- Enjoy the luxury of three-day weekends while still receiving the inflated salary of a state government employee? Then the Beehive State, a.k.a. Utah, will be the place for you starting in August. An order signed by Republican Gov. Jon Huntsman will shorten the work week for most state employees to four days. The new schedule comes at the end of a yearlong study researching ways to reduce energy costs in the state and will affect approximately 17,000 of the 24,000 employees in the state’s executive branch. Workers will now put in 10-hour days Monday through Thursday and have a three-day weekend to enjoy. Their pay will remain the same as their total hours worked won't change, but even so this is a nice benefit. The new rule won't apply to obvious professions like prison guards, police and instructors at state-run universities. I gotta say, I’m digging this new schedule. Heck, it’s not like state employees work most of the time anyhow, so those 10-hour days won't be so bad. Clock in at 7 a.m., mix in a few coffee breaks and a long lunch and clock out at 5 p.m. no worse for the wear. Score one for the Mormons, eh? Should I choose to relocate any time soon, Utah just became a much more likely destination…..
- What say we go ahead and agree to never, ever, ever show another replay of the horrific injury that happened to Arizona Diamondbacks catcher Chris Snyder Tuesday night? If you haven’t seen the video, consider yourself fortunate and don’t go looking for it - seriously. Snyder was blasted in the package by a foul tip during a game against the Milwaukee Brewers and suffered a fractured left testicle. He has been placed on the 15-day DL by the D-Backs and to be honest, that’s not going to be nearly enough time to recover from that kind of injury. No dude who saw that injury happen will ever forget the pain and agony they felt just from seeing it on video. Most of us probably felt compelled to duck for cover just viewing the video, so I don’t want to imagine how Snyder felt experiencing it firsthand. When he does come back, he had better be wearing a titanium-plated, Kevlar cup with reinforced steel on it because there’s no way he’s going to be able to relax and just play the game without knowing he’s protected against that ever happening to him again. My deepest sympathies and best wishes, Chris. Relax, rest, recover and do what you need to do, amigo, because no one is going to think less of you for any of it…..
- I’ll admit it, I’m starting to enjoy watching the whole Amy Winehouse circus. I’m not enjoying her music, mind you; it’s still an insufferable, indecipherable string of mumbled words from a perpetually drunk and stoned transvestite hooker who is harder to understand than Bob Dylan on a weeklong bender. Still, I’m enjoying the Winehouse saga because sooner or later she’s going to completely self-destruct and dammit, that is going to be fun to watch. She continues to travel around Europe, performing at summer festivals around large groups of rowdy fans and with plenty of alcohol and drugs in the mix. She already assaulted one fan at England’s Glastonbury festival because that fan allegedly groped her. Later in the week, she made her way to Argand del Ray for another festival and surprise, surprise, there was booze involved. An incoherent, mumbling Winehouse (in other words, just like normal) swigged from a glass of red wine on stage and plowed through a set of her crap-tacular music before getting into a helicopter and leaving. She managed not to assault anyone this time, but you can’t expect her to be at the top of her game every time out. Believe it or not, the level of musical talent at the festival may have actually declined once Winehouse left, with Jamaican techno-dance losers Jamiroquai and Colombian pop tart Shakira (Watch her dance? Yay! Hear her sing? Cruel and unusual punishment!) following up Winehouse’s lame set.
- Let’s wrap this up with two stories about bozos and clowns. Where to begin? Let’s start with the biggest bozo and the biggest clown of all, W. This guy could have walked around with a big red wig, white face makeup, a big red nose and oversized floppy shows and his presidency couldn’t have been any bigger of a joke than it already was. So it’s fitting that with his time in office winding town, W. is traipsing around the world, hitting up Europe and Asia on a glorified road trip instead of dealing with debacles like the Mess O’Potamia in Iraq, the growing problems in Afghanistan and the slow, steady demise of the American economy. Now we know that our mentally deficient leader will be attending the opening ceremonies of next month’s Summer Olympics in Beijing. Despite cries from nations around the world about boycotting the ceremonies and the Games entirely because of China’s atrocious human rights practices, W. is going to brave the toxic, polluted air, the algae-infested waters, the obscenely bad traffic and the steroid-laced food to attend the opening of the Olympics. Now that I think of it, maybe this could be a good thing. With world-class athletes coughing up soot from their lungs and out of their noses after short training runs in Beijing, maybe W. can breathe in enough toxic air to knock him out of commission and end his abortion of a presidency a few months early. On second thought, stay in Beijing for the entire Olympics, W. No one here will miss you, the country is guaranteed to run better in your absence and you might contract a major respiratory illness. Win, win, win all around!
- Moving on to our second bozo and clown….Bozo the Clown. A melancholy farewell to Larry Harmon, a.k.a. Bozo the Clown, legendary children’s entertainer and all around funny guy, who passed away this week from congestive heart failure. For half a century, Bozo entertained kids around the world (big kids too) and even though Harmon wasn’t the original Bozo, he earned the role and bought the rights to the name decades ago. He is the one most closely identified with the colorful, oversized Bozo persona and over his time in the role Harmon trained more than 200 Bozos to represent the character in local markets. The franchise grew to include animation, personal appearances and a TV program on cable station WGN that became a national show when WGN went from a Chicago station to a national network. So thanks for all of the laughs and wacky hijinks over the years, Larry/Bozo……
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