Lake Superior State University has released its annual list of “banished words”; words they consider trite, overused, annoying, or a combination of all three. Following below is the list, with my comments in italics: SHOVEL-READY “Apparently, the generally accepted definition of this phrase is to imply that a project has been completely designed and all [...]
Category Archive for 'Rants'
While reading a message board the other day, I saw a thread about New Year’s resolutions and rolled my eyes. My first thought was that nearly everyone would resolve to “lose weight” in 2010, as that particular resolution is typical and ubiquitous. There’s absolutely no originality about it at all. Sure enough, I was right. [...]
Four Year Old Suspended for Long Hair
Posted in Culture, Life, News, Rants, history, opinion on Dec 17th, 2009
In recent news reports I read about a four year old pre-kindergarten Texas boy who has been suspended from school for having long hair. Say what? Is this 1959 or 2009? I thought that the right of male students to wear long hair had been settled years ago. Indeed, when I was in high school [...]
Reading the webpage of one of my local TV stations, I came upon a story about a man who had been arrested for bigamy. He’d married his first wife in 2005, and had married a second woman this past October. Neither wife had been the wiser until the first wife intercepted a text message for [...]
Appealing to People’s Base Instincts
Posted in Life, News, Politics, Rants, opinion on Nov 17th, 2009
The other day while out driving, I was monitoring the Neal Boortz show, looking for ranty blogging fodder. And, as is almost always the case, I found what I was looking for. Because it was Veteran’s Day, he was relating anecdotes with that theme in mind. He told a story about a man attacked by [...]
The other day, I stopped in at a fast food joint to get something to eat. I gave my order to the person standing behind the cash register, who did not acknowledge the order in any way and made no move to enter it into the cash register. Instead, he was looking around me, silently [...]
While out driving on Halloween, I drove through a neighborhood in full trick or treat mode. Though a minority of older kids walked from house to house, most kids were driven by their parents to each house, getting in and out of the vehicle (mostly ubiquitous minivans) ever 25 feet or so. This meant that [...]
It seems as if I have a homing device to attract the religious of all stripes. I don’t know what it is; perhaps it’s my air of disrepute that attracts them like moths to a flame. Recently, they hired a new guy at my place of employment, a squeaky-clean, straight arrow kind of person. I [...]
Malpractice Insurance and Health Care Reform
Posted in Life, Politics, Rants, Social Issues, opinion on Oct 19th, 2009
Last night I was listening to the radio and came upon yet another right wing talk show. I didn’t recognize the woman’s voice; all I knew was that it wasn’t Ann Coulter, as I’ve heard her voice, ad nauseum, on several different shows, on both radio and TV. This unknown woman had the unpleasant quality [...]
Most people by now have heard of the justice of the peace in Louisiana who recently refused to marry an interracial couple. When I first heard the news, it boggled my mind, as I could not imagine such a thing happening anywhere in the United States in 2009. I’m not at all surprised that such [...]
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