Monthly Archives: September 2011

September 29, 2011 · 11:29 pm

Dead Ball Foul

[Editor’s note: This is another one of those you can’t make this up stories. It’s all about how a dirty room lead to a football team’s downfall.]

http://www.tennessean.com/article/20110927/SPORTS07/309270017/Facebook-post-costs-Perry-County-three-football-wins?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE

A mother complaining on Facebook about her sons’ messy room led to Class 1A football power Perry County vacating three wins.

The Vikings, ranked third in Class 1A, will not be able to count wins over Cornersville, Forrest and Lewis County because they used two ineligible players.

Offensive linemen Rodney and Ryan Belasic were declared ineligible by the Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association because their entire family does not live in Perry County.

“(Perry County) inadvertently played ineligible athletes in the first three ballgames,” TSSAA Executive Director Bernard Childress said. “It was two brothers that transferred. They got a residence in Perry County, but they had not vacated their residence completely in Henry County.”

Perry County’s record is 2-0. The win over Cornersville win was a Region 6-A game.

Childress said school officials thought the players’ entire family had moved to Perry County during the summer.

“But the mother actually works in Henry County, and she posted on her Facebook page that she sent the kids back to Perry County for the week and that she would not see them again until Friday night,” Childress said. “Then, later on her Facebook page, she posted, ‘How can two boys mess up their room as badly as they do when they’re only here on Saturday and Sunday?’ ”

Coaches and administrators in the Perry County area reported the Facebook posts to the TSSAA, which began interviewing the family.

When Childress notified Perry County of the potential problem two weeks ago, Vikings Coach Michael Harrison removed the Belasics from the team.

“We are sorry that this investigation happened and that the two players were deemed ineligible,” Harrison said in an emailed statement. “We hope to put this investigation behind us and move forward.”

The TSSAA defines a bona fide change of residence as “a move from one community to another that justifies a change of schools. Where a family continues to maintain a previous residence for the residential purposes of that family or any of its members, the move is not one that justifies a change of schools for purposes of the TSSAA bylaws.”

Cornersville, Forrest and Lewis County will keep the losses from Perry County on their records.

Individual statistics from those games still count. Quarterback Jacob Tucker is 93 yards from breaking the state career record for total offense and 13 touchdowns from the state career record.

Gladney dies: Buford Gladney, who won 127 games and a state championship in 16 seasons as football coach at Spring Hill, died Sunday following an illness. He was 66. Visitation is from 3-7 p.m. Wednesday and funeral services will be held at 11 a.m. Thursday, both at Oakes & Nichols Funeral Home in Columbia.

Contact Chip Cirillo at 615-664-2194 or ccirillo@tennessean.com. Contributing: Maurice Patton.

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September 28, 2011 · 10:32 pm

Popping Porcelain

[Editor’s note: This story is true as far as I know, and comes from the I Can’t Make This Stuff Up Department.]

Woman reportedly injured by exploding toilet at GSA building – WTOP.com

http://www.wtop.com/?nid=109&sid=2565294

WASHINGTON — A toilet reportedly exploded Monday and injured a woman at the General Services Administration Building in D.C.

The D.C. Fire and EMS Department confirms a woman went to the hospital with serious but non-life-threatening injuries.

“The GSA National Capital Regional Office Building experienced a building mechanical incident, which we understand may have resulted in injuries,” a GSA statement reads.

Channel 9 (WUSA) reports a memo made the rounds in the GSA building, warning people not to flush.

“Do NOT flush toilets or use any domestic water,” Channel 9 quotes the memo as saying.

“Due to a mechanical failure, there is high air pressure in the domestic water system that resulted in damage to toilets … There has been damage to flushed toilets that has resulted in injuries.”

The GSA has refused to respond to specific questions, only referring to its statement.

“The restrooms are back in service, and mechanical systems are being monitored as we speak,” the statement says.

The incident is not the first of its kind in the United States. A trial lawyer in Memphis, Tenn., Parke Morris, says he represented a client who was seriously injured when a urinal exploded in a GSA building.

Morris says the client told him he was working on a Saturday at the Federal Courthouse in Memphis when he used the sixth floor men’s bathroom.

“This was an old, kind of primitive urinal that had almost like a gas pedal that you would press down when you were finished doing your business,” Morris says. “And he pressed it, and it literally exploded. It was like a porcelain hand grenade went off.”

Morris says the explosion blew the man backwards onto the floor and severely injured his knee. He required a surgery and seven months of rehab before he could return to work.

After the man was blown back, he called down to the security desk and had a guard come up to help him.

“I don’t know if [the guard] didn’t believe him, or couldn’t believe what he saw, but he decided to flush the urinal next to the one that was now in pieces. That one exploded as well.”

Morris said in total, four urinals exploded in that Memphis bathroom that day and it was later determined to be caused by a problem in the water pressure.

Follow Andrew Mollenbeck and WTOP on Twitter.

(Copyright 2011 by WTOP. All Rights Reserved.)

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September 25, 2011 · 12:05 am

Not so slim waisted

I'm not sure what to make of this offer on Twitter. If she thinks I am somehow one of these women in the guise of a not-so-slim-waisted man, she would definitely be disappointed.

As a recent member of Twitter, it sometimes surprises me what can get done with only 140 characters.

Take this offer, for example. Certainly the name should say it all: “Jenny Breastits.” But to further drive home the point, she is “@LovelySoftBoobs.” And if that is not enough, her description makes it absolutely clear what she loves.

What I don’t understand is why she wants to follow my tweets? I am not a woman, don’t have the naturally full items she is most interested in, and I possess a not so slim waist. If she thinks I am harboring any of these things, she is suffering from delusions I cannot even begin to fathom.

Twitter may have a limit of 140 characters, but it does seem that at times, all of those characters are odd.

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September 23, 2011 · 6:23 pm

There once was a man with waders

trash, waders, water, word play, words, writing

via There once was a man with waders.

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September 23, 2011 · 6:02 pm

There once was a man with waders

There once was a man with waders
Who thought he might find him some gators
down at his creek,
where the trash did seep
left often by unkind invaders.

Man in waders

Man trying on waders, getting ready for First Creek Greenway Cleanup, Saturday, September 24th, 9 AM to noon,

It was Saturday, September 24th
when the man and his friends set a course.
from nine until noon
and not a moment too soon
to put an end to this trashy discourse.

So come to First Creek and discover
“treasures” left by some unkind others:
shopping carts and flat tires,
pay phones, couches, and wires
and stuff that the creek tries to smother.

Bring tools and gloves for your hands;
pick up trash for as long as you can.
Once done, we will eat
Magpies cupcakes, Three Rivers treats
and be glad we helped the creek and the land.

Magpies cupcakes

Magpies cupcakes and Three Rivers Market treats will be served up after the cleanup.

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September 18, 2011 · 8:09 pm

The idiopathic blathering idiot

The blathering idiot went to the dermatologist. Once the examination was over and the doctor had looked at his knuckle pads and his tinea versicolor, the dermatologist pronounced him a case of idiopathic medicine.

At first the blathering idiot felt insulted. While not the brightest bulb in the box or the sharpest saw on the rack, he did not consider himself an idiot, and he told the doctor so.

The doctor smiled, and then said, idiopathic means “modern medicine does not know the cause of either of your conditions.”

He then explained that for the knuckle pads, “we usually do nothing, unless they start causing you pain.”

For the tinea versicolor, a naturally occurring fungus that is in everybody’s skin, “it just runs a little wild in some people,” he gave the blathering idiot a prescription, then said of having two idiopathic conditions, “It just means you’re special.”

That made the blathering idiot feel better.

He then went to his local pharmacy to turn in his prescription. As he turned in the script, he saw a sign glued beneath the lip of the counter that read: “Select narcotics in time-delay safe.”

When the pharmacy technician took his prescription, the blathering idiot asked, “Which ones can I select?”

“Which what?” the tech asked.

“Which narcotics?” the blathering idiot said.

She looked at his prescription. “Your script doesn’t say anything about a narcotic.”

“But I can select one, right?”

She frowned. “No.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re not supposed to get any.”

Select Narcotics in Time Delay Safe

Select Narcotics in Time Delay Safe

“But it says I should select narcotics from the time delay safe.”

“It does not.”

“Yes, it does.”

“Where?”

He pointed at the sign. “Here!”

“It does not—”

“Yes, it does.” Clearly this young woman had not heard that he, the blathering idiot, was special. “Come out here and see.”

“I can’t.”

“Can’t what? Read?”

She glared at him. “I can’t come out there. It’s against the rules. I am the only person on duty back here right now and the rules say I can’t leave my station.”

“All I want is what the sign says I should select.”

“I think you should go to another pharmacy,” she said and offered him back the script. To be sure he understood, she pressed an intercom button and asked for “special assistance” in the pharmacy.

Insulted when a guard appeared, the blathering idiot snatched the script and marched out the door and to the next nearest pharmacy. As he walked up to the pharmacy counter, he again found the words: “Select narcotics in time delay safe” and hoped he would have better luck here.

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September 17, 2011 · 11:59 am

Check out the new ban at your local library

Expressing concern over the rising number of non-reports, County of K Mayor TB recently issued an executive order banning all sex offenders from public libraries.

Plans are underway to compare a list of registered sex offenders to the libraries 150,000 active cardholders, who would then be notified to stay away from the libraries. When asked about those offenders who don’t have library cards, or who may be homeless and can’t get a card because they don’t have an address, the mayor had no immediate response.

“I just don’t want them anywhere around our kids,” TB said. “The ultimate decision is how we pursue it.”

When asked where these offenders could go, TB said the local bookstores. They already handle banned books. Why not banned people, too?

A manager at a local bookstore, who asked not to be identified, responded that this was “another example of an unfunded government mandate.”

A library worker, when asked how she would identify a sex offended, said she didn’t know how she would identify a sex offender. “It’s not like they come up and self-identify.”

Under a new state law sex offenders can be banned from libraries and such identification could lead to jail time, which would simply lead to more overcrowding, which the County of K already has a problem with. Still, the County of K Mayor felt he needed to get out in front of this issue and issued the first such executive order for any of the major library systems of the state. As a Republican, you can never have enough moral government, he was heard to say. And it usually doesn’t cost much.

County of K sheriff of nodding ham, J Triple said, “I applaud the state of Tennessee for putting tougher regulations on these dirt bags who prey on our children.”

When asked about enforcement, J Triple said with cooler weather coming on, he plans to provide free sweaters to those sex offenders, many of whom may be homeless. The sweaters would have the scarlet letters “D-B” stitched into them in a way that his deputies, using infra-red night scopes on their rifles, will be able to easily see on the chests of the offenders. All the deputy will have to do, Triple J said, is point his rifle at the library entrance and he (or she) will spot the registered sex offender. An arrest would then ensue.

When asked what happens once the sweaters start getting swapped, worn by the wrong person, or even show up on Salvation Army Thrift Store shelves, Triple J grunted that he would let the courts sort that out. Innocent dirt bags were not his concern.

In a somewhat related issue, on the same day as Mayor TB announced his ban, County of K Commissioner AE (Always Embroiled in controversy to her close friends), announced that she had a benign tumor removed from her parathyroid gland. Though the symptoms of the tumor were fatigue, pain, fluctuating blood pressure, and insomnia – not untypical symptoms for any County of K Commissioner these days, she was glad the cause of her distress had been found and treated. Recovery time could take two or three months. When asked about the recent ban of sex offenders from libraries, AE reportedly muttered, she could only hope there was a similar tumor at the top of country government.

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September 16, 2011 · 10:06 pm

Self-mutating

Sel-protrait of sorts

Captured on pixels and only on pixels. Don't try this at home, unless you want to be silly.

Who says you need a professional photography to get a good portrait photo? suitable for framing, for use on resumes, or to simply impress a date on your dating web site page or personal blog. And for the mere price of three easy installments of $39.95 each, I will teach you the same tricks and tips that I know.

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September 12, 2011 · 7:31 pm

Dear Twitter,

How come most of the “people” that want to follow me on this social medium are diet gurus, body part enlargement specialists, and get rich quick schemers? Don’t they know I’m a multi-plus sized coach potato with a sweaty beer in one hand, a twitchy remote in the other, and a wallet flatter than a left-over night of pleasure?

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September 11, 2011 · 2:57 pm

Building a better story: Tension

In the last installment, I said there was a difference between conflict and tension. Conflict, as Bob McKey pointed out, is the gap between expectation and result. The gap can be small, such as being overcharged a dime or great, such as losing a loved one when you thought he would survive.

The best way to explain tension is to refer to a small book on writing by the writer and editor Algis Budrys, Lithuanian for “Gordon John Sentry, more or less.” His book, Writing to The Point: A complete guide to selling fiction is only 64 pages long, and may be hard to get. But this Strunk and White-sized guide to writing is worth your time (and it even covers manuscript formatting).

For Gordon John Sentry, more or less, a story consists of seven parts: 1) a character 2) in a context with a 3) problem, who 4) makes an intelligent attempt to solve the problem and 5) fails, tries a second time and fails, tries a third time and finally 6) succeeds or completely fails, and whose actions are then 7) validated by another character in the story.

Sounds simple, doesn’t it? That is the allure of telling a good story. But the execution is often more difficult, for writer as well as story character. Step 4 – 6 above is where in a story you find tension. The key is that the character makes an intelligent attempt and fails. With increased knowledge, he or she tries again, and fails. The increased knowledge increases the stakes in the attempt and thus increases the tension. After all, it should succeed, right? Then there is a third and final attempt. This is, in essence, all or nothing, so the tension should be at its highest here.

Grimm reaper and man

Tension, while often confused with conflict, is not the same thing.

Tension, then, is something that builds over the life of the story, fueled by and feeding into the conflict. A well known love story may provide the clearest example. Romeo and Juliet loved each other. Their families, however, were adversaries. Romeo and Juliet attempted to find a way to manifest their love in the midst of this conflict, each time failing until each makes one last effort that leads to both their deaths. In this example, the tension builds in opposition to the conflict, which is fairly clever if you think about, and because of that opposition, the conflict works to heighten the tension.

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