So, I’m driving to work, and they are discussing auto insurance rates, and they note that Massachusetts is one of the 3 cheapest states for auto insurance in the USA.
Over lunch, I confirm this.
I went to school in Massachusetts, and I had friends who used friends and relatives addresses in New Hampshire to register their car to save on insurance costs.
We have entered Bizarro world.
The idea that Massachusetts drivers have among the lowest rates in the nation is mind boggling.
You know, I’ve never been a fan of the zombie genre.
I’ve never sat through a whole zombie movie (though I do want to see the genre bender Shaun of the Dead), and I really don’t get the whole zombie walk thing.
However, the ziomnbie protest of Fred Phelps’ twisted bigoted family is a genius:
Counter-demonstrators dressed as zombies outnumbered protesters from the Westboro Baptist Church at a military base near DuPont, Washington over the weekend.
Melissa Neace, 27, launched a Facebook group to organize the zombies event after she learned that the radical ant-LGBT church would be picketing Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Seattle.
“We wanted to turn something negative around, into something people could laugh at and poke fun at,” Neace explained to The News Tribune. “It was the easiest way to divert attention from something so hateful.”
Over 200 people committed to attending the event on Saturday, which she called “Zombie’ing Westboro Baptist Church AWAY from Fort Lewis!”
Of course, this is completely unrealistic.
Zombies eat brains, and they’d starve if they had to depend on Westboro Baptist.
I was watching the video of Michelle Jenneke running the women’s 100m hurdles, it’s gone viral over the past few days, and what I notice is her hurdles form.
Her bouncing around and dancing as she gets ready for the race, but what struck me was the fact that she could have balanced a soup bowl on the top of her head and delivered it at the finish line without spilling a drop.
No wasted motion.
I spent about 7 hours sitting in a jury room watching sappy movies.
I was not called in for voir dire. In fact, none of the hundred some odd folks were called in.
So it’s off to work tomorrow.
They are showing the Sandra Bullock movie, The Blind Side, which is technically a public showing in violation of the law.
I will not be live blogging my jury duty because:
There are two reasons to be a Yankees fan.
The first is, as my mother did, is to live a few blocks from the stadium.
You could look down into the stadium and catch parts of the game from the roof of her parent’s apartment.
The second reason is to be deeply evil.
To have turned to the dark side, as it were.
In memory of Steve Gilliard, let me say, F%$# the F%$#ing Yankees.
BTW, naming stadia after corporations is even more evil than the New York Yankees.
H/t DC at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.
It appears that someone has found an old vial of Reagan’s blood, and is selling it:
Ronald Reagan’s foundation expressed outrage on Monday at a British company’s auction of what it says is a vial of the late U.S. president’s blood taken at the hospital where he was treated after a 1981 assassination attempt.
PFC Auctions, a company based in Guernsey in the United Kingdom, announced on Sunday that it would sell the vial of blood in an online auction set to end on Thursday.
The vial was taken at George Washington University Hospital on March 30, 1981, after Reagan was wounded by John Hinckley Jr. in Washington, D.C., PFC Auctions said on its website. It is said to have come from a person whose late mother had worked at a medical lab.
“If indeed this story is true, it’s a craven act and we will use every legal means to stop its sale or purchase,” John Heubusch, executive director of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, said in a statement.
The website for PFC Auctions said the latest online bid for the vial stood at 6,270 British pounds ($9,910). A PFC Auctions representative could not be reached for comment.
I guess that this is the Republican equivalent of a piece of the true cross, or Jesus’ foreskin. (Yes, Virginia, one of the medieval scams was his foreskin.)
BTW, here is the kicker:
The seller said he or she had contacted the California-based Ronald Reagan Library and Museum, which is run by the late president’s foundation, months ago and had been told that Reagan’s family would like to have the vial given to them.
“I told him that I didn’t think that was something that I was going to consider … and that I was a real fan of Reaganomics and felt that President Reagan himself would rather see me sell it rather than donating it,” the statement said.
H/t Ed Kilgore. BTW, read the comments on the his post, they are hysterical.
I just found out that an old friend, Tom Fish, has died.
I locked myself out of my car last night, and as a consequence (yes, I know correlation is not causation) I’m having some issues with muscle spasms in my back.
Nice locksmith. Got into my car in about 30 seconds, but it added to my stress level, and I’ve carried stress in my body since I was 7.
Went to the chiropractor after work today.
— Comment by John
I would have thought that George W. Bush would be proof enough of that.
While there are significantly less viable parties out there, Canada’s Rhineroceros Party, and the Monster Raving Looney Party in the UK, but because they fancy themselves as being in the big leagues in Britain, the Liberal-Democrats win the prize:
If there was a symbol of the Liberal Democrats’ discomfiture as their vote plummeted across Scotland and the rest of the UK, it came in the shape of a penguin.
In the Pentland Hills ward for Edinburgh city council, the Lib Dem candidate won fewer votes than Professor Pongoo, or independent candidate Mike Ferrigan, who ran his campaign in a full penguin suit.
Professor Pongoo, who stood to raise awareness of social and environmental issues, took 5.6% of first-preference votes to the Lib Dems’ 4.7%.
On the brighter side ……… Ummmm ……… There is no brighter side. You were outpolled by a bloke in a f%$#ing penguin suit!
About the only thing more embarrassing would be to be out-polled by the Fabian Socialists.
I wonder if anyone got fired over this.
H/t DC at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.
It’s a long story, but I was discussing journalism with someone today, and uttered a Yiddishism, and he replied, “Sy Hersh is the only guy who speaks Yiddish to me.”
I’m jealous. It would make my day if the dean of investigative journalism, Seymour Hersh, called me an “Ill conceived son of a wombat.”
I know that I don’t normally blog about work, but I had a bit of an adventure today.
I was sitting at my desk, when out of my drawers (let me rephrase that, my cabinet) jumped a 5 lined skink.
People have gotten glimpses of it for the past few days, and it jumped out (down actually) onto my desk.
I yelped (OK, maybe it was a shriek) but manged to corner it, and we got it into a cup, and one of my co-workers has taken it home for his kid to keep as a pet.
Certainly got the blood moving.
Surprisingly enough, it’s not Thomas Friedman who wrote this, it was David Graeber, in his book, Debt: The First 5000 Years.
I have to admit that I have not actually read this book, (and now, I never will) I am relying on a review from LizardBreath at Unfogged, and this is what she finds:
But then he starts talking about how democratic methods of structuring organizations are often more efficient than rigid hierarchies, and so will often arise spontaneously when people really need to be get things done. And he uses Apple Computers as an example:
Apple Computers is a famous example: it was founded by (mostly Republican) computer engineers who broke from IBM in Silicon Valley in the 1980s, forming little democratic circles of twenty to forty people with their laptops in each other’s garages.
I don’t know all that much about the history of Apple or of the computer business generally, but I’m pretty sure that’s as wrong as it could possibly be. Apple was founded by two guys, neither of whom (AFAIK) worked for IBM (maybe for a very short time? But certainly not extendedly). It was notoriously a rigid, top-down hierarchy, it was founded in the ’70s, not the ’80s, and who had a laptop until the very end of the ’80s? That’s a whole lot of wrong for one sentence.
It’s so stupid, that I am amazed that this wasn’t written by Tom Friedman.
The latest target of their mishugas? Why it’s the Girl Scouts of America:
Next time you buy a box of Tagalongs, you might be helping to fund an abortion.
Or, at least, that’s what one Republican lawmaker in Indiana might have you believe. State Rep. Bob Morris (R) wants to kill a resolution honoring the Girl Scouts because they are a “radicalized organization” that promotes “homosexual lifestyles” and funds Planned Parenthood.
In a letter to his fellow Republicans on Saturday, Morris said he would refuse to support a resolution celebrating 100 years of the organization because “after talking to some well-informed constituents, I did a small amount of web-based research, and what I found is disturbing.”
The letter, obtained by the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, says that the Girl Scouts of America and the World Association of Girl Guides “have entered into a close strategic affiliation with Planned Parenthood,” though “you will not find evidence of this on the GSA/WAGGGS website—in fact, the websites of these two organizations explicitly deny funding Planned Parenthood.”
Seriously, when did those guys with newspapers wrapped around their feet and standing on street corners screaming obscenities at passers by become the Republican Party mainstream?
I’ve so lived thisWell, this seems a lot like my high school days.
This explains a lot:
