Say What? Bidder snags William and Kate PEZ for $13,000!

I can’t friggin believe it!

Someone paid over $13,000 for a PEZ dispenser.

Every time I hear something about that stupid Royal Wedding overseas, it gets more ridiculous. The American media (not just the entertainment part) is desperately trying to pump this matrimonial ceremony up into a money maker.

Their pathetic attempts to recreate the monster cash cow Diane and Prince Charles’ Wedding became, aren’t resonating with most Americans. Over 65% said they were ignoring the wedding in a recent Gallup Poll.

By the way, PEZ is an Austrian business, but someone from America (Connecticut) ponied up the bucks for this (I would hope) one-of-kind PEZ product.

Story here

Did you know that US taxes are among the lowest in the world?

By many measures, Americans pay less than most other developed nations

“Think you pay too much in taxes? It could be worse. You could be living in Denmark.

As you send your hard-earned cash off to the good folks at the Internal Revenue Service, a new report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development may help take some of the sting out of writing that check.

The Paris-based group that tracks the economies of 34 nations found that the burden on U.S. taxpayers is just about the lowest in the developed world.”  Story Here

Photo - Several dozen protesters using a "mad hatter" theme counter-demonstrate against a tax day Tea Party rally of about a hundred protesters nearby Friday in Bellevue, Wash

Changing of the guard: Coachella 2011 - The rise of a new generation

It was rocking in Coachella this past weekend as bands from the aughts dominated.

I can just imagine the heat there as I use to work in Palm Desert and had a newspaper in Indio.

It’s good to see a new generation of rock emerge with their own unique sounds. 

“As the U.K. folk-revival quartet Mumford & Sons, all of whom are in their early 20s, stared out on the 70,000 people or so gathered to watch their set at the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival on Saturday night, they couldn't help but remark on how much had changed for them. "In 2008, I was a punter sneaking in here for Rage Against the Machine," one of the Mumfords' string players cracked in disbelief.” Story Here

Photo - Arcade Fire performs at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival at the Empire Polo Grounds in Indio on Saturday. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

Like David vs Goliath…Lakers vs Hornets….underdogs rule!

As a longtime Laker fan I can truly say I saw this loss coming….ouch! It still hurts! The Lakers have a bad habit of “playing down” to teams they think they own.

As I suggested in an earlier post, just because the Lakers won all four games against the Hornets in the regular season it doesn’t mean anything when it comes to the NBA Playoffs.

Losing today, 100-109, the Lakers weakness against top guards was fully exposed. Pau Gasol was beat up (stitches required under his eye) and had a horrible game. Kobe Bryant had more turnovers than the entire Hornets team who set a record for the least amount of turnovers in a playoff game. The Lakers looked unprepared and didn’t play like a team with good chemistry.

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"It’s not the will to win that matters—everyone has that. It’s the will to prepare to win that matters."
-Paul "Bear" Bryant

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If you are a Laker fan this was an ugly game to watch, as they trailed through most of it. If you’re a Hornet fan, I’m sure you’re buzzing with excitement. It was a painful loss for the mighty Lakers who wanted to play the Hornets instead of Portland in the first round. Beware what you ask for!Another ouch!

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"The most important lesson I've learned from sports is how to be not only a gracious winner, but a good loser as well. Not everyone wins all the time, as a matter of fact, no one wins all the time. Winning is the easy part, losing is really tough. But, you learn more from one loss than you do from a million wins. You learn a lot about sportsmanship. I mean, it's really tough to shake the hand of someone who just beat you, and it's even harder to do it with a smile. If you can learn to do this and push through that pain, you will remember what that moment is like the next time you win and have a better sense of how those competitors around you feel. This experience will teach you a lot on and off the field!"
-Amy Van Dyken

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Will the Lakers recover from this stinging loss? I wish I had the answer. As a fan, I’m going to display confidence in my team, and urge them to play better in game 2. That’s all I can do.

Go Lakers!

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As It Stands: Social experiments, thieves, and six degrees of separation

By Dave Stancliff/For the Times-Standard

Posted: 04/17/2011 02:40:26 AM PDT

I wonder what would happen if I walked into a fancy jewelry store, tried on an expensive watch, decided I liked it, and walked out the door with it like Lindsay Lohan, who took a necklace?

A jury will have to decide if Lohan's guilty of grand theft. As for me? I'd soon be rotting in jail on grand theft charges if I tried that little trick. Heck, I couldn't afford one of her lawyers (even for an hour), and my defense team would probably look like the “Whose Who?” of struggling public defenders in northern California.

I'm picking on Lohan because she's been down this path before. Poor little rich girl caught stealing stuff. Gets old after a while, don't you think? Then I got to thinking (uh oh!) and wondered if she's conducting some sort of “social experiment” and plans to tell the jury all about it at the proper time?

I recently read about one teenager in Southfield, Mich., who claimed he was conducting a “social experiment” when he robbed a comic book store.

According to WJBK-TV in Detroit, the teenager didn't want money. He wanted a detailed list of collector merchandise and threatened to use a realistic-looking homemade bomb. Here's where it gets weirder; the clerk was stubborn and didn't meet his demands. Then the robber relented and paid cash for the few items on the list the clerk did have!

When he was arrested (you knew that was coming), he told the authorities that the whole thing was just a “social experiment.” Isn't that interesting? If so, he might want to contact Lohan's lawyers and see if they could take his case. Providing he's the son of an oil baron.

Now where were we? Oh, yeah. Social experiments. I found this great website -- www.ilovesocialexperiments.com/ -- which shares experiences in social experimentation, sociology and human observation.

I didn't stop exploring the subject of social experiments there. In a controversial social experiment currently going on in New York City, the city is denying part of its homeless population any assistance for the next two years. They want to see if their $23 million program, called “Homebase,” is helping the people for whom it was intended.

Sounds cold, doesn't it? Perhaps clinical is a better word. In medical testing, it's long been the standard to give drug treatment to one group while another, the control group, goes without. You can read more about this social experiment at www.nytimes.com/2010/12/09/nyregion/09placebo.html?_r=2&hp.

Have you heard of Stanley Milgram, a social psychologist most noted for his controversial study “the Milgram Experiment” in the 1960s during his professorship at Yale? You might look him up for further enlightenment on the subject.

He was influenced by the events of the Nazi Holocaust and carried out an experiment to demonstrate the relationship between obedience and authority. Shortly after the obedience experiment, Milgram conducted the small-world experiment (the source of the six degrees of separation concept) while at Harvard.

Particularly poignant to me is the song “American Pie,” which documents the period of 1959 to 1970 in the “10 years we've been on our own” of the third verse. Coming near the end of a turbulent era, “American Pie” spoke to the grand social experiments of the 1960s, which eventually collapsed under the weight of realities.

And in 1970, as I sweated in the jungles of Vietnam, I knew the world back home was rapidly changing. My peers in the States now looked at me and my comrades as the enemy. My generation didn't lead the country into a new Age of Aquarius where love ruled.

The really sad part is there is no going back to those innocent times when America's youth thought they could change the world with the power of love. Turned out, peace and love demanded a price. Harsher for some than others. We all paid it in different ways.

My final observation to share with you is that life is an ongoing social experiment, constantly evolving and challenging us to be happy.

As It Stands, the lyrics “Bye bye, Miss American Pie” still bring tears to my eyes.

Some humorous thoughts & observations this Saturday Night Live

I’ve heard that the immune system of sharks is superior to humans… with the except of lawyers who also have other shark-like attributes. My apologies to the sharks for the comparison.

They say ants have no eyelids. I’ve never been able to get close enough to tell. Fact is, snakes don’t have ears, but don’t try sneaking up on one!
Male rats are known to mate with their mothers, sisters and any other females in their family. A pair of rats are capable of having 15,000 offspring in one year. Is it any wonder we use the word “rat” in a negative way when referring to someone?

Some animals can be gay. Really. Among them are the African Elephant, brown bears, buffalo, dogs, giraffe, chickens, emus, jewel fish, salmon, common garter snakes, the red diamond rattlesnake, and even some insects, to name some.

Snails have the ability to sleep for three years. Don’t ask my why this is a good thing but some researchers think it is. Starfish are brainless creatures of the sea, but I still like “Patrick” in “Sponge Bob, Square Pants” cartoons.
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Ants can lift objects 50 times their own weight. There use to be a comic book superhero called “Ant Man,” (DC Comics) who wouldn’t have been stopped by that nasty insecticide “RoundUp.”

Eels have two hearts. I’ve heard the phrase “slippery heart” by that’s ridiculous. And what’s with hagfish having four hearts? I’ve known hags that didn’t even have one heart!

Time to call it a day, my friends. Thanks for stopping by. (image source)

Inspirational words for a slow Saturday…

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“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”                                                                     ~ Mark Twain

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What does the future hold for a species bent on energy consumption?

So here we are, one foot on the bow of the sinking ship Fossil Fuel, the other on the bow of the U.S.S. Renewable Energy:

5 Myths About Renewable Energy

1. Renewable Sources Can't Replace Fossil Fuels

2. Renewable Energy Is Worthless Without Government Incentives

3. Wind Turbines Are Noisy, Costly Bird Killers

4. Solar Energy Doesn't Provide Enough Juice

5. Clean Coal Is the Answer

                                                                                             Photo -John Foxx/Stockbyte/Getty Images

Humor Break – here’s a smile or two just for you…

 

 If you think these photos are cool there’s lot’s more to see here

I get a kick out of humorous photos of all kinds and based upon reader feedback…so do you!

As It Stands shares some stuff you might not have seen today…

 

Not a lot of news happening, but here’s a few interesting tidbits:

An Oregon mailman was suspended for taking a crap in a yard on his route.

Man bites dog — then sues over police canine's act

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They say that the World's Oldest Man died in Montana at 114

Walter (shown here) Breuning's earliest memories stretched back 111 years, before home entertainment came with a twist of the radio dial.

That’s all from me bunky! Have a good one, and be safe on this Friday night Live!

Victim of PTSD: Ex-Marine, veterans' advocate kills himself

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

One of the military's most vocal suicide prevention advocates tragically took his own life.

Stories like this touch my heart.

I grieve for these young men and women returning from war with PTSD.

I suffer from PTSD, and when I read about others who appear to be handling theirs well and they suddenly snap…

I can’t help but shuddering. There, but for the grace of God, goes me. Someday my story could end the same way.

There’s no time limits with PTSD. There’s no predicting when it will overwhelm you. I live with that reality. Survivor’s guilt is common among those of us who go into combat and live while others die. It can be traced back to ancient times.

But this is my life right now… and I grieve for Clay Hunt, a vibrant Iraq veteran that was chosen to be in public service announcements reminding veterans that they weren't alone…but you see he was alone, or thought he was. That’s the damn thing. Each one of us face the possibility of Clay’s fate. Even those who appear to be doing just fine.

I’ve seen those “just fine” veterans in Stand Downs as they try to convince me that they’re different. That they don’t think about their time in combat or have nightmares. Or, the fact they saw their best friends head explode before their eyes. No. they can handle it. Just like Clay Hunt could handle it.

As It Stands, rest in peace brother, the war is finally over for you.

Excerpt:  

"He was very despondent about why he was alive and so many people he served with directly were not alive," said John Wordin, 48, the founder of Ride 2 Recovery, a program that uses bicycling to help veterans heal physically and mentally.”

STORY HERE