This and That | Ain't Complicated

Nuke Woodburn?

The first comment on the following story says so:

Woodburn police say more than a dozen people, some of them gang members, got into a street fight late Thursday, sending one person to the hospital for stab wounds.

Source: Woodburn Police Respond to Large Street Brawl

Weird 🙄

(We used to live in Woodburn. We still do lots of business there. We like Woodburn.)

Anyway, here’s some Oregon news causing less of a flap:

In thousands of Oregon neighborhoods and condo buildings, covenants and other rules ban clotheslines, even from private backyards. Homeowners using clotheslines face threatening letters from their homeowners’ associations and potential fines — not to mention simmering tension with neighbors who consider hanging clothes an eyesore or an emblem of poverty.

[…]

A bill that may soon become law would prohibit homeowner associations and condo associations from banning clotheslines in areas maintained by individual homeowners. House Bill 3090 cleared the Oregon House and could soon reach the Senate floor.

The effort joins others from Hawaii to Connecticut, where state lawmakers are caught in clothesline politics.

Source: Oregon legislation puts backyard laundry on the line

I’m all for clotheslines. In fact, we used them extensively in the past. I’ve even posted about them previously:

Bank It or Dump It?

Time to do some armchair quarterbacking!

By way of introduction, here’s part of the story as reported by The Oregonian:

When times are tight and people are hungry, any kind of waste — even the deep-sixing of a truckload of junk food — is taboo.

That may explain why no one seems to want to take the blame for sending 2,000 cases of snack cakes to the landfill after a Little Debbie truck overturned on Oregon 217 late Monday.

Read the full story here: Oregon 217 crash sparks debate over wasted Little Debbie cakes

The Oregon Food Bank wanted that food.

So if the decision had been yours, what would have been done with that dumped treasure?

Oh, and while you’re at the article, be sure to read the comments — the comedians were out in force. 🙄

And speaking of comedians, here’s another wreck related story. Read it all

Cyberian Scrabble

I understand that thread finally locked up over at WorldMagBlog.

Perhaps this will work as a substitute for it.

Here are the rules:

We’ll start off with the word loll.
The first player should change one letter of loll and post it in the comment section.
Subsequent players should work off the last word published in the comment section.
You can’t add letters.
You can’t use foreign (or foul!) languages.
You can only change one letter.
You can’t repeat a word already used.

Why loll as the starting word? Because that’s the last word used at WorldMagBlog. 🙂

Rule Update: Rearranging the order of existing letters does not constitute changing a letter.

Name Update: This is now Cyberian Scramble, but I’ll leave the post title the same.

Date/Time Update: This post was originally published on June 1 (2009) at 8:30 am Pacific. These updates are June 5 at 8:11 am Pacific.

Fowl Photos

Several months ago, Ruby had to exile one of our hens. Otherwise, she would have died at the ~~hands~~ beaks of the other hens. (Wow, she was low on the pecking order!)

(The hen, that is.)

Anyway, as a way of personal relaxation, yesterday afternoon I was hand-feeding her blades of grass and sprigs of weeds.

Her she is, in the process of swallowing a blade of grass she has just pecked from betwixt my fingers:

(I tried — unsuccessfully — several times to catch the grass still in my fingers as well as in her beak.)

Then I decided to do a portrait of her!

Remember the Exile!

Click the above image. Save the resulting bigger version to your computer. Make that image your wallpaper for today. Leave a comment telling the world (or at least me and the seven readers of this blog) that The Exile is now your wallpaper.

Thanks!

Supreme Court Selection

Well, President Obama passed up on nominating a black conservative man or a green liberal woman or a homosexual white man.

Instead he nominated a woman I never heard of. Right now, I know extremely little about her. I don’t even know her name.

Will the Republicans bork her? Or filibuster her? Or mock her? Or fling dirt (dry or mud) at her?

Will she have tax problems? Or nanny issues? Or paper trail nukes?

We’ll see.

One other thought: The Clintonistas bemoaned that President Clinton didn’t have a 9/11 event to do great things for their man. I wonder if the Bushies are regretting President Bush didn’t get a Supreme Court nomination so early in his first term.

Well, whoever this woman is, she will not impede the progress of history nor the execution of God’s will in it.

May she not have to endure all the demeaning unkindness so many others experienced in the confirmation process.