you got those limp wrists from your Living God as a curse because you refuse to obey. Here was the promise from God, and they are good as gold. We are seeing with our eyes, each day more and more that when Our God determines to curse a land, He does it with great panache.

Given the usual location of their heads, they’re lucky to be seeing their duodenums through those eyes.

You can, theoretically, get that combination on an Oklahoma vanity plate, though variations like 2DMBAD apparently are not going to be tolerated: the Oklahoma Gazette seems to have gotten hold of the canonical list of impermissible letter and/or number combinations [link goes to PDF file] from somewhere deep in the heart of the Oklahoma Tax Commission.

Among the verboten are some I think are fairly innocuous: FUGLY, UANOYME and WEDGIE. (Since we don’t have front plates, WEDGIE makes more sense here than it might in some other states.) Not on the list is the tag I had on poor Sandy, my now-deceased Mazda 626, because it wasn’t a vanity tag at all; but I suspect FME 694 wouldn’t have passed muster in New Jersey, given the astonished looks it got as I pulled into a Holiday Inn at Exit 8A. At least it wasn’t 469.

This is gonna cost a whole lot of money for stationery if it comes off:

However easily “Hail to Oklahoma Christian” may roll off the tongue, students of Oklahoma Christian University may be singing new lyrics for their alma mater in the not so distant future, as there appears to be another potential name change on the horizon.

The university has seen its share of names throughout its 58 year history. Originally Central Christian College in Bartlesville, the name changed to Oklahoma Christian College upon relocation to Oklahoma City. In 1990, the school reached university status and changed to its current name.

Mike O’Neal, president of the university, says the possibility of changing the university’s name again has been in discussion for several years now.

“Since early in 2002, I have often heard from alumni and friends that our name is frequently confused with all the other ‘O’s’ and ‘C’s’ around Oklahoma City,” O’Neal said. “In addition, there have been suggestions that our current name does not adequately reflect our broadening geographic constituency and tends to regionalize and limit the university’s influence.”

Perhaps their constituency is, um, something more than merely geographic. And what would they change it to, anyway?

There are a variety of names being considered, none including “Oklahoma” and few including “Christian.”

Some of the proposed names include Benson University or Benson Christian University, (Benson was an Oklahoman, the first chancellor of Oklahoma Christian and the most influential person in Christian higher education in the 20th century in the fellowship of the churches of Christ), Eagle University, Global Christian University, Libertas University, Noble University and some including the names of substantial benefactors.

This would be George S. Benson, born in Dewey County in 1898. (There’s a Benson Road on the east end of the campus.) Before Dr Benson took over as chancellor at OC, he was president of Harding College (now Harding University) in Searcy, Arkansas, whose name includes neither “Arkansas” nor “Christian,” which tells me that maybe it’s not such a big issue after all.

Disclosure: Once upon a time I got married to a Freed-Hardeman girl, which is why I know some of this stuff.

If you happened to notice that the University of Central Oklahoma was opening an Academy of Contemporary Music, you might be inclined to think that they’re ripping off the original ACM in Britain.

And you would be, as I was, mistaken:

ACM today announced the creation of ACM@UCO in partnership with The University of Central Oklahoma.

ACM@UCO is scheduled to open its doors to its first wave of aspiring musicians, producers and industry professionals in September 2009. The school is planned to open in The Oklahoma Hardware building, on Flaming Lips Alley in the heart of Oklahoma City’s vibrant Bricktown area. ACM@UCO will include special features integral to ACM’s distinctive style of education and success. The curriculum is focused on structuring courses that work hand-in-hand with fulfilling the needs of the music industry, ensuring that students are fully equipped to secure jobs in the sector.

ACM Founder and Director Phil Brookes said, “We are delighted to be working with UCO, to bring ACM’s unique brand of music industry education to America. The people involved with UCO are some of the most creative and forward thinking individuals we have had the pleasure of meeting. Everyone at ACM is looking forward to a great partnership and future with UCO, training tomorrow’s musicians, producers and music business leaders.”

Speaking of the Lips, manager Scott Booker will be the executive director of the new Academy.

UCO’s Jazz Lab will of course be continuing.

(Found here.)

Mike McCarville’s big story this week has been a list of connections between Jim Roth at the Corporation Commission and Chesapeake Energy chair Aubrey McClendon. Some of this stuff I knew, most of it I didn’t.

Observations from this corner:

• Chesapeake is always spending money, be it for real estate or for access. I keep wondering what I have to do to get a check from McClendon.
• Roth probably should have abstained from voting on the Red Rock power plant project, though the remaining members of the Corp Comm would have been left in a 1-1 tie.
• So far as I know, Roth’s general-election opponent, Dana Murphy, hasn’t weighed in on this yet. [Linked to sub-page to avoid annoying embedded sound file.]

As October Surprises go, this is fairly mild, but it’s clearly not good for a Commissioner to appear to be in someone’s back pocket.

I got this from one of the progressive mailing lists (yes, I’m on a couple of them), and thought it was worth mentioning:

Check your voter registration. For months, we have been recommending that everyone check to make sure they are registered to vote. It has recently come to light that 19 states are not following federal law; they are purging voters close to the election.

As I understand things, “close to the election” means within 90 days. I hadn’t heard that Oklahoma was running a purge around now — they might be swapping lists with other states to clean up the database, maybe, and according to Michael Clingman at the State Election Board, they purge in off-years — but it’s still not a bad idea to check your registration, just in case, simply because every system has bugs, flaws and holes.

Also in the mailing comes the suggestion that you avoid straight-party voting, as follows:

Problems abound with straight-party voting — on electronic voting machines and on paper ballots. We highly recommend that, if you want to vote for the same party across all races, vote for each individual person separately, and don’t mark any “straight-party” choice at all.

An example may be seen here. Under the circumstances, I have to agree: mark each race separately.

Voter registration in Oklahoma closes Friday, the 10th of October.

(Thanks to Rena.)

There are four of them coming up next month, and this is what I think of them.

(Note: The Vent goes all the way back to the first days of this site, twelve and a half years ago; the current installment is #600.)

First, they redesign the newspaper so it looks more like a Web site.

Next, they redesign the Web site so it looks more like a newspaper.

Did I miss something somewhere?