Manufactured News

No, I’m not talking about The Liberation of Paris. I refer you to this article.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20070626/sc_livescience/powercouplesmeetincitiesstudyfinds

After a painstaking study, it was determined that power couples meet in big cities. No shit?! When I ran this by 4M, he was taken aback. He stated that he believed most power couples met at NASCAR events. My take, at least before being enlightened by this article, was that the typical power couple met in rural trailer parks. I should have given this more thought though. My search for a partner in puissance began in San Francisco in the mid ‘80s when I was making eight bucks an hour. I struck gold. She had an ’82 Honda Civic and I just had a bus pass. The rest is history.

In the same vein, I came across an article last month that stated “A nagging sense of being unfairly treated at work or at home can raise a person's risk of heart attack”. If that’s the case, then, as Fred Sanford used to say, “I’m coming to join ya Elizabeth” And the clincher was the news that getting married was good for depression. That’s all well and good, but I think they ought to be looking for a long term cure.

Thanks for Your Input

I've gotten a lot of commentary from my readers lately. The Wig thinks I need to write a piece about celebrity adoption. The theme is "charity begins at home". His thought is that Angelina Jolie should adopt Lindsay Lohan. That's probably not a bad idea. It would free up Lindsay's mom to do the reality show she wants. It’s too bad nobody in that family is grounded in reality. The premise of the show is Dina’s quest to make her other kids famous. Great idea! Look what it did for Lindsay.

I also heard from the other member of the Binghamton triumvirate, Dr. Joe. He contacts me when he needs something. He thinks that just because he saved my life back in the spinal cord tumor days, I owe him something. He had a favor to ask so I swiftly granted it but then zinged him about not reading my blog. He left a riposte on my 5/28 post. He’s always been a joker. It brought me back to a night in his dorm room in ’79 when he grabbed a nearby hip length belted cardigan and a pair of clogs and did his best imitation of our stylish Long Island classmates. “So, what’s your mayjah”? For those of you that don’t speak Lawnguylandese, a mayjah is a course of study. Now that I reflect on it further, it wasn’t Dr. Joe doing that inebriated skit, it was me. Dr. Joe is a bright guy but doesn’t have much of a sense of humor. I can see his comment the next time I chide him about not reading the blog. “Did too read it!”

TCG provided his two cents when I went over to his house last week. He was hosting a dinner for kids that were going on a Costa Rica trip. The parents got to go too; to his house, not Costa Rica. As soon as I stepped in the door, I got an earful how he’s been checking my blog and I haven’t posted frequently enough. I serve no drivel before its time TCG. I walked away in a huff, singing my theme song, Leslie Gore’s “You Don’t Own Me”.

Shortly thereafter I get pulled aside by The Exec so he could gloat about his recent promotion. He likes to rub it in. He knows I'll be a bandwidth bureaucrat until social security kicks in, or I keel over from boredom, whichever comes first. He tells me that he now wants to be referred to as his VPness. Although that is a very fitting name for my vertically challenged friend, The Exec is indelibly etched in the mind of a dozen readers and it would not be fair to them to make that change. There is also the possibility he will become CEO, COO or some other C so VPness is too limiting for his career.

This Costa Rica kickoff event was quite fun. There were a few auslanders there, such as folks from South San Francisco and Millbrae, but we all got on pretty well. Everybody pitched in with a dish and the dinner was delish. I contributed a large bowl of ceviche. People said they liked it. I was a little nervous about transporting it so I secured it in the back seat. That’s where the term “seatbelt your ceviche” comes from. #1 contributed a Brazilian chicken dish. It reminded me of the old chestnut where someone asks directions. The first guy asks “Hey, can you tell me how to get to Costa Rica?” The second guy says “Do you know where Brazil is?” First guy says “Yeah”. The second guy says “It’s nowhere near there”. That’s my convoluted way of explaining #1’s lack of geographical orientation. Plus the guy is a tightwad. He brought about a pound and a half of chicken for 30 people.

Since we were sending our kids off for about 10 days to a foreign land, we considered sitting them down and giving the requisite “Get your mind right Luke” speech. In the end we decided against it. We were comfortable that between their proper upbringing and the tracking devices we planted on them, all would be OK.

I also got some blog suggestions from the upstate boys via a little email badinage we had last week. The topic of discussion was MS Outlook. The Upgrade King referred to is as “a 200MB hairball, one of the worst pieces of software ever developed in the history of computing”. Although a tad harsh in my judgment, The UK gets the upgrades because he knows his stuff. However, 4M and I find Outlook perfectly serviceable. TK uses some other whiz bang product. Well, gentle readers, what are your thoughts on MS Outlook? We’d really like to know.

Paris and Scooter Are In the House

The Big House

Well, not anymore and not quite yet.

Paris Hilton was released today after doing three days hard time, due to an undisclosed “medical condition”. She will now be under house arrest for the next forty days in her 2700 square foot Hollywood Hills home. That’s not a sentence; it’s a party waiting to break out. This summer’s L.A. hotspot will be Club Paris.

And unless Scooter Libby scoots across the border, or our esteemed president abuses his pardon powers, it looks like he’ll be doing a 30 month stretch. I’m open to a deal where they let Scooter go but put his ex-boss away instead. Yes, that is unlikely. There were dozens of letters written on behalf of Scooter from the likes of Henry Kissinger and Paul Wolfowitz. With friends like that……… An impassioned Lawrence O’Donnell made an excellent point on Countdown Tuesday night, stating that nobody of that stature is writing letters for any soldiers being brought to court martial, which is happening in part because they’ve been put in an untenable situation by men of stature.