Our favorite neighborhood cluck is at it again. The woman who I’ll refer to as “scary” has decided to chop up a huge piece of sidewalk to make room for more garden. Fine, whatever, but lets take a look at what she’s done with the smashed up concrete shall we.
She actually placed the broken chunks in this lovely arrangement. Her house is attached to mine. How much do you think my property value is plummeting?
Nice sculpture she’s got going here. Avant-garde concrete landscaping? Or lazy ass who doesn’t know how to dispose of her rubbish.
When I was in 8th grade my father had his fill of neighbors and went out and bought three adjoining plots of land surrounded by woods on the side of a hill. He had a house built in the middle of them and refused to ever sell the other two until my parents moved. It is times like these when I can truly appreciate the brilliance behind his decision.
Here’s a little something for all us good and decent folk in the neighborhood who are forced to deal with the one proverbial ”turd in the punchbowl.”
Is it possible that millions of people are ignorantly sacrificing their health in exchange for the convenience of microwave ovens? Why did the Soviet Union ban the use of microwave ovens in 1976? Who invented microwave ovens, and why? The answers to these questions may shock you into throwing your microwave oven in the trash.
One short-term study found significant and disturbing changes in the blood of individuals consuming microwaved milk and vegetables. Eight volunteers ate various combinations of the same foods cooked different ways. All foods that were processed through the microwave ovens caused changes in the blood of the volunteers. Hemoglobin levels decreased and over all white cell levels and cholesterol levels increased. Lymphocytes decreased.
In Dr. Lita Lee’s book, Health Effects of Microwave Radiation - Microwave Ovens, and in the March and September 1991 issues of Earthletter, she stated that every microwave oven leaks electro-magnetic radiation, harms food, and converts substances cooked in it to dangerous organ-toxic and carcinogenic products. Further research summarized in this article reveal that microwave ovens are far more harmful than previously imagined.
From the conclusions of Swiss, Russian and German scientific clinical studies, we can no longer ignore the microwave oven sitting in our kitchens. Based on this research, we will conclude this article with the following:
Continually eating food processed from a microwave oven causes long term - permanent - brain damage by “shorting out” electrical impulses in the brain [de-polarizing or de-magnetizing the brain tissue].
The human body cannot metabolize [break down] the unknown by-products created in microwaved food.
Male and female hormone production is shut down and/or altered by continually eating microwaved foods.
The effects of microwaved food by-products are residual [long term, permanent] within the human body.
Minerals, vitamins, and nutrients of all microwaved food is reduced or altered so that the human body gets little or no benefit, or the human body absorbs altered compounds that cannot be broken down.
The minerals in vegetables are altered into cancerous free radicals when cooked in microwave ovens.
Microwaved foods cause stomach and intestinal cancerous growths [tumors]. This may explain the rapidly increased rate of colon cancer in America.
The prolonged eating of microwaved foods causes cancerous cells to increase in human blood.
Continual ingestion of microwaved food causes immune system deficiencies through lymph gland and blood serum alterations.
Eating microwaved food causes loss of memory, concentration, emotional instability, and a decrease of intelligence.
This photo shoot was an unbelievable ab workout. I’m spent. Try holding your legs out about 6-10 inches above the ground off and on for an hour—sheesh I was shakin’ there at the end. Worked up quite a sweat too and the 10,000 degree lamp hovering a couple feet away wasn’t helping me any.
Thank God for that remote, I’d never have had the patience to run back and forth to get into this dopey position using the timer.
Once again, thanks goes to bluberd for the 50mm loaner lens.
You can find other bits here for this month’s self-portrait challenge.
I’ll start by saying I’m not depressed but I am bogged down with a horrible cliché of a question. What’s it all for?
I have fallen prey to this answerless question my whole life. Even as a little kid the point of life eluded me. In life you experience highs and lows. Love, sadness, joy, boredom, elation, sorrow, anger, depression—so what. You make friends, you lose friends. You laugh, you cry. You succeed, you fail. You see beautiful things and some wretched ugliness. Big deal. You don’t believe you’ll ever die then one day you start to worry that something awful will happen to you.
What am I doing and why? I have no idea.
I often march to the beat of my own drum, and I don’t even know what that is half the time, I just know I don’t want to march to the beat of whatever drum the masses are marching to, that would make life even more dull and pointless.
So I endeavor to keep myself entertained as that would seem to be the only point that I can come up with.
I was torn between this song and “What’s it All About, Alfie”, cheesy songs for a cheesy topic.
Perhaps this has bubbled to the top today because I’m exhausted from the weekend. Or perhaps because I spend way too much time thinking about nothingness and my life. Eh, who cares.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — A commercial fishing boat hauled in what may have been one of the oldest creatures in Alaska — a giant rockfish estimated to be about a century old.
The 44-inch, 60-pound female shortraker rockfish was caught last month by the catcher-processor Kodiak Enterprise as it trawled for pollock 2,100 feet below the surface, south of the Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea.
NOAA rep. holds a 38-inch ruler
over the giant shortraker rockfish.
They estimate the rockfish was 90 to 115 years old.
Well all I can say is thank God they killed it! You sure wouldn’t want something that managed to live for an entire century to keep on living. Some estimates say it could have lived to be 157, and that just can’t be allowed to happen.
I say lets round up all the rare centenarians we can find and snuff them all out so we can dissect them to see what they ate for lunch too. After all, they’ve lived long enough, there’s nothing left for them to do.
I’ve always been good at things you can do with your voice. When I was a kid I spent an inordinate amount of time in my room alone in front of my mirror practicing sound effects, accents and impressions. I would take my little tape recorder and record my favorite TV characters then play them back and repeat after them over and over until I felt I had the impression perfected.
My favorite was probably Rosanne Rosanna Danna. I was not allowed to stay up late enough to watch Saturday Night Live at that time but I’d sneak into my mother’s sewing room where she kept a little black and white TV, poised on the edge of my seat with my microphone waiting for anything Gilda Radner was going to do.
I probably recorded every skit that featured Gilda and began to memorize anything Lisa Lubner or Rosanne Rosanna Danna said. I could repeat it all verbatim and in character. This became a very popular party trick once I was in high school and I was happy to have something to entertain a crowd with. Sadly, all those memorized lines have vanished from my brain. One day they were there and the next they were gone. At least I can still imitate the sound of a pigeon taking off. While I realize that this ability is certainly something worth bragging about, this post is not about my great talents, but rather my horrible shortcomings.
It has to do with something vocal that I was never able to perfect on a consistent basis—yodeling. Given my (useless) talent I should by all means be able to yodel on command, but I cannot and this makes me quite frustrated. I am totally impressed by yodelers and have always wanted to add it to my repertoire. No dice so far, but it’s not over yet, there’s still time to fulfill my dream. I will one day conquer this yodeling monster that has taunted me for so many years.
I rely on the wise words of my childhood governess Maria. When she spoke of my desire to yodel she said it is ”a dream that will need all the love you can give, everyday of your life, for as long as you live”…
Climb ev’ry mountain
Ford ev’ry stream
Follow ev’ry rainbow
‘Till you find your dream
For all you other fans of the yodel, here’s the “Yodeling Queen,” Janet McBride.
Damn she’s good! I believe Janet taught LeAnn Rimes how to yodel, I wonder if she does workshops? That would be so cool.
Continuing on with this month’s Self-Portrait Challenge theme of “bits,” I thought I’d give my Gumby fingers a little exercise for this one.
Most of the time the fact that my fingers do this doesn’t bother me at all but it makes writing very tiresome and sometimes painful. They’d frequently just go numb. Back in the days before computers were commonplace, when you wrote all your homework and term papers by hand, I’d often have to tape the joints to prevent them from bending like this.
It also added a little extra challenge to playing the various instruments I was learning at the time. These fingers sort of act like trick knees, one minute they’re fine and then woops, they snap. My piano teacher was always so frustrated with my tremendously poor hand position. I would try to explain to her that I couldn’t keep my fingers in the proper form but I guess she was one of those smacked asses who don’t listen to a word children have to say.
We all knew I was no Vladimir Horowitz anyway, so when I eventually gave up out of frustration, nobody tried to stop me. I played three other instruments so my parents were probably happy to save a couple bucks on the piano lessons.
Thanks to bluberd for loaning me the 50mm, you can’t beat that f/1.8.
Spent Saturday night up in the studio fighting for our right to party and shooting photos with bluberd, the associate and of course Pig n Jo.
The studio is a particularly odd space with what I perceive as having some sort of magical powers. No matter how messy it is, the energy is always good up there.
Once things start rolling you suddenly feel like you’re 16 and time flies by without you noticing. It was 3:30 am before I knew it and then it’s such a drag to have to go to bed (for me anyway, I can’t speak for bluberd). I’m the type of person who just never stops once I get going.
I think the associate had to throw in the towel around 1:30 or 2:00, I can’t exactly remember, but she held up pretty well. I don’t actually know who could stick it out with us for an entire evening.
(doesn’t resemble you much does it)
Once our subject matter went to bed, we were left to just shoot ourselves which somehow managed to entertain us for a good long time.
I was evidently enraptured with just hearing the click of the camera and failed to pay attention to the settings for many shots. So I have quite a few of these very dark images.
Sunday was spent recuperating from Saturday, which I’m sure you have already guessed. I suppose I should have gone to bed by now so that I can catch up on some sleep, but I hate doing things I’m supposed to do because I’m a loner, Dottie. A rebel.
While out hiking the other day, I spotted this lovely lady taking a brisk stroll through the forest. She stood out from the dull browns and greys of the trees so nicely that I just couldn’t resist taking a couple shots.
I tried to sneak the pictures so as not to disturb her while she was hunting down some eye of newt, but alas, she suddenly sensed my presence and turned to look right at me just as I was about to shoot.
“Curses!” I said, not because someone caught me spying on them, but because I’m afraid of curses and this is just the kind of person who could put one on me. See that walking stick she has there, well my friends don’t be fooled. That is a cleverly disguised broomstick (see the large version for proof) and I saw through her lame charade immediately, but it was too late.
The sky began to darken and the wind picked up speed practically blinding me in a cloud of swirling leaves and dirt. Before she could summon the furies, I spotted a small grey field mouse scratching at my shoe and motioning for me to follow him. I rubbed my eyes in disbelief and decided to go along with him because it could possibly make for a really good blog post.
We ran and ran through a secret path in the woods full of all sorts of beautiful creatures, soft mossy rocks and trees that towered over us like giants. The sky began to lighten and the sunlight was making its way through the clouds.
He was very hard to follow and I was really starting to wonder where he was taking me when I suddenly stopped and realized that he was just a regular old mouse and that perhaps it wasn’t a good idea to take my dog’s Xanax and wash it down with a bottle of Chianti after all.
I feel it is only fair that I provide you with proof that I may be able to challenge your claim to the thrown. While your video cheese is absolutely brilliant, this song I have here may have actually managed to bypass the cheese genre altogether and run straight into the loving arms of the queerbate category.
For those of you who are visually based, you may prefer the uber cheesy and super queer video version:
Or, something more peppy for you partiers - the remix version. This took me awhile to hunt down, but when I like a song I try to find any other versions of it that exist:
Perhaps we should have one day a week that we decide is “cheese day” so that we can admire each other’s great/appalling taste in music and get the recognition that we deserve!
