April 01, 2004
--- Courtesy of the husband*
--- Courtesy of the husband*
Happiness and a spare.
Personally I much prefer "Prisoners of the Playtex Penitentiary."
Although, when they refer to Playtex, the first thought through my mind was not Playtex bras.
It was this.
*Just for the record. The husband claims he is more of a leg man than a
breast man. While he appreciates a fine set of mammary glands, he
always looks at the ankles first---or so he says. Sha. Whatever.
Happiness and a spare.
Personally I much prefer "Prisoners of the Playtex Penitentiary."
Although, when they refer to Playtex, the first thought through my mind was not Playtex bras.
It was this.
*Just for the record. The husband claims he is more of a leg man than a
breast man. While he appreciates a fine set of mammary glands, he
always looks at the ankles first---or so he says. Sha. Whatever.
Posted by: Kathy at
01:01 PM
| No Comments
| Add Comment
Post contains 86 words, total size 1 kb.
--- Ok, the new and
--- Ok, the new and improved A Small Victory is
up and running. While I will mourn the loss of Michele's political
commentary, I still like the fact she's turned it into a pop culture
blog. Last night she asked for homework.
More than happy to oblige, I posted this:
Shiny, happy songs that make you want to stick a fork in your
eardrum, eh?
Ok.
1. Anything from "Mary Poppins," particularly that damn spoonful of
sugar song
2. "My Heart Will Go On," Celine "I make myself vomit regularly and not
because I'm bulimic" Dion
3. "I Just Called To Say I Love You," Stevie Wonder. Stevie, what the
hell happened to you?
4. Anything by Elton John after he came out of the closet. Particularly
that "Candle in the Wind," piece o' crap.
5. "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun." Cyndi Lauper. 6. For the obligatory
"songs that mention jumping suck" category, we have "Jump," by Van
Halen and "Jump!" by The Pointer Sisters
7. Anything by Michael Jackson. EVER. And that includes the Jackson
Five, but specifically "The Man in the Mirror."
I think that's enough for now.
Happy to have vented, I shut down and went out to the living room to
eat the English chocolate that arrived with the postcard and watch TV.
This morning, wanting to see what everyone else had come up with, I
started scrolling through the comments and was surprised to see this
posted by Geezer---whoever the hell that may be.
Kathy: you obviously need a long, long vacation, somewhere completely out of sight and sound of any recording device...
... unless they're broadcasting a Mets game!
So much pain... so much pain.
No shit, Sherlock. Talk about stating the obvious.
I'm not going to touch the Mets thing with a ten foot pole. Mike Piazza is going to heal my pain? I think not.
up and running. While I will mourn the loss of Michele's political
commentary, I still like the fact she's turned it into a pop culture
blog. Last night she asked for homework.
More than happy to oblige, I posted this:
Shiny, happy songs that make you want to stick a fork in your
eardrum, eh?
Ok.
1. Anything from "Mary Poppins," particularly that damn spoonful of
sugar song
2. "My Heart Will Go On," Celine "I make myself vomit regularly and not
because I'm bulimic" Dion
3. "I Just Called To Say I Love You," Stevie Wonder. Stevie, what the
hell happened to you?
4. Anything by Elton John after he came out of the closet. Particularly
that "Candle in the Wind," piece o' crap.
5. "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun." Cyndi Lauper. 6. For the obligatory
"songs that mention jumping suck" category, we have "Jump," by Van
Halen and "Jump!" by The Pointer Sisters
7. Anything by Michael Jackson. EVER. And that includes the Jackson
Five, but specifically "The Man in the Mirror."
I think that's enough for now.
Happy to have vented, I shut down and went out to the living room to
eat the English chocolate that arrived with the postcard and watch TV.
This morning, wanting to see what everyone else had come up with, I
started scrolling through the comments and was surprised to see this
posted by Geezer---whoever the hell that may be.
Kathy: you obviously need a long, long vacation, somewhere completely out of sight and sound of any recording device...
... unless they're broadcasting a Mets game!
So much pain... so much pain.
No shit, Sherlock. Talk about stating the obvious.
I'm not going to touch the Mets thing with a ten foot pole. Mike Piazza is going to heal my pain? I think not.
Posted by: Kathy at
12:52 PM
| No Comments
| Add Comment
Post contains 323 words, total size 2 kb.
--- Lileks is en fuego.
--- Lileks is en fuego.
How will he bring our allies back to us? By waving the magic
ally-reassembling wand? No: by doing what they want us to do, not by
doing the things they don̢۪t. It̢۪s almost as if Kerry believes that
the point of a war is to have allies first and victory second. But I
think I know what he̢۪s doing. It̢۪s an appeal to those who always
say – always - that we “squandered†the goodwill of the world
after 9/11. But in certain quarters that “goodwill†was equal parts
pity, schadenfreude and the belief that we would now realize the errors
of our ways. And note how no one ever talks about how the Palestinian
Authority squandered the goodwill it got from the Oslo Accords. The
Squander, it would seem, is a bird unique to our nation, and we alone
are responsible for its care and feeding.
I want to write like Lileks when I grow up.
--- Nicholas Kristof is worried about genocide in Sudan, and the west's overall inability to stop genocide anywhere in Africa when it happens.
One lesson of the last dozen years is that instead of being purely
reactive, helpfully bulldozing mass graves after massacres, African and
Western leaders should try much harder to stop civil wars as they
start. The world is now facing a critical test of that principle in the
Darfur region of Sudan, where Arab militias are killing and driving out
darker-skinned African tribespeople. While the world now marks the 10th
anniversary of the Rwandan genocide and solemnly asserts that this must
never happen again, it is.
Some 1,000 people are dying each week in Sudan, and 110,000 refugees,
like Mr. Yodi, have poured into Chad. Worse off are the 600,000
refugees within Sudan, who face hunger and disease after being driven
away from their villages by the Arab militias.
Now, I can't really disagree with that statement, because it's the
humane thing to do, but since he's the one who brought up Sudan as his
prima facie evidence for more African intervention on the part of the
International Community, I'm going to have to go after him. Kristof
conveniently ignores what's been going on in Sudan for twenty
years---that the northern---Muslim---government has been trying to kill
off all the southerners. There's a civil war already
going on in Sudan. Not like you'd know about it because media coverage
is decidedly poor when it comes covering that continent: as far as the
media is concerned, well, Africa still should be titled "The Dark
Continent," because there sure as hell aren't any TV lights
illuminating the place. Easily half the continent's countries are
engaged in some sort of armed conflict right now. But does CNN cover
it? Nope. Martha Steward and Michael Jackson are much more important. I
digress. They're still fighting in Southern Sudan.
Despite a cease fire and a power sharing agreement between the northern
and southern factions. But Kristof declares the west should get more
involved---the United States in particular--- despite the fact we got
the two parties to the negotiating table after 9/11. In fact, President
Bush announced he was sending forth John Danforth to do something about
the problem in Sudan on 9/10.
Remember that? I'm sure you probably don't, but it's one of the most
tangible pieces of evidence that the Bush administration was doing
something about terrorism---and the countries that harbor said
terrorists---before 9/11. Sudan was the former home of such terrorist
luminaries as Illyich Ramirez Sanchez---aka Carlos the Jackal---and
Osama bin Laden. Carlos was caught and thrown into a French jail; Osama
fled when the Taliban took control in Afghanistan and offered him a
happy cave-dwelling existence in their country. Why the sudden change
of heart? Sudan had their hand slapped when Clinton sent thirteen
Tomahawk Cruise missiles carreering into a Khartoum aspirin factory.
This apparently was enough of a wakeup call for the Sudanese, who
promptly started ejecting terrorists from their borders. For once, it
seems, someone took the message correctly. The civil war in Sudan is
such a shame, because I truly believe if there was ever a country in
Africa that could not only survive, but thrive, it's this country. The
natural resources held within its borders are amazing. More oil than in
Saudi Arabia, scientists have estimated. But therein lies the problem:
the oil's down south, and the southerners don't like the northerners
very much and don't want them to have it. Not that I can blame them:
they tried to institute Shari'a on people who don't believe in Islam.
That's bound to rankle. The north, for the most part, is desert. What
arable land there once was in northern Sudan is being swallowed up by a
Sahara that seems to be marching at quick time. They need those
resources, so the prevailing theory that has ruled since Sudan became
independent of Great Britain back in the 1950's was to overwhelm the
rural southerners by means of war and to beat them into submission. And
maybe, just maybe they could convert a few to the ways of Muhammed in
the meanwhile. Despite the factions taking a few years off here and
there, you could argue that the civil war has been raging for almost
fifty years. The Bush Administration's involvement in Sudan has two
origins. First---stopping the north from harboring terrorists. They
followed the very rational assessment that if they worked to stop the
civil war, Sudan would become a stable regime. Second, there are more
than a few Christians in southern Sudan. Fundamentalist
Christians. The born-agains and their ilk have been busy converting
through the carrot and stick of humanitaritian aid for quite some time.
They wanted something done about the problem of slavery. Yep. You read
that right. Slavery. The capture of another human being and exploiting
them for free labor. This happens all the time in Sudan. Whether the
slaves be southern refugees who have fled to the relative safety of
Khartoum and are taken advantage of there, or if they were forcibly
removed from their homes and taken north makes no real distinguishable
difference in the matter: they're forced into slave labor. These
Christians were aligned with groups like Amnesty International (strange
bedfellows, eh?) to stop their brethren in southern Sudan from being
taken advantage of---and they lobbied for intervention on human rights
grounds. It's a non-starter to say which reasoning was stronger, but
either way it forced the two parties to get their collective asses to
the negotiating table to try and work it out. And all of it is due to
western intervention. So, for two years the northern government and the
SPLA---the Sudanese People's Liberation Army---have hashed their
differences out in Nairobi. They came to a power sharing agreement,
which went something like the south would have automomous rule over its
territories for six years, and then they could have a referendum if
they wanted to secede from the north. A cease fire was negotiated as
well, but, as you can see from the article above, it hasn't been really
successful in its implementation. People are still being forced into
slavery; people are still being killed. Where's the difference between
two years ago and now? There isn't much of one, unfortunately. But
Kristof wants to know when they'll stop the genocide being committed in
Darfur, which is in government held territory in western central Sudan.
Arab militias are killing black skinned people and are forcing them to
flee for the relative safe haven of Chad. It's genocide. Something
needs to be done. Admittedly, Kristof doesn't throw the blame at the
former colonial rulers for creating the situation in the first place
but he stops a hairsbreadth before reaching that conclusion. He speaks
of the International Community's hand-sitting experience in Rwanda, yet
he expects intervention when the parties involved aren't willing to do
anything other than allow for the slaughter their people. This is not a case when we can claim, as the world did after the
Armenian, Jewish and Cambodian genocides, that we didn't know how bad
it was. Sudan's refugees tell of mass killings and rapes, of women
branded, of children killed, of villages burned — yet Sudan's
government just stiffed new peace talks that began last night in Chad.
It's horrible, isn't it? People are being murdered left and right and
all we can do is sit on our hands and hope it works out. Every instinct
we have as human beings declares that this should be stopped. That it should never happen again.
But how can we do this? Do we send in peacekeepers? A military force
strong enough that it will stop the hostilities---until they pull out,
that is, and the flames are lit anew? This is the pattern. Look at
Kosovo, for example. Just a few weeks ago, three Armenian children
drowned, the locals blamed it on the minority Serb population and
rioting ensued. This was with peacekeepers present, mind you.
It happens over and over again. All over the world. It's sad to note
that this seems to be one of the uniting factors of the human race.
Hatred is as old as the Earth. People will hate. It's a part of human
nature. It seems illogical to me that we---here in the west---should
try to dampen that hate with our soft words and diplomatic actions and
think that this will do the trick. That we'll be able to stop Hutus and
Tustsis from despising one another simply because it suits our world
plans better than outright slaughter. It's arrogant---in the extreme.
Hate is illogical in itself, but that we would try to dampen the hate
with our highly educated views is even more illogical. I have no idea
what the average Muslim, Khartoum resident believes. Nor do I have any
idea as to what the average southern Sudanese goes through, either. I
can't get to that space they occupy with their thought processes
because I
haven't lived through what they've lived through. I haven't had
propaganda spouted at me about the source of their plight. I don't have
the common experience necessary to stop the violence. I am from the
West. I am from North America, not Africa. Why should some jerkoff at
the UN or the EU think that they've got the answers, either? I don't
know what to do about the problem in Sudan, but I simply cannot think
that more intervention in a place where they already despise intervention
would stop the violence. It's cruel and it slays me to say it---because
we all know how fond I am of international organizations---but perhaps
the international community has the right idea here when they stay out
of it.
How will he bring our allies back to us? By waving the magic
ally-reassembling wand? No: by doing what they want us to do, not by
doing the things they don̢۪t. It̢۪s almost as if Kerry believes that
the point of a war is to have allies first and victory second. But I
think I know what he̢۪s doing. It̢۪s an appeal to those who always
say – always - that we “squandered†the goodwill of the world
after 9/11. But in certain quarters that “goodwill†was equal parts
pity, schadenfreude and the belief that we would now realize the errors
of our ways. And note how no one ever talks about how the Palestinian
Authority squandered the goodwill it got from the Oslo Accords. The
Squander, it would seem, is a bird unique to our nation, and we alone
are responsible for its care and feeding.
I want to write like Lileks when I grow up.
--- Nicholas Kristof is worried about genocide in Sudan, and the west's overall inability to stop genocide anywhere in Africa when it happens.
One lesson of the last dozen years is that instead of being purely
reactive, helpfully bulldozing mass graves after massacres, African and
Western leaders should try much harder to stop civil wars as they
start. The world is now facing a critical test of that principle in the
Darfur region of Sudan, where Arab militias are killing and driving out
darker-skinned African tribespeople. While the world now marks the 10th
anniversary of the Rwandan genocide and solemnly asserts that this must
never happen again, it is.
Some 1,000 people are dying each week in Sudan, and 110,000 refugees,
like Mr. Yodi, have poured into Chad. Worse off are the 600,000
refugees within Sudan, who face hunger and disease after being driven
away from their villages by the Arab militias.
Now, I can't really disagree with that statement, because it's the
humane thing to do, but since he's the one who brought up Sudan as his
prima facie evidence for more African intervention on the part of the
International Community, I'm going to have to go after him. Kristof
conveniently ignores what's been going on in Sudan for twenty
years---that the northern---Muslim---government has been trying to kill
off all the southerners. There's a civil war already
going on in Sudan. Not like you'd know about it because media coverage
is decidedly poor when it comes covering that continent: as far as the
media is concerned, well, Africa still should be titled "The Dark
Continent," because there sure as hell aren't any TV lights
illuminating the place. Easily half the continent's countries are
engaged in some sort of armed conflict right now. But does CNN cover
it? Nope. Martha Steward and Michael Jackson are much more important. I
digress. They're still fighting in Southern Sudan.
Despite a cease fire and a power sharing agreement between the northern
and southern factions. But Kristof declares the west should get more
involved---the United States in particular--- despite the fact we got
the two parties to the negotiating table after 9/11. In fact, President
Bush announced he was sending forth John Danforth to do something about
the problem in Sudan on 9/10.
Remember that? I'm sure you probably don't, but it's one of the most
tangible pieces of evidence that the Bush administration was doing
something about terrorism---and the countries that harbor said
terrorists---before 9/11. Sudan was the former home of such terrorist
luminaries as Illyich Ramirez Sanchez---aka Carlos the Jackal---and
Osama bin Laden. Carlos was caught and thrown into a French jail; Osama
fled when the Taliban took control in Afghanistan and offered him a
happy cave-dwelling existence in their country. Why the sudden change
of heart? Sudan had their hand slapped when Clinton sent thirteen
Tomahawk Cruise missiles carreering into a Khartoum aspirin factory.
This apparently was enough of a wakeup call for the Sudanese, who
promptly started ejecting terrorists from their borders. For once, it
seems, someone took the message correctly. The civil war in Sudan is
such a shame, because I truly believe if there was ever a country in
Africa that could not only survive, but thrive, it's this country. The
natural resources held within its borders are amazing. More oil than in
Saudi Arabia, scientists have estimated. But therein lies the problem:
the oil's down south, and the southerners don't like the northerners
very much and don't want them to have it. Not that I can blame them:
they tried to institute Shari'a on people who don't believe in Islam.
That's bound to rankle. The north, for the most part, is desert. What
arable land there once was in northern Sudan is being swallowed up by a
Sahara that seems to be marching at quick time. They need those
resources, so the prevailing theory that has ruled since Sudan became
independent of Great Britain back in the 1950's was to overwhelm the
rural southerners by means of war and to beat them into submission. And
maybe, just maybe they could convert a few to the ways of Muhammed in
the meanwhile. Despite the factions taking a few years off here and
there, you could argue that the civil war has been raging for almost
fifty years. The Bush Administration's involvement in Sudan has two
origins. First---stopping the north from harboring terrorists. They
followed the very rational assessment that if they worked to stop the
civil war, Sudan would become a stable regime. Second, there are more
than a few Christians in southern Sudan. Fundamentalist
Christians. The born-agains and their ilk have been busy converting
through the carrot and stick of humanitaritian aid for quite some time.
They wanted something done about the problem of slavery. Yep. You read
that right. Slavery. The capture of another human being and exploiting
them for free labor. This happens all the time in Sudan. Whether the
slaves be southern refugees who have fled to the relative safety of
Khartoum and are taken advantage of there, or if they were forcibly
removed from their homes and taken north makes no real distinguishable
difference in the matter: they're forced into slave labor. These
Christians were aligned with groups like Amnesty International (strange
bedfellows, eh?) to stop their brethren in southern Sudan from being
taken advantage of---and they lobbied for intervention on human rights
grounds. It's a non-starter to say which reasoning was stronger, but
either way it forced the two parties to get their collective asses to
the negotiating table to try and work it out. And all of it is due to
western intervention. So, for two years the northern government and the
SPLA---the Sudanese People's Liberation Army---have hashed their
differences out in Nairobi. They came to a power sharing agreement,
which went something like the south would have automomous rule over its
territories for six years, and then they could have a referendum if
they wanted to secede from the north. A cease fire was negotiated as
well, but, as you can see from the article above, it hasn't been really
successful in its implementation. People are still being forced into
slavery; people are still being killed. Where's the difference between
two years ago and now? There isn't much of one, unfortunately. But
Kristof wants to know when they'll stop the genocide being committed in
Darfur, which is in government held territory in western central Sudan.
Arab militias are killing black skinned people and are forcing them to
flee for the relative safe haven of Chad. It's genocide. Something
needs to be done. Admittedly, Kristof doesn't throw the blame at the
former colonial rulers for creating the situation in the first place
but he stops a hairsbreadth before reaching that conclusion. He speaks
of the International Community's hand-sitting experience in Rwanda, yet
he expects intervention when the parties involved aren't willing to do
anything other than allow for the slaughter their people. This is not a case when we can claim, as the world did after the
Armenian, Jewish and Cambodian genocides, that we didn't know how bad
it was. Sudan's refugees tell of mass killings and rapes, of women
branded, of children killed, of villages burned — yet Sudan's
government just stiffed new peace talks that began last night in Chad.
It's horrible, isn't it? People are being murdered left and right and
all we can do is sit on our hands and hope it works out. Every instinct
we have as human beings declares that this should be stopped. That it should never happen again.
But how can we do this? Do we send in peacekeepers? A military force
strong enough that it will stop the hostilities---until they pull out,
that is, and the flames are lit anew? This is the pattern. Look at
Kosovo, for example. Just a few weeks ago, three Armenian children
drowned, the locals blamed it on the minority Serb population and
rioting ensued. This was with peacekeepers present, mind you.
It happens over and over again. All over the world. It's sad to note
that this seems to be one of the uniting factors of the human race.
Hatred is as old as the Earth. People will hate. It's a part of human
nature. It seems illogical to me that we---here in the west---should
try to dampen that hate with our soft words and diplomatic actions and
think that this will do the trick. That we'll be able to stop Hutus and
Tustsis from despising one another simply because it suits our world
plans better than outright slaughter. It's arrogant---in the extreme.
Hate is illogical in itself, but that we would try to dampen the hate
with our highly educated views is even more illogical. I have no idea
what the average Muslim, Khartoum resident believes. Nor do I have any
idea as to what the average southern Sudanese goes through, either. I
can't get to that space they occupy with their thought processes
because I
haven't lived through what they've lived through. I haven't had
propaganda spouted at me about the source of their plight. I don't have
the common experience necessary to stop the violence. I am from the
West. I am from North America, not Africa. Why should some jerkoff at
the UN or the EU think that they've got the answers, either? I don't
know what to do about the problem in Sudan, but I simply cannot think
that more intervention in a place where they already despise intervention
would stop the violence. It's cruel and it slays me to say it---because
we all know how fond I am of international organizations---but perhaps
the international community has the right idea here when they stay out
of it.
Posted by: Kathy at
12:47 PM
| No Comments
| Add Comment
Post contains 1799 words, total size 11 kb.
--- Man, this is cold.
--- Man, this is cold.
CHICAGO (AP) - McDonald's Corp. chairman and CEO Jim Cantalupo, who
helped engineer a turnaround of the fast-food chain by focusing on
better food and service during 16 months at the helm, died unexpectedly
of a heart attack Monday. He was 60.
The company moved quickly to name Cantalupo's successors. Charlie Bell,
McDonald's 43-year-old president and chief operating officer, was
elected CEO by the board of directors and will keep the president's
title; Andrew J. McKenna, 74, the board's presiding director, was named
chairman.
Could they have waited until the man's body went into the ground before announcing a successor?
Brrrr.
CHICAGO (AP) - McDonald's Corp. chairman and CEO Jim Cantalupo, who
helped engineer a turnaround of the fast-food chain by focusing on
better food and service during 16 months at the helm, died unexpectedly
of a heart attack Monday. He was 60.
The company moved quickly to name Cantalupo's successors. Charlie Bell,
McDonald's 43-year-old president and chief operating officer, was
elected CEO by the board of directors and will keep the president's
title; Andrew J. McKenna, 74, the board's presiding director, was named
chairman.
Could they have waited until the man's body went into the ground before announcing a successor?
Brrrr.
Posted by: Kathy at
12:47 PM
| No Comments
| Add Comment
Post contains 116 words, total size 1 kb.
Posted by: Kathy at
12:31 PM
| No Comments
| Add Comment
Post contains 0 words, total size 1 kb.
--- Fair warning. I'm liable
--- Fair warning.
I'm liable to be cranky today. Under the premise that I've been smoking
much too much lately, the husband has hidden my stash of smokes. He
threw this edict down around eleven a.m. yesterday. I've already gone
24 hours on one pack---which is much better than my average, but...
...I have one cigarette to last me until seven p.m. CDT. Which is five
and a half hours from now. I would ask that you go to your local
church/synagogue/buddhist temple and pray that the husband survives
until he can hand over the next pack at seven this evening---CDT. I've
got a can opener handy. A can of bitchcraft is sitting on the desk,
just waiting to be opened. Will I take the opener and do the deal?
Well, you'll just have to wait and find out, eh?
I'm liable to be cranky today. Under the premise that I've been smoking
much too much lately, the husband has hidden my stash of smokes. He
threw this edict down around eleven a.m. yesterday. I've already gone
24 hours on one pack---which is much better than my average, but...
...I have one cigarette to last me until seven p.m. CDT. Which is five
and a half hours from now. I would ask that you go to your local
church/synagogue/buddhist temple and pray that the husband survives
until he can hand over the next pack at seven this evening---CDT. I've
got a can opener handy. A can of bitchcraft is sitting on the desk,
just waiting to be opened. Will I take the opener and do the deal?
Well, you'll just have to wait and find out, eh?
Posted by: Kathy at
12:31 PM
| No Comments
| Add Comment
Post contains 150 words, total size 1 kb.
--- I can take it
--- I can take it no longer. The apartment is a pit. It must be cleaned
and I'm just the girl to do it. Well, I'm the only girl to do it unless
the husband decides to go either LDS or Muslim and I suddenly have
three other Mrs. Nelsons to contend with.
{insert much pondering here}
Ah, anyway...
Since I'm going to be busy scrubbing the toity and other various
disgustingly dirty household appliances for the rest o' the day, here's
some linkies to keep you all entertained.
--- The husband sent me this link this weekend. I haven't read it but he says it's brilliant, so go and give it a looksee.
--- This doesn't bode well for the Athens Olympics.
--- The versatile 'F' word
Takes a while to load, but it's worth it.
Whilst cleaning, I will be compiling a list of movies that, when
they're on the boober, I simply cannot surf past them. "Rising Sun" was
on FX last night, and even though it was edited to hell, the husband
and I *had* to watch it. I'm sure everyone has a few of these---"Rising
Sun" despite the fact it's based on a frigging Chrichton novel, is one
of those films. I think, ultimately, we're spellbound by Sean Connery's
Japanese-inspired hairdo. So, the question of the day is: what movies
do you feel compelled to watch every time they're on cable? Even though
you've seen them a thousand times and know the plot and every line
uttered by heart? Have at it. Although, I have a feeling the next time
I check the comments section, it will still be woefully empty.
and I'm just the girl to do it. Well, I'm the only girl to do it unless
the husband decides to go either LDS or Muslim and I suddenly have
three other Mrs. Nelsons to contend with.
{insert much pondering here}
Ah, anyway...
Since I'm going to be busy scrubbing the toity and other various
disgustingly dirty household appliances for the rest o' the day, here's
some linkies to keep you all entertained.
--- The husband sent me this link this weekend. I haven't read it but he says it's brilliant, so go and give it a looksee.
--- This doesn't bode well for the Athens Olympics.
--- The versatile 'F' word
Takes a while to load, but it's worth it.
Whilst cleaning, I will be compiling a list of movies that, when
they're on the boober, I simply cannot surf past them. "Rising Sun" was
on FX last night, and even though it was edited to hell, the husband
and I *had* to watch it. I'm sure everyone has a few of these---"Rising
Sun" despite the fact it's based on a frigging Chrichton novel, is one
of those films. I think, ultimately, we're spellbound by Sean Connery's
Japanese-inspired hairdo. So, the question of the day is: what movies
do you feel compelled to watch every time they're on cable? Even though
you've seen them a thousand times and know the plot and every line
uttered by heart? Have at it. Although, I have a feeling the next time
I check the comments section, it will still be woefully empty.
Posted by: Kathy at
12:23 PM
| No Comments
| Add Comment
Post contains 286 words, total size 2 kb.
--- Terribly sorry for all
--- Terribly sorry for all the ranting and raving yesterday, but Kofi pissed me off.
There's really no getting around it: the man is a weener.
--- And on a weener related sidenote...
Go and check out the latest advancements in
penis enhancement.
Invariably, I'm the one in our household of two who receives the penis
enhancement spams. The husband gets all the breast enhancement spams. I
suppose this could be considered a refreshing change of pace where
these spams are concerned. And it's funny, too.
--- This Passion of the Christ thing has gone too far.
GLASSPORT, Pa. (AP) - A church trying to teach about the crucifixion
of Jesus performed an Easter show with actors whipping the Easter bunny
and breaking eggs, upsetting several parents and young children.
People who attended Saturday's performance at Glassport's memorial
stadium quoted performers as saying, "There is no Easter bunny," and
described the show as being a demonstration of how Jesus was crucified.
Melissa Salzmann, who brought her 4-year-old son J.T., said the program
was inappropriate for young children. "He was crying and asking me why
the bunny was being whipped," Salzmann said.
Wait for it. Wait for it...
Patty Bickerton, the youth minister at Glassport Assembly of God,
said the performance wasn't meant to be offensive. Bickerton portrayed
the Easter rabbit and said she tried to act with a tone of irreverence.
{emphasis added by moi}
Ummm, Patty, perhaps you shouldn't be the youth minister of a church when you don't know the difference between reverence and irreverance,
I mean, unless you were going for a
funny-bunny-flogging-really-is-painless sort of attitude to make it
amusing for the children when the bunny was being whipped. If that's
the case, you probably do mean irreverance, but what the hell
is wrong with you that you'd flog the easter bunny in the first place?
Contrary to popular opinion, most kids do know that the Easter Bunny
was not in on the Crucifixion. He had nothing to do with it. Leave him
out of it. You know, if I had some sort of organizing structure for
this blog, I would place this one in the "Death to Smoochy" file.
--- Watched the 9/11 Commission this morning. Condi, I thought, did
very well. The husband, however is pissed off about Bob Kerrey's
ranting and raving. I missed most of it because I couldn't take the
husband's screaming at the TV any longer so I went and took a shower. Here's the transcript.
What an ass. As a former resident of the great state of Nebraska, I
would like to make it well known that I never voted for Bob Kerrey. In
the past, there have been times I have appreciated his willingness to
cut through the crap and get down to the heart of the matter, but this
is not one of them. He was completely belligerent toward a witness who
didn't have to testify in the first place and did so because she was
under attack and felt the need to set the record straight. But, as Bob
Kerrey himself said, "...I'm not going to get the national security
adviser 30 feet away from me very often..." and he took the opportunity
to take some seriously cheap shots on national television. I wonder if
he's been this nasty in the private interviews they've had with Condi.
I doubt it. He was grandstanding. Yet another example of someone using
the 9/11 Commission for personal gain. Clarke did it to make sure his
book sold well; Kerrey, I would bet you my last dollar, still hasn't
ruled a run for the White House out, despite the fact he's no longer
active in everyday politics.
There's really no getting around it: the man is a weener.
--- And on a weener related sidenote...
Go and check out the latest advancements in
penis enhancement.
Invariably, I'm the one in our household of two who receives the penis
enhancement spams. The husband gets all the breast enhancement spams. I
suppose this could be considered a refreshing change of pace where
these spams are concerned. And it's funny, too.
--- This Passion of the Christ thing has gone too far.
GLASSPORT, Pa. (AP) - A church trying to teach about the crucifixion
of Jesus performed an Easter show with actors whipping the Easter bunny
and breaking eggs, upsetting several parents and young children.
People who attended Saturday's performance at Glassport's memorial
stadium quoted performers as saying, "There is no Easter bunny," and
described the show as being a demonstration of how Jesus was crucified.
Melissa Salzmann, who brought her 4-year-old son J.T., said the program
was inappropriate for young children. "He was crying and asking me why
the bunny was being whipped," Salzmann said.
Wait for it. Wait for it...
Patty Bickerton, the youth minister at Glassport Assembly of God,
said the performance wasn't meant to be offensive. Bickerton portrayed
the Easter rabbit and said she tried to act with a tone of irreverence.
{emphasis added by moi}
Ummm, Patty, perhaps you shouldn't be the youth minister of a church when you don't know the difference between reverence and irreverance,
I mean, unless you were going for a
funny-bunny-flogging-really-is-painless sort of attitude to make it
amusing for the children when the bunny was being whipped. If that's
the case, you probably do mean irreverance, but what the hell
is wrong with you that you'd flog the easter bunny in the first place?
Contrary to popular opinion, most kids do know that the Easter Bunny
was not in on the Crucifixion. He had nothing to do with it. Leave him
out of it. You know, if I had some sort of organizing structure for
this blog, I would place this one in the "Death to Smoochy" file.
--- Watched the 9/11 Commission this morning. Condi, I thought, did
very well. The husband, however is pissed off about Bob Kerrey's
ranting and raving. I missed most of it because I couldn't take the
husband's screaming at the TV any longer so I went and took a shower. Here's the transcript.
What an ass. As a former resident of the great state of Nebraska, I
would like to make it well known that I never voted for Bob Kerrey. In
the past, there have been times I have appreciated his willingness to
cut through the crap and get down to the heart of the matter, but this
is not one of them. He was completely belligerent toward a witness who
didn't have to testify in the first place and did so because she was
under attack and felt the need to set the record straight. But, as Bob
Kerrey himself said, "...I'm not going to get the national security
adviser 30 feet away from me very often..." and he took the opportunity
to take some seriously cheap shots on national television. I wonder if
he's been this nasty in the private interviews they've had with Condi.
I doubt it. He was grandstanding. Yet another example of someone using
the 9/11 Commission for personal gain. Clarke did it to make sure his
book sold well; Kerrey, I would bet you my last dollar, still hasn't
ruled a run for the White House out, despite the fact he's no longer
active in everyday politics.
Posted by: Kathy at
12:16 PM
| No Comments
| Add Comment
Post contains 626 words, total size 4 kb.
--- There really is a
--- There really is a God.
And he listens to my prayers.
And he listens to my prayers.
Posted by: Kathy at
12:10 PM
| No Comments
| Add Comment
Post contains 22 words, total size 1 kb.
Ah, Saturday. It's a nice
Ah, Saturday. It's a nice day here, but since I took yesterday off to
enjoy the very nice weather and to work on other things, I'll have a
few posties for you all...to keep you from spending your day outside,
enjoying the nice weather. You probably just looked outside and noticed
it's not very nice where you live. You may have some complaints that
it's raining. It's not "springy" enough for you, etc. Well, it's nice
here, hence I don't really care about if it's nice where you live or
not. The rest of the continental United States always
has nicer weather than we do. You would deny me the opportunity to crow
about the weather here when I had to read how nice and warm it was
where you live all winter long? I think not. The sun is shining, a nice
warm breeze is blowing in through the window that's next to me. The
warmth it brings is positively delicious after the long winter we've
had. I have no idea if spring is actually here or if we're going to get
slammed with another bout of cold weather, but today is good, and if
today is all I've got until Memorial Day, well, I'm going to take
advantage of it.
enjoy the very nice weather and to work on other things, I'll have a
few posties for you all...to keep you from spending your day outside,
enjoying the nice weather. You probably just looked outside and noticed
it's not very nice where you live. You may have some complaints that
it's raining. It's not "springy" enough for you, etc. Well, it's nice
here, hence I don't really care about if it's nice where you live or
not. The rest of the continental United States always
has nicer weather than we do. You would deny me the opportunity to crow
about the weather here when I had to read how nice and warm it was
where you live all winter long? I think not. The sun is shining, a nice
warm breeze is blowing in through the window that's next to me. The
warmth it brings is positively delicious after the long winter we've
had. I have no idea if spring is actually here or if we're going to get
slammed with another bout of cold weather, but today is good, and if
today is all I've got until Memorial Day, well, I'm going to take
advantage of it.
Posted by: Kathy at
12:07 PM
| No Comments
| Add Comment
Post contains 222 words, total size 1 kb.
--- A rather disturbing thought
--- A rather disturbing thought woke me out of a sound sleep at 4:30 this morning.
YOU'RE AN IDIOT! IT'S 1066, YOU MORON, NOT 1088!This is just
another example for you, my devoted Cake Eater readers, of what it's
like inside my head. However, since all the computers in the household
were shut down and it would have required actual work on my part to get
connected to Blogger, which would have also meant that further sleep
would have been prevented if I moved out of bed....I rolled back over
and went back to sleep.
Accuracy is less important to me than being able to sleep. Particularly
since at 4:30, the husband wasn't snoring and reacquiring oblivion was
an easy task. Though, all the comments about England not needing that
damn Norman still stand.
YOU'RE AN IDIOT! IT'S 1066, YOU MORON, NOT 1088!This is just
another example for you, my devoted Cake Eater readers, of what it's
like inside my head. However, since all the computers in the household
were shut down and it would have required actual work on my part to get
connected to Blogger, which would have also meant that further sleep
would have been prevented if I moved out of bed....I rolled back over
and went back to sleep.
Accuracy is less important to me than being able to sleep. Particularly
since at 4:30, the husband wasn't snoring and reacquiring oblivion was
an easy task. Though, all the comments about England not needing that
damn Norman still stand.
Posted by: Kathy at
12:05 PM
| No Comments
| Add Comment
Post contains 144 words, total size 1 kb.
--- There are times in
--- There are times in your life when you recognize that you could
happily live for the rest of your days without a great deal of money.
That life is what you make of it; that possessions are not what is
needed to make your life a happy one; that bunnies and puppies are cute
(but that kittens are evil); that children are the most precious
possession you'll ever have; ad nauseaum, ad infinitum.
This, however, is not one of those times for me. I want money. Lots of
it. I have stuff I want to buy. And the stuff is expensive and it's
being sold at Christie's, so undoubtedly I'll need to don about five
grand worth of Armani when I attend the auction---and that's estimating
conservatively.
Ahem
Doris Duke's jewelry collection is up for grabs.
While I love the jewelry---this bracelet is making my mouth water---it's that her foundation is also selling off her wine cellar that's really making me go gaga.
Included in the lot---a 1918 Chateau Latour Jeroboam.
There are also bottles from 1928 and 1929, but who gives a rat's ass
about those---they're not jeroboams. A jeroboam, for the uninitiated,
is about three times the size of a normal wine bottle. {Insert whining
here}
God, if you've got the coin, go for it. And then email me and let me
know how good it was so I can at least get some vicarious pleasure out
of it.
happily live for the rest of your days without a great deal of money.
That life is what you make of it; that possessions are not what is
needed to make your life a happy one; that bunnies and puppies are cute
(but that kittens are evil); that children are the most precious
possession you'll ever have; ad nauseaum, ad infinitum.
This, however, is not one of those times for me. I want money. Lots of
it. I have stuff I want to buy. And the stuff is expensive and it's
being sold at Christie's, so undoubtedly I'll need to don about five
grand worth of Armani when I attend the auction---and that's estimating
conservatively.
Ahem
Doris Duke's jewelry collection is up for grabs.
While I love the jewelry---this bracelet is making my mouth water---it's that her foundation is also selling off her wine cellar that's really making me go gaga.
Included in the lot---a 1918 Chateau Latour Jeroboam.
There are also bottles from 1928 and 1929, but who gives a rat's ass
about those---they're not jeroboams. A jeroboam, for the uninitiated,
is about three times the size of a normal wine bottle. {Insert whining
here}
God, if you've got the coin, go for it. And then email me and let me
know how good it was so I can at least get some vicarious pleasure out
of it.
Posted by: Kathy at
12:03 PM
| No Comments
| Add Comment
Post contains 252 words, total size 2 kb.
--- So, I went and
--- So, I went and tried to stalk the Prez this morning---didn't work out.
I'll post the details later.
I'll post the details later.
Posted by: Kathy at
11:27 AM
| No Comments
| Add Comment
Post contains 29 words, total size 1 kb.
--- And we have more
--- And we have more silly Germans!
What I don't understand is if you're in Germany, the land of BMW,
Mercedes and Porsche; you have the skills to break, enter and steal a
vehicle, and you steal a frigging bulldozer and you take it on a joyride through Berlin?
What the hell is the matter with you?
What I don't understand is if you're in Germany, the land of BMW,
Mercedes and Porsche; you have the skills to break, enter and steal a
vehicle, and you steal a frigging bulldozer and you take it on a joyride through Berlin?
What the hell is the matter with you?
Posted by: Kathy at
11:26 AM
| No Comments
| Add Comment
Post contains 67 words, total size 1 kb.
--- Oh, thank goodness. I
--- Oh, thank goodness. I was really beginning to wonder what the hell happened to my silly Germans.
Have no fear...the talking trash cans are here!
Ah, German tax dollars, hard at work.
Have no fear...the talking trash cans are here!
Ah, German tax dollars, hard at work.
Posted by: Kathy at
11:18 AM
| No Comments
| Add Comment
Post contains 43 words, total size 1 kb.
--- Ok, Dorkafork. You win.
--- Ok, Dorkafork. You win. I spent yesterday trying to muster up
enough enthusiasm to go through the Federalist Papers to refute your
assertions and I just couldn't get there. I concede to you, oh,
magnificent eating utensil.
But...I'm going to get in one swipe about quoting the Federalist
Papers. They are not
the be all, end all, holy of holies as to what the writers of the
Constitution were going for. This would be blasphemy, I know, but let
me explain. You have three writers of the Federalist Papers. John Jay,
Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, who, one could easily say were
not the least popular members of the Constitutional Congress. Three
dudes who were there from the beginning, yes, but they are also three
guys who were from large, well populated states: Jay and Hamilton were
both from New York; and Madison was from Virginia. Their interests
would have---naturally---been different from those of the Carolinas or
Rhode Island. Despite their well-populated state origins, they also
manage to disagree with one another quite a few times, particularly
about the level of federalism that should be imposed with the
Constitution. The Federalist Papers were written and published in
various newspapers at the time to give the average, literate individual
an idea of the issues they were wrestling with and were an explanation
of why they were taking the tack that they took. They were never
intended to be the sole source of Constitutional intent that they have
become---meaning that they were written to put forward certain issues
with the intention of influencing the direction of the Constitutional
Congress. They're policy papers---in essence, political theory---hence
I take them with a grain of salt. Think of it this way: supposing that
some sort of Fountain of Youth serum is invented in the next fifty
years that allowed you to live for another two hundred: would you take
George Kennan's "X Article"
as the sole source of information as to why the United States took the
stance that it did against the Soviet Union, knowing that this is the
document that made people in Washington finally stand up and take
notice of what Stalin was doing and what the Soviets were all about?
Probably not, despite the fact Kennan coins the phrase "containment"
within its general wordiness. Remember, this is two hundred years from
now---there's going to be a lot of information out there for you to
refer to when you're lecturing your great-great-great grandkids about
how you lived through the Cold War (this of course is providing you
weren't born in 1989---at which point you can point your finger at me
and shout "ANCIENT HAG!") You'd use Kennan with other anecdotal
evidence---the Soviets ruthless take over of what would become the
Eastern Bloc; Stalin's purges; their defense capabilities, particularly
since they'd just been put on fresh display in WWII. Political theory
is just that: theory. The Federalist Papers are a brilliant example of
political theory---and some would argue the single, best example of
American political theory ever written. But theory, by its very nature,
is a fleeting thing; an idea about the way things work, put down with
pen and ink, to push the argument along until the next guy expands on
it. The Federalist Papers are just one more example of theory. They
pushed the argument along until the next guy expanded on it. And I
think that guy's name would be de Tocqueville, but it's been a long
time since my heady polisci days, so you'll forgive me if I've
forgotten someone, eh? This isn't to say the Federal Papers are not a
valuable resource. They are. But they're to be taken as a part of a
whole, as any political theory should be.
enough enthusiasm to go through the Federalist Papers to refute your
assertions and I just couldn't get there. I concede to you, oh,
magnificent eating utensil.
But...I'm going to get in one swipe about quoting the Federalist
Papers. They are not
the be all, end all, holy of holies as to what the writers of the
Constitution were going for. This would be blasphemy, I know, but let
me explain. You have three writers of the Federalist Papers. John Jay,
Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, who, one could easily say were
not the least popular members of the Constitutional Congress. Three
dudes who were there from the beginning, yes, but they are also three
guys who were from large, well populated states: Jay and Hamilton were
both from New York; and Madison was from Virginia. Their interests
would have---naturally---been different from those of the Carolinas or
Rhode Island. Despite their well-populated state origins, they also
manage to disagree with one another quite a few times, particularly
about the level of federalism that should be imposed with the
Constitution. The Federalist Papers were written and published in
various newspapers at the time to give the average, literate individual
an idea of the issues they were wrestling with and were an explanation
of why they were taking the tack that they took. They were never
intended to be the sole source of Constitutional intent that they have
become---meaning that they were written to put forward certain issues
with the intention of influencing the direction of the Constitutional
Congress. They're policy papers---in essence, political theory---hence
I take them with a grain of salt. Think of it this way: supposing that
some sort of Fountain of Youth serum is invented in the next fifty
years that allowed you to live for another two hundred: would you take
George Kennan's "X Article"
as the sole source of information as to why the United States took the
stance that it did against the Soviet Union, knowing that this is the
document that made people in Washington finally stand up and take
notice of what Stalin was doing and what the Soviets were all about?
Probably not, despite the fact Kennan coins the phrase "containment"
within its general wordiness. Remember, this is two hundred years from
now---there's going to be a lot of information out there for you to
refer to when you're lecturing your great-great-great grandkids about
how you lived through the Cold War (this of course is providing you
weren't born in 1989---at which point you can point your finger at me
and shout "ANCIENT HAG!") You'd use Kennan with other anecdotal
evidence---the Soviets ruthless take over of what would become the
Eastern Bloc; Stalin's purges; their defense capabilities, particularly
since they'd just been put on fresh display in WWII. Political theory
is just that: theory. The Federalist Papers are a brilliant example of
political theory---and some would argue the single, best example of
American political theory ever written. But theory, by its very nature,
is a fleeting thing; an idea about the way things work, put down with
pen and ink, to push the argument along until the next guy expands on
it. The Federalist Papers are just one more example of theory. They
pushed the argument along until the next guy expanded on it. And I
think that guy's name would be de Tocqueville, but it's been a long
time since my heady polisci days, so you'll forgive me if I've
forgotten someone, eh? This isn't to say the Federal Papers are not a
valuable resource. They are. But they're to be taken as a part of a
whole, as any political theory should be.
Posted by: Kathy at
11:06 AM
| No Comments
| Add Comment
Post contains 634 words, total size 4 kb.
--- You know, the husband
--- You know, the husband sends me some wierd links, but I think this
one is a serious contender in the "Taking of the Cake" category.
Ahem. Operation Take One For the Country (you might have to hit refresh a couple of times if it doesn't show up right away.)
Presented without commentary because I'm effing speechless.
UPDATE: Protein Wisdom says
"God Bless America."
one is a serious contender in the "Taking of the Cake" category.
Ahem. Operation Take One For the Country (you might have to hit refresh a couple of times if it doesn't show up right away.)
Presented without commentary because I'm effing speechless.
UPDATE: Protein Wisdom says
"God Bless America."
Posted by: Kathy at
10:57 AM
| No Comments
| Add Comment
Post contains 74 words, total size 1 kb.
--- An example of Scrabble
--- An example of Scrabble night at the Cake Eater household.
Yes indeedy. It is
a mistake to allow foreign languages into the game. Particularly when
your opponent (the husband) has more foreign language skills than you
do. In German. Which means triple word score hell with lots of
consonants.
Yes indeedy. It is
a mistake to allow foreign languages into the game. Particularly when
your opponent (the husband) has more foreign language skills than you
do. In German. Which means triple word score hell with lots of
consonants.
Posted by: Kathy at
10:44 AM
| No Comments
| Add Comment
Post contains 60 words, total size 1 kb.
--- I keep forgetting to
--- I keep forgetting to link to this very interesting article in Forbes about Teddy Kennedy's namesake titled Ponying Up To Camelot. (registration required--it's painless and they don't spam you.)
Edward Kennedy Jr. is raising money from unions and public pension
funds--and socking investors with princely fees.
Edward M. Kennedy Jr. is quite the rainmaker. In less than two years
the scion of the stalwart U.S. senator from Massachusetts has raised
$100 million for the $325 million Intercontinental Real Estate Fund
III, tapping the pension boards of the labor unions that have supported
dad for years. Kennedy's Marwood Group will collect $1.2 million in
fees over three years for his efforts.
Rainmaker, eh? Yeah, thanks to daddy.
"Some people may insinuate that I am looking to trade on my family
name. This is definitely not the case," the junior Kennedy says in a
statement. Intercontinental's chief, Peter Palandjian, says Kennedy's
pay is money well spent. Intercontinental charges an annual 1.25%
management fee--plus an extra 0.9%, over three years, for marketing
expenses that include the Kennedy cut.
Yeah, we all know you don't want to trade on dear old dad's name, Ted. You Kennedys are all alike.
The name doesn't mean anything but what you can do for yourself, right?
You're a real bunch of bootstrappers. Mmmhmm. You worship at the altar
of Bootlegger Joe! You want to be just like him---before he dumped all
of his stock and crashed the market in '29! You're tortured by what
your surname has become. You really do wish you didn't have that last
name, because you want to make it on your own merits. You don't want your successes spoiled by charges of nepotism! In fact, you damn well declare that no one
should dare accuse you of such a thing, being the bootstrapper that you
are! The gall of it, you declare in your snooty Harrrvarrrd Yarrrd
accent, that anyone would even think such a thing! Pfft. But it seems
as if there's a whiff of something in dear old Camelot---and it doesn't
smell all that nice, either. Seems some of the "institutional
investors"---aka unions--- Junior's brought to the table don't appreciate Intercontinental's passing along of Junior's costs.
The $10 billionChicago Teachers' PensionFund, wooed by the younger
Kennedy, spent months mulling whether to invest $35 million with
Intercontinental. Jacob Silver, a 13-year veteran of the Chicago
pension board, learned about Intercontinental over dinner with Kennedy
at an Orlando conference last summer. Other Chicago trustees met with
Kennedy, and in November Intercontinental made a formal proposal to the
Chicago fund's board. The board's lawyer, JosephBurns, noticed the
marketing fee in the offering documents and alerted the board via
e-mail. "It took a lot of nerve even to ask us for the money," says
Silver. "Intercontinental hired him [Kennedy]--we didn't." He adds that
the pension fund had never before been asked to pay extra for a fund's
marketing costs.
I wonder if the husband's consultancy could get away with such a thing? Talk about a new source of revenue! Woohoo!
Chicago's board told Palandjian to drop the fee or forget about the
$35 million. Palandjian agreed to swallow the Chicago fund's portion.
Undeterred, Palandjian has re-upped with Kennedy to help raise a fourth
fund. The target:$250 million, for which Kennedy's firm could earn as
much as $4 million. Kennedy views the job as a public service: "I am
committed to building my company and providing the highest-quality
service to my friends in organized labor." He had better hope
prospective investors don't follow Chicago's lead.
God, what a scam. I can hear Junior's sales pitch to the guy at Intercontinental now---can't you?
Here, let me set you up with these unions. They support my dad, I
know these people, they've got tons of cash that's just waiting to be
invested by someone like you---particularly in this volatile market. I
have contact with them all the time. I'll chat with them and set up a
meeting for you with them. It's up to you from there, but to make sure
this isn't hurting you too much---rainmaking can be expensive, I know,
but to make money, you've gotta spend some---I'm sure they wouldn't
mind if you passed along my fee to them. They're a big investor. And
they'll love what you're trying to sell them. And after all,
they're a union, it's not like they care about spending money
anyway---it's all a free ride for them.
Sheesh. This guy has about as much charm as his father did when he took
nine hours to open up his date's door.*
*ruthlessly plagiarized from Dennis Miller. "Mr. Miller Goes To
Washington."
Edward Kennedy Jr. is raising money from unions and public pension
funds--and socking investors with princely fees.
Edward M. Kennedy Jr. is quite the rainmaker. In less than two years
the scion of the stalwart U.S. senator from Massachusetts has raised
$100 million for the $325 million Intercontinental Real Estate Fund
III, tapping the pension boards of the labor unions that have supported
dad for years. Kennedy's Marwood Group will collect $1.2 million in
fees over three years for his efforts.
Rainmaker, eh? Yeah, thanks to daddy.
"Some people may insinuate that I am looking to trade on my family
name. This is definitely not the case," the junior Kennedy says in a
statement. Intercontinental's chief, Peter Palandjian, says Kennedy's
pay is money well spent. Intercontinental charges an annual 1.25%
management fee--plus an extra 0.9%, over three years, for marketing
expenses that include the Kennedy cut.
Yeah, we all know you don't want to trade on dear old dad's name, Ted. You Kennedys are all alike.
The name doesn't mean anything but what you can do for yourself, right?
You're a real bunch of bootstrappers. Mmmhmm. You worship at the altar
of Bootlegger Joe! You want to be just like him---before he dumped all
of his stock and crashed the market in '29! You're tortured by what
your surname has become. You really do wish you didn't have that last
name, because you want to make it on your own merits. You don't want your successes spoiled by charges of nepotism! In fact, you damn well declare that no one
should dare accuse you of such a thing, being the bootstrapper that you
are! The gall of it, you declare in your snooty Harrrvarrrd Yarrrd
accent, that anyone would even think such a thing! Pfft. But it seems
as if there's a whiff of something in dear old Camelot---and it doesn't
smell all that nice, either. Seems some of the "institutional
investors"---aka unions--- Junior's brought to the table don't appreciate Intercontinental's passing along of Junior's costs.
The $10 billionChicago Teachers' PensionFund, wooed by the younger
Kennedy, spent months mulling whether to invest $35 million with
Intercontinental. Jacob Silver, a 13-year veteran of the Chicago
pension board, learned about Intercontinental over dinner with Kennedy
at an Orlando conference last summer. Other Chicago trustees met with
Kennedy, and in November Intercontinental made a formal proposal to the
Chicago fund's board. The board's lawyer, JosephBurns, noticed the
marketing fee in the offering documents and alerted the board via
e-mail. "It took a lot of nerve even to ask us for the money," says
Silver. "Intercontinental hired him [Kennedy]--we didn't." He adds that
the pension fund had never before been asked to pay extra for a fund's
marketing costs.
I wonder if the husband's consultancy could get away with such a thing? Talk about a new source of revenue! Woohoo!
Chicago's board told Palandjian to drop the fee or forget about the
$35 million. Palandjian agreed to swallow the Chicago fund's portion.
Undeterred, Palandjian has re-upped with Kennedy to help raise a fourth
fund. The target:$250 million, for which Kennedy's firm could earn as
much as $4 million. Kennedy views the job as a public service: "I am
committed to building my company and providing the highest-quality
service to my friends in organized labor." He had better hope
prospective investors don't follow Chicago's lead.
God, what a scam. I can hear Junior's sales pitch to the guy at Intercontinental now---can't you?
Here, let me set you up with these unions. They support my dad, I
know these people, they've got tons of cash that's just waiting to be
invested by someone like you---particularly in this volatile market. I
have contact with them all the time. I'll chat with them and set up a
meeting for you with them. It's up to you from there, but to make sure
this isn't hurting you too much---rainmaking can be expensive, I know,
but to make money, you've gotta spend some---I'm sure they wouldn't
mind if you passed along my fee to them. They're a big investor. And
they'll love what you're trying to sell them. And after all,
they're a union, it's not like they care about spending money
anyway---it's all a free ride for them.
Sheesh. This guy has about as much charm as his father did when he took
nine hours to open up his date's door.*
*ruthlessly plagiarized from Dennis Miller. "Mr. Miller Goes To
Washington."
Posted by: Kathy at
01:59 AM
| No Comments
| Add Comment
Post contains 782 words, total size 5 kb.
--- I don't know where
--- I don't know where the husband surfs most of the time. Haven't the
foggiest notion of where he pulls some of the stuff he comes up with.
He's very much like a ten year old boy on summer vacation when it comes
to the internet: send him out the door in the moring; expect him to be
filthy when he comes home at the end of the day, with a frog hanging
out of his pocket. He fills my inbox with links he thinks I'll find
interesting. Mostly, it's an exercise in hit and miss. Sometimes he
hits and sometimes he misses. He hit tonight. The State of the News Media 2004: An Annual Report on American Journalism. It was written by the Project for Excellence in Journalism. It came out in February, but I haven't seen much written about it so I thought I'd link to it.
I haven't read the whole thing, but I did hit the highlights. I found the Public Attitudes section to be surprising.
Public attitudes about the press have been declining for nearly 20
years.
Americans think journalists are sloppier, less professional, less
moral, less caring, more biased, less honest about their mistakes and
generally more harmful to democracy than they did in the 1980s.
Consider a few changes in the numbers between 1985 and 20021: The
number of Americans who think news organizations are highly
professional declined from 72 to 49 percent.
Those who think news organizations are moral declined from 54 to 39
percent, and those who think they are immoral rose from 13 to 36
percent.
Those who feel news organizations try to cover up their mistakes rose
from 13 to 67 percent. The number of Americans who think news
organizations generally get the facts straight declined from 55 to 35
percent.
Those who feel who feel news organizations care about the people they
report on declined from 41 to 30 percent.
Those who think news organizations are politically biased rose from 45 to 59 percent. {emphasis
added by moi}
What I find surprising is that there's only a 14 point jump in the
number of people who find the media to be biased from 1985 to today.
Given all of the discussion regarding bias in the media---and the
inception of FOX News---I would have thought that number would be much
higher, and let me see if I can remember enough from college statistics
to tell you why.
I have some issues with the methodology of these numbers. I'm no stat
professor, but I do remember a few things about my time in those
classes, and one of the few was that for comparison purposes, an apple
must indeed be an apple. Oranges will simply not work, or the result is
skewed. The 1985 numbers, it seems, came from one source, MORI (I
think--I can't find an actual source for the 1985 #'s), and the 2002
numbers came from a Pew Research Report that seems to have been done to
see what the public's support for the media was post-9/11. When you
follow the link provided in the bibliography to the study results at the Pew website
you can see they used numerous samples and their reporting seems to be
fine. The trouble here seems to be that I can't find that MORI report
anywhere, provided that's the report they used for the 1985 numbers.
If I want to compare apples to apples, I need to know that there are
indeed two apples, and not one apple and one orange. I want to know if
the sample sizes were the same. I want to know if they covered the same
geographic regions in the 2002 study as they did in the 1985 study. I
want to know what the margin of error was on the 1985 study. I want to
know if the the 2002 survey asked *exactly* the same questions as the
1985 survey. And it seems, to me at least, that they aren't. The data
was compiled by the authors of the study and compared from that point
on, which, as my Stat101 professor would have told you had you been in
class with me on day one is pretty much par for the course. I'll never
forget what the man said: The
first and most important thing you have to learn about statistics is
that the numbers can back up any assertion you want if you know how to
manipulate them to that end. This, I suppose, was his best effort
to bolster three hundred students who wanted nothing more than to be
back in their rooms, sleeping off the previous night's hangover, but he
had a point. Here you have a study conducted about journalism by those
in the profession. Which to me sort of sounds like all the arguments
that lawyers and doctors shouldn't regulate themselves. And as we all
know, journalists are forever crying out that there's no bias in their
reporting, so you can let your minds wander from there about some of
the preconceived notions they brought to this study. It's completely
conceivable that they thought that number was high. A fourteen point
jump in seventeen years? It doesn't ring right. That number should, by
all the evidence placed in front of us, be higher than a measly
fourteen point increase. Seventeen years where there was huge increase
in the number of cable news media outlets over that period of time?
Seventeen years where people went from getting their news from one of
three major networks and their local paper to perhaps jumping online
and hitting the news feeds directly? Most people, myself included,
didn't think twice about bias in the news media until we had other
outlets to compare and contrast our regular news coverage with. And it's only a fourteen point jump?
It seems specious to me. It just doesn't sound right. I would have
thought that number would be much higher, but I can't even check the
veracity of their claim because the 1985 numbers are not available.
It's too late to go into this any more. I'm barely staying awake. If
someone wants to run with this, by all means, go for it.
foggiest notion of where he pulls some of the stuff he comes up with.
He's very much like a ten year old boy on summer vacation when it comes
to the internet: send him out the door in the moring; expect him to be
filthy when he comes home at the end of the day, with a frog hanging
out of his pocket. He fills my inbox with links he thinks I'll find
interesting. Mostly, it's an exercise in hit and miss. Sometimes he
hits and sometimes he misses. He hit tonight. The State of the News Media 2004: An Annual Report on American Journalism. It was written by the Project for Excellence in Journalism. It came out in February, but I haven't seen much written about it so I thought I'd link to it.
I haven't read the whole thing, but I did hit the highlights. I found the Public Attitudes section to be surprising.
Public attitudes about the press have been declining for nearly 20
years.
Americans think journalists are sloppier, less professional, less
moral, less caring, more biased, less honest about their mistakes and
generally more harmful to democracy than they did in the 1980s.
Consider a few changes in the numbers between 1985 and 20021: The
number of Americans who think news organizations are highly
professional declined from 72 to 49 percent.
Those who think news organizations are moral declined from 54 to 39
percent, and those who think they are immoral rose from 13 to 36
percent.
Those who feel news organizations try to cover up their mistakes rose
from 13 to 67 percent. The number of Americans who think news
organizations generally get the facts straight declined from 55 to 35
percent.
Those who feel who feel news organizations care about the people they
report on declined from 41 to 30 percent.
Those who think news organizations are politically biased rose from 45 to 59 percent. {emphasis
added by moi}
What I find surprising is that there's only a 14 point jump in the
number of people who find the media to be biased from 1985 to today.
Given all of the discussion regarding bias in the media---and the
inception of FOX News---I would have thought that number would be much
higher, and let me see if I can remember enough from college statistics
to tell you why.
I have some issues with the methodology of these numbers. I'm no stat
professor, but I do remember a few things about my time in those
classes, and one of the few was that for comparison purposes, an apple
must indeed be an apple. Oranges will simply not work, or the result is
skewed. The 1985 numbers, it seems, came from one source, MORI (I
think--I can't find an actual source for the 1985 #'s), and the 2002
numbers came from a Pew Research Report that seems to have been done to
see what the public's support for the media was post-9/11. When you
follow the link provided in the bibliography to the study results at the Pew website
you can see they used numerous samples and their reporting seems to be
fine. The trouble here seems to be that I can't find that MORI report
anywhere, provided that's the report they used for the 1985 numbers.
If I want to compare apples to apples, I need to know that there are
indeed two apples, and not one apple and one orange. I want to know if
the sample sizes were the same. I want to know if they covered the same
geographic regions in the 2002 study as they did in the 1985 study. I
want to know what the margin of error was on the 1985 study. I want to
know if the the 2002 survey asked *exactly* the same questions as the
1985 survey. And it seems, to me at least, that they aren't. The data
was compiled by the authors of the study and compared from that point
on, which, as my Stat101 professor would have told you had you been in
class with me on day one is pretty much par for the course. I'll never
forget what the man said: The
first and most important thing you have to learn about statistics is
that the numbers can back up any assertion you want if you know how to
manipulate them to that end. This, I suppose, was his best effort
to bolster three hundred students who wanted nothing more than to be
back in their rooms, sleeping off the previous night's hangover, but he
had a point. Here you have a study conducted about journalism by those
in the profession. Which to me sort of sounds like all the arguments
that lawyers and doctors shouldn't regulate themselves. And as we all
know, journalists are forever crying out that there's no bias in their
reporting, so you can let your minds wander from there about some of
the preconceived notions they brought to this study. It's completely
conceivable that they thought that number was high. A fourteen point
jump in seventeen years? It doesn't ring right. That number should, by
all the evidence placed in front of us, be higher than a measly
fourteen point increase. Seventeen years where there was huge increase
in the number of cable news media outlets over that period of time?
Seventeen years where people went from getting their news from one of
three major networks and their local paper to perhaps jumping online
and hitting the news feeds directly? Most people, myself included,
didn't think twice about bias in the news media until we had other
outlets to compare and contrast our regular news coverage with. And it's only a fourteen point jump?
It seems specious to me. It just doesn't sound right. I would have
thought that number would be much higher, but I can't even check the
veracity of their claim because the 1985 numbers are not available.
It's too late to go into this any more. I'm barely staying awake. If
someone wants to run with this, by all means, go for it.
Posted by: Kathy at
01:47 AM
| No Comments
| Add Comment
Post contains 1045 words, total size 6 kb.
72kb generated in CPU 0.0162, elapsed 0.1032 seconds.
48 queries taking 0.0917 seconds, 179 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.
48 queries taking 0.0917 seconds, 179 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.
