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From the NY Times: Income Gap Is Widening, Data Shows

"Income inequality grew significantly in 2005, with the top 1 percent of Americans - those with incomes that year of more than $348,000 - receiving their largest share of national income since 1928, analysis of newly released tax data shows.

The top 10 percent, roughly those earning more than $100,000, also reached a level of income share not seen since before the Depression.

[...]

The gains went largely to the top 1 percent, whose incomes rose to an average of more than $1.1 million each, an increase of more than $139,000, or about 14 percent.

The new data also shows that the top 300,000 Americans collectively enjoyed almost as much income as the bottom 150 million Americans. Per person, the top group received 440 times as much as the average person in the bottom half earned, nearly doubling the gap from 1980."

I'm sure that for those who knew all along that a government run by some of the richest, fat cats in America weren't at all interested in seeing anyone below them catch up... the numbers support you.

For those delusional bastards who felt that electing an "average joe like me" or "a family values representative", well I'm sure there are lots of excuses you can make to rationalize the fact that our President and his government never really had your interests in the first place. Enjoy.

Apparently Iran, confident that the US and UK are tied up in Iraq is pushing to make all the trouble it can. The idea being, naturally, that while the big boys have their hands full, they can get away with anything they please - from actively pursing nukes to snatching British sailors that wander too close to their border.

Clearly the other big dogs, Russia and China, are on their side. Unwilling to take any action against Iran and actively impeding any other countries that want to. Seems like a field day for Persia.

It's really not all that atypical behavior for the Middle East, where saber rattling and chest pounding is what symbolizes a "man" and social or political reforms are not even on the horizon.

Still it takes some nads for a government to actually take hostages in this day and age. Genuine members of the international community do not hold hostages, stage mock trials, or parade foreign nationals on TV. It essentially validates the position that they are really nothing more than a bunch of terrorists in suits.

While I hate people that feel compelled to talk and drive I am willing to give credit to people who go "hands free". Ok so you gotta talk? Fine, keep both hands on the wheel and I'll live with it. At least in an emergency you have the ability (even if not the attention or reflexes) to deal.

Bluetooth headsets are a dime a dozen. Frankly, the $40 unit I got for free with my last cell-renewal didn't even get a single bid on ebay at a starting price of $20. NIB even. The point is that they're cheap, easy to use and serve the purpose for hands free.

The question I run into, however, is why the fuck don't women seem to use them? Especially when they're driving? Women are supposed to be great mutli-taskers. Their brains are wired to process multiple signals in parallel, sure - maybe on paper that would seem to be an advantage in doing more than one thing at a time - but in practice? I'm sorry there's no two ways about it - the majority of fuckheads I see swerving around, missing stop signs, trailing into other lanes, cutting over three lanes at the last second and overall acting like diabetics about to collapse are women jawing away on the phone.

Maybe it's because most of the headsets look stupid when you wear them. Maybe it's because they don't fit with big, garish earrings. Perhaps it's simply because women don't dig technology enough to find headsets to be cool. Whatever the reason here's my big "fuck you" to all the Ho's who couldn't shut the fuck up long enough to turn their head before driving into my lane while I was still in the space next to them.

Please, next time, try it with a wall instead mmm'k?

There was an article recently about a new type of hospice being set up for terminally ill infants. While on the face of it, it seems like a noble cause, enabling parents and infants to spend time together in a less antiseptic setting for the short while they have, but there's actually a more sinister side.

It seems many of these infants were diagnosed in vitro as having terminal conditions... and the parents given the choice of terminating them decided instead to have their child, name it, enshrine it and make it suffer through a brief but agonizing life.

If you really loved someone would you cause them pain and agony knowing with clear certainty they would die? Especially someone who can't speak, can't understand? These parents who choose to have a terminally ill infant claim they want to cherish their brief time together, so as the baby is desperately trying to draw its breath they can grieve together as it dies.

Talk about fucked up.

Here's both barrels: the only reason these people are having terminally ill babies is a perverse Munchausen syndrome whereby they can draw the attention and sympathy through the tool of their child. That's it basically, "Look at me, poor me, my baby is dying and there's nothing I can do"... except of course perhaps make the sympathetic decision to prevent the child from suffering in the first place.

That's not love, it's narcissism.

It's been all over the news lately that a pet food manufacturer "changed ingredients" which basically killed pets that consumed it. It affected both dogs and cats that ate types of moist food (for the record I only feed my pets dry food 99% of the time). Animals died rapidly from kidney failure.

Not good.

So what did the pet food manufacturer do?

Well it got a bunch of cats and dogs and started feeding them the food to check and see if there really was a problem. Of course a bunch of these "test" animals then died.

That's nice, really. Heartwarming. So basically after animals and owners suffered through agonies of pain and loss, the pet food manufacturer decides to execute a few more animals just to "check". It's nice to know the lives of these test animals were essentially worthless, even more so from a company that supposedly has a consumers interest (and thus their pets interest) at heart.

I suppose actually doing some chemical analysis first and determining the difference in the makeup between the new and old food would have been cost prohibitive as a logical first step.

So to Menu Foods, of Streetsville, Ontario, here's a big fat FUCK YOU. I hope your stock tubes so hard it'll peak in China.

I stumbled upon this little gem on Cooks.com while researching a classic English recipe for Bubble-n-Squeek. The name caught my eye, and like passing a car crash I had to look. I'm sorry I did.

WATERGATE SALAD

1 (20 oz.) can crushed pineapple, undrained
1 (3 1/4 oz.) box instant pistachio pudding mix
1 lg. (12-13 oz.) Cool Whip
1 c. miniature marshmallows
1/2 c. chopped walnuts

Ok.. precisely what part of this constitutes "salad"?

To define what sucks
It is first necessary
To accept your fate

"Where do I go from here?"

Do you have times in your life when you feel like you're presented with a choice to keep doing things the same old way, more or less the way you know how, or take up a challenge and see what you're made of? I think it's scary for most of us trying to think and be different than we usually are. The older the person the scarier it is, I think, because as a child your job is to learn but as an adult your job is to produce.

As frightening as it is to break out and try something different, even scarier is the feeling that you could upset things that depend on you. It's that sense of dependence that locks the knees and prevents even the slightest inclination to stepping forward. And the end result is anger and frustration "Why can't I change? What's so hard about doing things differently?"

Some people make a lifetime out of change, deliberately reinventing themselves. The rest of us seem more inclined to just roll with what we're dealt, stepping up when we're demanded to but otherwise content to just travel along at a constant velocity on some path we took back when we didn't have much of a clue.

I don't think it's a matter of loving or hating yourself, or other people, it's just a matter of beating the inertia of your own image. Maybe that's the real rock that Sisyphus was pushing up the hill. I think I understand him better now.