$22.5 million/year for knocking a piece of cowhide around?

As Sporting News notes today, Manny Ramirez has just reached a deal with the Dodgers: $45 million for two years.

Now consider this: in Trenton, New Jersey, a different Manny – Manny Rivera, the firefighter – was fighting for his life a month ago after sustaining a critical injury while saving the life of a teenager:

http://www.nj.com/mercer/index.ssf/2009/02/firefighter_battles_lifethreat.html

Now, consider that the median salary of a firefighter with 20 years or more experience, in the U.S., is $62,888:

http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Fire_Fighter/Salary

So $22.5 million for knocking a piece of cowhide around; $62,888 for saving lives and risking one’s own life doing so, on a regular basis. The latter amount is not even 0.5% of the former.

That stinks.

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Lighten up, Army dudes

NC military mom arrives at Fort Benning with kids

Excerpts–

DAVIDSON, N.C. (AP) —A North Carolina woman who was recalled to the Army four years after being honorably discharged drove nearly 400 miles and braved a Southeastern winter storm to report for duty Sunday, with her children by her side….

…Pagan is among thousands of former service members who have left active duty since the Sept. 11 attacks, only to be recalled to service. They’re not in training, they’re not getting a Defense Department salary, but as long as they have time left on their original enlistment contracts, they’re on “individual ready reserve” status — eligible to be recalled at any time.

Pagan filed several appeals, arguing that because her husband travels for business, no one else can take care of her kids. All were rejected, leaving Pagan to choose between deploying to Iraq and abandoning her family, or refusing her orders and potentially facing charges….

…”The Army tries to look at the whole picture and they definitely don’t want to do anything that jeopardizes the family or jeopardizes the children,” O’Donnell  [Army spokesman in St. Louis] said. “At the same time, these are individuals who made obligations and commitments to the country….”

Source

Chill out, you hard-assed groundpounders, says I. You’re making her go through all this shit without any deference to the venerable tradition of motherhood, and even if you should let her off the hook, the fact remains that you screwed with her and her kids, big time. What the fuck is wrong with you? Y’all must have shit for brains. In this case, you and your red tape stink.

Trainspotting Toilet Scene (Caution!)

Some have speculated that the “Mr. Creosote Scene” from Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life (see below) is the most revolting in 20th century cinema. Having recently seen Trainspotting (1996) for the first time, I have to say it’s a serious contender; I find it far, far more revolting than Mr. Creosote.

Cautions:

• If you haven’t seen the movie and you’re a fan of Ewan McGregor, you might want to skip this clip.

• If you’re incapable of clinical detachment, and tend to retch when seeing revolting things, you should probably skip it.

• If you watch it, and it severely grosses you out or ruins your dinner…well, I warned you.

Stench figurative and literal: Naples’ garbage crisis deepens

Back in January, I made three separate posts about the mountains of garbage accumulating in the streets of Naples, Italy: “Naples Stinks,” “Followup: Sardinians Resent Naples’ Garbage,” and “Followup: Naples’ Garbage Crisis Laid Bare.” Now, here’s the latest–

(There are two kinds of human filth, here. One is obvious and may be cleaned up with garbage trucks and street cleaners. The other kind is harder to see and is notoriously hard to clean up.)

Camorra cause a stink in Naples

[via telegraph.co.uk]

The Mob has proved no better than Italy’s inept municipal authorities at running waste disposal business properly.

(Excerpt)

..the Mob has proved no better than Italy’s inept municipal authorities at running the service properly. Barely any new waste processing facilities have been built in Naples for decades, and since last December, the region’s dumps have been full to capacity and unable to take any more. Hence the refuse piles 20 feet high in Naples’ once-picturesque alleyways, and hence what Neapolitans call La Puzza, or The Stink.

With it has come another unpleasant smell – less easily detectable but just as familiar in Italian public life. It is the whiff of corruption, and the sneaking feeling that the situation got so out of hand because of murky links between the Comorra and the city’s administration, stymying modern refuse projects that might threaten their waste rackets.

“The fish starts to stink from the head, so we should blame the political class,” said Quarto Gennaro, 51, nursing an espresso in a cafe in Forcella, an old-time Camorra district packed with loafing, jowelly men resembling Sopranos extras. “They always act together with the criminals….”

Read the full article

A Bloodsucker on the Web

Anyone who’s ever had an abcessed tooth and the resultant root canal knows the misery it can bring. It hurts like hell, and it stinks, both literally and figuratively. A rotten tooth literally stinks of putrefaction and decay, to the core. And paying $1000 for a root canal out of pocket, followed by another $1750 for the crown because you don’t have dental insurance, stinks too.

What stinks even more is when health care specialists go at their profession with the first and foremost goal of getting filthy, stinking rich on you. This stench amplifies when they botch a procedure. Which they do, more often than many people realize.

But what stinks most of all is the maggot who creates a codified system for health professionals, designed to facilitate their rise into the ranks of the rich and leisurely, with virtually no regard to the suffering engendered by the obscenely high cost of health care for young and old alike, in the United States.

Mind you, that’s just my opinion. This guy could be a saint, and I could be the bad guy here. Read it and decide for yourself.

Starbucks verdict on “smelly sandwiches” suffers backlash

A little over a month ago, I made a post entitled “Starbucks corporate analysts: sausage on a roll stinks like a dead dog,” expressing my opinion that their decision to remove the “odoriferous” sandwiches from their menus is “…a bunch of smelly, nouveau-rich, pop-culture mock-elitist bullshit….”

The backlash is here. And it’s doing abysmally, because y’all want smarmy stuff like pumpkin-cream cheese scones with chocolate chips for brekkie, I guess.

Andrew Beaujon of Washington City Paper weighs in on the issue:

You Can Pry My Peppered Bacon, Aged Cheddar, and Egg From My Cold, Dead Hands

Involuntarily, I shouted “NOOOO!” when I read this line in the Times‘ story about Starbucks’ three-hour training session last night:

Lest anyone doubt that Starbucks is serious, employees were reminded that the chain intended to get rid of odoriferous breakfast sandwiches, just so customers can smell the coffee again.

Couldn’t they just get rid of the tea, or the Marcus Samuelsson–inspired baked goods, instead? I’ve got two kids, and sometimes those sandwiches are the only reason I have anything to eat before noon. Oh but wait: The Internet comes to the rescue

Meanwhile, the food critic at the San Diego Union-Tribune asks:

…I’ve endured parched maple scones in L.A., sickly-sweet streusel coffeecake in Chicago and a muffin in the Boston airport that didn’t make it past the first trash can.

What’s with Starbucks’ pastries? How can they be uniformly dry and tasteless in markets across the country? How can a company that prides itself on consistency and quality control of its coffee products be so hopelessly out of the loop with its edibles…?

Read the entire column

 

Comcast: Stinky Tactics

I got an e-mail with a video link from Tim Carr, campaign director at savetheinternet.com this morning.

We just caught Comcast Corp. stacking an FCC hearing with paid (and apparently sleepy) seat-fillers.

The hearing was set up to investigate Comcast’s recent blocking of the Internet. But Comcast packed the room so that the public couldn’t get in to voice their support for Net Neutrality.

We took pictures and recorded an interview that proves Comcast was taking seats from concerned citizens. Now, we need you to make sure that the company doesn’t get away with this ever again.

British Airways: The Dead Fly First Class

BA sat corpse in first class

A BRITISH Airways passenger travelling first class has described how he woke up on a long-haul flight to find that cabin crew had placed a corpse in his row.

The body of a woman in her seventies, who died after the plane left Delhi for Heathrow, was carried by cabin staff from economy to first class, where there was more space. Her body was propped up in a seat, using pillows.

The woman’s daughter accompanied the corpse, and spent the rest of the journey wailing in grief.

Paul Trinder, who awoke to see the body at the end of his row, last week described the journey as “deeply disturbing”, and complained that the airline dismissed his concerns by telling him to “get over it”.

Read the entire article

The stench of war…and death

Lebanon, 2006. The stench of death: Children hold their

noses as they pass corpses in a truck. Source: habeeb.com

——

Smells like Avril® Lavigne

Between an Avril® line of personal care products and Leslie Feist’s lucrative fornication with Apple®, Inc., Canada is going to get a reputation for producing money-grubbing popsters.

Eau de Avril in the works?

From Canoe-Jam

….Documents filed last month with the United States Patent and Trademark Office say the singer wants exclusive rights to her own name when it comes to products including fragrances, aftershave, bath soap, body lotion and talc

The move has got blogs and fan sites wondering about a possible product line….