This is the punch line to a Scott Stantis Prickly City cartoon (click to enlarge) that really has a lot of profound and hilarious possibilities. Thinking outside of the box doesn’t always result in good ideas. Please fill in the blank and post your answer in comments: Thinking that _____________ is the kind of thinking that got us Brittany Spears.
My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. My electronic chapbook was born.
This is a passage I copied from Coffee: A Dark History by Anthony Wild.
Thus, while the registered growers of Fair Trade coffees could in principle supply 75,000 tonnes of coffee annually, the demand in 2001 was only 15,000 tonnes. For every bag of coffee for which the growers have received the Fair Trade tariff, four bags of that same coffee have been bought in the bargain basement free-for-all of the market, which is either of the low quality exemplified by Brazil or Vietnam, or has been produced at a cost greater than the price it has been sold for. p. 265
Part of being a good citizen of the blogosphere is visiting, reading and, most importantly, taking the time to leave a comment on other’s blogs. It’s all about the conversation. In the interest of setting an example I’ve decided to link to those blog posts that have compelled me to leave a comment.
1723 Thanks, Chris
My Soundtrack: Don’t Stop by Brazilian Girls on WOXY.
Can 50 million bloggers pounding on their keyboards eventually write the entire works of Shakespeare? Probably not. But they can provide enough material for Director Oliver Mann to create a 70-minute verbatim theatre piece for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Bloggers: Real Internet Diaries opens today in Scotland.
Mann cherry-picked the odd, the kinky, the bizarre from the bloggosphere for his material. Five actors double-up to portray 10 bloggers that include an agoraphobic sex chat-line operator, a nymphomaniac mum of three, a woman who obsesses about her teenage son and a predatory bisexual buisnessman.
It’s too bad that Mann restricted his search to the United Kingdom. I could put together a wilder list than that in the NEO bloggosphere without even trying.
My Soundtrack: Sour Shores by Portastatic on WOXY.
As Duct Tape is to the American handyman, so was vodka to our counterparts in the Soviet Union (and I’m sure, now in the Russian Republic). My dad sent me this list of a Heloise-esque list of uses for the colorless, odorless liquid that reminds me of a college buddy who mixed vodka 1:7 to make windshield washer fluid for his car.
He swore it was cheaper and better than the blue stuff you bought at the autoparts stores.
1. To remove a bandage painlessly, saturate the bandage with vodka. The solvent dissolves adhesive.
2. To clean the caulking around bathtubs and showers, fill a trigger-spray bottle with vodka, spray the caulking, let set five minutes and wash clean. The alcohol in the vodka kills mold and mildew.
3. To clean your eyeglasses, simply wipe the lenses with a soft, clean cloth dampened with vodka. The alcohol in the vodka cleans the glass and kills germs.
4. Prolong the life of razors by filling a cup with vodka and letting your safety razor blade soak in the alcohol after shaving. The vodka disinfects the blade and prevents rusting.
5. Spray vodka on vomit stains! , scrub with a brush, then blot dry.
6. Using a cotton ball, apply vodka to your face as an astringent to cleanse the skin and tighten pores.
7. Add a jigger of vodka to a 12-ounce bottle of shampoo. The alcohol cleanses the scalp, removes toxins from hair, and stimulates the growth of healthy hair.
8. Fill a sixteen-ounce trigger-spray bottle and spray bees or wasps to kill them.
9. Pour one-half cup vodka and one-half cup water in a Ziplock freezer bag and freeze for a slushy, refreshable ice pack for aches, pain or black eyes.
10. Fill a clean, used mayonnaise jar with freshly packed lavender flowers, fill the jar with vodka, seal the lid tightly and set in the sun for three days. Strain liquid through a coffee filter, then apply the tincture to aches and pains.
11. To relieve a fever, use a washcloth to rub vodka on your chest and back as a liniment.
12. To cure foot odor, wash your feet with vodka.
13. Vodka will disinfect and alleviate a jellyfish sting.
14. Pour vodka over an area affected with poison ivy to remove the oil from your skin.
15. Swish a shot of vodka over an aching tooth. Allow your gums to absorb some of the alcohol to numb the pain.
16. JUST DON’T DRINK THE STUFF — IT’LL KILL YOU!
Maybe, but I still prefer my martinis made with vodka, shaken, not stireed with two olives. One for me and one for the prettiest girl in the room.
My Soundtrack: Day After Tomorrow by Tom Waits on WOXY.
My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. My electronic chapbook was born.
This is a passage I copied from Coffee: A Dark History by Anthony Wild.
Gandhi urged the Indian people to eschew the model of Western modernization because the world could not cope with a nation of 300 million (now more than 1 billion, JH) stripping the planet like a swarm of locusts. In the world of coffee, the day of the locust is upon us, and the tiling of the earth has become as precarious an occupation as the sewing of a sweatshirt. p. 264
Three years after the showboating silliness that passes for statesmanship in the U.S. House of Representatives, French Fries and French Toast are back on the cafeteria’s menu. Representatives Bob Ney (R-OH) and Walter Jones (R-SC) who were responsible for the original idiocy declined to comment on the shift.
It’s been a busy week in Wally World: the universe’s source of cheap plastic crap. On The Writing On The Wal — the blog USA Today says should be on its readers’ radar — Jonathan Rees, Robert Feinman and I continue our work dedicated to drawing back the curtain on the Bentonvile Behemoth’s corporate disinformation and other flackery.
CULTURAL ICON STATUS… Did this story happen at a Wal Mart? Of course not. In fact, I”m sure it never happened at all. But it points to the cutural icon status we have given the Bentonvile Behemoth. I wonder how many bags I”d have to buy before I got to tell the story though? Keep reading…
ON THE ROAD… 19 States, 35 Cities, 35 Days, 1 Mission. That”s the slogan riders on the bus nicknamed Smiley are traveling under from The Bronx to Seattle. Wake Up Wal Mart is sponsoring the journey of over-caffeinated Americans on one really big bus. Keep reading…
DEATH AND TAXES… What does $490.3 million buy in the U.S. Congress? A cabal of the über wealthy expect it to buy them $71.6 billion in tax savings. The 18 families can smell their payoff: the House passed Sunday and the Senate is expected to vote on Friday on their dream bill. Keep reading…
My Soundtrack: Wolf Like Me by TV On The Radio on WOXY.
Part of being a good citizen of the blogosphere is visiting, reading and, most importantly, taking the time to leave a comment on other’s blogs. It’s all about the conversation. In the interest of setting an example I’ve decided to link to those blog posts that have compelled me to leave a comment.
1510 BBQ Crawfish
1308 The bloggapalooza Interviews : Jeff Hess
1253 A Dose Of Vonnegut Out On The Hammock
1222 DEATH AND TAXES
My Soundtrack: Light Up Ya Lighter by Michael Franti and Spearhead on WOXY.
I’ve been on the fringe of Eric Fingerhut’s political life since he was Mike White’s campaign manager. I know Eric to be an honest, thoughtful and reasoned person. Anthony from BlueOhioan has the text and other information from a press conference that Eric held this afternoon. When he makes this kind of statement, I pay attention.
About his examination of Secretary of State Ken Blackwell’s platform and plans, Eric had this to say:
What I found truly shocked me. The core Blackwell platform for the State of Ohio is, in my judgment, dangerously misguided. It reflects not a conservative approach to government, but a reckless one. Were this platform to be enacted, the State of Ohio would be much worse off in the global competition than it is today.
There’s a lot more thoughful analysis in the whole speech, but it goes to the core of what Ohio faces: are we going to become the kind of place that people come to create their life, or are we going to continue down our present path and become a western version of Enver Hoxeh’s Albania?
My Soundtrack: Condi, Condi by Steve Earle on WOXY.
My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. My electronic chapbook was born.
This is a passage I copied from Coffee: A Dark History by Anthony Wild.
…Western consumers end up with a limited range of low-price, low-quality coffee. p. 264
My Soundtrack: Cherry Lips by Archie Bronson Outfit on WOXY.
Part of being a good citizen of the blogosphere is visiting, reading and, most importantly, taking the time to leave a comment on other’s blogs. It’s all about the conversation. In the interest of setting an example I’ve decided to link to those blog posts that have compelled me to leave a comment.
2247 Would Cleveland Support a Free Daily Afternoon Paper?
1253 A Dose Of Vonnegut Out On The Hammock
My Soundtrack: Little House Of Savages by The Walkmen on WOXY.
Everyone knows that the November elections are going to be nasty and that the battle between Kenneth Blackwell and Ted Strickland in particular is going to approach apocalyptic proportions as it descends into my-god, your-god territory. And we are going to be airing our dirty laundry nationally, if not internationally.
In this week’s New Yorker Frances Fitzgerald opens Holy Toledo with:
Pastor Rod Parsley stood on a flag-bedecked dais on the steps of Ohio”s Statehouse last October and, amid cheers from the crowd below, proclaimed the launch of “the largest evangelical campaign ever attempted in any state in America.”
A nationally known televangelist and the leader of a twelve-thousand-member church on the outskirts of Columbus, Parsley had gathered a thousand people for the event, and attracted bystanders with a multimedia performance involving a video on a Jumbotron and music by Christian singers and rappers broadcast so loud that it reverberated off the tall buildings south of the Statehouse.
TV crews from Parsley”s ministry taped the event. “Sound an alarm!” he boomed. “A Holy Ghost invasion is taking place. Man your battle stations, ready your weapons, lock and load!” In the course of the performance, Parsley promised that during the next four years his campaign, Reformation Ohio, would bring a hundred thousand Ohioans to Christ, register four hundred thousand new voters, serve the disadvantaged, and guide the state through “a culture-shaking revolutionary revival.”
Among those who spoke at the rally were Senator Sam Brownback, of Kansas, and Representative Walter B. Jones, of North Carolina, both Christian conservatives, and J. Kenneth Blackwell, Ohio”s secretary of state, who is now the Republican nominee for governor. All talked about the need to bring God and morality back into government. “We refuse to give up or back up or shut up until we”ve made a better world for all,” Blackwell said.
Can I get a witness?
My Soundtrack: Goin’ Against Your Mind by Built To Spill on WOXY.
People get really testy when you mock their religion. It can make them write positively unchristian letters that open with sentances like: If I was your creator and you mocked me in this manner I couldn’t think of a hell hot enough for you; or PASTAFARIAN?!? that doesn’t even make sense!! why the hell would god be PASTA?!?
Sixty years ago today a group of former GIs in the tiny town of Athens, Tennessee, asked the question Why fight overseas for freedom and come home and be denied the right to have your ballot counted? Why indeed. Rather than file petitions, this brave group of patriotis took Thomas Jefferson’s words to heart and did something about it.
From the Associated Press:
Harold Powers was only 20 when he watched a frightening sight unfold here 60 years ago: Battle-hardened World War II veterans in a shootout with armed sheriff’s deputies.
The so-called Battle of Athens began Aug. 1, 1946, when veterans opened fire on the local jail to stop corrupt local officials from stealing an election.
“It was scary,” said Powers, a retired elementary school principal who was right in the middle of the fighting and was sprayed with pellets from a shotgun blast.
Felix Harrod, 84, was a 25-year-old poll watcher at the courthouse during the shootout and said it was common for incumbents in the county about 45 miles northeast of Chattanooga to take ballot boxes to the jail and stuff them with pre-marked ballots.
In our founding document Thomas Jefferson wrote:
But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce [the people] under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.
Can it be any wonder that so many men and women are returning from Iraq and Afghanistan to seek public office?
My Soundtrack: A Toast To The Happy Couple by The Jim Yoshii Pile-Up on WOXY.
I grew up around water. And when I was growing up I was always playing in it. First building dams of cinders in the street after a rain. Then creeks, ponds and the Ohio River. I joined the Navy and sailed the Pacific and Indian oceans. Now I live on Lake Erie. Water speaks to something inside of me. Perhaps like Siddhartha, I long to be a ferryman.
Or maybe there’s bit of Ishmael in me. Today is the anniversay of Herman Melville who wrote:
Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off-then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.
Haze-gray and underway. Ah, there’s a life.
My Soundtrack: Excursions Into “Oh, A-Oh” by Stereolab on WOXY.
July was another record-breaking month for me with my daily page visits crossing over into four digist for the first time and my unique visitors almost, almost — would you believe I was that close — topping 9,000 for the month. I attribute a big chunk of my traffic increase to my pieces on Global Warming and George Bush.
My Soundtrack: Year Of The Waitress by The Eames Era on WOXY.
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