Not surprised, but disturbing anyhow
On the Today show this morning, they did a short piece on “The Dumbing of America.” They showed such cultural milestones as Kelly Pickler on a game show asking if France was a country and that teen beauty pageant contestant who made the national news for her moment of dumbness. Most disturbing of all is the statistic they threw out that 40% of people under age 44 had not read a single book in the past year! Yeah, there’s lots of free electronic input on our home computers these days, but I can’t imagine a society with people incapable/refusing to read a book just out of intellectual curiosity. (not even a dirty book?)
If you haven’t seen the movie, Idiocracy check it out! It’s an R-rated black comedy, and in it’s own way about as scary as Soylent Green! It’s about the dumbing down of the Future.
Speaking of books, I’m reading Hillary’s Choice by Gail Sheehy. It came out in 1999, after the Monica business. I might just as well tell you I won’t vote for Hillary. I’ve called her Lady Macbeth for years. Imagine being on the defensive, arguing, compromising, being betrayed (over and over again) by your spouse, all to get to the goal at the end of the rainbow. Campaigning for 30 years for crying out loud! Someday they’ll write an opera about her…like Evita, only set in Arkansas. She’s already been on the end of a lot of heartache. I don’t understand why she didn’t kick Bill to the curb 25 or 30 women ago. I might have more respect for her if she had! It’s like she’s made up her mind that if she’s elected it’s all been worth it. Ah but, what if she doesn’t win?
(Yeah, I’m the one that said I wouldn’t blog about politics and here I am at it again!)
What’s for Dinner? I didn’t want to watch it, but I had the news on and managed to see some of the video from that slaughterhouse out in California. Horrible. And we have all our polite euphemisms for what really goes on, i.e., processing instead of killing, packing instead of butchering. It’s not a job most of us would choose to do, even if it does provide dinner. Lots of farmers around here raise steers, but when their time comes, they’re taken away to one of these places. Sometimes at the grocery store, the meat department makes me freaky. Honestly, I have trouble sometimes looking at chopped bloody animal parts! I think without making a big deal about it, I’m going to work on substituting other things for meat protein. I don’t think I’d last as a Vegan, but I can probably do with less beef. Especially since the USDA can’t seem to guarantee its safety these days. More kidney beans!
Cross your Fingers: The Mega Millions is up to over $220 Million! That gets up where the prize is hard to comprehend. Put it like this-when Duchess was in middle school, her principal hit the state lottery for $18 million. After taxes, he still cleared over $600K a year-without working a lick! Two hundred million puts a person up there with medium level rock stars, not quite up there with McCartney and Jagger, but they’d let you sit in the sky suite! Seriously, if I got lucky, after I set up the trust funds for the family and bought my vegan cow sanctuary in New Mexico, I have causes I believe in, so I’d definitely share!
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