ABC News: Singer Robert Goulet Dies at 73
I recall Goulet most vividly from an appeance with The Muppets and as the villain in the second Naked Gun installment. Ok, maybe not so vividly.
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And somehow, my celebrity death sensors missed several weeks back that Match Game legend Brett Somers had passed away.
I’m bored. I need change. So this new look-and-feel isn’t necessarily better than the previous two, but it’s different, and I’m happy to have it for the time being. Does the site really need a running clock? No, but I actually like it.
And after my recent experience of having to design a template that the visually-impaired had to be able to read, I don’t give a damn how hard to read this layout might be. In fact, I don’t give a damn what anyone thinks of the layout. Anyone who reads this has probably found a feed aggregator by now, anyway.
For the record, here were versions 1 and 2:
Version 1 (February 16 – May 21, 2007)
Version 2 (May 21 – October 30, 2007)
Rudy Guiliani has a radio ad in Iowa in which proudly acknowledges being a survivor of prostate cancer (good for him, seriously). But then he does on to say that he’s mighty lucky not to live in the UK, where they socialized medicine, since the prostate survival rate is just 42%, compared to 84% in the U.S.
“You and I should be making the decisions about what kind of health care we get with our doctors, not with a government bureaucrat,” Giuliani says in the ad.
Nice argument, if it weren’t a pathetic, manipulative lie.
(I’m using good about not hot-linking/stealing stuff from other sites, like this one…)
More stats:
Cancer Research UK : Prostate Cancer survival statistics
I used to care a lot about baseball. Now, I’m just an casual observer of some of the playoffs, although I’ll generally make an effort to watch what might be the final game of the World Series, which is happening right now. The focus in the baseball world should be on the fact that the Red Sox are about to win the World Series…or at that Colorado Rockies are about to make a respectable comeback in Game 4 to avoid a sweep.
Instead, in the eighth inning, however many millions of fans still watch the World Series were subjected to the “breaking news” that Alex Rodriguez, “A-Rod,” would not be accepting the option on his contract to remain with the New York Yankees and would become a free agent. Yes, A-Rod is the best player in the major leagues today. But A-Rod is NOT in the World Series. The major league baseball season, I hope, should ultimately be more about the TEAM that wins the championship, not one player. But instead of commenting on the two teams vying for the championship, Joe Buck and Tim McCarver and their intrepid dugout reporter were talking about A-Rod.
I’d be disgusted with A-Rod, but it’s clear his super-agent Scott Boras made sure to leak this news while there were millions of people paying attention. The maneuver was a reminder individual athletes, not teams, dominate the headlines in professional sports. Of course, FOX didn’t need to go with the story.
And with that, congratulations to the Boston Red Sox for winning their second World Series in the past four years…
How flattering.
I stumbled upon some new “local” blog a few days ago. I asked a few local bloggers if they had heard of the blog or its author. I was unaware that the blog seemed to be a parody of a local food blog, since I rarely eat anywhere that braises or reduces anything and, therefore, don’t follow most of the local food blogs. Also, I was unaware that the author had caused a stink with an insulting comment directed toward a local blogger.
So I don’t know who this person, the author of this new blog, is. But I’m apparently worthy of a post in his blog. It would be mildly amusing if not for the “Wanted dead or alive” subject header, which is a bit creepy.
What’s also odd is that I’d be the first person to mock any designation of myself as a “Durham blogger”. I live in Durham, and I put brain droppings out there on the internet on this website. Sure, I aspire to be relevant, but I’m well-aware that posts of pet pictures and confessions of shopping at Wal-Mart don’t put me on a trajectory towards relevance. So the mystery blogger’s focus on me is puzzling.
Or you may refer to it as “Halloween”. For the last five years, I have referred to it is “Hollyween”, since my friend Holly has been throwing a party with that name for the past decade. In 2003 and 2005, I went as television characters, and I’m following in that vein in 2007.
2003 : Lorne (Angel)
2005 : Mrs. Garrett (The Facts of Life)
2007 : ?????
I’ll answer that question tomorrow.
Forgive me, Al Gore, for I have sinned. Last night, I shopped at Wal-Mart. I did so willfully. I figured it was a good place to look for an item I was needing for my Halloween costume. But I didn’t find it. Instead, I, and this is painful to admit, I bought groceries. Why, oh, why did I patronize the foremost expression of Satan on the planet (after Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Mary Hart)?
Because all the groceries are friggin cheap. Target’s got nothing on Wal-Mart for low-prices. A two-liter of Diet Pepsi Max is 98 cents at Wal-Mart. Always. I shop at Target maybe 15 times a year, and the one time a year I go to Wal-Mart, I realize that I could be saving about 25% on just about everything. Then, I suppose, Wal-Mart goes back on boycott status when I decide that the extra money I spend in a given year by choosing Target over Wal-Mart is essentially a charitable contribution to society.
I realize I’d be a far better liberal if I avoided big-box stores all together. But I don’t cook, nor do I knit my own socks, nor do I brew my own highly caffeinated low-calorie cola.
Imagine that you spend your whole life in one city and nearly half of it in one apartment. You hope to be able to die in this apartment. One day, an emergency causes you to have to leave your apartment. You realize you may not be able to return to your apartment soon. You may not even be able to live there again. But all your stuff, a lifetime of stuff, is there, and you imagine you’ll have a chance to go through it. But then, with little warning, you’re shuttled away from where you’ve spent your entire life and told you’re never going to see your apartment again.
As I began to write about this scenario, I realized it sounds an awful lot like I’m talking about someone in Southern California whose home has been lost to a fire.
Actually, I’m talking about my 86-year-old grandmother. With a variety of debilitating health problems, she’s been in and out of rehab centers and hospitals for the past four to six weeks. This follows a period of two years of somehow surviving mostly on her own following the passing of my grandfather. She will learn tomorrow morning that she’s neither going back to her apartment in Brooklyn nor a nearby nursing home. Instead, she’ll be brought to a nursing home in Central Jersey, where my weary mother can better watch out for her. It’s a great facility. My paternal grandmother spent several years there until she passed away 16 years ago. My mother tells me that my grandmother makes friendly quickly, and that she’ll like it. In truth, it is absolutely terrific news that there’s space in this facility for my grandmother.
But tomorrow, she’s going to face the reality that she’s never, ever again going to step foot in her home of 40 years. She has lived for 86 years in Brooklyn. Unbeknownst to her, today is her final full day there. She’s going to die in New Jersey.
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I don’t really have a point. And I’m surprised that I’m posting this to Toastiest. This is more the type of writing I’d do for a very limited audience, in the old Livejournal account. I still don’t have an intelligent response to the question, “What do you blog about?” It’s an exaggeration to say “everything”, and it’s obnoxious to say “whatever I feel like blogging about”. It would be false modesty claim to answer “nothing important”. It would be arrogant, though, to claim that anything I write about IS important. I blog because…I’m creating connections with other people, even if they are mostly anonymous, superficial connections. No one wants to live in a vacuum.
And, somehow, as far as I can tell, I’ve somehow neglected to post this video up on here. Or maybe I just didn’t tag it well and can’t find the post. In any case, it’s worth reposting, because, when I’m weary and feeling small and friends just can’t be found, etc., this makes me happy.
(9/12/06, Wake County Animal Shelter, Raleigh, NC)
Last night, at Duke’s Page Auditorium, Bill Bell struck back at Thomas Stith and his dirty campaigning. Bell, who’s usually very composed, seems to shine when he’s a little worked up. I have some more thoughts on the debate and campaign, but I wanted to get this video up here:
Here, the candidates answer a question posed by Bull City Rising’s Kevin Davis regarding the tone of the campaign:
