Friday's Odds and Ends

America's schools lose up to $175 billion a year through inefficient spending. And people are just now asking for financial accountability? According to an editorial in The Dallas Morning News, the same advocacy groups that called for academic accountability in school districts are now focusing on spending.

I wonder what took them so long.

Was it too much to ask that Christina Aguilera  sing the National Anthem as written, and maybe memorize all the words before performing in front of millions of people at the Super Bowl? It is embarrassing to hear so many celebrities butcher a song that is not all that hard to sing. My suggestion to future Super Bowl planners, select a young singer from one the the host city's school choirs to do the honors.

Speaking of Super Bowls. Dallas Mayer Pro-Tem, Dwaine Caraway gave Michael Vick the key to the city during  festivities leading up to the big game. That raised this question form a Dallas Morning News editorial, "Can any criminal with no discernible connection to Dallas get a key to the city?"  Dallas Morning News columnist Jacqueline Floyd  took issue with the fact that Caraway "hailed Vick as a hero." She pointed out that there is a vast difference between "forgiveness" and "adoration."

I'm just wondering why Caraway decided to honor Vick instead of one of the players from Pittsburgh or Green Bay who had come to play the game.

The city of Plano, Texas is looking for a new city manager and have hired a search firm to handle the selection process. Apparently they have narrowed the search to five people, one of whom said he never applied. The chief executive of the search firm had this to say I response, "He knew he was an applicant. We can't just grab resumes off the Web."

Uh, excuse me. Has he not heard of Monster.com?

According to a story in the Minneapolis Star Tribune last week, a woman was arrested after trying to send a puppy through the mail in a box. Supposedly it was to be a birthday gift for a relative in another state, but as the Minneapolis police officer said, "Some gift a dead puppy would have been."

No kidding.

Friday's Odds and Ends

First I want to acknowledge all my new followers. Glad to have you aboard and hope you find your visits worthwhile.

A recent letter to the editor in the Dallas Morning News responded to the lack of civility in public discourse. The person wrote, "As repugnant as it can be sometimes, this country embraces freedom of speech and permits the right to hate for all."

True, but that doesn't mean that we should all go into some sewer to make a point or join a debate.

We would all like to believe that bigotry is dead, yet people on Grand Isle in Louisiana got nervous when a group of minority workers showed up to keep beaches free from oil during the Gulf oil spill. According to a news story, the people were nervous because they were not used to seeing a "mass of people of color coming onto their isle."

Hmmm. What colors are their maids and gardeners?

Some company is offering bikini waxes for 8-year-old girls.

Not even worth a comment.

And finally, this word from the political arena.  The $600 million border security bill was passed in the senate recently with 98% of the chamber empty.  Senator Charles Schumer from New York and one other senator opened the session for 31 minutes and passed the bill. And Schumer actually nerve to gave a speech thanking "Everyone for their bipartisan support of the bill."

To whom was he speaking?

Any absurdities you might want to add to my list?

Friday's Odds and Ends

As football season gears up the news is full of stories about signing contracts and the high cost of buying an athlete. In perhaps one of the biggest deal this year, Sam Bradford got a $78 million, 4-year contract with the St Louis Rams. Thirty years ago a $30,000 signing bonus was considered a nice deal. Even taking into consideration the value of a dollar then and now, it is still obscene what athletes are getting. And the more they get the more they think need.

There's a syndicated cartoon, Plugger, that leads with "You know you're a Plugger when..." It pokes fun at people of a certain age and a certain economic status that is far, far below the lifestyle Sam Bradford will be enjoying. I came up with one, "You know your a Plugger when your after-dinner mint is a Tums."

Here are a few headlines from this past week:

Right-Wing Pundit Phyllis Schlafly Decries Government Assistance for "Unmarried Moms." Oh, right. Let's do all we can to encourage unwed mothers.


SEC Lets Citi Execs Go Free After $40 Billion Subprime Lie. And the thousands of people who lost their homes paid the ultimate price.

Puerto Rican Man Still Working at Age 104. Emilio Navarro, former professional baseball player for the Negro League, still works at the business he started and likes to go dancing. It is said he prefers to dance with blondes. You go, Emilio.


$3 million for Chelsea's wedding. Talk about a waste. How can people justify paying that much when so many others are struggling just to survive. One columnist wrote that Chelsea deserved it all because she has been such a model daughter. So wouldn't a nice wedding at about $100,000 have worked?

Right is Right, Wrong is Discretionary. No comment.

A Double Whammy of Absurdities

First,  I thought the story about the woman in a suburb of Dallas who was told she had to get rid of the tree stump in her front yard was the most absurd news item I read this week. According to the report, the stump has been in her yard for about 15 years and the city just now cited her for it.  The stump is huge. In fact, her son carved part of it into a seat where she can sit and watch the birds and the rabbits who frequently visit. It is a special place for her but apparently, the city does not care. There is an ordinance against having a dead tree stump on private property.

Could we all say "private property?"

As absurd as that is, however, it pales next to the story about a Homeowners Association in Texas that foreclosed on the home of a soldier  because he was late in paying his dues. The soldier was serving in Iraq at the time and apparently his wife did not open the mail that had the notices that the HOA payment  was overdue. The dues were $977 and the HOA sent several notices that were not responded to. So they foreclosed on the house and sold it at auction for $3, 201 to a man who later sold it for $135,000.

The house was originally purchased for $315,000.

Those who support the Texas law that allows foreclosures for non payment of HOA dues say that foreclosing is the only way that HOAs can compel people to pay the annual dues and abide by the other rules.

That reasoning is so absurd the person who drafted it ought to be tarred and feathered.

What do you think?

More Things I Didn't Make up

Homeowners associations can be of great benefit. You get to know your neighbors and you can all look out for each other in cases of emergencies or when you are traveling and need someone to water the plants. There is also some security in having an association as often there is a Neighborhood Watch program in effect that helps deter the criminal element.

On the downside, however, a homeowners association can get carried away with power and people can get cited for the most ridiculous infractions. A couple in Hoston wre fined for having gray tape on exterieor water lines. The association said the tape had to be black. The couple went to court and lost, so they ended up paying $20,000 for that lack of good taste.

Anyone knows black goes with everything.

One neighborhood association tried to dictate how many of a specific plant could be planted in a flowerbed. Sorry people, only five pansies to a plot.

Another association fined a couple in Texas for planting too many blue bonnets in their yard. Apparently this couple let the bluebonnets propagate at will, and neighbors found them unsightly.

Come on, folks. The Texas state flower is unsightly?

We almost moved into a gated community with a homeowners association when we came back to Texas 8 years ago, and I am so glad now that we didn't. I couldn't keep up with the fines we would receive because I mow around the early spring flowers that pop up in my front pasture area. I don't mow around all of them, mind you -- just a few here and there because they are so lovely and I can't bear to cut them down. The end result is that my pasture looks like some alien did crop circles there.


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Do you think homeowners associations have gone too far? Do you belong to one? What has been your experience.

I am Not Making This Up

Absurdities abound.

Yesterday I read a news story about a woman in Dallas who was clearing old, dead vines from a thicket along a park. Apparently there is a city ordinance that one cannot "cut, break, deface or in any way injure the trees shrubs, plants, grass, turf (just in case you don't know what grass is) , fountains, seats, fences, structures, improvements, ornaments or monuments or property within or upon any of the public parks."

Whew. Glad they covered all those bases.

The woman who did this dastardly deed, which led to an arrest and felony charge, is a 67 year old attorney. She was able to maintain a sense of humor and said she met lots of interesting people when she spent the night in jail. "I've never been in a perp walk before," she said. "It was cool."

The story in the Dallas Morning News reported that the woman had been cutting and removing briars, vines, and dead tree limbs from the wooded area of the park for several years. She never considered it "felonious gardening." She was just trying to be helpful.

This is another case where the strict adherance to the letter of the law is absurd. This woman was not hurting or defacing the shrubs. What she was doing was what many gardeners do to improve an area and encourage new growth. It was CLEAN UP. And, yes, I'm shouting.

Could we please use a little common sense when it comes to enforcing the law?

Purifying Merriam-Webster

I guess it is a sign that the economy must be getting better because people are now focusing on other such important issues as what words are in the dictionary.

This morning I read about a school district in California that has pulled all copies of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary from its shelves and formed a committee to study all entries in the reference book to determine if it has "age-inappropriate" words.

They'd better have a large committee. One report I read said that there are over 147,000 entries in that dictionary. That's a lot of scrutinizing. I hope someone brings them pizza and soft drinks to keep them fortified.

Apparently this all started when a student stumbled across the entry for "oral sex" that had the explicit definition. His parents were horrified that his young, tender eyes saw that definition and demanded that the school board do something. Some families are supporting the school's actions and say it's up to the district to do everything it can to shield children from explicit language.

Okay, how many of you did not EVER go to the reference section of the library to see what kind of titillating words you might find? Or how about those issues of National Geographic that showed half-naked people?

Let me see your hands..... I thought so.

Seeking out that kind of material was a natural rite of passage for children, along with playing "doctor" and all the other inquisitive things we did. Would we get in trouble if our parents caught us? Absolutely. Did it harm our little psyches? I don't think so. At least not for most of us.

Did our parents rush to ban the National Geographic from the library? Of course not. How absurd.

What is this World Coming To?

I was going to try to focus on fun topics for the next week or so leading up to the holidays, but recent news items are just begging for a rant. Actually not a rant, just an expression of dismay and perhaps a discussion about the absurdities of human nature, which is one of the reasons I write this blog. I think we all need to express our frustration with some of mankind or we might explode from trying to hold it all in.

One of the stories I read today was about a south Texas couple who put an aborted 7-month-old fetus in a gift box under a Christmas tree after they were unable to flush the remains down a toilet. The couple has been charged with abuse of a corpse and tampering with evidence. Police believe the woman used pills to induce an abortion last week, then called an ambulance after she began bleeding and told doctors she didn't know where the fetus was.

This is so absurd, I don't even know what to say. What were they thinking? Or were they even thinking?

A story I read yesterday also made me shake my head in disbelief. Apparently some parents in Detroit are so unhappy about the students there doing poorly on standardized tests that they want the teachers and administrators to go to jail.

That's right. Jail.

After release of a report showing fourth and eighth-grade students with the lowest math scores in the nation, Sharlonda Buckman of the Detroit Parent Network is reportedly pushing for prison time and civil lawsuits against teachers and officials in the school district who are not doing enough to educate the city's youth. She is reported to have said that someone needs to go to jail for this and it shouldn't be the kids.

I agree that educators need to be held accountable for their work, but this is a bit extreme, don't you think? Especially since the educator is only one third of a whole that makes for successful learning. The other two-thirds are parents and the student. And they all need to work together in harmony, not be setting up adversarial positions on something so vitally important as education.

And if any authority or court acts on this absurd request, I will really lose all hope in humanity.

What are your thoughts?

Another Rant

I hate to go from the fun of talking about pets to another rant, but you know me, I can't help myself.

A proposed bill to ban texting while driving has been all over the news today and reading about it made me stop and wonder why we need a law to tell us not to do something that is so obviously dangerous. Are we all that dense that we can't figure that out for ourselves?

In another part of one of the news stories on CNN, the reporter quoted from a recent study that found that "drivers who text while on the road are much more likely to have an accident than an undistracted driver."

Again, I have to say, "Duh?" Did we have to pay for a study that came to the same conclusion a five-year-old would have for the price of an ice-cream cone?

When I first heard about the study on the national news the other night, I burst out laughing. There was Charles Gibson in all his earnestness giving the story his all, quoting the statistics and issuing the warning. Watching him, I couldn't help but wonder if under the facade of seriousness there wasn't a part of him that found the story as absurd as I did. Of course distracted drivers are going to have more accidents than drivers who are not distracted.

Now I want my ice-cream cone.