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Mar. 25th, 2009 @ 03:08 pm Your Assertion Should Not Be Misread
There’s a pesky little lawsuit coming before the Supreme Court about a tiny little situation from a little middle school that had the teensiest little step over the line a few years ago.

That’s when an assistant principal decided that a 13-year-old, accused by a former friend who had “gone Goth” of “providing prescription drugs” to other kids, needed some serious attention.

We have a strict 100-percent tolerance policy in this country for Assistant Principals, which is why the American People are very proud of the school officials who dragged Savana Redding into an office and forced her to remove her butterfly-decorated stretch pants and pink top, and to examine her Interesting Parts by forcing her to hold her underwear away from her body, in an effort to make sure that our national War On Drugs was not compromised by any of the Ibuprofen tablets she was alleged to be dealing.
( Pull em down )
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Mar. 23rd, 2009 @ 03:54 pm Traffic Stop -- Detroit Style
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So today, from sunny Detroit, comes what may be the most pathetic indicator so far of just how hapless the entrepreneurs of this city of 22 percent unemployment have become.

According to an Alert Local Newspaper, police were called to a CVS drugstore in northwest Detroit (for those of you not from this area, that would be the part of Detroit that is to the north, but also west, of the city center, which as far as we can tell has drifted gradually over toward Windsor if defined by population or possibly toward Omaha, Neb., if defined by economic success).

There they found a stolen U-Haul truck being used in a valiant attempt to yank an ATM machine from the CVS wall.( Quick Cash Withdrawal )
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Feb. 2nd, 2009 @ 01:02 pm Magic Trick for Economy!
Most magicians, professional or amateur, cause audiences to gasp and applaud when they perform illusions by using the audience’s imaginations in the same way a Judo participant uses their opponent’s body.

That’s right. The illusionist points at the audience and says “Wow, does your ill-fitting gi ever reveal what a great big pot belly you have, and, by the way, that sports bra is pathetic and you have once again tied that belt in the wrong knot form.” At which point the opponent punches the illusionist smartly in the face, making it, instantly, into a Jiu-Jitsu match rather than Olympic Judo.

This is not to be confused with sleight-of-hand illusion.

( Ippon for us all! )
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Dec. 4th, 2008 @ 11:45 am A Better, More-Efficient Titanic
Those of us who have been paying attention to the elevator floor lights as they flash by here on the fun-ride known as “The Economy” know that the folks at the Florida amusement parks had it just about right when they designed their “Tower of Terror” ride.

That ride, we might remind those of you who have not heard of it in previous writings, is the one in which you enter through a murky mockup of a hotel basement, wait for an elevator, and, when that elevator arrives, scream in terror because the sole occupant is a funereal-looking Wall Street banker with a $700 billion government check made out to “cash” in his hands.

Haha. No, what actually happens with the “Tower of Terror” is that you get strapped in to a seat and the “elevator” shoots you up and down an elevator shaft at great speed, occasionally popping open doors to give you a glimpse across the Florida plain of your car being towed from a distant parking lot. This leaves you shaken and, in some cases, vomiting.

( Fundsapoppin’ )
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Dec. 3rd, 2008 @ 04:24 pm Grim News from the Academic Trenches!
Americans have been bewildered at the declining quality and content of higher education these days, especially as new studies tracking the cost of college have found that people are paying some 461 percent more for college now (after indexing for inflation) than they did in the mid-1980s. Worse, many cannot actually determine what that percentage means.

Now comes Google News with a story lead that explains why: It’s their software.

According to Google, leading in to an article by the Christian Science Monitor, the paper that took the paper out of being a paper this year, here’s the problem:

Nearly half of students at four-year colleges don't finish after six years, a report finds. This feature requires a newer version of Macromedia Flash Player and javascript-enabled browser.

If this doesn’t lead to an Archimedian moment, I don’t know what else will.
( Tricksy )
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Nov. 13th, 2008 @ 12:11 pm Having a Car Attack
So medical experts (they wear white coats and are often quoted, along the lines of “medical experts say”) tell us that the body cannot feel the gradual hardening of the arteries and plaque buildup that so plague consumers of donuts these days.

Not sensing that what used to be a nimble and elastic system is gradually becoming a frangible monument to Dunkin’ and Tim Horton’s, the donut-eaters amble contentedly around their narrowly-defined little world, doin’ the drive-thru thing. Sprinkles here, glazed there, sometimes cake old-fashioned, sometimes raised and fried, they just keep do-nutting along.

Then one day they get a utility bill in the mail with an unexpectedly large amount shown for a child’s cell phone, or the neighbor’s dog is observed excreting in their peony bed, and the adrenaline flows, the heart pumps, the jellyroll rolls and – prang! – the fatal flake blows off the inflamed vessel wall, and it’s off to the vibrant funeral parlor.

If this week’s headline writers were to review the incident, they would jot:

“Disaster for Donut Workers: Customer loss kills jobs, community tax revenues.”

( Car Attack! )
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Oct. 28th, 2008 @ 05:29 pm Golly, Mr. Answer Person!
Intrepid readers want to know: Have any of the many different things written about in recent weeks actually come to pass?

And, as Mr. Answer Person this very moment, we can only say: Sorta.

( Events Continue To Happen )
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Oct. 24th, 2008 @ 12:19 pm Future Beckons for ConCar?
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Back when I was a happy gamete and unaware of “commercial paper,” let alone paper of any kind, two giant railroads got into huge business trouble.

This led directly to the wonders of Amtrak and Conrail, two of the most-praised international business entities. Haha. Hahahahaha. Bwahahahahaha. (Brief cooling off period).

So here’s the cool deal about history, which often repeats itself but with the kind of minor variations that let you do, say, a new version of High School Musical that rakes in an audience of millions, even though the audience knows that nothing new is going to happen, that no actual high school is involved and that there’s no Richard Rodgers behind the turgid lyrics here. History is always just different enough that, just about the time you *think* you know what is going to happen, it happens but with different people involved. So, in the Franco-Prussian War, France and Germany fought and there were 194,000 casualties. Then, in World War I, France and Germany fought and there were 24 million casualties. Different story, right? That history, it’s cool the way it does that. That's why we need to think "automotive" today, rather than "railroad."

We’re playing the theme from the WayBack machine here, and Mr. Peabody and His Boy Sherman are jumping into the hopper to revisit: The Penn Central bankruptcy.

( Come Way Way Back )
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Oct. 23rd, 2008 @ 05:07 pm 139 thieves per year
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There are just times when numbers make you want to sing crazy songs, take out your fire extinguishers and shoot them towards the moon, or put duct-tape and tin foil on your head to restore nature’s balance and stop the Martians from playing annoying Captain & Tennile songs at you for a while.

Today’s crazy numbers come from the anti-car-theft people in Michigan, an organization known as H.E.A.T. (named, not after pre-menopausal flashes, as one would suspect, but based on the good old concept of coming up with an acronym that spells out a slogan, in this case having to do with people who believe some strange things).

H.E.A.T. just released a summary to celebrate its wonderful success in Michigan at moving toward its goal of “eliminating” auto theft. The reasons for the celebrations are:

1. It has paid out more than $3.3 million in rewards for tips leading to auto thieves’ arrests.
2. It has recovered $49 million in stolen autos.
3. More than 3,200 suspects have been apprehended.

Over 23 years.

Pass the tissue box, please.

( mostly )
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Oct. 15th, 2008 @ 06:40 pm Recession, Depression … Words Being Worn Out
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If you, like me, have switched your morning radio away from NPR simply to avoid morning headlines like “Another catastrophic day on Wall Street, which is proving worse for the Left-Handed and those who have Sex With Cantaloupes …” then you, like me, have also noticed that some of our nouns, verbs and descriptive adjectives are getting a bit shop-worn.

Some, indeed, are already mildly smoking from over-use and should probably have the hose played on them for a bit.

( trouble )
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