Toast (Can I say that?)

DETROIT – The phrase "shovel ready," incessantly invoked by the Obama administration this year as a way to sell its $787 billion federal stimulus bill, died Thursday.

The official cause of death was overuse, according to Lake Superior State University, which announced the phrase's demise in its annual List of Words to Be Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness, released Thursday....

"Stick a shovel in it. It's done," seethed Joe Grimm of Bloomfield Hills, Mich., in his nomination to the university's Word Banishment Committee.

link: Once-presidential phrase casualty of word war - Yahoo! News

More fun with numbers

If you count the Ft. Hoot shooting as a terrorist attack...16 people have died in the United States as result of terrorism in 2009. The other three deaths include the Little Rock military recruiting office shooting (1), the Holocaust Museum shooting (1), and Dr. George Tiller’s assassination (1), the last two coming at the hands of right-wing extremists.

On the other hand, 45,000 Americans died because they didn’t have health insurance and 600 died from salmonella poisoning.

link: Firedoglake » Terrorism Still Less Deadly in US Than Lack of Health Insurance, Salmonella

A warming trend

I woke up this morning and there was a minus in front of the number on the widget (no, it's not the first thing I do most days but today is trash pickup day and it seemed so cold when I was hauling the green bag out to the curb I decided to check, is all) so I went back to bed. Which worked. Now it's zero. Maybe I'll go back to bed again and see if that adds another two or three degrees. Maybe if I just stay in bed long enough it'll be like summer again.

Oh. Bears? They do?

Doing the math

...the odds of being on given [airline] departure which is the subject of a terrorist incident have been 1 in 10,408,947 over the past decade. By contrast, the odds of being struck by lightning in a given year are about 1 in 500,000.

link: FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right: The Odds of Airborne Terror

-Noted by our Midwest Bureau

No I couldn't wait, quelle surprise

I've been fooling around with the software for Barnes & Nobel's and Amazon's digital books. Both have apps that run on iPhones as well as computer-based apps and, of course, both have hardware of their own - Amazon has its Kindle and B&N its nook.

For the B&N test I found a cheap and eminently forgettable novel called "Hostile Intent," about a gadget-crazed, personality-free government killer who battles evil terrorists far and wide; for the Amazon project I found the complete Sherlock Holmes, illustrated, for $2.39 and read the first novel. Amusingly, both books cite liberals and foreigners as the root of all evil, so I guess we haven't made much progress on that problem in the last century or so.

The Barnes & Nobel iPhone app crashes; Amazon's works fine. The Amazon computer runs only on Windows at present, and is somewhat less slick than B&N's, but on balance I like Amazon's solutions best. I have no interest in either company's hardware. The iPhone makes a perfectly acceptable reading platform, and I have a MacBook so I'm portable enough as it is.

So, when I found email this morning informing me that Jasper Fforde's "Shades of Grey" has shipped (yay!) I downloaded the free sample from Amazon and - I know this is difficult to believe but it's true - by the time I'd finished the sample I was on the hook for the whole book. So it is now tucked safely away on both my phone and my laptop (the Amazon software keeps the two copies in sync).

It's cold here today - 13 degrees and very windy - and I've already been out twice doing errands, so I'm planning to curl up with a book for the rest of the afternoon.

Nobel Peace Through War Prize winner goes for three

WASHINGTON — In the midst of two unfinished major wars, the United States has quietly opened a third, largely covert front against Al Qaeda in Yemen.

link: U.S. Widens Terror War to Yemen, a Qaeda Bastion - NYTimes.com

Secret rules

Reports the New York Times...

In the wake of the terrorism attempt Friday on a Northwest Airlines flight, federal officials on Saturday imposed new restrictions on travelers...

The government was vague about the steps it was taking, saying that it wanted the security experience to be “unpredictable” and that passengers would not find the same measures at every airport...

And by the way, do you know the speed limit where you live? Is it five miles faster than whatever the sign says? Eight? Ten, or maybe less, or maybe different on certain days of the week or at different hours? OK to go faster at 1 AM than at 1 PM?

Hey, who knows. I've never been a fan of rules, myself. Or the people who make them. The only problem is, these days the people who make them walk around with ski masks over their faces and if you don't pay attention to the rules, whatever they may be today, they can pull your fingernails out and throw you in jail forever. Just like that.

Do not step on the grass.

There's good news and bad news...

...in Dave Barry's year-end review, found here in the Miami Herald. For example:

BAD NEWS: The economy remained critically weak, with rising unemployment, a severely depressed real-estate market, the near-collapse of the domestic automobile industry and the steep decline of the dollar.

GOOD NEWS: Windows 7 sucked less than Vista.

And so forth...

So we get to foreclose on them now?

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Fifty-five financial companies failed to pay dividends in November on money they borrowed from the U.S. government, bank research firm SNL said on Wednesday.

That number swelled from 33 companies that missed an August payment on government funds, according to an SNL analysis of government data.

link: 55 companies miss payment of TARP dividends: study - Yahoo! News

No, I didn't think so. Although I do think SNL is a perfectly fine name for a bank research company. Really, I do.

Maybe let's work on that hed a little more

For First Time, Minority Vote Was a Majority

link: Minority Voters Were a Majority in New York Election - NYTimes.com

It's going on my list

NYTimes movie critic A.O. Scott ends his review of the new Morton Downey Jr. vehicle, "Sherlock Holmes," noting:

A lot of fighting and not too much girl stuff.

Oh, and by the way...

...if you have nothing to do this evening except curl up with a laptop and watch George Patton - or, you know, that other guy - play Scrooge, here it is on Hulu. (If you like your Dickens scratchier - and shorter - Hulu also has the 1935 version here.)

When men were men and pies were pies, baby, pies

The blog Whatever It Is I'm Against It has been reporting of late on New York Times reporting of 100 years ago and today picks up the story of a 92-pound mince pie...well, you can read the story, as the Times had it, here.

William Howard Taft, U.S. president from 1909 to 1913, weighed in at more than 300 pounds and was distinguished, therefore, as the heaviest U.S. president ever elected, although Wikipedia hastens to point out, this means physically heaviest, not anything else.

The town of Traverse City, Michigan, baked a 28,350-pound cherry pie in 1987 but by then U.S. presidents were too skinny to care.

When life hands you snow...

...make a snowball like this baby rolled, reputedly, by university students in Madison, WI, and forwarded our way by Formerly From California Charlie.

I hear you knockin' but you can't come in

Time for some real music here (from our very own Work Avoidance List); I'm overdosed on Christmas tunes this year. A few weeks ago I dumped my entire holiday collection - 15 or 20 cuts, I guess - onto my iPhone and I've been listening to that while trudging around town ever since. In a way, it's nice, since it's music you don't have to pay the slightest bit of attention to. But enough is enough.

Usually I don't do this kind of thing. Usually I avoid Christmas music altogether (wait: all together, alright?) which is a fairly easy thing to do in a town without elevators, but this year was, well, just different, is all.

Let's have more stuff like this

[At the northern end of U.S. Route 1] Where the sparse, rolling landscape of northern Maine can get a bit monotonous, some relief is provided by the Maine Solar System Model. The MSSM, constructed in 2000 by the University of Maine at Presque Isle, is the fourth-largest solar system model in the world. The scale is 1 to 93 million, which means that one Astronomical Unit equals one mile. All of our system's planets are located along US Route 1, in order to present drivers with the opportunity to get a feeling of the scale of our solar system. Its original length was about 40 miles, all the way to Pluto, at the Tourist Information Centre in Houlton. . .

link: The Coastal Packet: MAPPING THE SOLAR SYSTEM IN NORTHERN MAINE

Cool! And there's a map at the link.

Also, JIC you're interested, here's the NORAD Santa tracker for this Christmas Eve.

Why does everybody stare at the chicken?

Every time I go to the meat case at the supermarket there are a bunch of people standing around staring at the chicken. Why? Nobody stares at the pork chops. Or the fish. Nobody even looks at the steaks. Do you know how much those things cost, the steaks? What's so fascinating about chicken, anyway? And why can't we have a special, express line for people who don't want to look. Hey, I'll even wear a blindfold. Just point me at the chicken, get out of the way, let me grab a package and I'll be gone. It's only chicken, after all. And even if it isn't it probably tastes like chicken, so what's the deal?

Exactly so

Obama, you may recall, was known to have supported single-payer himself - it was one of the reasons he was so much more popular than Hillary. Of course, throughout the primaries, when we questioned Obama's dedication to liberal causes, we were told at every step of the way about those things in his history that "proved" he could be trusted - he'd advocated single-payer, he was a Constitutional scholar, he was a community organizer - so of course, he'd never be the kind of guy who would sell out health care to the insurance companies, enforce Bush's shredding of the Constitution, or oppose a mortgage "cramdown" bill. Single-payer itself was never on the ballot, but the public did vote in a candidate who, as far as they knew at all, had been an advocate of single-payer. (Remember when Obama attacked Hillary for wanting mandates? Mandates are pretty much the only enforceable content in this bill.)

link: From the inestimable Avedon Carol at The Sideshow

And that's my complaint, exactly. I don't care about the health care part, as I've explained before. I just want all all that time I spent listening to those so-called primary debates refunded. I could have used it for something useful, like watching the dryers at the laundromat.

Wait!

Six? Degrees? That can't be good, can it?

Put some egg in that nog and let the merriment begin

WASHINGTON – The Senate is at work unusually early and voting on health care as Democrats zero in on their goal of passing President Barack Obama's signature issue by Christmas.

link: Senate starts early morn votes on health care Tues - Yahoo! News

It may be a crappy bill but they got it done by Christmas. So sit down and shut up. You can believe in that.

Look, I've said before and more than once, I have no horse in this health care race. I already have the commiefascist socialist pinko-leaning government health care - my doctor is a government employee - with which arrangement I am well pleased and for which exceeding grateful. I see no reason why you shouldn't get the same good deal but apparently the.... Oh. Health care industry. Does.

Ahh. I get it now.

Oh well. Jingle bells.

Next: Spring

It was, after all, "Grand Theft Auto"

BOSTON – Police say a frustrated Boston woman called 911 to say she couldn't get her 14-year-old son to stop playing video games and go to sleep....

Two officers who responded to the house persuaded the child to obey his mother.

link: Boston mom calls 911 over over son's video game habit - Yahoo! News

So it doesn't seem I'm missing all that much

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration took aim Monday at tarmac horror stories, ordering airlines to let passengers stuck in stranded airplanes to disembark after three hours.

link: Gov't imposes 3-hour limit on tarmac strandings - Yahoo! News

I haven't flown anywhere since the early 90's so I am blissfully unaware of what commercial flying is like these days. If it's like this - people stuck for 2, 3 hours on a plane while the plane itself just sits there on the ground - I'd just as soon take the bus.

Latitude: 42.59 N

The first day of winter.

The big blizzard...

...that would be both the paralyzingly disastrous part and the seriously awful part, missed. Or, at least, missed us; we got not a flake. As a matter of fact it's a warmish 22º degrees out there this morning, no sun but also no wind. So what was all the shouting about, anyway?

Alright!

We're only in the "Highly Disruptive," not the "Paralyzing" path (thanks, Accuweather!) of the big Nor'easter that's blowing up the coast this afternoon. Personally, I'd rather just go to bed blissfully unaware and see what tomorrow brings (good morning, dude, you're screwed).

Nobody left on the Left

Turn off MSNBC. Tune out Howard Dean and Keith Olbermann. The White House has its liberal wing in hand on health care, says White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

“There are no liberals left to get” in the Senate, Emanuel said in an interview, shrugging off some noise from the likes of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) that a few liberals might bolt over the compromises made with conservative Democrats.

link: Rahm Emanuel: Don’t Worry About the Left - Washington Wire - WSJ

Kids today

“Years ago children were satisfied with Jack-in-the-boxes, monkey-on-the-sticks, and other inexpensive baubles, but nowadays they’re looking for a whole string of iron cars, miniature automobiles, and flying machines,” laments Santa Claus in this New York Times feature story from Dec. 19, 1909.

Break out the mittens, darlin, the sun is broke

The sun is up but the temp keeps going down. My widget had a 4 about two hours ago. Now it has a 1. That can't be good.

So this is what it's come to now?

"Yes we can" has become "Oh well, at least it's better than nothing"?

Obama said the United States has acted boldly by vowing to reduce heat-trapping gasses and help other nations pay for similar efforts. But he indirectly acknowledged that some countries feel the United States is not doing enough, and he said an imperfect accord is better than an impasse.

link: Obama: Imperfect climate deal better than none - Yahoo! News

Climatecare is starting to sound a whole lot like healthcare to me.

Throw the rascals out

We are slouching toward health-care reform that's better than nothing but far worse than we had imagined it would be....In all likelihood, the White House and the Dems eventually will get a bill they can call "reform," but they will not be able to say with straight faces that the reform is a significant improvement over the terrible system we already have.

link: Robert Reich: Slouching Toward Health Care Reform

War games

WASHINGTON – Insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan have hacked into live video feeds from Predator drones, a key weapon in a Pentagon spy system that serves as the military's eyes in the sky for surveillance and intelligence collection....

Shiite fighters in Iraq used off-the-shelf software programs such as SkyGrabber — available for as little as $25.95 on the Internet — to regularly capture drone video feeds, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. The interception, first done there at least a year ago, was possible because the remotely flown planes had unprotected communications links.

link: Pentagon: Insurgents intercepted drone spy videos - Yahoo! News

Sounds perfect then

Liberals love Costco because they pay their workers about 40 percent more than their big box rivals.

Conservatives love them because they sell Sarah Palin’s book by the pallet, next to the camo wear.

link: Clueless in Costco - Opinionator Blog - NYTimes.com

What, another bake sale?

COPENHAGEN – U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton sought to put new life into flagging U.N. climate talks Thursday, announcing the U.S. would join others in raising $100 billion a year by 2020 to help poorer nations cope with global warming.

link: Clinton: US would help raise billions on climate - Yahoo! News

The good news is...

...that although my work hours have been cut in half recently I am scheduled to get a pay increase on the remaining hours that'll net me another dollar a month and - here's the best part - all the classes I have left are in the afternoon. Which means today, for example, I don't have to walk to work in 11º cold but I can wait until noon or so, by which time the temp should be a sub-tropical 15 or possibly even 16 degrees. Also, I have all morning to sort of work myself up to the idea.

And it's not a very long walk anyway, only a few blocks. So, not bad.

Whoa!! What could this guy be smoking?

US regional military commander General David Petraeus on Wednesday called Washington's fight against terrorism in Afghanistan "successful," even if Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has not been captured....

Petraeus said that even if bin Laden remains at large, "as a result of some of those efforts significant numbers of top 20 extremist leaders have of course been killed, and in some cases captured and removed from the picture."

Addressing the issue of efforts to train sufficient number of Afghan troops to succeed the United States ahead of an eventual troop pullout...

"It's very important we train as many as we can, as quickly as we can, without rushing to failure. Quantity does have a quality of its own but only if it has a reasonable quality as well," the general said.

link: The Raw Story | US war a success, even if bin Laden still at large: Petraeus

Significant numbers of top 20 extremist leaders?

Quantity has a quality of its own, but only if it has quality?

Must be some really good stuff.

Scientists get all jolly and like ho ho ho

Here’s a look back at one of our Christmas research collections, this from 2001, in two separate parts. Among the more prominent items:

“Unilateral phrenic nerve paralysis from cutting down a Christmas tree,” R.H. Tiede, J.R. Hover, S.F. Davies, Southern Medical Journal, vol. 87, no. 11, November 1994, pp. 1161-3.

“Christmas or harvester’s eye,” G. Howsam, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Ophthalmology, vol. 22, no. 2, May 1994, pp. 147.

“Convulsions at Christmas,” S. Kirker, British Medical Journal, vol. 305, no. 6868, 19-26 December 1992, pp. 1580.

link: Improbable Research » Blog Archive

More on the stealth war

Walter Pincus, Washington Post - The surge of 30,000 U.S. troops into Afghanistan could be accompanied by a surge of up to 56,000 contractors, vastly expanding the presence of personnel from the U.S. private sector in a war zone, according to a study by the Congressional Research Service.

CRS, which provides background information to members of Congress on a bipartisan basis, said it expects an additional 26,000 to 56,000 contractors to be sent to Afghanistan. That would bring the number of contractors in the country to anywhere from 130,000 to 160,000...

link: UNDERNEWS: OBAMA EXPECTED TO ADD 56,000 MERCENARIES TO AFGHANISTAN

Person of the Year

Well, now I’ve seen everything.

link: TIME’s Person of the Year revealed - Matt Taibbi - Taibblog - True/Slant

Sorry, Bunky, you lose

NEW YORK - The U.S. Treasury will not recover any portion of the $3.7 billion still outstanding in loans it made to automaker Chrysler under the Troubled Asset Relief Program, according to the terms of a plan filed with bankruptcy court on Tuesday.

link: Chrysler won’t repay $3.7 billion TARP loan - Autos- msnbc.com

And what was it that they wanted, does anybody know?

WASHINGTON – History may be calling but time's running out to act by Christmas, so Senate Democrats are coming to terms with the idea they won't get everything they want from health care overhaul.

link: Dems ready to push health bill despite setbacks - Yahoo! News

Bingo

As a candidate, Barack Obama endorsed the idea of allowing consumers to import cheaper pharmaceuticals from other industrialized countries. In the Senate he co-sponsored a bill that pushed the idea.

But now that he’s president and is taking money from the pharmaceutical lobby (PhRMA) to help get his bullshit health care bill passed, his administration is backtracking. His FDA chief Margaret Hamburg is pulling out the old safety canard. The CBO has estimated that a bill sponsored by Byron Dorgan to allow drug re-importation would save the government $19 billion over 10 years, and save consumers $80 billion.

There’s no legitimate reason to bar re-importation, except one: to preserve a subsidy for the pharmaceutical industry and, by extension, preserve the flow of campaign contributions to the Democratic Party....

link: PhRMA Hack: Campaign Promises Are Just That - Matt Taibbi - Taibblog - True/Slant

My New Year's Resolution this year...

...is going to be quit getting organized, you moron, you're driving me crazy. I mean it. I am so organized right now I'm running out of things to do. Things I want to do, I mean. If this doesn't stop I will have to start doing things I don't want to do and I don't want to do that. Enough is enough.

You really have to marvel at the insanity of it all

Boing Boing - Tahaya Buchanan, an American fugitive who'd been on the run for more than two years, dodging a national arrest warrant for insurance fraud, has spent her years underground gainfully employed by the Department of Homeland Security....

link: UNDERNEWS: GREAT MOMENTS IN HOMELAND SECURITY

There'll always be an England (wow!)

A woman who was given an anti-social behaviour order banning her from making loud noises during sex has admitted breaching the order.

Caroline and Steve Cartwright's love-making was described as "murder" and "unnatural" at Newcastle Crown Court.

Neighbours, the local postman and a woman taking her child to school complained about the noise....

link: BBC News - Noisy sex woman admits Asbo breach

But not a penny fer yer sniffles, bunky

House-Senate lawmakers are putting the finishing touches on a $626 billion Pentagon spending bill that Democratic leaders hope to clear for Obama's signature by Friday....

link: Congress readies defense budget

The $626 B does not include the cost of the 30,000 additional troops our Nobel War Is Peace Prize winner is sending to Afghanistan, nor any new bombs to drop on Pakistan but hey, that's just chump change.

Right, chump?

Guerrilla Handbell Strikeforce

A 13-member handbell choir [from Improv Everywhere] provided some unexpected accompaniment for a Salvation Army bell ringer on Lexington Avenue in Manhattan.

(Thanks, Lynn!)

So gnomes can't have holiday party like the rest of us?

BURLINGTON — Gnomes had been disappearing in the Bayhill neighborhood, but nobody realized how many until the wind blew down Lisa Soneda’s fence.

There in her neighbor’s yard were gnomes, lots of them.

There were red-hatted gnomes, green-hatted gnomes, few-inch-high gnomes and foot-tall gnomes. There were dozens, along with other yard statues including a deer, a squirrel and an owl. A variety of glass garden globes stuck into the ground beside them....

Though Soneda wasn’t missing any ornaments from her own yard, she suspected the collection of more than 60 ornaments was stolen because she’d heard of gnome thefts in the neighborhood.

link: Skagit County's News and Information Source | goskagit.com

Heat wave

It rained ice again last night but now it's pushing 40º. And forecast to do the same tomorrow before it gets cold again later in the week. So hey, let's go to the beach.

Our nomination for Simile of the Year

Advanced age has never been a curative, but some in society tend to be so awed by the prospect of longevity that they assume virtue must go along with it. Others are just naturally protective of the most senior of citizens, like a nation of Willard Scotts gazing fondly at a gallery of twinkling oldsters.

link: Aging: still the same at the century mark - The Boston Globe

All your soy are belong to us

With Monsanto's patented genes being inserted into roughly 95 percent of all soybeans and 80 percent of all corn grown in the U.S....

link: AP: Monsanto dominating seed markets with patented genetics | Raw Story

In case you were wondering just what the game is

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Nike Inc Chairman and co-founder Phil Knight said the scandal surrounding Tiger Woods is "part of the game" in signing endorsement deals with athletes and did not back away from the athletic shoe and clothing maker's relationship with the golfer.

link: Nike chairman stands by Tiger Woods: report - Yahoo! News

Too big to fail

So the Wall Street elite, just months removed from their near-death experience, are now making a fortune shorting the U.S. dollar. One year ago, faced with the greatest financial panic in generations, the American people swallowed hard and bailed out the banks. Today, the banks have moved on, and are tearing down the currency of the nation that saved them.

But it is nothing personal. It is strictly business.

link: David Paul: With Wall Street Shorting the Dollar, It is Time for Congress to Pursue Fundamental Change

Stories we never finished reading

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama is asking bank executives to support his efforts to tighten the financial industry...

link: Obama pushing banking execs on protection agency - Yahoo! News

Yeah, well, we pretty much know where that's gonna end, don't we? That's like going to Al Capone and saying hey, Al, I'd like your support in cleaning up all these speakeasies around town. Guaranteed to get a laugh in Cicero.

Hey, at least we might skim off the cheap ones

It seems late to realize this, but [U.S. Secretary of Defense] Gates told reporters he had only recently learned the “eye-opener” that the Taliban were able to attract so many fighters because they paid more. Generals in Afghanistan said the Taliban dole out $250 to $300 a month, while the Afghan Army paid about $120. So Gates has made sure that recruits get a raise to $240.

The American solution is always to throw more money at a problem; now we’re in a bidding war with the Taliban, which doesn’t bode well for the democracy manqué.

link: Op-Ed Columnist - A Game That’s Not So Great - NYTimes.com

Whoa baby throw another blanket on the fire

One of my weather widgets had it at five degrees this morning when I emerged from bed, the other had it at ten. I don't know why the discrepancy. But both widgets agreed it "felt warmer."

Dude. There is no, absolutely no way that ten degrees can feel warmer than anything that's worth feeling warmer than. I'm just saying. Seriously. For example, can 10 degrees feel warmer than an ice cube? No, I don't think it can. So there.

(And yes, I know about absolute zero but don't bug me about absolute zero because if it were absolute zero we'd all just be peoplecicles anyway, so who would care?)

Although now it's warmed up to 20º and the sun is out so it looks warm, so what the hell.

Quelle cheesecake

A group of beautiful French cheese fans, nicknamed the "Fromage Girls," posed for a pin-up calendar that uses sex to sell regional French cheeses.

link: French Cheeses Get A Pin-Up Girl Calendar (VIDEO)

Over the hill

Virtually everywhere in the world people tend to be more educated than their parents. This is no longer true in the United States. A report by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities indicates that the U.S. is one of only two nations on Earth in which people aged 25 to 34 have lower educational attainment than their parents.

link: Education Rate in U.S. Declines by Daniel Luzer | Washington Monthly

Top ten list is bottom ten

The Ten Brands That Will Disappear In 2010

link: The Ten Brands That Will Disappear In 2010 – 24/7 Wall St.

We are shocked! Shocked!

The world is being told that this [climate summit now being held in Copenhagen] is an emergency meeting to solve the climate crisis – but here inside the Bela Centre where our leaders are gathering, you can find only a corrupt shuffling of words, designed to allow countries to wriggle out of the bare minimum necessary to prevent the unravelling of the biosphere.

link: Johann Hari: Leaders of the rich world are enacting a giant fraud - Johann Hari, Commentators - The Independent

OK, if you put it that way

I find I am, almost against my will, utterly delighted by the Tiger Woods crash-and-burn who-woulda-thunk slut-of-the-week pornstars-n-skanks flameout shockfest circus funhouse megaspectacle.

link: Tiger Woods must die / The sooner he flames out completely, the sooner he shall rise again

WIIAI notices...

Gratuitous Headline of the Day: “Hindu Nationalists Drop Their Baggy Shorts.”

link: Whatever It Is, I’m Against It: Of baggy shorts and saggy skin

CAUTION

What's taken place in the year since Obama won the presidency has turned out to be one of the most dramatic political about-faces in our history. Elected in the midst of a crushing economic crisis brought on by a decade of orgiastic deregulation and unchecked greed, Obama had a clear mandate to rein in Wall Street and remake the entire structure of the American economy. What he did instead was ship even his most marginally progressive campaign advisers off to various bureaucratic Siberias, while packing the key economic positions in his White House with the very people who caused the crisis in the first place. This new team of bubble-fattened ex-bankers and laissez-faire intellectuals then proceeded to sell us all out, instituting a massive, trickle-up bailout and systematically gutting regulatory reform from the inside.

link: Obama's Big Sellout : Rolling Stone

Reading the rest of this may spoil your weekend. Why don't you just put it off until Monday?

Laughing, up there in Sturgeon Bay...

...Formerly From California Charlie sends this:

DADDY'S JOB

Little David is in the 5th grade. Yesterday morning when the teacher asked the children what their fathers did for a living. All the typical answers came up; fireman, policeman, salesman, etc. The teacher noticed that little David was being uncharacteristically quiet and so she asked him about his father.

'My father's an exotic dancer in a gay bar and takes off all his clothes in front of other men. Sometimes, if the offer's really good, he'll go out to the alley with some guy and do it with him for money.'

The teacher, obviously shaken by this statement, hurriedly set the other children to work on some coloring, and took little David aside to ask him, 'Is that really true about your father?'

'No,' said David, 'He plays for the Cubs, but I was too embarrassed to say that in front of the other kids.'

Gobble gobble blah blah

CNET - A study released Wednesday from the University of California, San Diego, reports that the average American consumes a whopping 34GB of data and 100,000 words of information per day. . .

But if bytes are the standard by which American days are judged, it's the video game that takes the top prize. Researchers found that the average American consumes 18.5GB of gaming data per day, representing 67 percent of all bytes they consume daily.

link: UNDERNEWS: AVERAGE AMERICAN CONSUMES 100,000 WORDS A DAY

If you're into the whole Christmas thing and use iTunes...

...you might want to check this out. (It's free.)

Don't get me started, dude, it's too late in the day

Just go read this for yourself.

It's a wonderful world! says the Fed...

WASHINGTON – Americans got wealthier for a second straight quarter in the fall, thanks to gains in stock investments and home values.

Net worth — the value of assets such as homes, bank accounts and investments, minus debts like mortgages and credit cards — rose 5 percent from the second quarter to $53.4 trillion, the Federal Reserve said Thursday.

link: Americans' net worth up for 2nd straight quarter - Yahoo! News

...and the AP. But, wait...

Yet even with that gain, Americans' net worth remains far below the revised peak of $64.5 trillion reached before the recession began. That underscores the vast loss of wealth over the past two years. Net worth would need to rise an additional 21 percent just to return to its pre-recession peak.

Oh.

All over town...

...there are snowmen in various states of assembly or disassembly. I like this one because it's a perfectly blank slate, unblemished by carrots or - what do we use instead of lumps of coal these days, for eyes? - or wacky scarves, or one might, I suppose, say even a head. Nonetheless. What there is of this guy is clearly built to last.

But watching whales play chess would be a lot more fun

The race to revamp the American health care system and turn it into an even bigger and more incomprehensible mess than it is today continues. Watching the congressional back-and-forth on this is a fascinating comic exercise, sort of like putting a chess board between a pair of beached Beluga whales and waiting for a game to break out.

link: Health Care For Almost One-Third of Everyone (Who is Left-Handed and Over 50)! - Matt Taibbi - Taibblog - True/Slant

Clarify, clarify

Aftermath

Doesn't look so bad when you see it that way. And actually it's a balmy 37º as we speak, and sunny, and all's well with the world except the sidewalks are icy. A few more warm, sunny days might take care of that, or then again, maybe not.

Trouble in...wait...Oslo??

No one expected Obama to attend every Nobel Prize event (I understand the toga party is a highlight), but his ungracious decision to skip even the traditional lunch with the Norwegian king is being taken as a rude snub. In other words, the newest winner of the Nobel Peace [By 2011 Maybe] Prize has managed to piss off... the Norwegians.

link: Whatever It Is, I’m Against It: Don’t make us get all Viking on your ass

Living on campus in a van

I live in a van down by Duke University

link: Pinched - Salon.com

In the mid '90s, our youngest daughter went to Syracuse University on a scholarship which paid her tuition. Mom and Dad paid room and board and "incidentials," which ended up being more than it would have cost us to pay the full freight to go to one of Ohio's excellent state schools.

(An aside: she majored in design, which required a lot of art classes, which required a lot of supplies. So we set up an account at the campus bookstore, which resembled a Super Wal-Mart, except nicer with many orange-colored items and without all the crap from China. The account was conveniently charged to our MasterCard each month, followed by a less-than-detailed statement. We noticed that the charge for "sundries" became larger with each statement until it dawned on us the "sundries" was shorthand for cigarettes and beer. We let her know that we would pay for books and art supplies, but she'd have to figure out how to afford "sundries." The cost of higher education dropped substantially.)

Our daughter emerged from college with no debt and a car that was paid for, while most of her classmates owed more than $100,000 in student loans. How can anyone justify that? So you've got to appreciate this guy, who lives in a van and survives mostly on peanut butter in order to afford an education at Duke, which I'm sure is even more overpriced than Syracuse.

-Paul Knue

Who woulda thunk?

Shares of U.S. health insurers rose on Wednesday after efforts to overhaul the health system moved away from creating a government-run insurance plan....

link: Health care stocks rise after Dems drop public option | Raw Story

Probably because they didn't take their shoes off

WASHINGTON - The Transportation Security Administration is investigating a security breach in which a manual for airport screening procedures appeared on a government website in a way that exposed sensitive information, officials said Tuesday....

link: Sensitive airport screening manual spent months online -- chicagotribune.com

Would it be possible to just re-wind a decade or so and try again?

Obama to accept Peace By 2011 Maybe Prize; and in other news...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Two leading international human rights groups gave U.S. President Barack Obama mixed reviews on his human rights record on Wednesday, a day before he is slated to accept the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo....

link: Obama rights record questioned ahead of Nobel prize - Yahoo! News

Glop

It's dumb, I know, really dumb, but I've spent pretty much all my life in cold states. And here's what I've learned from that:

1. The weather tomorrow will be just about the same as it is today except, of course, when it's totally not.

2. If you stick your nose out the door and it gets cold, then it's a cold day. Bundle up.

3. If you stick your nose out the door and it gets cold and also snowed upon, sleeted upon, and rained upon, then you're in New England. Go back to bed. To hell with it.

It's snowing now, it'll be sleet soon, then rain this afternoon, followed by glop which - the glop, I'm talking about now - will probably freeze overnight and be there until May. I'm just saying, this weather sucks.

It's not cold or anything, it's just gloppy. I hope those white Christmas types are satisfied. This weather is all on them. And the teachers, of course, who are always praying for snow days. Hmmpf.

And let that be a lesson to you, kid

BOISE, Idaho - It’s become an annual winter tale: A young boy gets his tongue stuck to a metal pole, perhaps as the result of a dare.

This year, the scene straight out of the movie “A Christmas Story’’ unfolded yesterday morning in Boise with a boy of about 10....

link: Double dog dare: Boy’s tongue sticks to pole - The Boston Globe

Except, of course, in Washington

Although most e-mail users have come to understand that messages remain on their computers even if deleted...

link: Text Messages - Digital Lipstick on the Collar - NYTimes.com

In the Age of Efficiency...

Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and other U.S. "social networking" sites are at minimum providing information...and in some cases have also received substantial funding by U.S. government related entities as a most efficient and cost-effective means of spying on their users around the world.

link: UNDERNEWS: YAHOO WILL SELL YOUR EMAILS TO THE GOVERNMENT FOR $30-40

Well, at least there's one thing he remembers

Keeping up with a perennial Loop Favorite . . . Alberto "Fredo" Gonzales, the former attorney general, is now contentedly ensconced in his poli-sci teaching gig at Texas Tech in Lubbock. Gonzales is one of about 20 people -- including former U.N. nuke inspector in chief Mohamed ElBaradei, Yao Ming, Robert Caro and Jerry Lee Lewis -- who help us reflect on weighty matters in Esquire's ninth annual Meaning of Life issue, the January edition, out next week.

"I guess I would use my son's word: cool. It was cool to work in the White House," he says

link: Al Kamen - In the Loop: Alberto Gonzales reflects on the Bush years - washingtonpost.com

And, oh yeah, a sample of what Little Alberto's eager student might be hearing at Texas Tech in Lubbock this term? Glad you asked.

"We should have," Gonzales says in hindsight, "abandoned the idea of removing the U. S. attorneys once the Democrats took the Senate. Because at that point we could really not count on Republicans to cut off investigations or help us at all with investigations."...

And you can't say that's not poli-sci.

Drink up

More than 20 percent of the nation’s water treatment systems have violated key provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act over the last five years, according to a New York Times analysis of federal data.

That law requires communities to deliver safe tap water to local residents. But since 2004, the water provided to more than 49 million people has contained illegal concentrations of chemicals like arsenic or radioactive substances like uranium, as well as dangerous bacteria often found in sewage....

link: Millions in U.S. Drink Contaminated Water, Records Show - NYTimes.com

Alas, the water department is not too big to fail.

LOL!

(The Devil made me do it.)

Whoa baby!

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates denied Sunday that President Obama had set an "exit strategy" for Afghanistan, and he forecast that only a "handful" of U.S. troops may leave the country in July 2011, when a withdrawal is due to begin.

link: Robert Gates says Afghanistan withdrawal will be gradual - latimes.com

The ink isn't even dry yet, is it? On that peace prize?

Because just what the hell

BAGHDAD -- Even as the U.S. military scrambles to support a troop surge in Afghanistan, it is donating passenger vehicles, generators and other equipment worth tens of millions of dollars to the Iraqi government.

Under new authority granted by the Pentagon, U.S. commanders in Iraq may now donate to the Iraqis up to $30 million worth of equipment from each facility they leave...

Some of the items that commanders may now leave behind, including passenger vehicles and generators, are among what commanders in Afghanistan need most urgently, according to Pentagon memos.

link: U.S. leaves in Iraq equipment that it may need in Afghanistan

The sky is falling, OMG!

Officials gather in Copenhagen this week for an international climate summit, but business leaders are focusing even more on Washington, where the Obama administration is expected Monday to formally declare carbon dioxide a dangerous pollutant....

An EPA endangerment finding "could result in a top-down command-and-control regime that will choke off growth by adding new mandates to virtually every major construction and renovation project," U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Thomas Donohue said in a statement....

link: Business Fumes Over Carbon Dioxide Rule - WSJ.com

Please, Chamber of Commerce, save us from certain doom! Or, alternatively, go soak your head.

See this, dude?

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration, buoyed by a resurgent Wall Street, plans to cut the projected long-term cost of the Troubled Asset Relief Program by more than $200 billion, in a move that could smooth the way for the introduction of a new jobs program.

link: Estimated TARP Cost Is Cut by $200 Billion - WSJ.com

What have I been telling you all this time? Ninety-nine percent of the world's problems could be solved by just finding a better accountant. A better accountant could just make them disappear.

Poof.

Look, next time something is almost needless...

In a move that's sure to make Internet freedom advocates everywhere laugh out loud, Chinese government censors hard-pressed to stem the tide of porn are now offering to pay web users to go searching for it.

Almost needless to say, China's interest in pornography has swelled, in a manner of speaking.

link: Chinese censors pay public to surf for porn | Raw Story

...why don't we just round it off to needless and let it go at that. Although I can see how you might have been distracted.

In the right place at the right time

The Washington Post’s Alec MacGillis reports that the stimulus has been a boon for D.C.-area contractors. According to reports from stimulus recipients, federal agencies are paying contractors millions to help sort through applications for stimulus funding. “The money’s largely going to places where it’s always been going,” says a former government official. MacGillis reports: “Of stimulus grants and contracts awarded so far, the District has received nearly 10 times as much per capita as the national average.”

link: Jobless Rate Edges Down; White House Credits Stimulus - ProPublica

Don't look now but I think we're surrounded

SYDNEY – Two stars of the "I'm a Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here" television show have been charged with animal cruelty after allegedly killing and cooking a rat to eat during filming.

link: Rat cooking lands TV show in hot water - Yahoo! News

Internet time

Bart Decrem, chief executive of Tapulous, a start-up company that publishes musical rhythm games, recalls the early days...

link: App Store Is a Game Changer for Apple and Cellphone Industry - NYTimes.com

We're talking, here, about the early days of the iPhone which was, what, three years ago now? Or possibly four?

From the excellent archives of the Progressive Review

SEX , CRIME & THE CAPITAL: Sex , crime and politics in Washington DC. A Progressive Review archive

JIC you haven't had enough.

OK, wait, could we maybe just talk this over here?

URGENT - WINTER WEATHER MESSAGE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE TAUNTON MA 1226 PM EST SAT DEC 5 2009 ...FIRST PLOWABLE SNOWFALL OF THE SEASON FOR MUCH OF SOUTHERN NEW ENGLAND LATE TODAY AND ESPECIALLY TONIGHT...

link: AccuWeather.com

How is this necessary, really?

We thought what we did mattered...

A Eulogy for Old-School Newsrooms

They were loud, chaotic and politically incorrect. They weren’t very diverse. But they sure were full of journalistic passion--and fun...

link: A Eulogy for Old-School Newsrooms | American Journalism Review

I was proud to be a member of "the shabby tribe of rapscallions and reformists." It was incredibly challenging and difficult work, but also a helluva lot of fun. If you weren't there, you really wouldn't understand; if you were there, you are lucky indeed.

-Paul Knue

Global heat

Copenhagen Mayor Ritt Bjerregaard sent postcards to city hotels warning [climate] summit guests not to patronize Danish sex workers during the upcoming conference. Now, the prostitutes have struck back, offering free sex to anyone who produces one of the warnings.

link: Gropenhagen Conference: Prostitutes Offer Free Climate Summit Sex - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International

But who's counting?

There are 68,000 U.S. troops and 42,000 from other countries in Afghanistan. The U.S. Army's recently revised counterinsurgency manual estimates that an all-out counterinsurgency campaign in a country with Afghanistan's population would require about 600,000 troops.

link: Obama plans to send 34,000 more troops to Afghanistan | McClatchy

But not today

In the film, "The Day After Tomorrow," the world gets gripped in ice within the span of just a few weeks. Now research now suggests an eerily similar event might indeed have occurred in the past.

Looking ahead to the future, there is no reason why such a freeze shouldn't happen again...

link: Earth could plunge into sudden ice age - LiveScience- msnbc.com

Before I set out for downtown this morning I checked my weather widget and it was registering 59 degrees and sunny (the sun I could see through the window and yes, I actually looked). Now, early afternoon, the sun's gone but the temp is 62. This must be spring!

But...but...but...

KABUL (Reuters) – The commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan reassured top officials on Thursday that Washington was not planning an early exit, part of a charm offensive to sell President Barack Obama's new strategy on three continents.

link: McChrystal tells Afghans U.S. not leaving yet - Yahoo! News

I can see how "we'll start leaving in 2011" squares with "we're not leaving any time soon," but how does "we're making your war bigger" become a charm campaign?

Obit for 2009 Bears

The 2009 Chicago Bears, a National Football League franchise, have passed away from playoff contention. The Bears are 89 years old.

Future NFL Hall of Fame candidate Brett Favre was on hand in Minneapolis, Minnesota to announce the Bears' time of death, 6:23 p.m. CST. Mr. Favre listed the official cause of death as "537 yards of total offense allowed," but Bears' authorities are still investigating.

link: RIP 2009 Chicago Bears - Leshock Value

Half a baby for you, half a baby for me...

Obama maps exit plan, says NYTimes.

WEST POINT, N.Y. — President Obama announced Tuesday that he would speed 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan in coming months, but he vowed to start bringing American forces home in the middle of 2011...

link: Obama Adds Troops, but Maps Exit Plan - NYTimes.com

But read down just a little further:

Senior administration officials suggested, however, that any initial withdrawal starting in mid-2011 could be very limited, depending on the military situation at that point.

In fact, withdrawing just one guy in 2011 would would fulfill that wimpy pledge and there was not a word, apparently (I haven't finished reading the speech) about when the so-called withdrawal would end.

In other words, no map at all, or none that I can see. A plan without a plan.

So he's saying there's a plan but not saying what the plan is (the righties would screech about giving away secrets to the enemy), and he's giving McChrystal troops but not all the troops he wanted (the lefties would screech about that, especially since Obama opposed Bush's "surge" in Iraq, or claimed he did). We all go home with half a baby here.

Except Obama. He goes home with his very own whole war.

I'm not sure which one...

...but I think one of those ribbons is for sitting around listening to Presidential speeches.

One-stop shopping for all your election needs

Diebold Inc. (DBD) has sold its money-losing U.S. election-systems business, just seven years after acquiring it amid hopes of rising demand for voting technology upgrades in the wake of the 2000 presidential election fiasco.

Diebold, whose main business is making automated teller machines, said Thursday it sold the voting-machine unit to privately held Election Systems & Software Inc. for $5 million, about one-fifth of what it paid in 2002.

link: ES&S Buys Premier (Diebold) Election Systems, for Near-Monopoly in U.S. Vote Count | Election Defense Alliance

ES&S, a private company, now controls something like 85% of all U.S. vote counting.

Keep your eye on the road

Glance away just for one short txt and you could wind up totaling a Toys "R" Us. They're popping up everywhere, it seems.

Known as “holiday express’’ shops, these stores are about 4,000 square feet, or roughly one-tenth the size of a regular Toys “R’’ Us, and are expected to stay open until mid-January.
-Boston Globe

Drive-by retailing seems to be a holiday trend, this year. Ho ho, and it's still November.

Who knew?

I knew it!

STOCKHOLM — A Hindu spirit is stalking the streets of Stockholm, armed with this Nordic capital’s latest fad: the nail bed.

link: Stockholm Journal - A Bed Where Comfort Is Not the Point - NYTimes.com

See, that's proof: Living in cold places freezes your brain.

Obama's LBJ moment

WASHINGTON – The White House says President Barack Obama is placing heavy emphasis on how the United States eventually will withdraw from Afghanistan even as he plans to announce a troop increase next week.

link: White House: Exit plan from Afghanistan is key - Yahoo! News

There will be light at the end of the tunnel Dec. 1.

Peace prize guy wants more troops

"President Barack Obama met Monday evening with his national security team to finalize a plan to dispatch some 34,000 additional U.S. troops over the next year to what he's called 'a war of necessity' in Afghanistan," officials purportedly told the newswire.

link: Obama to deploy 34,000 more troops to Afghanistan, report says | Raw Story

We were in a little classroom building next to the parade ground at Ft. Dix, NJ. We were there to listen to a presentation by an Army chaplain. Just before we filed into the classroom we'd been on the parade ground for bayonet drill, shouting "kill! kill! kill!" while stabbing dummies made of straw.

The chaplain asked, "Why do we have an Army?"

A guy in the back of the room stood up and said, rather enthusiastically, "To kill people."

"Oh no," said the chaplain. "It's to keep the peace."

On the parade ground, nobody was yelling "Peace! Peace!"

Seen at the Walgreens

Penny Candy - $1.99

Oh, never mind.

Ho freakin' Ho

The movie site, Hulu, has a selection of movies and TV re-runs labeled "Hulu for the Holidays," and one of the movies in that heartwarming category is called "So I Married an Axe Murder," described as an "offbeat, hatchet-driven romance...".

Yo, this is just tooo coool!

Former CNN host Lou Dobbs fueled already rampant speculation about his political future Monday, sending the clearest signals yet that he's mulling a bid for president — and leaving third-party political operatives salivating over the possibility of a celebrity recruit for the 2012 campaign.

link: Lou Dobbs mulls White House bid - Alexander Burns - POLITICO.com

I mean hey, can you dig it? Dobbs! Palin! And don't fergit Mitt! (Actually, this could be the plan: Get enough total wackjobs into the act and Mitt might start to look good. Is Huckabee still around? That Fred?)

I can't wait for 2012. The entertainment quotient will be off the charts.

I am shocked! Shocked!

Even with the stock market roaring back - the Dow Jones industrial average rose nearly 133 points yesterday, for instance, and the Standard & Poor’s 500 index is up more than 60 percent since March - ordinary investors are not reaping the benefits of the rally.

link: As market surges, many can’t afford to hop back in - The Boston Globe

One day you look up and...

P1000268, originally uploaded by tedcompton.

...damn. Look, you gotta admit that these cold, dark, damp November days get pretty depressing. And as soon as the ground gets covered with white (yeah, it's coming, sooner or later it is) there won't be even a spot of color left anywhere on the planet, or at least in Gfld, MA. All the houses are painted gray and everybody wears brown, or black. It's grim. (After a few days it's also grime, but I'm trying not to think about that.)

News at 11 - next week sometime

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama will announce his decision on whether to send more U.S. troops to Afghanistan "within days" after he held a final strategy session with top aides, the White House said on Tuesday.

link: Obama to announce Afghanistan decision within days - Yahoo! News

Next Tuesday maybe says Reuters. Enjoy your turkey, turkey.

Everybody's doing it

Change I can believe in, not

RW: Nobody has guaranteed all Americans good quality, affordable health care. There’s no question that, under the bill, underinsurance will remain a very substantial problem. Bankruptcies will still continue. People will be paying nineteen percent of their income out-of-pocket on health care—even people with subsidies. This is going to take a toll when you’re falling farther and farther behind every year. I’m very, very concerned with the issue of underinsurance.

link: Ron Wyden Speaks Out : CJR

The RW here is Ron Wyden, a U.S. Senator from Oregon. I don't know if he's an R or a D and I don't care.

Every word I read about this health care fiasco and it's so-called public option makes me more grateful for my own commiefascist government health care plan because, as far as I can see, it is the only game in town.

Where your oil money goes

It's a Mercedes Benz owned by an Abu Dhabi
oil billionaire (naturally).

Featuring the newly developed V10 quad turbo
with 1,600 horsepower and 2800nm of torque
0-100km/h in less than 2secs, 1/4 mile in 6.89secs
running on bio-fuel.

That is NOT stainless steel, people; it is WHITE GOLD!

-Noted by Door County Charlie

Going to the dogs

IMG_0254, originally uploaded by tedcompton.

Speaking of which, I was updating my iPhone apps (one of the best things about the iPhone and its attendant publicity is that one can finally say the word, "apps," right out loud) and I was reminded (speaking of iPhone apps) you have to swear you are of legal age to download the American Heritage Dictionary because, presumably, the language is just all full of naughty words. Shit.

You mean, not everybody gets a bonus this year?

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- A growing number of states reported rising jobless rates in October, and thirteen states reported unemployment rates above the national average of 10.2%, according to a government report released on Friday.

Overall, jobless rates increased in 29 states and the District of Columbia last month, while they fell in 13 states, according to a monthly Labor Department survey on state unemployment.

link: State unemployment rates rise - Nov. 20, 2009

Lots of goodness here

11 Awesomely Creative Billboards (PHOTOS)

History is dead

It seems this is the cover of Beck's latest book.

Meanwhile, in one of the most hilariously funny, scream-out-loud terrifying graphs ever printed in a daily newspaper, the NYTimes' Brian Stelter reports:

Glenn Beck, the popular and outspoken Fox News host, says he wants to go beyond broadcasting his opinions and start rallying his political base — formerly known as his audience — to take action.

Yeah, I bet

OAK BLUFFS - For year-round residents of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, it was an eagerly anticipated rite of fall: On the Saturday before Thanksgiving, two proudly independent communities tussled for bragging rights in the season-ending high school football matchup....

Vineyard native Emmett Carroll, 65, who ran the Menemsha Texaco station for years, remembers how the games united his island: “Nothing accentuated that more than going to Nantucket. And if we won, it was pretty exciting, coming out of the ferry with the fire trucks blazing.’’

link: For islanders, this was The Game - The Boston Globe

Who doesn't love a blazing fire truck?

Go figure!

The median list price for a bunionectomy (the surgical removal of a bunion) is $21,616 at The Oak Brook Surgical Centre but just $3,516 at the Hinsdale Surgical Center.

link: Hospital report cards: Illinois Web site with prices, quality ratings and more will launch Thursday -- chicagotribune.com

Well, sorry, you have to know something about the Chicago 'burbs to appreciate this one. Not to mention, there is probably someplace downstate where it costs $8.99.

YAME's homemaking tip of the month

OK, year. Decade? Would you believe decade?

If you are going to make stew you will need more than just some meat.

Or, to put it another way, if you insist on making up your menus at the grocery store it would be a good idea to turn the iPod off.

Because, Bunky, I'm just saying, if you come home without the veggies you ain't gonna have no stew.

Unless, of course, you already have some veggies which, in point of fact, I do: A carrot.

Sigh.

Wait, I thought that got you through customs every time

LOS ANGELES - Federal officials say they arrested a man who strapped 15 live lizards to his chest to get through customs at Los Angeles International Airport.

link: Authorities: Man tied lizards to chest at airport | Weird News | Wichita Eagle

Guess not.

And yeah, I saw that flea bite that elephant, I kid you not

Poll: More than half of Republicans believe ACORN stole '08 election

link: NY conservative blames ACORN ‘tampering’ for loss to Democrat | Raw Story

Frost on the windshields this morning, ho ho

Bunky, there's one little chore I won't be doing this winter: Standing out in the driveway on an icy-cold, windy, sleeting, still-almost-dark morning trying to scrape a coat of ice from the windshield. Ha!

It was only 25º this morning when I went out for a walk (which, by the way, is strictly just between us, the walking thing, I don't want to ruin my reputation and anyway the only reason I did it was because I was out of coffee and had to go get more which qualifies as a real emergency, doesn't it?) and now, pushing noon, it's still only 44º, which is beginning to look like a new low in highs.

Meanwhile, in a transparent play for more American tourists...

...Finnair, Finland’s biggest airline, has a new idea for attracting frequent flyers: free plastic surgery in exchange for air miles.

Breast implants, hair replacement surgery or a face-lift performed by the Nordstroem Hospital in Helsinki are among the newest offerings in the carrier’s Finnair Plus loyalty service, according to the program’s Web site.

link: Finnair offers free plastic surgery - Hurriyet Daily News and Economic Review

(H/T Catherine)

367

You might think...

KABUL (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama aims to bring the Afghan war to an end before he leaves office, he said on Wednesday, the eve of a swearing-in ceremony Western officials hope can help salvage Hamid Karzai's tattered reputation.

link: Obama vows Afghan exit; battered Karzai to take oath - Yahoo! News

...it's Karai's swearing-in that's supposed to rescue his reputation, or at least rescue it enough to gratify Western officials, but no...

The centerpiece will be Karzai's inauguration speech, with Western officials hoping to hear a specific program to combat graft, improve performance and limit the influence of warlords.

...it's a speech everyone's all excited about because, as we should all know by now, everything's in the spin.

An amusing exchange

Blockbuster Employee of the Month

-Passed along by Paul Knue

Never fall asleep in a tattoo parlor

How else do you explain Kenyon Martin's lips? Not the lips on his face -- the lips on his neck. They're fire-hydrant-red women's lips, smooching there for all time, a permahickey.

link: The Life of Reilly -- Rick Reilly -- The odd, often-confusing culture of the athlete tattoo - ESPN

And then, notes Cub Reporter Paul Knue, there's a fighter named Melvin Costa.

Written in elaborate scroll underneath his belly button, it says -- and may God take my eyesight if I'm lying -- "I Have A Small Penis."

"I really don't get this whole tattoo thing," Knue adds.

Chalk one up for "social networking"

Social networking saved the day for Bethany Thomas and Dmitri Zagidulin, newlyweds who were stranded in Germany after Expedia wrongly told them that they didn’t need visas for their Russian honeymoon, reported USA Today on November 6th.

link: Social Networking Saves Couple Stranded Without Visas

-Thanks to Catherine

Sarah redux

SARAH PALIN, a onetime beauty queen, a mother of five, the Republican candidate for vice president in 2008, and the former governor of Alaska, has a new incarnation: author.

link: Op-Ed Contributor - In the Wilderness, a New Frontier - NYTimes.com

"Argghh! Make it stop," notes our Midwest bureau chief.

Your money or your life

Even as drug makers promise to support Washington’s health care overhaul by shaving $8 billion a year off the nation’s drug costs after the legislation takes effect, the industry has been raising its prices at the fastest rate in years.

link: Drug Makers Raising Prices Before Reform - NYTimes.com

Are you reaching for my wallet or are you just...?

[General Motors] says it will begin repaying $6.7 billion in U.S. government loans with a $1.2 billion payment in December. It could pay off the full amount by 2011, four years ahead of schedule, but the money will come from funds loaned by the government.

link: GM reports $1.2B loss, says it shows progress - Yahoo! News

[Emphasis mine]

Apple hijacks your Mac?

...Apple is seeking a patent for technology that displays advertising on almost anything that has a screen of some kind: computers, phones, televisions, media players, game devices and other consumer electronics.

link: Digital Domain - Apple Wouldn’t Risk Its Cool Over an Ad Gimmick, Would It? - NYTimes.com

-Noted by Midwest Bureau Chief Phil Compton

Noted

Wednesday, November 11 is Veterans Day.

-From an USA.gov email dated November 15

Appreciation: Jim Knippenberg

Knip, 63, who took a buyout and retired a year ago, could do anything. He was a columnist, entertainment editor, features writer and a department head at various times.

He knew everybody. And how to reach them. (When he left the paper, co-workers demanded his two overstuffed Rolodex files and put them in a secure place.)

link: Appreciation: Jim Knippenberg | cincinnati.com | Cincinnati.Com

Knip was a good guy who lived hard -- and fully -- and died fairly young. There's something to be said for that.

He was a friend -- he was one of those rare people who was considered a friend by every one he knew -- even though we spent our careers on opposite sides. We even raised a few pints together, something Knip did with all of his friends who, of course, were legion.

There are many wonderful and funny stories about Knip, most of which have the added benefit of being true. But most of them will never be told completely or candidly in the traditional media. Simply because they can't.

Take the tale told at the end of this tribute. Humorous, but incomplete. Here's the real story:

Knip -- who most likely had an alternative lifestyle, if you know what I mean -- was waiting outside of his office after a harried day for a friend to pick him up. A very similar sporty little Mercedes (Knip lived well for an ink-stained wretch. It happens.) stopped in traffic in front of him. Absentmindedly, the Little Knipper jumps in and exclaims: "Fuck me. I need a drink." The stranger behind the wheel doesn't miss a beat.

"So I fuck you and I give you a drink," she says. "Do I at least get a cigarette afterward?"

Mortified, our hero identifies himself as the equally over-the-top columnist for the Other Paper, apologizes, and runs as fast as a life-long smoker can.

And that's the whole story as told by one of the most colorful and enjoyable people I've ever known. He was one of the good guys who made everyone smile when he entered the room. Rest in peace, old friend.

-Paul Knue