Pun Salad

Happy New Year!

Although I mean no disrespect and intend no offense to any reader who is not a user of the Gregorian Calendar.

• It does a sysadmin's heart good to see this in the syslog of his charges on New Year's Day:

  Clock: inserting leap second 23:59:60 UTC

  If these computers were puppies, I'd scratch them behind the ears for performing this neat little trick so well. (Thank goodness they're not Zunes.) More on the leap second at Slate.

• Orin Kerr notes that Alberto Gonzales is a horse's ass.

• The Rochester (NH) Police Log shows city life returning to normal after the Great Ice Storm of 2008.

  Tuesday, Dec. 16

  10:11 a.m. -- At Walgreen's a "clean cut" young man has stolen several electronic items. Clean cut ain't what it used to be.

  Wednesday, Dec. 17

  8:16 a.m. -- On Schley Street, a woman wakes up to find Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus on her lawn. It is not a miracle. If anyone is looking for these decorations, she tells police, she has them.

  Thursday, Dec. 18

  3:40 p.m. -- A woman reports that an unknown man is in her house, and police never help her. He is upstairs "in between the fixtures" having crawled through the vinyl siding. Meanwhile "they" are sucking her electricity through the wires.

  Sunday, Dec. 21

  8:06 a.m. -- A Chestnut Hill sheep is stuck in a ditch. Police contact the local Bo Peep to come get it.

James Lee Burke's Louisiana detective Dave Robicheaux tackles an impressive array of bad guys, while also battling his inner demons. (Not as successfully as he's done in other entries in the series.) This book was an Edgar Award nominee for best novel in 2003.

A horrendous crime, the rape and murder of a local teenager, has occurred. The prime suspect is Tee Bobby Hulin, a gifted local musician. Dave doesn't think that's the whole story, however, and he's right. Soon afterward a local prostitute is beaten to death while Tee Bobby is out on bail. Floating around is a man called Legion, one of the more creepy and unabashedly evil characters Dave has encountered; that's saying something.

As always, Burke's prose is masterful and intensely descriptive. And (as always) the current events have deep roots in the dark and corrupt past.

If you read this, you might want to familiarize yourself with Mark 5:1-20, although the ending is more than a bit different here. Dave's a good man, but he's no Jesus.