Filed under: Uncategorized
The Chicago Tribune went bankrupt today. A moment of silence for my future, please.
Filed under: Food, Weird | Tags: Food, game, holiday dinner ideas, meat consumption, pigeon, pigeon control, pigeons, times online
A school district in Carlsbad, New Mexico will hold a very important public meeting tomorrow discussing plans for pigeon control. Apparently there is an enormous problems with these birds on their campuses, as well as everywhere else in the universe. According to an article in Business Week last year, scientists predicted that the world’s pigeon population would reach 400 million in the next ten years. Let’s see, since pigeons produce 12 kilos of poop a year in their present numbers, we’re looking at a future with a lot more white stains on our cars (if we still have cars.)
Animal rights activists make it hard to legally shoot the pests without a great reason, so I think we should either come up with good reason to get rid of pigeons or just get rid of animal rights activists.
So before I start sounding like a gun-totin’ redneck, perhaps I should point totoday’s Times Online article for its suggestion of using the pests in place of turkey for the holidays. I mean, why not? Less hassle, and you can get ‘em fresh from your sidewalk!
They take less than half an hour and it’s more fun discovering the different flavours, making the whole process into a bit of a ceremony, accompanied by bread sauce and game chips (crisps).
Snaps for Times Online on making international pests sound like chic holiday cuisine. Check out your local Wegman’s this holiday season for your fresh, free-range “game birds” soon!
Filed under: In the News, Recession, Weird | Tags: begging, homeless, laid off, lay offs, Recession, us economy
Image courtesy of daylife.com
A former executive in New York has the bright idea of passing out his resumes while wearing a sandwich board that says “Almost Homeless: Looking for employment. Very experienced operations and administration manager.”
Paul Nawrocki, who was laid off in February, worked in the toy industry. His wife is disabled, his daughter’s tuition is at stake and he says he’s running out of money.
Nawrocki is one of thousands losing their salaries, as companies across the nations make cuts to afford costs. If a former executive with decades of experience can’t find a job selling his pride on the streets, it doesn’t leave much hope for the soon-to-be-college-graduate typing out blog posts with a mediocre grade-point average and thousands of dollars in student loans. Where’s that call girl who got that senator in trouble? Didn’t she make almost a million dollars a year? Does she have a business card?
Check out the CNN article of this sad man here.
Filed under: In the News, Sports | Tags: 33 year sentence, football players, oj simpson
33 years? I’d be crying too.
Filed under: In the News, Politics, Recession | Tags: cause, crisis, economic, economy, effect, of, on, unemployment, us, us economic crisis, us economy
“It’s unbelievable. We’re well on our way to the worst recession of the postwar period.“–Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at IHS Global Insight in Lexington, Massachusetts. Bloomberg.
“We have recorded the largest decline in consumer confidence in our history.“–Richard T. Curtin, director of the Reuters/University of Michigan Survey of Consumers, which started its polling in the 1950s. New York Times.
“You can’t get much uglier than this. The economy has just collapsed, and has gone into a free fall” –Richard Yamarone, Argus Research in New York. BBC News.
“There are no quick or easy fixes to this crisis, which has been many years in the making, and it’s likely to get worse before it gets better.“–President-elect Barack Obama.
“Do you know the difference between a recession and a depression?
A recession is when your neighbor loses his job, and a depression is when you lose yours.”–Someone’s elderly neighbor. Radio Free Europe.
“These numbers are shocking.” –Economist Joel Naroff, president of Naroff Economics Advisors. CBS News.
“US jobless figures confirm economic meltdown.“–United Press International headline.
Filed under: In the News, Weird | Tags: cow manure, cow methane capture, emissions, energy, environmental, farms, fart, farts, flatulence, green, meat, meat consumption, methane, methane capture, power
According to this story in the New York Times, a farm in the Netherlands is responding to the rise in meat consumption by cooking animal poop and harnessing the methane to produce electricity.
This week countries from all over the world will gather in Poland to discuss the problems of methane emissions from the trillions of animals in meat and dairy farms, which United Nations estimates say contribute to 18 percent of emissions raising global temperatures. Overrated Musician Dave Matthews reports:
More vegetarians around the world are realizing their silly ways, as shown in the rising meat consumption of over 30 percent. And as this percentage rises, so do emissions from said farms and methane is 22 times more potent than regular carbon dioxide. While “methane capture” aka “fart-tricity” sounds like a wholesome, self-sustainable alternative to farms, this is America and convenience and saving money prevails all rational decisions.
With the moral, anti-capitalist mumbo-jumbo aside, power through flatulence? I am in full support. Do you know what this means? Perhaps this could replace the remote control–just let ‘er rip to turn on your favorite program. Power outage? Never fear! Just use the generator in your ass!
To check out more benefits of fart-tricity, check out this article from the International Herald Tribune.
I’ve been in a writing slump for almost seven months. A lot of writing “manuals” and “guides” say that this is normal, but I think that such publications are full of shit. Let’s face it–most of us decide to become writers as our sole profession because we’re lazy. Telling writers that writers’ block, a period that could last anywhere from a few days to a few years, is in fact normal.
But if writers are lazy, then writer’s block is just another term for “unemployed.” Let’s take a look at a bullet list of my life:
- I tried working at my school newspaper. I got a few dozen clips during my active year, but eventually fell out of my position as a reporter because of a major screw-up in the reporting of a feature story. I single-handedly got the entire staff chided out by the advisors and publishing board because of it.
- Although I was a bit broken by that experience, I trudged along and landed an internship with a local free publication. My editor asked me if I wanted to stay on and freelance before summer started. Rather than take on that responsibility, I slept past noon everyday and never got anything done.
- I tried taking the very last reporting class for my degree and had to withdraw from it because I ran into some recurring fincancial problems and couldn’t handle any of the work.
- Due to the economic crisis, I still have financial problems and newspapers and magazines are laying off reporters all over the country.
Perhaps I should have gone into a practical major–medical, law or business. For the past three months, I beat myself up over this flaw in my career choice. After all, many writers have day jobs and therefore have the financial stability and albeit TIME to sit down and write great articles and novels.
But I realized something. I hate hospitals. The thought of working alongside blood, urine and feces grosses the hell out of me, not to mention the fact that medical professionals have to stay in school almost twice as long as most people. HA! Secondly, becoming a lawyer doesn’t always guarantee money. Look at those commercials on television about asbestos and dieting pills. Do I really want to help Mr. & Mrs. BillyBobbyJoeFranklinJohn from West Virginia in their quest to get money from some fast-food chain because the burgers made their asses immobile? And business majors scare me. Constantly associating myself with cutthroat corporate baboons and the prospect of having to sit in an office as a routine nauseates me.
So I guess there’s really only one real option. Does waiting tables as a five-year plan until I catch that big break sound appealing? Fuck no! But there doesn’t seem to be much of a choice until someone saves the media or I become the next J.K. Rowling.
I hate Harry Potter, but I digress.
I was on the phone with a friend last week and we got on the subject of middle school relationships. You know, the kind featured on Oprah that introduce our moms to flamboyant definitions to terms like “hooking up” and “rainbow party.” I have no recollection of attending any rainbow parties in the 8th grade, but it got me thinking of my very first boyfriend. He died a few days ago and I’m again reminded prematurely of how old I’m getting.
I was just growing out of giant ballchain necklaces and South Park shirts. (That’s embarrassing) Once I started listening to better music and looking more like a normal human being instead of a walking KoRn concert, someone noticed me. He wasn’t that great looking, but we both played the guitar and liked the same movies and that was the extent of my 14 year-old standards.
I have this one picture of us at the 8th grade end-of-the-year formal. He looks thin, pale and had that helmet-gelled hair popular among white males in the late 90s. My bright blue contacts made me look like a fish.
We broke up before high school and didn’t talk much afterwards, but I sometimes thought about catching up with him and asking if he ever found that watched Bringing Out the Dead and if he still thought it sucked.
My parents told me his dad found him and the rumors said it was an overdose. But that’s what everyone says when a 21 year-old dies.
I’ve been to the viewings of three high school friends in the past five years. Four, if you count the girl who sat in front of me in homeroom. Funerals for old people are sad but natural, like putting your 20 year-old cat to sleep. Seeing bodies of friends I spent summers with makes me feel old and helpless, regardless of the fact that I turned 21 six months ago.
Rest in peace, Bryan.
Filed under: In the News, Politics | Tags: cbs, cbs news, good decisions, katie couric, katie couric cbs, presidential debate, terrible news anchors
According to an article in the New York Observer, MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann remarked during the network’s Super Tuesday coverage that “it sometimes seemed like everyone in the business had already anchored a debate.”
Everyone except for Katie Couric. According to experts, CBS News’s shrinking budget–$15 million of which goes to her salary–can’t handle the overwhelming costs of hosting a debate for their biggest star. CBS President Sean McManus denies that their decision was based on financial reasons, but the Observer reports:
In the past, CBS has not been reluctant to shell out money to maximize on the Katie Couric phenomenon.
“You think about how much they wasted early on in billboards and other crap, wouldn’t it be smarter to invest in substance now?” said one source, with knowledge of CBS’s aborted debate plans. “Either the network is fundamentally dedicated to spending the money, or they’re not. If you’re really dedicated to bumping your news to another level, you host a debate. But there’s either no interest or no follow-through.”
Thank goodness. A Presidential Debate with Katie Couric would be like a televised game of 20 Questions. I could see it now: “What do you think of gay people? Hot or not?”
Check out Felix Gillette’s article in the New York Observer.
Filed under: Politics | Tags: arizona, college campus shootings, gun control, guns, northern illinois, virginia tech
Arizona Senator Karen S. Johnson has THE solution to campus shootings–allowing guns on campus!
According to Sen. Johnson (R, duh) the tragedies at Northern Illinois University and Virginia Tech would have been avoided, had a student or professor intercepted the gunmen with weapons of their own. She’s proposing that adults 21 and over should be allowed to carry guns on campus.
The crazy white lady, who described kindergarteners as “sitting ducks” in classrooms, wanted the original bill to cover the public school system as well, but the other legislators said that probably wouldn’t be a good idea and that it would probably be better if it were only limited to higher education.
However it is Arizona, a far-off land where one can roam free with a gun without a permit as long as it’s visible enough to scare the crap out of civilization.
Check out Randal Archibold’s coverage of the bill in the New York Times.
