June 08, 2008
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June 06, 2008
ALLIED EXPEDITIONARY FORCE
Soliders, Sailors, Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force!
You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.
Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely.
But this is the year 1944! Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs 1940-41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats, in open battle, man-to-man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our Home Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together toward Victory!
I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty, and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full Victory!
Good luck! And let us beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.
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June 05, 2008
TAKE THE FREAKIN' SUMMER OFF!
In case that wasn't clear enough, let me explain my thinking. You people have been bombarding the American public with your political campaigning for over a year now. I don't think I'm out of line when I claim to speak for the majority of people who are SICK TO EFFIN' DEATH of your incessant campaigning. We are tired of entire newscasts being devoted to breathless reporting on whatever campaign-related faux pas video appeared on YouTube today while real news that's happening elsewhere gets short shrift. We are weary of rumors that float around the campaigns being reported as fact. We are just plain freakin' exhausted with all of this crap. WE CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE!
This, of course, says nothing of the fact that most of us are appalled at how much money candidates need to raise to keep on BUGGING US! Do us a favor, please, just take the summer off, would you? Let us sit on the front porch with an ice cream cone without having to dodge your volunteers, who get a bit testy if you tell them you don't want to talk to them. Have your private fundraisers, where no media is allowed, so we don't have to hear about it. Stop with the stump speeches---no one's listening anyway. Just leave us ALONE for a few months. You'll save money because you won't be running a campaign no one's paying attention to anyway. Stop with the blabbering, and take a vacation. Your vocal chords could undoubtedly use the rest.
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June 02, 2008
Posted by: Kathy at
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{...}Mrs O'Boyle, 64, had been receiving state-funded treatment - including chemotherapy - for colon cancer.But when she took cetuximab, a drug which promised to extend her life but is not available on the NHS, her health trust made her start paying for her care.
{...}Mrs O'Boyle, an NHS occupational therapist, is believed to be the first person to die after being denied free care because of 'co-payment', where a patient tops up treatment by paying privately for extra drugs.
Co-payment was blocked last year by Health Secretary Alan Johnson because he claimed it would create a two-tier Health Service.
{...}Mrs O'Boyle was operated on in January last year for colon cancer and the doctors found it had spread to her stomach lining.
The former NHS assistant occupational therapist, who has three sons, twins Gerald and Anthony, 37, and Mark, 33, as well as grandchildren Luke, four, Finn, three, Jemima, two and Darcey, two, then had six weeks of chemotherapy.
She continued with this until September last year when she and her husband were told the devastating news there was little more doctors could do.
However, her consultant recommended-Cetuximab, which could extend her life. But it is available on the NHS only in Scotland, not in England and Wales.
It is one of many medicines the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence denies to some patients because of cost.
Mrs O'Boyle's decision to take it meant she and her husband had to spend £11,000 over two months for care from Southend University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. {...}
Nice, huh? A lifetime of taxes to pay for a health care system that actually employed this woman and her husband, only to be betrayed in the end because she was willing to pay out of pocket for a few more months on this Earth. She wasn't looking for a cure. She knew that was beyond her. She was simply looking for a palliative treatment which could extend her life a bit. Just a bit.
She was asked, "How badly do you want to live?" And she replied that she wanted just a few more months with her family. She paid the price for a drug that wasn't available under universal healthcare, and she did it gladly, only to be smacked with a frozen mackerel in the end. Her actions would create a "two tier" health care system, and that, apparently, cannot be allowed, because that would mean she wasn't receiving lowest common denominator health care, like everyone else does with the NHS, and the NHS cannot stand that. She thought she had the right to choose what her healthcare was worth to her, and that she wasn't going to be penalized for her decision. One would suspect, with universal healthcare, that that would be a reasonable assumption. Unfortunately, it wasn't.
And yet this atrocious system is what some people would have us install here in the US. This is what some people want because their health insurance premiums are too high, and they would prefer not to have to pay them, but would rather let the government run things. It's tidier in theory, but absolutely disgusting in practice.
Again, how badly do you want to live?
Governments with nationalized healthcare systems don't want to give their citizens a choice. Patients are blackmailed, ultimately, into going with the lowest common denominator treatment if the the choice is between that or nothing at all because they don't have spare millions on hand to pay for private care.
I know I harp on rather a lot about my cancer experience, but I don't think I've ever mentioned what Dr. Academic told me one time, about what my treatment would have been if I lived in Italy. During the course of the staging controversy, we were told by my original oncologist that I would have to undergo three treatments of chemotherapy, instead of the six I'd been told originally. The reason for this was that a new study had come out, advocating three treatments for women with my stage of ovarian cancer, instead of six, because they hadn't been able to find any added benefit, when contrasted with the risks, to the extra three treatments. However, when I was transferred over to Dr. Academic, he said, if I had to have treatment (which he wasn't sure about at that point in time because of the evidence he had in front of him) I would have to have the dreaded six treatments, because he didn't think the study the original oncologist had quoted was a very good study on the whole---and he would know, as he was on the board of the organization which published the study. He said that the group members had been polled and over ninety percent of them hadn't thought it a good study, either---and weren't going to use it as a treatment recommendation. He said that the reason for this disconnect was that to make the study's results all the more powerful, they had let in to the statistical pool ovarian cancer diagnoses from places like Italy and Japan, for example, and Dr. Academic scoffed at their inclusion. He said their participation had ruined the study---because they hadn't followed the protocol precisely, as in, the surgeries hadn't been completed in the proscribed manner and as a result, had skewed the results. He said, after he'd dropped this bomb, that if I'd been living in Italy, with my cancer, all they would have done was the surgery. After all, that meant I would have a 70% survival rate for five years, which is nothing to sneeze at, particularly if you look at the statistics for things like pancreatic cancer, which has a 2% survival rate. But with a round of "precaution" chemo, just to make sure everything was cleaned out, my five year survival rate was boosted to 93%.
Which would you rather have?
Pretty easy choice, isn't it, even with the knowledge that you'd have to go through the extended hell that is chemo to get those extra percentage points.
The reason for this move by the Italians, Dr. Academic explained, was that the national healthcare system had deemed the chemo was too expensive in light of the "limited" benefit it brought about in cases like mine. That's what we're talking about in terms of nationalized healthcare systems. A world where twenty-three whole survival percentage points are a benefit that's not worth the costs incurred. Quite frankly, this is the difference between recurring and not---and if ovarian cancer recurs, well, that's what the cause of death will be. It's sad, but it's true. So the goal, for women like me, is to make sure at the start that we have the best chances possible NOT to recur. That means a standardized protocol of precaution chemo. This is the standard of care here in the US. But not in Italy. How many Italian women, who were diagnosed with my stage of ovarian cancer, have recurred, and received, ultimately, a death sentence, because their government was too cheap to give them precautionary treatment in the first place?
Your life in a nationalized health care system has a fixed price attached to it, and if your cost of treatment exceeds that fixed price you're out of luck. Which, if you ask me, is the equivalent of a state-run eugenics program.
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, 
), 
, In reply, I shall call with a Noun...
and I shall raise with some adverbs.
That ought to keep you going this fine Monday morning.
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May 31, 2008
Anyway, today, as I mentioned, was gorgeous, but a little before six pm CDT, I noticed the sky was going dark gray. Everything went still around six, and then, about five after, all hell broke loose. The wind howled. The rain poured, and completely overwhelmed our gutters, bypassing the downspouts on both sides of the house, but, most importantly, I experienced something I'd never experienced before: a hail storm that lasted longer than five minutes.
Want to see what that sort of wreckage looks like?
Here's the steps on the front porch
Here's a quarter, for scale
Here's my freakin' shredded hosta. One of them. Everything's pretty much trashed.
Here's the street...all flooded and icy on the last day of May
See the tents in the distance? That's the Art Fair. The poor bastards. I'm fairly certain they closed early today. Again. Just like yesterday, because there was another storm then as well. Quite frankly, with the amount of wind, ice and water, I'm amazed that any of those tents are standing.
Some dude crossing the street in not the best choice of available footwear. That had to be cold.
At the time of this writing, it's 7:43 CDT. There is STILL hail on the grass and the sidewalks. Because the front came through, it broke the warmth and we dropped, oh, about fifteen degrees in five minutes. As the ground is warm, and the air is cold---we have a nice fog settling in. According to radar, there's another round coming in later. GOOD TIMES!
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May 30, 2008
Everyone seems to be posting Blazing Saddles clips in tribute, so I shall go another way. I humbly present "Went With the Wind," The Carol Burnett Show's parody of Gone With the Wind.
Perhaps these clips don't showcase Harvey's talents directly, but the sketch simply would not have worked without him. It just wouldn't have. His Clark Gable impersonation is DEAD ON PERFECT.
I just don't know what to say, other than watch the clips and see him in action. And if you're really looking for something to while away the time, go surfing on YouTube. You'll laugh---and you'll laugh hard. That, perhaps, is the best tribute one could offer, and I'm sure he'd have liked that. Because, if nothing else, it's pretty obvious Harvey reveled in a good laugh.
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May 29, 2008
I thought I'd post it, just in case you were looking for your one hundred and second way to cook chicken. And, as it's a grill recipe, the seasonal timing is perfect. (For those of us who live in the Northern Hemisphere, anyway.)
Misted Ginger Chicken
Makes one chicken
Combine in a bowl:
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 tablespoon fresh grated ginger
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon fresh minced thyme
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
Minced zest of one lemon
In a spray bottle, pour one bottle/can of ginger beer or really good ginger ale.
Spread the rub on the chicken bits (in the actual recipe, they call for a whole chicken, split on the backbone, with each breast, thigh, wing, and leg neatly folded into two, easily grilled bits, but as I had plenty of chicken in the freezer and none of it was in whole-form, I simply used the bits and bobs from a fryer.), making sure to spread the rub under the skin and on top of the skin.
Grilling the chicken is a bit of an adventure, because they call for you to use a technique called "indirect grilling" by which you place the chicken bits around the edge of the grill, and not directly on top of the flame. This takes longer, but the results, I guarantee you, are worth the extra time involved.
Place the chicken bits on the grill, away from the heat source, and don't move them for the entire cooking time. You don't need to flip them at all, as they will cook nicely without your efforts. All you need to do is, every ten or fifteen minutes, mist them with the spray bottle of ginger beer/ale to keep the skin moist, and to flavor it. The ginger ale/beer lightly carmelizes under the heat and provides a nice flavor and crispiness to the skin. And that's it. That's all you have to do.
It took about forty minutes or so to cook two thighs and three legs. If you cook the breasts, I would suspect it would take a bit longer, simply because most chickens nowadays have huge boobs. But the flavor of the ginger entirely transformed the chicken. To paraphrase the husband, most chicken dishes taste like, well, chicken, and don't transform into anything new. The ginger brought a entirely different flavor out of the chicken. He enjoyed it tremendously, particularly because I served it with the first of the sweet corn I could find, and a salad. It was a nice, light supper on a warm day.
Highly recommended.
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May 28, 2008
Posted by: Kathy at
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MENOPAUSE SUCKS!
Posted by: Kathy at
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May 27, 2008
Why am I not surprised that this is a GOP sponsored contest?
Hmmmm?
For more information, go here.
Posted by: Kathy at
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After making his billions, Mr. Berggruen, 46, lost interest in acquiring things: They didnÂ’t satisfy him, and in fact had become something of a burden. So he started paring down his material life, selling off his condo in New York, his mansion in Florida and his only car. He hatched plans to leave his fortune to charity and his art collection to a new museum in Berlin.For him, wealth is about lasting impact, not stuff.
“Everybody is different and I think that we live in a material world,” he told me. “But for me, possessing things is not that interesting. Living in a grand environment to show myself and others that I have wealth has zero appeal. Whatever I own is temporary, since we’re only here for a short period of time. It’s what we do and produce, it’s our actions, that will last forever. That’s real value.”
When I pressed him on why he no longer got much enjoyment from acquiring more “things,” he said this: “First, I don’t need it. Secondly, maybe in a bizarre kind of way, I don’t want to be dependent on it or have the responsibility. I don’t get that much enjoyment out of saying ‘I own it.’ ”{...}
Curious.
Because when I say I don't have a problem not owning a car right now, particularly when gas prices are as high as they are, people freak out---and they do freak out, and in the process wind up treating me like a freak. They can't get their heads around the notion that you could live without one. Then they quiz you incessantly about how you manage to survive, whilst they're not very subtly trying to suss out the "real" reason you don't have a car. Or haven't bought a house, or whatever else it might be that they own and you don't.
I wonder if his billionaire cronies give him shit for not having a mansion and a Ferrari. Or if they simply let him be "eccentric." Because if they do let him off the hook, well, that would be something different, wouldn't it? Because it doesn't seem like middle class people let you off the hook if you choose not to follow the same thirty-year payment plan that they do.
Because, if you're not wealthy, I guarantee you, there is no such thing as "eccentric." There's "crazy" and "bat shit loco."
You can probably guess what most people think I am when I tell them I get around by bus and rent the Cake Eater pad, instead of paying a mortgage on a depreciating house.
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May 24, 2008
The pictures didn't come across and the formatting is hash, but they're now available.
(You have no idea what a pain in the ass this was.)
Posted by: MRN aka "The Husband" at
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May 23, 2008
I waited nineteen years for this piece of shit?
Posted by: Kathy at
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{...}Now comes the airline service equivalent of End Days. Yesterday, American Airlines announced it will charge $15 for the first checked bag – a once sacrosanct free service.The nation's largest carrier, which will impose the fee starting June 15, said it will also raise fees for such things as reservation help and oversized bags, and lay off workers and cut domestic flights by up to 12 percent.
That's on top of American's decision last month to join other major carriers in charging $25 for checking a second bag.{...}
Look, I don't fly American. Ever. How could I? Northworst has MSP International Airport locked up, hence there really are very few American flights coming and going from here, but this is freakin' ridiculous? $15 to check a bag? The first bag, not the second bag, which they'll charge you $25 for having the GALL to think you could pack a second set of flip-flops and some extra beach towels for your trip to the seaside.
Who do these people think they are?
Look, it is not the customer's fault that American Airlines hedged their fuel costs erroneously. It's not the customer's fault that they still---still!---think that they can keep their business in business by following an outdated business model wherein they charge business travelers an arm and a leg and, somehow, that will keep the whole shebang afloat. Somehow, some airlines---gee, I wonder who they might be---managed to lock in their fuel prices at a decent rate, and they're still managing to make money with oil at $130 a barrel. Not as much money as before, but they're still up and running and NOT charging their customers---you know, the people who fund their largesse---$15 to check a bag.
I can understand cost cutting/revenue enhancing maneuvers in so far as they actually help the business they're trying to run. Cutting underwhelming routes is something I can understand. But I fail to see how, if American actually goes ahead with this cockamamie scheme, pissing off their customers by charging for something that used to be free is going to help them out in the long run. Because, ahem, if your customers are so pissed off that they refuse to fly your airline, you're not really going to make $15 for each bag that's not checked, are you?
It's one thing to charge for extras, like booze, or even---dare I say it?---food. But many would argue that a checked bag---particularly after the airlines' massive push toward checking bags after 9/11---is a necessity. People have gotten used to the new security requirements. They plan ahead. And since it's been no problem to check bags, and it's actually been encouraged, how does this change that scenario? People can only cut back so much, ya dig? They can cut back from two to one, but from one to a carry-on? What kind of problems is that move going to create? For one, I forsee many a delayed departure, with more gas being guzzled by idling planes, because all the overhead compartments are full and they have to figure out how to stow all the bags that won't fit. That's really going to help with fuel costs now, isnt' it?
When will these people learn?
And if they go crying to the government, to bail them out again, like after 9/11, I say let them rot. If the airlines cannot figure out how to make a buck in leaner times, then sayonara, boys! I don't care anymore. Which is appropriate, because the airlines patently don't care about me, or my needs, as a paying customer. They just want my cash---actual passengers and the luggage they bring with them seem to be something of an inconvenience to them.
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Most likely not safe for work for language. Use some headphones.
Death by tray it shall be!
Do You Have a Flag?
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May 22, 2008
Good God. I'm tweaked.
C'mon Kath. You know what a cautious fellow I am.
And that's precisely the problem here.
The lure of one of my childhood heroes coming back to the screen for the first time since I was fresh out of high school. Of course I'm going to go and see it. I have to go and see it. I can't avoid it. This is the equivalent of the husband missing the Star Wars prequels. I know it's probably going to suck, diminishing the entire series in the meantime, but I can't freakin' help myself. I MUST go and be reaquainted with Indy. Even though I know it will probably disappoint me terribly.
Sigh.
I have a bit of a confession to make: I actually wrote an Indiana Jones screenplay. Back in 1997. Well before they ever started talking about a sequel. It was one of my first forays into writing, and while I actually had no clue as to how to put a screenplay together (and still really don't, despite reading many books on the subject), I recently found it again, and I have to admit, it wasn't that bad. Except for the fact that a. I couldn't come up with a decent artifact and b. it lacks an ending. I set it in the summer of 1953 and the plot was centered around the young Shah of Iran. If you're not familiar with that point in time, it was pivotal in modern Iranian history, as Mohammed Mussadeq led the Iranian Majlis or parliament, to nationalize the Iranian oil industry. This shut down the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, which did not please, to say the least, the Tory party of Winston Churchill and future Prime Minister, Anthony Eden. They enlisted the help of the Einsenhower Administration, and the Brothers Dulles, to do something about that pesky Mussadeq, who was proving incredibly popular in Iran, thus weakening the Shah. Alan Dulles sent in Kermit Roosevelt, grandson of Teddy, to foment a military coup, to keep the Shah on the throne (because that was iffy at that point in time) and to marginalize (and that's a nice way of putting it) Mussadeq. Ultimately, Roosevelt was successful and, in the process, actually managed, to reassure the Shah that the Western powers were behind him, to get the British Government to have Big Ben strike the hour erroneously. (Yes, that's where the Bond people got that from. It actually happened.) The BBC World Service still, to this very day, begins every hour of programming with the chiming bells of Big Ben. When the bells rang one more time than was necessary, the Shah was assured of their intentions to keep him on the throne.
But I digress. While, ultimately, the Shah was kept in place, at that point it was iffy in the extreme.
Indy, at the time, was not-so comfortably ensconced in his professorial duties, and had pretty much put his derring-do's behind him. Until, one day, at a conference in New York, he was confronted by a young history professor, the daughter of diplomats, who'd spent the years of WWII as a teenage OSS courier in Teheran, where her father was stationed. An envelope of photos---some of Indy, some of Marion---has anonymously been mailed to her. She doesn't know why, but by coincidence, she recognizes Indy at the conference and confronts him with the photos, wondering what the hell is going on.
And we're off.
The young woman, Kate, of course, was Indy and Marion's child. She had been put up for adoption by Abner, Marion's father, and Henry Sr., who had cleaned up Indy's mess, of which, Indy was unaware. (The whole thing started off with a young grad student Indy and Marion hooking up, Abner finding out about it and being, understandably, PISSED OFF about his daughter's deflowering. After an entertaining chase scene through 1920's Chicago, Abner caught up with young Indy, the metaphorical shotgun was wielded, and while he was initially willing to go along with the marriage scheme, because he truly was in love with Marion, Indy ultimately couldn't go through with the plan and bolted.) I came up with this cockamamie idea after watching and rewatching the Nepalese bar scene in Raiders, and wondering, ultimately, what the story was. So, because I never got an explanation, I made one up.
Fast forward through CIA intervention, Marion's being held hostage, Indy finally realizing he's procreated, promises of the return of the Ark to Indy wielded in exchange for help in finding an artifact the Shah desperately believes he needs to stay in power, the Russians being not so cool about this, Indy learning that modern airplanes (well, modern in 1953) have hydraulics and when they're shot to bits, it's kind of hard to control a plane, a trip to Persepolis to retrieve an artifact Darius the Great (I think. I don't really remember.)had brought back from Ancient Greece with him...and you have a morass of a screenplay that never really got anywhere. I tried not to throw the kitchen sink in there, but I couldn't quite help myself. I eventually gave up and consigned it to the scrapheap of failed ideas, of which I have plenty.
So, as you might imagine, I'm somewhat invested in viewing the new Indy. I want to know if my ideas were better. I wanted Indy to be extremely uncomfortable with the idea of having a daughter (who, of course, inherited Marion's hollow leg). I wanted Senior to be thrilled that he's finally allowed contact with his grandkid. I wanted Indy and Marion to hook back up, and for good. These were the ultimate goals of the film I envisioned, but I also wanted it to be the next goddamn Raiders. I didn't want it to suck. But it did. Badly. The original setting, and ideas might have been fairly decent, I needed help with the execution. I needed Lawrence Kasdan, and it was obvious I wasn't going to get him. I had all sorts of fantasies about how I would give the screenplay to an acquaintance who had moved to the Hamptons for a job, and he would, somehow, slip it to Spielberg. I was pathetic, and ultimately, it was pathetic. Besides, at that point in time Lucas was wrapped up in re-releasing the altered versions of Episodes IV, V, VI. Spielberg had, seemingly, moved on to bigger and better filmmaking, with Saving Private Ryan in his immediate future. And, most importantly, Harrison Ford had repeatedly said he had no intention of EVER revisiting Indiana Jones. It was unlikely, even if I had a. finished it and b. dramatically polished it up, that it would ever get made, so what was I wasting my time on? Hence, I gave up. Maybe I shouldn't have.
So, this thing HAD BETTER NOT SUCK. I am entirely worried that there are entirely too many reviews which list all its faults, but whose authors qualify their criticism with their overwhelming happiness that Indy is back. While I'm as happy as the next person that Indy is back (and that Marion is back, too.), I want his return to not have a sucky story attached to it. I do not want another Temple of Doom. I would prefer another Raiders, but that's unlikely, so I'll settle for something along the lines of Last Crusade. Something that leaves me with warm, fuzzy feelings for my favorite anti-hero.
But what the fuck am I saying? That makes me just as bad as the critics. How low have I, and others like me, let the bar drop when we say we just want Indy to come out alive. Fer chrissakes, I'm disgusted with myself for letting my expectations fall so low.
Alas, however, I shall hand over my nine dollars sometime over this long weekend, and I intend to vent my spleen if it, indeed, sucks.
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Numero Uno: Why Did The Chicken Cross the Road?
BARACK OBAMA:The chicken crossed the road because it was time for a CHANGE! The chicken wanted CHANGE!
JOHN McCAIN:
My friends, that chicken crossed the road because he recognized the need to engage in cooperation and dialogue with all the chickens on the other side of the road.
HILLARY CLINTON:
When I was First Lady, I personally helped that little chicken to cross the road. This experience makes me uniquely qualified to ensure -- right from Day One! -- that every chicken in this country gets the chance it deserves to cross the road. But then, this really isn't about me.......
DR. PHIL:
The problem we have here is that this chicken won't realize that he must first deal with the problem on 'THIS' side of the road before it goes after the problem on the 'OTHER SIDE' of the road. What we need to do is help him realize how stupid he's acting by not taking on his 'CURRENT' problems before adding 'NEW' problems.
OPRAH:
Well, I understand that the chicken is having problems, which is why he wants to cross this road so bad. So instead of having the chicken learn from his mistakes and take falls, which is a part of life, I'm going to give this chicken a car so that he can just drive across the road and not live his life like the rest of the chickens.
GEORGE W. BUSH:
We don't really care why the chicken crossed the road. We just want to know if the chicken is on our side of the road, or not. The chicken is either against us, or for us. There is no middle ground here.
ANDERSON COOPER - CNN:
We have reason to believe there is a chicken, but we have not yet been allowed to have access to the other side of the road.
JOHN KERRY:
Although I voted to let the chicken cross the road, I am now against it! It was the wrong road to cross, and I was misled about the chicken's intentions. I am not for it now, and will remain against it.
NANCY GRACE:
That chicken crossed the road because he's GUILTY! You can see it in his eyes and the way he walks.
PAT BUCHANAN:
To steal the job of a decent, hardworking American.
DR SEUSS:
Did the chicken cross the road? Did he cross it with a toad?
Yes, the chicken crossed the road, but why it crossed I've not been told.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY:
To die in the rain. Alone.
JERRY FALWELL:
Because the chicken was gay! Can't you people see the plain truth? That's why they call it the 'other side. Yes, my friends, that chicken is gay. And if you eat that chicken, you will become gay too. I say we boycott all chickens until we sort out this abomination that the liberal media white washes with seemingly harmless phrases like 'the other side. That chicken should not be crossing the road. It's as plain and as simple as that.
GRANDPA:
In my day we didn't ask why the chicken crossed the road. Somebody told us the chicken crossed the road, and that was good enough..
BARBARA WALTERS:
Isn't that interesting? In a few moments, we will be listening to the chicken tell, for the first time, the heart warming story of how it experienced a serious case of molting, and went on to accomplish its life long dream of crossing the road.
ARISTOTLE:
It is the nature of chickens to cross the road.
JOHN LENNON:
Imagine all the chickens in the world crossing roads together, in peace.
BILL GATES:
I have just released eChicken2007, which will not only cross roads, but will lay eggs, file your important documents, and balance your check book. Internet Explorer is an integral part of the Chicken. This new platform is much more stable and will never cra...#@&&;,^(C% ......... Reboot.
ALBERT EINSTEIN:
Did the chicken really cross the road, or did the road move beneath the chicken?
BILL CLINTON:
I did not cross the road with THAT chicken. What is your definition of chicken?
COLONEL SANDERS:
Did I miss one?
DICK CHENEY:
Where's my gun?
Personally, I think Einstein's contribution is quite clever.
The second, from dear friend Mel, who lives in Northern-ish England:
Working people frequently ask retired people what they do to make their days interesting.Well, for example, the other day my wife and I went to Worthing and went into a shop. We were only in there for about 5 minutes. When we came out, there was a cop writing out a parking ticket. We went up to him and said, 'Come on man, how about giving a senior citizen a break?' He ignored us and continued writing the ticket. I called him a Nazi turd. He glared at me and started writing another ticket for having worn tyres.
So my wife called him a Shithead . He finished the second ticket and put it on the windshield with the first. Then he started writing a third ticket.
This went on for about 20 minutes. The more we abused him, the more tickets he wrote.
Personally, we didn't care. We came into town by bus.
We try to have a little fun each day now that we're retired. It's important at our age...
Heh.
Posted by: Kathy at
08:55 AM
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May 19, 2008
Kathy and I long ago traded sets of keys to each other's blogs and every now and again one of us will come across in order to get something off our chests which, for whatever reason, might not be politic to post on our own site. With Kathy's kind indulgence, I'm going to do that right now.
My in-laws are soooooooooo crazy.
Chorus: How crazy are they?
I'll tell you. Here's what I discovered as they came through this weekend on their semi-annual migration from Floridah to New England:
First, the M-I-L has been fiddling with various fad diets for years and years now. Her latest trick, apparently, is to convince herself that she is allergic to virtually every kind of food and drink under the sun (including - yes, really - certain types of water), and to avoid consuming them.
In fact, the woman is no more allergic to most foods than I am and her new-found condition is the product of nothing but auto-suggestion. The punch line is that she has lost weight. The pragmatist in me simply shrugs and says, "Hey, if it works." The philosopher in me pulls out great hanks of my own hair in incredulous frustration.
Second, the F-I-L has never met a conspiracy theory he doesn't immediately swallow hook, line and sinker. JFK. Mary Magdalene. The Tri-Lateral Commission. The Japanese. The Chinese. The Arabs. The Mob. The CIA. Why he's not a Scientologist, I really can't say. The only time he and I have ever had anything approaching a real fight was the time over adult beverages when I assured him with all my heart that when Alan Greenspan looked at himself in the bathroom mirror in the morning, his first thought was not how he was going to screw the F-I-L that day.
The new one is that the government is deliberately trashing the economy and destroying the middle class. That way, you see, more and more people will have no choice but to enlist in the army, which is what the Military-Industrial Complex wants.
As Howard Dean might say, "Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaarrrrrgggghhhh!!!!"
Ah, that feels better!
Mind you, I don't dislike the In-laws. They are awfully decent people and they've been very good to us over the years. But they are crazy, and these manifestations of that craziness can be a bit trying some times. Hence the need to vent.
Thank you for your indulgence.
Posted by: Robert at
07:37 AM
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