Saturday, August 25, 2012

A New Kind of Lie Detector


August 22, 2012

According to Missouri Rep. Todd Akin, a woman who is raped would probably not need an abortion, because (as he understands it) the trauma causes her body to prevent conception.

If this were true, it could add a whole new dimension to rape trials.

I can see the court case now: “No, the sex was not consensual, and I can prove it. I’m not pregnant!”



Saturday, August 18, 2012

Not a Bestseller


August 18, 2012

So, have you read the new book about the bored housewife living in a glass house?

It’s called Fifty Shades to Clean.



(It’s very likely that somebody else has made up a similar joke. But I haven’t heard it.)





Thursday, August 16, 2012

More Regional Differences


August 16, 2012

On Wednesday, August 22, there will be an elk-calling seminar at a Meridian sporting goods store. Let me know if you’re interested.

Another plea, this time from a man who has just moved from Anchorage, to keep your dog poop out of campground sites. He advocated more education. I know I’ve doubted the idea of education actually convincing terminally clueless people to remove their dog poop, but he says that in Anchorage, “with a lot of effort, including public education, signs and poop scoop bags, it got much better.” I stand corrected.

Finally: I won’t go into the entire discussion of do's and don'ts, but apparently in Idaho it’s now OK to take home road kill. Oh, goody.


Girl Talk


August 16, 2012

Does anybody else get tired of seeing, in movies and on TV, the tough coach or drill sergeant or the show-off guy in a group saying, “Hello, Ladies” as a way to imply that the guys are weak?

I’m pretty sure I saw an article several years ago (which I can’t find), that said a professional football team tried to keep up with a women’s synchronized swim team, and folded in exhaustion.

In any case, it’s an outdated concept. Women have shown that they are plenty tough. Maybe not beefy or brawny, but tough? Oh, yeah!

So what I’d like to see on TV or in the movies is a woman addressing her team of other women, saying, “Hello, boys.”

Fair is fair, after all.


Tuesday, August 14, 2012

A Shrewd Move


August 14, 2012


To make money, airlines decided to charge $25 or more for checked luggage.

To save money, passengers decided to cram as much luggage as possible into the overhead bins. So it takes forever for people to get on and off the planes.

Furthermore, the airplanes don’t have enough room for all the carry-on bags. So they ask people to gate-check the bags—for free—to the final destination.

(I don’t know why more people don’t do it. I always do, because I have connecting flights, and hate dragging luggage through the airport and into the bathrooms, or finding room for it at the food court, when I’m not dragging it at top speed to make a connecting flight on a tight schedule. However.)

Three years ago, they asked nicely, but nobody was doing it. I said, “Why don’t you offer to let the people who don’t tie up traffic by using the overhead bins off the plane first?”

The gate attendants just smiled and said, “Oh, we can’t do that.”

Really? You can’t say, “Passengers with items in the overhead bins, please remain seated while those who do not need to get items from the overhead bins come to the front of the plane to disembark.” You’re not bashful about anything else!

Flash forward three years. Now airlines are not offering incentives. They’re saying, “You can volunteer to check your bags at the gate, or we’ll do it for you.” So the first leg of my flight was delayed while the attendants gate-checked—for free!—lots and lots of bags. The bags that the airlines say cost $25 each to handle.

Watching the chaos and frustration suffered by both passengers and attendants, I murmured in one gate attendant’s ear, “Next contract negotiation—$5 baggage fees.”

She murmured back, “I know.”



Please forward this one to as many people as you can. If I'm lucky, it will convince the airlines to let us do-gooders off the plane first.

December 6, 2020

I read today that airlines are taking some common-sense measures to reduce the risk of infection during the pandemic. One of the changes is to board the planes starting with the back seats, to limit exposure from people continually passing the front-end passengers who are already seated.

I hereby renew my plea to the airlines to let people with NO carry-on luggage to deplane first, to limit the amount of standing in the aisles, waiting for people to get their luggage out of the overhead bins.



Monday, August 6, 2012

Hollywood, Here I Come

August 6, 2012

While I was was waiting for the final scene from "The Avengers" (which, incidentally, I thought was very funny, though I was in the minority in my group) I saw people who were credited as "Creature."

Wouldn't that be a cool way to break into the movies? No pressure, you just have to be a "Creature."

Maybe I'll give it a try.



Home Run

August 6, 2012

I have got to stop buying new houses to live in! Next time, I'm going to buy an old farmhouse, so that I can find an old painting worth $150 million, like the lady in Scotland who just found a possible DaVinci in her attic.