Iron Filings - 59
Sometimes I don't know what it is about Wisconsin people. During a recent cheerleading awards ceremony at Tremper High School in Kenosha several of the girls were singled out for special awards. Here's how it was reported in the New York Times:
"There was the Big Boobie award for the girl with the biggest breasts," the Times reports. "The coach giving the award, according to several parents among the 100 people in attendance, made a joke that the girl risked a concussion when she ran because of her 'enormous boobs.' There was a Big Booty award for another girl. In a video from the event, held at a local catering hall, the coach presenting the award said: 'We love her butt. Everybody loves her butt.' "The String Bean award," the Times reports, "went to a freshman who, as the Tremper cheerleading coach Patti Uttech later told school administrators, 'was so light and skinny.'"
I couldn't possibly add a meaningful comment about this event other than to say that the school did receive a nasty letter from the American Civil Liberties Union.
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I Don't Make These Things Up Department – In what seems to be a disturbing trend of white people calling the police on people of color doing ordinary things, a dispute over one dog humping another prompted a woman to call the police on a black man in Massachusetts. The man said he took his pit bull and his nephew's dog to a park where a woman called the police because his dog was humping hers. An officer eventually arrived but no citation was issued. The man, however, filmed the incident and put it on Facebook where it received nearly a million views.
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If You Thought The Anti-Vaccine Folks Were Only Concerned About Autism Department –
As cases of measles continue to rise across the United States, public health advocates have cast a critical eye on state policies that make it easy for parents to avoid vaccinating their children. The Food and Drug Administration has even warned that it may try to act if the virus continues to spread.
Here is what Arizona five-term State Representative and Republican Kelly Townsend had to say on Facebook about such a possibility:
"Dearest friends and people of Arizona, it seems we are prepared to give up our liberty, the very sovereignty of our body, because of measles …. I read yesterday that the idea is being floated that if not enough people get vaccinated, then we are going to force them to …. The idea that we force someone to give up their liberty for the sake of the collective is not based on American values but rather, Communist."
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This one's a bit delicate. My wife and I wondered what an informal poll would reveal with respect to how many young girls or even young women know the full word from which 'bra' is derived. Her guess was ten percent.
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Another Cable Adventure – Recently, the On Demand feature of our Comcast cable began acting up. If we were watching a previously broadcast network program the screen would go black when the program broke for a commercial. Sometimes we could get the program back, sometimes not. Intrepid techie that I am, I went to the Comcast website and, after wandering through numerous screens, managed to get into a chat with Sagrika. She seemed quite nice but, after putting me through a number of hoops for twenty minutes, she disappeared. Tried again, this time with Yitesh. After a similar bout of hooping he decided that my cable box needed a software upgrade. He did that through the magic of who-knows-what-in-the-hell-is-going-on and … problem solved.
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I ran into Pete the Pissed's wife, Maxine the Maudlin, not long ago. She's a lovely woman of low energy, and with a kind of low attitude about things as well. Unlike her husband, she's a soft perturber, not given to grand pronouncements about things good or ill.
"You're looking thoughtful, Maxine," I said to her.
"I always have thoughts," she said. "They're the bananas that sweeten up the cereal in my brain."
"That's one way to put it," I said.
"I don't eat much cereal anymore," she said.
"Oh? Why is that?"
"Tastes funny," she said. "Tastes like chemicals. Beef, too."
"Beef tastes like chemicals?" I said.
"No. I don't eat beef anymore because we're not supposed to."
"I didn't know that," I said.
"They muck up the climate with their, you know, flatulence. All the ice in the world is going to melt to where you'll need scuba gear to see a play in New York City."
"Because of the cattle," I said.
"It's not their fault," she said. "God gave them the ability to fart, but he gave us the ability to determine how many of them there are."
Indeed, in a downscale way Maxine can be amusing.
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Because I Know You Need A Good Laugh Today Department – Eric Zorn, in his Chicago Tribune Sunday column, regularly posts a "funniest tweet of the week" piece. If this one doesn't make you chuckle you need to do some work on your happy place.
"Whoever invented the toilet brush has a sick sense of humor. I'm sticking to toilet paper from now on."
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G.K. Wuori ©2019
Photoillustration by the author
