Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Random Thoughts

One of the city collection trucks in our area is labeled “Limbs Only.” I so want to paint others with ‘Heads Only” and “Torsos Only.”

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I thought there was a recession on. You wouldn’t know it driving on I-85. Giant transfer trucks as far as the eye can see (which, given that they were surrounding me the whole time, was about thirty feet).

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Saw a story on Myfoxdc.com about new red light cameras in Maryland, and how they were erroneously ticketing drivers that had stopped at the lights. While that didn’t surprise me, I was horrified by the mistakes in the article from this supposed twenty-year veteran journalist.

Fox 5 camera's stood at one intersection...
Your camera’s what? Oh! Did you mean “cameras?”

75 dollar citations.
Technically, every number under 100 should be written out, but if you’re going to break that rule, you definitely need a hyphen in “75-dollar.” Also, that’s an incomplete sentence, dumbass.

During a short period, the camera flashs continually went off when cars were at a complete stop. We asked one motorist, "Did you go past the red light." The unidentified driver said, "no I didn't, I'm still stopped here at the red light. If I went thru then you wouldn't be talking to me know.”
Misspelled word, incorrect punctuation, no capital letter at the beginning of a sentence, incorrect punctuation, misspelled word, incorrect word.

Seriously? This is professional journalism? This kind of laxity really pisses me off when I’m struggling to land writing gigs.

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You know…I’ve been reading all kinds of articles on the financial crises, and most of them use “too big to fail” at some point within the story. Like AIG, for example. According to half of the articles, if we let AIG crash, it will destroy our economy. My question is: Why didn’t Congress break up AIG like it did to AT&T and Microsoft? If the failure of your company would completely devalue the dollar, you need to be reigned in.

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It has recently come to light that Scott S. Reuben, former Chief of Acute Pain at Baystate Medical Center, was involved in fabricating twenty-one different medical studies, including studies for Bextra, Vioxx, Lyrica, Celebrex, and Effexor. While Reuben has declined to comment, his attorney has referred to “extenuating circumstances,” without going into any detail.

Extenuating circumstances? Bullshit. Nothing can justify this kind of massive irresponsibility. Dr. Rueben should have his license to practice medicine revoked, be sued into destitution, and then be shot in the head.

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