The Thrillionaires(SM) online community that I'm working on just came out with a 3 minute Inspirational Movie that is really great. I urge you to go watch it right now and to keep this email handy--it is super inspiring and uplifting:
I'll Let You Go Now, It's Time To Set You Free
The Washington Post winning submissions to its yearly neologism contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternative meanings for common words.
The winners are:
1. Coffee (n.), the person upon whom one coughs.
2. Flabbergasted (adj.), appalled over how much weight you have gained.
3. Abdicate (v.), to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
4. Esplanade (v.), to attempt an explanation while drunk.
5. Willy-nilly (adj.), impotent.
6. Negligent (adj.), describes a condition in which you absentmindedly answer the door in your nightgown.
7. Lymph (v.), to walk with a lisp.
8. Gargoyle (n), olive-flavored mouthwash.
9. Flatulence (n.) emergency vehicle that picks you up after you are run over by a steamroller.
10. Balderdash (n.), a rapidly receding hairline.
11. Testicle (n.), a humorous question on an exam.
12. Rectitude (n.), the formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.
13. Pokemon (n), a Rastafarian proctologist.
14. Oyster (n.), a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.
15. Frisbeetarianism (n.), (back by popular demand): The belief that,when you die, your soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.
16. Circumvent (n.), an opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men.
The Washington Post's Style Invitational also asked readers to take
any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing
one letter, and supply a new definition. Here are this year's winners:
1. Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops
bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows
little sign of breaking down in the near future.
2. Foreploy (v): Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose
of getting laid.
3. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the
subject financially impotent for an indefinite period.
4. Giraffiti (n): Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.
5. Sarchasm (n): The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the
person who doesn't get it.
6. Inoculatte (v): To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.
7. Hipatitis (n): Terminal coolness.
8. Osteopornosis (n): A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)
9. Karmageddon (n): its like, when everybody is sending off all these
really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's
like, a serious bummer.
10. Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day
consuming only things that are good for you.
11. Glibido (v): All talk and no action.
12. Dopeler effect (n): The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter
when they come at you rapidly.
13. Arachnoleptic fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after
you've accidentally walked through a spider web.
14. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito that gets into
your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.
15. Caterpallor (n.): The color you turn after finding half a grub in
the fruit you're eating.
And the pick of the literature:
16. Ignoranus (n): A person who's both stupid and an asshole.
The internet is a wonderful tool for research or to find places from my past.
The second thing I remember was I was given a job with responsibility connected to it.
We were having a fair and I was in charge of getting the horses. They probably were really ponies, but they seemed pretty big to me. We had to bring the horses across town to the school. Now you would think that they would have loaded up on a trailer for transport, but nope. A man and I transported them by leading them to the school. Through the streets of
When I came back to the states my father allowed me to enter a horse show. I placed third, out of three. My love of horses was gone. I like to look at them, but I'll leave the riding up to others.
The last thing I remember about
I guess we were graduating from middle school. We were all dressed in our uniforms, listening to whatever you listen to at such an event when a bird shit on my head and shoulders. This was so damn funny to everyone in attendance except me. Some nice teacher said it was a sign of good luck. Who thought that up? To me it was a sign that a bird had shit all over my head, and I can't remember any good luck coming out of that situation.
All in all, I had a wonderful time at that school. Now it is gone. According to the internet, it moved to
Today I was informed by the television that hurricane Bill has formed. I wish Bill, my husband was alive. He would be pleased that there is a hurricane out there named after him.
The number of vacations that Bill and I took together can be counted on one hand. We never went anywhere much unless it was for business. There was no one to take care of all of our animals and I've been just about everywhere already, so it was never really important that we go places. We lived on an island, on the most beautiful piece of property, with amazing sunsets, and dolphins playing off our deck. Who needs to leave that?
Before we married, we did take a vacation. The year was 1979. We started off by going to Montego Bay in
We finally made our way to the airport. It was packed with people trying to get out. So many unhappy people just standing around. The airport was closed. More hours passed.
Finally Bill took control. He left and came back later with a big grin on his face. When in doubt, throw money at the problem. He had found a drunk pilot in the bar. For a large amount of money he agreed to fly us out of there, if we could find someone to remove the palm trees from the runways. He paid people to go out and remove the debris. Then we rounded up some other people who were just as desperate as we were to get out of there.
We split the cost. We didn't bother to tell them that the pilot was drunk.
We finally ended up in
I didn't care why. I was in heaven. Each villa had a large bell that you rang when you wanted anything. Food, drink, a massage. It would be delivered immediately by someone who must have been living under the villa. They would just appear. I would swim naked in our pool. There was no one to see me, and at that time in my life, I looked pretty good, so why bother with a suit? The villas were almost like living outdoors. No doors on interior rooms. No glass anywhere. Shuttered windows that stayed opened most of the time. It was simply magical for many days, and then THEY came.
The family arrived in the villa next to ours. They were fat and loud and very unhappy. I didn't care that they were fat. I've been fat at times, myself. I did mind that they were loud and pissed off. You could hear them screaming at each other. Especially the wife. She hated the place. No phone. No T.V. No air conditioning. She was one miserable person.
I was just as miserable thinking of spending time with them in "my" pool. So, she storms out on the balcony, still yelling at her poor husband. I did the only thing I could think to do to irritate her even more. I went down to the pool, stripped down to nothing and dove into the water. The woman looked like she was going to have a heart attack. Shortly thereafter, they checked out and life went back to pure bliss. It was a most wonderful time with the man I loved for so many years. So, I decided the other day to google it. Not that I would ever want to go back without Bill, but just for a trip down memory lane. This is what I found out about Habitation LeClerc.
At one time in the seventies it was the place to go. Jackqueline Bouvier Kennedy stayed there . Mick and Bianca Jagger did too. It shut down in the eighties. This is the description of it now: " The ancient stone wall surrounding the fifty acre forest has collapsed into heaps of rubble. Squatters and thugs have invaded the once-pristine grounds, moving into its bungalows, cutting down trees, destroying plants and dealing drugs. It is now a metaphor for the environmental problems facing
Territorial bandits, mountains of trash, and pigs have eased their way up to and over the walls of the buildings and Botanical Gardens, causing most of the plants to be near extinction or die. Makeshift machine-gun slots now block the windows of the hotel reception area, and the marble fountains have long since run dry. A notorious drug gang called the Red Army has overrun the place, terrorizing and extorting "rent" from hundreds of squatters who have occupied the estate's thirty five mildewed villas. Nighttime gunfights are common, with corpses left on display in the morning."
How could something like this happen? Sixty percent of
So,
Hurricane David killed thousands of people before he made landfall in the
Nothing last forever, not even the Bonaparte's villa. Not my school, and not my husband.
Cherish the memories of your life. Cherish the golden moments, and try to make some more.
And then there was hurricane Hugo, but that's for another day.
In the fight against Universal Healthcare and a government-run option I keep hearing one argument pop up. Republican and Conservative foghorns keep spouting out how government cannot run anything, just look at Social Security and the Post Office. They spout how the Post Office has wasted so much money and is inefficient. But they seem to constantly avoid answering the question, Why??
Well, the reasons for the problems in Social Security and the Post Office are the same reasons that our economy crashed. Repubicans got a hold of it. During the Bush years they constantly spent our Social Security surplus, or let thieves pick it clean and it appears as if all the problems the Post Office is having can be lain at their table too.
Why is the Post Office suffering so much and losing so much money?? The root can be found in the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006, passed by a Republican Congress and signed by a Republican president.
Now, think about this for a minute. Republicans do not want to pass any healthcare reforms which would help those who cannot afford insurance. They do not want to pass any new regulations that require employers to offer their employees health coverage or pay a penalty. They do not want to do anything that requires corporate America to do anything but what they want to do which is to fleece the American worker, ship our jobs overseas and pocket huge profits all while crashing our economy.
With that in mind, what did the Republicans do in 2006?? Despite the fact that they will not even require private corporations making huge profits to fund part of their employees healthcare in 2006 they forced to Post Office to PRE-FUND the healthcare of their workers who have not even retired yet. No other corporation or organization is forced to do this.
For those who critisize the Post Office, they have made numerous attempts to get themselves back in the black:
The Postal Service—a self-sustaining organization that receives no financial support from the government—is mounting an effort to get itself back into the black. But Corbett argues that he is hampered by an uneven playing field because the Postal Service is burdened with requirements not imposed on other government agencies or private companies.
For example, a major component of the turnaround plan is the Postal Service’s attempt to win some leeway on the big payments it’s required to make each year for retiree healthcare. This year it is due to pay $7.5 billion for retiree healthcare, $5.5 billion of which goes to a trust to fund future benefits. No other government organization is required to pre-fund retiree healthcare, Corbett notes, and only about a third of corporations do any pre-funding.
"It’s difficult to be a competitive business—and we’re out there competing every day—when you have a funding requirement of 10% of your revenues to go into retiree healthcare and your competitors have no such requirement," he says.
http://www.treasuryandrisk.com/...
Yes, it appears as with everything else the Republicans touch, they have destroyed the efficiency of the Post Office by requiring them to do things their private competitors and no other business is required to do. In fact, the Wall St. Journal in an editorial on Aug. 22 sought to ignore the fact that Republican rule placed unfair disadvantages on the Post Office and instead sought to attack them because they (gasps) pay good wages and provide benefits:
About 80 cents of every postal dollar pays for employee salaries and benefits (compared to less than 50 cents for Fed Ex and UPS). What that means is that if you want to cut costs at the post office, you have to slash labor expenses. Mr. Potter has reduced Postal Service employment to 650,000 from 800,000 the past four years, largely through attrition. But he still employs 650,000 workers who have among the best wages and benefits in all of American life.
Most employees have no-layoff clauses, the starting salaries are about 25% to 30% higher than for comparably skilled private workers, and the fringe benefits are so expensive that the Government Accountability Office says $500 million a year could be saved merely by bringing health benefits into line with those of other federal workers. Mr. Potter has to set aside $5 billion a year just to pay for health insurance. Postal management now wants to "save" money by not advance-funding those obligations, and Congress is likely to say yes. But that doesn't save a dime; it simply creates even larger unfunded liabilities down the road.
In a response to this article, the American Postal Workers Union President William Burrus set the record straight:
Your editorial "A Better Way to Go Postal" (Aug. 22) draws the wrong conclusion—suggesting an end to the world's most extensive, affordable and trusted postal system.
To set the record straight: Congress—not email or bad management—put the U.S. Postal Service in a financial bind in 2006, when it directed it to "prefund" retiree health-care benefits. That mandate—a burden shared by no other federal agency or business—costs the Postal Service more than $5 billion a year. Without the prefunding requirement, the Postal Service would have had a surplus of $1.2 billion for its 2008 and 2009 fiscal years. Congress should reverse this onerous requirement.
Electronic communication is not rendering the USPS obsolete. Mail volume reached its height in 2006, well after Americans began using email and the Internet on a mass scale. Mail volume has slumped by approximately 18% since then, but the loss is almost entirely due to a recession-driven decline in business mail. In the decades since taxpayer subsidies to the postal system ended, postage rates have mirrored the overall rate of inflation.It is deeply troubling that Journal editors advocate ending the Postal Service's exclusive right to sort and deliver mail. The Postal Service must remain a public service if we are to honor our nation's commitment to serve every American community—large or small, rich or poor, urban or rural—at affordable, uniform rates.
That tradition has served the nation's people and businesses well for more than 200 years. Americans trust the Postal Service, staffed by public employees sworn to protect the privacy of their mailboxes, to collect, process and deliver their mail.
William Burrus
President
American Postal Workers Union
Washington
So you see, as with everything else the Post Office was actually running a SURPLUS until Republicans got their hands on it. Their obsession with "starving the beast" so they can argue to privatize everything to the robber barons on Wall St. has not only crashed our economy but has literally bankrupted one of the most dependable and recognized services in our country. If Republicans and the Wall St. Journal want to know what is wrong with the Post Office they need only look in the mirror.
The House recently tried to ease this crisis with HR 22:
H.R. 22 would modify a provision of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act that requires the Postal Service to prefund the healthcare benefits of retirees from its operating budget. The funding obligation — combined with the nation’s economic downturn — has brought the USPS to the brink of insolvency.
The bill would allow the Postal Service to pay a portion of the benefits from the Postal Service Health Benefit Fund for three years, through Fiscal Year 2011, and is expected to save the USPS more than $2 billion per year. The relief provided by H.R. 22 comes "without a single dollar of taxpayer money," noted APWU Legislative and Political Director Myke Reid.
The House bill has 338 co-sponsors, so adoption by the full House appears certain. However, a companion bill has not yet been introduced in the Senate.
APWU President William Burrus praised the vote. "We are pleased by the vote and eager for H.R. 22 to become law," he said. "But we are mindful of the long-term financial challenges facing the Postal Service."
Consideration of H.R. 22 by the House is expected before Congress’ August recess.
We need to support HR 22 and urge passage of it in the Senate. As always with Republicans they have taken a successful government service, crashed it into a ditch and will use their own failures to argue to privitize it to corporate crooks who pay low wages and offer no benefits. As with all the failures in our country right now, the problems at the Post Office are rooted in Republican greed and idiocy.
People over 60 who consume moderate amounts of alcohol have a reduced risk for Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias, according to a large review of studies.
The analysis, which appeared in the July issue of The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, reviewed 15 studies that together followed more than 28,000 subjects for at least two years. All the studies controlled for age, sex, smoking and other factors. The studies variously defined light to moderate drinking as 1 to 28 drinks per week.
Compared with abstainers, male drinkers reduced their risk for dementia by 45 percent, and women by 27 percent.
The researchers acknowledge that studying the effects of alcohol on dementia is complicated by issues like beverage type, standards of quantity and individual behavior that may interact with alcohol to affect mental acuity. But there is ample evidence from other studies that moderate alcohol consumption can increase HDL, or “good cholesterol,” improve blood flow to the brain and decrease blood coagulation. All three factors may reduce the risk for dementia.
Still, the authors warn against drawing premature conclusions. “The overall safety ofalcohol use in later life,” they write, “needs to be evaluated in relation to all of the available evidence” about its health effects.
Hurricane Hugo and the Terrible Teens
