A few people forwarded me this list today, about the worst bedbug infestations in the country. To my amazement, Cincinnati tops the list. Columbus — such a clean city! — is right behind. Detroit is No. 5, Dayton No. 9, and Baltimore — hey, Lippman! Feeling itchy? — is No. 10.
For the record, I have never seen a bedbug, or felt one’s bite. I know they’re a problem in New York (No. 7), but until I read this, I never dreamed they were moving west. I blame washed-out Brooklyn hipsters leaving Williamsburg to move back in with mom and dad in Worthington. Along with all their little friends!!!!!
The first person I knew who picked up scabies was gay. It was the ’70s, and we all know what that meant. He got scabies, then crabs, then hepatitis, then AIDS, and that was that. But it was the scabies that freaked me out. I knew the chances of me ever having unprotected anal sex with a stranger were pretty damn slim, but you could get scabies — he told me, scratching his arm — from sitting on the wrong couch. Yikes.
Alan had a friend who got the same thing in a Motel 6 (he swears), and for years on our many travels by car, he refused to even consider stopping there. (The prices for more respectable lodgings in Santa Fe changed his mind, and we found the Motel 6 there to be nicer than many Holiday Inns.)
Every night I troll the nation’s newspapers and wire services for health news, and I am here to tell you: From microscopic to smashable-with-one’s-foot, them bugs is gonna get us all. What doesn’t kill them only makes them stronger, and you can never kill them all. That said, I am never buying another piece of upholstered furniture used, and anyone who comes into my house is going to have to stand on the back steps for skin inspection and fumigation.
Which just dislodged a memory from “Gone With the Wind” (the novel): As the soldiers begin walking home after the war’s end, Mammy polices hygiene at Tara, requiring all to strip naked and submit to having their clothes go into “the b’iling pot,” while simultaneously scrubbing down with lye soap, followed by a home-brewed dysentery remedy: “…one and all, they drank her doses meekly and with wry faces, remembering, perhaps, other stern black faces in far-off places and other inexorable black hands holding medicine spoons.” Such happy slaves. Such a fascinating book.
Whenever I mention it, I teeter on the brink of a doctoral dissertation. I’ll spare you and skip right to the bloggage:
Why does everyone assume Mrs. Tiger Woods learned about his cattin’ ways via a supermarket tabloid? I’ve suspected from the beginning the revelation came at her gynecologist’s office, delivered with averted eyes and maybe involving, yes, crabs. Not that she will tell you.
Rich people of means, please learn to grow old gracefully. Plastic surgery might fool some people in your 40s, but down the road, it will only make you look like a monster. Your wife, too.
With the retirement of the Crown Vic Police Interceptor, competitors are rushing to fill the market for police cars. The Freep showcases the contenders, including one from an Indiana startup called Carbon Motors. One of the police stations around here has a tricked-out Mustang, and no, I don’t know why, either, except that they had the money and felt like spending it.
Meanwhile, the News looks at 75 years of the Chevy Suburban. You have to really love cars to live in this town. Tolerate ’em, at least.
Thank God I have Tom and Lorenzo to tell me Isabel Toledo now has a line of shoes at Payless. And they include a fetching fake-fur boot, just in case I need to make some extra coin on Woodward some grim winter.
Have a great hump day. I’ll be humpin’ copy, as usual.
Jeff Borden said on August 25, 2010 at 10:46 am
Chicago cops are rolling out in Chevy SUVs, which the chief says allows them to sit 7 or 9 inches higher than in the Crown Vics and the Impalas. Given their girth, I hope some of our finest don’t have heart attacks climbing up and down from those higher seats.
I always assumed there was enough of a market for fleet cars –police, fire, taxi, livery– that money could be made building something solely for that purpose, but until the E7, I’d never heard of an attempt.
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Deborah said on August 25, 2010 at 10:47 am
And Chicago is #3! Yikes. I started itching when I read this, don’t think it’s bedbugs just my usual hypochondria.
That photo of the old folks with hideous plastic surgery was unsettling for this early in the morning.
Isobel Toledo at Payless is amazing, but when I looked at the shoes… no thanks.
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4dbirds said on August 25, 2010 at 10:47 am
Sometimes I think this bedbug epidemic is being hyped by those who want to bring back DDT. That said, I do know someone who had an infestation and it was promptly taken care of with diatomaceous earth. It’s a cheap, nontoxic powder made from a ground up rock called diatomite. She bought it online along with a little rubber pumper thing and 72 hours later, all gone.
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judybusy said on August 25, 2010 at 10:51 am
Speaking of African Americans caring for whites, I am in the middle of “Washington: The making of the American Capital.” Much of the book is about the role of slavery in locating the capital in a friendly-to-human-bondage-environs, with some digressions. One of these was the role of free blacks in nursing many whites during the awful yellow fever plague in Philadelphia in 1793. Induced to do so by their supporter Benjamin Rush (who believed they were immune) they provided care to many people at risk of thier own lives. It was a turning point in their internal emancipation, as they saw ostensibly morally superior white people act in atrocious ways as panic swept the city. Sadly, after the plague ran its course they were accused of robbing and extorting money from the dying. Next chapter: the role of the Masons in creating our national capital. Fun stuff!
Re: scabies. In 2008, my partner picked them up at the hospital she works at. After four months, we finally got treatment–her doc initially diagnosed allergies and prescribed something steroidal. My initial consult with a dermatologist resulted in a diagnosis of “all those natural care, plant-based items you’ve used for 20 years is causing this horrible itching.” I nearly cried when I went back a month later and he regretfully informed me it was probably scabies, and could thus be treated. He wrote scripts for both us, even though he never saw my partner. My case, however, turned out to be nodule scabies. No treatment, just time until the itching went away. Lots of time: 6 freaking months.
Did anyone catch the amazing fact in the NYT today that Mississippi didn’t ratify the 19th amendment franchising women until 1984?
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coozledad said on August 25, 2010 at 10:52 am
As the climate warms, the number of mosquitoes, ticks, lice, chiggers and internal parasites like tapes, flukes and pinworms are already rising dramatically, and mutating faster than the available chemicals we have that keep them in check. You’ll also see the migration of parasites like blackfly (and the subsequent rise of river blindness) in human populations outside the current at-risk regions. Here, we’ve seen Ivermectin beginning to lose its effectiveness already, and urishiol bearing plants like sumac, poison oak and ivy are developing higher toxicity (couple that with humans becoming generally more allergic and you get deaths from systemic reactions). The climate change deniers are recommending we pump the environment full of DDT again, which will once again collapse raptor populations, wipe out beneficial insects, and give the laborers who have to spray the junk orange-sized tumors in their brains.
Sadly, people are just going to have to get used to scratching themselves raw over the long twilight of the stupidest animal that ever drew a fucking breath.
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Peter said on August 25, 2010 at 10:55 am
I do work for a small mid-scale hotel chain, and I found out about the bedbug problem about a year ago.
Those bugs are something. If the hotel’s eradication techniques were done on a human scale, the world would have ended many times over by now.
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judybusy said on August 25, 2010 at 11:01 am
Cooz, still laughing over here about your description of our species. I have thought that myself sooooo many times.
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MarkH said on August 25, 2010 at 11:02 am
If that’s a local PD you’re talking about, Nance, then the Mustang is an odd choice. Back in the ’80s, highway patrols favored hi-po Mustangs and Camaros for pursuit purposes. But they were eventually deemed cost-inefficient, and in the Mustang’s case, very unstable at speeds 100+ mph. Lots of stories of these cars in the junkyards, especially in California. In Wyoming, the HP is gradually moving toward more SUVs like Tahoes and Dodge Durangos, but maintain a mix of Dodge Chargers, Chevy Impalas, and of course, Crown Vics. Locally, our sheriff and police departments are phasing cars back in with their SUVs. BTW, if you’d like a Crown Vic police model, there are a lot of low mileage examples at decent prices on ebay.
We love our Suurban. It’s eight years old with 110,000 miles, well-maintained and always comes in handy with five of us in the house. Indespensible in Wyoming winters.
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Jeff Borden said on August 25, 2010 at 11:08 am
Cooz,
Eloquent as always. I HAVE seen right-wingers advocating for a return to the mass use of DDT, claiming it does not pose a threat to humans. This assertion can be placed alongside their denial of global warming, and should be treated with the same respect.
BTW, I was noticing something recently about the whole mosque debate in NYC. While our conservative chatterers are going on and on about the Cordoba House, who the hell is continuing the hate on the Mexican immigrants? I thought it was the brown hordes scuttling over our southern boundary that was our No. 1 problem, but it seems to have been displaced by the Islamic community center.
Egads. Perhaps the Mooslim terrorists and the Messican immigrants are in league together! The brown people will invade from the south while the other brown people invade from the east. The horror!
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nancy said on August 25, 2010 at 11:15 am
I’m puzzled by the Mustang in a suburban department, too, Mark, as there’s not a street in the whole municipality that has a speed limit higher than 35, and the department has a no-chase policy. (Get to the city limits and keep on a-goin’, and they’re reasonably cool with that.) However, this is Detroit, which always complicates matters where cars are concerned. It’s entirely possible the department got the Mustang on deep, deep discount, thanks to someone in the community who sits on the board of directors.
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LAMary said on August 25, 2010 at 11:24 am
I understand it was an unmarked Crown Vic chasing the person who was not me around my neighborhood on Monday. Personally I wouldn’t know. It wasn’t me they were chasing. Really. It just looked like me in my car.
I’m liking the Isabel Toledo flat ghillies. They would look nice at the beginning of the day and by 6 when I’ve been sitting at my desk for 11 hours and my feet have swollen I would have an attractive pattern of laces embedded in my feet.
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nancy said on August 25, 2010 at 11:26 am
I shrink at anything with “manmade materials” on the label, unless they’re the part that comes in contact with the street. I’m in the market for a decent pair of flats that still have a modicum of arch support, but I fear my foot’s reaction to those admittedly cute flats would be 1) sweat; and 2) stink.
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brian stouder said on August 25, 2010 at 11:37 am
but I fear my foot’s reaction to those admittedly cute flats would be 1) sweat; and 2) stink.
Well, if that grim Woodward winter ever gets here, I’ll be the first to make a reservation; and the fake fur boots probably will have the exact same effect. But that won’t matter, because I’d be one of those johns who only wants to talk
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ROgirl said on August 25, 2010 at 11:41 am
Didn’t the plastic surgery guy ever see this?
http://www.moderntimes.com/palace/20_image/phantom.jpg
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Kim said on August 25, 2010 at 12:02 pm
My experience has been when a hot car appears in the local police dept. fleet it means acquisition by forfeiture during a drug arrest.
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LAMary said on August 25, 2010 at 12:21 pm
I’m at the moment wearing some Anne Klein flats that have some support. They are leopard print snakeskin and that’s the only color I saw them in at Nordstrom Rack, but they’re comfy. Born makes some flats that are OK too.
http://www.zappos.com/ak-anne-klein-buttons-zebra-print
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Jeff Borden said on August 25, 2010 at 12:31 pm
Kim,
That was true when I was a police reporter in the mid-1970s in Columbus. Long before “Miami Vice” and its Ferrari, the vice squad in Columbus had access to a confiscated Corvette. When drug smugglers were using Florida as an importation site, so many fancy cars were confiscated that some sheriffs were driving Coupe de Villes complete with a gumball machine on the roof.
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beb said on August 25, 2010 at 12:33 pm
I live near Nancy and also saw a Mustang police car. I think it was an undercover drug car since the one I saw was unmarked and none of the lights were obvious until they started flashing. And the lights (strips of leds) were all over the car in odd locations, like along the door. It did not look like a traffic enforcement vehicle by any means.
But odder than that, and spotted at the same location, Moross west of I-94, was a black pick up truck, with flashing police lights. Again it looked like a tricked out conventional truck until the lights started flashing red and blue.
Jeff wonders if there is a large enough market for fleet vehicles to support a market of independent manufacturer. Checker cab used to built their own cabs, which were boxy, heavy and designed to drive hundreds of thousands of miles before collapsing. They stopped some time in the 60s I believe. The cars, designed to survive hitting potholes everyday, were too heavy and when gas prices shot up they couldn’t compete. So I’m guessing that no, there isn’t enough market for an indie fleet car.
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Linda said on August 25, 2010 at 12:38 pm
Coozledad:
I keep wondering if the DDT fans just bought stock in companies that produce it, and realize that they back The Cause (of DDT), for the slimmer than a snowball’s chance in hell of saying “we told you so,” which is the only reason conservatives do or say anything anymore. It’s like they have thrown in the towel on their own relevance, and are now just trying to piss people off.
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Jeff Borden said on August 25, 2010 at 12:43 pm
Beb,
I should’ve remembered Checker, of course. I’m old enough to know better. The Checker plant was the backdrop for one of the most underrated movies of the 1970s, “Blue Collar,” with Harvey Keitel, Richard Pryor and Yaphet Kotto. Written and directed by Paul Schrader, who also wrote “Taxi Driver,” it is about as dark and pessimistic a view of worker-company relations as anything I’ve ever seen. The final sequence –where the company and the union manage to reduce the problems in the plant to a racial war between blacks and whites– is really powerful. Phenomenal performance by Pryor. A far cry from his “white friendly black guy” turns in things like “Silver Streak.”
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Julie Robinson said on August 25, 2010 at 12:49 pm
Oh my. Just the other day my mom was fondly remembering DDT since it killed the mosquitoes she is struggling with this year. And she also complains about the illegals, meaning “dirty Mexicans”.
At the moment I’m wearing a pair of Birkenstock sandals, as I do just about every day. They’re great for my plantar fasciitis, but not so cute as Mary’s ballet flats. Come a certain age, it’s all about comfort over appearance.
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JayZ(the original) said on August 25, 2010 at 12:50 pm
Jeff:
Don’t you know that the new axis of evil is composed of Muslims who want to build a house of worship, undocumented Mexican immigrants, and gays and lesbians who want to get married?
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LAMary said on August 25, 2010 at 1:00 pm
I’m ancient Julie and I wear a lot of different shoes with different levels of comfort and practicality. Sometimes I can’t stand another day of Dansko black clogs so I do the leopard flats or the black flats with the big flowers on the toes. Another fave is a Merrel style called Pirouette which I think they have discontinued. They look like a cross between bowling shoes and baseball shoes. Merrel arabesques are good too. I’m planning on buying some in purple suede when autumn finally arrives.
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hexdecimal said on August 25, 2010 at 1:05 pm
Beb @18 – It was 1982 when the Checker Cab was last made. Those cabs were not much fun to drive but from a passenger point of view they were great. Very roomy. They could hold 6 passengers, as well as a months worth of laundry and two weeks of food.
In Fort Wayne, about 78 or 79, the cab company bought 4 door Peugeots. They were great to drive, but not so good for the passengers. They were hard to get into in the back for the elderly, and the trunk wasn’t much bigger than a bread box.
Here is the wiki on the Checker Motor Corp.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checker_Taxi
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Jeff Borden said on August 25, 2010 at 1:08 pm
No one could have predicted. . .
that all the sound and fury directed against the Islamic community center in Lower Manhattan by Rupert Murdoch’s flying monkeys of media would ever result in a Muslim cab driver being stabbed in NYC because he is a Muslim. I wonder if Beck, Hannity, Palin, the empty heads on the morning show, et.al. will get bonuses!
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nancy said on August 25, 2010 at 1:10 pm
The richest person I ever knew personally drove a Checker Marathon. She lived in Manhattan, so you’d think service would be a breeze, but it spent weeks on end in the shop in New Jersey, waiting for parts to be shipped in from Timbuktu. She got rid of it and bought a Ferrari.
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LAMary said on August 25, 2010 at 1:17 pm
nancy, you know Fran Leibowitz?
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Dorothy said on August 25, 2010 at 1:41 pm
I am THIS close to asking you what size shoes ou wear, Mary, cuz I’m wondering how economical (shipping from CA to OH) it would be to borrow a pair of some of the cute shoes you are describing.
I’ve been a flat-shoe-wearing kinda girl for some time now, but today I decided to wear gold sandals that have a 3″ cork wedge heel. I feel a little like I’m about to pitch forward if I walk too fast but they look great with the black, orange and yellow wrap around skirt I have on today.
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Sue said on August 25, 2010 at 1:50 pm
Jeff Borden, they will not get bonuses, but I suspect they will attempt to deflect from themselves by turning this into an argument against the hate crime designation.
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LAMary said on August 25, 2010 at 2:00 pm
As well as being ancient I have big feet. I wear a 10.5 or 11. Hey, I’m tall. I would fall over otherwise.
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Dorothy said on August 25, 2010 at 2:03 pm
My daughter wears 11s also – she’s 5’11”. I’m 5’9″ and wear a 9.5 or 10, depending on the shoe.
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Dorothy said on August 25, 2010 at 2:11 pm
After reading this all I could think was “What took them so long to see her ($P) in this light?”
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-08-20/sarah-palins-dr-laura-tweet-black-republicans-react/?obref=obinsite
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prospero said on August 25, 2010 at 2:13 pm
I was born in Children’s Hospital, in Cincinnati. It was the capital of slave trade, not bedbugs. So far as rolling street racing in Detroit is concerned, that happened, Woodward was shut down for miles through Southfield and Birmingham, it wasn’t like it was difficult. Ask Glenn Beck. These bedbugs were imported by formerly “good muslims”. We all know this has it’s roots in Al Qaeda, and that points right at Lichtenstein. Bastards are hiding Insects of Mass Torment.
They’re just another form of roach. They live forever and will torture human beings until there aren’t any humans anymore when Israel uses the non-existent nukes from Dimona to blow Iran to hell.
What the hell is wrong with people? Iran’s got no capability of blowing people up with nukes, and Israel does because they stole intelligence and fissionable material from the US? For sure. How in the world is that not a terriss state?
It’s not like I’m making something up, like W and the Neocons They made shit up and created a a massive deficit by running two off=budget wars that made massie profits for Haliburton for excetionally shoddy workNor do I propose or intend any action. Whackjobs make every whackjob more likely to act. Israel’s got no nukes trained on Teheran, right?
How much of the deficit comes from the illegal invasions? How much comes from the obscene rebates to extremeley rich people that never smelt a buisness they couldn’t devour? Factory farms and salomolla.
Seriously. You people aren’t idiots. How do you buy the first word out of any of these liars’ mouths? You buy Mitch Mc’Conneell and assholes just like him Killing Americans with bad eggs for profit is not a whole lot different from destroying the entire watershed by mountaintop destruction.
Is It?
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coozledad said on August 25, 2010 at 2:18 pm
Linda: That’s got a lot to do with it. It’s probably pretty cheap to make, too. If it’s easy to make, and its constituents happen to be a byproduct of some other chemical a company produces, they’ll bust their ass to sell it, even if field testing shows the remotest shred of efficacy.
It sounds like diatomaceous earth works really well on bedbugs. I would have thought borax would do the trick, since it works well on fleas and termites, but apparently not. Citrus oils, neem oil, and other plant based soaps kill a lot of different types of bugs, but they’re not proprietary compounds, and no one can glut themselves on some dumbass farmer’s money producing them.
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Jolene said on August 25, 2010 at 2:20 pm
cooz, your predictions re bugs in our future are disgusting, but, based on the home truths spouted by my dad, likely valid. Having farmed in North Dakota his whole life, he occasionally mentioned that the severe winters there killed organisms that might have survived in the soil in a milder climate, thus reducing their dependence on insecticides–which is not to say that they didn’t use plenty.
Seems like environmental organizations might use the threat of a buggier future to promote legislation to slow climate change legislation. Given the visceral, negative reaction that most people have to bugs, it might attract attention that predictions of changes with less intimate physical effects have not.
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Rana said on August 25, 2010 at 2:30 pm
I like Birkenstocks, and Clark’s Privo line, for comfortable but not ugly shoes. I also have several pairs of Vibram toe shoes (the uncomfortably named “Five Fingers” line) but fully understand that they are not, aesthetically, for everyone. (That said, they’ve come out with some SmartWool slipper-types that look pretty darn comfy.)
Re: scabies, bedbugs, and other creepy-crawlies, the grossest parasite I’ve had the misfortune to encounter was ringworm, which I got on my forearms after handling infected kittens. Disgusting. And itchy.
Off the link to the plastic surgery couple, there was this one, in which Justin Bieber’s music is slowed 800% and something like New Age space music results. Now, if only that can be done to all of his oeuvre…
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deb said on August 25, 2010 at 3:22 pm
those plastic surgery victims’ pictures should be posted prominently in the office of every plastic surgeon and “day spa” in the country. i’ve never seen creepier-looking human beings. that woman is a year older than me; she looks years older.
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nancy said on August 25, 2010 at 3:28 pm
Actually, until I read the comments on the Gawker piece I didn’t even notice what else she looks like:
I assume from what appears to be an extremely prominent Adam’s Apple, that Brenda Frank was probably born as Brendan & had some major surgical operations.
Now, of course, it’s all I can see. “Former model,” it says. Huh. Probably did a lingerie thing in the drag show.
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Deborah said on August 25, 2010 at 3:35 pm
Speaking of shoes… last summer before we went to Finland I bought some Ecco brand walking shoes. They worked great for me there and I’ve worn them a lot since, except through this summer it’s been so hot in Chicago I’ve worn mostly sandals. Yesterday was a cooler day so I wore my walking shoes and boy howdy did I get a blister from them, a real doozy on the back of my left heel. I turned my right ankle slightly on pocked pavement while walking to work a few days ago and it’s been hurting too. So today I’m walking kinda funny in my sandals. I hope this clears up soon because walking is the only exercise I get.
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Rana said on August 25, 2010 at 3:37 pm
Deborah, you might try blister pods (they’re gel-filled sticky bandage things) or, once you’ve healed, blister sticks (which are rub-on anti-friction stuff). BandAid makes both, as do some other companies.
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MichaelG said on August 25, 2010 at 3:45 pm
The CHP has tested Chargers and generally doesn’t like them. CHP feels they are too small inside but they do prefer rear wheel drive vehicles. They’ve tried Volvos, Mustangs and Camaros and I don’t know what else. They didn’t like the Camaros. The criticism was that they were unstable and had no brakes. They wrecked most of them. You’d be amazed at how many cars they wreck. They liked driving the Mustangs which had four speed standard transmissions. But all three, Volvos, Mustangs and Camaros were too small. As the CHP has been driving Crown Vics since around 1992, the Crown Vic is about all anybody remembers.
I’ve read about the Carbon. The articles I’ve seen have several reasons that the authors are skeptical about the venture’s success. A big one was the high cost. I wouldn’t buy stock.
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Bob said on August 25, 2010 at 3:55 pm
Judybusy: “Did anyone catch the amazing fact in the NYT today that Mississippi didn’t ratify the 19th amendment franchising women until 1984?”
State slogan: Keeping the other 49 from being last in anything
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Dexter said on August 25, 2010 at 3:58 pm
Gomez lives! And Lily finally got rid of that hipster streaked hair. Good job, Addams family.
I too remember when the Indiana and Michigan state cops used Mustangs in the 1980s . I thought about that last month when I drove to Detroit Metro airport and on I-275 I noticed young state cops in Chargers running their speeder-catching operation, two cars on the shoulder and down the road a few miles two more, ready to catch some leadfoots. A local sheriff’s deputy has a new Charger for his personal car here…cops love the Chargers, I guess. The new Indiana-made car looks interesting, best of luck to them.
I last rode in Checker Marathon cab in Chicago, fall of 1981, and the cabbie was a comedian, telling us AIDS jokes when that was a way to make fun of gays using Haitians in the punchline. Not funny then, never funny.
I toyed with the idea of getting one for fun, but that’s one that I dropped.
There a place online where we can buy retired London cabs, the Black Cabs. For a few thousand pounds we can have one of the best cabs ever built.
http://www.elitelondontaxis.co.uk/
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MaryRC said on August 25, 2010 at 4:02 pm
Nancy, you beat me to it: I was just about to say, is Mrs. Bad Plastic Surgery a guy? As for Mr. Bad Plastic Surgery, I’ve seen that odd upper-lip effect on Michael Jackson and now Dr. Laura, where the space between the nose and mouth seems disproportionately huge, while the upper lip has virtually disappeared and what’s left of the mouth seems to be sliding down the person’s face.
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coozledad said on August 25, 2010 at 4:05 pm
Dexter: I was thinking the old dude looked a lot like this:
tiny.cc/ph9uk
The former model says she “doesn’t cat around”, which translates to:”Those slabs at the funeral home are just too damn cold.”
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Dexter said on August 25, 2010 at 4:06 pm
hexdecimal: I remember those Peugeots in Fort Wayne. Wasn’t it a cost-cutting measure that turned out to be a costly mistake when the cars didn’t hold up like taxis just have to? And didn’t the drivers and passengers hate them?
I know I rode in one one time and it seemed really cramped.
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judybusy said on August 25, 2010 at 4:10 pm
Bob, that’s a very generous way to look at Mississippi!
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Jeff Borden said on August 25, 2010 at 4:21 pm
MichaelG,
Police officers are usually in a tie for bitching the most about their jobs with firefighters and journalists.
When I was working the cop beat from 1974-1977, the police moved from the full-sized Ford Customs to all manner of smaller cars: Torinos, Dodge Aspens/Plymouth Valiants, Pontiac LeMans, Plymouth Satellites. Oh Lord, how the officers complained about the lack of room inside the smaller vehicles. By today’s standards, most of the above-mentioned vehicles likely would be considered full-size.
I’m not real thrilled with the idea of SUVs as cruisers. Those things corner like an aircraft carrier. I can just see them going airborne during a pursuit and injuring bystanders.
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Dexter said on August 25, 2010 at 4:23 pm
coozledad, you are creative, so tell us what to do with this evil witch-bitch
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Dexter said on August 25, 2010 at 4:28 pm
here’s a hotter link to coozledad’s #45 post
http://tinyurl.com/23tpacl
an’ he damn-shore does, cooz!
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brian stouder said on August 25, 2010 at 4:33 pm
Speaking of Carbon Motors –
a few weeks ago I finally made it into the Cass County Historical Society’s museum, and spent a very enjoyable couple of hours taking in the displays and so on. And one thing I learned was that Logansport, Indiana once was home to a car company – called ReVere. I learned that this was a very expensive car, and they were only made for a few years (ending in 1926), and they sold one to the King of Spain.
The insurmountable problem was, Henry Ford was selling Model T’s for about $375, and the ReVere was priced about $3500; an amazing testament to Henry’s genius, and an example which one also gets to see at the Henry Ford Museum car display. They have all sorts of beautiful old cars from little factories all over the countryside which didn’t exist for very long – given their relatively astronomical prices. (The young folks had to practically drag me out of there, as I read all the various informational displays in front of the old-timey cars)
Leaving Henry aside, Googled ReVere and found this, which was interesting
http://pharostribune.com/local/x488889030/A-ReVere-for-Leno/print
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Jeff Borden said on August 25, 2010 at 5:14 pm
Dorothy,
I just got the chance to follow the link to black Republicans’ views of $P defending Ms. Schlessinger’s racial outburst. Pretty funny stuff. I love the one guy who describes Mama Malaprop as having “a pretty narrow intellect.” Yes, and Quasimodo is a rather homely man.
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hexdecimal said on August 25, 2010 at 5:35 pm
Dexter: You got it. The Peugeot was a nice, even fun, car to drive. Bucket seats, 5 speed transmission, even a moon roof. Compared to the Checker and it’s bench seat the Peugeot was luxury for the driver. However they weren’t meant to be driven 24/7 in the city and they fell apart in only a couple of years.
The Peugeot really weren’t very good for the passengers. Only 2 people could sit in the back and only 1 more in the front and that was it for hauling. I really did haul 2 plus size women, 5 kids ages 2-10 and a weeks worth of groceries and about a months worth of laundry in the Checker – many times. Couldn’t begin to do it in the Peugeot.
The reason they bought the Peugeot was at that time there was a gas shortage and what gas could be had was getting expensive. Sound familiar? $1.00 per gallon days. The thinking was the cab company could save big bucks by buying the smaller more fuel efficient car. How they decided on the Peugeot I don’t know.
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Little Bird said on August 25, 2010 at 5:55 pm
I convinced Deborah to try the same burn pads I use when I get blisters. And they really really work. They’re best for night, when the exposed blister would otherwise scrape against the bed and sheets. The product is called 2nd Skin burn pads. And they require gauze and tape. But oh my GOD does it feel better when it’s on! Hydrocolloid band-aids for the daytime, to keep the hem of your pants off of it are a good idea.
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prospero said on August 25, 2010 at 7:11 pm
How do these embarrassing oversights happen. Do you think we lie our asses off so much as we get caught in our lies? Dr. Laura was speaking her own truth.
To avoid blisters altogether, exercise the afflicted bodily parts regularly. You get calluses.
laura? Reveal your true self in a moment. She’s been wanting to call somebody nigger her whole life. She might actually understand. I can’t. I never thought about using that word in anger. I was brought up better, but, you know, my parents must have been some sort of hippies, instead of the doctor and nurse practitioner I thought they were.
They could have been bigoted Republicans spouting Islamophobic crap about a President who’s trying to fix a godawful mess he was left with by the most white-bread phony professional Christian empty suit in the history of the Republican Party, that was appointed but never elected. W employed this very Imam as his emissary to Islamic voters.???
Pretty scary.
And no help or even a single idea from people all over the political spectrum. Everything’s wrong? How about a suggestion regarding a solution? The Republican plan? Yeah, right. Republicans, if you have ideas other than Blazing Saddles, let’s hear ’em. Didn’t think so. He’s a ni-. That is about that. Or it’s about Ralph Vader, who can leap idiotic Senate rules and make things better with one swoop of a lightsaber. Good luck.
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prospero said on August 25, 2010 at 8:01 pm
Once again, I’m asking. Sure this voting thing is a good idea? No poll proves anything except that Americans taking polls believe, in general, bullshit. And they believe FoxNews isn’t just made-up shit So, ther’re both painfully stupid and deluded. And they email everybody on the face of the earthQuite literally, that means they are idiots taking polls.
Is the President a Muslim Anchor Baby? Of course he is. You see how there are idiots taking up spots in these carefully constructed poll chatrooms. Is his skin brown? Whoa, he’s a Muslim,
My honest question: Should that idiot be allowed to vote? Should it count? Women aren’t airheads. Can you actually quote a single thing Palin ever said that made remote sense? No. Because it hasn’t ever happened.
Even if photos prove it’s Sarah Palin? She is that fucking stupid. There is no known scientific method of plumbing the depths of that woman’s stupidity. As far as English, as a presumably first language, that would be moronic as you get. Sorry, everything out of her mouth. Malaprop? Bullshit. She is just painfully stupid. And mostly she looks fairly homely, rode hard, put up wet. But if that makes you pay attention Rich Lowry, she was winking at you, Rich Lowry, and you were staring through boozw go88les.
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Dorothy said on August 26, 2010 at 9:48 am
Speakin’ of bugs, I picked up a daddy long legs spider this morning with a Kleenex, rolled it tightly (or so I thought) and tossed it in the toilet. Turned my back for a few seconds and came back to flush it away. The damn thing had extricated itself from the Kleenex and was crawling on top of the tissue! Those things look delicate but their legs must be reinforced iron or something.
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LAMary said on August 26, 2010 at 11:19 am
It’s going to crawl out and exact its revenge, Dorothy. Beware.
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