Coffee Crisis

I read a story this morning about how a girl overdosed on caffeine . She'd had 14 double shots of espresso within four hours. Initially I was concerned, because most of my energy is caffeinated, but I usually go for two double shots on my way to work. Sometimes that makes me jittery, I'd never make it to 14.

But don't think I'm giving up on my Starbucks. Near the end of the article it states that coffee can protect against Parkinson's and simply going daft. Besides...it tastes good.

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In other odd news, we did a story on a new school principal. His name is Richard Cory. When I laughed about it at work my boss looked confused, so for the equally uncultured here is the poem you should have read in Lit. class :

Richard Cory
by Edwin Arlington Robinson
Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked,
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich--yes, richer than a king--
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.

.

You may also have heard the Simon & Garfunkel rendition. It's very catchy, but I don't really understand why they go on singing about how they wish they were Richard Cory after they've sung the bit about how Richard Cory killed himself. Oh well, A Poem On The Underground Wall doesn't make sense to me either.

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One last bit of oddness, I was driving home last night and saw an Amish buggy, that had been fitted with captain chairs/bucket seats. Buy a car!

My Love Affair with Monday

This morning I had about four shots of espresso. Normally that just keeps me from nodding off at my desk, but I must have been better rested than I thought because today I cannot sit still, which is probably why I have so many random thoughts running through my head this morning.

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First of all, I love Mondays. On Monday the week is new. I have’t screwed anything up yet. I haven’t snapped at my coworkers, yet. I have yet to forget my lunch every single day and I have not been led astray by the candy dish. Yet. I still believe that this week I will give work my best shot. Because it’s Monday it is so much harder to be apathetic, even when I felt that way all last week, except for Monday. On Monday, too, all my work goes quickly. I don’t care much for Tuesday, the novelty of my job has definitely worn off, but Monday is great. I just think you should know.

Also, I think I'm developing a phobia of going to the hair dresser. See, growing up I didn't cut my hair much and when I did my mom cut it straight across, no layers. This is fine when you wear your hair in pigtails or braids every single day, but you can see how that to change when I got older. That was fine too, my hairstylist loved me and I could walk in and say, "I don't know what I want, it should be this length, make it pretty."
In college I cut my hair very short, much to the approval of almost everyone I'd ever met and a few people I didn't even know (it's true) and the dismay of my boyfriend-at-the-time who really likes long hair (but seriously it didn't look good). That was easy because of Lucky Magazine's hair guide...but since then styles have changed and Lucky has yet to put out anything of equal or greater value.
The first stylist I tried here in Indiana cut my hair very nicely...oh a couple of times, but I've since discovered that though I bring the same picture with me each time, the original cut is never recreated.
I got tired of ineffectually attempting to straighten my hair, which hovers indistinctly between being straight and wavy, so I told my latest hairstylist I just wanted to wash the style and go. She completely misread that as, "Please scrunch my hair and try to sell me expensive hair care products, punctuate with uncomfortable small talk."

Which leads me to rant number three. I hate telling people I graduated from Grace. Invariably it leads them to believe that then is an appropriate time to tell me that they think 1) Grace is the devil, 2) All Gracies are pricks, 3) They would have never survived there because they are much too cool for that. Thank-you. I am glad to know of your disdain. I'll cherish it always.

For the record, I liked being at Grace. I liked a great majority of the people (and I don't even like people). I liked my classes. I liked chapel. I barely noticed the rules, much less felt compelled to break any of them.

If that makes me a prick, so be it, but at least I didn't go just because it was easy. At least I didn't go because mummy and daddikins threatened to revoke my car and pocket money if I didn't do it. At least I didn't spend the entire time whining that I was expected to meet a standard I agreed to meet. I'm sorry I'm not bloody cool enough, just cut my hair so I can pay the exorbitant bill.

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Moving on to actual events, this morning I was driving to work and I noticed something odd on the side of the road. It turned out to be a lady learning inside some sort of small covered cart (about knee high). The lady turned out to be Rosie Swale of Pope Wales. She’s walking around the world for cancer. She has this great accent and she never stops talking. It’s times like that I wish I had a pocket recorder. We met her because she met Delilah who thought that we might know of a harness shop where she could get a new harness made. None of the harness shops around here make people harnesses, but she’s out buying the parts right now and then some guy is going to sew them together for her. Meanwhile, her cart, Charlie, is parked outside our offices and people have been coming buy to take pictures (a local paper did a story on her).
Rosie’s been through Eastern Europe, Russia, Siberia, Alaska, Canada, and the upper plain states of the U,S.
You can check out her site at http://www.rosiesaroundtheworld.co.uk/.

Edit: She came back and I got some more pictures of her taking off. It was a lot of fun. I got to run up the highway and take pictures of her coming down the road. My job is really odd sometimes, but quirkiness can be a good thing.

So comforting...

Mon Jul 2, 6:48 PM ETPORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - A fire ravaged a marketplace in Haiti's capital,prompting a protest march Monday by hundreds of street vendors who accusedthe city government of setting the blaze to remove them from the area.The fire began Sunday night near Port-Au-Prince's cathedral, destroyingmerchandise including fruit, radios and televisions."We knew the mayor wanted to clean up this area and move the marketplace,but they never told us what day we should move," vendor Julio Alexis said.City officials did not immediately return calls for comment or make a publicstatement. Haitian police firing shots in the air broke up the demonstrationSome vendors said their sales at the market were their only source of income "Nothing remains," said TV repairman Philippe Audosit.People scrounged through the market's ruins Monday for aluminum and zincroofs, under the watch of police and U.N. soldiers.More than 80 percent of the 8.7 million residents live in poverty in Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere

Yup. That's where my little brother is. Very good.

American Giving

America raises the bar for gift giving in amount and the percentage of income that they gave to charity. Individual donations made up most of the total $300 billion given and religious organizations were most likely to be on the recieving end of that money.

Art & Science...together at last

There's a bit in the New York Times about the Creation Museum that's opening in KY.
To summarize the writer (this in the "arts" sections - because it's a museum?) thinks the displays look fabulous but makes no attempt to hide his dismay at people believing in science and the Bible.

One of my favorite lines is, "Evolution gets its continual comeuppance, while biblical revelations are treated as gospel." Silly people, why would anyone treat the bible like the gospel?

What bothers me is that the article, while obviously praising modern science, fails to recognize where it comes from. Here science is treated as the invention of secular humanists, but Ptolemy (who is here compared with creationists) was a Hellenist, and Copernicus the Christian. A good many famous scientists were Christians. They believed that God created things with an order and that therefore we could discover that order and learn how things work.
If they had believed we came about randomly perhaps they would not have bothered (because why should randomness have an order?).


"But given the museum’s unwavering insistence on belief in the literal truth of biblical accounts, it is strange that so much energy is put into demonstrating their scientific coherence with discussions of erosion or interstellar space."

I'm not sure I understand why Mr. Rothstein finds it strange, but I'm forced to assume that he is one of the many who believe that people have faith, not because something has shown itself to be trustworthy (over used ex. - you have faith the chair will hold you, because it always has) but because they dislike rational conversation (I do believe in fairies! I do! I do!)

If you're in doubt, yes, I believe in creationism. And it bugs the snot out of me that people think that this means I can't honestly love science, which I do.

And, I think that if a person is writing for the art section of the Times, they have every right to editorialize, but they should probably stick to the displays - which are a-mazing (thank-you Patrick Marsh!).

Use your imagination

From the New York Post

"May 8, 2007 -- Lisa King Fithian is a walking billboard against shoplifting as she parades in front of a Wal-Mart in Attalla, Ala. - her penalty for stealing. A judge ordered her and another shoplifter to stand outside the store wearing the sign for four hours for two successive Saturdays to avoid serving 60 days in jail."

A-mazing.

Presumably the shoplifters had a choice in this matter, but I can't help wondering if public humiliation is more effective than jail time.

Of course, it wouldn't work if they'd stolen from a smaller business or from a charitable organization, they'd probably get stuff thrown at them.

And if it were something like drug dealing, they'd probably just get more business.

black socks are never dirty

The laundromat is a weird place. There always seem to be a lot of guys at the laundromat I go to. I don’t understand why a bunch of men would want to hang out at the laundromat, but they’re always there, laughing and yelling in spanish, playing video games, watching tv, I’ve never seen any of them with actual laundry.

When I walked in a few days ago everyone was watching tv and it was pretty quiet because it was more news about the Virginia tech shootings. It was really tense, even though we’re several states away it’s hit people pretty hard. It was like the week after 9/11 only after 9/11 we all joked around about the news casters mustache and no one really felt like that in the laundromat.

When the news switched to some other story most went back to to their games or magazines, but the old man who was running the laundromat that night started talking about how Islamic people are trained from the time they’re children to be killers and how they go on living among us and one day something sets them off and they shoot everyone in sight. "But you don’t hear about that on our news!" he complained to the girl next to me, who was busy filling the room with smoke. The girl made eye contact and that was enough to set him off some more about how we weren’t being protected from "those Islamic people" as he pointed at the screen where Cho Seung-Hui’s picture was flashing across the screen again.
I wanted to scream, "He’s just some random Chinese guy! He is not islamic or part of the axcis of evil or on a jihad!" But I’m guessing that the old guy in his American flag baseball cap doesn’t distringuish that there are nationalities besides "white" and "dark".

Cafeterias are so yesterday

A new trend in prepackaged food is healthy lunches for kids. They are made by small companies and delivered to schools for prices around $4.50 - $7.50. Lunches include fresh fruit and veggies and some type of main course (like an organic pb&j or pizza).

Apparently parents are loving the service because most schools don't even offer fresh fruit or veggies at lunch time. But for five bucks wouldn't it be cheaper to buy the fruit and organic veggies and slap together a sandwich yourself? If you have the money to send out for these lunches (which can be custom ordere online), you probably live near a grocery that sells everything to make them.

But then again, it does come in really cute packaging.

gr8

If New Jersey wasn't scary enough, an insurance survey found that 1 in 5 drivers are texting while behind the wheel.

A new law wants to ban it in New Jersey. Some critics want to know why they're not banning other distractions, like eating, and the politicians said it would never pass if they did that.

Aw, they do care about our needs.

Peculiar...

Street church? I'm sort of suprised that the Times is even writing about this. It suprises me too that the homeless people would rather attend this outdoor service than go inside where it's warm.