Year: 2006
Stupid Reporter Tricks
Posted on August 7, 2006 in Gaffs Psychotropics
Do you mean to say that I am not taking lithium now for bipolar disorder?
Teen Sex and Suggestiveness
Posted on August 7, 2006 in Sexuality
Check this amusing blog riposte on the issue of whether suggestive pop lyrics causes teens to have sex. Now why don’t they investigate the sin of greed which is so much more commonly committed and mentioned in the Bible? Oh yes, they’ve been doing them as marketing surveys. And I, too, buy what they dangle in front of me.
Mark Twain!
Posted on August 7, 2006 in Biography Reflections
I want to kvetch like Mark Twain did, condemning his people and condemning himself as one of them.
Species
Posted on August 7, 2006 in Gyms
The species of slob — when found in locker rooms — is usually confined to young men.
Fall 2006 Predictions.
Posted on August 7, 2006 in Campaign 2006
I predict that the Democrats will win the election by a wide margin.
I predict that it will be brazenly stolen by the Republicans who fear investigation and impeachment.
I predict that the newspapers and other media will blame it on bloggers’ high expectations and faulty polls.
What I hope is that this time we’ll stand up and force a recount. If the evidence is destroyed, this could get interesting.
The Latest Blogging Scheme
Posted on August 7, 2006 in Blogging Strange
There seems to be a new trick that some bloggers are using to get traffic: they post the URL of your site on their blog for long enough for a search engine to turn it up and for WordPress to catch it to put up in your Dashboard. By the time you get around to checking their blog, the link is gone.
I suppose the idea is to trick you into thinking that they’ve linked you for good. Unfortunately, bubbies, it doesn’t work. I don’t care about your right wrong wing politics and I don’t care about fox terriers either. No respectful, topical link: no link back from here.
Without Narration
Posted on August 6, 2006 in Eating
I saw plates that didn’t resemble my order twice before she came with the correct one.
A Death in the Group
Posted on August 6, 2006 in Milestones
What can we see when we’re close to death other than life and its complications?
Minimum Wage Facts
Posted on August 6, 2006 in Class Mailbox
Not only do they get crummy wages, they have little or no health insurance.
1 Minimum wage workers haven’t gotten a raise in nine years.
2 Yes, in America you CAN work full-time and still be poor.
3 Nine big, fat raises. That’s what [Republican] congressional leaders have given themselves while blocking attempts to raise the minimum wage.
4 Those [Republican] congressional pay raises add up to $31,600 per member per year—three times a minimum wage worker’s total annual salary.
5 In 2003, workers paid an average of $2,283 for employment-based family health insurance. That’s 20 percent of a minimum wage worker’s $10,712 full-time, full-year earnings.
6 At the current federal minimum wage rate of $5.15, a minimum wage worker has to work 11.2 hours to pay for one tank of gas.
7 The chair of the Arizona anti-increase group Jobs First actually said most minimum wage workers who are not high school students or first-jobbers are “people who are retired and say, ‘Hey, we want to do this more as a way of biding our time.’” Ask the grandma taking your order at a local fast-food place if she’s doing it for fun. And according to the Economic Policy Institute, seven of every 10 workers who would benefit from a $2.10 increase in the minimum wage are adults.
8 Even greedy Wal-Mart supports a minimum wage increase so its low-wage customers can afford to buy more stuff.
9 Many of the people we pay the least take care of the people we love the most. Home health aides caring for our elderly parents and child care workers would benefit from a minimum wage increase.
10 Most Americans—by a big margin—want the minimum wage increased. [Republican] Congressional leaders are NOT blocking the increase to please their constituents.
The Makings of a Civil War
Posted on August 5, 2006 in Gyms Immigration
A fellow I met at the gym gave me an impromptu lecture. “I support the war,” he told me. “I voted for President Bush. But I don’t like his stand on immigration.” He believed that people came over the border just to get on welfare.
He complained about people in his union who did not speak English. “Do they pay taxes?” I asked. “The ones in the union do,” he said. “But not any of the rest.”
It’s getting tense without anyone realizing it. Latinos are talking about reclaiming the land they lost in 1847. Whites are not going to let them have it and will take steps to put down any rebellion before it starts. They are already calling the very presence of long-term residents an “invasion”. We have the makings of a civil war here and I don’t want to be on either side.
Clutter: An Inventory
Posted on August 4, 2006 in Poems
The magnifying glass useful for reading the fine print of insect wings.
The Nature of Life
Posted on August 4, 2006 in Reading Writing
Natalie Goldberg says in Writing Down the Bones:
Writing is not psychology. We do not talk “about” feelings. Instead the writer feels and through her words awakens those feelings in the reader. The writer takes the reader’s hand and guides him through the valley of sorrow and joy without ever having to mention those words.
When you are present at the birth of a child you may find yourself weeping and singing. Describe what you see: the mother’s face, the rush of energy when the baby finally enters the world after many attempts, the husband breathing with his wife, applying a wet washcloth to her forehead. The reader will understand without your ever having to discuss the nature of life.
