I just wonder if it's a good thing...

...when the cashier at the drug store hands you - OK, hands me - a discount coupon for deodorant.

It was a weird day.

Why I went back to bed

The biggest problem facing Mississippi in the wake of a massive oil spill in the Gulf isn't tarred beaches or ecological waste, the state's governor Haley Barbour said on Sunday. It's the national press corps, which, he asserted, is inflating the disaster's current impact and, as a result, decimating the state's tourism industry.

link: Haley Barbour: Oil? What Oil? Press Should Stop Scaring Tourists

Also, it's a rainy day here. We've had rainy nights more or less regularly but this is the first rainy day in quite a while. It's dark and muggy, and the forecasters say it might still get a whole lot worse (high winds, hail).

So why not?

Yeah, sounds like just the company I'd want to work for

"...we try to minimize the amount of time we spent on [interviewing job applicants who are currently unemployed (no kidding)] and try to rifle-shoot the folks we're interested in."

link: Disturbing Job Ads: 'The Unemployed Will Not Be Considered'

OK, I put the boldface in the quote. But still. Bang bang, you're hired.

The linked article notes what appears to be a trend in employment advertising: Companies looking for employees specifically refusing to consider the unemployed. No kidding. The rationale seems to be that if they allow unemployed people to apply for jobs they wind up with too many to shoot.

No. Really?

"Honestly we can't believe a thing BP says and a lot of people are starting to question what they're hearing out of the administration simply because both have their own vested interests here," said Steiner.

link: Expert: If cap fails, oil in Gulf will triple | Raw Story

We are shocked.

Awesome!

A New York City woman has sued Citigroup for firing her because she was just too good-looking, reports the Village Voice.

link: Debrahlee Lorenzana Says Citigroup Fired Her Because She Was Too Hot

Wait.

What?

Well, yes, it's true. This woman is too hot to be a banker, says Citigroup, where (according to the Voice)...

...the managers gave her a list of clothing items she would not be allowed to wear: turtlenecks, pencil skirts, and fitted suits. And three-inch heels. "As a result of her tall stature, coupled with her curvaceous figure," her suit says, Lorenzana was told "she should not wear classic high-heeled business shoes, as this purportedly drew attention to her body in a manner that was upsetting to her easily distracted male managers."

Really.

I'm not exactly sure what a pencil skirt is but maybe bankers are supposed to do it in ink.

From the Arcata police log, June 1

2:22 p.m. In what seemed like a failsafe arrangement, a man met someone he knew only as “The Hippie” near an I Street store and let the heavily jailhouse-tattooed man “test drive” his car for later purchase. It went so well that they were to meet at a future date so The Hippie could give him money for the car. Bye, The Hippie, in my car! But at the appointed pay-up point, The Hippie never returned with the cash. And what would be his motivation, anyway? Honesty? Funny. Anyway, the now the seller is now without car or cash value. He was unable to supply police with the license plate number or any registration paperwork.

link: Humphrey, The Hippie And Hordes Of Hortatory Half-Wits – June 1, 2010 | The Arcata Eye

Hey how far away is this Latvia place anyway?

The Latvian Association of Blondes (LAB) is doing its part to ensure their country has a robust economic comeback. Hundreds of blondes from around the country came to Riga, Latvia's capital, on Saturday to parade in pink and strut with their poodles in an effort to cheer up the struggling nation.

link: Latvia's 'Blonde Parade' Hope To Stimulate Economy (PHOTOS)

A blonde parade!

Laissez les bons temps rouler

As Congress investigated its role in the doomed Deep Horizon oil rig, Halliburton donated $17,000 to candidates running for federal office, giving money to several lawmakers on committees that have launched inquiries into the massive spill....

Of the 10 current members of Congress who got money from Halliburton in May, seven are on committees with oversight of the oil spill and its aftermath.

link: Halliburton campaign donations spike - Jake Sherman - POLITICO.com

Wow!

HAMPTON, Va. -- President Barack Obama, addressing graduates at historically black Hampton University on Sunday, said that it is the responsibility of all Americans to offer every child the type of education that will make them competitive in an economy in which just a high school diploma is no longer enough.

Moreover, Obama said, the era of iPads and Xboxes had turned information into a diversion that was imposing new strains on democracy.

"You're coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don't always rank that high on the truth meter," he told the students. "And with iPods and iPads, and Xboxes and PlayStations -- none of which I know how to work -- information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation. So all of this is not only putting pressure on you; it's putting new pressure on our country and on our democracy."

link: Obama: iPad, Xbox Turn Information Into A 'Distraction'

I missed this somehow. And already I forgot how I found it, probably because the internet has turned my once-crunchy brain to Pablum.

But really. Isn't this the guy who famously wouldn't go to Washington without his Blackberry? And now he can't figure out how to work an iPod? And by the way, do we really want a guy who can't work an iPod anywhere near the Gulf of Mexico?

(And what's even worse than Obama's yammering here is that in the poll at HuffPo (on the page linked above) 56.5% (as of my reading) agreed with him.

And they say Steve Jobs is the one with the reality distortion field.)

The most dangerous job in the world?

Some jobs just seem impossible to keep filled. Hollywood studio head. United States ambassador to Iraq. Editor of the New York Daily News. Defense Against the Dark Arts professor at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

To these we must now add "al-Qaida's No. 3 official." John Crimmings, proprietor of the New York-based Blogenlust, has been keeping track of al-Qaida third-in-commands captured or killed by our side, and counts no fewer than four.

link: Why are we always killing al-Qaida's "No. 3" operative? - By Timothy Noah - Slate Magazine

Note U.S intelligence officials now confirm they think they've gone and bumped off another one.

Are we going anywhere with this or are we just filling space?

It is not unfair to say that if his name were not Sean Patrick O’Malley, Boston’s cardinal and archbishop would not be shipping up to Dublin.

And if Boston had not been the epicenter of the clerical sexual abuse crisis that continues to rumble across the United States and Europe, Cardinal O’Malley would not be spending some time in the near future advising his Dublin counterpart, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, on how to weather a scandal.

But it’s more than that.

link: Plenty of lessons to go around - The Boston Globe

But not quite first enough

“Safety first,” said Andrew Gowers, a BP spokesman

link: BP Tries Again to Capture Oil With a Dome - NYTimes.com

Indeed.

And by the way, maybe we should stop calling that gadget down there a blowout preventer since, obviously, it did not.