I'm really glad to hear that someone in this world cares about keeping mercury out of dietary supplements. I don't know what I'd do without that guy.
* * *
The Senate--not surprisingly--has passed the "bailout" bill. The bill will go back to the House, and I sincerely hope it dies there like the horrible mutated monster it is. The House of Representatives is the "lower house", which is supposed to be responsive to the views of the people. The Senate is meant to be the "upper house", which originally was intended to act as a brake on the whims of the House.
Instead, the Senate runs amok while the House is putting a brake on things.
All the reports I'm seeing in the "alternative media" show that there is a lot of opposition to this thing among the actual citizens of the country. What needs to happen is for this thing to die an immediate death, because if it doesn't, we can expect more of this crap to continue. The thing is a 400-page pork bill, pure and simple--it's not just about "saving Wall Street", which itself is unnecessary.
According to Junkscience.com, "The Senate bailout bill contains a surprising 100-page section authorizing billions in tax credits for small wind turbines, geothermal heat pumps, coal gasification, carbon sequestration, plug-in hybrid vehicles, biofuels, etc. (Marlo Lewis, Planet Gore)."
No, it's not actually all that surprising.
Funny how the people who wail the loudest about the cost of war in Iraq are first in line to support giving away $700 billion to bail out Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. (And if someone wanted to bail out the nuclear power industry? Would that be okay, too?)
* * *
The worst thing about the web email access for my ISP is that--when I want to delete spam--it asks, "Are you sure?" When I tell it to delete messages from my inbox, it doesn't ask anything, it just does it.
I think that's backwards. They both are permanently deleted; if anything it should ask me if I want to delete the non-spam messages.
* * *
When I was at the doctor's office last, I had to wait for my kidneys to fill my bladder, so I was drinking water and reading in the lab waiting room. There was this diminutive asian woman, maybe in her 20s, waiting to talk to the receptionist, and she sneezed a couple times.
When she sneezed, she made a typical sneezing sound, which I will characterize as GBLSH!...and then followed it with a perfectly enunciated, "-choo!" in a soprano voice.
It's okay, asian girl. We know you just sneezed; you don't have to say "achoo" to get the point across. We get that it was not some kind of tic or seizure or something.
The sad thing was, it wasn't even a cute affectation.
* * *
The outdoor cat has had another litter of kittens. We count three cute and fuzzy little black-and-white kittens, at the bouncy-happy-cute-explore-the-world phase. I hope this litter survives longer than the last one did.
Really, the life expectancy of a cat in the wild is not very good, not with dogs and raccoons and owls around. They're not defenseless, but there are bigger animals around which are less defenseless than cats are--and kittens are particularly easy prey.
But these kittens are not socialized, so they run away if they even see someone. Odd, how that instinct actually decreases their life expectancy, but WTF, that's how things are and wishing it was different won't make it so.
Still, they're cute and fuzzy little critters, and they've got a pretty good shelter, so as long as they're not caught out in the open or venture too far from home, they ought to do all right.
* * *
...while trying to see if I could get a copy of the Vampire Princess Miyu TV box set on Ebay, I came across an extra-lame tee shirt. It's black, and has two lines of white text on it: "I'd rather be watching Vampire Princess Miyu."
Listing: "FUNNY! Vampire Princess Miyu- TV show New T-shirt"
1) it's not funny. It's not even on the same continent as "funny"
b) it has nothing to do with the TV show whatsoever
III) it neatly avoids copyright infringement by not using any graphics
It's about as funny as "I'd rather be driving my Fiero" or "I'd rather be fishing" or any of a myriad of other "I'd rather be..." lines. As in not funny at all.
Okay? Something that approximates "funny" might be "I'd rather get my blood drunk by Vampire Princess Miyu." Okay? You at least have irony going for you: "Whatever it is that I am doing right now is so stupid/boring/annoying that it would be an improvement if a vampire drank my damn blood."
And all of the seller's other auctions are the exact same thing only with different TV shows. "I'd rather be watching 20/20"? WTFF! What kind of loser would buy a cheap tee shirt advertising the fact that his primary motivation in life is to watch a bunch of douchebags on a TV news magazine? And there are 74 pages of this shit! ("3,659 results found"...all active auctions from one seller.)
"I'd rather be watching World Poker Tour"
"I'd rather be watching People's Court"
"I'd rather be watching Real Time with Bill Maher"
...
It's like he made a list of popular TV shows, put a # in front of each one, and then did a global search-and-replace to change # into "I'd rather be watching"
Oh my God.
But my faith in humanity has not suffered a fatal blow, because I note that he's sold 77 of these things in the last 12 months. (At least, via Ebay, going by his feedback numbers.) Just 77 out of how many hundred zillions of Ebay users? That's a proportion I can live with.
And--come on--"I'd rather be watching Real Time with Bill Maher"? Is there actually a market for something like that? How many of those has he sold in the past year?
I suppose if I dug through the thing I'd find "I'd rather be watching Webster". Those would sell well to the Brocktoon Fan Club.
I think John McCain said it best: