We've had a crazy couple of weeks at work. I'll be listening to my phone messages while two more lines are being transferred to me, and my radio goes off, an email pops up and I get paged. A tech is standing at my desk, my new-order box is stacked and my personal cell starts vibrating across the desk. Someone is standing outside my window miming ( Read more... )

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Age of sexual consent climbs to 16 ( Read more... )

( OBEY THE CUTENESS )

 Stark black and white posters from a 1920s "mental hygiene" campaign proclaim: "The feeble-minded can be divided into three groups: Idiots, with a mental age of less than 3 years; imbeciles, with a mental age between 3 and 7 years; morons, with a mental age between 7 and 11.

 
"They assume that if you can't move or perform your own personal care, you're not capable of making informed decisions," Sarlina says. "I've learned to cope with and control my condition....They showed no respect for my wishes."

After a six-day standoff, during which she says she was given no food, Sarlina checked herself out of the hospital.

President Ronald Reagan used Springsteen's then-popular song "Born in the USA" at campaign rallies in 1984 until he was asked by Springsteen, who supported Democrat Walter Mondale, to stop. The song about a Vietnam veteran's hard times was often misinterpreted as a patriotic call to arms.

Today's curb books?

Will Ferguson, Generica. Large paperback penguin edition.
James Baldwin, Go Tell it On the Mountain. Little Dell paperback from 1965, good condition.
Jack Kerouac, The Subterraneans. Great little paperback in good condition.

I've read Generica before (under the name "Happiness") and it's amusing. Another book with a great ( Read more... )

Tonight I was hanging out with Gweno. I mentioned that I hadn't really been posting for awhile. I also told her a work story which, even though it doesn't loom in my mind and rates as being part of the past, made her pull her hat brim down over her eyes and ask me to quit. Apparently in telling the story my neck turned red, like a rash. ( Read more... )

... make me cry about a pogo stick.