Nobody saw this coming, huh (Part Something)

Not from people who don’t know farm work from … Well, any kind of work except governmental, community organizing, college jobs and lawyering.

Department of Labor proposals will “prohibit farmworkers under age 16 from participating in the cultivation, harvesting and curing of tobacco. And it would prohibit youth in both agricultural and nonagricultural employment from using electronic, including communication, devices while operating power-driven equipment.

“The department also is proposing to create a new nonagricultural hazardous occupations order that would prevent children under 18 from being employed in the storing, marketing and transporting of farm product raw materials. Prohibited places of employment would include country grain elevators, grain bins, silos, feed lots, stockyards, livestock exchanges and livestock auctions.

“Additionally, the proposal would prohibit farmworkers under 16 from operating almost all power-driven equipment.”

Idiocy aside, how to balance prohibition “using electronic, including communication, devices while operating power-driven equipment” while prohibiting “farmworkers under 16 from operating almost all power-driven equipment.”



(The release was August 2011, but we can’t keep up with everything.)

So don’t sell the damn things in Ireland!

‘Nike Black and Tan Sneaker Gets a New Name’
‘Company Apologizes After Irish Uproar’

http://www.webpronews.com/nike-black-and-tan-sneaker-gets-a-new-name-2012-03

Call ‘em IRA Gunmen or Protestant Fanatics or something. GreenOrange or OrangeGreen. Grorange. Faith ‘n Begorrah. Paddies.

(And before Greens or Oranges fly into Hibnernia fury, let me say that like Harrigan, I'm proud of all the Irish blood that's in me. And I'd prefer that's where it stays.)

That’s nice, but potential immigrants should stay home

Texas v. California

“The two states’ educational outcomes reflect this disparity. If we compare national test scores in math, science, and reading for the fourth and eighth grades among four basic ethnic and racial categories — all students, whites, Hispanics, and African-Americans — Texas beats California in every category, and by a substantial margin. In fact, Texas schools perform consistently above the national average across categories of age, race, and subject matter, while California schools perform well below the national average.”

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/293412/texas-vs-california-chuck-devore

Texas is as close as I’ve been. (You know what I'm talking about.)

One of the funniest internet posts ever

This is supposedly a true article written by an American English teacher.
________________________________________
This was my assignment to the class:

"Today we will experiment with a new form called the tandem story. The process is simple. Each person will pair off with the person sitting to his or her immediate right. One of you will then write the first paragraph of a short story. The partner will read the first paragraph and then add another paragraph to the story. The first person will then add a third paragraph, and so on back and forth. Remember to re-read what has been written each time in order to keep the story coherent. There is to be absolutely NO talking and anything you wish to say must be written on the paper. The story is over when both agree a conclusion has been reached."
The following was actually turned in by two of my English students: Rebecca – last name deleted, and Gary – last name deleted.
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STORY: (first paragraph by Rebecca)

At first, Laurie couldn’t decide which kind of tea she wanted. The chamomile, which used to be her favorite for lazy evenings at home, now reminded her too much of Carl, who once said, in happier times, that he liked chamomile. But she felt she must now, at all costs, keep her mind off Carl. His possessiveness was suffocating, and if she thought about him too much, her asthma started acting up again. So chamomile was out of the question.
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Meanwhile, Advance Sergeant Carl Harris, leader of the attack squadron now in orbit over Skylon 4, had more important things to think about than the neuroses of an air-headed asthmatic bimbo named Laurie with whom he had spent one sweaty night over a year ago. "A.S. Harris to Geostation 17," he said into his transgalactic communicator. "Polar orbit established. No sign of resistance so far…" But before he could sign off a bluish particle beam flashed out of nowhere and blasted a hole through his ship’s cargo bay. The jolt from the direct hit sent him flying out of his seat and across the cockpit.

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He bumped his head and died almost immediately, but not before he felt one last pang of regret for psychically brutalizing the one woman who had ever had feelings for him. Soon afterwards, Earth stopped its pointless hostilities towards the peaceful farmers of Skylon 4. "Congress Passes Law Permanently Abolishing War and Space Travel," Laurie read in her newspaper one morning. The news simultaneously excited her and bored her. She stared out the window, dreaming of her youth – when the days had passed unhurriedly and carefree, with no newspapers to read, no television to distract her from her sense of innocent wonder at all the beautiful things around her. "Why must one lose one’s innocence to become a woman?" she pondered wistfully.

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Little did she know, but she had less than 10 seconds to live. Thousands of miles above the city, the Anu’udrian mothership launched the first of its lithium fusion missiles. The dim-witted wimpy peaceniks who pushed the Unilateral Aerospace Disarmament Treaty through congress had left Earth a defenseless target for the hostile alien empires who were determined to destroy the human race. Within two hours after the passage of the treaty, the Anu’udrian ships were on course for Earth carrying enough firepower to pulverize the entire planet. With no one to stop them, they swiftly initiated their diabolical plan. The lithium fusion missile entered the atmosphere unimpeded. The President, in his top-secret mobile submarine headquarters on the ocean floor off the coast of Guam, felt the inconceivably massive explosion which vaporized poor, stupid, Laurie and 150 million other Americans. The President slammed his fist on the conference table. "We can’t allow this! I’m going to veto that treaty! Let’s blow ‘em out of the sky!"

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This is absurd. I refuse to continue this mockery of literature. My writing partner is a violent, chauvinistic, semi-literate adolescent.

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Yeah? Well, you’re a self-centered tedious neurotic whose attempts at writing are the literary equivalent of Valium. "Oh, shall I have chamomile tea? Or shall I have some other sort of **CKING TEA??? Oh no, I’m such an airhead bimbo who reads too many Mills & Boon novels."

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***hole.

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B*tch.

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Wanker.

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Slut.

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Get **cked.

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Eat ***t.

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**CK YOU – YOU NEANDERTHAL!!!

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Go drink some tea – whore.

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A+ – I really liked this one.

From drmecury.com

Hey, there was a war going on

In the summer of 1967 the flight operations officer one day said, “Sgt. Merriman, a helicopter is going to Vung Tau today at 1400 and I don’t want to see you for three days.” Vung Tau was a former French resort city at Cape St. Jacque.

I spent my two-plus days enjoying the sight of the ocean, meals in a real restaurant and the low cost of beer.

On the third day I went to the airstrip and asked to use a phone to call base camp to find out when my ride would arrive. A Vietnamese woman showed me to an office.

Now, at base camp we were in the partly Stone Age in telephoning. A caller picked up the phone and waited and after a while someone at the main switchboard would plug in and say “Long Gaio” and the caller would say “Blackhorse Three-Zero,” or whatever.

So I was in the office at the airstrip. I picked up the phone. I waited for an operator. And waited. And waited.

The woman in the office walked over and gave me a “You dumba$$ Americans” look, stuck a finger in the O and slowwwly turned the dial, all the time giving me that look.

I felt like a dumba$$ American.

I mean, I had traveled all the way across the Pacific to save the Vietnamese from the perils of Communism, but I didn’t know how to dial a freaking telephone.

Genetics and burned toast

I burned breakfast toast. My lack of concentration was the fault of my hunter-gatherer waybacks.

Here’s how it happened:

I put the oven on “Broil” and two pieces of (not real) buttered whole wheat bread on the top rack. (Cylla used to say my method of making toast got the oven messy, what with the crumbs dropping down and all. She makes toast by setting oven temperature at 350 and then putting bread on a cookie sheet and the sheet in the oven. I figure my method is quicker and uses less electricity, even after using the “Clean Oven” setting once a month … When I remember.)

I went to the laundry room to see if the washer still contained (not my) clothes. It did not. So, I put in soap and started the water running. Just about the time I would have begun adding clothes, I remembered: Toast.

Well, shucks, I said. I went back to the kitchen just as the first smoke began seeping from the oven door and just as the smoke alarm went off. “Weeeeeeeee” at a pitch high enough the dogs came to see what the man had done this time.

The toast was black. Like a tire black. After taking the burnt offering from the oven, I turned on the stove ventilator and then opened two windows. Air began coming in from the outside, so I upped the thermostat to get air blowing in the opposite direction. All this time, the smoke alarm continued “Weeeeeeeeee!”

I went back to the laundry room and put clothes in the washer and then returned to the kitchen and (not real) buttered two more pieces of bread and stood beside the stove and turned the toast at the proper time.

I mentioned all that to Cylla. She said, “I took my clothes out of the laundry last night.”

I said, “I didn’t know.”

She said, “I walked right past you. I guess you were ignoring me.”

“No,” I said, “I wasn’t ignoring you. I was probably watching TV, and my single-focus male mind did not hear or see anything else.”

“Uh-huh,” she said.

“Really,” I said. “A man has a single-focus mind. Leave cave, kill caribou. Or buffalo.”

The difference between men and women is not the Mars-Venus thing, but hunter vs. cave keeper. Buying vs. shopping.

Think about it. A group of men leaves the cave to shoot some food. The men go to a place where they’ve found food animals before. The group uses strategy and tactics and kills a food animal. The group does all the butchering and cutting up and takes the food back to the cave.

If women had been the primary hunters, we might not be here. Someone in the women’s group would have said, “We went to the north valley last time. Let’s see what’s in the south valley.” And the other women would have said, “Cool,” or something similar.

In the south valley, maybe the women spotted a food animal. But before the launching of the spears, one woman would have said, “That’s a food animal, but maybe we can find a bigger one farther on. Besides, that hide doesn’t go with the décor of the cave.” And the other women would say, “Cool.”

It’s single focus vs. multi-tasking. Man hunts. Woman keeps the cave clean, makes sure no little cave people fall in the fire, keeps the water skins full, sweeps out the place now and then, maybe picks some yellow flowers for certain niches in the rock.

Simple.

Maybe I should buy a toaster.

Not good

The Parnall Pipit, designed by the Air Ministry: “The first of two prototypes (s/n N232) was flown in 1928, but crashed when a tailplane spar failed as a result of flutter. The second prototype (s/n N233), with a 520 hp F.XIIS engine and many other changes, was also lost as a result of violent flutter which fractured the sternpost whereupon the vertical tail surfaces were carried away. Further development of the Pipit was then abandoned.”

(Violent flutter and loss of vertical tail surfaces generally leads to a landing less than good. Nice looking airplane, though.)

http://1000aircraftphotos.com/Contributions/EwingBill/10860.htm