SOAPS--MY GUILTY PLEASURE

I've watched Soaps since I was a pre-teen, and I have been following the same ones since then (CBS soaps). However, I can only watch one nowadays on my lunch hour now that I have a 9 to 5'er--The Bold and the Beautiful. One of the reasons is obvious: I like to look at the hot men! The other reason it that they are extremely funny to me. The cliches, one liners and chick battles are most entertaining. I love the powerful bitchy mavens and the trouble they cause, like my favorite, Lucinda on As the World Turns. She is not being shown too often lately, and I miss her sarcasm, witty remarks and haughtiness. I swear she ad libbed a lot of her lines. I also love plot lines with rivalries among business moguls like the one among Victor Newman/Jack Abbot/Brad Carlton in The Young and the Restless, and the Everybody vs. Alan Spaulding in The Guiding Light. Right now I'm getting a huge kick out of Ridge Forrester vs. Rick Forrester on B&B. I will now give myself some B&B eye candy!
RICK--HOT!

RIDGE--HOTTER!!

"The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited to the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were." --John Keats

TO HELL WITH CATNIP

Pictured is the bong-like contraption that Acea Schomaker of Lancaster County stuffed his girlfriend's cat into and smoked marijuana from it. Scomaker said that he constructed it in such a way that it wouldn't immerse the cat in too much smoke. He also said that he did it to calm the cat down, because it would bite and scratch both him and his girlfriend and they feared it would be euthanized if they took it to an animal shelter. AWWWWWW, such a kind thing to do! Schomaker was caught after local sheriff's deputies responded to a domestic disturbance at his residence. He was quoted as saying, "Every time we took her (the cat) out she would pretty much just lay down and proceed to clean herself and act like a stoned person". NO SHIT!

McMELTDOWN!

A Fort Pierce, Florida woman, Latreasa L. Goodman, called 911 THREE times after being told by McDonald's employees that they were out of Chicken McNuggets and was refused a refund. Stated Ms. Goodman, "This is an emergency. If I would have known they didn't have McNuggets, I wouldn't have given my money, and now she wants to give me a McDouble, but I don't want one." She was cited on a misuse of 911 charge, but was sent a gift card for a free meal because she should have gotten a refund. Personally, I think she should have also gotten a McBoot in the arse!

OBAMA HEALTH PLAN: KEY POINTS

*Expand Medicaid eligibility to include greater numbers of the uninsured
*Mandate coverage for children
*Create a national exchange through which the uninsured could purchase a public or private policy
*Provide subsidies to lower-income individuals and small businesses to help defray the cost of purchasing insurance
*Tax medium- to large-size firms that decline to provide their employees with health insurance. (This point irks me!)
*Small businesses would be exempt from mandatory coverage or contributions and would receive a tax credit of up to 50% on health care premiums for employees.

I have A LOT of questions regarding this plan, the dominant one being how will this be paid for?

As I said above, I have an issue with imposing a punitive tax on certain businesses that opt out of providing insurance to their employees. This is the land of the FREE--free choice included. That means the employers should make the decision without fear of governmental penalty whether or not they will provide health insurance. Additionally, people are free to choose jobs that provide health insurance. This may sound too simple and maybe a little unsympathetic, but I believe in a free market society and freedom of choice, not governmental control.

My first job: food service

I was only 14 and my mom came home from work one night and asked me if I was interested in working as a dishwasher at the restaurant she was working in. I took the job and that was the start of my +-20 year career in the restaurant industry. It was a very small, upscale Italian restaurant and I had been there with my father & brother to pick up my mom, and I was fascinated with the place. It had a 'mafia' theme, complete with a 'Godfather Table' , fake machine gun in a violin case as a wall decoration, and a giant charcoal sketch of Marlon Brando as Vito Corleone in The Godfather. My mother had to wear a black silk shirt, black short skirt, black beret, white tie and white gun holster (with a cap gun in it!) as her uniform. The male waiter had to wear the same, minus the skirt, of course. I have many fond memories of my time there (14-17)

I just joined Twitter to see what it's all about, and Shaquille O'Neil is one of the people you can follow. This is one of his best tweets:

"People n phoenix u have 5 min to touch me I have 2 laker tickets n my hand I'm on a corner at a bus stop" -- Shaquille O'Neal

Can you believe that? I wonder if anyone saw his post and touched him to get the tickets?! Well, he did say on his Twitter profile that he was going to "perform random acts of shaqness".