How Green Were the Nazis?

No? How about "The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America," or perhaps "Tattooed Mountain Women and Spoon Boxes of Daghestan." Vote now for the oddest book title of the year.

Stop the presses!
I love those ridiculous studies where some group spends years finding out something that we all knew already. My favorite was the "peer pressure leads to teens trying cigarettes for the first time" bombshell.

Now there's this article where five psychologists who apparently have nothing better to do, have concluded after a study that "today's college students are more narcissistic and self-centered than their prececessors."

We needed a study to prove that the majority of young people today are so selfish and egocentric that they really do think they are the center of the universe?

Gosh, glad those findings are in.

Snarky About Made-Up Words and Camping
In the ongoing decline of American language, we now have "glamping" "shorthand for glamorous camping", as created by someone who obviously hates English.

Glamping? Well that's wrong on two levels.

First off, I'm sick to death of smooshed together words that mean nothing and exist only because people are in too much of a hurry to get back into their SUVs to actually take the time to pronounce two whole words!

Second....um.....glamorous camping? The article refers to a "wilderness resort" in British Columbia where tents have "Persian carpets, down duvets, and even electricity." So why bother? Why not go the whole way and hold out for actual walls?

Now don't think I'm being condescending to those too precious to go out for "real" camping. Personally, I hate camping. I was raised in a conservative, Catholic family which means I'm physically incapable of peeing into a bush. But the fact still seems hilarious that if you don't want to rough it, why are you even trying? Why bother to stay in a tent (even one with Persian carpets) if what you really want is room service and a jacuzzi?

As for the term "glamping" personally I think it's such a stupid concept that anyone who goes in for it deserved to be referred to as a "glamper."

Geography 101
Stop the presses! Forget Darfur, a larger world crisis has gone all but unnoticed by the media.

Switzerland, that dark horse, has invaded Liechtenstein. Ok, Ok, so it was dark and they were lost and tired but I mean really! War in Europe and we're all "ooh...Ann Coulter said bad word."

Heresy
Ok, I'm going out on a limb here. But I just want to say, for the record, "I don't give a fuck about Anna Nicole Smith."

Phew....I feel much better.

I mean really, people, why should we care? I feel the same vague sympathy for her family and friends that is appropriate at anyone's death, but beyond that my reaction is one of relief. Oh good, one less media-created semi-celebrity to annoy us. At least once her funeral coverage is over. But why in the world was she famous anyway? She had hooters and married rich. And that's all that is necessary for fame in this century. Alexander the Great had to conquer Persia in order to be a household name. Oh, if only he'd had hooters think of all the time he would have saved.

She was nothing. She did nothing. She didn't seem to make the world a better place. She didn't seem to do much of anything, and yet for years her clothing, her weight, her affairs...were all watched as if knowledge of her hemlines could cure cancer. How useless and superficial the world has become when someone so useless could be so famous.

So she's dead. So what? Forgive me if I seem heartless, but is this really a national tragedy?

Back...
So here I am. Back from The Great Gall Bladder Heist of '07. All-in-all, not too bad. Modern medicine is truly amazing. I mean they take out one of your organs, and then send you home. Within 3-hours of the surgery I was curled up in my own comfy bed, high on vicodin and sleeping like I did before we got a cat.

The recovery has been easy too. It's hard for me to handle the whole "take it easy," instructions, though. My poor beloved husband keeps signing mournfully as he sees me carrying baskets of laundry around the house. But aside from my own pig-headedness, I'm fine.

The low-fat diet has, so far, proved to be easy. Cheese will be my Achilles' heel, though. Cheese -- the world's most perfect food. I can deal with low fat everything else....but how can I live in a world without triple-creme brie?

So there I am...
...minding my own business, when suddenly I get sick. And not just "I feel icky" but "honey, can you drive me to ER?" sick. So into the hospital I go, for a week. They take my blood at 5 am. I pee into cups to repeatedly prove that I wasn't pregnant. I have CT scans and various other views of my innerds taken. Much boredom, much longing to get home to sweetie and kitty. Much drama.

I'm home now, thanks to modern chemistry, and I'll be having a gall bladder-ectomy at the end of the month. Whee.

If you ever get sick, the nurses on the 8th floor at Peninsula Hospital are amazing.

Oh god, no!
Someone just used the most egregious, most horrendous, most apallingly atrocious corporate bullshit phrase ever. To describe a meeting where the point was filling people in on status of a project, the term used was "on-boarding."

On-boarding?
ON-BOARDING?

No, no, no! Not a word. Not even close to a word. Bad, bad, bad.

The Lion Becomes the Lamb
Dorothy L. Sayers, best known as the author of the wonderful Lord Peter Wimsey series of mystery novels in the 1930's, was also a noted writer on religion. In her essay "Creed or Chaos," she points out a fact about the life of Jesus that I have always found to be wonderful in provoking both thoughts and arguments:

"The people who hanged Christ never, to do them justice, accused him of being a bore. On the contrary; they thought him too dynamic to be safe. It has been left for later generations to muffle up that shattering personality and surround him with an atmosphere of tedium. We have very efficiently pared the claws of the Lion of Judah, certified him "meek and mild," and recommended him as a fitting household pet for pale curates and pious old ladies. To those who knew him, however, he in no way suggested a milk-and-water person; they objected to him as a dangerous firebrand. True, he was tender to the unfortunate, patient with honest inquirers, and humble before Heaven; but he insulted respectable clergymen by calling them hypocrites; he referred to King Herod as "that fox"; he went to parties in disreputable company and was looked upon as a "gluttonous man and a wine-bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners"; he assaulted indignant tradesmen and threw them and their belongings out of the Temple; he drove a coach-and-horses through a number of sacrosanct and hoary regulations; he cured diseases by any means that came handy, with a shocking casualness in the matter of other people¹s pigs and property; he showed no proper deference for wealth or social position; when con-fronted with neat dialectical traps, he displayed a paradoxical humor that affronted serious-minded people, and he retorted by asking disagreeably searching questions that could not be answered by rule of thumb."

What I love about this philosophy, is that it brings up a point that most so-called Christians would rather forget. Namely that Jesus (whether real, fictional, or a combination of both), was a troublemaker. And yet Christians of today never question the status quo, and would be shocked at the suggestion that Jesus (disclaimer again) was anything less than the perfect "Lamb of God." Interesting....

Political websites that suck
The headline says it all. Check this out if you have time to spare. They are universally awful. I'm not sure if my "favorite" is the candidate who has a margarita recipe or the one who says that his oponent was born under the same sign as Hitler.

Oh, grow up
Wonderful article by Michael Bywater about how it's time to adults to stop whining and just grow up.

Colour in action!
This ad for Sony Brava TV is a wonderful little snippet of lunacy. And yes, they really did this. Cool, huh?

Only in Kenya
I cannot begin to tell you how happy this little clip makes me. The tune is infectiously silly, the lyrics insane, the animation too cute for words. I love this!

Humbling
This short film has a powerful message. Please watch it. Then let it inspire you to do something.

Shake up in the cosmos
Well, it's official, Pluto is no longer a planet. For some reason, this upsets me. In a world full of change and chaos, the planets were a constant. Remember "My Very Extravagent Mother Just Spent Uncle Ned's Pay?" (A memnotic for remembering the planets.) Now Uncle Ned is unemployed and will get no pay.

Sure, the universe changes. Technology makes it possible to explore even further into the galaxy and new celestial bodies appear, but it seems so sad, downgrading a planet to a "dwarf planet." Poor, maligned, Pluto. I may start a petition. Save Pluto!

Way to go Exxon?
Not sure if this is true or not, but if it is....it's hilariously scary.

Oldest Ever Pro Baseball Player
This story made me smile.

94-year old John "Buck" O'Neil, one of the stars of the great Negro Leagues, played in a minor league All-Star game on Tuesday night. He lead off the top of the first inning for the West (a walk), and then a mid-inning trade had him starting off the bottom of the inning as well. Horray!

Giant geese and other oddities
Just when you get that "ok, the web is as odd as it can be" feeling, along comes your discovery of the Large Canadian Roadside Attractions website. And once again, life is happily surreal.

I love eggs!
Oh my, there are no words. Crank up the music for this lovely song. Odd with a capital "huh?"

There is no intelligent life...
...in the U.S. Senate. Check out this discussion of the Internet by the senior senator from Alaska. God help us...