The ad reads: “Are you sick and tired of cleaning up after your lazy, good-for-nothing family?” Try murder. It can be easy, even for a woman.

All these years I thought I was going gray. Turns out I’m a peroxide blonde.

Which just goes to show that one of my Viking friends was right when he said, “I’m not getting grayer. I’m getting blonder.”

And here’s a story about a woman in New Zealand, an amputee, who got the Weta special effects people (the folks behind all the neat stuff in “The Lord of the Rings”) to make her a prosthetic mermaid’s tail.

Part of me thinks that’s a little creepy. But most of me thinks it’s pretty neat.

What bothers me is that the tail the technician is shown sculpting in the pictures doesn’t appear to be the same tail the woman is wearing in the photos. Perhaps there were alpha and beta versions. Or perhaps they’re making them available to the general market.

Tips on both stories: Fox News.

Humanities departments are among the hardest hit. In this post, Joel Mark comments:

The recession is not what is hitting the humanities departments of most of our major universities. Intellectual poverty and dishonesty are what is hitting them, in the name of such ideologies as postmodernism, neo-Marxism, socialism, political correctness, multi-culturalism and sheer selfish and immature anger (especially in the arts).

I love the humanities and have taught for several years in the humanities department of a university in California. The best place to study and learn about what we call the humanities today, however, is often as far away as possible from a major modern university.

If humanities departments in universities do suffer, that constitutes our best hope for a future rise in our actual learning in the real ‘humanities’ far from the angry ivory towers. So, I am optimistic.

Over at “Follow the Money” blog, Brad Setser notes a Wall Street Journal story reporting, “Citigroup officials hope to persuade private investors that have bought preferred shares — such as the Government of Singapore Investment Corp., Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and Kuwait Investment Authority . . .”

Setser goes on to point out, “But it is striking that none of the ‘private investors’ mentioned in the Wall Street Journal are actually, well, private investors.”

Speaking of banks, did you hear President Obama say the Feds would strong arm banks to do what they want? Continue reading Words Used to Mean Things →

“Something essential, however hard to define, had been lost en route [to suburbia]; some aspect of innocence, perhaps, that at least to a romantic imagination, once existed in our towns,” according to Rod Serling apparently. “Casting a seductive smile, Serling alone continued to convey on TV what every other serious writer wanted to say but wasn’t allowed to”–that message being the dangers of commercialism and fear of current events.

Thanks for Delanceyplace.com for this excerpt.

“NASA global warming satellite crashes after launch”

*snicker* Maybe it was on a failed mission.

A new public service announcement from the federal government’s new National Coordinator of Health Information Technology.

[Camera pans over empty rooms in a dimly lit, well-furnished house. Senior male voiceover begins.]

I’ve lived a good life. I don’t want to be a burden on my family or the good taxpayers of America . . .

[Pan over unused swimming pool and immaculate yard]

Working hard a McDonald’s, Jiffy Lube, or Waffle House just to make ends meet.

[Cut to old man at a kitchen table with a glass of wine, speaking into the camera. Shake the camera to add realism.]

My doctor told me medication for people my age was becoming scarcer by the day, so I asked him what I could do to help ease me onto the next life. He said, “Try salt.”

[Cut to salt pouring slowly, gracefully, from 5 lb. container.]

He said, “Salt tastes great, and eating more salt can raise your blood pressure which will shorten your life.”

[Show old man salting his steak, salting his wine, taking of the lid off the shaker and pouring it down his throat. Continue voiceover.]

Now, I eat salt with everything. And I eat more processed foods, because they’re rich in wonderful, life-affirming salt.

[Cut to man speaking to camera]

You know, I’ve lived a good, long life, and with salt, I can pass on that life to my children and yours. Cheers.

[compassionate female voiceover] One in four men will probably have a stroke by age 85. Get yours over with sooner by using more salt. Pass on the good life. A message from thoughtful people at the office of the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology.

Carl Trueman states, “Some weeks ago, I penned a piece on Ref21, arguing that the trendy Christian infatuation with cultural interaction was problematic at a number of levels. Well, a review of the film, Milk over at the Gospel and Culture project is good evidence of a number of my points.”