Apropos of nothing, I really was a volunteer at a community suicide prevention hot line once upon a time in the way-back. I'll reveal one of the most shameful things I ever did in my life now, heretofore known to only a select few. A select VERY few. One of the other volunteers and I (we worked in pairs) took the phones off the hook for about a half hour one night so we wouldn't be interrupted while we engaged in other (and MUCH more pleasant) activities on the floor of the center. It was worth it, in the end, and we consoled ourselves by sayin' it was a slow night. Coz it was. Sorta.
My wife and I were watching Who Wants To Be A Millionaire while we were in bed.It prolly goes without sayin', but my life is remarkably free of discord such as this these days. We thank The Deity At Hand for small favors. Every day.
I turned to her and said 'Do you want to have Sex?'
'No,' she answered. I then said
'Is that your final answer?'
She didn't even look at me this time, simply saying 'Yes.'
So I said 'Then I'd like to phone a friend.'
And that's when the fight started...―:☺:―My wife sat down next to me as I was flipping channels.
She asked, "What's on TV?"
I said "Dust."
And that's when the fight started...―:☺:―
My wife was standing nude, looking in the bedroom mirror.
She was not happy with what she saw and said to me,
"I feel horrible; I look old, fat and ugly.
I really need you to pay me a compliment."
I replied, "Your eyesight's damn near perfect."
And that's when the fight started...
Well, now. Doesn't that sound appealing? We're gonna be in the high 60s today and that's a lot warmer than "normal." I have no right to expect these moderate temps to continue right into Spring but I WAS hopin'. Kinda-sorta.High temperatures ranging from 10 to nearly 20 degrees above average over far eastern New Mexico today will drop 5 to 15 degrees Sunday across the northeast plains as the far southwest edge of an Arctic air mass eases into northeast New Mexico.
The coldest of the air mass will likely delay until Tuesday and Wednesday of next week... as highs over the northeast plains are forecast to reach at best in the teens and nighttime lows Tuesday night may drop several degrees below zero. The Rio Grande Valley and western New Mexico will also likely experience some colder weather next week... though not the bitter cold of the northeast.
Computer weather forecast models still are displaying some significant differences on the track and timing of the two main low pressure systems making up this storm complex... but they are at least showing those two main features.
See when it starts to fall apartWe're on about health issues here, the Hip are on about something entirely different but no less true. I've sung this song in THAT context, too. But not lately.
It really falls apart
Like boots or hearts, Oh when they start
They really fall apart
I was thinking if you were lonelyWell, so much for that sentiment. There might have been some folks who "wouldn't know," but that shit all came out in the wash now, dint it?
Maybe we could leave here and no one would know
At least not to the point that we would think so
... Thomas Edison was granted a patent for his incandescent light, in 1880. Just slightly less than 130 years later the state of California implemented a virtual ban on his invention, forcing its citizens to buy "eco-friendly" (oh, how it pains me to use that term) substitutes in the form of those damned CFLs or LED lights, both of which are horrendously expensive, and in the case of CFLs... an environmental hazard due to their mercury content. Or Californians can choose to live with less light from a "standard" 100 watt bulb.
Who's that woman on your arm, all dressed up to do you harm
And I'm hip to what she'll do, give her just about a month or two.
Bit off more than I can chew and I knew what it was leading to,
Some things, well, I can't refuse,
One of them, one of them's the bedroom blues.
She delivered right on time, I can't resist a corny line,
But take the shine right off you shoes,
Carryin', carryin' the bedroom blues.
Oo...
Dr Marie-Catherine Klarkowski said: ‘The most important thing is to take away patients’ fear. The sight of cleavages gets patients narcotised and distracted from the pain rather quickly.
‘Some patients’ mouths are already wide open on entering the practice.’
It is unclear if the patients feel less pain but the number of clients going to the Relax & Smile practice in Munich has risen by a third since the change. Yes, they are all men.
Every Man's Three Dreams
Heh. I could tell ya some stories about the last one, Gentle Reader. Oh, yes... I could, indeed. But I won't.To be as handsome as his mother thinks.To be as rich as his child believes.To have as many women as his wife suspects...
Texas Beer Joint Sues Church
In Mt. Vernon, Texas, Drummond's Bar began construction on expansion of their building to increase their business.
In response, the local Baptist church started a campaign to block the bar from expanding with petitions and prayers. Work progressed right up until the week before the grand reopening when lightning struck the bar and it burned to the ground.
After the bar burning to the ground by a lightning strike the church folks were rather smug in their outlook, bragging about the power of prayer, until the bar owner sued the church on the grounds that the church "was ultimately responsible for the demise of his building, either through direct or indirect actions or means."
In its reply to the court, the church vehemently denied all responsibility or any connection to the building's demise.
The judge read through the plaintiff's complaint and the defendant's reply and at the opening hearing he commented, "I don't know how I'm going to decide this, but it appears from the paperwork that we have a bar owner who believes in the power of prayer, and an entire church congregation that now does not."
True Story?
Never live in a town with more churches than bars.I'd wager I'm in violation of my own rule these days, seein' as how P-Ville has but two watering holes and god-only-knows how many churches. But then again... bars don't mean as much to me today as they did back when I wrote the law.
Hard as it may be to believe, the fireplace — long considered a trophy, particularly in a city like New York — is acquiring a social stigma. Among those who aspire to be environmentally responsible, it is joining the ranks of bottled water and big houses.
“The smoke from a fire smells very nice,” said Diane Bailey, a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council in San Francisco. “But it can cause a lot of harm.” The tiny particles, she said, “can cause inflammation and illness, and can cross into the bloodstream, triggering heart attacks” as well as worsening other conditions.
Or as Starre Vartan, a 33-year-old blogger who goes by the name Eco-Chick, put it: “Any time you are burning wood or cow dung, you’ll be creating pollution. It’s like junk food: if you do it once a month, then who cares? But if it’s something you do every day, it’s important that you mitigate it somehow. It’s a hazard.”
Wood smoke contains some of the same particulates as cigarette smoke, said Dr. Norman H. Edelman, the chief medical officer for the American Lung Association, as well as known carcinogens like aldehydes; it has also been linked to respiratory problems in young children.
“We now know from lots of studies that wood smoke is very, very irritating,” Dr. Edelman said. “It contains a lot of irritating gases and it also contains damaging particulate matter. It’s probably not good for anybody, and it’s especially bad for anybody who has a chronic respiratory problem.” So the association strongly advises people not to use the traditional fireplace, he said.
A self-proclaimed media insider made the same observation at the far-left website Daily Kos Friday:If Comcast was going to move Olbermann to its own sports channel, why would they humiliate him this way first?It will happen (so I'm told) on the channel now known as Versus. It's a sports channel owned by Comcast, and the story I'm hearing is that it will be rebranded as NBC Sportschannel once the takeover is complete, with Keith as its star personality.
Beautiful day today and purple Winter twilight.
[...]
Every time the no 8 bus passes the Bank of England and I see this amazing cigar shop I think of you.
If I am pessimistic about the future of liberty, it is because I am pessimistic about the strength of the English-speaking nations, which have, in profound ways, surrendered to forces at odds with their inheritance. “Declinism” is in the air, but some of us apocalyptic types are way beyond that. The United States is facing nothing so amiable and genteel as Continental-style “decline,” but something more like sliding off a cliff.
[...]
Continental Europe has given us plenty of nice paintings and agreeable symphonies, French wine and Italian actresses and whatnot, but, for all our fetishization of multiculturalism, you can’t help noticing that when it comes to the notion of a political West—one with a sustained commitment to liberty and democracy—the historical record looks a lot more unicultural and, indeed (given that most of these liberal democracies other than America share the same head of state), uniregal. The entire political class of Portugal, Spain, and Greece spent their childhoods living under dictatorships. So did Jacques Chirac and Angela Merkel. We forget how rare on this earth is peaceful constitutional evolution, and rarer still outside the Anglosphere.[...]
Within the next five years, the People’s Liberation Army, which is the largest employer on the planet, bigger even than the U.S. Department of Community-Organizer Grant Applications, will be entirely funded by U.S. taxpayers. When they take Taiwan, suburban families in Connecticut and small businesses in Idaho will have paid for it. The existential questions for America loom now, not decades hence. What we face is not merely the decline and fall of a powerful nation but the collapse of the highly specific cultural tradition that built the modern world. It starts with the money—it always does. But the money is only the symptom. We wouldn’t be this broke if we hadn’t squandered our inheritance in a more profound sense.
The time has come to put any thoughts of Sarah Palin running for President to rest. I say that not because I dislike her; on the contrary, I'm a fan. I think she did an excellent job as a vice-presidential candidate in 2008 and has been an effective spokeswoman for conservative causes in the years since. But there is no way she is ever going to be elected President, and the sooner Republicans get over that idea, the better.
[...]
No one with a 59 percent unfavorability rating among independents has the chance of a snowball in Hell of being elected President. 2012 will be a vitally important election year; it is no time for a kamikaze Presidential campaign or for a cult of personality.
Republicans (and conservatives) need a candidate who has a chance to win against an incumbent who, despite everything, is not particularly unpopular and who won't be able to do much visible damage between now and then.Agreed, yet again. Mr. Hinderaker and YrHmblScrb are of the same mind and I like his kamikaze metaphor. One can only hope Mrs. Palin recognizes the futility of a presidential campaign on her part and does the right thing. One would also hope her smitten base would wake up and smell the coffee, as well. But there's little or no hope for the Dead Enders; they'll be there long after Mrs. Palin's gone... still bowing, still curtsying. God Save the Queen!
One hopes that Governor Palin will see the writing on the wall and devote her energies to helping the conservative movement and other, better-positioned candidates rather than to pursuing a Presidential ambition that can only prove destructive.
DES MOINES, Iowa -- Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has tasked her aides with quietly gauging her level of support for a potential presidential campaign by making inquiries to a select pool of likely allies and grassroots activists in Iowa, RealClearPolitics has learned.Well, I suppose the jury's still out... but this isn't good news. As Blake Hounshell (the managing editor of Foreign Policy Magazine) puts it:
Key Republican officials and operatives in the nation's first voting state had begun to assume that Palin would not run for president in 2012 since most of them have not heard a word from her or from her small circle of aides, even as other likely candidates have begun jockeying more forcefully behind the scenes. But a Palin adviser confirmed that although the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee's footprint has not been as heavy as that of other possible candidates, her political action committee has indeed been taking discreet steps in Iowa that would help her build a credible campaign here if she decided to launch one.
Words of doom RT @marcambinder: Sarah Palin establishing a small beachhead in Iowa.
Like Taranto, I don’t believe that Mrs. Palin’s resume qualifies her to be president. But then again, neither do I believe that the current president’s resume prior to his election qualified him for the task.What he said. The adults in the room all seem to have a common POV in this space. Why is that, I wonder?
But I don’t hate him. Hate is such a waste of energy.
