I am coming to the conclusion that I am not a “people person”. Funny since I work in retail, but it’s true. A great many people in the world annoy me. My latest annoyance?
He’s been on late night TV for what seems like forever now. Shilling whatever new “miracle” cleaning product is out there, but as of late he is really grating on my nerves. Now, he’s no Rachael Ray mind you, but he ranks up there. His loud, aggressive voice… telling you what the “secret” is… giving that stupid thumbs up he does. Billy, newsflash, you aren’t my friend, shut up and go away.
Honestly, I am finding that most TV personalities annoy me. I really could care less what “Oprah’s Favorite Things” are. My dislike of Oprah really came to a head last week when I saw an ad for her show (no, I don’t watch it, the ad’s alone annoy me) where she was going to go meet her neighbors. The most irritating moment came when she is standing in some woman’s kitchen and said something to the effect of “You throw parties a lot and entertain, but you’ve never invited me?!”… wow… can we say “awkward”? You just berated a woman for never inviting you over. Wow. I have had many neighbors in my life I never even met, let alone came over for dinner. It just seemed blatantly rude to me.
What is it about appearing on TV that makes you think you are somehow superior? It seems to make people act in ways that any normal, sane, person never would. Rachael, Oprah, Billy, Dr. Phil, Regis… all annoying. Yet, they all seem to get legions of fans. Am I missing something? Is there some part of me that just doesn’t function correctly and I am incapable of falling into these people’s vortexes of popularity?
Patients at the detoxification facility have stained towels blue, purple, yellow, orange, green and black. Black sludge, glass shards, and other matter have been observed to be coming out of the pores of program participants.
Glass shards? Out of pores? Black sludge? From exercise, vitamins and dry saunas… I mean, let’s ignore the fact that this should be impossible to begin with, but, it just sickens me Scientology is taking advantage of these people who are so desperate for help.
As the anonymous person who pointed this out to me said, if Scientology could prove this, I would eat my hat.
Spider-Man the Broadway musical… with music from Bono and The Edge of U2. This is all sorts of wrong, not only for this character, but Broadway in general. Whatever happened to musicals written just for the stage and not based on a movie? The Lion King… The Color Purple… The Wedding Singer… all musicals now, and that is but a small sampling of similar shows.
Spider-Man? Really? Someone isn’t pulling my leg here? That’s just all sorts of wrong.
It seems this was the number one request on their consumer feedback website. Microsoft of course is trying to play it off, but isn’t it fascinating people DON’T want to deal with Vista? One of my employees has been putting off a purchase due to the fact he wanted nothing to do with the bloated software. I called him the second I read this, he’s thrilled. (Before anyone says it, yes, I talked to him about Macs)
So, you have a new OS that is spitting out existing software, peripherals that won’t work, and is a resource hog. And Microsoft is surprised by this?
In response Microsoft said that Dell was responding to a “small minority” of customers who had a very “specific” request.
Female high school teacher fired for relationship with student
The Associated Press
MULVANE, Kan. | Spectators burst into applause as the Mulvane School Board voted unanimously to fire a female high school teacher over an inappropriate relationship with an 18-year-old female student.
Tiffany Garrison, 25, had submitted her resignation from Mulvane High School well before Wednesday night’s special school board meeting, but it was not scheduled to take effect until the end of the school year.
Garrison was suspended with pay April 9 when the district started investigating the relationship. Officials in the south-central Kansas district officials have said the relationship did not involve any illegal activity such as alcohol use or anything of a sexual nature.
About 60 people attended the special board meeting, which ended with the vote to fire Garrison for reasons that included insubordination and maintaining a relationship with a student. Garrison, who did not attend the meeting, has 15 days to appeal the dismissal and request a hearing.
The girl’s parents attended the meeting and said they were “elated and relieved†by the board’s decision.
As the board was in executive session discussing the matter, the girl’s mother read the crowd a letter she had sent to board members demanding Garrison’s dismissal.
The letter said e-mails between Garrison and the girl suggested that their relationship involved more than “pure friendship†and that it involved some physical contact.
“Ms. Garrison should have never allowed the relationship to escalate past the point of teacher and student,†the letters said.
“At the present time, we feel the only appropriate and acceptable action by the Mulvane school board is to fire Ms. Garrison.â€
The parents said Garrison moved out of the area after the relationship was exposed.
Now, anyone who has read my blog for more than a month or two knows of my “fondness” for student/teacher relationships. They are… oddly intriguing. Wrong, yes. Intriguing none-the-less. And of course the fact it was a lesbian situation makes it all the more intriguing to the media. Bless them, they do love their sapphic laden stories.
Tom Cruise is being fruity again. This time he’s decided to disguise it as aiding the first responders of 9/11, an effort that is difficult to argue with. Everyone wants those people taken care of, of course they do, but at what cost?
This is a difficult thing to argue with, it really is. I feel horrible for the first responders, and they do need help, but this is not the place to get it. Never mind how questionable the treatment is. It involves 30 minutes of exercise, taking vitamins & minerals, and spending several hours a day in a dry sauna. Sure people are going to feel better, but it is not treating the toxins these rescue workers inhaled, they’re just losing weight!
I’m not surprised that City Councilman Hiram Monserrate, the host of the Cruise fund-raising dinner, claimed such extraordinary benefits from following a health-restoring regimen inspired by L. Ron Hubbard (’Cruise Control’ Pol: It Helped Me,” April 7).
For someone of Hubbard’s genius, it’s clearly a small step to cure respiratory diseases that have baffled doctors at our best hospitals.
Hubbard’s brilliance will shine even brighter when donors respond with millions of dollars aimed at getting those 9/11 rescue workers into saunas, taking vitamins, exercising and dieting – leaving a big cut of the donations for a few at Scientology headquarters.
That same brilliance fogs minds. It makes it impossible to question Cruise’s mission, despite the fact that a membership at a YMCA with a sauna, a bottle of niacin from the corner drugstore and a month without trans fats would accomplish as much for about a hundredth the cost.
Chris Bischof
Brooklyn
Exactly! This is no different than going to the YMCA! Instead, Cruise is soliciting millions of dollars for this program, and it is estimated he has raised $4 million already. If you look at the video on this page from WABC, you will see this is being done in a very nondescript office. Why so much money? Where is it all going?
The first responders who talk in the video about the benefits, bless them, they swear the religion is not being preached, it may very well not be, but this is nothing more than a PR sham put on by the “church”. L. Ron Hubbard was a documented “exaggerator” about his military and educational record, he wrote bad sci-fi, and by no means did he have medical training to come up with a “detox program”.
In fairness, here is another letter from the same New York Post editorial page:
For a newspaper normally on the forefront of speaking out for 9/11 rescue workers, you did us all a disservice by calling the Cruise-sponsored event a fund-raiser for Scientology.
The program is secular and not run by the church.
I wonder if your medical experts, who are calling it “hocus-pocus,” have ever dealt with the sleepless nights, leg pains, tingling in their hands and breathing issues.
Thanks to the program, I don’t. It gave me and hundreds of my fellow rescue workers our lives back.
I started the program knowing nothing about Scientology, and I know nothing about it now. I just know that, thanks to them, I feel like a new person.
Steven Mona
Greenwood Lake
I hope it is helping, I really do, but the Church of Scientology is not who I would turn to for help. They are a cult, nothing more, and their methodologies have been called into question numerous times.
Someone does need to help the first responders, and everyone who suffered from that horrible and tragic day, but anytime “Tom Cruise” and “Scientology” are mentioned in connection to anything, my suspicions are immediately raised.
I am still waiting for a good explanation of why the school felt the shooting at the dorm was not worthy of locking down the campus. They have been quoted numerous places as saying because it was considered “an isolated event”… WHO CARES?!? You had someone with a gun on your campus! You lock it down and locate the gunman!
And now… NOW we learn that during his two hour pause, he went to a post office and mailed a manifesto to NBC! (and why NBC?!? Of all the news agencies, you choose the currently lowest rated network?) If the school had locked down, those classes would have been secured and lives would have been saved.
To me, this is worthy of a full investigation and it had better be forthcoming.
It just seems silly to blog on any of my normal subjects today when there are so many families hurting over the tragedy at Virginia Tech. The number of dead keeps staying in flux, but does it really matter? 31… 32… 33 is the latest number I’m hearing. There are 30+ families hurting. 30+ groups of friends hurting. Even 1 person hurting is too many.
I know it’s too much to ask, but I just hope the media shows some respect in this, but I know they won’t.
Gizmo News is reporting on comments made by Brad Smith, senior vice president and general counsel of Microsoft, said about Apple’s recent comments about DRM. They are mind-numbingly bitter it would seem over Apple swinging the DRM deal with EMI records.
I’m not a big believer in just blaming the music industry for Apple’s inability to sell every conceivable iPod
That’s now what you said you idiot. They said it was about defending the rights of the consumers in that DRM restricted the end consumers right to do with their purchase as they please. DRM has little, to no, bearing on the sale of iPods, but on the sale of the actual music.
I think they’re (Apple) doing pretty well from what I can tell. In fact I think the music companies are the ones who right now are doing a little less well.
Well, yes, because as a consumer, refuse to purchase an item with such restrictive rules placed on it. Just like I won’t buy a CD with copy protection on it. I refuse to be treated as a pirate because a hand full of people are pirates. It’s not fair to the majority of consumers.
Smith said that Microsoft would be interested in similar deals for its Zune player, which made a lackluster debut in US stores last year.
“At the same time I wouldn’t go as far as Steve Jobs did and suggest that everything is the fault of the record labels,” he added.
Okay, so basically you’re bitter because Apple beat you to the punch. If you so believe in DRM, then you shouldn’t be interested in similar deals. And doesn’t this benefit Microsoft in the long run? Music purchased at iTunes can now be played on a Zune, which it couldn’t before hand, so if someone was buying an iPod over a Zune just for that reason, doesn’t it benefit Microsoft in the end?
“I believe that fundamentally people who produce content and who own the rights to that content deserve the opportunity to make their own decisions about how they want to provide that content to the public,” Smith added.
And as a member of the public, I have the right to vote with my dollars and not support those decesions made by the rights owners. They can make those decisions all day long, but if I feel they restrict my freedom, then, that’s my right to say “no thanks”.
The Zune is a failure for the most part, Apple beat you to the DRM punch, suck it up and stop being a sore loser.
Shia LaBeouf appears to be Steven Speilberg’s new favorite person. Spielberg is producing Transformers, with Shia. Now comes the news Indiana Jones 4 will also feature Shia as… wait for it… Indiana’s son.
I may cry now.
As just about anyone can tell you, adding a son/daughter to a franchise is never a good idea. And honestly, didn’t Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade wrap up the series well enough?
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Speaking of my new favorite movie, Transformers, there’s a new pirated TV ad circulating on the net. I would link you, but it’s moving around fairly quickly. Optimus Prime speaks in it… he has lips. LIPS! So I’m guessing the pics we’ve seen with the face guard must be battle shots or something, and the shield pops in… to protect his robot lips.
He has lips.
LIPS!
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The Speed Racer movie is actually shaping up with some fairly interesting casting. The Wachowski Brothers have a mixed track record of hits and misses, but this one is kind of hard to screw up. Cars… driving… special tricks. Pretty simple.
So the interesting casting? Christina Ricci as Trixie… that SO rocks. Here’s the cast so far:
I have been on eBay since January 19,1998. I have gotten a grand total of 7 negatives, 6 were from idiots who couldn’t follow directions, 1 was justly deserved as I forgot to pay someone. Why is it there seems to be a sudden stream of people sure I am out to rip them off?
Since the first of the year I have had multiple disputes filed against me on both eBay and Pay Pal, something that had never happened before. Almost all of them could be settled quickly if not for the following problems:
Spam filters – I understand we all hate spam, but if you have your filters set so high I can’t get an answer to you about your shipping costs to the UK, how am I at fault? I responded to a guy four times with his shipping costs, he claims to have not gotten one of them and became very belligerent with me. We finally got it worked out, but yeesh.
Tracking – I’ve been getting a lot of “You didn’t ship this!” Funny… I have a tracking number and it shows as delivered.
Phone calls – Every email we send out has our phone number. As does every invoice… it’s in every auction… and it’s listed in our “About Me” page. Not getting an email reply? Pick up the freakin’ phone! Or, lower your spam filters!
The mail service – In this day and age, why do people still insist on sending money orders? There are numerous ways to pay me without ever exposing your credit card/debit card number to me, use them. Do not blame me when the postal service takes forever to deliver your money order, if ever.
Feedback – Everyone whines about leaving them feedback, fine, we do. And, obviously, people leave it for us, so, how about you actually look at it before you yell at us? I am getting really tired of people who think I’ve turned to a life of crime over their item that ended for $2.50. Yes, that’s right, I took your $8.25 (including shipping) and absconded on a tropical holiday. I am such a bastard.
Damaged package – If an item arrives damaged, how about contacting us and seeing if we’ll work with you to remedy the situation before leaving me a neutral? As stated in our auctions, every item ships from here with insurance automatically.
