Category Archives: Truth is stranger than Fiction

The Flu that led the pigs to slaughter

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Ok, I am not a doctor (although sometimes I pretend to be among family and friends who know better).  And I don’t know much about the scientific origins of the N1H1 virus. 

I know this:  everyone is still going to call it Swine Flu.  Also, I know that I don’t want to imagine how humans got it from pigs (if that is even true).  Oops, too late.  Yuuuuuuuuuck.  Pause for composure.  Resume.

As I understand it (but unencumbered by information, knowledge or a medical degree), this strain of Swine Flu started in Mexico.  The contagion is brought about by human mobility. 

Nevertheless, some months back, Cairo decided to slaughter all the pigs in the city to protect against Swine Flu, although I find it hard to imagine airplanes full of pigs schlepping to visit their relatives in Mexico and bringing it back to Cairo.  Also, in a country with a Muslim super-majority, why are there pigs? 

Still, the irony is yet to come in this story.  After the pigs were slaughtered, the residents of Cairo were overwhelmed by garbage and unsanitary conditions.  Why? Because the pigs — among the most unsanitary of animals — ate the garbage and kept the streets clean (or cleaner).  Now, without the pigs, there is a real threat of disease from the mounds of rotting garbage.  Pigs were Cairo’s free sanitation system.  How crazy is that?

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What does the Berlin Wall have in common with F Troop?

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As you may remember, in the early TV show, “F Troop”, the US Calvary was losing a battle with Native Americans (Indians, then) at Appomattox and was in retreat, until Private WiltonParmenter abruptly sneezed (the sound apparently misunderstood by some soldiers as “Charge!”) and turned retreat into victory.  He was then given the command of F Troop in Fort Courage.

What has this to do with the Berlin Wall? 

Well, according to the Wall Street Journal, apparently, East German Politburo member Günter Schabowski was fumbling through his papers at a press conference November 9, 1989, in response to a question about newly-instituted travel regulations.  A little addled by the questioning, he said some incomprehensible things that the reporters heard as, effective immediately, there would be free travel from East to West Berlin.  People swarmed the Wall and the confusion and chaos that ensued caused the Wall to come down.  I bet he wished he had only abruptly sneezed. 

He is apparently still alive but too sick to be interviewed.  The accidental hero of German reunification.

Aint it always the little things that bring down the giants?

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E-books recreated as paperbacks

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Wait, I thought the ad campaign for the Amazon Kindle was “think green, buy e-books”??  Now Amazon is going to print e-books in paperback?  Then why do you need e-books again?

There is something so odd, almost reverse-Darwinian about this. As if Thomas Edison decided that candles and oil lamps were better than light bulbs.  And printing paperbacks is SOOOOOOOOOOO ungreen, especially if publishers have unsold hardcover or paperback copies stacked in warehouses.  Don’t kill more trees.

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HP, Amazon to sell paperback versions of e-books

  • By MICHAEL LIEDTKE, AP Technology Writer – Wed Oct 21, 2009 2:16PM EDT  

SAN FRANCISCO –

Some of technology’s best-known companies are betting there’s pent-up demand for on-demand books.

Hewlett-Packard Co., the world’s top seller of personal computers and printers, is teaming up with online retailer Amazon.com Inc. to join Internet search leader Google Inc. as the latest entrants in the quirky new market of re-creating digital books as paperbacks.

The concept represents a different type of book recycling, as digital copies created from print get a second life as paperbacks.

[rest of article deleted]

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FOOTBALL — Orrin Hatch’s Legislative Priority

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You can’t make this stuff up. 

We are fighting for economic recovery, we are fighting two wars, we are fighting multiple insurgents in the health care industry, we are trying to save the planet from our carbon emissions, we are trying to prevent nuclear proliferation and SENATOR ORRIN HATCH WANTS THE PRESIDENT TO INTERVENE ON COLLEGE FOOTBALL BOWL CHAMPIONSHIPS?

Sen. Hatch says there is some antitrust violation involved in the way the championships are decided.  Senator, there may be another antitrust violation, too.  It involves health care.  Maybe you read about it.

Orrin, Orrin, Orrin.  Do we live on the same planet?  Don’t you have pressing matters of state in the Senate that require your UNDIVIDED focus?  Are our national problems a joke to you?  If you were a senator from New York, I would start a campaign to recall you.

By the way, in No-Where-istan, we have no organized sports leagues.  Since No-Where-istan lives in my head, cleats would be painful.

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 By FREDERIC J. FROMMER, Associated Press Writer Frederic J. Frommer, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 9 mins ago

WASHINGTON – Shortly after winning last year’s presidential election, Barack Obama said he was going to “to throw my weight around a little bit” to nudge college football’s Bowl Championship Series to move to a playoff system.

On Wednesday, Sen. Orrin Hatch took him up on that.

Hatch asked the president to launch a Justice Department investigation into the way the BCS — a complex system of computer rankings and polls that often draws criticism — crowns its national champion.

“Mr. President, as you have publicly stated on multiple occasions, the BCS system is in dire need of reform,” Hatch, R-Utah, wrote in a 10-page letter, obtained by The Associated Press.

Hatch, who held a hearing on the BCS in July, told Obama that a “strong case” can be made that the BCS violates antitrust laws.

[rest of article omitted]

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For Serious News, Turn on Comedy Central

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Last night, Jon Stewart skewered CNN on its coverage of the health care debate.  I love Jon Stewart because he points to the idiocy of the 24 hour news cycle and the schnews (schmooze plus news) or newsertainment that passes for pertinent information about our cities, our country and the world. 

All the networks do is talk about finding out information, but they don’t really.  They ask us what we think and then read from the Twitter responses.  Fact-checking Saturday Night Live skits and not fact-checking what the politicians are saying is sheer idiocy.  Spending more time on whether SNL is a bellwhether for Obama than the issues is a disservice to viewers.

Other than Jon Stewart and Bloomberg News, I don’t know where else on TV to get pertinent information.  If I want comfort TV, I watch Rachel Maddow, because I agree with her views.  But for cold, hard, factual news . . . Comedy Central?  What an irony.

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Truth is the best fiction

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The majority of voters against the Iraq War live in Blue States.

Virtually all terrorist targets are in Blue States.

Most uninsured people live in Red States.

Most people who will be taxed under any Obama plan live in Blue States.

Most tea party goers won’t give up social security, medicare and — if they needed it — food stamps and welfare.  Apparently, these government entitlements aren’t “government entitlements“ government entitlements.  [Imagine the annoying hand motions depicting quotations marks.] OK, you’re not “stupid” stupid. 

Most tea party goers want to repeal the “death tax” even though statisticallyno one in their group other than the heirs of Glenn Beck and other Fox celebrities who will benefit from that tax repeal.  The idea of Glenn Beck progeny has turned this Blue Stater an awful shade of green.

If any RED STATE wishes to secede from the Union, we will throw in free Fox cable channels free for a year as a parting gift.  No, don’t thank us.  Thank YOU.

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Buying Challah can be a Contact Sport

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Tonight is the start of Rosh HaShanah and the ten days of introspection, reflection, repentance and atonement, culminating in Yom Kippur.

But today, today, is the day when frantic Jews push and shove to get the ingredients of the holiday meals.

The rule is:  tonight, we start atoning for what we did at the store today.

I went out to get a challah (special bread for Sabbaths and holidays) from the neighborhood bakery on the upper, Upper West Side.  I stand in a long line winding its way outside this adorable store front.  All is seemingly calm until I move into the store as my turn comes up.  I hear in a booming voice:

“I put my order in DAYS ago!! Last name FERNberg. F-E-AWR-N-B-E-AWR-G.  FernBERG.  5 plain, 2 raisin challahs!!!  Do I have to call my husband?”

One woman is so upset that she isn’t being paid attention that she refuses all bakery workers’ efforts to assist her.  She needs to feel oppressed.  This is the kind of stuff that should happen in the privacy of a psychiatrist’s office.

Then a rumor rages rampant that only raisin and whole wheat (oy) challahs were left.  Now, comes the pushing and the shoving.  People step out of line, disgusted.  Then we find out there are plain challahs.  Now people want to step back into line.

Now comes a Talmudic question:  when a person voluntarily steps out of line but under false pretenses, does the person get his or her place back?

Great for Talmud, not for the hand-to-hand combat of pre-holiday upper, Upper West Side.

As everyone climbs over each other (vowing internally to start repentance tonight), I get my challah and leave quickly and, thank G-d, intact.

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According to the Huffington Post, Bill O’Reilly Supports the Public Option

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According to the Huffington Post, FoxNews psycho-in-chief Bill O’Reilly supports the public option.

WHAAAAAAAAT?

I got nothing to say because my mind cannot comprehend and my mouth cannot speak and my fingers are about to stop typing. . . right after . . . .

WHAAAAAAAAT?

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107 year old woman is looking for husband no. 23!!!!

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107 year old woman is looking for husband no. 23!!!! (Even Liz Taylor can’t beat that.) 

It is so odd on so many levels.  The math suggests an analogy to buying a new car every few years (a new riff on the cash for clunkers campaign) or changing husbands every time your car gets an oil change (no lubes, please).  Her current husband is 70 YEARS younger.  No visual, please.  AND, he is a drug addict.  But that only adds a seamy aspect to this otherwise perfectly rational story. She thinks he is going to leave her for someone he met in rehab.  Isn’t that always the way it is, huh, Britney and Lindsay?  (I am guessing here, because I don’t keep up with either of these “stars”.)

What happened to the other husbands?  Hmmmm. Would she be eligible for health care coverage under the Obama plan if she didn’t live in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia?

The truth is the best fiction.

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KUALA LUMPUR (AFP) – A 107-year-old Malaysian woman says she is ready to marry for the 23rd time because she fears her current drug addict husband might leave her for a younger woman, a report said Monday.

Wook Kundormade headlines four years ago when she married Muhammad Noor Che Musa, a man 70 years her junior in northern Terengganu state, with pictures of the couple’s wedding splashed across regional newspapers.

But Wook is now looking for new love as she fears that Muhammad, 37, who is undergoing voluntary drug rehabilitation treatmentin the capital Kuala Lumpur, will leave her once the programme ends, she told the Star newspaper.

“Lately, there is this kind of insecurity in me,” the paper quoted her as saying, showing a photograph of the smiling, wrinkled-faced centenarian wearing a Muslim headscarf.

“I realise that I am an aged woman. I don’t have the body nor am I a young woman who can attract anyone.”

“My intention to remarry is to fill my forlornness and nothing more than that,” she said, adding that she felt lonely without her husband by her side to celebrate the coming Muslim festival of Eidal-Fitr next week.

Wook said she planned to visit Muhammad on the second day of Eid if her neighbours were willing to drive her to the capital.

Muhammad, who was a lodger in Wook’s house, had previously said it was “God’s will” that the couple fell in love.

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What is the fear?

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The minute President Obama took the oath of office, there has been a fevered pitch among white right wing radicals, as if somehow life imitated art and we elected the Manchurian Candidate.

Relax, everyone, Barack Obama is not the Manchurian Candidate.  How do I know?  Because George Bush was the Manchurian Candidate.  Think about it.  Whether you read the book, or saw either of the movies, George Bush bent to the will of his vice president (through Cheney’s own statements), a vice president who believed in torture and brain washing and who, as vice president, was able to wage war within the US and outside.  (Even the Manchurian Candidate had limits so we did not bomb Iran.  Thank G-d.)  During those 8 years, we fought a senseless war and muddled through another and let tinder boxes of Anti-American sentiment smolder and erupt.  The country was almost destroyed by catastrophic financial crises. The government put incompetent people in charge of disaster relief for its own citizens.    We survived the Manchurian Candidate. 

Relax, everyone. Give Obama the chance to do the things we elected him to do.

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