I don’t watch the news on TV anymore. I get it from my radio and from Google. It’s effortless, I don’t have to look at preening news anchors, and I can click it away when it gets to be too much. What follows filled my till for the day.
Politics
Rick Santorum called the Mitt Romney campaign’s attempt to paint the day as a victory for itself “very desperate for a man who supposedly has it in the bag.”
Yes, it was beyond desperate for Romney to ask the front singer of the band Alabama for a rendition of “Sweet Home Alabama,” a song actually written by the group Lynyrd Skynyrd. Fortunately, though, we were spared Romney singing it in that Wonderbread, generic-man tone of his. He has as much rhythm as a dripping faucet.
But they’re all desperate. They shriek the most outlandish, the most intemperate nonsense to gain attention and votes. Yet, one huge constituency is leaving, apparently sick of the noise and the intrusion into their lives—women.
The fragile gains Republicans had been making among female voters have been erased, a shift that has coincided with what has become a national shouting match over reproductive issues, potentially handing President Obama and the Democrats an enormous advantage this fall.
You see, you white men: You get all paternal, controlling and up in our faces, and we get all uppity and leave.
Sports
We’ve reached the fifteenth season of the ultimate fighter and it’s starting to look as if we’ve seen enough. Every show comes to an end whether it’s good or bad and it seems as if The Ultimate Fighter has reached that point.
And the end of Ultimate Fighter would change your world how? I know some people like this “sport,” but to me it’s all a bunch of kicking, slapping, and punching. It’s a bit like the Republican primaries but much less annoying. We could do away with all these ridiculous primaries if we just put the whole lot of them into a cage and let them kick, slap and punch their way to victory. Callista would have to stand in for Newt, though. My bets are on her.
Science
Scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory have put out a new video to address false claims about the “Mayan apocalypse,” a non-event that some people believe will bring the world to an end on Dec. 21.
There’s nothing conspiracy theorists and end-of-the-world prophets hate more than being told their voyage to never-never land is a non-event. You’ve just given away all your money and property to an old white guy with wrinkly wrinkles and bad teeth, and now you’re told that you’ll be able to hit the sales on December 26, 2012. Too bad, so sad.
Health
An online petition urging the government to stop the use of “pink slime” — the scrape and waste meat products that are treated with ammonium-hydroxide — in school food has collected almost 20,000 signatures over the last several days.
After reports that school districts around the country were serving kids hamburgers containing up to 15 percent of the processed product known in the meat industry as “Lean Finely Textured Beef’, parents and consumers poured online to express their disgust.
Yet adolescents (and many adults) continue scarfing this stuff up routinely at their favorite hamburger franchises, but won’t eat Brussels sprouts? Is “Lean Finely Textured Beef” the same as “puree”? How about “emulsify”? I’m imagining some very hefty industrial-sized blades in blenders that can finely texture hooves and bones and the occasional metal nose ring off a cow. Yummy.
Entertainment
A North Dakota newspaper columnist sat down to review her town’s hot new Italian restaurant, rhapsodizing about the chicken Alfredo, crisp greens and “two long, warm breadsticks.” But because the restaurant was the Olive Garden, Marilyn Hagerty’s earnest assessment swiftly became an Internet sensation, drawing comments both sincere and sarcastic from food bloggers and others.
For Hagerty, 85, the response was bewildering – and it threatened to make her late for a bridge game.
People are so pompous, aren’t they? I call it the Bourdain Effect, for the chef who has made it his life’s mission to whisk Paula Deen off into the halls of cooking shame. Come on, people, it’s North Dakota! You expect a boutique-sized, snobby, expensive bistro to spring up among the corn and wheat fields? Don’t be ridiculous. And lay off this busy elderly woman who just wants to finish a column and then get to her bridge game on time. I bet when you’re all 85 you’ll be wishing you had a great job like hers, a social life, and a few teeth left to chew on breadsticks.
Technology
Apple has sold out of initial supplies of the new iPad in every country where it will launch the tablet on Friday, and is now telling buyers that orders will not ship for up to three weeks.
I have an iPad 2, which I purchased just a little more than a year ago. Now we’re up to iPad 3. I’ve only gotten a year’s use out of mine! I can’t imagine what an iPad 5 might be able to do, but it better be worth the money. If it can’t teleport me to other locations, then I’m not laying down a single dime for it.
The tech industry creates a bizarre economy doesn’t it? IT engineers who should have thought of advancements and new features before the product launch, but were too busy congratulating themselves during the pre-launch party, say, “Okay, that will be in the next version.” This practice justifies and ensures their jobs, fuels an industry that develops products with no end point in sight, creates new, angry customers who wait for the product delivery, and guarantee retail prices much higher than the previous ones. We’re all a bunch of hamsters on a wheel.
Business
Sara Blakely, 41 year old billionaire, spends a lot of time jetting around Asia, laying the groundwork for Spanx in countries that don’t obsess about their posteriors quite as much as Westerners do. She and Blakely plan to open stand-alone shops, first in Atlanta, then slowly worldwide. They’re pushing their cheaper diffusion line, Assets, and adding new categories— swimwear, activewear, men’s underwear—as customers demand more options and competitors like Yummie Tummie, Dr. Rey Shapewear, Skweez Couture and Body Wrap (as well as Victoria’s Secret and Maidenform) flood the booming shapewear market.
It all sounds just so tiring (pulling on something akin to a sausage skin!) and constricting (where does that square of dark chocolate go?) to me. What special form of lingerie hell it must be to wear this body gear underneath clothing in a hot, humid, summer climate. At the end of an oozy, saturated day in South Carolina or Alabama, the voluptuous woman peels away her Spanx and out pours a biblical flood. Ah, we are so vain.
Last Random Snippet
Just a thought: The people among us who decry and disdain politics the loudest might just be the same people who practice politics the most, and the most often, at our workplaces. Call it adapting, being a loyal minion, sucking up or whatever, it still seems awfully inauthentic to me. But, I suppose, it’s a form of survival.
Have a wonderful Sunday!
