Nipples Airport Security Risk

It might be wise to stay out of the Lubbock, Texas airport if you have any sort of piercings. On February 24 a woman named Mandi Hamlin set off the alarms when she went through the security check on her way to Dallas.

It's my nipples she told the security checker. I have nipple rings.

Mandi was told to remove the nipple rings. She said she wouldn't. She was then told she could not get on the plane. So, Mandi gave in and was taken behind a privacy curtain where she successfully removed the bar parts of the piercings, but she could not get the rings loose.

Mandi began to cry. She told her torturers that she needed pliers to get the rings off. She was given pliers. She was successful. She was scanned again, and again set off the alarms. It was a belly button ring this time. But she was allowed to board without removing the belly button ring.

Apparently belly buttons present much less of a threat than nipples. The Transportation Security Administration is investigating the incident.

Gloria Allred is Mandi's lawyer. I hope she gets a good settlement.

Alma and Obama

This morning I got email from one of the South's Best Songbirds, she being Alma Squillante, currently performing at various venues on the Texas Gulf Coast. Before I make mention of what Alma's email was about I must mention her MySpace page where you can listen to her sing and learn where you can go hear her in person.

My two long term readers may remember me making mention in a couple Bloggings, I think one was called The Soviet State of Texas, of how a person in Texas can get thrown in the Texas Gulag for something as minor as a 6 year old $20 bounced check. Alma would be the person I know who had that happen to her. She writes about it in her MySpace Blog.

Anyway, in this morning's email Alma pointed me to a website where all I had to do was answer 15 questions to learn who I should choose for president. My answers were then analyzed and then the presidential candidates were listed in order of what level of agreement I shared with them regarding the various issues raised in the 15 questions.

Apparently I made a mistake (I sort of already knew that) when I voted for Hillary in the Texas Primary. Apparently I am in more agreement with Barack Obama than I am Hillary. I'm pretty sure I can't change my vote.

Hillary's Brave Combat in Bosnia

Am I the only one shocked to learn that President Bill Clinton sent his wife and daughter and the comedian known as Sinbad into the Bosnian War Zone where Hillary and Company had to duck and dodge bullets from snipers?

What sort of man would send his wife and daughter into such a dangerous situation? Shocking. And where was the Secret Service during this?

Just a couple weeks ago I saw Hillary at the Fort Worth Stockyards with the Secret Service all over the place. She's not even First Lady anymore, but way back in 1996, when she was only half way through her First Lady Days, the Secret Service let the First Lady do a corkscrew defensive landing in a combat zone and then ordered her to duck and run for cover? Were they trying to get her killed? What was Bill thinking? Sending his wife on such a mission. Along with his only child. Shocking. Was this during the time period when Bill was pre-occupied with Monica, one can't help but wonder?

Strangely, in photos taken during this incident, such as the one you see above, Hillary took time from running for cover to greet a little Bosnian girl. Now, one might think that Hillary's maternal instincts might have kicked in, with her picking up the little girl and carrying her to safety from the incoming sniper fire. It must not have occurred to Hillary, at the time, how well such a rescue would have played for us folks back home. But, then again, you do have to sort of wonder what sort of mother would stop to talk to a stranger, even a little girl stranger, when her own daughter is standing right by her, with bullets incoming from who knows how many snipers from who knows how many directions.

Well, obviously Hillary is a very brave girl (Bill has been referring to Hillary as a girl in speeches the past couple days), who has the courage to face any danger, any obstacle. Be it combat fire or climbing mountains. Which is why it is so appropriate that Hillary was named after Sir Edmund Hillary, who became internationally known years after Hillary was born. But somehow her mom and dad knew a man named Hillary was going to climb Mount Everest in 1953 and so they named their only daughter Hillary when she was born in 1947, 6 years prior to Sir Edmund making the Hillary name famous. Hillary has frequently said how proud she is to be named after Sir Edmund Hillary. Just like she is rightly proud to have dodged all those bullets in Bosnia.

The Clinton Pathology

I just finished Barbara Olson's "The Final Days: The Last, Desperate Abuses of Power by the Clinton White House." This book covers in great detail the final weeks the Clintons were in the White House.

Like, Details about Hillary's gift registry that went out to who knows how many people, soliciting gifts, like furniture and china, for the Clinton's 2 new homes. Hillary even solicited for, and got, an expensive cashmere sweater. All this begging at the same time Hillary had received a controversial $8 million book advance.

In addition to the loot the Clintons acquired via the begging route they also hauled off, in the words of permanent White House staff, anything that was not nailed down. Much of what was taken was put in warehouses in Little Rock. When the Clintons were told that much of what they took was government property and should have remained in the White House some of the loot was returned. But, there has never been an accounting of what was taken and what was returned. The Clintons also offered cash for some of what they took. But there has never been a record of that money being paid to anyone.

The biggest scandal in the Clintons final days were the dozens upon dozens of dubious pardons. Clinton wasn't pardoning people who'd somehow gotten a raw deal, like a kid thrown in jail for 10 years for being caught with a marijuana cigarette. No, Clinton pardoned serious criminals. He even pardoned a long sought after fugitive, Marc Rich. The Rich pardon caused the most outrage, first off due to the nature of his crimes and second off due to the fact that his ex-wife, Denise, paid the Clinton's well over a million bucks for their Presidental Library, huge donations to Hillary's senate campaign, huge donations to the DNC, and, of course, she bought Hillary some of the items that were on Hillary's gift registry.

Hillary's brother, Hugh, sold several pardons for $400,000. When Hillary found out she was horrified and insisted her brother return the money. It is not known if he did return the money, or if Hillary scolded Bill for facilitating her brother's pardon for hire scheme. Bill's brother, Roger, who got one of the last minute pardons, was so sure he could get his big brother to do some pardoning for him, pre-sold 7 or 8 pardons to fellow drug crime convicts who Roger had met in jail. Unfortunately for Roger, this turned into one of the rare occasions where Bill did the right thing, leaving Roger in hot water with the cons who'd given him money.

Clinton pardoned several drug kingpins who the DEA had worked years to convict and put away. Bill had no explanation as to why he would pardon drug kingpins. The pardons outraged leaders in South America who had cooperated with the U.S. in fighting the Drug Lords with the president of, I think it was Columbia, saying that if it had been he who had issued such a pardon on his last day in office, the United States would have been outraged and extremely critical and accusatory.

In the words of the Wall Street Journal's Al Hunt the Clinton Pardon Scandal "leaves a stain that is bigger than anything during impeachment which, despite the effort of Clinton haters, really was about awful personal behavior. I think the damage (to Clinton's legacy) is severe. I think it's lasting. It's on Bill Clinton's legacy. It's on Hillary Clinton."

Go to Wikipedia for a short article with more detail about the Clinton Pardon Scandal. Go to this Blog for a list of who was pardoned and what their crimes were. You'll see why Jimmy Carter called this scandalous and Al Gore said he was shocked.

United States #1 Status in Danger

Unless Americans start eating more the United States is in danger of losing its status of being the Fattest Nation on the planet. Mexico is rapidly gaining on us and is currently the #2 Fattest Nation. At its current rate of growth Mexico is on track to surpass the U.S. as the World's Fattest Nation within 10 years, according to Mexican Health Officials.

Less than 29 percent of Mexican women are not overweight. Approximately 34 percent of Mexican men are not overweight. In other words more than 71 percent of Mexican women and 66 percent of Mexican men are Fat.

Mexico's weight gain has been quite rapid. As recently as 1989 less than 10 percent of Mexican adults were Fat. Since 1989 Mexico has seen a big increase in the number of American fast food joints like McDonald's and Kentucky Fried Chicken, along with modern grocery stores stocked with modern American food.

Speaking of Kentucky Fried Chicken, relating to the obesity epidemic, KFC announced yesterday that their American restaurants would soon be sporting new neon signs saying "Kentucky Grilled Chicken." I don't know if the KGC will have that special taste that KFC has. It will be lower in fat, salt and calories. KFC/KGC will also be adding some healthy side dishes to go along with the mashed spuds and gravy and macaroni and cheese.

I don't know if this Kentucky Grilled Chicken idea appeals to me. I mean, if I want healthy chicken it is real easy to just roast a chicken myself. Every few years I'm in the mood for Kentucky Fried Chicken, original recipe, and that's what I get. Then after a few bites I remember why I only have it every few years.

Here in the South we have KFC Buffets. You can really overload on Kentucky Fried Chicken at a KFC Buffet. Along with way too many biscuits. There are good reasons why Texas is the Fattest State in the Fattest Country in the world.

Texas Obesity Kills

Being obese can cause all sorts of risks to ones health. Let alone what it does to ones appearance. As everyone in the world knows everything is bigger in Texas. Including the people.

In Texas obesity can be deadly in disturbing ways. Like this week in La Joya, Texas, that is in Hidalgo County, near the Mexican border in the fattest part of Texas, an obese babysitter fell on top of a 2 year old boy and crushed his skull, killing him. A local justice of the peace was quoted as saying "It didn't look like there was any foul play from what I saw."

Men's Fitness magazine does an annual list of the United State's Fattest and Fittest Cities. The list varies wildly from year to year which would seem to render it sort of silly. Like in 2005 Seattle was the Fittest City while Houston was the Fattest. In 2005 Arlington, Texas was the 22nd Fittest City, but somehow, within 3 years, Arlington became the 2nd Fattest City, with Fort Worth being the 4th Fattest. San Antonio, this year, is the 3rd Fattest, El Paso 5th Fattest, Houston has really improved from its #1 Fattest position in 2005 to being only the 10th Fattest in 2008. I guess that Fitness Campaign in Houston has really paid off.

So, Texas has 5 cities in the Top Ten on the Fattest list. That is quite an accomplishment. Now, living here, this does not surprise me. You see a lot of really really BIG people here. I remember in August of 2004 I flew up to Seattle, Seattle being the Fittest City at that point in time. I had not been up there for almost 3 years. So, Lulu picked me up at the airport. She had to deliver some stuff to a gallery in Pioneer Square in downtown Seattle. It was February. Unlike here, in Texas, there were a lot of people walking about downtown in Seattle. And what was so striking to me was, after my long exile in Obese Texas, it looked to me like the Seattlites had had the air let out of them. I was so used to seeing so many bloated up Texas Balloon People it'd warped my perceptions of what humans look like.

One thing I have noticed during the course of my exile in Texas is there has been a noticeable increase in the number of people I see exercising in the various parks I go to. Like when I first discovered River Legacy Park in Arlington I was very impressed with what a nice park it is and very surprised at how few people used it. That is no longer the case. You now see a lot of people biking, walking, roller blading and playing, with only, maybe 25% of them appearing to be obese.

So, it sort of surprises me that Arlington is now supposedly the #2 Fattest City in the U.S. That is quite a fall from being on the list of Fittest Cities in 2005. Now, it does not surprise me to see Fort Worth being listed as the 4th Fattest City. I can pedal for miles on Fort Worth's Trinity River trails and see nary a human except for a bum or two sleeping under a bridge.

I live in Fort Worth and I'm doing all I can do to try and get Fort Worth off the Fattest List and onto the Fittest. But I am only 1 of over 660,000 people. I can't do this all by myself. Some other people in Fort Worth are going to need to put down the doughnuts and get off the couch.

Hillary and Whitewater Falls

I'd intended to Blog about Hillary today regarding some surprising details I read in a book I just finished, that being Barbara Olson's "The Final Days: The Last, Desperate Abuses of Power by the Clinton White House." Barbara Olson died on 9/11 in the plane that crashed into the Pentagon.

It is very strange reading all these books about the Clintons. Each of them cover the same ground, tell the same story, be it Dick Morris, Gail Sheehy or now, Barbara Olson.

Each seems to focus on some different aspect, with all sorts of detail I'd not learned before. I remember all the Clinton scandals during the White House years, be it Travelgate, Filegate, Vince Foster suicide, Monicagate and Pardongate. But the main media coverage of Clinton's deluge of dubious pardons during his last few days in office, well, I had no idea how scandalous this was, how much of it was tied to Hillary's run for the New York Senate and just how sordid it all was.

And somehow, as is the norm with Hillary and Bill, the Pardon Scandal did them no lasting damage.

Anyway, I'm in too good a mood to have fun detailing the Clinton Pardon Scandal right now. It's a beautiful day. I went on a good hike at Tandy Hills Park. It's starting to get green. Today I took a picture of the Tandy Hills Park Waterfall, which is what you see above.

Alice Tonasket and Wee Cheng

Yesterday I mentioned an email I got from someone who felt I'd hurt her feelings and disrespected her home away from home, that home being Scarborough Faire. I got an email from another person yesterday in which the emailer asked me who my most memorable out of the blue emailers have been. I could only think of two who I actually remember by name, mostly because they both became constant emailers.

One is Alice Tonasket. She'd been at my webpage about Mount Carmel and the Branch-Davidians and somehow thought I had something to do with that debacle. She was rather inarticulate back then so it was really hard to understand what she was asking. It sort of seemed like she was interested in joining my church. So, I replied to her. Told her it cost $200 to join my church. She decided to pass on the offer.

Alice is well known in her local zone for her home brew. Alice makes about 4 kegs worth of beer a month. What she doesn't drink she sells, bootleg style, bottling it herself in classic old beer bottles that she makes labels for. Alice calls her beer, "Alice Doesn't Drink Here Anymore Ale."

Over time I learned Alice has a bit of an amnesia problem. This made it sort of fun to play with her. She is easily confused. Currently she is emailing one of my pseudonyms named Igor and has forgotten that Igor is me. She now thinks Igor is my brother. So, she emailed me yesterday complaining about my brother Igor being mean to her.

Alice lives in a very small town in an isolated part of eastern Washington (the state, not the city), but, even though it is a small town, Alice is surrounded by constant Soap Opera turmoil and drama. A couple years ago Alice's Soap Opera was spinning out of control. I suggested she use her MySpace webpage to deal with various issues. For a slight monthly fee I agreed to create several MySpace characters and write blog postings for Alice. The various characters then opined in with their two cents on Alice's issues.

It did not take long for the targets of Alice's disdain to feel the sting of her pointed tongue. The zenith was reached when one of the targets showed up at Alice's house threatening Alice with the law if she didn't stop telling the truth. Of course, Alice blogged about this the next day, thoroughly chastising the trouble causer. Who is now a meek lion afraid of the Roar of Alice, rather than the other way around. The days of Alice the Meek have long vanished.

Alice now finds herself the recipient of new found respect among all the characters in her cast. It has become common for Alice to hear pleas of "Please don't blog this." To which she warns "Don't do it if you don't wanna read about it."

And then there was Wee Cheng from Singapore. Way back in the 1990's I had a website called Dialing Doctor Durango. It was supposed to be a tongue in cheek know-it-all advice type thing. But, for some reason way too many people took it serious. I finally killed that website when I learned it'd been listed as one of the top 20 medical websites on the Internet on some German university website and then got an email from a woman in the UK asking me for medical advice about her uterine tumor. That was enough. It had to stop.

But, long before I killed Doctor Durango I heard from Wee Cheng. Asking me for relationship advice. Anyone who knows me knows I'm the last person you'd wanna be asking for that type advice. Wee's ex-boyfriend, Teck Seng, was moving back to the island from London and he'd let Wee know he wanted to get back together. He'd broken Wee's heart. Wee didn't know what to do. Her mother told her to take him back, that if she didn't she'd end up like a cuttlefish. This stuck in my mind because I had no idea what a cuttlefish was. Wee explained it's a dried up stinky fish that is used in Asian cooking.

So, I told Wee to give Teck Seng a chance. And so she did. The romance re-bloomed. Wee agreed to marry Teck. I was invited to the wedding. I did not attend.

The Wee Cheng/Teck Seng wedding was probably 4 or 5 years after I'd first started exchanging emails with Wee. She'd send me things in the mail, like antique postcards. One time she asked me if I could ship her some wonderful cheese she had in Japan. It was Cheez Whiz, you know that stuff you spray out of a can. I shipped her 3 cans and some real cheese. Shipping was expensive so I took the cheapest option, basically a slow boat to China. By the time it got there Wee'd found Cheez Whiz in Singapore. I never heard how the real cheese faired.

Wee called me a couple times. She's a teeny little thing but her voice is real deep and very guttural and her English is very hard to understand.

Wee's mom died before she got married and before she had a baby. So, Wee's mom never knew that Wee did not end up like a cuttlefish. The last I heard from Wee Cheng Seng was in 2003. Her husband Teck Seng is very anti-American. He works for some high tech company and was stationed in California for a year. Hated the Americans he worked with and pretty much everything else about America. Why, I do not know.

So, when King George invaded Iraq Wee Cheng emailed me in quite an irate mood, as if I had anything to do with what George did. She told me if America invaded any more Asian countries she would not have anything to do anymore with anything American. I replied, in full umbrage mode, and asked if that meant she'd be giving up the Internet, it being an American invention of Al Gore's, after all.

I never heard from Wee Cheng again. I hope she's all right. I tried to contact her after the 2004 tsunami, she liked to vacation on those beaches in Thailand. But I never heard from her again.

Alzheimers's Hits Home

I know Alzheimer's is a serious subject and nothing one should make light of. But how does one know if this is what one is dealing with?

I won't name names, but yesterday I agreed to drive someone up to this town called Flower Mound for an appointment. The first thing this person forgot was his wallet. So, I had to buy gas. After driving for a few miles this forgetful person decided to call to make sure the appointment was on track. No phone. Left it at home. Along with the wallet. So, I turned around to head back to the phone. Found the phone. With a message saying the appointment was cancelled.

Now, the above was not too bad. But then today I've had to work with this person on a project and it has been one confusing muddle after another. The confusions bordered on the bizarre. I won't detail them because to do so would not only be laborious, it would also cause me to re-live the pain.

Do Alzheimer's sufferers get a deer in the headlights lost look when they are caught up in a moment of confusion? Do they stammer and stutter a lot? Is there an Alzheimer's for Dummies book?

On a totally different, non-Alzheimer's note, have I mentioned Scarborough Faire and the brouhaha I accidentally caused myself when I webpaged my impressions of my visit to that event a few years back? Well, it's about to start up again, and so I am starting to get emails about it again. I hadn't added any of these to my website for awhile, but today I did, because today's email amused me, so I added it and one I got a couple weeks ago.

You can read those emails and see what awful thing I did that caused so many people to get so upset and others to find it all very funny by going here to read the Feedback from emails and newsgroup postings and here to go to the webpage that caused the death threats.

Jerry Jones & the Dallas Cowboy Stadium Scandal

Both my long time readers may remember me mentioning, a time or two, my total disdain for the way Jerry Jones and the city of Arlington went about building a new stadium for the Dallas Cowboys. It's a scandal of monumental proportions that has not quite entered the national consciousness yet. But, here in north Texas there are many who are quite aware of this corrupt use of the perfect valid concept of using eminent domain to obtain private property for the public good. Here in Texas that legal tool was perverted to steal dozens of homes, ruin who knows how many businesses and kick hundreds out of their apartments. To build a football stadium. For the public good. Public being those who can afford a ticket.

So, there is this brilliant Fort Worth Blogger, no, it's not me. I'm in East Fort Worth. Anyway, this guy named Allen has this brilliant Blog and awhile back, on his Blog, he made reference to my chronicling of the Cowboy Crimes in Arlington. The second 'click here' below in Allen's post goes to the full blown beautifully illustrated rant he's referencing and that would be me doing the ranting in the full blown beautifully illustrated rant.

"The City of Arlington took the homes from their owners. No one had a choice. The homes and apartments were bulldozed, and a new stadium is being built for the Dallas Cowboys. Arlington technically took possession of the land, but the land is now underneath concrete that belongs to Cowboys owner Jerry Jones. Click here for a great analysis of the stadium problem, as blogged by a Houston lawyer. Click here for a full blown beautifully illustrated rant, a diatribe that should make our blood boil. It's a harangue that would cause us all to drive over to Arlington with torches and pitchforks if we weren't a nation of sheep."

This morning I got email from the author of the above paragraph, Allen, he being the brilliant Fort Worth Blogger of a Blog known as "The Whited Sepulchre", pointing me to the illustration of Jerry Jones you see above. Allen told me I could use the beautiful Jerry Jones artwork for whatever purposes I wanted. And so I have.