I've heard that some Internet Explorer users are having a hard time viewing el bloggo here; that the columns have suddenly become all goofy and mismashed.
Well, I'm here to tell you that my devoted tech team (namely, the husband) is not working on the problem. Why is he not working on it, you, my devoted Cake Eater readers---all five of you---ask, in a petulant, toe-tapping manner? Well, because we've had a hard time sussing out just what the hell is going on over at Munuviana, and rather than figure out just what that evil mastermind, Pixy, is up to, we're going to move the blog to a different host. Honestly, I think this is the easier thing to do in this situation, for everyone involved. Things have changed a great deal in my three years on moo knew and it's just not the easiest and most effective way to blog anymore.
Now, I don't want anyone to think I'm knocking moo knew. It's been great while it's lasted, but it's time to take control of my destiny, and move where I have a bit more control over things.
I'll keep blogging here in the meantime, but expect big things in the days and weeks to come. Like archives from the very beginning of the Cake Eater era! A new layout! And some added functionality, too, because the husband is, ultimately, a geek and he likes toys. All in all, I think it will be good.
The only question that remains is, will you, my devoted Cake Eater readers, follow me over to the new Cake Eater pad?
I sincerely hope so.
The latest Cigar Aficionado landed at the Cake Eater pad a while back, but it's finally just made its way into the reading queue. Tom Selleck's the cover boy this month, and I'm amazed at how well he's held up. He's still cute, even without the Ferrari, the aviator shades and the flowered shirt. He's still got that impish grin and those dimples that made me swoon when I was in seventh grade. But, most importantly, it appears the dude has a brain!
Some bits and bobs (that I have painstakingly typed out for you, my devoted Cake Eater readers, because Cigar Aficionado doesn't put its articles up online and that ixsne's the cut and paste option.) that might interest you:
{...}"He makes you want to do the best you possibly can and encourages you by example. If he ever chose to run for office, well, he has the charisma, the knowledge---and I'm talking global knowledge---and the wit to make things happen. We joke about our votes canceling each other's out, [and} his take on global affairs and politics are a lot different than mine," Brandman says, smiling, "but over the years as we've discussed things and debated them, Tom's caused me to look at things differently---not necessarily to vote differently!---but to see things from a different perspective. He's broadened my own awareness of things, broadened my perspective, and that's a good thing."Selleck groans out loud when Brandman's comment "if he ever chose to run for politics..." is passed by him for a response and it's obvious that it's opened up a can of worms that he's simultaneously eager and loath to talk about. Selleck's political leanings have been commented on by the media---both accurately and not, says Selleck---constantly over the last decade or so and, frankly, he's a little tired of the whole thing.
"I'm not politically active; I'm politically minded," Selleck's insisted in recent years, and if a review of the actor's political donations over the last decade or so turns up a number of campaign contributions to Republican candidates, so, he points out, do donations to Democratic candidates. He's not ashamed of his conservative leanings in an industry that's heavily liberal, he says, but he's also tired---really, really tired---of being characterized as something he's not, and includes being, exclusively behind Republican support issues or thinking himself of running for office.
"I'm a Libertarian at heart, although it's not practical, [and] I'm a Conservative---little 'L', little 'C'---and I've been a registered independent well over a decade," says Selleck. "I don't fit into the box that [people] want to put me in."
{...}"Look, I've had a couple times people make a phone [call] saying...'we want you to run for governor,' And I said, "Why? Do you know how I'd govern or do you just think I'm famous enough to get elected? I'm not interested. I'm an actor.' It's vaguely flattering, but that being said---I mean, it's come up endlessly in every [film press] junket I've ever been on. You know, I finally had to say, 'Look, I don't want to talk about politics. I'm not running for office. I'm flattered you think I'm worthy, I guess that's implied in your question, but I'm an actor. That doesn't mean I'm not interested in politics, the subject, or that I don't vote, but...I'm an actor!"
If there's one political---or politically correct/incorrect---subject that Selleck doesn't mind discussing openly, it's that of ever-increasing bans on personal behavior, including smoking.
"It's not good to smoke a lot. It's not. But when people move from convincing to mandates, it's just not my deal. And I don't think that is what a free society is about. Government has a function in education but not [in] propagandizing, and that is not a simple world. That world is messier. That world allows for human failure and that world allows for messy solutions, which we ought to get really comfortable with if we want to stay free. It's real simple to practically abolish speeding if you apply the death penalty to it.
"Look," Selleck continues, "we don't stay free with what we're doing now. There's just no end to it [and] it's a question of what responsibilities we give up. My concept of society, which I tell kids as often as possible, is what they should be most grateful for in a free society is the first to fail. Which sounds kind of weird. But if you don't have the right to fail and you're protected from failure, you can't truly succeed. You're then stuck in this great gray middle where you're giving up responsibility for the perceived benefits that come from government, [and] that's a very slippery slope. Do you remember when the seat belt law came into being, and how every politician in the country would say: 'It's a law but it's really [just] a guideline and officer would never pull somebody over for not wearing a seatbelt?'
"Then you start, if you live long enough, to see the slippery slope and an erosion. That doesn't mean people shouldn't wear seat belts. It doesn't mean cars shouldn't come with seat belts, [but] you end up with this 'nanny state' and people don't see the correlation between that and all aspects of life. You can find a 'good reason' to prescribe anything.
"I think free society is supposed to be messier than that. Solutions to social problems have to be. I'm not on a crusade, it's just the way I think, and I don't know, I think we need, in the words of the most politically incorrect [laughs] character I can think of, Jack Nicholson [in A Few Good Men}, 'You need me on that wall.'"
I like a man with a brain and a love of liberty. And dimples.
Can't forget the dimples.
Despite this, I suspect Sunday's vote in Venezuela on Lippy McLipster's proposed constitutional "reforms" to continue his so-called Bolivarian Revolution will overwhelmingly be for the "Si!" option.
Because that's the way Lippy rolls.
Robbo reminds us that today is the 133rd anniversary of the birth of Sir Winston Churchill.
In a related aside, for my birthday, I received a very cool gift: The Making of the Finest Hour. This is a marvelous book for anyone who wants an insight into the way dear old Winston's mind worked. Facsimiles of the first and final draft of that marvelous speech are published in the book, and they're not just any old facsimiles---they're facsimiles of Winston's drafts. With corrections and additions in his very own handwriting. Also included is a CD recording of the BBC radio broadcast, when Winston delivered the speech to the House of Commons on June 18, 1940.
Despite the fact I've had the book for almost a month, I haven't delved too deeply into it just yet, mostly, because I still haven't the brain power to give it the attention it deserves, yet I have been savoring it, picking it up, reading a bit, and then putting it back in its place on the dining room table. I'm sure the husband thinks I haven't read it at all yet, because it doesn't look like it's moved at all, but tisn't true. It's just one of those books you take your time to work through, even when you don't have chemo brain. The reasoning behind some of his revisions is obvious; on others, however, they really make you wonder at how brilliant the man was, at how he knew he could achieve policy goals with a rework of a single sentence. Edward R. Murrow commented at the time, "He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle," and it's absolutely true. Which is particularly amazing when you keep in mind what was going on at the time in terms of Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain, and that Churchill probably had very little time on his hands for speech editing. He used everything he had at his disposal, and if that included the language, so be it.
This book has the Cake Eater Seal of Approval. If you've got a Winston-admirer on your holiday shopping list, this is the perfect gift for them.
If the title line didn't tip you off, and are wondering what the link is about, well, Denver is my nephew.
UPDATE: The Cake Eater Father informs me that Denver almost aced one of his college entrance exams, as well as being a football star. Last I heard, he was taking both the ACT and the SAT, so I don't know which one it was, and I'm not likely to find out because I'm not going to bother emailing my sister, Denver's mom, as she has a spotty record at replying. But, still, impressive, no? Particularly when you keep in mind the kid has had major surgery in the past six months to correct a serious pulmonary problem.
Methinks the boy is headed for college scholarship land.
Particularly when you're a big lipped, fat assed dictator in Venezuela.
CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Wednesday CNN may have been instigating his murder when the U.S. TV network showed a photograph of him with a label underneath that read "Who killed him?"The caption appeared to be a production mistake -- confusing a Chavez news item with one on the death of a football star. The anchor said "take the image down" when he realized.
But Chavez called for a probe in an interview on state television, where he repeatedly reviewed a tape of the broadcast, questioning why the unconnected photograph and wording were left on screen for several seconds.
"I want the state prosecutor to look into bringing a suit against CNN for instigating murder in Venezuela," he said. "... undoubtedly it is part of the psychological warfare."{...}
Yawn. God this is getting old.
Hey, Lippy McLipster, shut up already and be patient. We'll murder you when we're good and ready...and not a second before.
And we'd hardly let CNN do our advance work, ya dig?
God, this climate change shit just pisses me off more and more every day.
China and India should be spared the full burden of fighting climate change, the United Nations said on Tuesday in an agenda-setting report published just days ahead of an intergovernmental conference to agree to a successor to the Kyoto protocols.The report of the UN Development Programme recommends that countries such as China and India should be required to reduce their emissions by only 20 per cent by 2050, while the rich industrialised countries shoulder a cut of 80 per cent.
The report will provide ammunition for developing countries wishing to avoid adopting stringent targets on emissions. China, India and others have argued that rich countries should carry more responsibility for the climate because most of the stock of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere came from the growth of their industry. {...}
Did you get that? China and India would only have to reduce emissions by 20%, whereas the rest of the developed world should have to reduce their emissions by 80%. You know, because climate change is the result of our industrial growth, not theirs.
Saving India for another time, let's keep in mind that this is the same China with whom both the US and EU have trade deficits, not surpluses. The same China that's hosting the Olympic Games next summer and is doing so, partly, to show off how "developed" their country has become over the past twenty years or so. This is the same China that has a freakin' moon program. This is same China that is currently set to pass the US as the worst polluter in 2010. And, most importantly, this is the same China that's currently ruining my niece's Christmas whimsies because most of the toys on the shelves are produced there and her mother won't let her have any because of safety concerns.
Leaving aside the fact that man-made climate change has yet to be conclusively proven, why on earth is this country getting a pass? China's not developing. It's developed. If they've got a freakin' space program that should be a big fat honking clue that they're not hurting for cash. They can go on and on about how they're not to blame for this supposed round of climate change, but what will their excuse be for the next great environmental disaster to befall the world? Because at the rate they're sucking up natural resources, and the slip-shod manner they're using to do so, whatever comes down the pike will be their fault.
What will they say to get themselves off the hook then?
Did you see this on Friday? No? Well I didn't either. But I wish I had.
Yes, Eric, Boulder does have a lot of hippies.
This is highly disturbing, but, honestly, it was bound to come down to this sooner rather than later.
The full story is here
{...}Mr Massey tells the officer he does not understand why he has been stopped or what he is being charged with, at which point the officer orders Massey to get out of the car. The officer then puts down his clipboard and immediately takes out his Taser and points it at Mr Massey without any provocation whatsoever, yelling "Turn around and put your hands behind your back" as Massey attempts to point out the speed limit sign and engage the officer in conversation.A shocked Massey asks "what the hell is wrong with you?" and backs away, turning around as the officer had demanded, at which point the officer unleashes 50,000 volts from the Taser into Massey's body, sending him screaming to the ground instantly and causing his wife to jump out of the car and yell hysterically for help.
Lying face down on the ground a shell shocked, Mr Massey says "officer I don't know what you are doing, I don't know why you are doing what you are doing" to which the officer replies "I am placing you under arrest because you did not obey my instruction."
Mr Massey then once again asks the officer several times why he was stopped and what he is being charged with. He then asks for his rights to be read and points out that the officer cannot arrest him without doing this. Instead of reading Massey his rights the officer then addresses another patrolman who arrives on the scene sardonically commenting "Ohhh he took a ride with the Taser" to which the other officer answers "painful isn't it".{...}
Ultimately, this comes down to what you think your rights are and what the cops think your rights are---and the two are never going to meet. You might want to understand that when you get pulled over. Save your arguments for court, because when the police are armed, well, they're going to win every time. Is it sad that that's the situation, particularly when the police are funded with your hard-earned tax dollars? Yeah. It is. But it's the truth of the situation. You can either accept the situation as it stands, and perhaps save yourself from receiving 50,000 volts, or you can argue about your constitutional rights and get zapped. Your choice. Realize one thing: the police aren't your friend. Nor are they under any obligation to help you understand your alleged crime or rights, despite what Law and Order might portray on tee vee. You'll have to work with your legislative bodies to get that changed, because arguing with a police officer about it isn't going to do anything.
Lest you think I have it in for the police, know that I don't. I can understand the defensive posture police take to protect themselves. They have to deal with an awful lot of horrible individuals who have absolutely no respect for them or the law and they would be negligent if they did anything but take a defensive posture, but this is beyond the pale. It's obvious that the guy wasn't going to harm anyone. His sole crime is that he was a bit mouthy and didn't do precisely what the officer thought he should do, but that shouldn't have earned him a jolt from a taser. Every situation varies and the police should have enough common sense to recognize this. The cop had no common sense and when things didn't go exactly as he would have liked them to, he resorted to brute force. He was Eric Cartman, demanding that the man "Respect his authoritah!" It's just that simple. This could have been resolved easily enough, without anyone going to jail or being tasered, if the cop had just bothered to listen. He didn't. And now he's, apparently, brought a multi-million dollar lawsuit down on his department.
The police are making their own job harder with stunts like this. I doubt they realize that, though.
{hat tip: Martini Boy}
Hey, you damn Minnesotans for Romney bastards:
Ahem
STOP SPAMMING ME WITH YOUR DAMN JUNK E-MAILS!
If I'd wanted to be on your list, I would have signed up for it. That I'm on a blogroll with a number of conservative bloggers who happen to live in the state of Minnesota does not mean I want e-mails from you people, detailing your beautifully coiffed candidate's positions. It's that simple. Furthermore, that you want me to help manage your e-mail list pisses me off. I never subscribed to your list in the first place, hence I shouldn't have to unsubscribe, ya dig?
Now, knock it off or I'll start mocking you. I might even have some fun with Mitt and his hair in photoshop. So, if you'd like to prevent that eventuality, you know what you have to do, eh? Consider yourselves warned.
When are you e-campaigners going to learn, eh?
If you're going to be in London on December 18th-20th, and want to knock out some of your holiday shopping...you should drop by the Savoy Hotel, where, apparently, everything must go.
The Savoy Sale, to be conducted by Bonhams, will feature stylish items of furniture with impeccable provenance at affordable prices. The furniture to be sold, which includes lighting, mirrors, works of art, and silver plate, will all be offered at “no reserve”, which means that items could go for as little as £20. However, some of the more important furnishings are expected to fetch in excess of £15,000.Bonhams’ Director of The Savoy Sale, Harvey Cammell, says: “The auction presents everyone around the world with a “once-in-a-lifetime” opportunity to acquire an extraordinary range of iconic items from one of the most famous hotels in the world.”
The three-day sale is expected to fetch in excess of £1 million. The majority of lots consist of furnishings from 215 bedrooms and suites, including the famous Monet Suite, as well as The Royal Opera House Suite and The Richard Harris Suite, in which the famous actor lived for a while. In addition, selected items from The Savoy Hotel’s public areas including The Lobby, The Upper Thames Foyer, The Thames Foyer, The Beaufort Room, The River Restaurant, The Manhattan and Parlour Bars and The Abraham Lincoln Room will be auctioned.{...}
They've shut the hotel down for the next year to rehab it. Given the current state of design style and taste that's happening in London right now, God only knows what it will look like when it's done. If you fancy yourself a preserver of style and taste and all things decorous, you might want to pop by and pick some stuff up.
Besides, there aren't any reserves. You could, conceivably, get something on the cheap. Which is more than I can say about actually paying to stay at the Savoy, which is anything but.
I'm back, my devoted Cake Eater readers.
I know. You were missing me, right? You could barely get through the day without me and my incredibly wise and informative posts, right? You're breathing a sigh of relief that I'm back at the keyboard this fine and chilly Monday morning, right?
Heh. {wink, wink, nudge, nudge}
Whilst you were gorging yourself on turkey and all the assorted side dishes, the husband and I were doing the same. Only in Texas, where the husband's family now resides. His sister and her family moved there about a year and a half ago, and his parents followed her shortly thereafter. Grandparents and Grandkiddies have been reunited and all is well in the Ft. Worth suburbs. We got around to visiting them over the holiday ("It's about time, too!" according to my mother-in-law, who sometimes forgets that airways and highways go in both directions and are not, in fact, one way.) and had a good time seeing everyone and getting caught up while eating way entirely too much food.
Two eventful things happened whilst we were in Tejas. First off, it appears we had to travel to Texas to get our first taste of snow. Yes, that's right. It snowed. In Texas. On Thanksgiving day. The kids were ecstatic and soaked completely by the time darkness fell. Second, my brother-in-law works as a computer enginerd for Lockheed Martin, and he was kind enough to take us on a tour of the manufacturing facilities for the building he works in. This building is one of five or six---and they're each well over a mile long, but, as the brother-in-law informed us, weren't quite big enough to get this particular bomber out the door without having to maneuver the wings in a diagonal fashion.
It was very cool to see how they put the planes together and how they have the manufacturing processes organized. In my brother-in-law's building we got to see F-16 wings being put together, the mid-section of an F-22 Raptor being readied for shipping to another Lockheed plant in Georgia and, wonder of wonders and EASILY the coolest thing of the day, an F-35 being wired up. I should also mention this was the very first F-35 with STOVL capabilities that was being constructed, right in front of our very eyes.
Which was suh-weet, my devoted Cake Eater readers.
The brother-in-law was disappointed that the engines weren't out on display, too. They had been the week before, but no longer. We weren't disappointed at all because what we got to see was impressive enough in itself. Apparently, in the next couple of weeks it will be finished. Everyone who was working on wiring it up was "The A Team" according to the brother-in-law, because it was the first. They've been working around the clock, evidently, to get it ready for its first flight. Supposedly, in a few years they're going to produce one F-35 a day at this facility. While that was hard to imagine, I suppose they'll manage to get it done. If nothing else, it was an interesting experience in seeing my tax dollars at work. The sheer number of people and material they need to put one of these things together---and keep in mind this is with automated processes that are much more efficient than those of years past---is astonishing.
So, if you know someone who works at Lockheed and can get you in the door, my devoted Cake Eater readers, I would highly recommend the experience. It was very, very cool to see the end result of the Joint Strike Fighter competition.
It seems like a good chunk of Central and South America have gone cuckoo for cocoa puffs social justice.
I say, "Let 'em."
We, meaning the US, didn't let them satisfy their teenage lust to date Che Guevara back in the 70's in the name of the Domino Theory. We generally don't worry about communists anymore because, ahem, we know socialism doesn't work.
Because they have failed to learn this lesson, when their doomed relationship with the corpse of Che fails, and they come crying to us, to help their economies out, we should let them rot.
I will fully admit that I might be a bit harsh in my evaluation, but screw it. I'm sick of that fat fuck Chavez and all those who are so easily duped into believing what he says. He wants them to be poor. They readily follow him. They should get what they so patently want.
I mean, honestly, who are we to impose our imperialist vision on these people?
Just slip a sable one of these under the tree...
...been an awfully good girl, Santa Baby...
Move along, now. There's nothing to see here, folks.
Hit play and watch. It won't take long, I promise you.
So, I ask you, my devoted Cake Eater readers, is bad credit a dealbreaker these days?
Seriously. I want to know.
Call me naive if you must, but when I got married, I took the "for better or worse" part rather seriously. Maybe I'm being a little too inclusive for modern tastes, but that would seem to mean that you took everything, whether or not it made for a catchy commerical or even a pleasant little bitch and moan festival. You seemingly loved this person you were marrying; you realized they were human and probably had made some mistakes in their life, but you were willing to take on said mistakes. Because you're human, too, and probably had made some mistakes yourself.
This commercial would seem to advocate checking your beloved's credit report before getting married. Because, you know, you wouldn't want to get married to them if they had---GASP!---bad credit. Because you know, there's nothing worse in this world than---GASP!---BAD CREDIT! And if your intended did have---GASP!---bad credit, well, then it would apparently be adequate grounds for dumping said intended.
And you could be a happy bachelor with a dog and a yard.
What say you, my devoted Cake Eater readers? Is bad credit a dealbreaker?
I Am Cancer Free!
Seriously.
No residual cancer in my chest, abdomen or pelvis. Also, no new cancer in my chest, abdomen or pelvis.
It's all good, kids.
To paraphrase Dr. Academic, I'm as close to cured as I'm going to get.
Thanks for all of your support, my devoted Cake Eater readers. You're a bunch of rock stars.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I'm going to go and get stinkin' drunk.
Later on today, I will travel to Dr. Academic's office and find out the results of my Pet Scan.
Holy crap, am I ever tweaked about this.
Gah. I know I'm flipping out over nothing. I know I am, but, God help me, I can't quite keep myself from doing so. This is such a bad move. I know it, but, again, I can't help myself.
I woke up at five this morning, which I think we all know, my devoted Cake Eater readers, doesn't happen even when I want to wake up at five. I'm not a morning person. At all. Yet, this morning, I woke up while it was still dark and, better yet, was completely awake, instead of being groggy and crabby at being disturbed. This never happens. Just ask the husband. I got up, went to the little girls' room, had a drink of water, and then went back to bed. It was only through repeated rubbing of my back that the husband was able to lull me back to sleep. Sigh. He's such a good egg. I honestly don't know what I'd do without him.
Sigh.
I know this appointment is probably going to take less than fifteen minutes.
I know that this appointment won't start any where near the scheduled time. Dr. Academic will be running late, as always. And he will be in a hurry to give me the results, and when that's done, will do his absolute best to whoosh out of the exam room, because he's got his reputation as the human tornado to uphold.
I know it will probably be all good and that everything is fine, but...
...what if it isn't?
That's all I can think about. I can think positively as much as I'd like to, but thinking positively about this stuff has not gotten me very far in this whole fiasco. I've learned the hard way that thinking positively, and hoping for the best, will only lead me to rack and ruin. But keeping the negative stuff from being too negative, if you get what I'm saying, my devoted Cake Eater readers, is even harder, it seems. I'm having all sorts of visions of more cancer, more surgery, and more chemo. And it's all scaring the shit out of me, because I don't want ANY of those things to happen. Even though it's highly unlikely that they will, in the first place.
Sigh.
Like a drunk driver completing a sobriety test, I'm searching for the fine line in the middle, kids, and I'm having a hard time slapping my big fat feet down on it.
Keep your fingers crossed, my devoted Cake Eater readers, eh? Not just for everything to be fine, but so that I don't lose what's left of my already-addled mind between now and two.
{...}The 10-page indictment mainly consists of excerpts from Bonds' December 2003 testimony before a grand jury investigating the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, or BALCO. It cites 19 occasions in which Bonds allegedly lied under oath.{...}Defense attorney Mike Rains said he spoke briefly with Bonds but did not describe his reaction. At an evening news conference, he read a statement accusing federal prosecutors of "unethical misconduct" and declined to take questions.
"Every American should worry about a Justice Department that doesn't know if waterboarding is torture and can't tell the difference between prosecution on the one hand and persecution on the other," Rains said.
{my emphasis}
{insert rolling of eyes here}
While I wouldn't necessarily equate waterboarding with perjury and obstruction of justice charges over alleged steroid use, Bonds' lawyers apparently have no issues with doing so.
Talk about having a big head.
Oh, wait, Bonds does happen to have a big head. A really big head. And not just in the figurative sense, either.
It's ironic that steroids, which are generally used to treat inflammation, can cause such inflamed use of language.
Looks like Hank Aaron's home run record might be safe after all. One can only hope Major League Baseball feels the same way.
NSFW disclaimer is attached. At least not without headphones.
Heh.
As a somewhat related aside, I just learned the other day that the songwriter character in Rear Window was also Dave---and was a songwriter in real life, with such hits to his name as Come-on-a-My House....and many, many more.
Interesting, no?
{Hat tip: Mr. H.}
Back when I worked at the Bou, the place was still run by the founders and the company was on the verge of either bankruptcy or great things---it just depended who you talked to. Kim and John Puckett, the founders, had brought in so many original investors, to get things up and running, and they wanted to be paid off handsomely. To achieve this end, Kim and John pretty much had the entire company running around like chickens with their heads cut off, implementing this or that new management technique brought in by this or that new manager.
My personal favorite was the "Labor Management Manual" which was, in theory, meant to help store managers like myself to recognize our peak hours and the adequate level of staffing necessary to maximize said peak hours. Filling out this manual meant going through a week's worth of hour-to-hour sales figures, checking the manual to see how many staff I was supposed to have on shift to cover said sales, and then reporting how many staff members I actually did have on hand. This had to be filled out and handed in with my P&L sheets, and it did me no good whatsoever in a tight labor market, when I couldn't find another person to work the morning shift to save my life. Besides, I didn't need a freakin' manual to tell me that I needed an extra person on staff to handle the morning rush---it would have been obvious to a blind man on a galloping horse. In essence, it was busy work. And it was an "innovation" that was brought in by a guy named Jay Willoughby, who took Boston Market public, and pretty much tanked the company in the process. The Boston Market IPO---and the management that led up to it---is now being taught at Harvard Business School as an example of what not to do. This is the guy who Kim and John hired to help pay off their original antsy investors---and he bailed as soon as it became obvious that he wasn't going to be promoted to CEO. They brought in some dude from McDonald's for that. He managed to get Caribou sold off to some Investment Dar in Dubai and then he bailed.
Then the board hired Michael Coles to take over and take the company public--- and now he's decided to leave the company.
{...}He issued a statement saying it was "time to step aside and let a new CEO take the company through its next phase of growth."{...}
Given that the share price has apparently dropped two-thirds of its value since its launch, I'm not surprised. What's better about Coles' leaving is that it's loaded with irony. You see, when Coles took over the company, a lot of old friends were either ignominiously shitcanned (as in the case of my dear old boss, Eliot, the man who famously advised us that, "You can put shit on a stick and sell it at the airport.") or quit, simply because Coles was intolerable and they didn't want to work for him. Some people waited until the company went public, finally got their stock options they'd worked so very hard for from the very beginning (and which you couldn't keep if you quit before the IPO), and got the fuck out of there with their sanity barely intact, but others who stuck around and disagreed with him were fired. He canned so many people, his nickname around the support center (aka company HQ) was "Willy Wonka" because "people just keep disappearing." It's laughable in the extreme that Willy Wonka has morphed into Veruca Salt.
It's even funnier when you take into account that he and his wife wrote a very touching (heh) children's book called "The Land of the Caring Bou" and it was sold in every single store.
One of the reasons I was so very glad to get the hell out of that company was because it had changed from when I started. Kim and John had been investment bankers in Manhattan, had become fed up with the daily grind, and, after an inspiring trip to Alaska, decided to start up a coffee shop with an Alaskan theme to it. It was a hit, and it rapidly expanded. It wasn't uncommon to find Kim and John actually working behind the counter at any given store. They liked it. They had managed to build it up, but in the process had brought in all that corporate nuttiness they'd eschewed from the very beginning so they could pay off investors. Caribou was the anti-Starbucks, until everyone came to the realization that the only way they were going to make this pay off was to turn into Charbucks. While I abhor their coffee, Charbucks is top dog for a reason, and Caribou will always be playing catch-up if they think that branded breakfast bars and drinks are the solution to the problem. It's completely possible that Caribou will never catch up to Starbucks. Starbucks built up its brand not by selling Frappacino drinks at 7-11, but by building stores. Only then did they they branch out into other marketing opportunities. Caribou thinks they can leapfrog this step---mainly because it's freakin' expensive to open new stores. If I'm remembering correctly, it's about a quarter mil per new store. And now they want to franchise, but instead of attracting franchisees, they want real estate developers instead. When I worked for the Bou, the word "franchise" was anathema. Now, it's apparently the way to go, but only for a select few who have "real estate development" experience. They're just doing everything wrong. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to see this.
And never mind about the fact that many, many talented and successful store managers leave the company every day because they're promised advancement within the company, and are always passed over for a. men or b. ass kissers or c. ass kissers who happen to be men. None of that is, apparently, relevant.
Oh, and you can't buy pork sandwiches there, either.
It seems as if the company still hasn't learned its lesson, particularly when it comes to investment money, and I'm beginning to wonder if it ever will.
I hope it succeeds, even though I don't work there anymore, because, really and truly, they do have a superior product. I'm still a loyal customer. But I wonder how long that's going to last.
You wouldn't think that the Chairman and CEO of Exxon Mobil would be a bit of a whiner, would you, particularly not when his company is making billions of dollars, in pure profit, per quarter. But apparently he, somehow, finds the time:
{...}Mr Tillerson was strongly critical of the drive in the US for independence in energy supplies, arguing that US imports could be curbed by increasing energy efficiency and boosting oil production by allowing companies access to restricted areas. “Regardless, no conceivable combination of demand moderation or domestic supply development can realistically close the gap and eliminate Americans’ need for imports,” he said.He warned that pursuing energy independence “can have a chilling effect on existing trading relations”, and quoted a report by the US National Petroleum Council warning that policies intended to foster it “may create considerable uncertainty among international trading partners and hinder investment in international energy supply development”.{...}
Go read the whole thing. It's interesting and I do agree with most of it, but...you have to laugh. What did he think was going to happen with oil at $95 a barrel? That we were simply going to bend over and take it forever? Methinks he's more concerned about the price dropping than he is about trade relations. Which would make Exxon Mobil's shareholders, who have been raking it in, a bit testy. Of course, you should not pay attention to the fact that if we became more energy independent, Exxon Mobil, which has laid out billions of dollars to invest in oil fields world wide, would take a big hit---that's beside the point. Mr. Tillerson is worried about trade relations. Really he is.
{Insert rolling of eyes here}
The US's energy problems stem, mainly, from the fact that we're beholden to oil imports from countries who a. have issues with democracy, b. suck up most of the profits so they can plate their toilets in gold, and/or are determined to nationalize the oil industries to give power back to the people (!) (thy name is Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad) and c. will do what's best for them, not anyone else. We're at their mercy because they control supply. We've gotten sucked into many an international political snafu because of our dependence on oil. The solution to this problem, a rational person would think, is to decrease our dependence on oil imports. You don't have to be a bra-burning hippie to think that life would be a bit easier if we were more energy independent; that's just common sense. While he's right in that we're never going to be able to eliminate imports, it just doesn't strike me as if he's coming from a standpoint of pure philanthropy, with our interests nearest and dearest to his heart, ya dig?
Once upon a time people used to say what was good for GM was good for the country. Are we now supposed to believe that what's good for Exxon Mobil is good for our country?
I think that's a wee bit of a stretch.
Suh-weet.
{hat tip: Fraters}
Also, while we're on the subject of sweet, sweet violence in hockey, meet Derek Boogard, Left Wing for the Minnesota Wild. This dude loves fighting. He's 6'7", 275 lbs. and can't quite seem to keep himself out of trouble.
This is from the season opener against the Blackhawks. He obviously is pwn3d in this one, but that's hardly typical.
I think I'm in love.
And he can skate, too.
Also, in a somewhat related fashion, if you haven't been over to hockeyfights.com, you might want to go. It appears to be your one-stop-shop for blood on ice.
First of all, a very large 'thank you' from moi to any and all who have served our country, and to those who are currently doing the same. We owe you a debt so great, much like the current federal debt, I doubt it will ever be fully repaid.
Thank you.
Second, I will point you to an interesting opinion piece by Niall Ferguson from this weekend's Financial Times. Ferguson makes the claim that too much remembrance is a bad thing.
A small sampling:
{...}All acts of remembrance are religious in origin. The great monotheistic faiths practise ritualised commemoration of their founders, their heroes or martyrs, their trials and tribulations. In any global list of holidays, it is still the holy days that predominate. A characteristic feature of modernity has been the effort of political entities – first empires, then nation states and more recently political parties and pressure groups – to create secular versions of commemoration. The British remembrance of the first world war is just one of the more successful bids to sacralise the political..Commemoration and remembrance are, you might be forgiven for assuming, better than amnesia. But they should not be confused with memory or folklore, much less with history. Nor should we overlook the fact that, in certain contexts, official remembrance may have the effect (often intentional) of keeping old grievances and ancient hatreds from fading.
Our memories are more or less spontaneously constructed as we store experience in our brains, though we are in some measure taught how to do this (how to think historically about our own lives) as we grow up. Folklore is what our relatives and older friends tell us about the past. History is – or should be – the accumulation of verifiable knowledge about the past as it is researched by professional scholars and disseminated through books, other media and institutions of learning.
An act of commemoration is something else. It is usually initiated by elites (King George V took a keen interest in Remembrance). It nearly always has a purpose other than not forgetting something or someone. And yet its success or failure – measured by its endurance over time – depends on how far it satisfies human appetite for myth. Precisely for that reason, commemoration can involve the systematic misrepresentation, or even outright invention, of past events.
In the case of Remembrance, the mythical invention was that the industrialised slaughter of four and a quarter years had been a worthwhile sacrifice for the sake of “civilisation”. The possibility was firmly suppressed – though raised at the time by a rebellious minority – that the war could have been avoided and had done nothing to resolve the fundamental imbalance of power on the European continent. It was precisely this insistence that the war had been a necessary tragedy, not a futile blunder, that gave Remembrance its potency. Without the tragic undertone, the rituals and symbols might have lacked force.{...}
Go read the whole thing.
I can see his point but I'm not sure he drove it home in the correct way.
Discuss.
Third, also in this weekend's FT is Mrs. Moneypenny's column, which, for my devoted UK Cake Eater readers, might be of interest. Mrs. Moneypenny, for those who might not have heard of her, is a weekly columnist in the FT and is an investment banker (I think. That she deals with finance that's WAY above my head is pretty much all I can say for certain.) with a fondness for the Chelsea Garden show, Krug Champagne, and shooting parties. She is married and a mother to three offspring, who are named Cost Centre #1, Cost Centre #2, and, obviously, Cost Center #3, due to their expensive nature. I usually enjoy Mrs. M.'s column, as she makes some rather salient points about life.
Anyway, Mrs. M. is on a bit of a crusade. To wit:
{...}You may recall from a previous column that I remain astonished that Sir Keith Park is not personally commemorated – Park ran the air defence of London and south-east England, and it was largely thanks to him that so much of London, including so many Wren churches, remains with us today. The Battle of Britain monument on the Embankment bears his name, but no statue of the man himself exists anywhere.Since I wrote that piece, on Battle of Britain Day, things have moved on. A benefactor has offered (through the letters column of the FT) to underwrite the cost of erecting a statue, and a campaign is under way to position it on the vacant fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square, at the heart of the city that Park saved and within sight of New Zealand House (Sir Keith was born in New Zealand).
Trafalgar Square is under the control of the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, and he has delegated the decision on what occupies the fourth plinth to a group of commissioners, who seem convinced that what London needs is a series of increasingly abstract works of art. None of those commissioners could enjoy a free London now were it not for Sir Keith and those who served in the RAF in the summer of 1940. Perhaps we, and they, should listen to our monarch and thank those who fought so hard for our freedom – and what better way to do so than with a statue of Sir Keith Park?
To join me in campaigning for the statue, write to the Fourth Plinth Commissioning Group, c/o Greater London Authority, City Hall, The Queen’s Walk, London SE1 2AA.
You can read more about Sir Keith here.
I'd write a letter to the Fourth Plinth Commissioning Group, but I doubt, with a Minnesota postmark on the envelope, they'd pay much attention. So, if you live in the UK and think that the gentleman who saved London from burning to the ground deserves his own statue in Trafalgar Square, by all means send them a letter stating so.
If not, well, you've got issues. But I hereby authorize you to send them a letter for no other reason than to verbally whip them for organizing under a name like "Fourth Plinth Commissioning Group." Bleh.
What up, Jewel? Are you too poor to hire a competent plastic surgeon?
You can't possibly be.
I had to suffer through that damn "You Were Meant For Me" song the other day when I was getting my Pet Scan. Talk about "Nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide." Oy. I couldn't move a muscle or the scan would have been ruined. I had to suffer through your music, as it played on the stereo, in a misguided effort to make the process more relaxing.
If I have to listen to the shit, you can at least spend the royalties responsibly, eh?
Update: And get your teeth fixed, too, while you're at it.
So, French President Nicholas Sarkozy spoke to a joint session of Congress yesterday.
Here's a transcript of this extraordinary, well-written and moving speech. Go and read it in its entirety. It's really rather amazing.
Yet...here's the headline from this morning's Financial Times:
"Sarkozy Calls For a Strong Dollar Policy."
Sarkozy ended his speech with this:
{...}Long live the United States of America!Vive la France!
Long live French-American friendship!
I can understand the inclination to disregard large chunks of this speech simply because it was apparently tailor-made for the audience to whom Sarkozy was speaking, but considering Sarkozy has done a complete one-eighty from his predecessor's policies toward this country, I don't think the one paragraph, in a four page speech, where he talked about the weak dollar should have been the lede.
Via an email. This might be old. I have no way of knowing, but I found it enlightening. {insert wiggling of eyebrows here}
If Bush Were to QuitIf Bush resigned today, this is what his speech might be . .
Normally, I start these things out by saying "My Fellow Americans." Not doing it this time. If the polls are any indication, I don't know who more than half of you are anymore. I do know something terrible has happened, and that you're really not fellow Americans any longer.
I'll cut right to the chase here: I quit.
Now before anyone gets all in a lather about me quitting to avoid impeachment, or to avoid prosecution or something, let me assure you: There's been no breaking of laws or impeachable offenses in this office.
The reason I'm quitting is simple. I'm fed up with you people. I'm fed up because you have no understanding of what's really going on in the world. Or of what's going on in this once-great nation of ours. And the majority of you are too damned lazy to do your homework and figure it out.Let's start local. You've been sold a bill of goods by politicians and the news media. Polls show that the majority of you think the economy is in the tank. And that's despite record numbers of homeowners, including record numbers of MINORITY homeowners. And while we're mentioning minorities, I'll point out that minority business ownership is at an all-time high. Our unemployment rate is as low as it ever was during the Clinton administration. I've mentioned all those things before, but it doesn't seem to have sunk in.
Despite the shock to our economy of 9/11, the stock market has rebounded to record levels and more Americans than ever are participating in these markets. Meanwhile, all you can do is whine about gas prices, and most of you are too damn stupid to realize that gas prices are high because there's increased demand in other parts of the world, and because a small handful of noisy idiots are more worried about polar bears and beachfront property than your economic security.
We face real threats in the world. Don't give me this "blood for oil" thing. If I were trading blood for oil I would've already seized Iraq's oil fields and let the rest of the country go to hell. And don't give me this 'Bush Lied; People Died' crap either. If I were the liar you morons take me for, I could've easily had chemical weapons planted in Iraq so they could be 'discovered.' Instead, I owned up to the fact that the intelligence was faulty.
Let me remind you that the rest of the world thought Saddam had the goods, same as me. Let me also remind you that regime change in Iraq was official US policy before I came into office. Some guy named 'Clinton' established that policy. Bet you didn't know that, did you?
You idiots need to understand that we face a unique enemy. Back during the cold war, there were two major competing political and economic models squaring off. We won that war, but we did so because fundamentally, the Communists wanted to survive, just as we do. We were simply able to out spend and out-tech them.
That's not the case this time. The soldiers of our new enemy don't care if they survive. In fact, they want to die. That'd be fine, as long as they weren't also committed to taking as many of you with them as they can. But they are. They want to kill you, and the bastards are all over the globe.
You should be grateful that they haven't gotten any more of us here in the United States since September 11. But you're not. That's because you've got no idea how hard a small number of intelligence, military, law enforcement, and homeland security people have worked to make sure of that. When this whole mess started, I warned you that this would be a long and difficult fight. I'm disappointed how many of you people think a long and difficult fight amounts to a single season of 'Survivor.'
Instead, you've grown impatient. You're incapable of seeing things through the long lens of history, the way our enemies do. You think that wars should last a few months, a few years, tops.
Making matters worse, you actively support those who help the enemy. Every time you buy the New York Times, every time you send a donation to a cut-and-run Democrat's political campaign, well, dang it, you might just as well FedEx a grenade launcher to a Jihadist. It amounts to the same thing.
In this day and age, it's easy enough to find the truth. It's all over the Internet. It just isn't on the pages of the New York Times or on NBC News. But even if it were, I doubt you'd be any smarter. Most of you would rather watch American Idol.
I could say more about your expectations that the government will always be there to bail you out, even if you're too stupid to leave a city that's below sea level and has a hurricane approaching.
could say more about your insane belief that government, not your own wallet, is where the money comes from. But I've come to the conclusion that were I to do so, it would sail right over your heads.
So I quit. I'm going back to Crawford. I've got an energy-efficient house down there (Al Gore could only dream) and the capability to be fully self-sufficient.
No one ever heard of Crawford before I got elected, and as soon as I'm done here pretty much no one will ever hear of it again. Maybe I'll be lucky enough to die of old age before the last pillars of America fall.
Oh, and by the way, Cheney's quitting too. That means Pelosi is your new President. You asked for it. Watch what she does carefully, because I still have a glimmer of hope that there are just enough of you remaining who are smart enough to turn this thing around in 2008.
So that's it. God bless what's left of America. Some of you know what I mean. The rest of you, kiss off.
Can't say I would blame the guy if he decided to pack it in.
Well, after two months of insurance related hell (Fight the power that be! WOOT! Idiots. Every single last one of them.), I have finally been approved and scheduled to have the Pet/CT Scan which should prove, once and for all, that I'm cancer-free.
Dr. Academic wanted me to have this done in the middle of September, a month after finishing chemo. Because of the aforementioned insurance related hell, I'm just getting around to having it now, almost three months after finishing chemo.
And I'm suddenly nervous as all get out.
I know why this is. I think most rational people could figure it out and it's, obviously, that I'm afraid the cancer is still there, despite the results of somewhere around ten different CA-125 tests that show precisely the opposite. I'm lucky. CA-125 works for me. It doesn't work for 20% of women, who could, quite literally, have a cancerous cyst on their ovary that's roughly the size of a football and the test would still show a number in the normal range. God only knows what size of a hissy fit I would have worked myself up to by now if I couldn't rely on the CA-125 results. But, since my appointment is in a couple of hours, well, I'm just starting to work myself up now.
I don't know what to think about this. It should confirm what Dr. Academic has been telling me all along: That they got all of the cancer in the surgery and that I'm cancer-free. We may not know the how or why I came to be an ovarian cancer patient in the first place, but that, I've found doesn't really matter. Particularly when there's the now to be dealt with. Where am I now? Is the cancer gone? Like I've been told repeatedly. Or is it back? Has it been there all along? Did the chemo work as promised? Or has it, perhaps, gone someplace else? What, precisely, will this scan show? Will it pick it up at all if it's back? It's scary shit, my devoted Cake Eater readers. And I won't know the results for another week and a half, because that's the earliest I could get an appointment to see Dr. Academic.
There are all these variables running around in my head. Telling me not to think about it is about as futile as telling a hamster to get off the wheel. It's just not going to happen. I know I shouldn't be worrying about it. That everything is as Dr. Academic has told me repeatedly. That I'm just, per usual, making a mountain out of a molehill. Sigh. It's just that they said it wasn't anything the first time around. And it was something. A very serious something. It's a fine line to walk. I want to believe them, but a part of me is sounding the alarm bells, telling me not to until all the evidence is in. That I'll just be setting myself up for further heartbreak if I do believe their positive prognosis, and the results come in stating the opposite.
There is one thing I shall be paying a great deal of attention to today, however, is the reaction of the people working there. You see, when I was in the ER, and they gave me a CAT scan and an ultrasound, well, the behavior of the people running the scans changed dramatically over the course of the scans. They'd be friendly one minute, then the next, when the size of the problem was apparent, they'd clam up. The CAT scan people weren't too bad, but you could definitely sense an attitude adjustment in the air. The lady who did the ultrasound, however, was as chatty as could be and then she completely shut up. Not a peep left her mouth. She didn't even want to tell me I was done. She simply covered me up and arranged for transport. The ER nurse, too, kept shooting me meaningful glances, like she was trying to tip me off to just how serious this was, despite what the doctors had told me. I, of course, noted all of this at the time, but refused to pay any attention to it because it went against my general world view that everything was going to be just fine. I'm determined not to make the same mistake again. I will be watching them like a hawk. And if, for instance, they're having a bad day and just aren't feeling particularly chatty in the first place, well, I'll undoubtedly make a lot of it.
Sigh.
But, right now, all I want to do is eat lunch. You can't have food four hours before the scan, so despite having a large bowl of oatmeal (with raisins!) for breakfast, I'm now very, very hungry. It's time to get this crap over with.
Mainly because I want to eat something.
The Post-Scan Update
Well, all things considered, there are worse ways to spend an afternoon. Like sitting in a recliner, hooked up to an IV at the oncologist's office.
Here's where the scan was done. If you've got some time to blow take a virtual tour of the office. This was, by leaps and bounds and the occasional skip-to-my-lou, the swankiest office I've been in since this whole thing started. The oncologist's office is, well, serviceable. That's the nicest way to decribe it. My OB-GYN is in the same building as the Pet Scan place and I thought their office was nice. It's nothing compared to the Pet Scan place. It's like the difference between the furniture outlet and the Henredon showroom. Suddenly, it makes an awful lot of sense why these things are $1700 a pop.
The process was fairly routine. I was quickly ushered into a plush waiting room, with a leather recliner (take that, you cheap oncologists! Vinyl. PAH!) where the nurse quizzed me about all the drugs I was on, had taken in the past couple of months, and about the chemo, etc. She then started an IV, but there wasn't a drip involved, thankfully; she simply brought out this two-inch-wide, five-inch-long, steel encased syringe and shot the radioactive sugar solution (FDG) into it. After that, she handed me a glass of what looked like Milk of Magnesia (berry flavored!) and a small bottle of water for a chaser and told me to drink up. This was the contrast. Between the two of them, they would light my innards up like a pinball machine visible from space.
I had to sit around for forty-five minutes, to allow these two things to start flowing through my body, and then it was time for the scan. The PET scan machine looked exactly like House's MRI of Doom, only bigger and with a longer table. I laid down, put my arms up around my ears and they ran me in and out of the donut portion for the better part of a half-hour. I almost fell asleep. It was so very quiet. No thunking. No bells. No whistles. Nothing. Just a light mechanical purr. With this they can see if there's any cancer left, because the cancer cells will feast on the FDG, which is partially a simple sugar solution, and it'll show. They apparently can stage cancer with this puppy by watching just how fast the sugar is metabolized by the cancer cells. Which, is pretty cool, particularly when they usually have to figure that out via surgery. It can even differentiate between malignant and benign tumors, and it'll pick up any cancer recurrence more quickly than a blood test.
When it was over with, I, of course, paid particular attention to how the nurse was acting. She was the same after as she'd been before. I said, "I almost hate to ask, but how did it look?" She replied, "I have no idea. The computer is still processing the images. "
Duh.
Wow. Just freakin' wow.
STELLA McCartney is fighting back against her evil ex-stepmonster, Heather Mills.{...) {T}he fashion designer has created a jewelry line, and her first effort is a necklace featuring a single-leg pendant. The bauble costs $500 - a lot less than the $100 million Mills is looking to get from Paul.
You have to respect someone who follows through. Not generally a big fan of Stella McCartney, or her PETA activities, but apparently this chick is willing to put her money where her mouth is.
That I can respect.
...Jack Aubrey would think of this monstrosity.
I saw this on 60 Minutes last night, when they profiled the owner, venture capitalist, Tom Perkins. (The footage isn't up on You Tube yet, so you're getting this instead.) And, while I watched, I simply wondered what Lucky Jack would think of a sailboat that he alone could sail. I mean, fer chrissakes, that thing is bigger than anything the Royal Navy had going at the time of the Napoleonic Wars---and you can pretty much sail it yourself. No sailors are required to hoist and unfurl the sails. No one has to climb up the rat lines to do this task...they simply unfurl from inside the masts, where they're stored. There's no wheel on the bridge, but rather a dial, which directs a computer program to do all sorts of sailor-y things. It's made of carbon-fiber, so it's light and scoots through the water like a hot knife through butter. It's amazing.
The boat's cool, don't get me wrong. Have I mentioned that it can unfurl its own sails? What's not to like? I'll bet you can make some pretty good soused hog's face in that galley, too.
But damn. I have to think that Lucky Jack, who was fond of coin, make no bones about it, and would only rarely begrudge someone their money, and only with good reason, would think it an expensive, ostentatious and, ultimately, deeply heretical ship.
Discuss.
...it's my birthday, too, yeah.
No, really. It is. On this date in 1970, at 12:03 am, I was born. The Cake Eater parents tell me it was election day, which sounds about right, I suppose. Now, I've never divulged this information before, my devoted Cake Eater readers, simply because I didn't think it was that big of a deal; that turning one year older wasn't anything worthy of a blog post. This was usually because I was cranky about it and I wanted to spare you. I wasn't a big fan of aging, that another year had gone by and I hadn't accomplished what I wanted to, and I felt old so much of the time, it seemed, particularly on my birthday, that I just didn't want to go there.
Then I got cancer.
I was made to realize that I'm a pup when it comes right down to it. There's nothing quite like having the (mostly) elderly denizens of the treatment room all shake their heads at you as you walk to your plush, vinyl coated recliner, whispering the words, "So young," as they tut-tut in disapproval to drive the point home. It's made me change my mind about turning another year older. I'm now extremely glad I'm turning another year older. That was a bit dicey there for a time. We didn't know if number thirty-six was going to be my last birthday, or if I was going to be lucky enough to reach thirty-seven. But now it seems that I'll reach thirty-eight, thirty-nine and so on and so forth, provided I don't get run down by a bus in the meantime. For this I'm grateful. Hence, it would be extremely unworthy to say I'm turning twenty-nine for the ninth time, like I normally do, instead of just fessing up to my actual age. So, my devoted Cake Eater readers, I'm THIRTY-FREAKIN'-SEVEN.
And I'm happy with it.
This does not, however, mean that I'm going to lose my addiction to anti-aging creams. Sheesh. As if. I'm in freakin' menopause right now. I need this addiction to continue apace otherwise I'm going to look more than thirty-seven, if you take my meaning. And that might just send all this birthday related happiness straight down the toity.
Anyway, every year, I try and muster up enough self-awareness to figure out just what I've learned over the preceding year, about myself and the world I live in, and the people with whom I share this planet. This means acknowledging the good and the bad about all of these things. I always hope there's more good than bad in the list, but sometimes that ain't always the case. This year, however, there is more good than bad. Surprisingly. Here's what I've learned for the school year 2006-2007, in no particular order:
I sometimes feel a vicious anger toward God for what's happened. But then I always forgive Him. He's got his plan. I simply need to work on adapting myself to it. The fault is with me, not Him. There's a reason for everything; you just sometimes never know what that reason may be. It's less about figuring things out, than adapting to them. I'm less inclined to cut human beings the same amount of slack, however. Why this is, I have no idea. It just is. Anyone who hears my tale of woe decides on the spot that the best thing they can tell me that we "can always adopt" is bound to get, at the very least, a nasty look. As if this is the simple, elegant solution to this problem. One that will make everyone happy. That bees will again buzz, birds will fly, the air will be warm and kissed with sweet smelling breezes and all will be right with the world. It ain't the solution. For many and varied reasons. I've learned that most of the the people who tell me this, generally speaking, want to live in a world where there isn't injustice and pain and all manner of horrible things. They say these idiotic words not to make me feel better, but to make themselves feel better. As if, by saying them, they will restore balance to a world where crazy shit happens for no reason whatsoever. It doesn't work that way. Unfortunately. There are no simple, elegant solutions that restore balance to the universe. Ever.
And that should about sum it up, my devoted Cake Eater readers. We'll just have to wait and see if year thirty-seven has as many interesting lessons to learn.
{insert wiggling of lush, fully grown-in eyebrows here}
I cannot tell you how many times I see someone google in this post. I'm usually the third or fourth listing for "Why hasn't he called?"
Sigh.
Ladies, listen up. Life is too short to wait around for a guy to call you. Go and lead productive lives. Live up to your potential. And if the urge to google for the answers to all your problems---including your love life---strikes again, well do try and restrain yourselves, eh? You're just managing to make yourselves look more than a bit desperate.
Hey, Fattie McFatFat, put down the Pringles, the steak and that third beer or you'll get cancer.
Scientists with the American Institute for Cancer Research and the World Cancer Research Fund in Britain have analyzed thousands of recent studies and produced 10 recommendations to help people lower their risk.Men should consume no more than two alcoholic beverages daily, and women, only one, the report says. Several studies have associated alcohol consumption with elevated breast cancer risk.
Other recommendations include avoiding cigarettes, red and processed meats, consuming a diet rich in vegetables, and exercising 30 minutes a day.
“There is a major and very important conclusion,” said Walter Willet, one of the report’s authors, “and that is: Overweight and obesity can contribute to an individual’s cancer risk — abdominal circumference, especially.”
We think people should be as lean as possible without being underweight,” said Willet, an epidemiologist and physician at Harvard University’s School of Public Health.
Fat, especially in the midsection, can increase the production of hormones that drive development and growth of cancer cells, he said.
{...}Experts evaluated more than 7,000 studies over five years to compile the report. Panelists found “convincing evidence” that carrying extra weight, particularly around the waist, may lead to cancer of the esophagus, pancreas, colon, kidney and uterus, as well as post-menopausal breast cancer.{...}
If you have massive amounts of time to blow, you can read the entire report here. All five hundred and thirty seven pages of it.
See, this is not how research dollars should be spent, in my humble opinion. Trolling through old studies, looking for evidence to back up pre-determined conclusions that just happen to coincide with major public health initiatives is not great in the overall scheme of things.
Color me skeptical about this report. Deep purply shades of skeptical, bordering on black.
I don't particularly like studies like this, where researchers compile data from numerous and varying studies and purport to draw previously unseen conclusions from said data. Correlation does not equal causation. It does not appear to me, not having read the study, that they actually did anything to prove that having some extra weight around the midsection actually increases your risk of cancer; it's that they looked over old studies and drew that conclusion. It may be true, but damnit, I want proof. Particularly when it appears that they're trying to link this finding to the overarching push against obesity. Again, correlation does not equal causation. It's just that simple. Never mind that it appears they looked very little at other factors, like genetics, that are equally if not more important in preventing cancer.
I'm tired of this shit.
Look, I can't tell you how many freakin' statistics I've had thrown at me since I was diagnosed. They're everywhere you look. The doctors and nurses shoot them at you, with increasing regularity and without a second thought, because these statistics are the only proof they can give you regarding your treatment, and, ultimately, your outcome. These statistics come from research done in the field, obviously, and health care providers would be lax in their duties if they didn't keep up with them. As such, they will tell you that you have a 25% increased chance of this, or a 25% decreased chance of that, and a 90% chance of the other. You, as a cancer patient, quite literally, have to make life or death choices based on statistics. You need those statistics to be good. You need good math to plan out how you're going to fight this disease. So, when someone trolls through a bunch of studies and tells me that, in their humble opinion, I'd better keep the fat off because there's an increased chance of my cancer returning if I have one extra hamburger per week, they'd better have good math, and ultimately a good study, to back up their conclusions. My life has been altered enough, thank you ever so bloody much. I'm not going to alter it more based on what I consider to be shoddy work.
It's one thing to educate yourself when you're looking at cancer. That's important and I'm not going to knock anyone who wants to do the research. What I will say, however, is that if you don't have an understanding into how a simple statistical poll is conducted, you'd better learn, and you'd better learn fast. If you don't understand how the study was conducted and what kind of math they used, you can't judge the veracity of it, let alone the efficacy. How many people will take the highlights of this study as the God's honest truth and will alter their lives because of it? Even though it's highly specious? Well meaning doctors will throw this one at overweight patients as added incentive, even if the link hasn't been conclusively proven, because fighting obesity is seen to be fighting for the greater good. Legislators will then get involved because there's a risk of cancer from being obese, they will predict health care costs will go up and all sorts of shit will start being banned for our own good. You can see it, can't you? It has the potential to spiral out of control. Individual choice will be then limited because of a specious study that doesn't actually prove anything.
Never mind that this is not how I want research dollars spent, thank you ever so bloody much. That's apparently not all that important in the scheme of things. But if you can link cancer to being overweight, because it so nicely dovetails with other public health goals, it's apparently all right to go for it. Because an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Which ultimately means that you're screwing over the people who actually do have cancer, and would like a cure or an effective treatment, thanks ever so bloody much, because it's deemed more important to spend money researching how to prevent it in the first place. Just speaking as an ovarian cancer survivor, this pisses me off. We don't have an early screening test for ovarian cancer, along the lines of a Pap Smear for cervical cancer. You, generally, find out when you're on the table, if you're lucky enough to get to the table at all because the symptoms are so freakin' vague to begin with. For most women diagnosed with ovarian cancer, this means that they catch it late, when the chances of survival are low. I'm lucky they caught it when they did, but Dr. Academic admitted flat out that they don't know much about my stage of ovarian cancer; they know a hell of a lot more about the later stages simply because that's when more women are diagnosed. Currently, in the United States, we spend $600 per death on ovarian cancer research. With breast and prostate cancer it's $3000 per death. Yet, ovarian cancer is the fifth leading cause of death in women. Around 22,000 women this year alone will be diagnosed; of that number, roughly 15,000 will die because of the disease. That's almost two-thirds, which is just an unacceptable statistic, if you ask me, but they're not asking me where I'd like research dollars spent to lower that number. Nooo. They're more interested in spending research dollars on specious studies that don't prove anything when it comes to preventing cancer, but that do dovetail nicely with what they consider to be the greater good.
Just never mind all those dead cancer patients along the way.
