raggedcompany's blog

I am elated because I now have the best explanation for why we got rid of the self-help section.

I'm not going to write a novel anymore.  I'm just going to string news stories together in a fractured narrative.  I mean, seriously: you can't make this story up--especially not the names.

I swear I was looking up a variant form of anachronistic. It's the truth.

I think I'm getting really old before my time. At least that's the best explanation I can give for enjoying a joke from a usage manual.

A friend of mine from work grew up in Saginaw, MI.  He's tried to describe the desperation of the place before. 

Jimmie Dale Gilmore's tried. 

This guy succeeded in communicating said desperation to me.

Something tells me that some writer for the Plain Dealer went to the bar after work and said, "You'll never believe the headline I wrote today."

I hope that writer drank for free the rest of the night.

While this was incredibly satisfying, I felt uneasy about it afterwards.

Jon Stewart, in the video posted above, essentially says that if networks such as CNBC did their jobs, i.e. focused on reporting, interviewing, and exhaustive fact-checking, those networks could serve as great tools for illumination. Instead, those networks have dropped the ball. Jon Stewart and the staff of The Daily Show make this point routinely: many news outlets provide little news and plenty of entertainment.

Since the internet has returned to my life, I've become just as unproductive as the last period in my life with the internet: I enjoy checking my spam email to see if there's anything worth reading. Sometimes this causes me to pose existential, or at least corporeal, questions.

Is it really desirable to increase the size of one's nether regions? I don't mean genitalia, I mean the entirety of the nether regions.¹ Because if you think so, then I've got something I should forward to you.

I'm so proud to be an American.

I guess, if you're a CIA agent, you are responsible for at least some fantasies.

First, read this. Then read this: The impulse behind the article seems admirable. Two people who worked for Obama's campaign are trying to dispel the notion that Appalachians uniformly opposed Barack Obama. But, they are writing about their time spent in "southeast Ohio." Obama's campaign dogged it in West Virginia and Kentucky. I'm not hurt. Obviously, Obama and his staffers know how to run an effective campaign and win an election.

If there's one thing I hate about election day, it has to be all these "I Voted" stickers. I voted. I waited in line for almost two hours. Granted, that's nothing compared to how long lots of people I know waited to vote in 2004. I didn't wear the sticker they gave me. Mostly because I don't like coffee from Starbucks.