A political dig? Or am I being oversensitive?

I’ve mentioned before how much my Psych text irritates me. The discussions of Erikson, Piaget, Vigotsky etc. Are interesting, but it never misses a chance to show that the United States is really, really bad — worse than Romania and Japan and just about everywhere else — when it cones to life expectancy. Or ageist stereotypes. Or glass ceilings. It irks the hell out of me.

So, when I ran across this chart, I assumed it was another slap at my political viewpoint:

(sorry for the size, but it’s not readable otherwise)

I read it and thought, Yup, those stick-in-the-mud conservatives! They’re all scared of change and new experience and would never go traveling, or pet a turtle, or try riding a horse, or shooting a machine gun, or climb a mountain. Nope! Only liberals are cool and open!!

But maybe I’m jumping to conclusions. After all, a lot of folks who think like me don’t label themselves conservatives. Maybe they didn’t mean the political labels but were speaking generally of temperament and the attitude toward life.

What do you think?

She owns a shotgun named Luciver. I think I’m gonna like this girl.

We had a “Study Group” last night for our A&P Final (digestive system and reproductive system, yippee). I use quotes because it ended up being about an hour of studying followed by dinner, dessert and lots and lots of conversation 🙂 Of the three women I had over last night, two of them are very interested in learning to shoot.

The woman I mentioned in the post title — let’s call her Lacey — owns a shotgun for home defense. She practices with it when her father comes to town but is still a little nervous about it. Apparently she tried shooting his pistol once, but it was a .45 (I think) and kicked a lot and kind of frightened her. Also, she swears she was so bad at handling it that she’s much more accurate with her shotgun than a pistol!

So. We’re going to the range next Wednesday night! I’m going to have her double up on ear protection and play with Siguito the Mosquito and Siguette. If I can’t get her to be more accurate with a .22 than a shotgun, I’ll eat my hat.

Oh. And have I mentioned this woman looks like Barbie? Highlighted hair, blue eyes, and she works in a plastic surgery clinic; I’m fairly sure they play with Botox and other stuff when they’re bored.

I’ve said it before — Centerfire is a language that crosses all boundaries.

Wow, Easter’s an actual holiday? Who knew?

We went over to Mike’s parents’ house yesterday for a lovely Easter dinner. Our contribution was a baked-from-scratch chocolate triple-layer cake held together with homemade whipped cream and coated in homemade frosting.

Now, there are two ways this could have come about:

A) Lissa decided that she was FAR too good a baker to bring a STORE-BOUGHT birthday cake, that she would never deign to stoop so low, and did it all herself. Or …

B) She pulled up to an absolutely empty Publix parking lot Sunday morning and went, “Oh sh*t. Easter. Holiday. Oh CRAP!!”

Yeah.

I turned my cupboard inside out, sent Mike to Walmart for half and half and whipping cream, and made this:

How was your Easter? 🙂

Introducing Mermaid Anorexic Barbie!

Wait … You mean that’s a real person??? Oh … My bad …

Phase 1: Task Force!

Driving into work today, the Radio People threw out a teaser that Pres Obama was “finally going to do something about those high gas prices!”

Ho boy. I knew it wasn’t going to be anything useful in the long-term (like opening up some drilling sites or building a nuclear plant) but though it might be a short term gesture. You know, release some of the strategic petroleum reserve,something like that.

Nope! “A presidential task force to investigate fraud and price gouging.” Because, as the Radio People gleefully informed me, all you have to do is drive by a gas station and you know SOMEONE’s ripping you off!!!

*facepalm*

I am sure this new commission will be every bit as successful as the Debt Commission was.

In other words, break out the bicycles!!

Superhero capes to fight unemployment. My god, Florida is BRILLANT.

SERIOUSLY??????

Dubbed the ‘Cape-A-Bility Challenge,’ it was slated to be part of a public-relations campaign featuring a cartoon character named ‘Dr. Evil Unemployment.’ The capes cost about $14,200 and foam cutouts of ‘Dr. Evil Unemployment’ cost another $2300.

Yesterday there were pictures posing with this doofus-y looking Evil Unemployment dude, but apparently they’ve been pulled. I can’t imagine why.  Also, the original story cited a $73K cost.

Widespread outrage — combined with ridicule, scorn and bafflement, no doubt — has led to killing the campaign.

Obviously, if you can’t fight unemployment by spending government money on satin-y superhero capes for people without jobs, then the terrorists have won.

What to get your sweetie if he’s a gunnie

A subtle encouragement to keep cleaning our guns after we go shooting? Maybe!

That’s a cleaning mat showing the different components of a Sig 229. Pretty cool, no? 🙂

Gunnie gifts

It’s coming up on our second anniversary and so I ordered a cute lil’ present for Mike.

The best part?

I got the idea from my boss 🙂

I’ll share the secret on Monday!

More grumbling about my psych professor

Look.  I know it’s a community college.  I know she’s not getting paid as much as she wants.  I know that she has a daughter and probably lives a busy life.  I actually think she’s a nice person.  So, there’s that.

On the other hand — THE PROFESSOR PART OF MY PROFESSOR IS DRIVING ME UP THE EVER-LOVIN’ WALL.

We had a current events assignment (due today).  I’m irritated at the assignment because we have to do twenty articles and I know DAMN well she’s not going to read more than three of them.  We have to do twenty so that it’s a “term-end” kind of assignment, and then she’ll grab a few at random and grade the project accordingly.  I hope she picks some good ones.  Whatever.

Here’s the irksome part — we have to submit it to turnitin.com before hard copy submission in class.

No, I don’t care about my work being checked for plagiarism; I’ve never plagiarized anything in my life, so I could care less about proving it.

What drove me batsh*t InSaNe was . . . I needed the class ID to create an account.

Now, you might think that since the turnitin.com requirement was written on the syllabus, she might have included the ID information there.

No.

You might think it would be on the current events assignment sheet.

No.

You might think she would send an email to the class with the ID information.

Oh, no!

Instead, she mentioned it *once* on March second.  I had to comb through pages and pages of handouts and notes and scribbles to find that I’d jotted it down at the end of one class when someone asked.

HATE-RAGE HATE-RAGE HATE-RAGE.

I hope she got about fifty emails between last night and this morning asking for the ID.  It would serve her right.

grrrrr . . . .  . .

But remember, the Republicans want to snoop in your bedroom!!

Oh, for the love of Pete.

Driving to work this morning, I was treated to a Jay G-worthy blast of rage. No, it wasn’t the commute. The drivers were no worse than usual, my car is comfy and cozy, and Rajah* had made me coffee to drink along the way.

No, my fury — combined with a hefty dose of WHAT THE F*** IS WRONG WITH YOU?!?!? — was aimed squarely at the school administrators in Chicago who are banning homemade lunches. They’re making all the students buy school lunches because they’re “healthier.”

*cue the exploding head*

Mind you, it’s not about forcing each student to shell out $2.25 to the school each day, oh, no. It’s that the SCHOOL knows better — and can/will provide better — than the parents. It’s for their own good. In loco parentis. Why trust parents to feed their children correctly, anyway? The school board knows best.

This is CHICAGO. The very epitome of deep-blue. Yet the folks who scream hysterically at parents who don’t want their kids to take Sex Ed at age ten are fine with the school literally dictating what their children can ingest on a daily basis.

Shiva WEPT.

Here’s the link (iPhone sucks at links): http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2011/04/12/2011-04-12_chicago_public_school_bans_kids_from_bringing_lunch_forcing_them_to_eat_cafeteri.html?r=news/national

I’m sure others are blogging about this latest nanny-state insanity, so I’ll paste links as I find them.

*I tend to think that Mike makes the coffee, but he swears that Rajah does it. Who am I to argue?

UPDATE: Sure enough, here’s Jay: http://stuckinmassachusetts.blogspot.com/2011/04/non-ma-nanny-run-amok.html