What I'm reading right now (besides the usual junk fiction) is "Eat Me: The Food and Philosophy of Kenny Shopsin," featuring the musings and recipes of a New York
I never, ever thought I would see this. It's the actual concluding paragraph from an actual editorial on the actual Journal Gazette editorial page:
Hallelujah -- looks like I'll have time to do some of those things I've been putting off this year:
Along with the economy, the Earth itself is slowing down, requiring timekeepers to add an extra second to their atomic clocks to keep in sync with Earth's slightly slowing rotation. So an extra second will be tacked on to Dec. 31 after 6:59:59 p.m. and before 7 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.
It's often said that party labels don't matter as much at the local level, and generally that's true; there's no Pepublican or Democratic way to fill a pothole. But sometimes it does matter -- even at the local level, Democrats probably have a tendency to favor "fixing" things, and Republicans are likely to look more skeptically at change.
The Wall Street Journal's editorial captures the essence of the Blagojevich scandal:
The list of crooked politicians is long, and the list of stupid politicians even longer. But if the criminal allegations made yesterday against Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich are proven in court, rarely will a politician have combined the two qualities with such efflorescence.
Remember "My country right or wrong"? Isn't "Buy American" the same sort of thing? Never mind how bad the product might be or how expensive it is, it's your patriotic duty to choose it over that evil foreign product. But it's not always that easy:
For example, some Ford Focus automobiles are actually produced south of the border, at a factory in Mexico, and Nissan Altimas are built right here in the United States - in Tennessee.
They never learn, do they?
Westfield » For three months, no new development will occur in the city's downtown, pending the outcome of a long-awaited presentation set for next week.
[. . .]
You have to love Illinois politics. The rest of us think we know what corruption looks like, but only a sitting Illinois governor can get arrested on charges the U.S. attorny says are of "staggering" breadth. Rod Blagojevich all but put a "for sale sign" on the operation his office. And there is this especially nasty allegation:
What's the worst way to deal with a shrinking customer base? Why, cut back on what you offer, so that it chases away more customers and forces you to cut back even more, which . . . Sounds really stupid when it's put that way, doesn't it? But that's what everybody does, the Nothing But Crap network being the latest example:
N.J. Gov. Jon Corzine takes the marbles out of his mouth long enough to explain the economic crisis:
"Now the piper is coming home to roost," Corzine said. "We have to pay that piper."
But why did the piper cross the road, and will he find a place to roost there, and do we have to pay him then, too? I think the piper in New Jersey has flown the coop.
But don't count your pipers before they hatch.
I thought I'd been nagged by the best, but apparently not:
A woman's "nagging" led her husband to buy a ticket in the $7.5 million Powerball with a couple of minutes to spare on Saturday night.
[. . .]
I have never been so glad to listen to my wife's nagging," he said.
Way to encourage her, pal. You now deserve what you get for the rest of your life.
"We've got phoney-baloney jobs up the ying-yang, say America's mayors! All we need is the money to pay for them!" Nick Gillespie on Barack Obama's tired, old change:
When the history of this awful moment of bailout hysteria is written, there'll be a chapter or 20 on the complete bogosity of what might call "the infrastructure flim-flam"—the idea that government can boostrap the economy out its funk by hiring two guys to dig a hole and a couple more to fill it in.
Guess I'd better brace myself for all that extra work I'm going to have to do tomorrow:
People across the country are being urged to skip work Wednesday after calling in "gay."
The loosely organized protest, called "Day Without a Gay," (www.daywithoutagay.org) is intended as a statement against California's ban on same-sex marriage, along with other political developments considered anti-gay.
OK, so Obama hasn't been able to totally quit smoking yet. Who's surprised? Some people think his attempt to duck the question in the Tom Brokaw interview is a symbol of Bigger Things:
If we can't get a straight answer out of Barack Obama about a personal habit like smoking, are we to expect any different with the economy, taxes, defense, spending, or past associations?
This may be the single worst idea I've seen in a month:
Thursday was the first time the George Bush Intercontinental Airport offered karaoke to harried holiday travelers. Over the past years, the airport invited school choirs to perform Christmas carols in the concourses
Wow, something I've been for years now has a name:
Bay Area waiters have a nickname for many of their customers these days: the non'trée.
Not that I want my president to be spending countless hours obsessively e-mailing with his BlackBerry, but this has always bothered me:
For security reasons Barack Obama was initially told he would need to give up his mobile.
Or maybe not. Apparently the president-elect is feeling a bit too constricted inside the presidential bubble, which is understandably tightly controlled by the Secret Service.
[. . .]
Remember that "Twilight Zone" episode in which nobody realizes until too late that "To Serve Man" is a cookbook? Well, when Keanu Reeves says he is "a friend of the Earth" in the remake of "The Day the Earth Stood Still," that doesn't mean what people think it does, either, and it shows just one of the two ways the re-makers have screwed up a classic movie.
An innovative approach to keeping kids out of trouble:
Inmates at the Wabash Valley Correctional Facility hope their performance of Shakespeare adaptations will help at-risk kids stay out of prison.
Inmates in the Shakespeare in Shackles program recently adapted and performed scenes from "Romeo and Juliet" to highlight the violent society Romeo lived in and the consequences of his choices.
This is one of the most shocking crime stories I've seen in a while:
Police say a Muncie woman was arrested after asking a state trooper whether she could smoke -- and then trying to light up a marijuana joint.
Thirty-two-year-old Honesty Knight was a passenger in a vehicle that Trooper Eric Perkins pulled over for a traffic violation early Friday. While the trooper was talking to the driver, Knight obtained the trooper's permission to smoke.
