My Sick Mind

I don't understand about diamonds and why men buy them. What's so impressive about a diamond, except the mining? - Fiona Apple, "Red Red Red" Thanks, Fiona. Here are a few things that I don't understand: UNTIED SHOES - The creative people at Nike and Reebok spend millions on research to figure out exactly how a shoe should fit, and a lot of people run around with the laces undone. A hundred dollars for shoes you aren't going to tie seems to me to be a waste of good technology. PENNIES - C'mon with the pennies, already. Haven't we advanced far enough as a civilization that we can figure out how to price things so that we don't need pennies? THE NINE-TENTHS AT THE END OF THE GASOLINE PRICE - Ditto. Try this: Stop by your local gasoline emporium and ask for a gallon. See how much it costs and try to get your one-tenth of a cent change. TELEMARKETERS - I guess, if people weren't buying things from them, they wouldn't exist. But I have a h...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Italian fashion group Fendi S.R.L. sued Wal-Mart Stores Inc. in U.S. federal court on Friday, accusing the world's largest retailer of selling counterfeit handbags and passing them off as genuine at its Sam's Club warehouse stores. In one example cited in the lawsuit, a black handbag bearing Fendi's trademark logo was offered for sale in a Sam's Club store in Miami for $508.25, 45 percent less than the retail price of $930 for a genuine Fendi bag. --------------------------------- I don't know which is worse; that Sam's Club is selling the fakes for over $500, or that Fendi sells the real ones for over $900. In both cases, I think women have lost their minds. It's a handbag. Any bag that costs more than what could potentially be carried in it costs too much. Fifty bucks - that's the limit, I think. It's odd that Sam's price is considered a bargain. $500 would probably buy about 1,700 rolls of toilet paper, which to me is a...

No less a group of philosophers than major league baseball players have been weighing in on the Jason Grimsley saga. Faced with the prospects of seeing one of their own lose both his source of income and integrity, they have rallied around the guy. Oh ... did I say he lost his integrity? Read on: PHOENIX - As Jason Grimsley's career screeched to a halt in the Dimaondbacks clubhouse, in the Phillies' room Sal Fasano shook his shaggy head in sorrow. "It hurts my heart," Fasano said. "One thing about Jason is, he's a man of integrity," Fasano said - Grimsley's alleged cheating notwithstanding. Fasano pointed more toward Grimsley's departure and his naming names: "He's going to tell the truth. That's what he does." Chicago White Sox reliever Jeff Nelson was upset Grimsley apparently identified several other players as using performance-enhancing drugs in an affidavit filed by IRS special agent Jeff Novitzky. "[Taking steroids]...

PHOENIX - Pitcher Jason Grimsley was released by the Arizona Diamonbacks on Wednesday, a day after his home was searched by federal agents following his admission he used human growth hormone, steroids and amphetamines. The raid - and Grimsley's implication of other major league ballplayers - was the latest sign that widespread investigations into drug use by athletes are still active, even in the era of tougher testing. "Clearly," U.S. Attorney Kevin Ryan said, "we're not done." For the record, Jason Grimsley pitched in 552 games and compiled a 42-58 record with a 4.77 earned run average. He pitched for the Phillies, Indians, Angels, Yankees, Royals, Orioles and Diamondbacks while allowing opponents to bat .265 against him. If that speaks for the success of HGH and amphetamines, then perhaps athletes need to look elsewhere for inspiration. Meanwhile, the minimum salary for a major league player is $316,000 a year, so perhaps the use of steroids and othe...

The last cofferdam protecting the just-completed main wall of Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River is blown up as the 12-second series of blasts sent the 30-meter (30-yard) top section of the cofferdam tumbling into the river in Yichang, central China's Hubei Province, Tuesday, June 6, 2006 the official Xinhua News Agency reported. The 1.4-mile-long Three Gorges Dam now holds back the full force of the river and assumes its role in controlling the deadly floods that have regularly ravaged China's farming heartland. (AP Photo/Xinhua,Liu Chan). And the hand of God formed it into a huge representation of ... oh, you figure it out.

Rolling Stone magazine's National Affairs Daily published the following interview with Howard Dean today, 6-6-06. Portions appear below: Rolling Stone : How confident are you Ohio in 2004 was fairly decided? Howard Dean : I’m not confident that the election in Ohio was fairly decided. We did our own Democratic party study in Ohio with a panel of experts. We absolutely know that there was a systematic voter suppression. We couldn’t say one way or another if the election was stolen. We couldn’t rule it out, but we couldn’t prove that it was. We know that there was substantial voter suppression, and the machines were not reliable. That’s clear. ...of the reports that we’ve received, where you push the screen for one candidate and the other name comes up repeatedly — most of those reports are on Diebold machines. In the governor’s race last year, we had reports from a southwestern district in Virginia that people were in fact pushing Democrat Tim Kaine’s name and Republican Jerry Kilg...

NEW YORK - As the fight over immigration reform drags on, an ominous undercurrent to the debate — racism — is becoming more pronounced. From muttered ethnic slurs to violent attacks, activists say an anti-immigrant backlash seems to be growing in America's neighborhoods and workplaces. A few political leaders have called proposed immigration measures before Congress "racist." "The climate has gotten demonstrably worse and it is racially charged," said Devin Burghart of the Center for New Community, which tracks anti-immigrant activity. "It's not simply a debate about immigration policy. It's about race and national identity and who and what we are as Americans." Well ... who are we, exactly? We are a country that shows television programs like the ALMA Awards tonight. The ALMA Awards are sort of a Hispanic Golden Globes - as if the Golden Globes excludes Hispanics. It doesn't, of course, so why segregate a race with a spotlight on their g...

WASHINGTON - Is Tuesday's date 6-6-6 merely a curious number or could it mean our number is up? Something about the number 666 brings out the worry, the hope and even the humor in people, said the Rev. Felix Just, a professor of theology at the University of San Francisco. A Jesuit priest, Just has taught both apocalyptic theory and mathematics and maintains a "666-Numbers of the Beast" Web site that contains history, theology, math and precisely 66 one-line jokes about 666. Oy . So, what happened on the original occurance of this date, June 6, 0006, and the subsequent one on June 6, 1006 to cause theologians and other people of a confused mindset to think that something was going to happen on Tuesday? They're just numbers on a calendar that we made up and doesn't necessarily coorespond to calendars in other parts of the world. So what makes us think that our calendar is the one on which God deems to act? Are we that pompous as Americans to think that God sing...