Bad Blogger

Sorry for taking so long to get around to this. I remember carrying an article which I remember tearing out of Time Magazine about an alleged (although neither I nor the Time Magazine writer knew this at the time) support group called "DABA Girls", or "Dating A Banker Anonymous". Some highlights of the article:

The economic crisis came home to 27-year-old Megan Petrus early last year when her boyfriend of eight months, a derivatives trader for a major bank, proved to be more concerned about helping a laid-off colleague than comforting Ms. Petrus after her father had a heart attack.

For Christine Cameron, the recession became real when the financial analyst she had been dating for about a year would get drunk and disappear while they were out together, then accuse her the next day of being the one who had absconded.

Dawn Spinner Davis, 26, a beauty writer, said the downward-trending graphs began to make sense when the man she married on Nov. 1, a 28-year-old private wealth manager, stopped playing golf, once his passion. “One of his best friends told me that my job is now to keep him calm and keep him from dying at the age of 35,” Ms. Davis said. “It’s not what I signed up for.”

Read more...

In this July 1, 2003 file photo, Callie Rogers from Cockermouth [sic] in Cumbria is seen after she won £1.9 million in the U.K.'s National Lottery. Callie Rogers, now 22, told the News of the World that she has just £20,000 left of the jackpot she won six years ago. Most of the £250,000 she had wasted on cocaine - 'a nasty evil drug' - had been for an ex who was addicted to it, she said.














That's about $31,000 more than I have in my account

Callie Rogers was just 16 when she won a whopping $3 million in the lottery. Six years later, she reports that she blew untold sums on drugs, partying, exotic cars, and breast implants. A staggering $730,000 went to designer clothes alone, Ms. Rogers explains in an article from AOL. Says Rogers: "I honestly wish I'd never won the lottery money — and knowing what I know now I should have just given it all back to them." She's currently left with around $32,000.

Environmentally Friendly Bombs Planned

New explosives could be more powerful and safer to handle than TNT and other conventional explosives and would also be more environmentally friendly.

TNT, RDX and other explosives commonly used in military and industrial applications often generate toxic gases upon detonation that pollute the environment. Moreover, the explosives themselves are toxic and can find their way into the environment due to incomplete detonation and as unexploded ordnance. They are also extremely dangerous to handle, as they are highly sensitive to physical shock, such as hard impacts and electric sparks.

To make safer, more environmentally friendly explosives, scientists in Germany turned to a recently explored class of materials called tetrazoles. These derive most of their explosive energy from nitrogen instead of carbon as TNT and others do.

MORE Misplaced Priorities...

'God, deliver us from these high gas prices'

Pray-in at Chevron Station, hoping for a miracle

Rocky Twyman has a radical solution for surging gasoline prices: prayer. Twyman - a community organizer, church choir director and public relations consultant from the Washington, D.C., suburbs - staged a pray-in at a San Francisco Chevron station on Friday, asking God for cheaper gas. He did the same thing in the nation's Capitol on Wednesday, with volunteers from a soup kitchen joining in. Today he will lead members of an Oakland church in prayer. Yes, it's come to that. "God is the only one we can turn to at this point," said Twyman, 59. "Our leaders don't seem to be able to do anything about it. The prices keep soaring and soaring."

the rest of the story... I think Jesus was pretty unequivocal on this point. When asked his position on taxation, he was incredulous: Asking for a coin, he held it up to his questioners and asked, "Whose likeness is on this coin?" When they answered Caesar, he said, "Then render unto Caesar what is Caesars, and render unto the Lord [the Spirit] that which belongs to the Lord [Sprit]." The price of gas is a mess people have gotten themselves into, and to beg for Deus ex Machina at this point is purely childish.

Jerusalem on the Jukebox

Song lyrics | Jerusalem On The Jukebox lyrics

WASHINGTON, DC—With national stupid-shit consumption at an all-time high and federal shit projections indicating sharply rising levels of stupidity over the next decade and a half, a small but vocal group of lobbyists has revived an old debate on Capitol Hill, calling for strict, federally mandated limits on incredibly stupid shit.

Though every previous congressional effort to curb incredibly stupid shit has met with failure, the sheer size of the current U.S. shit industry, combined with the unmitigated stupidity of most of the shit it produces, has once again raised the question: Should the U.S. impose limits on incredibly stupid shit?

"The manufacture, marketing and distribution of stupid, worthless shit is an unfortunate but unavoidable reality of any modern industrialized nation. Nonetheless, the problem has gotten way out of hand here in America," said C. Brian Mattson, a member of the Commerce Department's Advisory Board On Stupid, Really Stupid & Incredibly Stupid Shit, testifying before Congress Monday. "The time has come to face facts: Without some sort of cap on America's unchecked stupid-shit production, we face a crisis of diminished intelligence within the national discourse that threatens to bury our society under a tidal wave of crap the likes of which the world has never seen."

Should The U.S. Impose Limits On Incredibly Stupid Shit?

Yet the prospect of federally legislated shit-stupidity limits remains controversial, raising many questions: In a free society, do citizens have a constitutional right to be as stupid as they wish? How stupid is too stupid? What about the enormous profits generated by incredibly stupid shit? And are limits even realistic given the ever-growing consumer demand for stupider and stupider shit?

"Look at this ridiculous piece of unadulterated plastic junk," said Bergeron, spokesman for Citizens for Federal Shit Limits, randomly picking up an object from the shelves of a Bay Area Spencer Gifts, where the group staged a press conference and protest. "Just look at it! A magnetized Monica Lewinsky face that says, 'Interns Suck'? What kind of a human being would buy this? And why does it need to glow in the dark? I ask you, does that make sense? Where does it all end? Has the entire planet gone insane?"

Despite the outcry from the CFSL and other groups, many experts contend that any effort to pass shit-limiting legislation is doomed to fail. The U.S., they say, has become so dependent on incredibly stupid shit that sustained, long-term economic growth cannot be ensured without the steady influx of still-stupider shit.

The FULL STORY...