“A woman in Anchorage, Alaska is charged with cutting off her boyfriend’s penis and flushing it down toilet.”
Jack’s Shack is adamantly against violence against women, except in cases like this. The gloves come off. Ouch.
Archives for February 2005
Risk Factors for Heart Disease
“NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – The circumference of your waist correlates more closely with several known risk factors for heart disease than does your body mass index (BMI) — the measure of weight in relation to height — according to a report in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (news – web sites).
The findings are based on an analysis of data from 10,969 subjects who participated in the third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from 1998 to 1994.
Dr. Shankuan Zhu, from the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, and colleagues found that waist circumference was more strongly tied to cholesterol levels, blood pressure, and blood glucose levels than was BMI.
Among men, the circumferences that were equivalent in terms of cardiovascular risk to being overweight or obese were highest for whites, lowest for blacks, and intermediate for Mexican Americans. By contrast, the waist measurement cutoffs among women varied little by ethnicity.”
Bad Blogging- Also Known As This Stuff Sucks
I just finished reading Mochassid’s latest commentary in which he says
I realized that I wrote some of my most compelling stuff (okay, other than themacaroon thread) in those early days when no one was watching. I have to admit that since then, most of my stuff has been drivel.
It is a common dilemma, something that many bloggers agree with. Mo further elucidates:
I find that this happens with most bloggers. They come out of the blocks with a head of steam and quickly peter out. Many stink from the beginning but others start with interesting takes but stop being interesting shortly after debuting. Ironically, since many bloggers are driven by their desire for hits but peak in hits only after having written everything interesting that they will ever write, most readers are drawn to them only after they descend to mediocrity.
The intrepid Baal Ha-Bayit of Treppenwitz has a solution he refers to as David’s Room. Here is a description:
In a nutshell, the most frustrating aspect of a journal’s early life is that you can’t save your ‘good stuff’ for when you have a bigger readership… because, guess what? That readership is never going to show up unless you have the good stuff out there for them to read.
‘David’s Room’ posits that the first few months of a blog/journal’s life can be compared to someone reading their most intimate prose into an intercom… all the while hoping that someone – anyone – will eventually walk into the room on the other end and start listening (and maybe even talk back).
I am not sure that I agree with the gentleman. I think that initially you may find that you share many of your best stories early on, but it seems to me that any blogger worth their salt requires some time to find their sea legs.
That is, it takes time to find your voice and your place. Blogging is a skill, it is not something that most people can just sit down and do effectively. It requires time, patience and devotion to improvement. It is not merely a matter of having good stories to tell, but it requires a certain skill in effectively communicating your thoughts and feelings.
The blogs that capture me offer a combination of these elements.There are some bloggers who I read solely for their skills as wordsmiths. I think that their stories are junk, I can’t relate to them or find them to be stupid. That is the truth, but I also know that I can always learn from others and I seek out writing that captures me, that grabs me by the balls and says read me.
To use an old cliche, when push comes to shove it seems to me that the blogs that last are going to be those that have authors that are intimately tied to their blogs. I have a love affair with my blog. She is my confidant and my best friend. Non-judgemental and forgiving she listens to my tales of happiness and destruction without question and without comment.
If you want my unsolicited advice, don’t do this unless you are writing for yourself. It is the only way that you can truly be happy At least, at 12:36 am it makes sense to me. Maybe I’ll feel differently during daylight hours.
Night all.
Following the Breakup- The Fiction Continues
I decided to double post the entries for this story here and on the
Fragments of Fiction blog. It will be interspersed with normal posts here, but on the other blog it should be the only thing I post there, or so I anticipate. Who knows, the journey is what it is all about.
Some people don’t like the clickety-clatter of chaos and confusion caused by the end of a relationship. That had never been a problem for her. When it was done, it was done and she always knew. Some of the men had begged her to reconsider, professed their undying love and offered to change, but by that point it was too late.
It was dead and there was no second coming. She wasn’t like her friends, willing to ignore problems because of a fear of solitude. It wasn’t honest and she was honest, too honest. She knew it, but it wasn’t something that she worried about or focused upon. In her eyes there was a natural cycle for relationships, they began, developed and grew into something that would last a while, but were ephemeral in nature.
And so it was with the last relationship, at least that is what it had appeared to be. But like many things in life, appearances can be deceiving and she had learned that leaving this last guy behind was far more difficult than she could have ever imagined.
Initially she hadn’t thought twice about it. She just walked out and headed towards the bus station. She never shared her finances with her men. She was far too independent for that, insisting that she maintain her own checking account. It was part of how she maintained control and in part responsible for how she kept from getting too close to them. They could only get so far in her head before they reached the end of the line.
Inside her pocket she clutched a small purse. It contained a lipstick, a stick of gum, bank card, checkbook with a balance of $7,237.34 and the first and only credit card she had ever owned.
All of her clothes, books and music had been left behind in the apartment. She liked making a clean start and this was going to be just that, clean. She figured that she had enough money to start over wherever she ended up and just where that would be remained up in the air.
Once she got to the station she would purchase a ticket somewhere and during the ride she would consider her options. She might even go on a vacation, lounge around on a beach somewhere and enjoy herself. She was single and all things were possible.
A billboard advertising the “Simple Life of Country Living†led to one of her famous impulses and so it was she ended upon a mostly empty bus headed down South. Her father had a hunting lodge that he rarely used, it was quiet and comfortable and she knew where the caretaker left the spare key.
Naked Dining
“NEW YORK (Reuters) – The diners arrived at a nice Manhattan restaurant on a cold February night and stripped off coats, hats, gloves and scarves. They didn’t stop there.
Skirts, shirts, pants, underwear and stockings all ended up stashed in plastic bags by the bar as the patrons got naked for the monthly “Clothing Optional Dinner.”
“It’s exciting to be in a restaurant nude,” said George Keyes, 65, a retired junior high school English teacher.”
Not all that exciting, think that I’ll pass.
Rose’s Story
I am still reading Rose’s Story about Mark Skier’s mother and how she survived the war. It is very compelling