When's the last time you saw anybody smoking on TV, unless it was in an old movie on one of the cable networks? Are smokers going to start feeling like blacks must have in the 1950s, when television producers pretended they didn't exist? Just a passing thought, triggered by:
Smoking in a film? Rate it R, so that no children under 17 are exposed to it.
That idea, at least, is what anti-smoking advocates were promoting at a rally Wednesday evening in Downtown Indianapolis.
Anybody who's ever followed a sports team has probably given in at least once or twice to the Evil Ref Syndrome. It always seems -- especially in close games -- that those rotten officials are calling us for fouls we never committed and letting the other side get away with murder! Why, somebody must be paying them off or something! Usually, this is all good, clean fun, emotions getting away from us in the heat of vicarious battle.
OK, I was one of the biggest nerd-geeks ever in high school, and I've been a fan of all the "Star Trek" TV shows, including "Voyager" (mostly for Seven of Nine, admittedly) and even the mostly forgotten "Deep Space Nine." But this is kinda creepy:
People go into therapy because they don't know who they are or are having trouble facing who they are. So why would we find a psychotherapist among the Amish, who are about as comfortable in their own skins as any group in America? Well, we learn, in this fascinating National Public Radio story, some of the kids who go on Rumspringa adventures, sampling the outside world before settling into Amish life, get into trouble with the police and have to go into court-ordered counseling.
One of those pop-culture sites recently did a post on "Twenty Celebrities that have Aged Miserably." It's kind of a mean-spirited post -- if celebrities seem to age worse than most people, it's only because they started out
Drat. Somebody forgot to send me the memo on this, so I screwed up and called St. Patrick's Day St. Patrick's Day yesterday:
Faith and begorrah, is nothing sacred?
Some folks are trying to transform the name of Tuesday's holiday from St. Patrick's Day to “Shamrock Day.”
It's no big deal one way or the other if the unnamed lesbian high school student in Lebanon wins her suit against the school district and is allowed to wear a tuxedo to the prom. Schools have been given more leeway in recent years to regulate all sorts of student behavior, so it would be no great surprise if she lost. On the other hand, who cares what she wears? Are we going to make Secretary of State Hillary Clinton give up her pants suits and start wearing dresses to diplomatic functions?
I know times are so tough that all the hard-luck stories that have been piling up may have nearly exhausted your store of sympathy. But pause for just a moment to consider this heart-rending account of the plight of some the West Coast's downtrodden. As told by the Los Angeles Times, because of an inability of some people to get government-provided converter box coupons, "Digital TV may bypass skid row":
This gets my nomination for oddest story of the year so far:
CROWN POINT, Ind. — A Chicago man has been convicted of attacking his wife on their honeymoon in Indiana after she refused his demand for a specific sex act.
Newspapers periodically try to show they're still relevant to kids by doing these cute features on the slang being used these days. The stories are pretty pathetic, because the slang has usually changed by the time the story hits the streets, and who should really give a rip about ever-changing ways of saying the same old things? Now, somebody has finally done a slang dictionary that deserved to be done:
