Strongly Worded Letter

What The Hell Is A Cake Wreck?

Thank you to blog reader Maria who tipped me off to a blog called Cake Wrecks. It is apparently the site you have been waiting for to read about "when professional cakes go horribly, hilariously wrong."

Cake disasters are chronicled in many categories, like Harsh Reality, Sweet Messenger:

The next category is Why Are The Children Screaming? with the additional commentary of " I don't get it - we just brought out the cakes, and poof! Mass hysteria!"

The Celebrity Wrecks entry includes Hulk & Linda Hogan being so "greatful" for their son Nick, the one who is in jail for killing that dude.

Little Bindi Irwin had a picture of her dead father, the Crocodile Hunter, to spend her tenth birthday with.

And Michael Jackson was a cake wreck before he was a train wreck. Here's the cake for his sixteenth birthday party.

And I think my favorite, captioned with I Believe The Children Are The Future, is Li'l Derrick's cake for his 4th birthday. Nothing says being four like Grand Theft Auto and gangstas with guns.

Enjoy the rest of the blog, here!

The Naked City (NSFW, Sort Of)

I have been reading through the excellent Lonely Planet travel book on Finland this week in preparation for my trip Friday. Mostly, I will be winging it out on the highway but it will be nice to know something about the nearby towns to help me decide which road to take sometimes.

The internets have been helpful too and I came across an interesting page that only briefly mentions Helsinki. It is a picture page of some of the curious public art photos of Spencer Tunick.

I didn't know his name but have certainly heard about the man who has been traveling the world for more than twenty years taking pictures of dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of nude people.

Here are just a few of them, starting with Santiago, Chile.

Now London, England, not that you can tell.

Melbourne, Australia.

And Central Park, New York City, USA.

I like boobies as much as the next guy - more, if the next guy is Ryan Seacrest -  but these photos do not particularly speak to me at all. They are sort of interesting I guess but not really seem to be more effort than they are worth.

Here is the link to see more and some final thoughts from Mr. Tunick.

""A body is a living entity. It represents life, freedom, sensuality, and it is a mechanism to carry out our thoughts. A body is always beautiful to me. It depends on the individual work and what I do with it and what kind of idea lies behind it - if age matters or not. But in my group works, the only difference is how far people can go if it rains, snows etc.”

Death May Not Be Proud But It Is Honest

I often enjoy reading the newspaper obituaries - I've mentioned that before - and here's why.

People are interesting. Almost all of them. But since I'll never meet most people, obituaries are a way to hear the highlights without spending any time with the actual people. Because people are boring too.

Here's one I missed in the Vallejo Times-Herald, whatever that is, but thanks to blog reader Joe I got a second chance.

"Dolores Aguilar, born in 1929 in New Mexico, left us on Aug. 7, 2008. Dolores had no hobbies, made no contribution to society and rarely shared a kind word or deed in her life. I speak for the majority of her family when I say her presence will not be missed by many, very few tears will be shed and there will be no lamenting over her passing.

"Her family will remember Dolores and amongst ourselves we will remember her in our own way, which were mostly sad and troubling times throughout the years. We may have some fond memories of her and perhaps we will think of those times, too. But I truly believe at the end of the day all of us will really only miss what we never had, a good and kind mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. I hope she is finally at peace with herself. As for the rest of us left behind, I hope this is the beginning of a time of healing and learning to be a family again.

"There will be no service, no prayers and no closure for the family she spent a lifetime tearing apart. We cannot come together in the end to see to it that her grandchildren and great-grandchildren can say their goodbyes. So I say here for all of us, goodbye Mom."

Finally! Someone telling it like it is! I'm so over all the obits I read where every single person was a beloved family member and flawless citizen of the world who faced every minute of his final illness with grace and dignity. Someone out there has to have been a real son-of-a-bitch who lived a crappy life and then whined and complained every minute from the time he got sick so that the family was glad he finally croaked. Where are those stories? 

There are an awful lot of folks like Dolores who contributed nothing and will not be missed and it is refreshing to read about.

To enjoy the complete story of how this unusual obituary came to be published last week, click here.

 

  

A Large Question

Hey Bean,

   I have something for you to hop up on your soap box about:  Target drink sizes.  I was at Target this weekend and went to the in store food service counter and ordered a soda,

The Target employee said:  "Small or medium?"

I looked at him funny I guess because he repeated:  "Do you want a small or medium?" 

I said:  "Don't you mean small or large?"  

He said: "No, small or medium"

I said: "Oh so you are out of large cups?

He said:  "No, we don't have large, just SMALL OR MEDIUM!!!!!" 

Needless to say, I did not try to educate him on the concept of both large and small being present in order for medium to exist, but I would LOVE if you took this up as one of your issues! 

Thanks Bean!

No, thanks to you, Colleen, for your excellent letter. I have fought the same battle myself and always lost. It makes no logical sense whatsoever.

If the reason they don't want to call a medium a large is because they don't want consumers to think it is as big as large drinks are at similar stores then they could rename theirs bigger and smaller. But I agree with you that small and medium needs a base line to be meaningful. Small or medium compared to what?

This reminds me so much of a conversation I had recently with a co-worker who has a "hot chick" scale with no 10. I say his 7s and 8s are not really 7s and 8s unless those numbers represent a relationship to a 1 -10 scale. In other words, if, say, Megan Fox is "only" a 9 but you have no 10s then Megan Fox has to be a 10 on your scale.

I welcome other readers to weigh in on any aspect of either point.

Fool Me Once.....

Here are the first four paragraphs of a story of great interest to me I found this week on AdWeek.com:

The company that manufactures Airborne, described as a dietary supplement whose vitamins and minerals help support the immune system, has settled its case with the Federal Trade Commission over the advertising and labeling of its products.

According to the FTC, Airborne, Bonita Springs, Fla., "Has agreed to pay up to $30 million to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it did not have adequate evidence to support its advertising claims in which its effervescent tablet was marketed as a cold prevention and treatment remedy."

Airborne has denied wrongdoing or illegal conduct, but reached an agreement with the FTC and agreed to settle a class action lawsuit "to avoid continued expense and distraction from management of the business," according to a statement released by the company.

The FTC's complaint stated that there was "no competent and reliable scientific evidence to support the claims made by the [company] that Airborne tablets can prevent or reduce the risk of colds, sickness, or infection; protect against or help fight germs; reduce the severity or duration of a cold; and protect against colds, sickness, or infection in crowded places such as airplanes, offices or schools."

Me again. Now I have a tough decision to make. Do I....

A) Convince myself that Airborne works as advertised but they got busted by the Feds because the company didn't have the proper scientific research to prove their claims?

or B) Accept that the product doesn't work and that millions of us who swear by it, and have much anecdotal evidence to support our strong faith in its effectiveness, are just victims of a placebo effect?

Can it really be all in my head? Here's all I know. Before Airborne: scratchy sore throat every time I traveled. After Airborne: healthiest man getting off the plane. Am i a sucker?

Black People Are Funny

Our African- American friends and families can be - shall we say - "creative" when it comes to naming their chilluns.

Here are some real life names of actual people who actually live on Earth right now:

Timnesia. Keleesha. Qwiyya. Naheim. Emani. Omani. Amani. Davoni. Tyasia. Queeta. Shoneeta. Natayah. Demyah. Diavon. Iverllizz. Qymir. Aniyah. And baby girl Cazmere.

Those are all great but my favorites are the more common names that are tweaked to make the baby seem more unique or something. My black friend Uniqua told me that. Take a "boring" name like Jasmine but spell it Jazmeen. Why be Michael when you can be Mychel?

That brings me to your chance to win something in our first ever StronglyWordedLetter.com contest!!

Thursday I went to the movies and the pretty young sista who sold me my ticket should have been named Brianna. But she wasn't. Her parent(s) put an extraordinary amount of thought into how to turn that regular name into something special. Your job: Guess what they came up with. I saw it with my own eyes on her name tag as she took my $8.00 (It was a matinee.)

One guess per person please. First correct answer wins something from the Bean Store, worth ten dollars or less.

Check the comments section below to see what others have guessed before you take a stab at it. I will post there myself once we have a winner or if no one gets it I will reveal the correct spelling here tomorrow. Have fun. Be creative and stay black.

    

I Am Rich

Apple's Steve Jobs (or just God, to many of us) told the Wall Street Journal this week that more than 60 million iPhone applications have been downloaded from the company's website so far in about the one month that they have been available.

At this pace the company stands to bank at least 360 million dollars a year in new revenue from the AppStore. Jobs expects it to be a billion dollar marketplace one day adding, "I've never seen anything like this in my career for software."

Let me back up a step for non-Apple people which, inexplicably is most of you.

You've seen or heard of the iPhone, right? Well, an Apple App is a program you download that lives on your phone's desktop. It's like having a bunch of little internets on your phone working all at the same time.

So you can have, say, the USA Today news stories delivered continuously on your phone, or a permanent Soduku game at your fingertips, or an eBook reader loaded with all seven Harry Potter books if you want.

There are hundreds of applications, some made by Apple but many offered by third parties. Some are free, some are a dollar, some quite a bit more.

So far the most notorious App is one that Apple allowed, then deleted from availability after only eight sales. Here's the curious story, edited from something called www.CRN.com (links within the story are theirs.)

"Earlier this week the I Am Rich application went up, commanding a $999.99 price tag, the most a developer can charge through Apple's App Store. The program essentially loads a screen saver onto the Apple iPhone to remind users and alert others that the user has money to throw around willy-nilly. The 'status symbol,' once downloaded, does nothing but load a ruby red icon on the home screen, with the subtext  I Am Rich. When the user activates the program, a large, glowing red gem appears. That's all.

When I Am Rich first appeared in the App Store on Tuesday, the applications information page on iTunes read like this: "The red icon on your iPhone or iPod Touch always reminds you (and others when you show it to them) that you were rich enough to afford this. It's a work of art with no hidden function at all."

Apple introduced the App Store last month to coincide with the release of the Apple iPhone 3G. The App Store is designed to let iPhone users download third-party applications and lets developers sell the applications they've created.

As of Friday, the I Am Rich application was no longer available in the App Store, much to the chagrin of Armin Heinrich, I Am Rich's developer.

'I have no idea why they did it and am not aware of any violation of the rules to sell software on the App Store,' Heinrich told the Los Angeles Times in an e-mail.

The Times, however, said Apple was too slow to remove the high-dollar application. Eight people —six from the U.S., one from Germany and one from France— shelled out the dough for I Am Rich within the first 24 hours it was available.

Posts on several public forums and Web pages, however, call into question the validity of those purchases. In one instance, a screen shot of an App Store review, which has been circulating the Web, shows that one user mistakenly dropped the $1,000 for I Am Rich thinking it was a joke.

"I saw this app with a few friends and we jokingly clicked 'buy' thinking it was a joke, to see what would happen," the upset I Am Rich owner wrote. "THIS IS NO JOKE. DO NOT BUY THIS APP AND APPLE PLEASE REMOVE THIS FROM THE APP STORE."

The Black Death

I wasn't going to devote a blog post to comedian Bernie Mac's sad and untimely death this weekend but it was not because I did not admire him greatly - I did. But as is so often the case, I know there are many others who will do a far better job of eulogizing him elsewhere. My friend Frank wrote a personal tribute on his blog yesterday including links to some nice write-ups from Mac's hometown newspaper, the Chicago Tribune.

Then came word that Oscar and Grammy-winning soul legend Isaac Hayes had also passed away. Depending on your age you might know him best for his 1960s music career as a songwriter and performer in the Stax Records stable or his 1970s successes as a popular soul singer or his more recent work as the voice of Chef on the popular cartoon South Park.

I'm sure many people will seek out actor Samuel L. Jackson for comment about working with both Mac and Hayes recently on a film named Soul Men, due for release November 14th.

One Of These Is Not Like The Others.....

Some will joke that Jackson should immediately lie down somewhere safe in his house and not leave until the Summer of Death is over. I'm not worried about him and have never bought into the dumb theory that celebrity deaths happen in threes. We just count them that way.

Actor Morgan Freeman already dodged the Grim Reaper this week by surviving a serious auto accident so I guess it wasn't his time. But just in case there is going to be another black celebrity joining the All-Heaven Squad soon, here are my more likely picks.

1. Harry Belafonte
2. Aretha Franklin
3. Mohammad Ali

Strongly Worded Letter #11

Mr. Rod Arquette
Program Director
KIRO Radio
1820 Eastlake Avenue East
Seattle, Wa

Dear Mr. Arquette,

     Please accept my suggestion in the spirit in which it is offered - a sincere effort to improve your on-air broadcast product.
     Many of your news anchors seem to misuse some common terms to describe the weather. Just this morning I heard someone in your newsroom glumly describing the  "partly cloudy" morning but perk up at the forecast that later today would improve to "partly sunny."
     Is he not hearing what he is saying? If it is only "partly cloudy" in the morning then it is actually mostly sunny. And his excitement over the "partly sunny" weather coming later should be tempered by an understanding that he means it will be mostly cloudy.    
     This bad media habit of sometimes saying the opposite of what is meant reminds me of the exasperating expression used to describe two airplanes that fly too closely to each other. The reporter often refers to this near hit as a "near miss."
     Old business: I wrote to your predecessor last year requesting that your news anchors stop referring to "warmer" and "colder" temperatures as well. Since a temperature is a number used to describe the weather, it can only be higher or lower. Weather can certainly be warmer or colder though and that certainly makes more sense. I'm revisiting the point in this letter because the error still occurs on 710 KIRO several times a day.
     Thank you for your time in reading this note and my best wishes to you and your staff,

End Of The World, Momentarily Postponed

There are more than a few people around the world who breathed a sigh of relief yesterday to learn that a scientific experiment planned in Geneva, Switzerland will now actually happen September 10.

The Large Hadron Collider is a new particle accelerator and the world's largest.  So on that date next month scientists will "make the first attempt to circulate a beam of protons around a 17-mile-long super-cooled underground racetrack."

The collider, 14 years and $8 billion in the making, has been built to smash together protons that have been accelerated to energies of 7 trillion electron volts, and examine the remains for clues to the origin of mass and new forces and particles in the universe." (New York Times)

Why were there people who cared so much about this complex experiment? Because of the possibility, admittedly remote, of that this doomsday machine will really be a black hole factory and that a stray one could "devour our planet whole. Black holes possess gravitational fields so strong that nothing can escape them, even light." (LiveScience.com)

So, planetary annihilation has been put on low heat for now but I'm going to be keeping tabs on what happens next, that's for sure.

The experiment hopes to answer many questions about the Big Bang Theory that some believe formed our universe, why there is more matter than anti-matter in space and more.  Just Google "Hadron Collider" and pick your news source.

One fascinating group of Collider photos can be found on Slashdot.com and I want to share a few here. In case you care to see the face of your new Master. 

 

You Do Not Want To See This

I didn't notice it. I didn't care about it. I probably would have never even thought twice about it. But Donna insisted I one day ask a doctor what the hell was going on with my freaky belly button.

Mine is not strictly an outie like I've seen on other people and it is certainly nowhere near an innie. So what is it?

I was in a medical office a couple of weeks ago on an unrelated matter and decided to ask. Dr. WhiteCoat poked his finger in my stomach knot and then licked it. Okay, he didn't lick it. i made that up. But he did very casually remark, "Oh, you have a herniated navel."

I went to the Wiki and here is the gist of a herniated navel:

"Umbilical hernia is a congenital malformation, especially common in infants of African descent, and more frequent in boys. (Ed. note: Check and check.)

A hernia is present at the site of the umbilicus (commonly called a navel, or belly button) in the newborn; although sometimes quite large, these hernias tend to resolve without any treatment by around the age of 5 years. 

Babies are prone to this malformation because of the process during fetal development by which the abdominal organs form outside the abdominal cavity, later returning into it through an opening which will become the umbilicus."

I had to read that twice but I think I got it. Body stuff that formed on the outside was supposed to go through my belly button to live on the inside for the rest of my life. Not all of it made it through. What's left is what I see.

The doctor mentioned I could have a procedure to "fix" it. Look, if I'm not going to have surgery on this face i am certainly not going to have it for my belly button.

I warned you in the very headline of this post that you do not want to see this.  Remember that? Then why are you even thinking of clicking here?  Don't do it!  And if you ignore my advice, the complaint desk is closed. We have lint to manage.

Humorous Today Words Internet

Hollywood Gets Lost In Translation was the headline of a very entertaining piece in Friday's USA Today. It was all about new titles American movies often get when they play in foreign markets.

For instance, Get Smart might not mean anything in countries where the TV show never aired, So in France it was called Max The Menace, in Italy it was Agent Smart: Casino Totale, in Taiwan Is The Spy Capable Or Not? and in China, simply Confused Spy.

There were numerous examples given in the article along with reasons for the translation, ranging from "it just sounds better in that language" to "it provides a hint of the plot to audiences who might be skeptical of what is, to them, a foreign film." Here are some of my favorites mentioned:

Knocked Up became Slightly Pregnant in Roman Catholic Peru and One Night, Big Belly in China.

When Grease was re-released for it 30th anniversary recently it was Vaseline in Argentina.

American Pie transformed into American Virgin Man in China.

Alien played Poland as The Eighth Passenger Of The Nostromo.

Much Ado About Nothing showed throughout Latin America as Lots Of Noise And Not Many Nuts.

The current Dark Night in Mexico became The Knight Of Night.

The classic comedy Airplane! got the way better German title The Unbelievable Trip On A Wacky Airplane.

After I read the article I did a little poking around online and found a few more worth sharing, including this batch of Japanese translations of U.S. films. They sure love to put the word love in their titles.

Something To Talk About was When Lost In Love.

Sleeping With The Enemy became When Love Is Broken.

Final Analysis turned into The Suspicion Named Love.

Out of Africa? The End Of Love And Sorrow.

An Officer And A Gentlemen, The Departure Of Love And Youth.

And, my favorite, As Good As It Gets turned into A Romance Novel Writer.

And a couple more from Mexico before the credits roll:

There Will Be Blood became Bloody Oil.

No Country for Old Men was No Place for the Weak.

Juno grew to Juno: Grow, Run and Stumble.

And the most accurate of all, in Germany Woody Allen's angst classic Annie Hall was renamed Urban Neurotic.

Blood Money

Don't shoot me, I'm just the messenger. Blog reader Christy informs us of a new craft-making website with step-by-step instructions on how to create holiday ornaments, earrings, cufflinks and more. Oh, from tampons.

Here are a few of the beautiful items that YOU can now make thanks to TamponCrafts.com:

A lovely Thanksgiving turkey table centerpiece.

A Valentine's Day flower bouquet.

 

A  beautiful Christmas angel.

 

And, for any special occasion, it's the Heart Earrings, about which the site says,  "Wear your heart…on your ears. These tampon heart earrings display both your romantic sentiments and your menstrual pride."

I'll save you clicking here to find out how to make your own pair and let you breathe a sigh of relief as I explain it's only red food coloring.

Houston Has A New Problem...

Edgar Mitchell, the sixth man to walk on the moon, says aliens have been visiting the earth for the past sixty years.

A veteran of the Apollo 14 mission, Mitchell also says world governments are aware of the alien visits, but have covered them up.

NASA denies it is involved in an alien conspiracy or cover up.

Here's more of the story in Dr. Mitchell's own words from Reuters News.

Let's set aside for today whether you or I think extraterrestrials have already visited Earth. We won't solve anything with opinion and we are still short of irrefutable proof more than 60 years since the modern flying saucer era began on 24 June, 1947 near Mt. Rainier, Washington, just a few miles south of where I am sitting right now.

Here's the question on my mind today. Why would he lie? What explanation can there be for an American hero, one of only twelve humans to have ever walked on the moon, to make up stories like this? Would he really risk his reputation - his legacy - on a hoax? What do you think?

Questions On Aisle 5.....

So I'm at the Safeway store Thursday afternoon and although I drove away satisfied with $71.26 worth of Yummy, I also left with some questions . Fortunately, I had my cellphone camera with me so can just put them out there and forget about it.

1. Look, I get the concept of store brand knockoffs. They're cheaper than the name brand and they taste sort of the same. But do they have to rip off the name of the major label product too? I'd have more respect for this soda if it just were called Safeway Pop and they put on the label, "Comparable to Dr Pepper."

2. Seriously, what's this deal? How can Grape Jelly be so freakin' awesome and Grape Jam be the unholy spawn of Satan? Why do they even make jam? The Oreo Company doesn't sell regular great Oreos but also offer Oreos made of dirt and hair.

3. It took more than 35 years but I finally found something sadder than the Tears Of A Clown.

4. What is it, my Jewish friends? Beer? Barbecue Sauce? Paste?

5. Who are these people? And why do I care if they know each other, much less are Good Friends? And what does that have to do with cereal? My head is puzzled.

Buy Me Some Peanuts And Cracker Jack.... (Peanuts Not Included)

Yesterday the Seattle Times reported a new promotion at Safeco Field this summer. That's the home of my beloved, yet struggling, Mariners baseball team, the team that just got swept by the Red Sox at home for the first time in 15 years. Sigh. Anyway, here's the story:

"The Seattle Mariners are declaring two sections of Safeco Field no-peanut zones for a couple of games this summer.

The AL club announced the move Wednesday to make the ballpark safer for children and grown-up fans with peanut allergies.

Special cleaning is planned in sections 311 and 312 down the right field line before the games, one on Aug. 5 against the Minnesota Twins and the other Sept. 9 against the Texas Rangers. Then signs will be posted to alert fans to the ban on peanut products in those sections.

Peanuts also will be banished from nearby concession stands.

A few other major and minor league teams have offered special seating to lower the risk for those who are allergic to peanuts. In May the entire minor league ballpark in Clinton, Iowa, went peanut-free."

I knew lots of folks have peanut allergies but did not realize that they were among the top eight most common food allergies, which are:

Milk
Eggs
Peanuts
Tree nuts, such as almonds, cashews, walnuts....
Fish, such as bass, cod, flounder..
Shellfish, such as crab, lobster, shrimp
Soy
Wheat.

By-the-way, that little list takes care of ninety percent of all documented food allergies.

I'm very lucky. I am not only not allergic to any foods, I am not allergic to anything that I know of, besides maybe hard work and Larry The Cable Guy. I've met lots of people who suffer allergies to everything from grass to novacaine and it sucks for them.

Question though. What is it about the peanut allergy that makes it so very deadly? People allergic to milk can sit next to a person drinking milk and they have no reaction. But I've heard stories of people smelling peanuts and getting ill. There was that one story not too long ago of a teenager that died after kissing someone who had had a peanut butter sandwich for lunch earlier that day. And are peanuts the only one that is so dangerous with so little contact or are there others?

American Idiot

Radio talk show host Michael Savage is this week's media punching bag after he made these comments about autism on his syndicated show:

"[a] fraud, a racket. ... I'll tell you what autism is. In 99 percent of the cases, it's a brat who hasn't been told to cut the act out. That's what autism is. What do you mean they scream and they're silent? They don't have a father around to tell them, 'Don't act like a moron. You'll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don't sit there crying and screaming, idiot.' " 

First of all he's an idiot. He can argue that autism is often misdiagnosed or difficult to diagnose but anyone who claims 99% of autistic children are just badly behaved or victims of poor parenthood is stupid. Or disingenuous. Or both.

But that should be no surprise to anyone who has ever listened to the Savage Nation, as he calls his show for Michael Savage is the worst kind of "shock jock."  Howard Stern, in contrast, uses humor to make a point, or exaggerates his actual opinion to make a point or just entertains his audience without making a point. Same with Rush Limbaugh. They are not only brilliant communicators but are intelligent and believable people, as well as responsible broadcasters.

Savage is the opposite. Is it possible he is the rude, intolerant, racist, homophobic, fascist, bigoted, vulgar brute that he sounds like every minute of every day on his show? Possibly, but I think he says shocking things just to shock.

The guy in an embarrassment as a talk show host,  as an American, and as a human. But here is where I disagree with some of his critics this week.

Yesterday, a band of protesters turned out on the street in front of WOR, the radio station that airs the Savage show in New York City. They marched, carried signs, and chanted their wish that the host be fired for his remarks.

Seriously, can't someone be stupid anymore without being fired? Clearly there is a huge audience for Savage's act. He is the third most listened to talk show host in America behind Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. More that 8 million people a week want to hear what he has to say. Why not let them instead of demanding that every voice that offends you is silenced?    
 
Disagree with him? Think his facts are wrong? Offer to go on his show and present a different opinion. If he declines, take your message to one of the thousands of other media outlets available to you.

Here is a convenient sign for you to print out and tape to your radio for future reference.

IF YOU DON"T LIKE THE PROGRAM YOU ARE LISTENING TO, THEN CHANGE THE STATION. IT IS OKAY IF OTHERS DO WANT TO HEAR IT. THIS IS STILL AMERICA.

A Snake In The Grass

It was a little unexpected. Donna and I were out in the front yard counting chipmunks (not a euphemism!) yesterday afternoon when I noticed my dog Atomic playing with something a few feet away. Turns out it was about a two-and-a-half foot snake skin,

We have a fair amount of garter snakes on the island which is great news. They only do good things in your garden and though they are mildly venomous I've never heard of anyone being really hurt by one.

Looking over the discarded skin I was very impressed with what a complete specimen it was, almost like a whole other snake. But I also realized my own ignorance about the hows and whys of snake skin shedding. I can't figure out how a snake (or my late beloved tarantula Fluffy) could manufacture a second skin on the outside its body and then crawl out of it. It seems like a lot of work to end up looking essentially the same as you were before you bothered. So what's that deal?

Well, It's A One For The Money.....

I confess that I don't regularly read KnoxNews.com, a website with news of interest to residents of Knoxville, Tennessee. But fortunately for me my friend Frank Murphy does and he tipped me off to this interesting recent article:

"Defacing money is a federal offense. At least that's what we've been told. Frankly we're too lazy to look it up.

Illegal or not, fear of arrest isn't stopping a lot of people from scribbling on money. You've seen it yourself. Heck, you've probably even done it yourself. And you've probably tried to figure out what on Earth the writer meant by her ink-pen musings.

Stuff That People Write on Money collects 71 photos of just such monetary doodles. Attempt to decipher them for yourself at www.sorabji.com/.

You'll find plenty of different messages that were inscribed on funds and sent back into the cash flow. Grocery shoppers jot down their lists. Lottery enthusiasts record their favorite numbers. Forgetful motorists scrawl parking spaces. Disgruntled citizens make snide political digs. Star-crossed lovers let the world know that they're together. People practice their signatures. And quite a few former presidents sprout facial hair and afros.

So the next time you visit an ATM or bank teller, you may not just be getting cash to purchase a Nintendo Wii. You might also be getting a menacing warning about angels taking over the world or an urgent message to 'free the werewolves.'"

The last paper currency-based site I remember hearing about is WheresGeorge.com, which exists to mark and track bills as they travel across the world. It's kind of neat to find out a bill you just received in change in your neighborhood has recently been to the other side of the country, then to Asia and back.

 

Rage Against The Machine

I don't know if there's a bigger picture I'm missing - in fact, I'm sure there isn't - but it's just too weird not to suggest.

On July 4th we had some visitors in town and I planned ahead to buy tickets for all of us to see the new Will Smith movie, Hancock. We drove down to Renton for the 2:30 showing at the East Valley 13. Fail!

We knew something was up when we pulled into the parking lot and saw just a smattering of cars there instead of being packed as you'd expect on a holiday. Then we saw a uniformed theater employee standing on the sidewalk and knew she was not handing out good news.

The theater had been hit by lightning that morning it turned out and "everything was fried." How random is that? How often is a movie showing canceled by lightning? I couldn't even get a refund on my advance tickets that day since none of the registers were working either.

As odd as that was, stuff does happen and I probably would have forgotten it by now except for what's happened since.

A few days ago, I was running some errands in downtown Seattle and found a parking space on Broadway, near Pine. We have those electronic parking meters that take cash or plastic and dispense a ticket for up to two hours so I put in my credit card to buy some time. Fail!

For the first time in all the years I've been using these machines my Visa card got swallowed inside one. No way to retrieve it, it turned out, no matter how many times I hit Cancel. I found the trouble phone number on the kiosk and called it to make a report. The nice Filipino man who answered the phone told me someone would be out in 20 to 30 minutes to open 'er up. So that happened.

I still didn't put those two incidents together until yesterday when once again technology was my foe. I was in the Tukwila Target store standing in line at the cash register. I was, no joke, buying a jar of mayonnaise and the new Randy Travis CD. In case you are wondering if I could be any whiter, yes, I could have also been buying some golf shirts and some Wonder Bread, wise ass.

Again with the firsts. The power suddenly went out in the entire store.  We were plunged into total complete darkness for about 15 seconds, just long enough for me to wonder why there weren't any emergency lights in the store. If the lights were out much longer I'm sure the looting would have begun and then the looters would have fallen over themselves trying to find the exit.

So the power came on but the cash registers did not. You know computers. Each one had to be rebooted and I just stood there watching a series of screens slowly come present themselves to Ming, my checker. There is no way to rush a reboot so I just stood and stood and eventually left my Caucasian merchandise on the counter and  vowed to return on another day with more reliable electricity. Fail!

Soooooooo, is there a theme here?  Is Someone trying to send me a message about the destructiveness of rampant American commercialism? Or am I jinxed? Or should I be seeing clues to the upcoming Al Qaeda attack?  Or is it just a wacky coincidence?  Courage.

  

First Quarterback Controversy of The Year!!!

I know people who get very sad this time of year. They wake up one late Spring day and realize the NBA finals are over, the Stanley Cup has been skated, and there is nothing but baseball now.

That's not me. This is a very exciting MLB season with Yankees drama, Cubs excitement, Detroit comebacks, Tampa Bay dominance (until this week!) and many other story lines that I am eating up. And bring on the All Star Game tomorrow night!

But if you are one of those sad sacks with a countdown on your calendar to the start of football season, man, did you love this weekend!

Brett Favre, one of the elite quarterbacks in the history of the game, a player so beloved they should retire the #4 jersey on every team, not just in Green Bay, has decided he wants to un-retire.

I was planning on writing more about it but when I read Gene Wojciechowski's column on same on ESPN.com i realized I could not improve upon anything he said about it. With one exception. I think he goes a little light on Favre. Yeah, I know it is mighty hard to walk out of the spotlight (see Michael Jordan, Roger Clemens, Evander Holyfield, etc.) but the way he did this is kind of a dick move. He should have had all these second thoughts before that March press conference and if he still ended up retiring and now wants to change his mind he should keep it to himself for the sake of the Packers organization.

Anyway, here's the first part of Gene's excellent analysis with a link to the rest....

"The World Series of Poker isn't being played in Las Vegas. It's being played in Green Bay, Wis., and Hattiesburg, Miss. And so far, a very amateurish Ted Thompson is trying to show strength in his hand.

Feel free to laugh the next time Green Bay Packers management, both past and present, starts talking about 'preserving' Brett Favre's legacy and cherishing Favre's place in the team's 'family.' It means nothing.

The Packers are about the Packers, and that's fine, even expected, but at least say so from the beginning. Don't pretend you're genuinely concerned about Favre's standing in franchise lore when, in reality, you're more concerned about damage and image control.

Favre wants to unretire. And yeah, it's a bit of a diva-ish thing to do. Tears in March. Text messages in July.

But Favre has earned his share of diva currency, enough for one Get Out Of Retirement card. He's played hurt. He's played with his heart heavy with grief. And he's played for the moment, not the money. There are bits and pieces of his body all over Lambeau Field.

Thompson, the Packers' general manager, doesn't see it that way. His solution -- and remember, the Packers are the self-appointed guardians of Favre's football reputation -- is to announce that one of the greatest quarterbacks in NFL history, the guy only seven months removed from the NFC Championship Game, can return but may be a second-stringer. Think about it: Favre wearing a baseball cap and holding a clipboard.

Some legacy.

Packers management wants it both ways. It says it wants to protect Favre from himself, but mostly it wants to protect Favre from becoming a free agent, signing with the Minnesota Vikings and possibly kicking the Packers' butts twice in the regular season. That's the reason behind not granting Favre his release -- nothing else.

Management says the 'finality' of Favre's retirement prompted the Packers to 'move forward with our football team.' But how can you move forward if Favre is still on the depth chart? If you don't want him as your starter, which is beyond astounding, then why want him at all?"

The rest is here. What do you think will happen next? This is juicy stuff, people.

Typepad S.O.S.

                                      here
Frankly, I've had it up to        with Typepad lately. I apologize in advance that this will not be a general interest post but I a) need to vent and b) am hoping for some help from more experienced bloggers than me who might be reading this.

Back in 2006, when I was writing my first blog, I used the free Blogger program. A few months in I realized one really does get what one pays for as I fought numerous crashes, bugs and service outages to get anything published.

So when I started over last October I test drove several of the pay services including Wordpress, Squarespace and Typepad, the one I ultimately chose.

I've had several annoyances all along that I have just learned to live with but some of the recent problems - especially since they introduced a Compose Editor "Upgrade" - have me wondering if I once again chose poorly.

I'm going to share what's going on and if anyone has tips that might help please post a comment below (preferred, so we all benefit) or email me privately.

1. The newest problem is that Friday and Saturday the automated Publish feature did not work.  I set my up my entries to post every morning between 4:00 and 5:00 a.m. and yes, my calendar was set up properly. Yet, nothing went live until I manually did it when I logged on. 

2.  It doesn't matter how often I go to Design, then Change Theme, then Custom, none of the changes I make and save there translate to the Compose Editor. 

3. In Compose I can find no way to change the default font from Arial, 11. I can change it manually but can not save it for next time.

4. And when I do change my font size manually by highlighting the page I write, the changes only work one paragraph, and sometimes one sentence, at a time. In other words I had to manually enlarge #3 above from default 13 point to the preferred 14. And then I had to highlight #4 and change it separately.

5. One of the Known Issues I'd like to publicly complain about is the suspension of the Post Search feature too. Does anyone know if it is coming back?

6. There must be an easier way, and one with fewer steps, than what I go through to post songs on my Christmas music sister blog each day. Each song first shows up as a link to Download the song rather than stream it. I have to save that, erase that in the Rich Text screen and then add all the embedding code manually on the HTML screen. It shouldn't be that hard. Is it me?

7. In the last two weeks there is yet another new problem. When I click on Save at the end of writing a post, or just to back it up as I go along, it's supposed to save it right away and then let me navigate off the page. Instead, I now almost always get the warning screen that says something like, "Are you sure you want to leave this page? You have unsaved changes..." even though I don't. It is an incredibly annoying extra step to have to go though over and over again.

I'm sure there are more I'm not thinking of but that's all off the top of my head. Again, if you can help me, or direct me to a site or a source that might (except the non-responsive Typepad Help Desk), I thank you. For the 99% of you who understandably don't care how the blog is made, just that it is, I'll try to find something  you'll actually be interested in tomorrow!

  

Rock In Peace

I had the FM radio on the other day - I don't remember what station - and they were playing Bob Marley's Could You Be Loved from 1980. Now there's a song that has not only aged well, it could have been released in 1990 or 2000 or even today and it would be hailed a a classic. And that is so true of so many of Marley's records; Redemption Song, One Love, No Woman No Cry just to name a few.

That the reggae giant was only 36 years old when he died got me to thinking of all the music he might have made had cancer not taken him and if he was able to avoid assassination.

But is he the #1 musical artist whose potential was barely reached before a life cut short? I started thinking of others who would have to be in contention for the title of biggest musical loss. Here are some my other candidates:

Hank Williams, only 29 when he died. Even non-country music fans know his remarkable contributions to America's permanent songbook; songs like I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry, Hey Good Lookin', Your Cheatin' Heart, and dozens more. The Devil and the liquor took Hank.

Buddy Holly, plane crash, 22. Think about that - only 22! Yet 50 years later we still song along with That'll Be The Day, Peggy Sue, Everyday and more. Honorable mention on the same plane was Ritchie Valens of La Bamba fame, just 17 years old. Who knows what his future held?

Jimi Hendrix, another drinker so he only made it to 27. An A-level songwriter, A+ guitar player who brought fuzz and fire to his instrument. You can't help but think of Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin and Kurt Cobain among other 27 year-olds who burned out rather than faded away.

Your turn. I want to know who you'd put at Number One on this chart: the musical artist who had the most to still contribute to the world before his death. Michael Hutchence? John Lennon? Selena? Jeff Buckley? Luther Vandross?  Ian Curtis? Biggie? 

Through Rain And Sleet And No!

Well, it's the second time it's happened this year and  I am really ticked off. I'd fire off a strongly worded letter to my imaginary boyfriend, U.S. Postmaster General Jack Potter, but I know it wouldn't do any good.

From time to time I'll stop by my "city" Post Office, the one I frequent when I have stuff to mail and I find myself on the other side of the water from the island where we live. I like to surprise Donna by sending her postcards, for no reason other than everyone likes to get something handwritten in the mail once i a while and it lets her know I am thinking of her.

Last week I sent her an awesome little antique photograph of a very proper and fancy little girl, circa 1920 I guess and expected it to arrive at home the next day. It's only 13 miles by the way. Well, it didn't come. Surely by the following day though, right? Not so much. The sad end to the story is that it has now been a week and the postcard never came.

Somewhere in the middle of all this I stopped by the so-called Post Office and talked to the worker bee on duty. I explained about the undersized black and white photo postcard I had mailed that week that never arrived at its destination and wondered if she could re-check the mail chute in case it got stuck.

"Oh, it was undersized. There's your problem," she shot back.

"Well, it was a little smaller than a modern postcard but certainly something your machines would have been able to pick up. It wasn't invisible!," I countered.

"Did you put your return address on it?," she asked , and not ironically.

And I said, before leaving, "With all due respect, if you can't deliver it to the correct address already on the card, why might you be able to deliver it to the return address?"

Look, I know you take your chances if you don't get tracking on anything you mail and it certainly wouldn't occur to me to do that on a postcard but it is still disappointing. So, Donna, your little girl is lost but please enjoy this image of a monkey riding a bicycle, with my deepest affection.

Love, Bean

"Everybody Likes To Cha Cha Cha...."

I was reminded of the Sam Cooke song lyric above when I got an email from blog reader Jennifer in Sacramento. She wrote:

"I heard about this cool website yesterday. You can sign up for free and then text message any question you want and get a text message answer back. The website is www.chacha.com  A friend who belongs to a club that I do told me about it. Check it out."

Thanks, Jen. Here's how the website describes its service:

"Ask any question in conversational English from a cell phone. Call 800-2ChaCha or text 242242 and get the answer as a text message in a few minutes."

Some of the examples of questions shown on the site are, "Where can I get pizza near Spring St. and 6th Ave. in NYC?" and "Is there a way to remove acrylic paint from jeans?"

So, not being too proud to beg, I tried it out. For some reason the very first question that came to my mind was, "How does the moon affect the earth's tides?"

About two minutes later, I got this text back on my phone, "Moon's gravity tugs on the ocean enough to make a bulge form in the sea below the moon. As Earth turns ocean shores go into bulge."

The Wikipedia page about the service says that real people answer the questions, not an automated search engine. So I was pretty impressed with the speed and the quality of my response.

Caveat! Thing One:  The site says, "standard text messaging rates apply" and I have no idea what those are and how much my little experiment cost me, if anything.

Caveat! Thing Two: If your wife sees a text message from something called ChaCha.com be prepared to potentially have some 'splainin' to do. I'm just sayin'. It could be misunderstood.

Summer Of Death Continues!!!!

The facts are scant but this much was being reported over the weekend.

"A European Vogue cover model fell to her death from her Manhattan apartment building Saturday in what has been ruled a suicide.

Ruslana Korshunova, 20, died around 2:30 p.m. in a fall from a building on Water Street, in Manhattan's Financial District...."

Look, I don't bring this up just to add another body to the Summer Of Death but to point out something I find fascinating about human nature. We the people hate the unknown.

We read the quotes in the paper from those who knew her; the doorman at her building who said she was a "sweet girl" and the ex-boyfriend who added "she was a good person."

But because we don't understand or don't accept death by suicide when the victim is so young and so pretty we start to speculate.

Here are a few of the reader comments left on the story on the Huffington Post yesterday.

Anastacia writes, "Jumping seems like such a painful, way to die full of desperation. It doesn't track because, being a model, she probably knew people who had access to drugs. She could have easily gone that route if she wanted to commit suicide, which in it self seems implausible. She had everything to live for and her family back home needed her."

Here's Alex, "I have a friend who comes from Russia and supports her mum and brother working as model in New York. and she told me many stories where some of those girls had spirit attacks. She told me they shared apartments and rooms and many girls and some girls would sleep walk and get ghosts or spirit attacks where they strangled fellow models in sleep or got hysteria or did really weird things in sleep. She told me these incidences are common in Milan and New York because of the pressure and competitions and always having to smile day out to get a job and be a bitch in private. My friend told me of one time she slept in a room with four girls and woke up being strangled by a sleep walking fellow model."

Ailbje says, "People don't just throw themselves out of windows without prior suspicious behaviour. People do not kill themselves without good reason; unemployment, bullying, substance abuse etc..  It does seem that there was either something very bad going on or she was murdered. I agree with posters suggesting mafia involvement. They are everywhere and they target Eastern Europeans for extortion, often threatening not only them but their family back home if they do not give them what they want. It would not be difficult for someone to sneak in and out of a building."

Now Darcy, "Very suspicious to me 20 years old so much to live for and also the time of day is unusual for suicide... They don't even know if someone else was there so why call it a suicide..could have been an accident or maybe a murder with some big roller involved and being covered up..you've gotta know NY City Police you can never tell with them..."

Kalima, "Then again, the most often thing that happens is, lonely, goes to a party, someone introduces her to drugs. Not even thinking about suicide but feels as she can fly, have you heard this for the very first time?  This is how the bosses of agencies all over the world keep their 'girls' in line."

Madrid, "Not likely a suicide-- more likely related to the Russian mafia that increasingly runs the lives of new immigrants from former Soviet states to NY."

And so it goes on. And I'm not even saying it's a bad thing that we tend to fill in the missing facts with those from our own imagination. Assumption, theory, speculation - they are stops along the path to critical thinking but let's not be to quick to believe our own make believe version of events. 

Keeping Up With The Joneses

I guess I first encountered it a few months ago when I was flying on an Alaska Air flight and learned the bad news that the airline's partnership with the Coca-Cola family of products has expired.

Their new beverage provider was Seattle's own Jones Soda. I went ahead and ordered up the company's Cream Soda, the weird, clear liquid you see in the glass in the picture. That's right, cream soda that looks like water and tasted like dirt. It is really, really awful. Why? Why screw with cream soda, Jones? Drinking it is like licking coal. It's bad, times awful, multiplied by tragic.

I had almost forgotten about my disappointment until I visited our local supermarket this week and saw this soft drink display of cases of the evil stuff.

Please note the company's tactic of almost literally wrapping their cream soda in American flags in a blatant attempt to appeal to our patriotism while at the same time poisoning this great country with their ghastly soda pop.

 Don't fall for it, citizens. Stand tall and say NO! to this Red Menace in a clear bottle.

Something Store

SomethingStore is a fun new website that operates simply: We will send you something, an item selected randomly among many things from our inventory, for $10 (free shipping in the US) and you will find out what your something is when you receive it. What will yours be?

     

Your Something May Be Anything
It may be something you need, something you want or something you desire.
Yours may be a cool gadget, rare book, table game, handmade necklace, reverse clock, box of gourmet chocolates, set of shiny shower curtains, popular video game, big-box retailer gift card, the latest version of a software, a set of kitchen knives, a pair of designer jeans, garden tool, kitchen appliance, unique home decor item, electronic equipment, magazine subscription, office supply item, or ... Your something will most likely be brand new, though it may also be refurbished or antique.

Anything But ...
For legal reasons and per our company policies, some restrictions do apply. We do not provide any items or services that are illegal to trade in United States, for example. Full list of exclusions is here: Something ... Not .

Me here: Well, you have to know that as soon as I found this website, they had my ten bucks. My mystery package just arrived and here is what I got. 

I am not exactly sure what this is but it appears to be a bag made out of zippers sewn together by someone named Alan Stuart.

It’s kind of neat, not something I would ever buy for ten dollars but I don’t feel ripped off.  And there are probably some hipster teenagers out there who would love it.

Let me know if you order from the Something Store and what you got! 

Weird, Weird World

I don't know if this week's news is actually any weirder than usual or if I just accidentally happened upon a bunch of oddball stories but here are three that I thought worth sharing, adapted from wire services.



Thing One: A quadriplegic woman is embarking on a record-breaking attempt to sail solo around Britain using just her breath to navigate a 20 foot sailing boat.

Hilary Lister, 36, is to sail single-handed round the British Isles. Just one problem - she is quadriplegic and can only move her head, eyes and mouth. She will spend the next three months sailing round the British Isles in a specially adapted boat she controls using a 'sip-and-puff' system of straws.

She suffers from a rare disorder known as reflex sympathetic dystrophy, an agonizing muscle-wasting condition which has left her with no movement below the neck.

At home in Canterbury, Kent, she can only do the simplest of tasks by using her forehead to push levers on a machine which changes the channel on the television or answers the telephone.

But thanks to high-tech adaptations to her Artemis 20 boat, she has become the first quadriplegic to sail across the English Channel and the first female quadriplegic to solo circumnavigate the Isle of Wight. Her previous record-breaking achievements will pale in comparison to the latest challenge, which will see her encounter some of the trickiest sailing conditions in the world.

She has tried to lead as active a life as possible and graduated from Oxford University with a high 2.1 in biochemistry despite having to dictate papers while lying flat on her back with epidural painkillers being pumped into her spine.

Her outlook on life changed dramatically when she discovered sailing, and realized she did not have to sit staring out of the window, but could experience the exhilaration of riding the crest of a wave.

"It is the ultimate freedom for me," she said. "I get out on to the water and suddenly my physical inabilities no longer matter.  "It's amazing, I use my breath through three straws and they control the sails and the tiller.  "I have a support boat that follows me from half a mile away, and even that feels too close."

Through her challenge, Mrs Lister hopes to raise money for her charity, Hilary's Dream Trust, which aims to help other people with disabilities achieve their dreams of sailing.

Mrs Lister's progress will be posted on her website.

                                                               
Thing Two:  A street-sweeping truck roaring down a Bronx, N.Y. street sucked up a dog and killed her as her owner held the leash.

Robert Machin said he had just finished walking his two Boston terriers and was about to put them into his car when the truck appeared. The retired transit worker said he was suddenly whipped around and saw one of the dogs, Ginger (center, in photograph), being swallowed by the sweeper's round bristles.

"I went berserk at that moment because I couldn't believe what had occurred," he said and that he yelled at the driver to stop, but the truck kept going. He and friends chased the truck for 2 ½ blocks before catching up with it. Ginger's slight body was later pulled from the sweeper.

The city Department of Sanitation called the death "a rare and unfortunate accident."
A heartbroken Machin questioned whether the driver was observing proper procedures, saying the truck seemed to barreling through the street at an unsafe speed. The heartbroken Machin, 57, choked up as he described losing Ginger. With his children grown, he said, "These two dogs, they're my life."

Thing Three: Another human foot was found Wednesday on a British Columbia shoreline, the second this week and the sixth within a year in a bizarre mystery that has confounded police.

Like most of the others, it was a right foot encased in a running shoe, said Sgt. Mike Tresoor of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. He said a citizen spotted it on a beach and no other remains were found.

The latest find and most of the others were recovered within a few miles of each other along island shorelines in the Strait of Georgia, which lies to the south and west of the provincial capital of Vancouver.

Authorities say they haven't reached any conclusions about the origin of the feet but are working to determine if there are any links to any other partial remains recovered in the province.

"Too my knowledge, we have not encountered anything like this," RCMP spokeswoman Annie Linteau told The Associated Press Wednesday evening. She declined to speculate if foul play was involved.

She did suggest that the latest find could be from the body of a missing fishermen or a plane crash victim, but she didn't provide any specifics. "In the first four cases, we did not find any evidence the feet were severed," she said. "It's too early to say if this foot was severed."

P.S. Rare midday update! News just broke that Foot #6 was a hoax. It was animal remains stuffed into a shoe! Why? No known motive yet but the first five are still mysteries.

Strongly Worded Letter #9

12 June 2008

Target Store
301 Strander Blvd
Tukwila, WA

Dear Manager:

     I am a frequent shopper at your Target location but have been troubled by one facet of the store’s layout for some time.  I am writing you today for some clarification.
     Why do the doors to get into the store open automatically but the doors to get out require a manual push?
     It seems to me that most folks walking in have nothing in their hands to prevent them from easily opening the door but on the way out they are often saddled with a shopping cart or  have their hands full with shopping bags chock full of terrific Target merchandise. Either way can make it quite awkward to handle all that plus manage a heavy glass door.
     I’m really curious what the thinking was behind that decision.

Sincerely,

P.S.  Hey. while I've got you, is there only one Bullseye, the dog in your commercials? Or do you do like they did with the Olsen twins on Full House and have more than one dog playing the part?

Colder Than Siberia

The front page of the Seattle Times reported on our chilly spring in an interesting way Wednesday. I know we have nothing to really complain about when I see the Iowa floods on my television set but still, with the start of Summer only a few days away, can this really be our Spring?

The best word I heard this week to describe the weather is Junuary!

Seattle weather: Colder than Siberia!

It  doesn't seem fair, but it's the cold, hard truth — accent on cold: While Seattle hasn't seen a 70-degree day in more than two weeks, Fairbanks, Alaska, has had six of them in the past 10 days.

Just about everyone, it seems, is toastier than we are. You've heard of International Falls, Minn., the self-proclaimed "Icebox of the Nation?"? It's had four days this month in the 70s, topped off with a pleasant 75 on Sunday.

Across the Atlantic, the northern destination of Oslo, Norway, has been passing the 70-degree mark nearly every day recently, while even the Siberian city of Tomsk, Russia, hit the 70s last weekend.

Meanwhile, shivering Seattle residents, hearing about snowplows back at work on Snoqualmie Pass this week, probably have only dim memories of the 77-degree high of May 24, the last time the mercury crept into the 70s here.

On Tuesday, state highway workers clearing away the last of 7 inches of snow on Interstate 90 could remember only two other times in the past 30 years that snowplows have been called out this late in the year.

Maybe we shouldn't complain too loudly, though.

The East Coast has been sweating and sweltering in mid- to upper-90-degree heat, setting records in several areas.

In New York City, the temperature was pushing toward the 100-degree mark. Combined with high humidity, the heat had people scurrying for shade or air-conditioned relief.

Weather experts say June made its chilliest debut ever in Seattle last week, but at least a mild respite is on the way. The National Weather Service forecasts highs 68 on Saturday and Sunday, with the promise of a "partly sunny" weekend.

Not a scorcher by any means, but much nicer than we've been getting.

(End of Article)

P.S. Update!!! The weather forecasters were right!!  Yesterday was beautiful, sunny and warm (65 degrees) for most of the day. Here's Tater's view from the front porch, where she sat with me yesterday afternoon and took in the day. 

P.P.S. Happy Father's Day to all the dads today, especially to mine and to Donna's dad,  Howard!! See you both soon.