News in Briefs

Sent  by my Coworker
to the Entire Staff Today

You gotta keep on your toes where I work. Too many overeducated people with too much time on their hands. And today was no exception.

In response to this email from her boss who sent an inadvertently provocative email to all staff, my colleague Catherine sent this "artwork" back to the entire staff.

This email got a personal thank you from me in return.

Sent: Wednesday, October 23, 2013 10:22 AM
To: Reporters; Editors
Cc: Art
Subject: Potential Chart/Graph Material

Please let me know if you have any material for charts or graphs that could go with the briefs. Thanks.

(Just so you know, briefs are shorthand in our office for "news in brief" a section of the paper!)

American Exceptionalism

Thanks to you, my work colleague Ross Brenneman, I have lost 5 minutes of my life that I can never get back. Now, I bring you this treat.

He sent around the office an images from "Heidi Hits Children" (@heiditron3000, which linked me to this guy's blog on Tumblr. Which let me to this:

Isn't this like a sign out of "Mad Max?"

Which in addition to reminding me of why I kinda hate my hometown—because it was covered in stripmalls with signs like these—sent me to the good people at Google to look up "The Decorative Diaper." I mean, for godsakes, what could that be, except for what a child does to the insides of a diaper? 

From the pages of the
Decorative Diaper,  a diaper trike

But no. It led me to this Facebook page for the Decorative Diaper business (I mean #1, not #2).

You need to "like" this page, because the lady taking the time to create monstrosities like these needs support. It scares me what kind of time suburban moms have on their hands. I cannot believe that women with full time jobs create things like this.

But the fun doesn't stop there, oh no, I want to encourage you to look up sports lingerie.

Frankly, now that I think of it…is sports lingerie…jockstraps? What exactly could the creator of that shop have been thinking? This is American exceptionalism. Exceptionally, exhaustively innovative.

Maybe this is what my right wing friends mean when they say,

"America better innovate or die."

 I think I understand now. I hope you find the time to look up these other stunning suburban businesses in Burbank, California, including Nana's Catheteria. Youch!

Empty Gestures Mean so Much

Remembrance of Things Past?

Um...sometimes there comes a time when you just have to "call a spade a bloody shovel," as my ex used to say. So it is that today.

On the one month anniversary of September 11, 2013, I bring you a vision of our idiocracy that apparently appeared in an unnamed city's Courtyard Marriott. Photographed by @eclectrica, this little treasure shows us all how ridiculous we can be, when we try hard enough.

It's my pleasure to bring you what happens when we live our lives through our mobile phone cameras, and not through our own two eyes.

Let's hope this was Marriott-wide policy and that you could have gone to the Marriotts in downtown NYC and seen signage like this. Man-oh-man, I can hear the New Yorkers now:

"What the hell, Fred. Get a load of this! The terrorists killed over 3,000 people, and we got free mini-muffins for 30 minutes in remembrance. Mini-muffins?! Where are the friggin' bagles? This happened in New York for chrissake!" 

Be sure to open your purses, there's more mini-muffins from where those came.

Wow...dear lord. One friend replied: " If that offer from 8:45-9:15 was supposed to correspond to the window of time when the towers were hit than this is just as tasteless as those muffins likely were."

1. J Crowley ‏@jdcrowley11 Sep

   @eclectrica @Cheesegod69 "My husband died in the WTC and all I got were these lousy muffins."

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   •  Reply 
   •  Retweet 
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2. J Crowley ‏@jdcrowley11 Sep

   @eclectrica @Cheesegod69 "It's 9/11, we should do something, but what?" "Half an hour of mini-muffins in an awkward time slot?" "Brilliant."

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3. chrisna ‏@chrisna11 Sep

   @eclectrica We eat mini muffins for those who cannot.

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4. Pierce Cavanaugh ‏@JPCIV11 Sep

   Thanks, Marriott. RT @eclectrica: What pic.twitter.com/HI9yggeOco

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5. Bart Smith ‏@bart_smith11 Sep

   But just for a half hour. —RT @eclectrica What pic.twitter.com/X159Yp8r23

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6. Derek Schultz ‏@Schultz126011 Sep

   What a touching tribute. Seriously, how clueless are some companies? RT @JPCIV Thanks, Marriott. RT @eclectrica: What pic.twitter.com/in5JNfirVY

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PRC or U.S. House of Representatives?

Falun Gong as Realized by Giotto

Received the most beautiful Renaissance-inspired rendering of a live organ transplant in China today.  Just had to share. That nutty Falun Gong group is alleging that the PRC had nothing better to do than rip open the chests of live people and rip out their vital organs.

While far-fetched, we have to remember, the U.S. House of Representatives is toying with letting the U.S. economy default on its debt and cause the dollar to crash all in an effort to let their constituents know that they did what they were elected to do.

Maybe Chinese officials were elected to do this to Falun Gong members. "Hey lady, I don't wanna rip out your vital organs, but the voters made me do it."

____________________________________________________________________

Just so you don't think I'm nuts, this is the actual email from "Andy" that came into my work inbox. Oy vey, why can't Microsoft ForeFront come up with a better way to block spam?

Dear Sir / Madam, we really need your help.

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) performs the second-highest number of organ transplants per country per year, yet there exist no sufficient public organ donation program or organ distribution system in China, and the Chinese population has a cultural aversion to donation.

It is understood that medical professionals in the People’s Republic of China began conducting organ transplants with the use of organs that were harvested from executed prisoners in the 1980s. In June 2001, Chinese Dr. Wang Guoqi testified before the House International Affairs Subcommittee that hospitals worked in collusion with state security agencies to extract organs from executed prisoners without written consent of the donors. These transplants became a lucrative source of income for Chinese hospitals.

The practice of sourcing organs from nonconsenting prisoners is a violation of medical ethics and has been condemned by international medical organizations, such as the WMA, TTS and the transplant community.

In order to protect their families and associates, while in detention, many Falun Gong prisoners refuse to provide their real names or other identifying information. This makes them more of a target for transplant abuse.

In 2006, Canadian researchers human-rights attorney David Matas and former Secretary of State for Asia-Pacific David Kilgour conducted an investigation into allegations of organ harvesting from Falun Gong prisoners. Based on extensive circumstantial evidence, their report concluded that the allegations were true, and that tens of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners may have been killed for their organs.

In their book Bloody Harvest, Messrs. Matas and Kilgour quote a 2006 phone recording of a doctor from a Chinese hospital:

Caller: I want to know how long [the patients] have to wait [for a liver transplant].

Dr. Dai: The supply of organs we have, we have every day. We do them every day.

Caller: We want fresh, live ones.

Dr. Dai: They are all live, all live…

Caller: I heard some come from those who practice Falun Gong, those who are very healthy.

Dr. Dai: Yes, we have. I can’t talk openly to you over the phone.

Caller: If you can find me this type, I am coming very soon.

Dr. Dai: It’s OK. Please come.

After 1999, an exponential increase of transplantations in China coincided with the onset of the unlawful and brutal persecution of Falun Gong practitioners. In the absence of a public organ-donation program and a decrease in the number of executions, detained Falun Gong practitioners became part of a living pool of donors, ready to be organ harvested on demand. They have been contributing to the more than 10,000 transplants per year in China.

Falun Gong practitioners are subject to medical examinations while in detention, such as blood tests, urine tests, X-rays, and physical exams. These examinations are unlikely to be motivated by health care concerns since detained Falun Gong practitioners are subject to persecution and torture. It is implausible that the detention centers would go to the extra expense for the exams unless there were financial returns.

There is a significant discrepancy between the number of organ transplants performed in China and the number of identifiable sources of organs, including death row prisoners. The PRC government has failed to adequately account for the sources of these organs.

Senior Chinese Communist Party officials are complicit in the forced organ harvesting from living Falun Gong practitioners. In 2012, David Matas said at the annual conference of the International Association of Genocide Scholars in San Francisco:

“On Nov. 30, 1999, the ‘610 Office’ [in China] called more than 3,000 officials to the Great Hall of the People in the capital to discuss the campaign against Falun Gong, which was then not going well.  Demonstrations were continuing to occur at Tiananmen Square. The head of the ‘610 Office’, Li Lanqing, announced the government’s new policy on the movement:‘Defame their reputations, bankrupt them financially, and destroy them physically.’

A call to destroy Falun Gong physically is a call to genocide. It is not admittedly a call to genocide through sourcing their organs. Nonetheless, when that sourcing occurs, in the context of a call for physical destruction, the two should be linked. Organ sourcing is the means. Physical destruction is the intent.”

Under the format of “executing prisoners”, killing people to harvest their organs for transplantation is a crime against humanity and a breach of medical ethics. The demand for transplant organs must not justify the means.

Falun Gong practitioners, the largest group of prisoners of conscience in China, are the main targets of this crime against humanity.

-----

You can help by signing the petition to the UN Human Rights High Commissioner Calling for an Immediate End of Forced Organ Harvesting From Falun Gong Practitioners in China.

Click here : http://www.dafoh.org/petition-to-the-united-nations/

And please forward this email to your friends or relatives, so this persecution can be ended soon.

Your help can save many lives.

Thank you.

Urgent Email About Victor From Tariq

  

From: Tariq Khalil Badran [mailto:abudhabi.branch@cbd.ae]
Sent: Wednesday, September 20, 2013
To: A Thing That Makes Me Go Hmmmmm...
Subject: Please can we talk?

Hi,

I need to discuss with you about Victor.Please contact me.

Tariq K.B

Tariq,

OMG! So great to hear from you. 

Just so you know, I'll be on vacation until well into next month, so I can't really email right now. Mai Tais by the pool, and all. 

But really super to get your message. Do let Victor know we all love him, and hope that his family can find the money to cover the ransom.

 

Speak with you when I get back from Turks and Caicos. 

Enjoy the sunshine!

—A Thing That Makes Me Go Hmmmmm...

Every Once in a While we all Need a Little California Soul

California Soul

I don't tend to rave much about California. It's a nice place to visit, wouldn't wanna live there. You've all heard me say it before.



But hey, what do I know? I moved to Washington, D.C. to find people who were more in touch with reality and could see the forest for the trees. And what did I get? A bunch of over-educated folks who know more than anyone else, but who are so busy with their lives they don't have time to feel or get in touch with their soul.

So, today, I bring you "California Soul" by Marlena Shaw who seems to be having something of a come back on Spotify, which has been playing her back-catalogue on my "Waltz for Koop" station. One forgets just how exceptional this low-profile Blue Note artist's work is (She's still recording, believe it or not.)

And frankly, ever since we lost Fontella Bass last year, I;ve been feeling the need to recognize the other, extraordinary backup singers, low-profile artists who didn't bask in the fame and glory that Diana, Martha, and the many others did. But these singers took a terrific place in the pantheon of new music pros who sampled and rediscovered these artists, like The Cinematic Orchestra who repurposed these voices for the sounds of the early 21st century. From "Rescue Me" to "All That you Give," California Soul takes you back to where we should be, even if we are living in D.C.

 

Careful the Liars you Listen to

Fun Huffington Post article by Bill Maher on California today. Obviously, I do not agree with his reasoning that just eliminating Republican legislators is good for the country. But he makes interesting points that if you can get past his hysteria.

I think it may be too soon to agree with Maher here and say California is saved thanks to the new governor. I mean just look at their hopeless school system destroyed by selfish, idiots who voted for Prop 13 in 1978. Imagine taking a brilliant, locally-driven educational system, and ripping it out tooth and nail for the system they have now. If the California taxpayer starts actually paying their damned property taxes, maybe even that might change in time.

Maher is a crank, but one that can be quite eye-opening. You know the noise of political campaigns can be so deafening that you just completely miss really obvious things. I am certainly a victim of this myself. In this article, he mentioned something I remembered, but had not really thought through at the time.

Do you remember the following about Mitt Romney's campaign...he said, basically, a vote for Obamawas a vote to turn America into a pathetic backwater like..Greece or Spain or Italy or California. Well...he LIVES in California, not Sal Tlay Ka Siti.


Why kind of liar says things like that? Oh my. Well a guy who is busy covering this up...the truth isn't very pretty...

"On the campaign trail last year, Mitt Romney warned that if we didn't follow his conservative path, "America is going to become like Greece, or... Spain, or Italy, or... California." And that was a big laugh line with Mormons, because Greece, Spain and Italy have some art and poetry and theatre, but nothing like Salt Lake City. Yes, Mitt sure hates California, which is why he moved to San Diego. To the house with the car elevator."

In my effort to find photos for today's blogpost, I came upon this stellar poster from an anti-Brown blogger, that inadvertently positions the dislike for Governor Moonbeam as bad for the state. But with the economy finally getting back to normal in California...what's to dislike, precisely?

Jerry is laughing all the way to the history books.

Fun aside, I'm in the midst of trying to secure him as a speaker for our next big event here at work.