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Help! Somebody wake me up and get me out of this nightmare. I’m seriously starting to believe that surfing the net can adversely affect a person’s (mental) health. Consider some of these news item lifted from across the web.
Mar 5, 2008 Bordeaux, France (Reuters)
Cemetery full, mayor tells locals not to die
The headline says it all, folks.
According to the article from Reuters, “The mayor of a village in southwest France has threatened residents with severe punishment if they die, because there is no room left in the overcrowded cemetery to bury them.”
An ordinance posted in the council offices warns the 260 residents of the village of Sarpourenx that "all persons not having a plot in the cemetery and wishing to be buried in Sarpourenx are forbidden from dying in the parish," adding, “Offenders will be severely punished."
The 70 year old Mayor, Gerard Lalanne, claims he was forced to take drastic action, saying, "It may be a laughing matter for some, but not for me." Planning on going somewhere soon, Mr. Mayor?
I wonder just what the ordinance means when they say, “Offenders will be severely punished." What additional punishment can you inflict on a dead man?
Mar 26, 2008 The Evening Standard (London)
Protecting the children
Hall Primary School in Clacton, Essex, decided to protect the children from pedophiles by covering their faces with “smiley faces” in the schools on-line newsletter.
Frank Furedi, a sociology professor at the University of Kent, said the school was being alarmist. "Every time a school takes silly measures, it says we see the world through the eyes of a pedophile. They think that any innocent picture of school children will somehow be subverted and manipulated.” Uh-huh.
The school has, apparently, taken down the controversial pictures from its website. A message on the website says: "Our newsletter section is undergoing maintenance. Back soon!" Uh-huh.
Feb 28, 2008 AP Altoona, PA
Crispy Frickin' Chicken
The Associated Press article advises that, “A convenience store chain's billboard, advertising its fried chicken sandwich, is ruffling the feathers of some residents.” The sandwich, known as the “Crispy Frickin’ Chicken” sandwich had apparently upset some residents with its fowl language.
(By-law) enforcement officer Fran Calarco said "There was a lady who left an angry voice mail, and a man called and said he had small children and didn't think they should be exposed to that type of language. I told him I completely understood and agreed."
The convenience stores are owned by Sheetz Inc., based in Altoona and operating stores in Maryland, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia and West Virginia. They took down the billboards a week later when the ad campaign was scheduled to end.
Maybe I should post an “Adult Content” warning on this site to keep the frickin’ assholes out?
I was browsing through an old copy of “Popular Mechanics” I had stashed on the top shelf of my bedroom closet the other day. When I say old, I mean old; the pages yellowed and brittle. The date was November 1919 which was ironically, the year of my father’s birth and one of the reasons I have kept the magazine around so long.
The magazine contains a full page ad touting the advantages of quitting smoking and offering a smoking cessation program for less than $2.00 (plus postage). Apparently, the tobacco prohibitionists have been around for a long time.
Later, while surfing the net, I came across the following essay by Samuel Clemens (better known as Mark Twain) on a smoker’s choice web site. Mr. Clemens didn’t care much for the anti-smoker fanatics in his day either.
Both the graphics and the essay are in the public domain, so I reprint them here for your consideration and amusement.
The Moral Statistician
By Samuel Clemens
Originally published in Sketches, Old and New, 1893
I don't want any of your statistics; I took your whole batch and lit my pipe with it.
I hate your kind of people. You are always ciphering out how much a man's health is injured, and how much his intellect is impaired, and how many pitiful dollars and cents he wastes in the course of ninety-two years' indulgence in the fatal practice of smoking; and in the equally fatal practice of drinking coffee; and in playing billiards occasionally; and in taking a glass of wine at dinner, etc. etc. And you are always figuring out how many women have been burned to death because of the dangerous fashion of wearing expansive hoops, etc. etc. You never see more than one side of the question.
You are blind to the fact that most old men in America smoke and drink coffee, although, according to your theory, they ought to have died young; and that hearty old Englishmen drink wine and survive it, and portly old Dutchmen both drink and smoke freely, and yet grow older and fatter all the time. And you never try to find out how much solid comfort, relaxation, and enjoyment a man derives from smoking in the course of a lifetime (which is worth ten times the money he would save by letting it alone), nor the appalling aggregate of happiness lost in a lifetime by your kind of people from not smoking. Of course you can save money by denying yourself all those little vicious enjoyments for fifty years; but then what can you do with it? What use can you put it to? Money can't save your infinitesimal soul. All the use that money can be put to is to purchase comfort and enjoyment in this life; therefore, as you are an enemy to comfort and enjoyment where is the use of accumulating cash?
It won't do for you to say that you can use it to better purpose in furnishing a good table, and in charities, and in supporting tract societies, because you know yourself that you people who have no petty vices are never known to give away a cent, and that you stint yourselves so in the matter of food that you are always feeble and hungry. And you never dare to laugh in the daytime for fear some poor wretch, seeing you in a good humor, will try to borrow a dollar of you; and in church you are always down on your knees, with your ears buried in the cushion, when the contribution-box comes around; and you never give the revenue officers a full statement of your income.
Now you know all these things yourself, don't you? Very well, then, what is the use of your stringing out your miserable lives to a lean and withered old age? What is the use of your saving money that is so utterly worthless to you? In a word, why don't you go off somewhere and die, and not be always trying to seduce people into becoming as ornery and unlovable as you are yourselves, by your villainous "moral statistics"?
Now, I don't approve of dissipation, and I don't indulge in it either; but I haven't a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming petty vices. And so I don't want to hear from you any more. I think you are the very same man who read me a long lecture last week about the degrading vice of smoking cigars, and then came back, in my absence, with your reprehensible fire-proof gloves on, and carried off my beautiful parlor stove.
I was playing some old records the other day, listening to some folk music from the late fifties and early sixties. One of the songs on the record was an ‘a cappella’ arrangement of “The Ballad of Springhill”. It’s one of the finest versions of the song I’ve ever heard; which is not really surprising. The song was both written and performed by Peggy Seeger and Ewan MacColl.
Bono and U2 are among the many who recorded the song. They did a version as recently as 1987. OK. So it wasn’t all that recent.
Anyway, back in the winter of 58/59, I was going to SMH (Sydney Mines High School). I believe I was sitting through an early morning latin class when we heard the whistle from Princess Colliery signaling trouble in the pits. It was a long eerie blast, frightening actually, that sent shivers down your spine.
Most of the class, myself included, just looked around with raised eyebrows wondering just what the hell was going on. Some of the kids knew, either briefed by their parents or perhaps having listened to the radio that morning before coming to school. And, it didn’t take a lot of explanation for the rest of us to understand.
“They’ll be going to Springhill.”
When you live in a mining town, within a quarter mile of the pit head, you don’t need any more explanation. You just start wondering; how bad and how many?
The October 23, 1958 “bump” at Number 2 coal mine in Springhill was the worst in North American mining history. You’ll need a geologist to explain what a bump actually is or what causes them. But, you can imagine the death and destruction wreaked by a small underground earthquake, especially to miners labouring deep in the bowels of the earth. There were three distinct shock waves from the bump in Springhill, shaking the entire region.
Draegermen and teams of barefaced miners immediately began the rescue effort. Teams began to arrive from other coal mines on Cape Breton Island and Pictou County, to help with the rescue of trapped miners. The first of the rescue teams encountered survivors at about 13,000 feet down the slope, walking or limping toward the surface. Rescuers were forced to work down shafts either in a partial state of collapse or blocked completely by debris.
The last of the survivors were brought to the surface on Sunday, November 1, 1958. There would be no more in the days that followed. Bodies of the dead were placed in airtight aluminum coffins before being brought to the surface due to the advanced state of decomposition.
Of the 174 miners in Number 2 colliery at the time of the bump, 74 were killed. The remaining 100 were rescued, with some spending as many as eight days trapped underground.
We had just gotten our first television set and CBC affiliate CJCB-TV usually started broadcasting around one o’clock in the afternoon. However, when I got home for lunch that day, Dad was already glued to the black and white “portable” in the living room. If I recall right, some of the men he’d served with in the North Novies were working in the Cumberland mine.
The disaster became something of a milestone in television history as the first major international news event to appear in live television broadcasts. That kind of stuff is “old hat” these days, but in the fifties it was high drama.
A week or so later, when the last of the survivors were being brought to the surface, a reporter rushed to ask one of them “what he wanted most” after having been trapped underground for eight days. Without hesitation, and with the whole world watching, he replied "A cold 7-Up."
I remember the old man laughing and saying “That bugger just got himself a job for life.” I don’t know how long the job lasted, but the 7-Up company did hire the guy as a spokesman.
Following the disaster, the Springhill mines, once the town’s economic lifeblood, were closed, never to reopen.
The Ballad of Springhill
In the town of Springhill, Nova Scotia
Down in the dark of the Cumberland Mine
There's blood on the coal and the miners lie
In roads that never saw sun nor sky
Roads that never saw sun nor sky.
by Peggy Seeger & Ewan MacColl
The McDonald's Happy Meal could become a thing of the past in Liverpool, England. The city council is planning to outlaw the meals on the grounds that they are damaging the heath of children, particularly as they offer free toys in order to encourage parents to buy junk food for their children.
Council’s Childhood Obesity Scrutiny Group is proposing a by-law that would forbid the sale of fast food accompanied by toys. Councilors say the promotional items are used to boost sales through something they call "Pester Power" - children pestering parents for Happy Meal toys. Liverpool Council claims they are contributing to the epidemic of childhood obesity.
For the full story, see my other blog, Stand FAST
Help! Somebody wake me up and get me out of this nightmare. I’m seriously starting to believe that surfing the net can adversely affect a person’s (mental) health. Consider some of these news item lifted from across the web.
