quit yer bitchin' #19

could this possibly be why cleveland (hell, most of ohio) has such a chip on its collective shoulder?

i mean, what other state turns sodomy into a family activity?

quit yer bitchin' #18

the reason we quit going to rennaissance festivals. actually, we could buy wearing something like this in private (not that we do anything like that; we write and publish elsewhen in the buff, just like the german shepherd next door tells us to). maybe even - in a supportive & nurturing environment - daring to show it off in public. but a photo op? what was he thinking?

it's grip the gristle time

should we give chrysler/gm us$25 billion of our money to save them from bankruptcy?

no. here's why:

gm and chrysler's problems predate the current credit crunch by a considerable margin. in fact, they've been committing the cardinal sin of business for decades: building what they want to sell, rather than what customers want to buy (a culture common to a few of our past employers, too).

the difference is, when those employers reached their inevitable ends, the government wasn't waiting, cash in hand, to bail them out. instead, they were rewarded for their willful thickheadedness with a market society's greatest weapon and most terrible punishment: they went out of business. bought by rivals, consumed by shareholders, or dying a slow, cancerous death, they all eventually paid that price for their stupidity, and rightly so.

some will argue that the automakers must be bailed out because of the number of jobs at stake, but this is poor management. you don't reward a line worker that stays at a job where they are taught by their coworkers to do the minimum amount of work to avoid getting fired, setting their benefit and pay demands on 'stun', and ignoring that a worker at a chinese car company - with whom they will shortly compete - makes $6 a day and works 13 hours a day with zero days off.

if you think that chinese (or indian, or honduran, or costa rican, or or or) worker won't be competing with you for a job in a few years, months, or days, you're living in a dream: an economic downturn is an ideal hook for your company to hang further outsourcing on.

no. both sides - labor and management - are to blame. both sides should pay for their mistakes. we should cut our losses here, let the fallout fall, and invest in those companies and those market segments that actually have a prayer of surviving long term.

we don't know about you, but we're tired of dc pouring our futures down this particular long, black hole. and in case you think a win by one candidate or the other will change things much, recall that we still haven't heard obamee or mclame talk about punishment for those responsible for the global economic meltdown.

quit yer bitchin' #17

with all the talk about jobs being shipped overseas, you never hear about all of the jobs that china tries to hire americans to do. like holding up the targets for firing squad practice. apply now.

when should you have sex?

at elsewhen, we're not shy about telling you what to do with your life. and why not? we both know that, if left to your own devices, you'd only waste it. whom to vote for, which books & movies you should like, what you should think, even your amused disdain for religion: we've got you covered from cradle to grave. and it's in that spirit that we present our latest guide: how to know when to have sex.

enjoy (but not too much).

why nutrasweet's a no-no

do you ever drink diet soda? use artificial sweetener in your tea? if you consume aspartame (sold under the trade names nutrasweet, equal, neotame, canderal, spoonful, equal-measure, etc., all manufactured by g.d. searle & company), you should be aware of the following:

when broken down by the body, aspartame becomes methanol (wood alcohol), formaldehyde (which your body stores forever in your brain and other fatty tissues, where it builds up over time), phenylalinine and aspartic acid (two amino acids which can cause tumors and brain damage).

aspartame is 180 times sweeter than sugar, and is known to cause a craving for additional calories. so if you're using artificial sweeteners to lose weight, you're actually taking two steps back. aspartame accounts for 75% of all of the adverse reactions to food additives reported to the fda, and may harm unborn children.

if you happen to consume aspartame in combination with msg (used in many snack foods), or ritalin (used in the treatment of attention deficit disorder), it may cause depression, mood swings, or panic attacks.

and, finally: aspartame was originally rejected by the fda as unsafe for human consumption. the president of searle at that time - donald rumsfeld (we shit you not) - lobbied hard to change fda's stance and won approval for aspartame. after, all 14 of the fda scientists that voted for approval wound up on searle's payroll.

we use honey, here at elsewhen: non-toxic, plenty sweet for earl grey, and it never spoils. plus we like bees.

making education relevant

kids these days have a lot more to learn than when your humble elsewhen staff was in school. unfortunately, much of what is taught today is dross, the education that you receive varies hugely from state to state (the main reason no one wants nationwide standardized testing), and much of what will be truly useful in life is missing altogether.

we've often thought that a class or two on managing a household budget, wise use of credit, and basic retirement investments should be a requirement for all high schoolers.

politics & the secrets of social interaction - how to read body language, negotiation vs. fighting, salesmanship, avoiding drug use (including alcohol, gambling, and other dependencies) - would also all be useful in the real world.

and rhode island beat everyone else to the punch on our #3: they recently went beyond simple sex education and made learning about violence in dating a requirement.

we don't know about your high school/college years, but ours were rife with young women in destructive relationships from which they seemed unwilling or unable to escape. nice work, rhode island! now we just need to get every other state on board.

quit yer bitchin' #15

so the economy is bad, your employment is (or shortly will be) in question & your retirement just went up in flames.

look on the bright side: at least you haven't been reduced to giving up the finer things in life, like this fella.

yet.

belief

as long as people believe in absurdities, they will continue to commit atrocities.

francois-marie arouet, aka voltaire (1694 - 1778)

marcia marcia marcia!

if you flipped when the (later disproven) rumor that little cindy brady became a porn star came out, you'd better sit down.

maureen mccormick, (tv's marcia brady) reveals in a new book that she had a nasty cocaine habit, family history of syphilis, three abortions, and traded sex for drugs.

(we know - we totally missed out on all that sweet brady action, too. but look at it this way: there's always lindsay lohan. or nicole richie, tara reid, winona - nicknamed 'wanna' - ryder, bijou phillips, natasha lyonne, evan rachel wood, heather graham, heather locklear, mena suvari...)

early election chicanery

this promises to be one of the most entertaining elections since nixon stomped mcgovern. just listen to what's happened so far:

the republicans hired a contractor called ypm to trick voters into changing their political party, often without their knowledge or consent.

the state of michigan denies removing tens of thousands of eligible voters from its rolls.

meanwhile, the ny times said it found problems with voter registrations in co, in, oh, mi, nv, and nc.

at the same time, ahnold schvarzenwhatsit vetoed a bill to make california's convoluted voting process any easier for non-republicans to understand or participate in. (he said he was too busy to make the bill a priority.)

and the beat goes on.

lehman brothers: hangin's too good for'em

so congress did the right thing and declined to bail out lehman brothers - score one for rational thought. but did you know that - even as they were pitching for congress to bail them out - lehman was arranging millions of dollars in bonuses for its execs?

let's run that one up the flagpole again, just because it sounds so dreamy: the company was going down in flames. investors were losing their shirts. and they gave the poindexters who brought about the meltdown rewards.

in a footnote, aig sent its execs to a posh resort after it got a federal bailout. but did any aig execs invite you to enjoy the $440,000 in spa, golf course, or banquet time that you paid for? (we're betting no,unless they invited you and somehow forgot to invite us.)

if we needed any further proof that the banking industry can't be trusted with our money, we're betting this is it. (and that our own government can't be trusted to oversee squat, of course - but that's kind of a foregone conclusion, isn't it?)

republicans officially frothing-at-the-mouth crazy-desparate

this image isn't ours. it actually appeared on an official gop website. not only that - the gop group that posted the image also said that senator obama is supported by hamas.

what kind of shithouse rat crazy would throw up this kind of crap? who could possibly be this convinced that their own candidate has no chance of winning as to resort to pandering, racist, inflammatory nonsense? who could possibly sink this low?

sacramento county republican chairman craig macglashan. following some push from the media and the gop central leadership, craig had this to say: "i'm aware of the content. some people find it offensive, others do not. i cannot comment on how people interpret things."

he's right, of course. so why not do what he really wants to do, and put that burning cross right on his front lawn for all of us to interpret as we please? hell, we'll chip in for the wood - anything to help support a fella's right to free speech.

iraq: balance sheet

as of this writing, the total number of american casualties in iraq, as confirmed by the dod, is 4,180. the number of iraqi casualties is astounding: 1,273,378. and the current amount that it's cost you, your children, and your grandchildren: more than us$563 billion. (you'll see the most current figures in our counter in the sidebar to your right.)

if, like us, you like to play with numbers, this works out to almost us$135 million per american death, but only us$442k per iraqi - a comparative bargain. also, thanks to improvements in production numbers, each american death now buys us roughly 3.5 million fillups at the pump (that's about 11,000 tankfuls per iraqi death), compared to the wasteful stats at the beginning of the war (only 2 million tankfuls per dead american and just 6,500 fillups per iraqi death).

while all of this has been going on, the oil companies have been consolidating their hold on the market, securing no-bid contracts for oilfield services, production, and distribution, and buying smaller players until just a few powerful names are left in the ring.

it's worthwhile and instructive to look at the change in oil company stock as the death tolls - and our debt load (which you owe to china, by the way) - have stacked up.

so what's our takeaway? does exxon demand blood sacrifices in exchange for higher share prices? will cheney (whom we affectionately call tricky dickless, for obvious reasons) get his old job back at halliburton when biden boots him out of his vp digs? did we avoid attacking saudi arabia - where almost all of the 911 hjijackers were actually from - because the saudi royal family is friends & business partners with dubya's family?

how the hell should we know? go find out for yourself!

radiant marketing solutions

will the job scams never end? here's the latest: an email that purports to be about a job but is actually a survey site that makes money off your contact information:

http://www.e-researchcenter.us.com/

http://radiantmarketingsolutions.com

and here's the email that these con men send:

I hope you're having a great Saturday! I'm Jim the Executive HR Manager for the Radiant Marketing Solutions group. Sorry for the late reply, but I have been extremely busy for the past week. You've, been forwarded to me from one of our umbrella companies by my buddy Julius and I personally reviewed your resume and I believe you have a very good chance of getting the job. All you need to do is answer three specific questions and one essay question for the job on one of our websites.

All instructions are below.

**Job Qualification Form**

IMPORTANT: Kindly follow the instructions carefully, the first page on this site will be using our regular customer's website general info form. Follow the instructions completely until you reach page 3. On page 3 you need to answer three specific questions and one essay question, along with inputting your name and telephone number.

You may begin filling out your information here: http://www.radiantmarketingsolutions.com/ad4/4/2.html

On Page 3, be sure to follow instructions and answer your questions completely and input your contact information properly. I will review all your answers and give you a call to set the final one-on-one interview.

Thank you for your time and I hope to talk to you soon!

Have a great day!

Sincerely,

James Andrew Koletty
HR Executive Manager
Radiant Marketing Solutions Group

on a clear day you can see liv tyler

this is liv tyler, daughter of band groupie bebe buell (think penny lane in almost famous) and aerosmith frontman steven tyler.

ms. tyler is - when paired with an appropriate director - an actress of some talent. according to grupthink, she is also the 17th most beautiful woman in the world.

this involves having a personal trainer, dresses that cost thousands of dollars, hair stylists that wouldn't even take your calls, and a small army of nail & makeup technicians.

this is liv tyler, single mother, hanging out at the beach sans hair, nail, & makeup technicians, personal trainer, and dresses.

see the difference?

remember this the next time that you get down on yourself for your appearance.

you are who you are. you don't need to be anything - or anyone - else.

quit yer bitchin' #14

yes, this really is sean connery, star of all of the best james bond flicks, highlander, a fairly lame indiana jones number, the league of extraordinary gentlemen, and on and on.

take heart, fellow soon-to-be-bankruptees: following bond & before highlander, mr. connery had as much trouble finding work as any ordinary joe. as a result, he accepted a part in a sci-fi stinkeroo called zardoz.

(and, we're guessing, threatened with legal action when he balked at wearing this sexy little number. and the saddest thing? we actually own a pair of those boots.)

army spends $4 million on mind control helmet

speaking of where our tax money goes...

no, really - it's not a joke. and can you imagine the pitch? "see, this helmet, it will allow soldiers to directly transmit their thoughts to each other! and... and... they can fly drones! yeah! and play wii without those wacky stick thingies!"

(actually, we're just bitter because they turned down our photonic crystal time travel belt buckle. the lights spelled out 'nugent'. we knew we should have gone with 'frampton'. everybody likes frampton.)

hell has officially frozen over

oh. my. god. we agree with the bush administration and the state of louisiana on an issue! it's the apocalypse! sheep are eating lions! karl rove got laid!

(okay, you got us - we made that last one up. turd blossom is unlayable, even on doomsday.)

but we digress: the supreme court has ruled that rape - even the rape of a child - is insufficient cause for the death penalty. dubya and louisiana - a state where we once watched police officers allow someone to sell heroin right in front of them without batting an eye - disagree. and - believe it or not - so do we.

pedophilia is an incurable condition. pedophiles prey on children. if a lion was hanging around your kids' schoolyard, would you put it in a cage for awhile and then let it out to hang around the schoolyard again?

of course not.

elsewhen firmly believes that, upon conviction in a court of law, pedophiles should be put to death. roasting them on a spit is our personal favorite, but each state will probably want to come up with their own sendoff. we could even have contests for the most imaginative method. double point value for priests & pastors.

need help cheating on your spouse?

ain't america wonderful? we're the land of opportunity. come up with an original idea, build a business around it, and make a mint. money, money, money. and - as everyone knows - the secret to making money is finding out what people already do and convincing them to pay you to help them do it. (like porn. or viagra. or looking down on paris hilton.)

trouble is, all of the morally upstanding ideas have been taken. heck, even the morally bankrupt ones. so what's left?

help people cheat on their spouses.

yep, you heard that right. ashley madison is the ultimate slimy business. imagine what it must be like for your self-esteem to work there. kinda like selling meth, we bet.

how to rape kids & get away with it

let's suppose that you're a pedophiliac, republican representative from florida, and it comes out that you've sent sexually explicit email messages to congressional pages. maybe you've even diddled a few. so you decide to skip running again and 'retire'. after all, you'll get a congressional pension and health insurance for the rest of your life - what have you got to lose?

but then florida police start to look into whether or not what you did might be - oh, i don't know - let's say illegal as hell. and to prove their case, they ask for copies of your email files. naturally, you say no, because prison is for little people. so the police go to congress and ask them for your email messages. and they say no. because foley was a congressman, and if they let one of their own go to prison, what's to stop us from sending any other member of congress that allegedly commits statutory rape from going to prison?

because we're congress. we make the law. we don't have to follow it. the law is for little people. just ask tricky dickless.

wonder where your tax money goes?

now that our government has spent us$1 trillion of your retirement and your children's future earnings to pay off felonious actions by well-connected, filthy rich crooks, have you begun to develop an interest in exactly where your tax money goes?

it doesn't cover black budget items or the cia's drug money, of course, but it's tasty, anyway.

really achieving your childhood dreams

randy pausch was a remarkable educator & a remarkable man.

watch the video. your life may be better for it, or it may not.

as with so many things in life, that's entirely up to you.

pantsing the patent office

our largest corporations are putting money behind a new patent approval process that takes some of the oversight that the patent office now has & puts it in the hands of their own product development teams.

let me say that again, with slightly more spin: companies that are often sued for patent infringement by inventors now get to help decide which patents get approved.

huh? haven't we learned a lesson about this kind of incestuous relationship between the guv & industry vis a vis the fda and big pharma? are we really stoopid enough to go right ahead & set up the same kind of pervy uncle/pliable niece scenario all over again?

here's a pretty clear indication that these companies aren't proposing change for our own good: they'd like to limit the awards paid to inventors that win lawsuits against them. in other words, if you invent something & a company steals your idea, at best you will only be able to get back a fraction of the money that should have been yours in the first place. the company gets to keep the rest.

novel concept, that. kinda like saying that a thief that cleans out your house won't go to jail, only has to give back your garage door opener, & gets to keep all of your appliances.

the argument made by industry is that these lawsuits slow down the pace of american inventiveness. as we always recommend, it pays to look at the metrics whenever any side makes a claim. if what industry says is true, why does the number of patent applications have such a steep curve:

we don't dispute the fact that the u.s. patent office is swamped, principally because it is consistently starved for funding by congress & the white house. even in this day & age, patents are researched almost entirely by hand, which is a bad joke at best.

here's the elsewhen counter-proposal:

give the patent office the funds that it needs to drag its technology into the 21st century.

hire enough patent office staff to catch up on the backlog.

make it part of their employment contract that they can't go to work for any company for whom they have approved patents. (frankly, we've had enough of that with congress & the fda - don't get us started.)

set up a watchdog agency with teeth to make sure this is strictly followed.

commission google to index the entire patent office. they've already started this on their own - this will just makes it official.

we believe that this is a fair & equitable arrangement that protects the legitimate interests of both sides without putting the fox in charge of the henhouse.

(another brilliant piece of gratis consulting work from your friendly neighborhood elsewhen staff. remember us at christmas.)

tina fey

as amused as we've been by ms. palin's very public gaffes (like running for office), we enjoyed tina fey's impression of her much more. in addition to being a bright spot in saturday night live's declining years, she has a successful show of her own (30 rock) and a burgeoning movie career (check out baby mama).

plus she's got major hubba-hubba appeal.

sugar-frosted sugar bombs

it's probably not news to you that cereals aimed at kids contain sugar. the kicker is how much: up to 50% of the weight by volume. something else that's interesting: the same cereals in their overseas incarnations don't contain this much sugar.

(this is, of course, absolute proof that u.s. food companies are fattening up u.s. citizens so they can be eaten by their alien masters. doritos & taco bell are merely to give us some flavor. humans are notoriously bland - think boiled pork. not that we'd know.)

the worst offenders:

kellogg's honey smacks

post golden crisp

the best:

cheerios

kix

honey nut cheerios (mmmmm - honey)

life

quit yer bitchin' #14

the market collapse seems to be causing a little tension around the office...

a new twist on the kenya scam

remember the old scam about the african government ministry that said it was willing to pay you millions in exchange for helping them to transfer uber-cash in oil wealth to the states, and all they needed was your bank account to channel the money?

they're back, but with a new twist: they want to give you a job, but you have to handle all of the money through your bank. uh-huh. the posts are appearing on - naturally enough - craigslist. here's a peek at one (found listed under customer service):

We are in search of a special individual who will be the public facing evangelist for our great software and technology products. This person should be comfortable interfacing on a technical level with our product and services teams and at the same time be a dynamic public representative of these products and services to external, high-level business customers.Get back to us if you are interested in this job.

the addresses and company name all mention charlestoneltd, using hotmail addresses. you've got to admire these con artists for their sheer inventiveness. if they would just put that much energy into actually creating real jobs, they'd be able to make money and avoid prison.

has anyone seen any variations on this one yet?