Archive for the Soap Box category
May 8th, 2007
Some days I’m really glad the doctors told me not to eat red meat.
The Maine Department of Agriculture says a Greene company is voluntarily recalling nearly a ton of beef. Bubier Farms says nearly 2,000 pounds of beef may be contaminated with fecal matter, a common source of E-Coli bacteria.
State officials say 1,936 pounds of beef may be contaminated with fecal material, as well as other contaminants. The problem was discovered by a federal inspector earlier this week. Officials say the inspector found fecal matter and hair on slabs of beef inside a cooler at Bubier Meats.
Bubier meats is a
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Tags: beef, red meat, food contamination e. coli, Bubier Farms, Maine Department of Agriculture, Maine
May 2nd, 2007
This is the type of dog treat that made Wookie so sick. IAMS tartar treats are allegedly 100% edible and digestible. And… supposedly, they are also hard enough that they won’t break into chunks large enough to disrupt digestion.
The treats puff up when they get wet, so Wookie had two 1″ x 1.5″ pieces, floating around (chewed - but undigested) in his stomach for nine days. The pieces resembled wet particle board. The “treat” caused him diarrhea, vomiting and severe abdominal pain. He lost over 10% of his body weight in a week and is still an inpatient at Virginia Tech’s teaching hospital.
So far, we’ve spent $1500.00 and made seven vet visits. (and even now… we’re not 100% sure he’s OK)
If you have dogs… please think twice about giving them these treats. It just isn’t worth the risk.
Uploaded by letskyce on 2 May ‘07, 8.01am EDT.
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Tags: IAMS Tartar treat, Pug, puppy, dog, diarrhea, vomiting, severe abdominal pain, Virginia Tech, Wookie
May 2nd, 2007
Remember when we were kids and in the Summer we’d all try to do odd jobs in the neighborhood to earn money? That was before we were old enough to work in the Winn Dixie or Pizza Hut. Generally, there’d be a lot of errand running on our bikes or babysitting.
But there would be this one lucky kid who cornered the market every Summer on mowing people’s lawns. He’d rack in the dough.
Where is that kid now?
Seriously.
I totally want to hire him.
I don’t think kids do that sort of stuff any more. I never
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Tags: none
December 11th, 2006
I used to think those games you play at office Christmas parties were pretty fun. You know the ones, right? Everyone buys a gift under a certain amount of money and then there’s a swapping type game. Some people call it Yankee Swap, White Elephant, Santa Swap, Rob Your Neighbor, Grinch Exchange, etc., etc.
I’ve never played it the same way twice either. The rules are constantly changing as far as how you can steal a present, whether it’s before or after you’ve picked a gift from the pile, how many times a present can be stolen
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Tags: Yankee Swap, White Elephant, Grinch
December 6th, 2006
Since moving to a location that necessitates the use of the Turnpike and therefore paying for the Turnpike twice a day, I have discovered just how much in a hurry other drivers appear to be. Some are far more excited about getting to work or school in the morning than I am, I guess, and it doesn’t seem to matter if I’m at the exact change toll booth at 7:30am or 8:15am. There is always someone a car or two behind me so entirely anxious to get to work that they cannot wait for me to put my exact change
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Tags: soap box, speeding
November 17th, 2006
I don’t know why, but I’m always a little shocked at what people will ask for on my Freecycle list. If you don’t know what Freecycle is, it’s an international network of people, “who are giving (& getting) stuff for free in their own towns. Each local group is moderated by a local volunteer (them’s good people).” Basically there’s mailing lists broken down to regional areas all over the world and
When you want to find a new home for something — whether it’s a chair, a fax machine, piano, or an old door — you simply send an
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Tags: greed, Freecycle
November 17th, 2006
90 - Percentage of people who consider their pet dog or cat to be a family member.
60 - Percentage of pets that are overweight.
45 - Percent of owners of overweight pets who say their pet is in “ideal” shape.
Source: Health, Nov. 2006.
You mean there are people who don’t think that their pets aren’t part of the family?
Of course, now I’m wondering when the t.v. shows for helping your pets lose weight are going to start on Animal Planet. I mean, you can already buy doggy treadmills — People, just walk your
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Tags: interesting trivia, pets, dog treadmill
October 10th, 2006
I am a Pro-Choicer. I believe in the right to choose. I’ll just state that out in the open. You won’t change my mind on that.
And not that it’s any of your business but I’ve never had an abortion nor do I expect to. I also have no children nor do I plan to.
However, I do have many questions about the Pro-Life/Anti-Abortion view. Mind you, I don’t expect to change your mind either. I’m just curious and interested in a two-way discussion. All (non-hateful) views are welcome.
I find that once I start thinking about the whole when-is-a-baby-a-life debate, I’m just
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Tags: abortion, pro-choice, anti-abortion, pro-life
September 26th, 2006
I saw this the other day and couldn’t help but think that this cartoon represents the quintessential problem with world today, particularly with Americans. No one is listening to each other. I really want to say that hard-core rightwingers are the worst perpetrators, but really it’s the hard-core anyones — rightwingers just happen to be the most visible right at the moment in the U.S.
Tags: Dilbert, cartoons, Scott Adams
September 16th, 2006
I saw the creepiest and most inappropriate commercial last night for a local church. It starts off looking like one of those sports shoe or drink commercials where they’re going to tell you to “Just Do It” or make you feel that everything is attainable if you just drink their blue sugar water. There’s a guy on some high man-made structure out in nature. The sun is shining, he’s drinking from a sports bottle, there’s inspirational music playing, he’s about to bungee jump. The music climaxes. He holds up the drink to the sky and then jumps. The bungee cord
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Tags: Christian, inappropriate advertising
September 8th, 2006
I haven’t seen it. I can only comment on what I’ve read. There seems to be a lot of posting flurry going on. Plus, it’s been covered by the MSM.
So, I can’t really comment on the actual movie because as I said I haven’t seen it. I wasn’t one of the ones chosen to preview it. I’m apparently not right-leaning enough if what the rumors say is true. I do find it odd that ABC didn’t honor President Clinton’s office’s request for an advanced copy but handed it out to all of those right-wing bloggers. That just smacks of
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Tags: ABC 9/11 Docu-Drama, lie, truth, Bill Clinton, rightwinger
September 7th, 2006
Have you seen this commercial?
It’s one of the Army Reserve recruting comercials. It’s the one where the son and the dad are talking and the son keeps telling the dad that “it’s the Reserves” and the dad keeps repeating “but it’s the Army”. The son keeps trying to reassure the father that it’s not really the Army because he can still go to college and it’s “just the Reserves;” the Reserves’ll do all of the training “around here until they need me”. In the end, the father is convinced because it’s the Reserves and not the Army so everything is
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Tags: Army Reserves
August 8th, 2006
Posted
in
Politics & Causes,
Books, Music, Movies, & T.V.,
Geekery,
Soap Box,
The World,
Featured,
Iraq & Afghanistan,
The Middle East by
n. mallory
Late last week the following exerpt was going around the liberal blogosphere as more evidence of President Bush’s cluelessness from the White House:
A year after his “Axis of Evil” speech before the U.S. Congress, President Bush met with three Iraqi Americans, one of whom became postwar Iraq’s first representative to the United States. The three described what they thought would be the political situation after the fall of Saddam Hussein. During their conversation with the President, Galbraith claims, it became apparent to them that Bush was unfamiliar with the distinction between Sunnis and Shiites.
Galbraith reports that the three of them
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Tags: Iraq, George W. Bush, Peter Galbraith, Spin City, Islam, Sunnis, Shiites
comments See also in
Politics & Causes, Books, Music, Movies, & T.V., Geekery, Soap Box, The World, Featured, Iraq & Afghanistan, The Middle East
August 8th, 2006
Reading this article, I’m reminded of all of those people who insist that American soldiers never ever commit autrocities and to so much as think such a thing, particularly in a time of war, is akin to treason. To utter or print the words, to repeat them, to say you witnessed such things — these are the worst kinds of sins, far worse than murdering, torturing and raping innocent civillians, particularly those innocent civillians American soldiers are meant to protect and liberate.
NEW YORK A study of declassified Army documents by the Los Angeles Times on Sunday found that the killings of civilians by U.S. soldiers during the Vietnam war were far more numerous than previously known — and went largely unpunished. In total, 320 incidents of abuse by U.S. soldiers are substantiated.
“Abuses were not confined to a few rogue units,” the Times reported. “They were uncovered in every Army division that operated in Vietnam.”
Atrociities by U.S. troops in Iraq are currently gaining wide attention.
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Tags: Vietnam, American soldiers, Iraq
August 1st, 2006
When you think about the possibilities…when you consider what lives might be helped…when you consider that in hundreds of labs around the world unused, unwanted embryos are never going to become anything more than lifeless chemical waste…when asked, if you did your part, however little for stem-cell research, what will you say?
If I had the chance, if it were me, in the position of someone who’d had the opportunity to go through the man-made miracle of in-vitro fertilization, I think I’d want to give a little back to man and science, if I could. After all, without those researchers looking for miracles, my own miracle wouldn’t be possible, would it? Is that too much to ask? Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: stem cell research, George W. Bush, Australia, IVF, embryo
July 19th, 2006
Remember when Right-wingers used to make the argument that the war was justifiable because of all of those people Saddam had killed? Remember how the death toll under all of those years under Saddam was much worse than anything we could do?
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — More than 14,000 civilians have been killed in Iraq in the first half of this year, an ominous figure reflecting the fact that “killings, kidnappings and torture remain widespread” in the war-torn country, a United Nations report says.
Killings of civilians are on “an upward trend,” with more than 5,800 deaths and more than 5,700
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Tags: Iraq, Saddam Hussein, death toll
June 9th, 2006
The other morning, I drove into the parking garage like every other morning. We share it with the hotel next door, some nearby office buildings and the general public. This means that sometimes it’s fuller than others and sometimes there’s a moron or two wandering around. That morning, there was a fully licensed one.
I wasn’t even to the top of the first ramp and there was a car that wanted to back out. I thought to myself about what a lucky break that was. I should have realized that it never is lucky.
As I watched,
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Tags: soap box, pet peeves
June 6th, 2006
- I don’t care who’s flag you’re flying…I swear I don’t care if you feel the need to fly the Mexican flag, the American flag, or the Confederate flag on your flagpole. Mostly I’m tired of people complaining about what people should be flying or what it means or who it’s insulting.
What kills me is that all of those people who are demanding that the American flag be honored above all others don’t seem to care that no one seems to bother taking them down every night or in bad weather anymore. There are hundreds of those dirty tattered little car
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Tags: Dixie Chicks, Gay Rights, GOP
April 12th, 2006
TLC’s been running these “Life’s Lessons” commercials lately that are kind of funny and cute. People get little collectible trophy/figurines of horrible life mistake moments like a a husband who won’t turn the tv off while his wife is trying to neck or a woman yelling at someone and a little girl mimicing her and on and on. I like the one where the little girl is on the phone gossiping and telling whoever is on the other line about someone who has a new man every Friday and a new car in her driveway every Friday and
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Tags: TLC, soap box
April 9th, 2006
I was in the grocery store yesterday, waiting in the checkout line and I noticed this little boy of about six to eight years of age. He was kneeling in front of the candy in the checkout line in front of me though his mother was unloading her full cart two lines down. He zipped up his coat, took a Hershey bar and slid it into the neck of his coat. When he stood up, the candy bar slid out the bottom. He immediately reached down, grabbed the bar and tried again.
So, here’s my question: At this point, would you tell the boy’s mother, tell the boy to put the candy bar back, tell a store employee, or ignore it and mind your own business, thinking about the Netflix movie that arrived in your mailbox today?
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Tags: none
