News you can use
News you can use
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I hate to say “I told you so.” Life’s too short to waste so many words on vindictiveness. It’s so much more uplifting to just point your finger and laugh, which is exactly my response every time someone says they’re going to try snowshoeing or cross-country skiing for the first time and they come back sore, exhausted and disheartened. Not that I’m against either winter activity in theory because the theory behind them is that they give humans a way to more easily travel across winter snow so we are better able to commune wit...
I am what could be called an indiscriminate eater because I enjoy eating, will try most anything and have favorite foods categories from cuisine and to gut bomb. I can be equally happy with a hot meal that’s taken hours to prepare or courses to serve and, on the flip side, pulling leftovers out of the fridge and eating them cold from the container just to kill my hunger pangs. I think of it as an asset to be so versatile, and in my youth my family called me a garbage gut. They were fond of calling us kids affectionate pet n...
Lacking most signs of those qualities commonly referred to as feminine, I have been content to go through life as I started it, as a tomboy. Life would be a jean-clad and dirty finger-nailed slice of heaven if this were the end of the story. However, my constant companion, Irony, not being one to leave well-enough alone, did give me a few feminine traits, and chief among those is body image issues that plague primarily females. This problem is also called “imagined ugliness,” though I and everyone else with the problem would...
I’m not saying my childhood was any more awesomer than anyone else’s — certainly it had its share of dark points and failures, many of these self-induced — but my childhood had its amazing highlights that others would be hard pressed to equal or exceed. Specifically, I got to raise, care for and see up close a wide variety of wild animals. Did you get to raise black bear cubs and take them to second-grade show and tell? I think not. Even though one of them peed on a classmate’s desk, I still had plenty of playgroun...
Americans, like humans everywhere, love holiday traditions, and a college town in New Hampshire has started a new Halloween tradition to rival any All Hallow’s Eve custom as college students and unwitting townsfolk rioted the Samhain out of the Keene Pumpkin Festival last weekend. Keene, New Hampshire, is home of the Keene Pumpkin Festival, Keene State University, and the Keene police department and their military-style armored vehicle, as well as a guy named Steven who apparently doesn’t understand the U.S. Con...
One of the hardest things to do is to say exactly what you mean in a way that people understand exactly what you mean. No one knows that better today than the good-intentioned people at New Jersey’s Moorestown Township Library. They tried to say exactly what they meant, only they said it in Latin, which was their first mistake. Latin is, of course, a dead language, and the dead don’t say much of anything useful. Maybe they can with a ouija board or through a spangled gypsy woman reading a crystal ball. But I wouldn't cou...
Pamville News Editor's Note: The April Pamville News, featuring the month's truecrime stories, is brought you by the letter E. ——— Economica Erotica: Greek for business as unusual In November 2008, an unsuspecting U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission released its regular biannual internal audit report of the good, the bad and the "what were you thinking" deeds of its agency. New York-based Ponzi scheme king Bernie Madoff was watching his financial empire crumble. And, because of their own poor financial practices, U.S....
I know some readers are too young to remember those long ago days, but the rest of you might recall way back when we had that nice weather just last week. Wasn't it awesome?! So now all of a sudden we have winter again, complete with multiple power outages, and I'm all, like, huh? But, but, but I thought I was totally pretty much prepared, and then I found that I'm all, like, caught with my pants down. Again. I swear, it's like no one sent me a memo that we were going to have winter this year. And who'd've thunk it'd last,...
I love this time of year. The world is so green and shiny it looks expensive. From a distance the green expanse is like a bit of emerald perfection because — and this is the important part — if I don't look too closely I can imagine that it's all green grass. Lovely grass, lush and splendid, for as far as the eye can see. Of course, that's a sham, a lie, a weak grasp at selfdeception. This isn't the lush, expanse of sod-o-glamor it appears to be, for hidden among the grass, waiting to overwhelm it, is a mess of [insert curse...
My husband, John, loves a good hearty debate. He's always ready to jump into the middle of a topic, disassemble it, analyze it and blah blah blah about it. I can see the attraction, but serious thoughts have a very limited shelf life in my head. He's generally lucky if I have enough focus for one, maybe two, deep comments and then a few jokes before the issue goes stale for me. At best, I get excited enough to start making things up about a topic and that keeps it fresh for quite a while — like the crisper drawer for v...
I would personally like to thank the folks at Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience for creeping me out with the latest distressing brain information. In the Feb. 16 Discover News online at news.discover.com, Cristen Conger reports that researchers from the Netherlands Institute ran brain scans on gobs of different people and found that the people in the study who have chronic insomnia also have decreased levels of gray matter. In other words, chronic insomniacs, such as myself, have diminished brains like shriveled gray rai...
Now I'm totally confused. Recently, a friend living on the southern edge of Havre had a mountain lion hanging out on her backyard deck for two mornings in a row. A mountain lion. This is normally a shy mountain dweller, and now it's hanging out in the 'burbs of a prairie town like it's panhandling for morning coffee? Seriously? Local Fish, Wildlife & Parks warden Wes Oedekoven said that FWP has noted a slight increase in local sightings in recent years, but this simply may be from the spread of homes to outlying areas. Most...
New York City is not without its western-related travails. It seems that the NYC street entertainer who calls himself the Naked Cowboy (but isn't) is suing another street performer who has started a similar, bawdier, street show under the name Naked Cowgirl (though she isn't either). The Naked Cowboy, whose given name is Robert Burck, has been a popular fixture in Times Square for 10 years singing and playing guitar dressed only in cowboy boots and hat and a pair of briefs. He has also trademarked and franchised his Naked...
An April 19 article from The Associated Press about the ramifications of women's fashion in Iran has slipped under the international radar, but I'm here to blow the lid off of this amazing revelation. In Iran, one of the world's most earthquake-prone countries, women are required by law to conceal their entire bodies under scarves and draped clothing, called hijab, when in public. However, some women, most notably young sassy women, disregard the law and wear revealing clothes, like tight coats and scarves loose enough to...
In various cultures over the ages owls have symbolized everything from good fortune and wisdom to impending disaster or death. And, of course, in recent decades a whole new generation of Harry Potter-loving children worldwide believes owls are the mysterious harbingers of mail delivery. In the world of me, the owl has, since my childhood, been a symbol of spring. I know, right? It seems incongruous that one person's haunting death-omen is another person's promise of excitement. It's not as bad as it sounds. The spring I...
Maybe you've caught yourself saying something that starts with these words: "Oh, young people these days ... ." And then you go on with something like: they don't know how to work, they're too soft, they're too chubby, they're too arrogant, they don't know nothing, they're always blah blah blah, until you sound like a cantankerous old fart. Frankly, many statistics and much media coverage give weight to a lot of these complaints. And who among the over-30 crowd can't say that they thought they were much smarter than they...
Through personal experience, I can tell you this: It's not so much the realization that the ground is moving under your foot as it is the keen moment of understanding that the buzzing noise is a rattlesnake telling you to get your fat foot off him that really kicks in the adrenaline overdose. The good news is that the adrenaline allows you to jump a full 6 feet, twisting in the air to land facing the immediate threat of death by venom. The adrenaline rush works the same way for a dog too. This being my first snake encounter,...
My husband John and I are in the preliminary stages of shopping for what you might describe as big ticket items. Since we have a no ticket, just stand at the window looking in, kind of budget, I've been perusing classified ads. It takes a while to find the right thing, at the right time, at the right price that way. In the meantime, sellers have kept me more than entertained with their ads. For sale, things that make me go "huh?" "I Rock": I have no idea, but if owning it makes me musically inclined or otherwise hip, I'll buy...
All salesmanship has a language that must be decoded by the buyer. For example, when house shopping, "fixer-upper" means the house is a giant, financesucking vortex. Either take out three mortgages right away or pass it by. "Quaint" means the rooms are so small you'll have to go outside to change your clothes, and none of the walls are square — much like the walls in a house of illusion and they'lle mess with your mind. If you're car shopping, then avoid the "low mileage, mint condition" vehicle. It's a lemon. It's been on t...
Lately, I've had cause to wade in the deeper end of the intellectual puddle. Despite my preference for shallower thoughts, I've been contemplating more philosophical and theological topics than usual — searching for answers to the most profound question of all, the first question in a person's life and the first question in all the universe: Why? Specifically, I want to know: Why has all this stupid shinola been happening to me? Specificallier (and this only a partial list, from only the last two weeks): One of my horses k...
Out of the blue, someone acquainted with my longstanding offensive against the guerrilla units of rodents that frequently overrun my white trash estate said to me: "I haven't read any columns about mice lately — you haven't had any problems with them this spring?" What?! Shhh! Shut your pie hole, fool. I wanted to say. What kind of question is that? I mean, really, does this person, this harbinger of ill luck and doom, not understand how the universe works? You don't go drawing attention to some things, like really good t...
Prior to moving to the plains of north-central Montana, my only knowledge of rattlesnakes came from an incident when I was a teenager. One afternoon Mike, a friend of my parents, called my dad in a panic to say that he was out of town and talking to his wife on the phone when she let out a classic blood-curdling scream, and then the phone went dead. He asked Dad to go check on his wife, Laurel. Dad, having honed his law enforcement skills in the rougher 'hoods of Los Angeles before becoming a Montana Fish & Game warden, went...
Pamville News reporters have scoured the latest news to shine a light on recent criminal activities and torture every last drop of fiction from the events. Robbery to go A masked robber with a gun walked up to the drive-through window at a Wendy's in Atlanta, demanded to be given the cash drawer and ran away with it into the night, says a report from The Associated Press on Sunday. But, times being tough, the robber was unhappy with his small take of $586, so he called the fast food restaurant to complain. Twice. "What did...
After reading Paul Foy's June 1 Associated Press article, "Woman sues Google over Utah walking directions," Pamville News has learned that a woman is suing Google Maps over what she claims were unsafe directions that resulted in her bodily injury. Lauren Rosenberg of Los Angeles, Calif., was visiting Park City, Utah, in January, when she used her Blackberry to access Google Maps for directions to walk from one end of the town to the other. The Google Maps directions led her to a four-lane boulevard that did not have a...
Of all the miraculous advances in medicine that could be made, such as curing cancer, re-growing nerves and producing a medical marijuana plant that doesn't attract law enforcement, scientists at the European fertility conference in Rome reported that they now can use a blood test to predict the onset of menopause. That's fabulous. Earth shattering really. Thanks guys. Now women all over the world can plan ahead to be miserable. Seriously, most women like to plan — even I like to plan. I could sit around all day planning t...
