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It’s too bad stupidity isn’t painful.
Volume 15, Number 2, January 10, 2010
(BERMAN GENERAL’S WARNING: Reading this column could result in "Changes in behavior, hostility, agitation, depressed mood, suicidal thoughts or actions, anxiety, panic, aggression, anger, mania, abnormal sensations, hallucinations, paranoia, confusion, serious skin rash, nausea, vomiting, sleep problems, constipation, loose stool [with occasional violent discharge], gas, and vivid, unusual or strange dreams.")
Greetings, and thanks for joining me for another week. Starting us off are a few news stories you may have missed. First, I just got a thank-you letter for telling Time-Warner to get tough with FOX network (there was a chance they would part ways) – they got tough and made an arrangement to keep FOX! What T-W didn’t say is that my bill would go up SIX dollars (cause and effect?)! Fool me once….
Next, Karma? Ouch! Gotta make you wonder: Shannon Broome, 15, of Jacksonville, Fla., with her leg in a cast and still laid up from a June rollover accident in an SUV, was hit again last month when another out-of-control SUV came through her bedroom wall and re-broke the leg (among other injuries). [Florida Times-Union]
Finally, do not try this at home! Marcella Rivera said the last thing she heard was that her soldier-husband, William Rivera, would try to reconcile with her and their five children when he got back from Iraq, but then her mother saw a TV program on returning soldiers that showed William being married to another woman. Marcella pressed a bigamy charge in Independence, Mo., but prosecutors dropped it after William convinced them that "post-traumatic stress disorder" suffered in Iraq had made him forget that he was married. [KCTV (Kansas City)
WANT TO HEAR ME CURSE? Sit beside me in the car as I pass a gas station! Gas prices again are rising again… very quickly! While it may be more painful to fill up, analysts said it may actually be a good sign (you can imagine what I want to say about the “analysts”). AAA said demand for gas in China is a big part of the increase in the price of gas for us. “Experts” said it's a sign that the global economy could be on the mend. So, it looks like a double whammy because we have given most of our jobs and production to China and they have to get to work somehow….
Signs you’re getting old (or at least I am): I am just not built for Twittering. I did tweet for a little while, but there’s too much - constantly - to keep up with. I also don’t understand the attraction of texting – it’s so isolating. I know it’s what attracts young people these days, but…. They look like zombies, staggeringalong with heads down, hands together, staring at a little screen, thumbs moving madly,– multiple electronic umbilical cords – apart yet “together.” Feh!
It’s easier not to think! The country is full of knee-jerk Democrats… and knee-jerk Republicans. Anyone who buys the entire party line of either side is not much of a thinker, if you ask me (which, of course, you didn’t). In a way, it could be argued much of religion is that way as well. In the past decade, there has been zero net job growth in the U. S. The right will place it all on Obama (they seem to put anything and everything negative on Obama [after his full year in office, I’m getting close to agreeing]) and the left will point back to and put it all on Bush-Light. Anyhow, as with health insurance, I do believe there is a solution to making everything better, but we need first to know what it is, and we need a leader to make it happen. (Speaking of health insurance, if someone stepped back and asked if there was such a thing as an ideal plan [and we didn’t have to make sure the corporations were taken care of with extra considerations and excessive profits], would that make a difference? I think so!)
I am not sure why, but I love watching the game of American football. Having been brought up around Boston, I do enjoy the Patriots, but I just love the game itself and will watch just because.
On the other hand, other kinds of football – extreme football: The body of 36-year-old Hugo Hernandez was left on the streets of Los Mochis in seven pieces as a chilling threat to members of the Juarez drug cartel. A note read: "Happy New Year, because this will be your last." To drive home the point, the assailants skinned Hernandez's face and stitched it onto a soccer ball. The gruesome find, confirmed by Sinaloa state prosecutors, represents a new level of brutality in Mexico's drug war, in which torture and beheadings are almost daily occurrences. Ow! (Yahoo News)
Hallelujah! The latest Jesus sighting was in Florida where a woman returned home after a visit to the doctor. After having her blood drawn, she thought the resulting image in her bruises resembled Jesus. People have seen the image of Jesus in fish sticks, water-stained plaster, pasta, toast, tailgates, a couch, and on a tortilla to name but a few of the more publicized ones. I have to wonder how many people have looked everywhere but within to find Jesus in their own hearts, and how many are so desperate they’ll see anything anywhere…. By the way, it’s called "Pareidolia" and describes a misperception involving a vague or obscure stimulus being perceived as something clear and distinct. It explains various misperceptions which includes Mary aspirations, the face of Jesus on a burnt tortilla, many UFO visions, Elvis sightings, etc.
“Snakes in a Mobile Home.” Doesn’t have the same impact as Snakes on a Plane, but… Crews responding to a trailer fire in southern Utah had another factor to contend with: snakes. Kristeen Checketts, the animal control officer in St. George, says there were about 19 pet pythons in the trailer when it caught fire. Once the fire was put down, Checketts and firefighters began pulling out snake after snake, most in cages and some up to 18 feet long. Checketts says 11 survived. The snakes' owner tried to revive another by massaging it and blowing into its mouth through a plastic pipe. Fire Capt. Jason Whipple says the accidental fire started with a heat lamp in one of the snake cages. (http://www.thespectrum.com)
From "http://www.accessatlanta.com", it’s a new record (maybe)! South Dakota authorities say a woman found passed out in a stolen delivery van earlier this month registered a blood alcohol content of .708 — nearly nine times the legal limit and a possible record for the state. Meade County State's Attorney Jesse Sondreal says the highest blood alcohol content state chemists he spoke with could recall was a .56. The state's legal limit is .08. Authorities say the woman missed an initial court hearing Dec. 15, but that they later found her in another stolen vehicle, and that she had been drinking
A New York woman is suing a bar - after she suffered concussion when she was hit by a falling moose head. Raina Kumra says she was minding her own business at the White Slab Palace on the Lower East Side when the stuffed head fell off a wall. Her lawyer complained: "The taxidermy moose head weighed approximately 150lbs, with antlers spanning over three feet." Ms Kumra says it caused her "chronic neck pain, anxiety, fatigue, dizziness and other serious and severe personal injuries," including "embarrassment". Ms Kumra, an internet design consultant, declined to comment, reports the New York Post. But the lawsuit says that since the incident, her "overall health, strength and vitality have been greatly impaired." The suit seeks unspecified money damages from the bar for "failing to ensure that the plaintiff and other patrons of the defendants would not be struck by the loosely affixed... moose head".
This week’s quotes are uncredited and some are arguable, but they all have something in common (I am just not sure what it is). (1) “Anyone who teases you loves you.” (2) “Among those who stand, do not sit; among those who sit, do not stand. Among those who laugh, do not weep; among those who weep, do not laugh.” (3) “Don't be too sweet lest you be eaten up; don't be too bitter lest you be spewed out.” (4) “The innkeeper loves a drunkard, but not for a son-in-law.” (5) “The only truly dead are those who have been forgotten.” (6) “Your friend has a friend; don't tell him.” (7) “What you don't see with your eyes, don't invent with your mouth.” Finally, perhaps the best of all: “G-d could not be everywhere; therefore he made mothers.”
From Reuters, the "Peanuts" comic strip character Snoopy was recently named the top dog in pop culture by the American Kennel Club as part of its 125th anniversary celebration, beating out a college sports mascot. Nearly 76,000 online voters chose their favorites from a list of pop culture dogs drawn from television, film, literature, sports and art, the kennel club said. Snoopy was the pensive dog whose best friend was a bird and who seemed to be smarter than his human master in the comic strip created by the late Charles Schulz, who died in 2000. It must have been a younger crowd doing the voting; I mean, Lassie and Rin Tin Tin didn’t even break into the top ten. I do have to wonder how many votes Snoop Dogg garnered.
From UPI, local police in Ohio found something of interest in a display microwave at home furnishings store IKEA -- it was a real lamb's head. An IKEA employee told the West Chester Township store's management of the grisly find, which was immediately removed. IKEA spokeswoman Kitalena Mason said a worker told management about "a small lamb's head found in the kitchen area of our showroom." She said the head was removed and the area cleaned. Store security tapes did not show the area clearly enough for police, who said they have no suspects. The newspaper said no one reported lambs being killed in the area, and noted such animal body parts are available at nearby international markets. (I can just hear the ads now, “But wait, there’s more! Buy today and we’ll include a real lamb’s head….” Hoyyy!)
Finally, they walk among us…. A man savagely killed a dog, ran naked through a tennis club and poured hot coffee on his head before he was finally arrested. Bayron Reyes Lopez, 26, of San Clemente, was hospitalized after being captured at the tennis club where he worked as a maintenance man. Amormino said deputies believe he jumped from a third-story window to get away, and was unhurt. Just after 6 a.m. Judy Donnelley called to say a "strange" man had approached her, and when her 5-year-old mini schnauzer named Coco intervened, the man killed the dog, hitting, choking and "repeatedly beating her on asphalt in front of me." "She saved my life," Donnelley told KCAL-TV. "I don't know how to thank her." She put flowers on the street where her dog died. Minutes later, other callers reported a naked man running through the Rancho San Clemente Tennis Club and pouring hot coffee on his head. That's where deputies caught up with him, Amormino said. He was initially hospitalized but "will be, at the least, booked for cruelty to animals," Amormino said. He was being tested to determine if he was under the influence of any drugs or narcotics, Amormino added, so other charges were also possible. (You know, it’s too bad some “people” have to commit a heinous act before authorities can do anything about it, but I am not sure how else to deal with such things.) Sigh.
Later.
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