Hank Learns the Bad News

"I just told Hank about the words 'Speaker of the House John Boehner.'"

via Slog

I Hope You Don't Need Me for the Next Three Months

Come Monday, I'll be back at school. The following week, I'm off for Labor Day and Rosh Hashanah, then the shit gets real. My list of course materials is disconcertingly extensive; nothing compared to last spring's list, which also scared the shit out of me. Little did I know what was coming. Here it is (sans books for Holistic Health Practices, which haven't yet been published), both because maybe it's interesting but mostly because I like to make lists:

• American Sexual Histories
• City of Eros: New York City, Prostitution and the Commercialization of Sex, 1790-1920
• Major Problems in the History of American Sexuality
• Rape and Sexual Power in Early America
• Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America
• Collaborative Leadership
• Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending & the Battle Against World Poverty
• Children of War: Voices of Iraqi Refugees
• Country of My Skull: Guilt, Sorrow, & the Limits of Forgiveness in the New South Africa
• Human Rights: A Very Short Introduction
• Social Justice: Welfare, Crime, & Society
• Taxi! Cabs & Capitalism in New York City

It's only twelve books for three classes.... OMG. Maybe Holistic Health Practices will have only one book. Or no books. That could happen, right? Right? Blerg.

image via Toothpaste for Dinner

Pantophobia

I think I have it and I'm not being facetious.

Overheard in HDEV348, or Why I'm Shitting Myself

"The bachelors degree is the new high school diploma."

As if this isn't stressful enough as it is....

More Proof Depression Hurts Women's Hearts

From MSNBC:

WASHINGTON - Severe depression may silently break a seemingly healthy woman's heart.

Doctors have long known that depression is common after a heart attack or stroke, and worsens those people's outcomes. Monday, Columbia University researchers reported new evidence that depression can lead to heart disease in the first place.

The scary news gets worse:

The depressed women were more than twice as likely to experience sudden cardiac death — death typically caused by an irregular heartbeat, concluded the 12-year study, published Monday in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. They also had a smaller increased risk of death from other forms of heart disease.

The big surprise: Sudden cardiac death seemed more closely linked with antidepressant use than with the depression symptoms the women reported.

This is disconcerting to say the least.

Today in Things That Have been Flattened

My question: HOW does this happen? Monster trucks are HUGE and LOUD and not SNEAKY and INVISIBLE.

via Slog

Jaws and How it Scared Me

Yesterday, I came home from work and I was all, "grumble grumble this," and "grumble grumble that" after a particularly aggravating day. I just wanted to chill out and try to forget about that which ired me.

We've recently canceled cable in an effort to reduce spending so I couldn't just zone out in front of the tube and had to choose a DVD instead.

Hmm... The Office? I do love The Office and have watched all the seasons over and over again. Maybe. Death Proof? I love that, too, but I watched it recently. Stripes? Garden State? Meh.

HEY! Jaws! I've never seen Jaws in its entirety. Great! Great choice!

So, Jaws it is!

Ok. You've seen Jaws. Everyone has seen Jaws except for me, right? Jaws is the 1975 horror film directed by Steven Spielberg and based on the novel by Peter Benchley.

I was laying on the couch watching Jaws. Its good! I liked it. But you know what? It. is. SCARY! Do you know what else? Jaws is rated PG, like kids movies! This movie has blood and severed limbs and I think some viscera. It also has the stalking and subsequent consuming of a child who was enjoying some great beach time fun.

If I had seen it as a kid (the movie is PG, remember) I think I would be terrified of the ocean. So, I'm really glad I didn't see it when I was a kid.

image via Wikipedia

Guns Don't Kill People

Parents who buy their 8-year-old son a .22 and teach them not to fear the weapon kill people.

From CNN:

FLAGSTAFF, Arizona (AP) -- A man who police believe was shot and killed by his 8-year-old son had consulted a Roman Catholic priest about whether the boy should have a gun and had taught him how to use firearms, the clergyman said.

Vincent Romero, 29, and Timothy Romans, 39, were found fatally shot in Romero's home Wednesday. The Very Rev. John Paul Sauter said the man, Vincent Romero, 29, wanted his son to learn how to hunt, but the boy's stepmother, Tiffany, suggested that he have a BB gun.
Police say the boy used a 22.-caliber rifle Wednesday to kill his father and another man, Timothy Romans, 39, of San Carlos.
Romero was an avid hunter who taught his son how to use a rifle to kill prairie dogs, said Sauter, of St. Johns Catholic Church.
"He wanted to make sure the kid wasn't afraid of guns, knew how to handle it," the priest said. "He was just too young. ... That child, I don't think he knows what he did, and it was brutal."
The boy, who faces two counts of premeditated murder, did not act on the spur of the moment, St. Johns Police Chief Roy Melnick said.

This Week in Facebook News

From BBC:

CROYDON, South London-

A man has been jailed for life for stabbing his wife to death over a posting she made on the social networking site Facebook.

Wayne Forrester, 34, told police he was devastated that his wife Emma, also 34, had changed her online profile to "single" days after he had moved out.

The Old Bailey heard Forrester drove to her home in Croydon, south London, and attacked the mother-of-two.

He stabbed her with a kitchen knife and a meat cleaver on 18 February.

I wonder what Forrester would have done if she was interested in "networking."


via Slog

Re: I Had My First (5 mm) Dermal Punch Today

During the piercing, literally, as soon as my ear crunched, I thought, "I am never getting another dermal punch again." It has been a mere 10 days and already I'm considering having the other ear done. It will be several months before the left ear is healed and thus at least a few months before I can do the right ear but I really love how it looks.

I'm really excited to have the option to pierce at whim again. During my years in mort. school and the subsequent years at the funeral home, I was required to be professional, conservative, appropriate for public consumption. I hated it. Now, I can have my druthers and my dermal punch, too.

Jezebel to McCain: Look at This Mess You've Made!

From Jezebel:

John McCain created this hateful monster, and no amount of back-pedaling, especially when he's still running ads trying to portray Obama as a terrorist, is going to stop it. The Straight Talk Express is currently on its Hate Across America tour, and John McCain is slowly becoming the lead singer who can't figure out where all of his rock star dreams went wrong. We'll here's a hint, Senator: when you stoke the fires of paranoia, hatred, and anger, you might just get burned. Or booed. Either way, when your audience can't even accept your own words anymore, you might want to ask yourself why any of us should.

What He Said

Is anyone else experiencing some mild to moderate trepidation?

From The New Yorker's George Packer (emphasis is mine):

A number of people are afraid that the ugly tactics of the McCain-Palin campaign are going to incite violence, maybe assassination. Joe Klein, Andrew Sullivan, McCain’s former adviser John Weaver—even the ultimate sober-sided moderate David Gergen last night on CNN. I hope they’re wrong. It’s a big leap from hateful talking points and shouted epithets to vigilantism and the lone gunman. What’s undeniably true is that Republican rallies and the incendiary language of party leaders are stirring up the darker, destructive mob passions that have a long history in American politics. At the very least, the Republican ticket is making sure that, if Obama wins, he’ll be regarded as an illegitimate and dangerous President by thirty or forty per cent of the country.

Palin is too shallow to understand the weapon she’s playing with; she’s just thrilled to be the birthday girl and the object of so much semi-erotic devotion. But McCain knows better....

via Slog

Furthermore, not only does he know better, McCain is now attempting to control the wild, blood-thirsty beast he has created.

also via Slog

I Had My First (5 mm) Dermal Punch Today

I had my first dermal punch today; its a 5mm conch. It was incredibly painful and bloody. Afterwards, the piercer asked if I would like to keep the flesh. I declined.

Pictures will follow after a few days of initial healing.

He Put it on eBay

via Truthdig

SHIT! This Is Awful News

She may have a uterus but she is certainly anti-woman. Furthermore,

TPM:

So now we've learned that Sarah Palin is McCain's choice for vice presidential nominee. I have to say, it's a daring pick but I think a very weak one. I'm perfectly happy with it. Palin is in the midst of a reasonably serious scandal in her home state. Her brother-in-law is a state trooper who is in the midst of an ugly custody battle with her sister. And she's accused of getting the state police to fire him. Recently she was forced to admit that one of her aides had done this, though she insists she didn't know.

Next, John McCain's central and best argument in this campaign is that Barack Obama simply lacks the experience to be President of the United States. And now John McCain, who is a cancer survivor who turns 72 years old today, is picking a vice presidential nominee who has been governor of a small state for less than two years and prior to that was mayor of a town with roughly one-twenty-seventh of the constituents that Barack Obama represented when he was a state senator in Illinois.

Whatever you think of Barack Obama's qualifications to be President, Palin is manifestly less qualified. And that undermines the central premise of McCain's campaign.

Half-ton Woman Indicted in Slaying of Nephew, 2

From CNN (emphasis is mine):

A grand jury indicted Mayra Lizbeth Rosales, 27, on Thursday on one count of first-degree murder and on one count of injury to a child in the death of Eliseo Gonzalez Jr. She previously had been charged with capital murder.

Rosales weighs nearly 1,000 pounds and cannot fit through a door to leave her home, leaving prosecutors wondering how to bring her to court. As of Thursday evening, she was not in custody.

Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Trevino said that holding her at the county jail for her trial would be impossible because she needs extensive medical care.

::shakes head:: I don't even know.

via Slog

image via KGBT

Guns Don't Kill People: The Update

The 14-year-old boy who shot and killed a 54-year-old hiker he mistook for a bear has been charged with manslaughter.


via Slog

You, Holly Highfield, Are All Class

From News4Jax:

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. --

Police recently arrested a woman they said deliberately hit a bike rider and crashed two separate cars, and then ran off naked.Holly Highfield faces DUI and several other charges after witnesses said she intentionally struck a bicyclist, took off her clothes and ran around the crash scene, then drove off the road while attempting to leave the scene in someone else's vehicle.Police said the incident occurred Sunday evening while Highfield, 34, was driving three children, ages 10 to 14.

Just after 8 p.m., officers were called to a report of an accident involving a pedestrian and a naked woman at the intersection of San Pablo Road and Pirate Court.The children in Highfield's car told police that she was driving north when she turned to them and said: "Do you think this biker is going to get hit? Do you have faith? Are you afraid?" They said she then steered her SUV across San Pablo and struck 55-year-old Cathy Giury riding a bicycle.

When a couple in a van stopped to see if the bicyclist needed help, Highfield allegedly got out of her vehicle, jumped into the van yelling that she was going to jail, ordering the man behind the wheel to drive her away. Police were told than when the driver refused, she got out, took off her clothes and began running around.

According to the police report, when the bystander got out to help the bicyclist, Highfield yelled at the passenger in the van to get out, then attempted to drive off, but left the road and struck a fence.When police arrived, Highfield was placed in the back of the patrol car. Officers said she became increasingly violent. When a female officer attempted to cover Highfield with a sheet, she was kicked.The arrest report indicates Highfield "appeared to be under the influence of some type of drug." It said she also urinated in the back of the patrol car.

Ack. The crazies, they are everywhere.


via Slog

Father-in-Law of U.S. Volleyball Coach Killed

From Reuters:

BEIJING-A Chinese man stabbed to death the father-in-law of a U.S. Olympic coach at a Beijing tourist spot on Saturday before taking his own life, casting a pall over the first day of sports action at the Games.

Todd Bachman was killed and his wife, Barbara, suffered life-threatening injuries in the knife attack, the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) said.

Their daughter, Elisabeth Bachman McCutcheon, who played volleyball for the U.S. women's team at the 2004 Athens Games is married to New Zealander Hugh McCutcheon, coach of the men's team. She was with her parents at the time of the attack but was not hurt, the USOC said.

A Chinese tour guide was also wounded in the attack by a man whom police said had no fixed residence nor job, but traveled to Beijing from the affluent eastern city of Hangzhou on August 1.

Tang Yongming, 47, from the eastern city of Hangzhou, attacked the trio shortly after midday at the centuries-old, 45-metre-high (148-ft-high) Drum Tower in central Beijing. He died after leaping from the Tower, police said.

Assaults on foreigners are rare in Beijing, host of the 2008 Olympic Games. Police said the Chinese tour guide was out of danger....

Read an update on Barbara Bachman and find more information about the attack on The New York Times; read about Beijing's post-attack security increase on Reuters.

You and Your Big Ideas

Greyhound Scraps Ads after Canada Bus Beheading