Dietary laws.

When I go to the market on Saturdays, I generally confine myself to the sheds and the Gratiot Central Market, aka the Meat Mall, across the freeway. But recently someone said I had to check out Saad’s, a halal meat place a block or two away, and so this week I did.

My befuddlement must have been evident when I walked in and looked around a blank anteroom, because a kindly girl directed me: Take a number, and step through the plastic flap door to do my shopping. It was a little like Dorothy leaving the house after it’s landed in Oz. I don’t think I’ve seen a retail arrangement quite like it. You shop amid a row of hanging carcasses — lamb, they looked like — with open cases offering meat in every imaginable cut and preparation, from frozen pre-marinated shwarma to beef skin and goat heads, complete with eyeballs, not to mention bins of tripe, frozen and carved into blocks. Women in headscarves and men in skullcaps gathered great shopping bags full of product; I have to assume they were restaurateurs, stocking for the week ahead. But I didn’t laugh out loud until I saw this:

sharifables

Sharifables. Halal Lunchables. I’m always cheered by stuff like this. It suggests we have more in common than not. Even Mecca-Cola, born out of an explicit desire to buy non-American, pro-Palestinian products, doesn’t seem all bad. We have different faiths, but we all enjoy a refreshing cola beverage from time to time.

I’d wandered in thinking I might get the ingredients for a nice lamb stew, but left without buying anything. I think I need a more sedate experience. Still glad I went, though. I hope Stephen Colbert learns about Sharifables soon:

Meanwhile, a sad story unfolded elsewhere in Detroit. I’m sure any of you who have dealt with mental illness can understand how this happened:

Kelly Pingilley was trying to make sense of the voices in her head when she went looking for answers on the Internet.

She stumbled upon a website promoting a religion that believes in UFOs, vampires, conspiracy theories and doomsday prophecies.

Pingilley was drawn to the writings of time travel and people’s thoughts being controlled by cell phone towers, friends said. With the teachings feeding into her delusions, Pingilley’s behavior grew increasingly erratic.

The woman killed herself late last year. Lots of good detail. This one jumped out at me:

Kellie Pingilley declined to say why the family failed to get help for her granddaughter’s apparent affliction.

I really hope they did what they could. It’s a terrible situation to have to deal with. I hope they did something. But what makes this story interesting is the fact the reporter reached the crazy person who clicked with this other crazy person, and then said, when all this was explained to her, “Some stuff was pretty out there. It was just crazy.”

Good to know.

And now another week lies ahead. Let’s hope for a good one.

Posted at 12:45 am in Detroit life |
 

57 responses to “Dietary laws.”

  1. David C. said on March 11, 2013 at 7:10 am

    It’s natural to wonder why someone, anyone didn’t get the person with serious mental health problems any help. Usually, someone tried – many, many times. First off, it’s very difficult to get an adult committed involuntarily. There is a period when the patient is first started on meds where their paranoia goes through the roof and they believe the drugs they are being given are poison. They almost always need to be hospitalized until they get through that period. And of course, there’s a financial angle. Because there is always a financial angle. The person probably has no job and therefore no insurance. In most states, a single person without children isn’t eligible for Medicaid, so they’re SOL unless the family has the means to pay themselves. My wife’s family has gone through this several times with her older brother. It’s a nasty bunch of hoops that I wouldn’t want anyone to have to go through.

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  2. beb said on March 11, 2013 at 7:58 am

    David C covers pretty much the main points above. The other question is how does one tell when someone is technically insane and just full of nutty ideas. As a liberal listening to some of the conservatives ideas about Agenda 21, UN world orders, and so on, I’m convinced that they are full on bat-shit crazy, every bit as much as the woman who thought we was being controlled by cellphone towers.

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  3. coozledad said on March 11, 2013 at 8:49 am

    beb: White panic crazy is too big to hospitalize, and besides, it’s a cash cow. Too many people willing to prepare for the impending collapse of the fiat dollar by buying gold (payment via Visa, Mastercard, and American Express only!)with fiat dollars.

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  4. brian stouder said on March 11, 2013 at 9:18 am

    Cooz – and the smart ones eventually realize that even with a whole chest full of gold coins from G Gordon Liddy his-own-self, when the society collapses you still can’t eat! So then, you have to buy the survivalist food containers from Glen Beck or Shit-for-brains-Sean; and you gotta defend your dung heap even from the other whiteys who live in your gated community (or maybe especially from them) – so you gotta getcha some guns (and then some more guns) and ammo…lotsa ammo! And when others are buying ammo, you gotta buy more! Doesn’t matter how much ammo you have, more is always a good thing…and when a rush is on and ammo supplies are low and prices are up, that just proves that you gotta buy more, right there.

    PS – speaking of guns, here’s a breaking story that will hopefully be a big nothing.

    http://www.wane.com/dpp/news/indiana/ball-state-warns-of-man-with-gun-on-campus1363004966917

    here’s an excerpt that strikes me as non-sensical (emphasis added by me):

    A statement on the university’s website said the person “had no discernible threatening behavior” and was described as a white man with a medium built, between 5-foot-2 and 5-foot-5, wearing dark pants and a light jacket. He was seen walking eastbound on the north side of the library. It appeared he had a handgun in his left hand.

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  5. Julie Robinson said on March 11, 2013 at 9:44 am

    What David C. said. Plus, those meds all have side efffects, so once you feel better, why continue taking them? Especially when there are so many alternatives, be they herbal, dietary, or astrological.

    And speaking of delusional, what is Hamid Karzai thinking? Or maybe the delusion is in the minds of those in our government who still think he’s a good ally. I know he’s considered the best of all the bad options, but I really don’t understand why we’re still propping him up.

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  6. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on March 11, 2013 at 9:47 am

    For a taste of the good kind of crazy: https://www.google.co.uk/

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  7. brian stouder said on March 11, 2013 at 9:49 am

    btw, I’m still chuckling over Nancy’s sly headline.

    Remember all that “Sharia Law” nonsense from the right? How insane would the fulminations of the ‘fairly unbalanced’ rightwing in this country become, if dietary pronouncements were coming from some billionaire mayor with dark skin and an Islamic heritage, rather than lily-white Bloomberg?

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  8. MichaelG said on March 11, 2013 at 10:40 am

    The guy “had no discernible threatening behavior”. Walking down the street with a gun in your hand isn’t “discernible threatening behavior” ? We really have become numb to this stuff.

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  9. Peter said on March 11, 2013 at 10:53 am

    A minor point, but I thought Sharifables was a combo of Shari (or Sharia) and fables, but now it’s finally sunk in that it’s Sharif and ables, like lunchables…which is kind of a shame because I thought you can really work up the Aladdin theme with the fables, although I guess with the Sharif angle you could have Omar Sharifables complete with Bridge advice…

    OK, I’ll adjust my meds now.

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  10. Connie said on March 11, 2013 at 11:13 am

    Open carry groups here in Michigan have demonstrated by bringing their AR-15s and other weapons and openly entering the Lansing and Birmingham libraries and sitting with their visible weapons in the children’s rooms.

    If you were at the library with your kid and a bunch of guys with big scary guns came into the children’s area how would you react?

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  11. brian stouder said on March 11, 2013 at 11:21 am

    Connie – I’d grab our young ladies and hit the fire exit

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  12. Prospero said on March 11, 2013 at 11:32 am

    Connie@10: Where they have managed to demonstrate their mastery of gun safety by shooting themselves in the lower appendages.

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  13. Jeff Borden said on March 11, 2013 at 11:36 am

    Neil Steinberg has an interesting column in today’s Chicago Sun-Times about Rand Paul’s filibuster on the use of drones. It explores the dichotomy of Paul’s anti-drone but pro-every-kind-of-gun imaginable stances, to wit, Paul doesn’t trust the government to make good decisions on who to kill with a drone, but he’s totally cool with the notion that any Tom, Dick or Harry with a gun will make a wise one.

    Off-topic: We saw “The Book of Mormon” on Saturday night. It lives up to the hype. Absolutely hilarious. The prices were heinously expensive –$110 per ticket for the mezzanine– but it was as good a production as I’ve seen in years. It’s worth saving up for. . .

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  14. Charlotte said on March 11, 2013 at 11:38 am

    I hate those “why didn’t they ….” questions. Let me just say from unfortunate experience, no one asks that question more often than the families. Who as David points out, never have any good options. I’m torn about psych meds — I’ve seem them sort of keep my mother kind of stable for decades (depending on how much she’s drinking). On the other hand, my brother was always slightly depressed, but never suicidal until he went on, and then off (ran out of $$) SSRIs. Hindsight is no more clear than what you can see from inside the thick of it.

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  15. Sherri said on March 11, 2013 at 12:12 pm

    Going off SSRI’s is a nasty business even if you taper off, much less going off cold turkey. Some are worse than others; it depends on the half-life. Short half-life means bad withdrawal, or as they say in the literature, “discontinuation syndrome.”

    You can get help for someone, but you can’t force them to take their meds, and the meds do have significant side effects.

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  16. Kath said on March 11, 2013 at 12:19 pm

    Appropos of the discussion a few weeks ago about bounding rodents Marten runs wild at a soccer game in Switzerland.

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  17. nancy said on March 11, 2013 at 12:22 pm

    Great find, Kath. Is there any clip that can’t be improved by adding “Yakety Sax?” I think not.

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  18. Dexter said on March 11, 2013 at 12:26 pm

    It’s not a good start of the rest of his life for Kwame Kilpatrick.
    There was much speculation on The Frank Beckmann Show as to the political comeback of Kilpatrick “…if he skates today.”
    The only one that skated was old man Kilpatrick, the go-between.
    Kwame Kilpatrick was found guilty on too many serious charges to list here, and his bag man was found guilty on even more. Extortion, fraud, on and on the guilty verdicts rained in on the former mayor. 🙁 The Federal Building was a pretty somber place I am guessing. Kilpatrick is now officially merely a part of Detroit’s past. There is no more talk of any comebacks. He’s gone now.

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  19. Dexter said on March 11, 2013 at 12:29 pm

    http://www.freep.com/

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  20. Jolene said on March 11, 2013 at 12:30 pm

    For people with schizophrenia, discontinuing meds is so common that it’s almost part of the disorder. When the drugs are working, people tend to feel (more or less) well, except for the side effects, which tends to make them think, “Why not get rid of the side effects?” Hence the in and out of the hospital, in and out of jail, and other back and forth cycles so commonly observed.

    It’s very tough to manage the disease on behalf of another adult, even with money, which most people don’t have. If people can stay stable long enough to get declared disabled, they can qualify for (some) public assistance, but it is a tough, tough road.

    So amazing that this young woman managed to connect with someone just as impaired. The detail that caught my attention: the claim by her online interlocutor that Kelly Pingilley was killed by a NATO hit squad. Says it all.

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  21. alex said on March 11, 2013 at 12:59 pm

    <iWalking down the street with a gun in your hand isn’t “discernible threatening behavior” ? We really have become numb to this stuff.

    Or overly sensitive, as the case may be. In Fort Wayne a few years ago, a Burmese man who understood very little English was walking down the street carrying a power drill in one hand when he was shot and killed by a cop who mistook it for a gun.

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  22. alex said on March 11, 2013 at 1:01 pm

    Looks like my itals failed above.

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  23. Prospero said on March 11, 2013 at 1:09 pm

    Dexter @18: Kwame needed NCAA law enforcement as Cam Newton got. Kwame’d be free and the old man would be in jail. And if you’re so sure he’s gone, I’d point out Marion Barry, in Chocolate Second City.

    When the nutcases start asking about Halal in shops in Dearborn, I want to hear an explanation of how the USA way of life is not endangered by Jews keeping Kosher:

    http://www.differencebetween.net/miscellaneous/difference-between-kosher-and-halal/

    Far as I’m concerned Hebrew National dogs are straight from Yaweh, and I’d imagine Halal dogs with a similar spice recipe would be wonderful, too. I’ll still always like Nathan’s best, and now there are Nathan’s onion rings in the frozen food cabinet at our grocery to go with them.

    Believe me, even with constant attentiveness regarding meds, mental illness is very difficult to deal with in somebody you love. There are times I lock up the Henckels. Now S’s meager disability is hanging by a thread and it’s possible I’ll have to pick up the cost of the medications. I’d like some shitheel granny starver to explain what would happen to this beautiful, creative woman were she on her own. We’re trying paliperidone palmitate, which is a once/month injectable, which so far produces no TD symptoms (the biggest worry, and the biggest reason people disfcontinue meds).

    The mail made my day today. New CDs, including a bunch of Replacements titles I haven’t had around for years. And most of the CDs didn’t have the obnoxious tape inside the shrink wrap. Pleasant surprise. I hate that shit like I hate the little stickers on apples.

    According to the NRA and its legislative arm ALEC, am I not within my rights to pull a gun and shoot that gun toter? Stand my ground.

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  24. Basset said on March 11, 2013 at 1:40 pm

    Jeff@13, Eric Clapton’s coming to Nashville in a few weeks and that $110 will get you a seat in the furthest reaches of the balcony and a five-dollar soda. Seats on the floor start at $368, believe we’ll be missing that one.

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  25. Prospero said on March 11, 2013 at 1:47 pm

    If I knew EC would not play Lay Down Sally or Tears in Heaven, I might pay to go see him. And it would help if I thought Steve Winwood would show up.

    Ditching nukes for coal? Not a panacea. Probably more like a sea of pancreatic cancer. Nukes are perfect, except it’s been 70 years and nobody has any more of a clue what to due with the process waste products than they di back when Jeffrey Holder let the genie out of the bottle. Coal? It’s perfect too, except that no behemoth electricity provider is actually going to spend the money involved by geometric progression in building up from 98 to 99% clean in the costs of scrubbers and baghouses.

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  26. Brandon said on March 11, 2013 at 2:22 pm

    @Prospero: What do you think of peak oil? Do you think everything can be run on renewables now or soon?

    Everyone can weigh in.

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  27. brian stouder said on March 11, 2013 at 3:11 pm

    Brandon, when there is no alternative, there is no problem.

    (non-reassuring corrollary: all bleeding stops, eventually)

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  28. Prospero said on March 11, 2013 at 3:35 pm

    Coal would be OK with me Brandon, if coal production and turning coal into electricity were both nationalized in the US. Economies of scale could bring pollution control from burning coal down to far safer levels at much lower costs, while most likely lowering energy costs, with greater accountability and much more social responsibility.. Other than that, I didn’t claim I had any sort of answer, but the horrendous problems are clear as the nose on Karl Malden’s face. So far as the energy sphere of the economy continues to be run by born criminals like Blankenship, the Kochs, and Kennyboy and the Enron “Smart Guys”, we’re all in the mullagatawney, and it’s increasingly airborne.

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  29. Prospero said on March 11, 2013 at 3:35 pm

    Instant karma bites HalfBreitbart right on the ass. Ha ha ha. Idiots.

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  30. Sherri said on March 11, 2013 at 3:35 pm

    Just cut the waste, but don’t cut my essential government funding: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/yellowstone-gets-real-about-budget-cuts/2013/03/10/fdc3e5f4-868f-11e2-9d71-f0feafdd1394_story.html

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  31. Prospero said on March 11, 2013 at 3:44 pm

    C’Mon Sherri, the NatParks would be fine if they just housed more franchise hogslops like Mickey D’s and Fuddruckers. Maybe a Hooters or two would make Yellowstone a bigger draw.

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  32. mark said on March 11, 2013 at 4:02 pm

    Oh the horrors. Shortening snow-mobile season in a national park for a few thousand speed freaks. A government that can’t subsidize high-end snow racing for rich rednecks clearly has failed.

    Maybe we could view this as lengthening the un-terrorized animal season.

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  33. brian stouder said on March 11, 2013 at 4:23 pm

    …and Pros – forget Breitbart’s Karma; Slate’s funniest piece is the one about how the Turd Blossom’s boss is a genuine (bullshit) Artist!

    http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2013/03/09/george_w_bush_art_teacher_praises_his_art.html

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  34. BigHank53 said on March 11, 2013 at 4:40 pm

    Brandon, the short answer is that we can’t do everything we do now with renewables.

    The long answer is that we can’t do everything we do now with fossil fuels, either. They used to be cheap. Incredibly cheap. They’re still cheap, relatively–I doubt there’s a single consumer product out there in which energy represents more than 2% of the cost. Energy is so cheap that cargo planes fly roses from Kenya to England so people can have roses all year. Those artichokes and mangos at Whole Foods didn’t walk there, either. Metro Market in Seattle gets deliveries of bread from Paris.

    Fossil fuels are going to become more expensive in the future. We’ve gotten to most of the easy ones, and there are a lot more customers on the planet than there were fifty years ago. Their money spends just like ours does, and there’s no reason to expect anyone selling oil or coal or natural gas to give us a discount. As a market is stressed, small fluctuations in supply can cause large fluctuations in price. Examine oil prices from 2002-2005 for an object lesson.

    There are two approaches to the problem. One is to pitch ‘clean coal’, tar sands oil, deepwater drilling, and fracking. (Nukes are a dead end; solar is now cheaper and we still don’t have anywhere to put high-level waste. Microscale nukes may work, and it’s worth spending money on researching them.) The other approach is to spend a ton of money on renewables and conservation (there are huge inefficiencies built into our infrastructure) so that when the shit hits the fan, so to speak, we have a softer landing pad. If we follow the advice of the American Enterprise Institute, we’ll still be so dependent on oil when it hits $500/barrel that the US economy will look like a melon dropped off a fourth-floor balcony.

    This is all before we consider any climate change, of course.

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  35. Catherine said on March 11, 2013 at 4:43 pm

    Please don’t make me defend 43. I mean… the man’s retired. Maybe he could explore his creative side in peace? It’s not like he had a gallery show — family emails were hacked which is how we all got to see his work. And all he wants is to paint dogs…

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  36. alex said on March 11, 2013 at 5:01 pm

    And all he wants is to paint dogs…

    Does he show them going to the bathroom like his self-portraits?

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  37. alex said on March 11, 2013 at 5:06 pm

    Oh the horrors. Shortening snow-mobile season in a national park for a few thousand speed freaks.

    Horrors? This is a partial reversal of a really stupid anti-environmental policy initiated by Dubya to allow snowmobiling there. If I’d known this travesty cost tax dollars to boot, I’d have been as angry as a libertarian. I say stop it altogether if it costs the taxpayer a single dime.

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  38. Prospero said on March 11, 2013 at 5:13 pm

    Peter@9: As Joe Strummer said, “Sharif don’t like it.”

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJ9r8LMU9bQ

    First two places I looked, song was down for copyright reasons. Bet that would go over big with Strummer and Jones and Simonon.

    As an avid backcountry skier, I hate snowmobiles for any purpose besides ambulance service. They are filthy and incredibly loud, and in nature, tend to be driven by assholes.

    On the subject of nukes, I have to believe that if nobody has come up with anything better for nuke waste than the design at Fukushima where hot spent rods were stored in shallow pools on top of the actual containments (what genius thought that was a good idea? Holy shit!Let’s store these kerosene cans on top of the furnace.) in the last half century+, there is no way to do it safely. Recycling spent fuel rods is somewhat promising, but it’s expensive. The great “shoot it into space” contingent got real quiet real fast when the first shuttle blew to kingdom come. The thing about generating electricity by burning coal is that the technology for making it environmentally neutral (more or less) is well known and fairly simple. Problem is, it costs a great deal.I think that’s a bullet Americans are going to have to bite, and it won’t do a thing about the profligate coal producing companies that can’t make mines safe or slurry pits safe, hell, they can’t even get at coal and make a profit any more (according to the mineowners) without befouling all of the nations watersheds with mountaintop spoil. This is a job for government, at this point. Anybody with an inkling of understanding of the meaning of economies of scale, and the callous social irresponsibility of free marketeers would see this in a flash.

    Peak oil? The way oil companies are still sucking away at the gummint teat, and closing off on competitors for cheapie oil leases, while postponing all new drilling and whining about it, you have to figure they think we’re already there and they’re squeezing the last blood drops out of them rutabagas.

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  39. Bitter Scribe said on March 11, 2013 at 5:17 pm

    Appropos of the discussion a few weeks ago about bounding rodents, Marten runs wild at a soccer game in Switzerland.

    For a moment I thought you meant Dutch goalie Maarten Stekelenberg.

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  40. Deborah said on March 11, 2013 at 6:30 pm

    My response to peak oil is wind and solar. It’s not going to be easy or cheap, but why put off the inevitable and do a lot of harm in the meantime.

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  41. Charlotte said on March 11, 2013 at 6:39 pm

    Wind, solar and lots and lots of cutting back. Do we really need all these appliances? Clothes dryers and dishwashers are two I think almost everyone could probably do without — most of us did without those two until what? 20 years ago? thirty? People driving 75 mph in SUVs with no cargo and no passengers and heating their houses to 75 and 80 degrees in the winter (or the equivalent in air conditioning). Public transportation and neighborhoods in which one can walk. I think we’re in bigger trouble than any of us want to admit, but there’s a lot of room for conservation — Personally I want one of those little ELF bikes I posted to the other day (or something like it) which could replace about 80% of the driving I do, and some solar panels for my roof.

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  42. alex said on March 11, 2013 at 7:19 pm

    Everyone should be eulogized like this. A knee slapper.

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  43. LAMary said on March 11, 2013 at 7:53 pm

    Does he play for Ajax, Bitter?

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  44. Prospero said on March 11, 2013 at 7:55 pm

    No matter what sort of rotation anybody tries to put on it, Americans did not vote for the GOPer House of Representatives. President Obama was easily re-elected and Democrats expanded their majority in the Senate, so why are we stuck with a GOP-controlled House of Representatives? Gerrymandering. Democratic House candidates won more than a million more votes than Republican candidates, but districts drawn by Republicans for Republicans allowed the GOP to hold on to their majority. This isn’t even disputed by the Republicans. In fact, they brag about it. Do Dems gerrymander? Hell yeah, but the current level of GOPers flouting the Constitution, stymying the will of the people and flaunting their state level shenanigans shamelessly is unheard of in US history, at least since Reconstruction.

    http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/01/17/1459991/rslc-gerrymandering-house/

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  45. MichaelG said on March 11, 2013 at 8:00 pm

    What? Obama wants to confiscate my dryer and dishwasher? From my cold dead hand.

    I saw a guy riding one of those cargo bikes the other day. The long wheelbase type with an enclosure in front of him containing a child. It looked stable and easy enough to ride. If it weren’t for the expense, I think we’d see a lot more of them.

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  46. Prospero said on March 11, 2013 at 8:01 pm

    Americans sure as shit didn’t vote for a House that would vote once daily to repeal ACA while never condescending to vote once, ever, on four substantial jobs and infrastructure bills sent them by the Obama administration. Bastards have not earned dime one of their sizable paychecks, and I’m all for thinning their treasonous herd by cutting their Cadillac health perks back to Deux Chevaux levels.

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  47. Prospero said on March 11, 2013 at 8:04 pm

    We gave up on the dishwasher when we remodeled. S. had been calling it the dish hider for a long time, and the damn thing was too noisy for the TV. The resulting cabinet space expansion was well worth actually doing the dinner dishes after dinner instead of stowing them in an appliance.

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  48. Deborah said on March 11, 2013 at 8:11 pm

    Alex at #42, now there’s a wake I would love to go to.

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  49. Sherri said on March 11, 2013 at 8:35 pm

    I’m with the dear departed Harry on DST being the Devil’s Time. Also, Bacon of the Month? Oh my.

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  50. Connie said on March 11, 2013 at 9:18 pm

    I posted the TPM story about Harry’s obituary on my facebook page this morning and dedicated it to all my Indiana friends who still hate DST after 8 years. And the example of them all still longing for the old non class basketball tournament, gone since 1995, makes me think my Hoosier friends will not get over DST either. Those 2 things seem to be the number one topic of conversation in Indiana this time of year.

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  51. brian stouder said on March 11, 2013 at 9:35 pm

    That was an intesting obit, indeed. Mary – did you get shaken up today, or did the quake not reach LA?

    Here’s some photos of one of the best and coolest new things in Fort Wayne – the MLK bridge. The thing has very pedestrian-friendly sidewalks across it, and our 8 year old and I have walked across it several times, so as to read the series of MLK quotes spaced across the span. We’ve done this a few times, when upon leaving Science Central [which was the city’s coal-fired electrical powerhouse, a few generations ago] – visible in some of the photos with the brightly colored smoke stacks.

    http://interactives.wane.com/photomojo/gallery/3008/60450/dr.-martin-luther-king-bridge/mlk-bridge/

    At night-time, the changing colors on that bridge’s super-structure is nothing short of genuinely beautiful

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  52. brian stouder said on March 11, 2013 at 9:35 pm

    make that “are” and not “is”

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  53. MichaelG said on March 11, 2013 at 11:37 pm

    I like it, Brian. They added some style to what could have been just another boring bridge.

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  54. Hattie said on March 12, 2013 at 12:27 am

    We have different faiths, but we all enjoy a refreshing cola beverage from time to time.
    Classic!

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  55. LAMary said on March 12, 2013 at 12:40 am

    Didn’t feel the earth move, Brian. It was pretty far away and it was relatively small.

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  56. Dexter said on March 12, 2013 at 12:43 am

    prospero, Marion Barry was brought up, indeed, as the callers and radio host were discussing a Kwame comeback, but this was prefaced by the “if he skates” caveat.
    I know that Barry was re-elected after a prison term, but Kilpatrick is going away for a long time, and will have no clout at all when he’s released years from now. Look at the charges he was convicted on:
    http://www.freep.com/article/20120902/NEWS01/309020130/The-charges-former-Detroit-Mayor-Kwame-Kilpatrick-facing

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  57. beb said on March 12, 2013 at 8:37 am

    Charlotte@41: We’ve done without a dishwasher all our married lives so, yeah, that’s an appliance I think most people can live without. But clothes dryers are different. The alternative is to hang clothes out to dry but that requires a yard for a clothesline or a basement where clothes can be hung up or soak in the musty aroma of the basement. I suppose at some point if energy becomes too expensive people will starting looking for alternatives to clothes dryers but I think they offer too much convenience to too many apartment dwellers to be given up that readily.

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