The Weekly Notes 2008

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Weekly Notes:

July 28, 2008

 

The Stupid FDA:

The farmers had to plow their tomato crops under losing millions of dollars. No one would buy the harvest after the stupid FDA said they were contaminated with salmonella bacteria. Now the fools at FDA have decided they were not the carriers after all. Should we say woops? Try saying woops to a farmer who has lost his livelihood in this latest government fiasco. Does anyone remember when they all but destroyed the apple industry with false reports on Alar? They said it was dangerous to humans. That was a lie based on ignorance. Does anyone remember the cranberry debacle when they tried to wipe out the cranberry industry in their prime season with another phony report? Why do we trust these fools? They are less than useless. They are a constant threat to human health and to our economy. They are and choose to be ignorant. I think I would sooner trust Merck.

 

A new drug;

We have a new drug for old-timers disease. It is called Dimebon. According to the test results, it not only arrests the advance of Alzheimer’s, it improves memory. This could be a super breakthrough. Mrs. Gaffer is terribly frightened of this problem. She had a relative who suffered from some kind of age related dementia and she concluded it must have been Alzheimer’s. As do we all, Mrs. Gaffer tends to forget things sometimes. However, she does not see it as normal, but as the early stages of this disease. It does not help for me to tell her she does not forget more now than she did when we first met. She does not believe it when I tell her she could not remember my name on our second date. She just puts her fists on her hips and stares at me. If she forgets to do that or forgets who I am now, I will believe she has Alzheimer’s. Otherwise, she is the same as thee and me. She forgets sometimes.

 

The N Word:

They showed us a repeat clip on ABC of an old charade where a gang of black people was pretending to bury the N word. They had a wooden coffin and went through some silly nonsense. I’m not sure if this rerun was a response to what Jessie Jackson did. It could be. The truth is black people use that word more often that the rest of us. I do not use it at all. There are much more subtle ways to insult someone I decide to dislike. I don’t need to use a crude epithet.

 

Cuisine in Flint:

For variety in dining, Flint is a non-city. I am 77 years old and I had never had Japanese food in this incarnation. I do not count the steakhouse I visited one time. You know it; a gang of people sits around a table with the silly guy with the whirling knives cutting stuff up. That stuff is completely Americanized around here. It just pretends to be Japanese. Well, recently, we visited my twin brother in Trenton, Michigan.  I assure you, Trenton, a suburb of Detroit, is not a major city. While there, my brother knew I had never tasted Japanese food so he took us to a local Japanese restaurant.

 

He ordered for us, and I later saw some items on the menu that I might have tried had I ordered myself. I think my ordering would have improved it for Mrs. Gaffer and me. When we got home, I wanted to do it my way so I looked in vain for a Japanese restaurant near my home. I was not able to find one. The best I found was a Sushi bar. We will try it, of course, but it was not what I wanted. I know Flint is a blue-collar town, but so is Trenton. I think some Japanese folk are missing a golden opportunity here. I’m sure there would be a customer base in a city of 250 thousand plus. There must be a Japanese population and some people who just like to experience different flavors as we do. The same is true of Chinese food. There is a good place in our local village, but not a decent one in Flint unless you count buffets and carry out places.

 

Cash Advance:

In Flint Michigan, someone robbed one of those cash advance places. They are the ones who charge more than 50% interest when they compound it. Once they get a hook into someone, it’s financial doom for that person. I cannot say I am heart broken over their being taken down by a lesser crook than they are. They keep a drawer full of cash so they can loan a trivial amount of money to the people they are planning to rip. I don’t think the cops should waste time on that. As the saying goes, “My dog ain’t in that fight!” If it was, I’m not sure which side I would be on.

 

It’s a Gas:

Our local ABC television station makes me giggle sometimes when they pretend they can cover the national news. They have two prime time hours every day to do news and in my opinion, they do not do a good job of covering the local news. They breeze over important news without giving us names and points of interest, then they will spend long minutes on some trivial stuff that is of limited interest. I think if they had only fifteen minutes to do it, they would do a better job. They should leave the national news to Charlie Gibson. He does it well. He studied under a master, Peter Jennings.

 

Get Honest:

This handful of people who call themselves Vets for Freedom should get honest. They should call themselves Vets for McCain. They are not fooling anyone who does not want to be fooled. Even the knee jerk Republicrumbs probably know the truth.

 

Verizon:

I am still searching for a way to replace Verizon with some kind of reliable service. Today, our landline went out again, as it often does. It is good we had a cell phone to call in the problem. The bad part is the cell phone does not work here. Mrs. Gaffer had to drive over to the local village to find enough bars to make a call. Normally, they will promise to have the service restored within 24 hours. This time they promised 3 days. What that means is, a lot of people called in with the same complaint and they don’t have a clue of where to look for the problem. I would still like to see a federal effort like TVA to bring wireless phone service to the millions of people who are in dead zones. There are some local efforts, but they really are local. The service area is very limited. Only a federal effort would handle it.

 

I did Not Read It:

I got an email on my server the other day addressed to topguy@wesoomi.com from some fool. It contained 1272 blocks of data. Needless to say, I did not download it so I did not read it. The header I did look at contained a title for what looked like some kind of a book or story, apparently about robots. My best guess is the email was the full text of the tome. Duh!

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