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.
