Category Archives: Awards

October 18, 2012 · 0:00

Throne Update

It seems like just the other day when I was telling you about David Siegel in my post Robbin’ a Better Hood.

You know, it was the story of David, the poor billionaire CEO of Westgate Resorts who likes to sit on a golden cherub-encrusted throne. In case you can’t remember, he threatened his employees with termination if Mitt Romney doesn’t become president, if Obama wins and raises his taxes. He also complained about not getting any happy hours.

Oh, it was just the other day!

Well, I’ve learned so much since. And I just gotta share.

You see, I learned that apparently CEO’s are pack animals. And a bunch of other CEOs are doing the same thing to their employees so that they can protect their billions.

At first I was confused. How could so many folks, living high on the hog, come up with the very same idea?

Then I learned just last night that there is a common thread here that, well, I for one would never have guessed.

Because guess who is telling those CEO’s to do that? Guess who is showing his leadership ability by actually getting billionaire CEOs to follow an order? Guess who has the morals and ethics of a crack whore?

[26:30] I hope you make it very clear to your employees what you believe is in the best interest of your enterprise and therefore their job and their future in the upcoming elections. And whether you agree with me or you agree with President Obama, or whatever your political view, I hope, you pass those along to your employees. Mitt Romney, June 6, 2012.

Yup, it’s Mitt. The guy whose team is in favor of voter suppression (heard the one about the Arizona Voter ID cards that were sent out with the wrong date for election date – funny thing, it’s only wrong on the Spanish ones).

Can you say “Watergate?” Can you say “Iran Contra?” Can you say “Tammany Hall?” Are you listening Mitt Romney?

I heard that Ann will be cancelling her next few campaign stops. She’s out shopping for furniture for the Oval Office.

Or maybe they should go on the Truman Balcony.
The view of the peasants is way better from there..

40 Comments

Filed under Awards, Campaigning, Conspicuous consumption, Criminal Activity, Elections, Humor, Hypocrisy, Law, Politics, Stupidity, Taxes, Voting

Tagged as Assholes, GOP, Humor, Politics, Pushing Buttons, Stupidity, Voting, Washington

October 10, 2012 · 0:00

Get Fresh Pressed Now!

It’s your most cherished hope. It’s what you wake up, day after day, wishing would happen. It’s more important to you now than World Peace.

Yup. You wanna be Fresh Pressed.

And I can help you there, my friend. Just listen up.

You see, I have the power to make it happen. To get you there. To fulfill your wildest blogging dreams.

I would have mentioned it before but, well, I only just realized my power. Until today I thought it was just coincidence. I’m so ashamed.

Take a look at my blog roll – you’ll see. I follow a lot of blogs that have been Freshly Pressed. Even though my blogroll is hopelessly out of date, you can see that I’m there in the trenches with the best of the best.

But I just didn’t see the pattern.

Last winter when I was having problems receiving emails of some of the blogs I follow, I decided to follow myself – that way I’d know for sure that I was getting alerts of all the folks I wanted to read.

That’s when it happened. Yup. I was Fresh Pressed for Hey Doc?

It’s happened since, too. Well, not to me, of course. But still I just didn’t notice the pattern. Finally it dawned on me. A couple of weeks ago when I started following Fear No Weebles. She was FP’d almost immediately after I put my email address in the “Follow Me” slot for a post called There’s something about Mr. Weebles.

But the concrete proof came just this week. For those of you who don’t know her, Miss Weebles is very fond of Le Clown of A Clown on Fire. She even wrote a post politely recommending that Word Press’s habit of not FP’ing the Clown should end. I clicked over there and realized that I’d been meaning to “Follow” him for a while, but, well, hadn’t. So I did.

And one of the first posts I read with my coffee this morning was “WordPress To Retire Le Clown’s Not Featured on Freshly Pressed Jersey.” He got into the club. You’re welcome, Clown.

So I figured I’d help you guys all out and make a buck or two while I’m at it. For a nominal fee, I will follow YOUR BLOG!

Get Yer Fresh Pressing Here!

$500

Sorry. No refunds.

113 Comments

Filed under Awards, Bloggin' Buddies, Conspicuous consumption, Criminal Activity, History, Humor, Writing

Tagged as Crazy people, Humor

September 18, 2012 · 0:00

So There!

The memory is still sharp. Clear. Painful.

I don’t think my brother Fred ever hurt my feelings as much as he did when he laughed at me that day. When, as a 4- or 5-year old I shouted at him:

“You’ll be sorry when I wake up DEAD.”

Instead of being cowed, well, Fred laughed at me. I was devastated. Confused. I didn’t understand what was so funny. Later he explained it to me:

“Lease,” he said patiently, “You can’t ‘wake up dead’!”

“Why not?”

“Because if you’re dead, Lease, you don’t wake up. You can’t. Cause you’re DEAD.”

“Oh.”

It was the first time I understood that I had done something incredibly stupid. I learned my lesson, though. Never again did I threaten anyone with the possibility that I’d wake up dead.

So imagine my surprise when I read about high school nurse Terry Collins in this article. I learned that I wasn’t so dumb back then after all.

You see, Ms. Collins woke up dead one day. Yeah, it’s true! She got a letter saying that she was taken off the voter registration list because she is dead. She was quite surprised because, well, she felt just fine! Coincidentally, her 80-year old father was equally surprised when he got a similar letter. He had woken up dead, too! Even more coincidentally, they are both African-Americans registered to vote in Texas! Or they were until they woke up dead in a state where the Governor is a Republican and the legislature is run by the GOP.

Apparently, there is an epidemic in Texas. An epidemic of waking up dead! And the number of folks who are caught up in this, umm, problem? According to NPR, there are about 80,000 Texas voters who woke up one day and found out via the US mail that they were dead. Most are African American or Hispanic. Imagine that, they were members of minorities who tend to favor Democrats, and they woke up dead.

I’m calling Fred. He’ll be so sorry he made fun of me.

* * *

The creativity of the folks who try to keep others from voting is quite impressive. If only they used it to govern, the U.S. might be in much better shape today.

Here is a link for online voter registration

64 Comments

Filed under Awards, Campaigning, Childhood Traumas, Elections, Family, History, Humor, Hypocrisy, Politics, Stupidity

Tagged as Elections, Family, GOP, Humor, Politics, Stupidity, Voting, Washington

September 13, 2012 · 0:00

Eye on the “Booker” Prize!

I am awesome. Yup. It’s true. You see, well, I have a new prize. A new award!

Yes, just the other day, I got A Booker Award! Seriously! Me!

What does that mean? Well, it is awarded to a novelist of great achievement from the United Kingdom or from Ireland. Cool! I’ve been to both places. I’m sure that qualifies.

The Man Booker Foundation awards the Booker Prize! But not to me.

Here is what it says on the Man Booker Award site:

Winning the Man Booker Prize is the ultimate accolade for many writers. As 1996 winner Graham Swift commented, “Prizes don’t make writers and writers don’t write to win prizes, but in the near-glut of literary awards now on offer, the Booker remains special. It’s the one which, if we’re completely honest, we most covet.”

Every year the Man Booker Prize winner is guaranteed a huge increase in sales, firstly in hardback and then in paperback. There is spin-off too in global sales of books, in future publishing contracts and in film and TV rights. Besides the fortune, the winner of the Man Booker Prize can also be sure of fame. The announcement of the winner is covered by television, radio and press worldwide.

Isn’t that cool? Won’t it look great on my resume?

Janice, of Aurora Borealis actually nominated me for a Booker Award. Pretty neat huh? Especially since I will be the only novelist to win such a coveted award who has not, um, actually written a novel. But hey, I won two Oscars without ever working on a movie. Apparently I am multi-talented.

Oh wait. I just looked at Janice’s post a little more closely. Oh. My bad. I didn’t win the Man Booker Prize. I won this one:

I got THIS one!

Cool! Sorry for the confusion. (But if you think I’m changing my resume, you’d better think again!)

I am delighted to accept it this award. To do so, I need to

Thank Janice for the nod. Thanks so much for thinking of me, Janice. For those of you who don’t know her, Janice is an amazingly good person, a writer of poetry, prose, of pieces that make your heart break, and your heart sing. Of pieces that make you question the humanity of some humans, and soar at the gifts others can bring. So thank you Janice. You were one of my first followers. And one of my first and best blogging buddies.
I need to put a picture of the award on my blog – there it is!
I need to tell y’all about five books I love. That’s the hard part, because I love books. I read two or three books a week. Whichever one is in my hand is usually high on the list of my favorites – otherwise I would put it down and not bother with it. But I will try to narrow my list. Here are some of my favorites:

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stephenson is the first book I remember. My sister Beth used to read it to my brother Fred and me every night for years. When I found the old copy of Treasure Island that Beth read from years later, the book fell open to the “Apple Barrel Chapter,” the one we begged for every night. It was through the reading of this that Beth taught Fred and me to love books. Good books. She taught us to love stories and the magic you can always find in them.

Forever by Pete Hamill. A young Irish man travels to America in colonial days. Through an act of kindness, he is granted eternal life as long as he never leaves Manhattan. The story traces the his and the city’s journey from colonial days to the present. Magical. When my sister Beth, who gave me books, was dying, this was the book I read to her in her last hours. It is a beautiful story. I wish I could have read her the whole book.

The Woman in White by Wilke Collins. I’m a sucker for the classics. Wilke Collins was a contemporary of Dickens. He wrote beautifully about different problems in Victorian society, many of which we grapple with today. The Woman in White deals with mental illness. Poor Miss Finch is a blind woman whose life and disability is presented with dignity in a time when that wasn’t often the case in life or in novels. No Name presents two upper class sisters who suddenly learn that by a trick of fate, their parents were somehow not legally married; The Moonstone set the stage for modern mystery stories. He is a writer to check out if you love classic literature. Collins’ protagonists are women and they are true heroines, all.

The Weird Sisters by  Eleanor Brown. Weird Sisters is the author’s first novel and it is so incredibly brilliantly (and differently) written. The three sisters are complex and humorous and absolutely delightful, when you don’t want to kill them. Just like real sisters. The book is a gift to anyone with sisters. Or anyone who likes to read. Or maybe just a gift to me.

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. A complex look at the lives of two women in Afghanistan before and during the Taliban’s rule of Kabul.

Ask me again tomorrow and, well, I’ll likely come up with a different group. Because I love books. I just can’t get enough of them.

Lastly, now I need to nominate five bloggers who can lie on their resumes, too. It’s always hard because folks love or hate these awards, or fall somewhere in between, like me. I tried to find folks who like awards and who haven’t yet received this one. This is a challenge, you know!

Speaker 7 of Speaker7

Val of QBG Tilted Tiara

Frank of A Frank Angle

Cooper of Security is for Cadavers

Twin Daddy of Stuph Blog

Lorna of Lorna’s Voice

Totsymae of Totsymae

OK, so I can’t count. Do not feel obligated to accept this award. But I’d love to hear what you all like to read too!

42 Comments

Filed under Awards, Books, Humor, Writing

Tagged as Awards, Humor, Writing

August 31, 2012 · 0:00

The Sequel

I’ve told you before: I know these folks. I grew up where the book was written and the movies filmed. So I know all about these gals.

They don’t look or act any different in person than on TV. They are molded this way from a special polymer. From the earliest vestiges of childhood, they know their part. They walk a little differently than you and me, they talk a little differently. They stand a little differently. The nose is up, the eyes are either scornful when looking at you and me, or doe-eyed, when looking at Daddy or Hubby or money or jewels.

Yes, here they are: