I really miss living in Central Ohio just for bizarre headlines and news bips. People in Michigan just aren't weird enough.
Showing posts with label my kind of news. Show all posts
Showing posts with label my kind of news. Show all posts
Monday, March 30, 2009
Other News
So I just finished writing the post below (kinda boring, but what-ev) and I called my best friend Amy who tells me about a huge drug bust back home. I went to a website of a local Columbus news station to read about it and got distracted because I saw this first:
Saturday, October 11, 2008
The News Round Up
Hey all... I'm back. Sort of.I'll be leaving again shortly as MDH and I pack up for a week long stay in a hotel starting Monday when the people we hired to refinish our hardwood floors begin to do so.
They told us that it will take 4 days and after they are finished we won't be able to walk on the floors in shoes or move the furniture back where it belongs for another week after that. That may seem like a long time to have things scattered all over the place, but because it's been this way for so long already, I've become accustomed to living in a pig sty. So whatever dude.
Actually, I've never been more excited to stay at a hotel in my entire life. It's just the crappy Ramada down the street, but it will be a week of living like a semi-normal person again. I won't have to turn sideways to walk through my kitchen and I already know exactly where the phone book will be (in the nightstand drawer).
The floor people were able to schedule the work in just the nick of time. I've gotten so used to living in this mess that one more day of it and I would have begun wearing nothing but mumus and eating all my food straight out of the can.In the comments of this post, which contains the majority of my bitching, somebody made the clever suggestion that we move everything back to it's proper place until time came closer to the actual date when the work was to be done. Yes. Thanks for that. Marvelous idea. I hear you. It makes perfect sense and would probably have been a fine thing for us to do if we were not the two laziest people on planet earth and possibly galaxies beyond.
Anyhoo... now there is an end in sight.
Meanwhile I realized that not only have I been neglecting my blog I've also left it hanging with a couple of untidy loose ends that I intend to take care of in this post.
Like first of all:
Whatever happened between Gaydar and Jogger? Remember that whole thing with the old man with the crush on the young girl and the mysterious packet of Oreo cookies? Well I swear on a stack of chocolate cream filled cookies that the very next day after I wrote that post - what should I see displayed prominently on my very own desk when I got to work? Yes. A mysterious packet of Oreo cookies.
Anyway... here's what happened... Nothing. Absolutely nothing. It was weird and I half wondered if Gaydar hadn't read my blog post where I all but called him a dirty old man because his annoying harassment of Jogger seemed to end right after I wrote it.
Jogger and I still don't know who gave us the cookies.
and loose end number 2:
The Case of the Olive Garden Charges
In this post I wrote a few months ago about a mysterious charge I noticed on our family credit card statement to the Olive Garden to the sum of $52.83 and the arguments and accusations of bad taste that ensued between me and MDH. A week or so later I called my mother who thanked me for the Olive Garden gift card I had sent to them for their anniversary. What a relief! Neither of us remembered having eaten at the Olive Garden because neither of has had.
And now a numbered list of random bullshit:
1. I dyed my hair back to my "natural color". At least I think it's my natural color. Over the years my blond highlight just kept getting lighter and lighter and my hair was starting to look fried. It's brownish now and very shiny again.
2. MDH does not like my new old hair color. He said he finds it "jarring". Too bad mutha fucka.
3. I drove around the block and wrote down the address of the house where the dog lives that barks all goddamn night and keeps me awake. I don't know what I'm going to do with it yet, probably call the police the next time it happens. I have also toyed with the idea of finding out the phone number of the house too and then calling these assholes at 2am when they let their dog bark and howl for hours on end.
4. I have become addicted to the new HBO series True Blood. I know, I know. Vampires. But trust me, it's really good.
5. I have also become addicted to the MTV show called Exiled where the little spoiled rotten assholes previously featured on My Super Sweet 16 are hauled off like criminals in the night, made to live among families in third world countries and forced to perform chores such as making huts out of cow poop and sleep on dirt floors. It's wonderful. A feel good festival of grins and evil giggling.
6. Mr. Boo got me last week. I vowed that I would never let this happen, but it did and I am ashamed. You see, I was deep in conversation with my back to the cubicle aisle way and the asshat snuck up behind me and burst a handful of bubble wrap in my ear. I won't go into detail about what happened or what I said to him afterward, but suffice it to say that he limped away from the experience holding onto his ball sack for dear life and has still not been able to look me in the eye nearly a week later. I have no fear that he'll ever sneak up and scare me again.
In this post I wrote a few months ago about a mysterious charge I noticed on our family credit card statement to the Olive Garden to the sum of $52.83 and the arguments and accusations of bad taste that ensued between me and MDH. A week or so later I called my mother who thanked me for the Olive Garden gift card I had sent to them for their anniversary. What a relief! Neither of us remembered having eaten at the Olive Garden because neither of has had.
And now a numbered list of random bullshit:
1. I dyed my hair back to my "natural color". At least I think it's my natural color. Over the years my blond highlight just kept getting lighter and lighter and my hair was starting to look fried. It's brownish now and very shiny again.2. MDH does not like my new old hair color. He said he finds it "jarring". Too bad mutha fucka.
3. I drove around the block and wrote down the address of the house where the dog lives that barks all goddamn night and keeps me awake. I don't know what I'm going to do with it yet, probably call the police the next time it happens. I have also toyed with the idea of finding out the phone number of the house too and then calling these assholes at 2am when they let their dog bark and howl for hours on end.
4. I have become addicted to the new HBO series True Blood. I know, I know. Vampires. But trust me, it's really good.
5. I have also become addicted to the MTV show called Exiled where the little spoiled rotten assholes previously featured on My Super Sweet 16 are hauled off like criminals in the night, made to live among families in third world countries and forced to perform chores such as making huts out of cow poop and sleep on dirt floors. It's wonderful. A feel good festival of grins and evil giggling.
6. Mr. Boo got me last week. I vowed that I would never let this happen, but it did and I am ashamed. You see, I was deep in conversation with my back to the cubicle aisle way and the asshat snuck up behind me and burst a handful of bubble wrap in my ear. I won't go into detail about what happened or what I said to him afterward, but suffice it to say that he limped away from the experience holding onto his ball sack for dear life and has still not been able to look me in the eye nearly a week later. I have no fear that he'll ever sneak up and scare me again.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Mitts Off Ladies, He's Mine
MDH shocked the shit out of me this morning by asking to do a guest post on my blog. The poor lamb tossed and turned all night after watching endless hours of Pennsylvania Primary news coverage.
Please address your comments to MDH as the views and opinions expressed in this blog post are not necessarily those of The Lady Who Doesn't Lunch.
And now... here's my baby:
Subject: This I believe: govt of the peeps, by the peeps, for the peeps aka the American Experiment teeters on failure
PA like OH, MI and FL is where the general election is won or lost.
So what does it mean that 10% of the PA voters are not planning to vote & 15% will vote for the old guy and of those 15%, 90% of them say they voted for Hillary Clinton? Those are the GOP supporters meddling with the Dem election....in other words, given that single digits would have been bad for Hillary Clinton's fundraising the Rush factor made all the difference between a win that results in Hillary Clinton being bankrupt and gaining a miniscule number of delegates and not being able to push more super delegates into her camp to a convincing win that will net her a miniscule number of delegates, delay decisions by some super delegates, & allow her to raise money to continue....just like in Pittsburgh where the chief financial backer of the actual vast right wing conspiracy against Bill endorsed Hillary Clinton, look for the GOP, broke though it is, to have amazing amounts of cash to spend in NC & in on race baiting TV to continue using Hillary Clinton to destroy the Dem party.....and if she prevails, and by no means does the rookie have this thing as locked up just because he has won it by the actual stupid rules of the Dem party, the GOP will pivot all of those resources to re-demonize Hillary Clinton & to convince Barak Obama's voters they got screwed. Add in the confusion voters currently have between McCain 2000 who crushed GOP cash register lobbying and McCain 2008 who welcomes an endorsement from a group dedicated to ending life on the planet....for jesus, the navy man might, with a smart vp choice and despite giving increasingly incoherent, frankly sad to see, interviews each day, yet rise to a higher rank then his daddy. Don't get me wrong....I have always been in favor of seeing an actual Vietnam War vet in the White House, but I had the impression the one I would get would actually vote for veteran's benefits for our current multiple felony committing, gang banging, rapists of fellow service people, but, at least not gay and fully supportive of cross national military Christian groups, heros. BTW - next week I will be back in DFW airport which usually means I'll have a good look at several hundred of our best fellow Americans going or coming from the war zone. Please do anything you can to support these poor bastards as they are bearing the absolute heaviest burden resulting from god's own party's stupidity and the Dem's (except Paul Wellstone – rip), 2002 missing spine.
Either way the future doesn't make me gotta wear shades...... the long march of America from a nation mostly inhabited by christians to a christian nation (hang in there Turkey) continues with more & more tax dollars going directly to religious institutions in exchange for votes/power & end times rhetoric becoming an acceptable political policy........our almost inevitable looming financial collapse from debt is moving ever closer as the mortgage write downs worldwide, better regulatory institutions outside of the US, and spiraling worldwide inflation dramatically reduce the risk of getting out of the dollar based economy............ our elected federal officials' continue their inability to stop even the most insane unsupportable US govt giveaways, like social security for millionaire retirees including the old guy & his beer barroness and direct subsidies for 'farmers' like the wolf family in Columbus or the Van Andel family in Grand Rapids........and the prison population, more and more managed for profit or for religious conversion, keeps climbing faster then a Manny ball hit to left.
And then there's infrastructure, the one sure way govt can help an economy (there used to be 2....you had war which used to be good for the economy, however, the GOP has figured out how to profit from outsourcing the war to sub-contractors....many of whom use non American labor) but we live in a country basically still operating new deal public works projects, where bridges fall into rivers, airlines rig their safety records with help from fed regulators, entire streets disappear into a cloud of steam or morph, as in Michigan, into one giant pothole.
Think I am as crazy as senator's McCain's or Obama's more of the same, almost universal, you would only buy that crappy policy if you had a better tax break health care plans? Those that have the luxury of traveling or living outside the US can judge with their own eyes....fall ill on a street in Taiwan and see a system where your health records are instantly available in every office of every provider in the country, or go to Japan where they laugh at our cell phones, or Europe where they laugh at our public transportation system, or the Netherlands where they laugh at us for our 'get tough' policies to jam prisons with non violent drug users, and or to brazil (buy CZZ) and France (if atomic energy is good enough for bob it is good enough for me) where they laugh at our energy policies that enrich our enemies/friends. In India and Ireland people are emigrating home from the US for a better quality of life for their children and country after country can now literally look down on us as their people get taller and we get wider.
But why did yesterday push me over the edge to declare that the end was nigh....well it wasn't the election, nor the horrific stoppage time own goal right smack in the middle of you'll never walk alone...it was this: from the Harvard med school...... Over these four decades, the researchers found that the overall US life expectancy increased from 67 to 74 years of age for men and from 74 to 80 years for women. Between 1961 and 1983 the death rate fell in both men and women, largely due to reductions in deaths from cardiovascular disease (heart disease and stroke). During this same period, 1961–1983, the differences in death rates among/across different counties fell. However, beginning in the early 1980s the differences in death rates among/across different counties began to increase. The worst-off counties no longer experienced a fall in death rates, and in a substantial number of counties, mortality actually increased, especially for women, a shift that the researchers call “the reversal of fortunes.” This stagnation in the worst-off counties was primarily caused by a slowdown or halt in the reduction of deaths from cardiovascular disease coupled with a moderate rise in a number of other diseases, such as lung cancer, chronic lung disease, and diabetes, in both men and women, and a rise in HIV/AIDS and homicide in men. The researchers' key finding, therefore, was that the differences in life expectancy across different counties initially narrowed and then widened. http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0050066&ct=1
The hollowing out of America, akin to the 70s but with a hell of a lot more places for people to put their money and faith outside of the US, is nearly complete. (as general franks and beans once said "a terrorist, massive, casualty-producing event [will occur] somewhere in the Western world – it may be in the United States of America – that causes our population to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass, casualty-producing event.") liberty's lamp could be doused once and for all, just like the right of habius corpus, by a bi-partisan movement of the sheeple.
But beyond buying that villa in Costa Rica and getting a few more weapons for this year's mandatory office secret Santa I want you to know that I remain filled with hope that once the drunkenness wears off we can turn the tanker away from the rocks! Look at 2006's punishment of the GOP. Look at the GOP voters attempting to punish themselves with McCain. Look at the Dems possibly selecting an actual, real American family to occupy that nice house in Washington City. America's cities, forced into tolerance and good management by their human density, refuse to go quietly into the night. US States are getting more active in demanding the feds stop the madness and more people then ever outside the US, despite our foreign policy screw ups in an attempt to help them to freedom or maintain corporate profit margins, are living with liberty, democracy and the rule of law.....so while our time as Winthrop's shining city on the hill is clearly waning & the Kinks reprise catch me now I'm falling, here's to Brazil, India, & Europe. If we in the states can delay our use of nukes to bring about the second coming for just a few more decades I am confident that Adam Smith and the new mega democracies will bring a reformed China and maybe even old/new Russia to freedom's blessings. As a man once said in the face of certain destruction "there is always hope"
My very best vibes to you all!
PS - anyone who didn't see the HBO John Adam's, I highly recommend you not only see it but try to read the book about my fellow Scorpio before watching and it will be even more rewarding/fabulous.
Please address your comments to MDH as the views and opinions expressed in this blog post are not necessarily those of The Lady Who Doesn't Lunch.
And now... here's my baby:
Subject: This I believe: govt of the peeps, by the peeps, for the peeps aka the American Experiment teeters on failure
PA like OH, MI and FL is where the general election is won or lost.
So what does it mean that 10% of the PA voters are not planning to vote & 15% will vote for the old guy and of those 15%, 90% of them say they voted for Hillary Clinton? Those are the GOP supporters meddling with the Dem election....in other words, given that single digits would have been bad for Hillary Clinton's fundraising the Rush factor made all the difference between a win that results in Hillary Clinton being bankrupt and gaining a miniscule number of delegates and not being able to push more super delegates into her camp to a convincing win that will net her a miniscule number of delegates, delay decisions by some super delegates, & allow her to raise money to continue....just like in Pittsburgh where the chief financial backer of the actual vast right wing conspiracy against Bill endorsed Hillary Clinton, look for the GOP, broke though it is, to have amazing amounts of cash to spend in NC & in on race baiting TV to continue using Hillary Clinton to destroy the Dem party.....and if she prevails, and by no means does the rookie have this thing as locked up just because he has won it by the actual stupid rules of the Dem party, the GOP will pivot all of those resources to re-demonize Hillary Clinton & to convince Barak Obama's voters they got screwed. Add in the confusion voters currently have between McCain 2000 who crushed GOP cash register lobbying and McCain 2008 who welcomes an endorsement from a group dedicated to ending life on the planet....for jesus, the navy man might, with a smart vp choice and despite giving increasingly incoherent, frankly sad to see, interviews each day, yet rise to a higher rank then his daddy. Don't get me wrong....I have always been in favor of seeing an actual Vietnam War vet in the White House, but I had the impression the one I would get would actually vote for veteran's benefits for our current multiple felony committing, gang banging, rapists of fellow service people, but, at least not gay and fully supportive of cross national military Christian groups, heros. BTW - next week I will be back in DFW airport which usually means I'll have a good look at several hundred of our best fellow Americans going or coming from the war zone. Please do anything you can to support these poor bastards as they are bearing the absolute heaviest burden resulting from god's own party's stupidity and the Dem's (except Paul Wellstone – rip), 2002 missing spine.
Either way the future doesn't make me gotta wear shades...... the long march of America from a nation mostly inhabited by christians to a christian nation (hang in there Turkey) continues with more & more tax dollars going directly to religious institutions in exchange for votes/power & end times rhetoric becoming an acceptable political policy........our almost inevitable looming financial collapse from debt is moving ever closer as the mortgage write downs worldwide, better regulatory institutions outside of the US, and spiraling worldwide inflation dramatically reduce the risk of getting out of the dollar based economy............ our elected federal officials' continue their inability to stop even the most insane unsupportable US govt giveaways, like social security for millionaire retirees including the old guy & his beer barroness and direct subsidies for 'farmers' like the wolf family in Columbus or the Van Andel family in Grand Rapids........and the prison population, more and more managed for profit or for religious conversion, keeps climbing faster then a Manny ball hit to left.
And then there's infrastructure, the one sure way govt can help an economy (there used to be 2....you had war which used to be good for the economy, however, the GOP has figured out how to profit from outsourcing the war to sub-contractors....many of whom use non American labor) but we live in a country basically still operating new deal public works projects, where bridges fall into rivers, airlines rig their safety records with help from fed regulators, entire streets disappear into a cloud of steam or morph, as in Michigan, into one giant pothole.
Think I am as crazy as senator's McCain's or Obama's more of the same, almost universal, you would only buy that crappy policy if you had a better tax break health care plans? Those that have the luxury of traveling or living outside the US can judge with their own eyes....fall ill on a street in Taiwan and see a system where your health records are instantly available in every office of every provider in the country, or go to Japan where they laugh at our cell phones, or Europe where they laugh at our public transportation system, or the Netherlands where they laugh at us for our 'get tough' policies to jam prisons with non violent drug users, and or to brazil (buy CZZ) and France (if atomic energy is good enough for bob it is good enough for me) where they laugh at our energy policies that enrich our enemies/friends. In India and Ireland people are emigrating home from the US for a better quality of life for their children and country after country can now literally look down on us as their people get taller and we get wider.
But why did yesterday push me over the edge to declare that the end was nigh....well it wasn't the election, nor the horrific stoppage time own goal right smack in the middle of you'll never walk alone...it was this: from the Harvard med school...... Over these four decades, the researchers found that the overall US life expectancy increased from 67 to 74 years of age for men and from 74 to 80 years for women. Between 1961 and 1983 the death rate fell in both men and women, largely due to reductions in deaths from cardiovascular disease (heart disease and stroke). During this same period, 1961–1983, the differences in death rates among/across different counties fell. However, beginning in the early 1980s the differences in death rates among/across different counties began to increase. The worst-off counties no longer experienced a fall in death rates, and in a substantial number of counties, mortality actually increased, especially for women, a shift that the researchers call “the reversal of fortunes.” This stagnation in the worst-off counties was primarily caused by a slowdown or halt in the reduction of deaths from cardiovascular disease coupled with a moderate rise in a number of other diseases, such as lung cancer, chronic lung disease, and diabetes, in both men and women, and a rise in HIV/AIDS and homicide in men. The researchers' key finding, therefore, was that the differences in life expectancy across different counties initially narrowed and then widened. http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0050066&ct=1
The hollowing out of America, akin to the 70s but with a hell of a lot more places for people to put their money and faith outside of the US, is nearly complete. (as general franks and beans once said "a terrorist, massive, casualty-producing event [will occur] somewhere in the Western world – it may be in the United States of America – that causes our population to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass, casualty-producing event.") liberty's lamp could be doused once and for all, just like the right of habius corpus, by a bi-partisan movement of the sheeple.
But beyond buying that villa in Costa Rica and getting a few more weapons for this year's mandatory office secret Santa I want you to know that I remain filled with hope that once the drunkenness wears off we can turn the tanker away from the rocks! Look at 2006's punishment of the GOP. Look at the GOP voters attempting to punish themselves with McCain. Look at the Dems possibly selecting an actual, real American family to occupy that nice house in Washington City. America's cities, forced into tolerance and good management by their human density, refuse to go quietly into the night. US States are getting more active in demanding the feds stop the madness and more people then ever outside the US, despite our foreign policy screw ups in an attempt to help them to freedom or maintain corporate profit margins, are living with liberty, democracy and the rule of law.....so while our time as Winthrop's shining city on the hill is clearly waning & the Kinks reprise catch me now I'm falling, here's to Brazil, India, & Europe. If we in the states can delay our use of nukes to bring about the second coming for just a few more decades I am confident that Adam Smith and the new mega democracies will bring a reformed China and maybe even old/new Russia to freedom's blessings. As a man once said in the face of certain destruction "there is always hope"
My very best vibes to you all!
PS - anyone who didn't see the HBO John Adam's, I highly recommend you not only see it but try to read the book about my fellow Scorpio before watching and it will be even more rewarding/fabulous.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
The Evening Snooze
If you were to talk to me about national or international current events you would find that I'm fairly well informed. I've had a subscription to Newsweek since I moved out of my parents house 19 years ago. I listen to NPR throughout the day, read The New Yorker, The Economist, Vanity Fair (the perfume ads drive me batty), and watch BBC World News at least 3 times a week.I don't like confrontation, so it is unlikely that I will share my opinion about politics with you here in this blog or anywhere else. You will learn all you need to know about my tastes and leanings by having read the paragraph above and then reading the paragraph below.
Because I live with MDH, who is constantly listening to and reading news all day while he's working I'm even more informed. He also checks in with the false gods of news everyday; Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and that irritating Hannity guy. He calls it "taking one for the team", because he likes to also keep abreast of what's going on in the land of ridiculous exaggerations, made up news and endless crazy speculation.
He can't seem to stomach Bill O'Reilly though and won't give his show the time of day.
Anyhoo... what I'm trying to say here is I am aware and informed on most things national and global, but I tend to either get all riled up or bored to death every time I watch the news or read a newspaper with any serious intent.
So while MDH is snug in our den switching back and forth between Face the Nation and This Week with George Stephanopoulos on the TV while he watches Tim Russert on his laptop, and contentedly jeering, I'm in the office reading News of the Weird online. Perhaps the rumors are true and there is nothing but cotton candy between my ears, but I can only take so much news and opinion before I will run away screaming.
Fuck the Presidential Primaries, foreign policy screw ups and climbing oil prices - here are some of my favorite recent stories from News of the Weird.
Police in Mount Lebanon, Pa., said in December that no illegal acts were involved, but some parents still want to know why the nondenominational Christian Mount Lebanon Young Life club had staged a teenagers' social event during which boys wore adult diapers, bibs and bonnets and sat in girls' laps while being spoon-fed. Said youth minister O.J. Wandrisco, the skits were not "dirty," but "to break down the walls and let (the kids) have fun." A previous skit involved, according to a parent, kids eating chocolate pudding out of diapers. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 12-8-07]
Dr. Paul Schum, 50, the principal of the Catholic Bethlehem High School in Bardstown, Ky., was arrested in October on prostitution-related charges after he was discovered loitering in an alley, dressed as a woman, in leather and fishnet stockings and with fake breasts. A local priest, presumably intending to help Dr. Schum, said dressing as a woman didn't sound like something Schum would be involved in, "(b)ut again, we're in the Halloween season." (Dr. Schum eventually resigned, and the prosecutor chose to drop the charge.) [WAVE-TV (Louisville), 10-31-07, 12-20-07]
Mr. Sandy Wong, 45, was sentenced in November in Edmonton, Alberta, to 90 days in jail for three counts of indecent exposure, including masturbating with his pants down while sitting on the roof of a BMW at a local agriculture fair. According to a psychiatrist, Wong said he is sexually attracted to the BMW's roof because "it's curved like a woman's body," but he also has been aroused by a 1967 Camaro, a 1965 Chevy Bel Air, a 2005 MiniCooper and a 1991 Buick Century. [Edmonton Sun, 11-23-07]
A 32-year-old man was found dead, stuck in the cat door of his girlfriend's St. Augustine, Fla., house after she had kicked him out. Said a friend, "(H)is head was caught ... like he was (trying) to reach up and unlock the door ..." [WKMG-TV (Orlando), 11-12-07]
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