Those deep-fried mashed potatoes were a bit too deep fried for my liking, but they should satisfy anyone looking for a salty snack. And I must remember to avoid the Fair on mild, sunny Labor Day weekends as I was completely engulfed in a sea of asses and elbows. Just thinking about it causes me to hyperventilate (which isn’t easy to do on a respirator). Many of my friends are bemoaning summer’s end, but I welcome the cooler days, the lazy gloomy weekends, and the lower electricity bills.
I’m going to spend part of my long holiday weekend trying to find out whether deep fried mashed potatoes are worth a trip to the State Fair. Expect a full critique on Monday. Until then, excelsior!
Now that Stephen Hawking has denied the role of God in the universe’s creation, he won’t be able to beg for divine intervention as I put him in a chokehold in the final moments of our zero-g deathmatch. I also thought up a new tagline for the TV promos advertising our match:
Two godless gimps will enter the ring. Only one will leave.
I’m also thinking we can do a sort of pre-match before the main event. Dig it: Hawking and I tag team a bunch of yeshiva students, Mormon missionaries, and Bible camp counselors. The pay-per-view numbers alone could be enormous.
When I graduated from law school in the dotcom boom years of the late 90s, few of my peers chose public service careers. When a big law firm is offering you a six-figure salary, you’re not likely to give much serious consideration to the legal aid position that pays roughly 75% less. An interesting consequences of the current recession is that some firms are offering paid deferments to newly hired attorneys whom they can’t afford to bring on board at full salary for a year. Legal aid organizations and nonprofits are benefiting from an influx of talented and eager young attorneys who can afford to work for little or no money because of these deferments. Some attorneys are even choosing to remain in public service after their deferments end.
The world would be a much better place if these firms made deferments a permanent recruiting tool. New associates could get some great experience and lose some of that newbie awkwardness before entering the office grind. Clients in need would receive excellent representation from talented attorneys. Unfortunately, this practice is likely to end once the economy improves.
Tim Pawlenty only has a few months left in office, but he remains ever vigilant against the evils of socialized medicine and the threat it poses to the moral fiber of good and decent Minnesotans. Earlier today, he issued an executive order instructing state agencies not to apply for any grant funding under the Affordable Care Act “unless otherwise required by law.” The text of the order was is filled with catchphrases that are the standard fare of Tea Party rallies (“federal takeover of health care”, “intrusions into individual liberty”, etc.), providing incontrovertible and rather vulgar evidence of Pawlenty’s presidential ambitions.
The order also has the effect of jeopardizing Minnesota’s opportunity to receive planning money for the state insurance exchange that must be operational in a few years. Passing up this opportunity will hamstring the state’s efforts to comply with federal law, which might prompt the federal government to step in and operate the exchange on Minnesota’s behalf. Both liberals and conservatives can probably agree that such an outcome would be less than ideal. But if Dayton loses to Emmer–a wholly-owned tool of the Tea Party–that might be exactly what happens.
I don’t have any particularly strong feelings on what happens to my body once I die. After all, I’ll be dead. Donating myself to science is one option. I’d probably make a really memorable dissection for some unsuspectingly med student. Or I could have my ashes scattered in some faraway place (or maybe just onto the street below my window). But then I discovered that it’s possible to have one’s cremated remains pressed into vinyl records with a personalized selection of tracks. Custom artwork is extra, but I’m sure my loved ones would be willing to put up some additional cash to remember me properly. But I’m going to state explicitly that the cover art better not feature anything resembling roses, skulls, or paisley. Tasteful nudity, on the other hand, is perfectly acceptable and tacitly encouraged.
I’d better get to work on my playlist. Hmm, should I start with Blue Oyster Cult’s “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” or Radiohead’s “Creep”?
My sister called me a little while ago to inform me that she had won an iPad at a workplace drawing. She seemed pretty excited and I didn’t have the heart to tell her that it will probably be yesterday’s model in a matter of months. But I still bugged her to bring it over so I could properly fawn over, er, I mean, mock it.
That Canadian filmmaker who replaced his prosthetic eye with a digital video camera keeps doing crazy stuff and I keep blogging about it. Now he’s on a quest to find a female amputee who would be willing to be fitted with a paintgun prosthetic. Him artistic vision is likely inspired by the Tarantino/Rodriguez film Grindhouse, which featured a comely woman with a machine gun as a prosthetic for her missing leg. I’m sure he’ll get more than a few applicants, although I’m not sure how one would hold auditions for something like this. It’s probably a tad exploitative, but I choose to view it as a deconstruction of traditional notions of disability and femininity.
And now I have a really strong urge to finally watch Grindhouse.
I have to blog and run tonight, but it will probably do my brain some good to get away from my various electronic devices. At least, until I get home and soak up some streaming Netflix goodness while checking my Twitter feed and leveling up my rogue in World of Warcraft. My brain may be turning to pudding, but it’s having a lot fun along the way.
The city of Philadelphia is requiring bloggers to pay $300 each for a business privilege license, regardless of how much money that proprietor actually makes via the blog. One blogger targeted by the city reported making a total of $11 over a two-year period. Even a pinko liberal like me can recognize that this might be a case of government overreach. Just because a blog features a couple AdSense or Amazon ads doesn’t mean that it’s a profit-making machine. I’ve made a whopping $10 from this blog over the years and to label me a business would be an insult to other businesses. Municipalities are entitled to seek out new revenue streams in these cash-strapped times, but trying to milk casual bloggers probably won’t impress the tech companies that cites like Philadelphia hope to attract.