Right there in front of God and everybody

I'm a little rusty on my Dante, but isn't there a special level of hell for perverts who try to seduce children during an Easter Sunday church service? Is it located somewhere near the place reserved for slayers of border collies?

Police say a convicted sex offender was arrested after he allegedly passed a sexually explicit note to a nine-year-old girl during Easter Sunday church services.

Fifty-three-year-old Robert J. Duke of Clarksburg was arrested Monday and charged with distributing obscene matter to a minor with intent to seduce the minor.

(Associated Press)

Taking Heinous to a Whole New Level

Every border collie I've ever known is smarter than this incredibly evil individual.

A Berkeley County man has been charged with killing his family's dog with two pickaxes because the pet was named Felony and that reminded him he had recently been charged with a felony.
(from an Associated Press report)

(Note: the dog was an 11-year-old border collie. That info appears later in the story)

May he be herded into the fiery depths of hell by a mob of angry border collies.

How does killing a dog because of its name make sense to anyone, even the criminally stupid?

"Local Woman Loves the Lord"

Again, I'm not kidding. This is a direct quote. It's the banner headline on the front page of the free newspaper distributed to all households in this area. There's nothing really wrong with the headline, nor is there anything wrong, of course, with loving the Lord, but doesn't it strike you as a bit Onion-esque? While not as entertaining as The Onion, the story is a decent one about a woman's mission trips, with lots of details about her travels. Still, the headline makes me snort.

Gradually Moving Toward Wellness

After about a week of stumbling around and whining (to the cats, as there is no one else here), I'm finally beginning to shake this un-well state. I went to the McDoctor at one of the nearby walk-in clinics to get the antibiotic du jour -- twice. There's no way to know if what I had/have really required an antibiotic, but there seems to be a certain amount of pressure - from some people I encounter - to get an antibiotic. Anything less seems to be considered acting negligently, and you know there is nothing worse than not taking one's wellness seriously.

"Did you get any medicine yet? When I was sick last month, I got XKCLVJALDKFJ antibiotic and it cleared me right up."

"Have you gone to the doctor? My sister got !#$!%! antibiotic. Maybe you should ask for that one."

Sigh. And I should ask for fries with that, too. A McDoctor Extra Value Meal. I probably had a stupid run-of-the-mill cold, for which there's no cure, but I spent well over $100 on pills and office visits because being un-well for more than two days cannot be tolerated.

The Church of Holy Thoroughness

Today I saw a local advertisement for a church called (no kidding, no exaggeration, I swear):

Word Faith Ministry Full Gospel Jesus Holy Ghost House of Prayer

Let's hope the parishioners tithe using cash, because I can't imagine writing that on a check.

Wellness is Making Me Sick

Everywhere I turn, someone is trying to convince me to be "well," and, frankly, it's getting on my last nerve.

Needless to say, my health insurance company really, REALLY wants me to be well. Their website lists wellness programs under a variety of different names, sometimes twice in the same list of links - you know, just in case someone would overlook that first link and miss the all-important wellness message. They periodically send a newsletter offering new ideas for me to keep myself well. As I am an utter moron, these helpful tips are just what I need. Fruits and vegetables good, fast food bad. Sweet Lord, I never would have guessed. Thank you, insurance company, for imparting your wisdom.

That the same insurance company is much less eager to pay for my monthly injections, which are truly required to keep me well. Wellness is good, but only when it's free or someone else is paying.

State government leaders also want to keep me well, and more importantly, they want to keep children well by yanking "unheathlful" products out of public schools. According to a recent news article, the governor wants to make it mandatory that all children in all grades be weighed and have their body mass index computed on an annual basis. That's right. There aren't enough opportunities to humiliate children as it is. Let's weigh them each year and really torture the chubby kids. And what - if they only knew their BMI they'd "do something about" their weight? (Ok, must stop - this is really worthy of a separate rant.)

I don't blog about work, but since the wellness bug is so widespread, I don't think I'm giving anything away by saying that my employer, too, is quite concerned about my wellness. Well, concerned to the point of hammering it into my head day in and day out the various wellness programs I should try (on my own time, of course, and at my own cost). I should walk, and walk and walk and walk and walk some more. I should go hear speakers talk about nutrition. I should eat right. I should do this, do that, and be WELL, damn it.

I suppose there is some slim chance this gag-worthy campaign is being conducted out of genuine concern - an extraordinarily slim chance. Employers seem to race to tell employees to "be well," but they certainly don't seem to see any connection between low pay and wellness. Don't bother suggesting to them that paying employees a little more might help their overall wellness. For example, have you seen the price of apples and other fresh fruit? I spent $10 on apples during my last grocery store visit. That was one-third of my total grocery bill. Hmmm - a giant bag of store-brand potato chips or two apples? If you're trying to buying filling snacks for your hungry kids and have very limited funds, what do you buy?

But what I really want is for them just to leave me alone, even though I'm generally very concerned about my health and have been on a diet since at least 4th grade (that's an entirely different rant, too). There's something insulting to me about the constant barrage of wellness messages, especially when I know that the intent is not to help me live a better life but to keep down costs or, in the case of my employer, to increase productivity and keep down costs.

What I think they would really appreciate is if I just dropped dead without having any type of extended illness. "We want you to walk and eat right and be WELL, but if you can't be well, please, please, just drop dead quickly and don't cost us much money. And if sudden death isn't an option with your family medical history, be sure to keep euthanasia in mind." It would be more genuine to just put a Dr. Kevorkian-style suicide machine in the break room so un-well employees could off themselves (of course, then they'd feel compelled to post a sign above the machine stating, "Employees committing suicide are required to give two-weeks notice").

Oh yeah, by the way, did I mention that I'm getting a cold and am in a really pissy mood?

Never accuse us of acting too hastily

Hey, maybe we should see if this whole integration thing takes hold before we do something rash like change the constitution.

House OKs removal of segregationist language
Wording in constitution eluded 1990s cleanup

1990s? Nearly 40 years after the Supreme Court decision? It took four decades to get around to that?

Sigh.

House Blogging - The Basement Saga

To you, it's just a cement block wall painted gray. To me, it is a GLORIOUSLY BEAUTIFUL gray wall, because it has taken me all the blessed winter to apply waterproof paint to my basement walls. Finally - FINALLY - I'm nearing the end of the project.

Here's how the same corner looked before Drylock.

For those of you who don't know - and I hope that's almost everyone - putting on Drylock paint is not as simple as painting your typical interior walls. First, you have to chisel out loose mortar and fill all the cracks. For me, that was the most tedious part. I bought a chisel especially for the chore, but I wound up using a screwdriver instead. My father remarked that that "wasn't too good for the screwdriver." Yeah, yeah, but screwdrivers are cheap.

After that, you have to remove all the effervescence (see white stuff in the before photo above) using the special Drylock etch product. Rinse the surface, let it dry, and then, finally, you're ready to paint.

At least two coats are required, and the paint doesn't roll on like normal paint. First of all, it's about the consistency of stiff cake frosting. You're supposed to use a stiff paint brush to apply the first coat. After that you can use a roller, but I stuck to the brush.

Michelle was smart. She and her husband did this process before they moved into their house. I have so much junk in the basement, and nowhere to move it, so I had to just keep moving the junk from corner to corner while I did the whole Drylock process on each little section.

Cost for the materials was right around $300. I can't even begin to count the woman-hours required to complete the project.

Hillbilly Bird Watching

A couple of the pheasants came back today. They dined on spilled seed from the birdfeeders and some stale saltines I threw out this morning. (crappy digital camera doesn't do them justice)

So long, Martha

The AP is reporting that the "domestic diva" will be leaving the cozy confines of Alderson in just a matter of hours - between 12:30 & 1:30 a.m. Whisked away from the hardscrabble hills in the middle of the night - just perfect.

Tonight on one of the local TV channels, an Alderson resident was interviewed briefly and said that even though they had not seen Martha, she was so "dynamic" they could feel her presence in the town of Alderson. Yes, so dynamic that she inspired numerous T-shirts and landed the town hundreds of crocus bulbs. I predict the next round of T-shirts will say something like "Someone famous came to stay here and all we got were these crummy crocus bulbs."

Another Educator Hall of Shame Candidate Emerges

A Braxton County Middle School teacher has been charged with having sex with four children under the age of 16. State Police last night filed eight charges of third-degree sexual assault against 37-year-old Toni Lynn Woods of Strange Creek.

Strange Creek indeed.

UPDATE: See also Jerry's take on the matter, the Charleston Gazette (this article states that Woods was an asst. wrestling coach and her husband is head coach), FoxNews,

Of all the things that merit public outrage
Well, I hope everyone's pleased, getting that horribly unfeminine statue scrapped. Yeah, it would have been a real disgrace to have a muscular woman wearing a t-shirt representing the state's female veterans. Would've ranked right up there with vote-buying and the meth lab epidemic on the list of disgraceful things in the Mountain State.

Speaking of things that might not really deserve all the attention they've been getting, lawmakers are fervently working to preserve a child's "right to nurse" (i.e. breastfeeding in public) . Is this really a huge issue? How many babies have had their nursing rights violated in this state? (Kansas is also addressing this critical issue, by the way)

I don't have a problem with people breastfeeding in public. If you can't deal with the comments from others (as mentioned in the Kansas news article), then don't do it, and I would advise you to work on developing a thicker skin (so to speak) because this will be just the first of many such trials related to your child. Wait till the kid starts getting teased at school. There are incredibly stupid, rude people in the world, and passing a law isn't going to shut their mouths.