News you can use
News you can use
Sorted by date Results 2508 - 2532 of 3210
Dear Richard, Across the street the sewer main sprung a vicious leak. Nasty, smelly water is burbling up, sending a gray putrid pool down the street my way. The break is right on the corner of Calle del Pulpo and Tiberon. Actually, I don't know where the break is but that is where the icky water is gushing out. Please send the guys down to fix it. With all the flooding going on, a side effect of Hurricane Norberto, I don't know when the city crew here can get to it. I would call in the break, but I don't know who to call or...
The Gods of Irony have their own random agenda, and they rarely interact, intervene or interfere on purpose with a human - unless of course, that human has horses, then they're fair game. Horses are magical creatures whose true gift is to be four-legged irony magnets. Want a personal visit from the Ironies? Just say about a horse task: "This will only take a minute." Mayhem is the only possible result. There will be running, snorting, tails flying. There will be a gate...
Drag me kicking and screaming to the latest electronic devices and I obviously want nothing to do with them. My cellphone — the dumbest one I can find — is smarter than I am, and has functions I’ll never use. Writing on paper, any paper, even a brown bag, with a soft lead pencil gives me satisfaction in the depths of my soul. I like the texture, the drag-scritch of the lead across the surface, the drag tracks the pencil leaves in its wake. Having said that, I confess, the only...
There has been a lot of jocularity in recent days because of the national craze of challenging people to have ice cold water poured over their heads as a way of raising funds for the fight against ALS, the dreaded neurological disease. If the craze moves forward this week as it did last week, it seems like nearly everyone in the country will have had the honor of being doused with frigid water. We hope so. It all raises more money and awareness for the cause. But we hope the hilarity of the ice bucket treatment doesn’t detrac...
War doesn’t do as much for humanity as it used to. We’re all so angry and ill-tempered it’s tiresome. Where's the unity? After World War I and its exciting sequel World War II, the war franchise seems to have increasingly fizzled as a means to unify people. Allies aren’t close buddies. All the enemies declare their own victory. People are dead, money is spent and no one gets a sense of satisfaction. Enemies, allies, countrymen, neighbors, everyone is so crabby-...
Actually, there is no “we.” I am the one wondering if I lost my last wing nut. I’m down in the dumps, crawling along the bottom of the pit, rolling in slime and garbage. Well, it sort of feels like that. After a month of visiting friends and relatives, being part of their everyday “normal” life, I cannot help but make comparisons. Of course, I compare my insides (see above) with your outsides. You, of course, come out looking beautiful in my assessment, happy, joyous an...
I attended the Dawson County Fair with my daughter Dee Dee and her family. It was touch and go whether there would even be a Saturday night rodeo. Black clouds had rolled in, covering the sky, temperatures dropped, thunder roared and lightning struck as rain pounded the ground for hours. Too dramatic? Four different storm cells hit in succession and all the above is true. When we got to the fairgrounds the rides had been shut down. Rain aided the Mud-a-palooza, mud volleyball...
The road to hell is paved with good intentions, or what we call just another day here in Pamville. What I intend to do when the Internet goes down: read a book, get ahead on writing assignments. What I get done: watch a DVD, doodle in my notepad, eat. What I intend to do when the power goes out: read, do outside chores, go for a long hike. What I do: sleep, call someone in town to ask if their power is on, drive to town for an ice cream cone. What I intend to do with my long...
We’ve all met those people, those cool people who are so super cool that they don’t even know that they’re cool or that you are a changed person just by having met them. Should you ever have the opportunity, or whatever, to meet me, you will soon start wondering where you could go to find such a person. Kind of like a cleansing of the mind’s palate after encountering something distasteful. I don’t really have much personal experience with being cool — regular cool, super...
Hi, my name is Alexandria. Call me Lexi. Grandma took me on train from Seattle to Wolf Point so I can spend time with my cousin Antoinette. Call her Toni. I am 6 years old. Toni is 8. Grandma asked me to write about the trip. So I took notes. We left Seattle from the newly restored King Street Station. Grandma told me to write that. It is beautiful. I told Grandma this is my story, and she should write her own story. In fact, I had to teach Grandma to give up all thoughts and...
I met my wife for the first time in Creative Leisure. I had gone to Creative Leisure to rent a movie that had just come out - it may have been "Shaun of the Dead," or "Kill Bill," or some other cult classic from the early 2000s - and I had just rented the last copy in stock. This cute girl and a couple of her friends came in and asked Rick Linie if he had any copies left of the very movie in my hands. An awkward kid barely out of his teens, I said something stupid like "Nyah...
Sen. John Walsh, D-Montana, has been caught red-handed plagiarizing a report for his master’s degree. The New York Times did a tremendous public service by discovering and reporting on the plagiarism at the Army War College. Since then, many voters are taking a second look at the former general and his candidacy. The war college is taking a second look at the degree he received. The senator and his staff have given various accounts of the whole mess in recent days. But one gets the sense that there is something of a shrug of...
I met my wife for the first time in Creative Leisure. I had gone to Creative Leisure to rent a move that had just come out - it may have been "Shaun of the Dead," or "Kill Bill," or some other cult classic from the early 2000s - and I had just rented the last copy in stock. This cute girl and a couple of her friends came in and asked Rick Linie if he had any copies left of the very movie in my hands. An awkward kid barely out of his teens, I said something stupid like "Nyah...
I met my wife for the first time in Creative Leisure. I had gone to Creative Leisure to rent a move that had just come out — it may have been “Shaun of the Dead,” or “Kill Bill,” or some other cult classic from the early 2000s — and I had just rented the last copy in stock. This cute girl and a couple of her friends came in and asked Rick Linie if he had any copies left of the very movie in my hands. An awkward kid barely out of his teens, I said something stupid like “Nyah nyah, I’ve got the last one,” rather than being...
Sen. John Walsh, D-Montana, has been caught red-handed plagiarizing a report for his master’s degree. The New York Times did a tremendous public service by discovering and reporting on the plagiarism at the Army War College. Since then, many voters are taking a second look at the former general and his candidacy. The war college is taking a second look at the degree he received. The senator and his staff have given various accounts of the whole mess in recent days. But one gets the sense that there is something of a shrug of...
Nothing says Americana quite like the Midwestern heartland and good ol’ American ketchup, and nothing says America’s heartland needs you more now than ever than a 170-foot-tall ketchup bottle going on the auction block in a little city called Collinsville, Illinois. This isn't just any old 170-foot ketchup bottle. It is a vintage, mint condition, red-white-and-blue, world’s giantest ketchup-bottle-disguised 100,000 gallon water tower, ever. Ever, I tell you. But that...
I’m freezing. I’ve been shivering since landing at Sky Harbor in Phoenix last Wednesday. Phoenix is even hotter than Mazatlan. This being summertime, I didn’t expect frigid air in Phoenix. I had forgotten the airport is a converted refrigeration unit. Figuring I would not need them until I reached my destination in the middle of the night in Seattle, I had packed my sweater and jeans jacket in my checked luggage, somewhere in the bowels of an aircraft. Within half an hour...
Maybe I watch too many movies and I’ve become jaded, bored by the action movie formula, but thoughts of reality keep intruding on my action/adventure cinema experience. In a scene where thieves break into a downtown office to steal solid gold bars to finance a major drug and firearms purchase from dastardly no-good-nicks, (this is what I see): Two mastermind thieves enter the building through the roof (one of them gets stuck in the opening they made and, in the process of g...
I am willing to entertain the idea that the devil is real and he is working in the manufacturing business as a design concepts innovation engineer. Yes, I just made up that job title, but with the devil on the loose, literally making mischief, I think we have bigger things to worry about than my imagination. These devilish products include mirrors that make objects appear closer than they are. Yes, it’s true. Why mess with my depth perception? Why not make it a plain ol’ mirro...
My friend David died last year. Ah, I miss him. But now and then I channel David. His wife, Vidya, insists David channeled P.T. Barnum. David was an idea man. He was always coming up with a good idea to do this or do that. When we worked in theater, I used to tell him, “Write up your idea and tell us how you intend to carry it out.” That suggestion killed a lot of ideas. But when a super-great one showed up, we instituted it right away. David used to say, “I just throws ’em o...
With the arrival of Independence Day, veterans like us often reflect on what patriotism means in terms of the responsibilities we American citizens have. One responsibility we all have is environmental stewardship. As we celebrate our nation’s independence, the U.S. military remains ready to serve and protect. In order to maintain a strong defense, our military needs safe, secure, reliable, and affordable energy. That’s why the military is taking steps to strengthen our defense by using cleaner energy, increasing the use of r...
Today we celebrate the colossal public error and the people whose job or hobby puts them in line of public scrutiny. I live your pain. Today we celebrate the 1-minute parking sign in Brentwood, California. Yes, it’s a one-hour parking area, but thanks to an error in the official city signage making it a one-minute parking zone you’d barely have time for a round of musical chairs in a clown car. And those clowns are fast. Possibly the best part about this sign error, rep...
I always knew I was a princess. Not any old run-of-the-mill princess, mind you, but a fairy tale princess. Not just any fairy tale princess, mind you, but a princess like the one from “The Princess and the Pea.” None of your Snow Whites or Rapunzels for me. Cinderella came close, but I could never do the glass slipper. How did I know my royal roots? When I was a child I could not sleep unless and until I had made the bed conditions exactly “right.” The sheets had to be smoo...
A friend in Glasgow tells us somebody he knows has a son “moved away.” He went to Williston, North Dakota. Not that far away actually. His daughter, though, “stayed at home.” She moved to Missoula. Farther away, but, most important, still in Montana. There is something that binds Montanans, from Culbertson to Butte, from Whitefish to Ekalaka. There is a sense of community. A feeling of rigid independence, friendship, willingness to help and more than a touch of eccentricity. They say Montana is one community with very lo...
Sometimes I wish I’d taken drugs in my youth — not that I’m advocating that behavior as a lifestyle, but it just seems like such a white-bread cliché to blame my chronic airheadedness on being a natural blonde. And I’ve met my parents, known them since birth (my birth). They seem to be reasonably intelligent people, so it’s highly unlikely that it’s a genetic problem. I didn’t have children so I can’t blame them somehow, like they can alter human genetics retroactively. M...
