Because I am known throughout the neighborhood as "The Guy Who Can Fix Things", my neighbor Rick just stopped by to get my advice on a complex and baffling home improvement project.  (Rick is no light-weight DIY guy, BTW).

"Do you have a method for getting all of the lights to burn on a strand of Christmas lights?", he queries.  "Yes", I replied quickly, "get in the car and drive to the nearest store and buy new ones."

Being a provisionally licensed electrician, I have puzzled over what happens to perfectly good and fully illuminated strands of lights between the time in January when I carefully remove them from the tree and then attempt to string them on another the following December. 

Add to this the fact that last year my Dad gave me a box of lights that have adorned my parents house every Christmas for the past 30-odd years - and worked perfectly every year -  I figured something was going on so I researched the phenomenon and found the cause.

Back in 1996 the members of the Christmas Tree Light Manufacturer's Association were suffering from lagging sales and held the secretive Twinkle Summit in the nation of Macau (now part of China).  The Association entered into a set of agreements about the future development of the industry (this was the meeting that spawned the new Icicle Light craze and subsequent high-tech variations of the traditional light strand) - the pact includes this language regarding standard three wire light strands:

• Agreement #2 - Regardless of brand, country of origin, retail selling price, written warranty claim or any other product differentation - NO manufacturer will produce ANY strand of Christmas lights that will function properly for longer than 24 months from date of manufacture.  

The set of agreements outlines four ailments that a strand of lights might exhibit to fulfill the letter of the agreement.  The association agreed on four different malfunction scenarios so we wouldn't suspect collusion.  Among them is the one that is most common at the Hoggard household: 

• Malfunction strategy C - The common (3rd) wire shall be manufactured with model 6Y8 wire which is engineered to break internally following 600 hours of continued absence of any electrical flow.  The resulting malady will be that one half of the strand will cease to function.

No amount of bulb changing and/or tightening will fix your strand of lights - you and I are the victims of a real life Commie plot so... give it up - it ain't gonna happen - give in to base consumerism and throw them away. 

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Self-described bleeding-heart-liberal Molly Ivans is for middle-of-the-road Howard Dean.  She has decided to stop throwing her primary vote to the wind by traditionally supporting a "list of losers only a lily-pure liberal could love" in favor of actually making her vote count on someone who might actually win.

"I know, he's even less of a liberal than Bill Clinton was, but I don't think Dean is a moderate centrist. I think he's a fighting centrist. And folks, I think we have got ourselves a winner here."

In further support of Dean's viability she also acknowledges what the blog world knows intuitively, sez Ivans, " Let me second the notion that this year, the Internet is to politics what television was in the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon race.

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There have been undercurrents of what is shaping up to be a very contentious race in next year's District 7 County Commissioner's election.  The office is currently held by one of my favorite people - Mary Rakestraw (R) - but she has been targeted because neither party can count on her to be either a loyal supporter or the loyal opposition.  Mary is an independent  thinker so the powers-that-be apparently want to install someone who will be predictable.

Reliable sources tell me that two very prominent folks are after her seat:  Former County Manager Roger Cotton, who just switched party affiliation from (D) to (R), and current at-large Commissioner Mike Barber (D) who may feel he has lost too much county-wide support to win again at-large. 

Probably related to the sorting out of the combatants, it is clear to me that the News & Record is grooming County Commissioner Mike Barber for whatever he chooses to do.  In their no-rhyme-nor-reason decisions on what articles they post on-line, I can't link to everything over the past weeks that they have written postively about Mike - but it has been noticed by many that he is getting a great deal of positive publicity from the paper.

The clinchers were an editiorial on Wednesday publicizing Barber's short-on-details economic development incentives, and then this morning's edition....

The front page features a shot* of a rosy-cheeked Santa with a pretty little girl in his lap.  My guess is that there were no less than six Santas in Greensboro enthralling children on any given day this week but the one the N&R chose to publish was a particularly jolly looking elf - Commissioner Mike Barber. 

*The N&R quit posting and archiving photos back in April, they really need to get more serious about their on-line content IMHO.

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