Finally, it’s Friday – and a three-day weekend at that. Finally, I get to spend some quality time with my imaginary girlfriend. Maybe we’ll hang out with Lance Armstrong and do some “T”. It’s pretty cold here today, and while it’s supposed to warm up tomorrow, the thaw won’t last long, as next week we’re predicted to get much colder (below zero, even). So I decided it was time to finally order another 4 tons of pellets. We’re going through them pretty fast, and are down to about 30 bags (1200 pounds). At the rate we’re burning, that’s about two and a half weeks’ worth. I’m kinda into staying warm, now that I’m old.
I don’t know if anybody’s familiar with the “Evil Dead” movies (Evil Dead, Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness), but they’re Sam Raimi classics starring Bruce Campbell. Well, now they’re doing a remake, and it turns out it stars everybody’s favorite city girl transplanted to the ‘burbs, Jane Levy. As cute as she is in Suburgatory, she’s equally creepy-looking in this movie – at least judging by the trailer. I can hardly wait to see it.
Have a good weekend.
This is from Mother Jones, not the Onion, and it isn’t April Fools Day:
Glenn Beck has a dream. On Thursday, the former Fox News host, gold bug, survival-seed guru, movie star, and bestselling author unveiled plans for a new planned community—inspired by the Ayn Rand novel Atlas Shrugged—to be built at an undisclosed location somewhere in the United States*.
No, really:
Glenn believes that he can bring the heart and the spirit of Walt’s early Disneyland ideas into reality. Independence, USA wouldn’t be about rides and merchandise, but would be about community and freedom. The Marketplace would be a place where craftmen and artisan could open and run real small businesses and stores. The owners and tradesmen could hold apprenticeships and teach young people the skills and entrepreneurial spirit that has been lost in today’s entitlement state.
There would also be an Media Center, where Glenn’s production company would film television, movies, documentaries, and more. Glenn hoped to include scripted television that would challenge viewers without resorting to a loss of human decency. He also said it would be a place where aspiring journalists would learn how to be great reporters.
Across the lake, there would be a church modelled after The Alamo which would act as a multi-denominational mission center. The town will also have a working ranch where visitors can learn how to farm and work the land.
Independence would also be home to a Research and Development center where people would come to learn, innovate, educate, and create. There would be a theme park for people to recharge and have fun with their families.
People would also have the option to live in Independence, with a residential area where people of different incomes could all come together and be neighbors.
Beck estimates the city-theme-park will cost about $2 billion to build, or roughly .002 trillion-dollar platinum coins, or .178 Fox News blue whales.
Correction: This post originally stated that the city would be in Texas. Beck hasn’t specified which state he’ll build Independence in.
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/01/glenn-beck-building-his-own-city
Well, he might be ignunt enuf to try Missouri. These states might have a problem as well:
Independence, Virginia
Independence, Missouri
Independence, Iowa
Independence, Kansas
Independence, Kentucky
Independence, Ohio
Independence, Oregon
Independence, California
Independence, Minnesota (2 different cities, one west of Duluth and one west of Minneapolis/St. Paul)
He could find another country or another name. How about Unhinged Texas or Glenistan Afghanistan.
Happy Gun Appreciation Day, y’all!
The Girl of My Dreams
By GAIL COLLINS
There is nothing the world loves more than an athlete who’s playing the game on behalf of a dying loved one.
In the land of sports, people who have terminal illnesses are always more interested in the team’s fortunes than in having their son/brother/lover/best friend at their bedside. The story’s been a staple ever since the expiring Ronald Reagan told Notre Dame to “win just one for the Gipper†in “Knute Rockne — All American.â€
And now we have Manti Te’o, the star linebacker for Notre Dame, whose dying girlfriend turned out to be imaginary. But imaginary with a lot of team spirit. “Babe, if anything happens to me, you promise that you’ll stay there and you’ll play and you’ll honor me through the way you play,†she told him when she was critically injured in a car crash, fell into a coma and then emerged to learn she had leukemia. When she was conscious, she devoted much of her time to writing inspirational letters to Te’o before each game.
Such a girlfriend does not exist. Somebody made her up, and the sports world is currently debating whether Te’o was the victim of a hoax, or part of the conspiracy.
All I can say is, the story tells you a lot.
Fans cheered when Te’o played through what he said was the day of the funeral of his girlfriend, Lennay Kekua, who died on the same day as his actual grandmother. (“I knew…that my girlfriend and my family would want me to be out there. They wouldn’t want me to be sulking over things,†he told Sports Illustrated.)
It’s the American way. But as the story unfolded, it turned out that she didn’t ever require his presence. In an interview with Sports Illustrated, Te’o said that at one point, he was on his way home to Hawaii for summer break when the comatose Lennay almost died in a hospital in California. “They were scheduled to pull the plug while I was in the air,†he told Sports Illustrated.
It didn’t seem to occur to him that he might have dropped by. Do you think this is a young-man fantasy — a girlfriend so lacking in neediness that you don’t even have to visit her in the hospital while she’s in a coma followed by leukemia?
In fact, there was apparently never any physical connection. They talked on the phone. Texted all the time. But the star linebacker — who reportedly saw other flesh-and-blood girls on campus — didn’t seem to feel this special romance was lacking anything simply because it had no three-dimensional aspects.
Maybe in an era when “dating†seems to mean “send texts about whether to get together later,†this counts as a fulfilling relationship.
It’s possible Te’o was the credulous victim of an elaborate trick. But he was surrounded by a veritable army of coaches, chaplains and mentors, who were presumably privy to the Lennay saga from the start. Certainly they knew all about it when the Notre Dame publicity machine made it a core part of the football team’s undefeated-until-the-championship-game season. But nobody seemed to raise an eyebrow.
If you listened to the story while sitting next to Te’o on a bus, you would have warned him not to tell a national TV audience about this girlfriend until he got some proof she actually existed. (“We met just, ummmm, just she knew my cousin. And kind of saw me there so. Just kind of regular,†he told Sports Illustrated.)
But nobody at Notre Dame seems to have paid enough attention to figure out that the girl at the center of their winning-season story existed in the same universe as the Little Mermaid.
Right after Christmas, Te’o told his coach that a woman who sounded like the dead girlfriend had called him to say she wasn’t deceased after all. The coach told the higher ups, and Notre Dame hired an outside firm to investigate the case. When an exposé broke on the Web site Deadspin, the school’s athletic director, Jack Swarbrick, held a press conference to tearfully announce that the investigation showed that Te’o was the victim of a “very elaborate, sophisticated hoax perpetrated for reasons we can’t fully understand. But it had a cruelty at its core.â€
This all occurred a couple of years after the Notre Dame team was involved in a genuine tragedy when a freshman from a neighboring girls’ college reported she had been sexually assaulted by a football player. The school did not order up an outside investigation. In fact, there appeared to be no investigation at all. After a period of dead silence in which she received a threatening text from another player, the girl died from an overdose of medication. Nothing else happened. Writing this week in The Washington Post, Melinda Henneberger, a Notre Dame graduate, noted that “my alma mater held the kind of emotional news conference for the fake dead girl they never held for the real one, Lizzy Seeberg.â€
Game’s over. Notre Dame loses.
A great baseball character Earl Weaver has passed. I remember Earl first from when he was the manager of the Rochester Red Wings, the big International League rivals of our Richmond Braves. Once Earl protested the organ player at Parker Field so the next time the Red Wings rolled into town, they had an Earl Weaver Music Appreciation Night. All fans showing up with a musical instrument got in for free. Lots of kazoos as I remember it.
:slap: :rant1: 🙁 :gate:
Yeah, I remember him when he was at Rochester. As I got older, I found the name “Red Wings” to be kind of amusing.
I hate to talk sports, but I can’t help but mention that it’s nice to beat the #1 team in the country at their house. :40:
Ditto.
STAN ‘THE MAN’ MUSIAL DIES AT 92
🙁 :gate:
:gate:
Happy Birthday, DeForest Kelley.
What’s Orly Taitz going to do now that Obama has been sworn in for a second term?
I am waiting for the teabaggers and the birthers and the racists to come up with their conspiracy theory about why O’Bama had to be sworn in privately today in the White House Blue Room.
Does Orly, Queen bagger, still have pending cases? I was thinking they’ve all been smacked down and she’s been sanction for her frivolous law suits.
And we’re off…
Hank Epton â€@HankEpton
The working wingbut theory on the Bible today is that it was a Koran and the blue cover was to hide it… SC wingnut theory. #2013inaug
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1h Hank Epton â€@HankEpton
And heeeere we go. The wingnuts don’t think Robinson family Bible used at the private swearing in of POTUS was REALLY a Bible. #2013inaug
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