Yeah, so I think we all know that while France is a member of NATO, they haven't committed any troops to that mission since De Gaulle was president. We all know this, right? You didn't? Well, that's what the deal is. However, ever since Sarkozy was elected president, France has been toying with the idea of supplying troops to NATO again. Apparently, however, they're concerned with how NATO is run.

Their concerns have nothing to do with the possibility of their troops being sent out to, say, Afghanistan, unlike their neighbors the Germans. No, their concerns have to do with NATO's bureaucracy---and how unwieldy and bloated it is.

France, which is studying a possible reintegration into NATO military structures, called on Saturday for faster moves to reform the 26-nation body's labyrinthine internal structures and budgets.

Defense Minister Herve Morin told a security conference in Munich that NATO had a 2 billion euro (US$2.90 billion) annual budget and a staff of 22,000 full-time employees, the equivalent of one for every three alliance troops currently on missions.

"It has nearly 320 committees or sub-committees, with some carrying the name of 'committee on the challenges of modern society' or the 'food and agriculture committee'!" Morin said.

Who would have ever guessed that France (FRANCE!!!) could (or even would) be so concerned with the size of a bureaucracy that they might rule out reinvolving themselves because they judged it to be so out of control?

This is shocking.

It's on par with some scientist announcing that, indeed, cats and dogs don't really hate each other.

Posted by: Kathy at 10:26 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Have you heard? Foster and Associates (the geniuses who gave us this brilliant work of art. ) are in the process of building the world's first carbon neutral city, to be called Masdar City.

Wanna guess where Masdar City will be located?

Abu DhabiÂ’s renewable energy initiative, Masdar, has laid the cornerstone of its carbon-neutral, waste-free city, saying it will invest $22bn in the hope that the project becomes a blueprint for sustainable development around the world.

Oil-rich Abu Dhabi said it was committing $15bn (€10.3bn, £7.7bn) into a broad range of alternative energy projects beyond Masdar City, such as solar and hydrogen power plants and solar panel manufacturing sites.

Foster & Partners architects will design the car-free city, housing 50,000 residents by 2016. Masdar’s research institute, founded in partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will be located in the 6.5 sq km development that aims to turn into an alternative energy cluster for 1,500 ­businesses.{...}

Yes, you read that correctly. This environmentally forward and car-free project will be built in Abu Dhabi.

And, of course, it will be funded with the proceeds from the sale of all that glorious Texas Tea.

Think that's good? Just wait. It gets better.

{...}To maximise energy efficiency, the cityÂ’s narrow thoroughfares will draw on the traditional architecture of the old walled towns of the Middle East. Carbon emissions saved by these techniques will then be monetised through carbon credits under the Kyoto ProtocolÂ’s clean development mechanism.

{my emphasis}

That's just freakin' genius. Would that we could all be so canny.

Posted by: Kathy at 10:02 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Thank God the husband no longer plays World of Warcraft.

You're probably thinking that he quit because I was having trouble with all the time he spent playing. Nope. If he wants to play MMORPG's, I don't really have an issue with it, so long as he's not spending every waking hour on the damn computer either playing or dealing with "guild business." It's fun for him. While I don't get it and never really will, it's not for me to judge. And, as I've mentioned before, anything that leaves me with sole control over the tee vee is a good thing.

No, the reason I'm glad he's not playing WoW anymore is because of crap like this.

Now, the husband would never want this bit o' machinery in the first place, mainly because he likes to build his own gaming rigs. But, I'm glad he quit playing because I don't want him associating with people who would buy this sort of thing.

Embracing your inner geek is one thing; slapping down your credit card to buy a World of Warcraft Edition Dell Laptop is entirely another.

Posted by: Kathy at 09:02 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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1 Coming soon to a gamer with boundary issues near you: http://www.ageofconan.com/ "Time enough for sleep in the grave."

Posted by: MRN aka "The Husband" at February 07, 2008 11:58 AM (6r15q)

2 Back in MY day, it was BCGs and pocket protectors that announced your Everlovin' Geekishness to the masses. Huh.

Posted by: Margi at February 07, 2008 03:44 PM (IYBY1)

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Alcatraz: Future Home of Global Peace. Or at least that's what some hippy drippy trippy idiot would have it become.

San Francisco voters will decide on Tuesday whether to remove the famous Alcatraz Prison visited by thousands of tourists a day and instead create a "global peace center."

The proposition sharing the presidential primary ballot comes from the director of the California-based Global Peace Foundation who gives his name as Da Vid. He says transforming Alcatraz will "liberate energies, raising the whole consciousness of the Bay Area."

Supporters would like to raze the prison and build a medicine wheel, a labyrinth and a conference center for non-violent conflict resolution. Volunteers collected 10,350 voter signatures last year to put it on the local ballot.

But even in a city long famed for its embrace of counterculture, many are skeptical about he plan.

"Perhaps we haven't reached the proper stage of enlightenment yet, but we're more inclined to support propositions with defined sources of funding attached to them," the San Francisco Chronicle said in an editorial.{...}

I went on a tour of Alcatraz a few years back, when the husband and I visited San Francisco. It was one of those guided tours, where you wear headphones and listen to certain tracks as you visit different places within the facility, and one of the parts that struck me was when former prisoners reminisced about their experience and said that when the wind came across the bay from Oakland and San Francisco, they became miserable and depressed because they could hear the life they were missing out on. The sounds of traffic carried, but so did the sounds of laughter and conversation. One can only hope that, if such a place were to be built on Alcatraz, the wind would carry the sounds of guitar strumming, Kumbaya singing hippies to the residents of those fair cities---and perhaps, just perhaps, they'd get so annoyed they'd ditch their dippy hippy ways and would get with the freakin' program already.

Posted by: Kathy at 07:27 PM | Comments (12) | Add Comment
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...or so Whitney Houston warbled all those years ago. Yeah right.

{...}Authorities said that a 17-year-old girl in a hot-pink sweatshirt approached Smith outside of a Winn-Dixie supermarket at Hypoluxo and Jog roads in Boynton Beach Wednesday evening and asked the girl what her favorite cookies were. Police told WPBF that, while Smith was telling the teen about her favorite Cinna-Spins, the teen snatched an envelope containing about $167 off of Smith's table, hopped into another teen's car and drove away.
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Smith told WPBF that she turned to her mother in tears, saying, "Mommy! That girl took all my money!"

Authorities said they caught up with the 17-year-old girl Thursday and pulled her out of class at Park Vista High School, where she allegedly confessed to the crime, WPBF reported. Investigators said the girl's female accomplice, another a Park Vista student, also confessed.

The Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office said that the case has been handed over to the State Attorney's Office to determine if charges will be filed against the teens.

Smith's mother, Charlene Rubenstrunk, told WPBF that the girls returned to the store Thursday to taunt her daughter.

"They are within 10 feet of the same kid they just robbed last night and there is nothing anybody can do about it. I find that offensive," Rubenstrunk said.

The girls, whose names are not being released because they are minors, told WPBF that they were not remorseful for the crime, and that they did it because they "needed money."

"We went through all that effort to get it, we got all these charges and we had to give the money back. I'm kind of pissed," one of the girls told WPBF.

The other girl told WPBF that she was upset because police found them.

"I'm not sorry, I'm just pissed that I got caught," the girl said."

You think that's offensive? Check out the video. Pretty much the same as the article, but chock-a-block full of attitude.

I thought it was bad enough that they'd said what they did, but the way they said it, the way they apparently thought it was cool to be on tee vee is even more offensive.

You needed money, so the best way to go about that is to steal from a freakin' girl scout? What the hell?

You know, since I don't have kids, I generally refrain from telling parents how to raise their offspring. But if either of those girls was my kid, well, I'd take a strap to them. Then, when they're incapable of sitting for a few days, I'd let the police arrest them and throw their worthless asses into jail for a few days without bailing them out. Then I'd make them volunteer in a homeless shelter for about a year. To show them what it's really like to need money.

But, I don't have kids, so what do I know?

{Ht: Laura W. over at Ace.}

UPDATE: I just showed this to the husband and his question was, "Do we have someplace to throw little whores like that other than Vegas?"

Posted by: Kathy at 12:01 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Ok, so two things are apparent to me after watching this video:

1. I have until February 10th to stock up on popcorn.

2. Apparently, Steven Hawking is one of the members of "Anonymous" because he's obviously the voice over. Like, duh.

Might want to go a little more covert there, Stevie.

{ht: wwtdd who also has a neato link to some crazy ass shit that the broad from The King of Queens allegedly wrote.}

Posted by: Kathy at 12:54 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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This is what you get with socialized medicine.

Doctors are calling for NHS treatment to be withheld from patients who are too old or who lead unhealthy lives.

Smokers, heavy drinkers, the obese and the elderly should be barred from receiving some operations, according to doctors, with most saying the health service cannot afford to provide free care to everyone.

£1.7 billion is spent treating diseases caused by smoking, such as lung cancer and emphysema

Fertility treatment and "social" abortions are also on the list of procedures that many doctors say should not be funded by the state.

The findings of a survey conducted by Doctor magazine sparked a fierce row last night, with the British Medical Association and campaign groups describing the recommendations from family and hospital doctors as "out­rageous" and "disgraceful".

About one in 10 hospitals already deny some surgery to obese patients and smokers, with restrictions most common in hospitals battling debt.

Managers defend the policies because of the higher risk of complications on the operating table for unfit patients. But critics believe that patients are being denied care simply to save money.

{...}Among the survey of 870 family and hospital doctors, almost 60 per cent said the NHS could not provide full healthcare to everyone and that some individuals should pay for services.

One in three said that elderly patients should not be given free treatment if it were unlikely to do them good for long. Half thought that smokers should be denied a heart bypass, while a quarter believed that the obese should be denied hip replacements.

{...}Ninety-four per cent said that an alcoholic who refused to stop drinking should not be allowed a liver transplant, while one in five said taxpayers should not pay for "social abortions" and fertility treatment.{...}

Doctors in the UK apparently think the only people they should treat are the people who never get sick.

Well, that would assuredly leave more time for golf.

Posted by: Kathy at 12:06 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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I think most people remember this moment.

An actor schooled the UN on its priorities, and it worked, in many ways. Because Clooney had the temerity to point out the truth of the UN, that it has, and does, allow genocide to occur, even though its charter explicitly states the opposite, people in developed countries, around the world, finally got a clue as to how the UN was avoiding its duties. While I'm generally of the opinion that celebrities should stay the fuck out of politics, this is one of the extremely rare exceptions to that rule. In this instance, George hasn't really gotten what he was asking for, UN peacekeepers on the ground in Darfur, to protect refugees and keep the relief workers safe. Shocker. The African Union is still doing that job, and they're having a hard time with it, because everyone and their brother seems to be working against them. But he did push in the right direction, mentioning the phrase "right and wrong" whilst doing so, and for that he gets some points from me.

I respect George for fighting for Darfur. It's a worthy cause and he uses his voice and celebrity in a good way to fight for the people there. But that respect I have for George took a big hit when I found out he could be bought cheaply:

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon named actor George Clooney, who has campaigned for refugees in Darfur, as a U.N. "messenger of peace" on Friday to promote the world body's peacekeeping efforts.

Clooney is the ninth U.N. messenger -- people chosen from the fields of art, music, literature and sports who have agreed to help focus attention on the United Nations' work.

U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas said Clooney would have a special emphasis on peacekeeping. She said he had been "recognized for focusing public attention on crucial international political and social issues."{...}

What did they promise you, George, to get you to do this? Peacekeepers? Boots on the ground? I know there's some quid pro quo going on here. What is it, Georgie Porgy Puddin' and Pie? You have to know that you just got the shit end of the stick, eh? They're going to use you and you're not going to get a damn thing out of them. I'm sure you think you're doing a good thing here; that you're simply killing two birds with one stone, but you've just signed up to be an agent of an agency that doesn't give a damn about solving the problem that is Darfur.

Good work, bud! I'm sure that'll save some refugees from dying.

Posted by: Kathy at 10:49 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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More batshit fucking loco for your edification/entertainment.

I highly recommend checking out the second video, to hear about how Tom Cruise "saved" all the firefighters in NYC after 9/11. The third one focuses on his mission (impossible) to get psychiatry banned.

Good times, my devoted Cake Eater readers. Good times!

Posted by: Kathy at 01:30 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Depending upon whom you chat with around here, Garrison Keillor is a savior, or he's a tremendous asshat. I don't think it'll come as a surprise to anyone when I reveal, right here, right now, that I side with those who think he's an asshat.

{...}Keillor and his wife, Jenny Lind Nilsson, are suing their next-door neighbor, Lori Anderson, to stop her from building a two-story addition to her home that would include a three-stall garage and studio.

The lawsuit, filed Monday in Ramsey County District Court, claims the addition would "obstruct the access of light and air to the Nilsson-Keillor property" and "impair or destroy protected historical resources."

Both homes in the 400 block of Portland Avenue are within the Ramsey Hill historic district.

The complaint also said the project would obstruct their view "of open space and beyond" and possibly hurt property value. The estimated market value a year ago for Keillor's home was about $1.2 million, according to property tax records; Anderson's was about $600,000.

The city also is named a defendant in the documents, which said Keillor and his wife were not notified of public hearings before a zoning variance was approved and the project was OK'd by the Heritage Preservation Commission.{...}

Get that? Keillor is not only suing his neighbors for blocking his view of an alley, but he's also suing the city of St. Paul because, ahem, he says he wasn't notified of public hearings.

Hey, jerkweed, public meetings are, by definition, open to the public, which means there was notice. Just because some city employee didn't come up to your door, ring the bell, a copy of Lake Wobegon (that he was just hoping and praying you'd have graciousness to autograph) in his trembling hands, doesn't mean that there wasn't notice. It just wasn't of the personal variety, which you, in your self-proclaimed position as arbiter of all things Minnesotan, would have undoubtedly preferred. This is the way it works for the rest of us. Why would you think you're immune?

"We were heartsick," Anderson said of learning about the suit.

Olson said when he and Anderson decided to marry, they realized their one-car garage wasn't big enough. Even before they hired an architect, the couple said they talked to neighbors. They planned to build three stalls, a storage area and a mudroom on the first floor and a studio for Anderson's business on the second. The addition would be a few feet lower than the existing home and would be attached to the rear.

The project would add about 1,900 finished and unfinished square feet to the home, which now has 2,124 finished square feet. The Keillor-Nilsson home has 5,168 finished square feet, according to tax records.

Anderson and Olson received a zoning variance for a 23-foot rear-yard setback rather than the standard 25 feet and conditional approval from the Heritage Preservation Commission, pending final approval of the plans.

{...}Olson said Monday that Keillor and his wife "couldn't have cared less" when Anderson told them they were building a bigger garage.

"He's a busy guy," Olson said. "We didn't feel obligated to include him in the planning."{...}

See? Dear old Asshat knew that his neighbors were planning a remodel. He just didn't care until it impeded his view of open space---open space that just happens to be owned by his neighbors. And what about that view, eh? Roll that beautiful bean footage!

See, apparently you're only allowed to use all the space on your lot if you're Garrison Keillor. The little people next door shall not, apparently, be allowed to expand upon land they own because it means dear old Garrison might feel claustrophobic, in his residence, in the middle of a historic neighborhood that's not necessarily known for its overwhelmingly gargantuan lots to begin with.

Go read the rest of the article if you can stomach it.

This is becoming one of those issues here in the urban areas of the Twin Cities---people expanding their homes in a large way, or completely knocking older homes down to build a bigger, more modern home on a lot with existing trees. The lots here are not large, and some of these homes, do, indeed, look like they've been shoehorned in, despite most builders best efforts. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. The City of Minneapolis has been toying with the notion of not allowing this to happen anymore, even though it's a proven fact that said homes add to property values. In fact, here in Cake Eater Land, which is one of the older suburbs in the Cities, there is a moratorium on knock-downs in place for one of our older, richer, neighborhoods, until April. Another neighborhood tried to latch onto that moratorium this fall and their measure failed, in part, because contracted home sales were falling through left and right simply at the threat of a moratorium on rebuilds. People want larger houses these days. We lead different lives today than we did when these homes were originally built---and those different lives require more space than what is on offer. I see absolutely no problem with remodeling or knocking down a home on land that you own. The overall aesthetics of a neighborhood should not trump an individual's property rights. It doesn't matter if the proposed house rebuild/remodel is hideous. If someone wants to amend their property, they should be able to do it as they see fit, even if it pisses off the neighbors. That's not going to stop some people, though, Garrison Keillor being one of them.

I have no doubts that, sometime in the future, Keillor will try and make his lawsuit against his neighbors, who have done everything the way they're supposed to do it, part of this larger debate. He throw his weight around, and people who have no cause to be ticked off about this issue, will side with him. Because he's Garrison Keillor, and everyone knows he's a defender of all things good and above average here in Minnesota.

You, know, except for things which restrict his view.

Posted by: Kathy at 11:02 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Go and see the batshit fucking loco.

Swim around in it, until you're so waterlogged you can swim no more.

Then realize, because you're not a member of a freakin' cult, you can laugh your ass off at this. Whereas I'm sure some poor, deluded Scientologists had to pay good money to see this video the first time around and, ahem, undoubtedly took it very seriously.

{ht: Dearest Jonathan}

Posted by: Kathy at 12:03 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Yuck.

Twins separated at birth and adopted by separate parents later married each other without realising they were brother and sister.

The siblings were recently granted an annulment in the high court's family division.

The judge ruled that the marriage had never validly existed. Marriages can be annulled if one of the parties was under 16 at the time, if it is a bigamous union, or if the couple are closely related.

The identities of the British pair and the details of the relationship have been kept secret, but it is known that they were separated soon after birth and were never told they were twins. They did not discover they were blood relatives until after the wedding.{...}

On a somewhat related note, I've always thought there was a decent sci-fi book/movie to be written about the future consequences of sperm/egg donation. As in, epidemiologists notice there's a uptake in hemophilia cases/exceedingly stupid children, etc. Once they figure it out, they try to take their case to the public, advocating DNA tests before people get married, to try and stop this sort of thing from going any further and start being murdered/chased around by big bad guys hired by multinational sperm banks/infertility clinics, who, of course, want to stop them.

If anyone wants to run with it, go to town. I'm, obviously, not going to write it. But I would like, at the very least, a thank you in the "Author's Note" section.

{ht: Steve-O)

Posted by: Kathy at 01:35 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I'd throw this one in the Silly Germans file, but alas, it's a pair of Polacks* who've caught my eye this time round.

WARSAW (Reuters) - A Polish man got the shock of his life when he visited a brothel and spotted his wife among the establishment's employees. Polish tabloid Super Express said the woman had been making some extra money on the side while telling her husband she worked at a store in a nearby town.

"I was dumfounded.{sic} I thought I was dreaming," the husband told the newspaper Wednesday.

The couple, married for 14 years, are now divorcing, the newspaper reported.

So, do you think he was more dumbfounded at seeing his wife at a brothel, or knowing he'd just gotten busted, big time, for visiting one?

*And, yes, I can use the term 'Polack'---because I'm half Polish. Anyone else who's not Polish who tries to use it will get their ass beat by me. Got it?

Posted by: Kathy at 04:42 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The whole world appears to be in an uproar today about the fact that Britney Spears finally lost it.

Sigh.

This chick, for all the wackiness she's displayed over the past year, still can see her kids. Does she have full custody? No, she does not. But, she's allowed supervised visitation. I suppose that will probably change after last night's events, but still... She's squeezed out two kids and she still has the right to see them. Even though she's a complete whacko, her biological right to "mother" her children is all important and no one, apparently, wants to intrude upon that right.

Contrast this with the fact that I, as a cancer survivor, will need to have Dr. Academic state in a letter that I am cancer-free and expect to have a normal life span, with a good quality of life, just to get in the door. Of course, I probably won't need him to write the letter for five years, because that's the average amount of time adoption agencies make cancer survivors wait before they can apply to adopt. And that's just the tip of the iceberg, kids.

I'm just wondering: does the bitterness show? I hope it does, because there is something seriously FUCKED UP about this entire scenario.

Posted by: Kathy at 01:12 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Taking a page out of Robert Mugabe's playbook, Lippy McLipster has decided to issue a new currency in an effort to prop up the notion that's there's no inflation in Venezuela.

In an effort to stem record-high inflation, Venezuela launches a new currency on Wednesday – the “strong bolivar” – by slicing three zeroes off the bolivar.

While President Hugo Chávez’s government is hailing the measure as an anti-inflationary measure that will help stabilise the economy, non-government economists fear the strong bolivar will be anything but strong.

“We’re ending a historical cycle of . . . instability in prices,” Rodrigo Cabezas, finance minister, said on Monday, adding that the change aimed to “recover a bolivar that has significant buying capacity”.

“It was necessary to leave behind the consequences of a history of high inflation,” Gaston Parra, central bank president, said in a televised year-end speech. He added that officials aimed “to reinforce confidence in the monetary symbol”.

However, in view of racing inflation, an increasingly unsustainable exchange rate and shortages of basic goods, José Guerra, a former chief economist at Venezuela’s central bank, said: “The monetary ‘reconversion’ is not going to stabilise prices. It’s not going to help reduce inflation, or anything of the kind,” arguing that the new currency could even trigger higher inflation. “It’s a dangerous move,” he said.

{...}José Manuel Puente, an economist at the IESA business school in Caracas, says the exchange rate is at least 20-30 per cent overvalued. But the key problem, he argues, is the gap between the official and the “parallel” exchange rate for the dollar, which recently exceeded triple the official rate of 2,150 bolivars.

You know, just because people can set their farts on fire doesn't necessarily mean that they should. I believe the same principle applies here.

Posted by: Kathy at 11:56 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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A bit of advice to our favorite web slinger from moi. Ahem. Feel free to use the UN building when you pull your Tarzan routine, but for the love of God, don't actually enter the freakin' place.

{...}In a move reminiscent of storylines developed during the second world war, the UN is joining forces with Marvel Comics, publishers of Spider-Man and the Incredible Hulk, to create a comic book showing the international body working with superheroes to solve bloody conflicts and rid the world of disease.

The comic, initially to be distributed free to 1m US school children, will be set in a war-torn fictional country and feature superheroes such as Spider-Man working with UN agencies such as Unicef and the "blue hats" - UN peacekeepers.

Camilla Schippa, chief of office at the UN Office for Partnerships, told the Financial Times the script was being written now and the final storyline was due to be approved in February. The illustrators are working for free. After publication in the US, the UN hopes to translate the comics into French and other languages and distribute them elsewhere, Ms Schippa said. The idea came from French film-maker Romuald Sciora, who had been working on other UN projects and is making a DVD about the international organisation that will be distributed to schoolchildren along with the comic books.{...}

Spidey, Spidey, Spidey. Whatever are we to do with you? Poor, naive sap. Mary Jane's behind this one, isn't she? You can fess up. We'll understand.

Whilst I'm sure Mary Jane's heart is in the right place, she's wrong about this one. She fed you some line of bull over cold, leftover pizza, about how the UN, really and truly, is the only international governmental organization that can truly help those in need around the world, didn't she? Well, my web-slinging friend, don't you see that she's taking you for a ride? Mary Jane, while a very nice girl, I will admit, is also an actress. Of course she's going to have a very liberal worldview, wherein the UN is good and wonderful and the mean, old US is withholding their funds and talking trash about the work they do. MJ would understand that it's all about PR. Where better to reap the benefits of good PR than with those who have very little power to distinguish between the facts of the situation---i.e. that the UN is the most corrupt of corrupt organizations and most Americans have formed a bad opinion of them for precisely that reason---and the lure of a free comic book? Yes, Spidey, we're talking about the children; they are first front engaged in any propaganda war because they have a limited sense of the world, and the motivations of the people within it. They're easy targets, Spidey. Go to your history books and check out where Goebbels and Stalin made their biggest strides---and you'll see it was with the children of their respective countries. You're being used, Spidey, in a propaganda war to bring children over to the dark, insidious side of institutional corruption. While I would agree that institutional corruption isn't exactly on the same level as anti-semitic fascism and communism, the toll it exacts, however, can be just as hefty as either of those ideologies.

I fully realize you're a physics geek, who's got bigger problems to deal with in his daily life that don't revolve around widespread corruption at the UN, but, really, you need to wise up.

Posted by: Kathy at 10:35 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Clueless

Who better to disparage than lawyers? They're known for talking fast, driving expensive cars and making sure they take as much of our hard-earned money as possible - when we're at our most vulnerable.

Some lawyers are willing to face up to their bad rep. The attorneys at Parsinen Kaplan Rosberg & Gotlieb of Minneapolis have turned it on its head, creating a magazine-style public relations piece called "(Not Just Another) Despicable Lawyer."

Designed for some 5,000 clients and friends of the firm, the magazine contains stories about the good works its lawyers have done, the interesting trips they've taken or the hobbies they enjoy outside the office. It also lists gift ideas that benefit others, like Heifer Project International, which provides animals for families in poor countries.

"I think this piece has really captured the essence of the culture of the firm," said Mary Kay Ziniewicz, the firm's business development director, who came up with the idea.

"Our clients see a side of their attorney that they didn't know before, and so it really opens up conversations," she said. {...}

So, what we have here is yet another waste of paper in the name of "community relations," to put it kindly. It's fluff pr, but it's fluff pr, with style, and a sense of humor about itself. Whilst I will give them credit for the tack they took, they still manage to screw it up, however.

{...}In one of the magazine's more personal pieces, managing partner Howard Rubin talks about his personal crisis of confidence and a simultaneous struggle with his mother's Alzheimer's disease.

"I dwelled on life's problems and what they were doing to us, rather than focusing on what I could be doing," he wrote.

He realized that he wanted to help others and loved to throw great parties. Rubin ended up serving on the board of the Alzheimer's Association, chairing its annual gala.

The energy he gained from that work also spilled over to his law practice. He began to see that his contributions were valuable, and he decided the firm "needn't be dull and laborious - we could have unforgettable parties!"{...}

{my emphasis}

Yay! Unforgettable parties! Who wouldn't want to go to an unforgettable law firm party? We, apparently, can all find higher purpose in this life simply by having an unforgettable (!) party! It's, like, in the Bible or something.

The pressing question I would like answered, however, is if the firm's clients who received this piece o' work were somehow charged for it----and the postage the firm used to send it out.

Posted by: Kathy at 09:11 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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So, in a bit of precisely plotted populist electioneering, the Serbian parliament was set to pass a resolution today, "{...}implicitly rejecting membership of the European Union and NATO if the West recognizes the independence of Kosovo." President Boris Tadic is up for re-election in January, and, apparently, he's ready to forgo the carrots for the stick. Probably because it'll play well during his re-election campaign, when the prizes double during the rhetoric round.

Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica had this to say in regards to said resolution:

{...}"Kosovo is big enough for Serbs and Albanians," the prime minister added. But "the main problem is that the United States is preventing the Albanians from compromising."{...}

{my emphasis}

Gee, if only those pesky Americans would get the hell out of the way, of course bees would buzz, birds would fly, dogs and cats and Albanians and Serbs would live together in peaceful harmony. If only the US administration would evacuate to Hawaii for the month of January and take up surfing as an admirable past-time, the Albanians would see reason and peace would break out all over, like a particularly virulent case of the crabs.

Yep. It's all our fault. Really and truly. The Serbian Prime Minister said so.

Posted by: Kathy at 11:18 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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We've gotten some snow here in Cake Eater land over the past couple of days.

Starting on Friday night, we received some sort of precipitation that resembled a slurpee. That froze solid on Saturday afternoon, when the temperature dropped quite quickly after another inch of the white fluffy stuff covered it over. On Sunday, we received about four inches when the tail end of the blizzard that hit Wisconsin rather badly sideswiped us. Yesterday, we received another few inches, and this morning, it's snowing lightly and is supposed to stop in the next hour or so. Reportedly, on Friday we're to get another one to three inches.

The only reason I mention this precipitation pattern is to note that I'm really sick and tired of the snow plow drivers only showing up for overtime hours. As in, the plows are all over the roads late at night, but if you need them to be running at any time during the day, well, that's a crapshoot. The Cake Eater pad resides on a fairly busy road, which is managed by Hennepin County. Across the street, in the Province of Minneapolis, the streets, per usual, have barely been cleaned off at all. Our back alley is taken care of by the Cake Eater City crews, and they've been on the ball---and I've got no issues with them. (They even plow the sidewalk in front of my house, because the plows dump their stuff there and they wisely realize that no mere mortal snowblower could work its way through that crap.) But it appears as if the Hennepin County and City of Minneapolis crews would prefer to make sure they're making as much money per hour of snowplow driving as possible, whilst the roads become completely unmanageable in the meantime. This is not to say I haven't seen crews from my perch, here in the Cake Eater pad, during the day, but they are far and few between during that time period, whereas during the evening, they're all over the place. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize what's going on here. Mr. H. reports a similar situation within Ramsey county, where he lives.

I suspect, if the snow keeps up in this fashion, the county and Minneapolis will be announcing sometime in early February, if not sooner, that they've run entirely out of money for snow removal and will come begging to the state for assistance. Of course, when they go a-begging to the legislature, I'm certain they will not mention that their drivers only seem to show up for work when they're getting paid double for their services.

Posted by: Kathy at 08:53 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Sigh. Don't we, perhaps, have better things to do, o' pointy chapeaued ones?

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Vatican on Wednesday condemned the film "The Golden Compass," which some have called anti-Christian, saying it promotes a cold and hopeless world without God.

In a long editorial, the Vatican newspaper l'Osservatore Romano, also slammed Philip Pullman, the bestselling author of the book on which the family fantasy movie is based.

It was the Vatican's most stinging broadside against an author and a film since it roundly condemned "The Da Vinci Code" in 2005 and 2006.

"In Pullman's world, hope simply does not exist, because there is no salvation but only personal, individualistic capacity to control the situation and dominate events," the editorial said.

{...}The Vatican newspaper said "honest" viewers would find it "devoid of any particular emotion apart from a great chill."

{...}The Vatican newspaper said the film and Pullman's writings showed that "when man tries to eliminate God from his horizon, everything is reduced, made sad, cold and inhumane."

The U.S.-based Catholic League, a conservative group, has urged Christians not to see the movie, saying that its objective was "to bash Christianity and promote atheism" to children.

The Vatican newspaper called the movie "the most anti-Christmas film possible" and said that it was "consoling" that its first weekend ticket sales were a disappointing $26 million.{...}

I hadn't commented on this "Whole here we go again, it's another DaVinci Code" thingymabob, because the Vatican hadn't chimed in directly. But now that they have, well, it's time to revisit ground we've covered many, many times before.

Whilst sighing loudly.

First off, I don't take anything the Catholic League has to say seriously, because, to steal a line from Kathy Griffin, it appears the organization is one guy who has mad emailing/press release-issuing skillz. Second, I'm a little tired of the Vatican feeling threatened by works of fiction. Man up, for Heaven's sakes, because God only knows that there are plenty of men in the Vatican---there should be some spare testosterone floating around there somewhere. I fail to see why the Church would be so threatened by works of fiction that it felt the need to slam them into a wall, much like a wrestler would in a WWE pay-per-view extravaganza, and, furthermore, blatantly ask people to boycott them. It's a move that screams you have no faith in what you're preaching, and that you're afraid, somehow, sometime in the future, people will see that there's just a man behind the curtain and not the Great and Powerful Oz. Stop it. You're making asses out of yourselves. You're supposed to be above this sort of thing.

If someone's faith is so threatened by the mere thought of people going to see a movie based on a book with heavy atheist themes, then you don't really have much faith, do you? That it's the pointy chapeaued ones who apparently don't have much faith in people to view the movie, simply for entertainment's sake, and to not come out of the movie theater as a flaming atheist, ready to rush right over to Barnes and Noble to pick up Richard Dawkins' latest 'God is Dead, You Idiots' screed, is, well, disturbing.

Do I not have ANY readers in Vatican City? For Heaven's sake people, stop making fools out of yourselves!

*My apologies to Robbo for stealing his schtick.

Posted by: Kathy at 12:55 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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