Newscoma

Yeah, I like Girl Singers:

[youtube=<object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/wDU2EXsW9tA"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/wDU2EXsW9tA" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object>]

But I also like the original version:

[youtube=<object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/XRDi67G0Siw"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/XRDi67G0Siw" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object>]

Yeah, I like ‘em both.

What say you?

The sinus headache from hell has reached astonomical proportions to the point that I’m feeling rather naseous.

My teeth feel like they are falling out of my jaw, on to the floor only to be devoured by mad weasels who’ve recently eaten thrown away kitty litter and want to eat my eyes out.

And I’m watching Wolf Blitzer, which with the sinus and all, makes me want to run for the river because, campers, he grates. Not like Sean Hannity, but he just wears me out.

I’m going to watch Teen Titans. Shut up.

The only thing that will save me is a really good draft beer and winning the lottery.

Yeah. I know.

I talk about being fearless a lot. I’m not as much as I would like to be, but I try (and occasionally fail.)

A recent post by my buddy Finn got me to thinking about the transition of change in our lives and how painful it is. And it is. I see my other friend, rack9, adjusting to a new way of life. It can’t be easy. I talked to her on the phone last week and I realized although an ocean separates us, that I feel just as disconcerted as she does. It can become a raw wound. Trying to explain my lack of motivation and sadness to people that I love becomes very hard. I find myself defensive. I can’t understand why others don’t understand, but then again, if I don’t understand it myself, how are they going to get it.

I’ll be honest, the professional and personal hits I vaguely refer to that I took in February have made me introspective and considering that things will never change. And also, I ALLOWED them to make me feel less than. And this makes me feel worse than anything else because I have allowed someone else to make me feel unnecessary.

And that is no one’s fault but my own.

Unless I change this myself, you know.

Where do I belong? What should I do? Why do I feel so unmotivated? Why can’t I let this go? What do I want?

And there is the crux of everything. What do I want to do? I realized long ago that there are no white knights on strong steeds coming to save me. We have to save ourselves and then sometimes that doesn’t work and we have to readjust. And accept. But there in lies the rub.

Confidence also wanes. I’ve always been pretty self-assured, but not recently. Recently, I’ve just been tired. So tired that it’s almost like a disease creeping through my body, and my spirit eating away at me like cancer. It’s scary stuff, but in being somewhat transparent on this blog, you get the good with the bad. Part of it.

I don’t know what the answers are. I do know that I need to find my mojo again. I don’t really know how to do this. But I’m in good company. Strong women like Finn and rack9 give me hope because they are fearless in a time when I don’t feel that I am, although it hurts, so I know I can get back to that. It will just take time. And we all have our moments of fear or confusion and it’s fine because that’s what makes us stronger if we don’t get immersed in mud.

And aren’t we all the same in some ways, despite the differences of our situations, because learning to become fearless and move forward is the same despite the circumstances.

It’s food for thought for me on this Monday.

I’ll try today to do something fearless, something I’ve never done before. I don’t know what that something is. It will probably be a small and only significant to me. But I’m going to try.

And yeah, this post is about hope and grabbing the lifeline.

Now back to your regular scheduled programming of ‘coma. 

A conference is being held in Washington this week to address the decline in young readership.

This year’s World Young Reader Conference is the seventh put on by the World Association of Newspapers (WAN), the Paris-based global industry group representing 18,000 newspapers and 76 national newspaper association. The conference is sponsored by the foundation established by the largest U.S. association, the Newspaper Association of America (NAA), as well as some big American chains, including Schurz Communications Inc.; Landmark Communications Inc.; The Washington Post; Cox Newspapers Inc.; and Gannett Company Inc.

Very young readers are also targeted with daily print papers in Bolivia, Mexico, Panama, and Ecuador.

This is an on-going conversation with all newspapers right now across the country.

There’s more.

One session will be devoted to ideas for including youth-oriented material in every part of the newspaper. At one foreign paper cited by Abbott, for instance, section editors are mandated to publish something aimed at young people on every single page. The mandate is enforced with scorecards. “If you’re a sports editor, and you don’t have something on every page for someone under 25, you’re going to be marked down,” Abbott said. “Get marked down enough, and you can even lose salary — that’s how serious they are taking it.”

The conference will also be looking outside the newspaper industry to learn lessons from other media in attracting the young. 

The results of what is discussed will be food for thought for anyone in newspapers

Okay, this is different:

Scientists have created the world’s first human-sheep chimera – which has the body of a sheep and half-human organs.

The sheep have 15 per cent human cells and 85 per cent animal cells – and their evolution brings the prospect of animal organs being transplanted into humans one step closer.

Professor Esmail Zanjani, of the University of Nevada, has spent seven years and £5million perfecting the technique, which involves injecting adult human cells into a sheep’s foetus.

Processing here. What do you think?

Random Sheep Photo from here 

Dear Neighbors Across The Street;

I like you guys. Your kids are groovy. We get along just great.

Your two golden labs are quite beautiful dogs. Seriously. However, when your dogs run around the neighborhood and in my yard, it worries me. They are running into the road. I’ve put them back in your backyard on several occasions over the last couple of years. They are very friendly to me and I have no complaints, but right now I’m in my pajamas and it looks as if I’m going to have to go get dressed to make sure they are safe.

And when your dogs are running around, then my dogs feel resentment that they have to be kept in the dogyard at the back of the house. They also bark at your dogs and, once again, they are angry with me for making them stay inside. As they are little dogs, they have very shrill barks (except for Mabel, who honestly sounds like a Doberman.)

This has been going on all day. I thought I saw you drive home, but alas the dogs weren’t put up.

As I write this, the bigger of your two lovely hounds is standing at the door staring in the window. My little dogs are having a conniption fit.

So please, for the sake of your dogs, who don’t understand cars too well which has made me run and wince most of the day and my very own sanity is waning, which at the moment is on a tenuous thread leading me into becoming a ballistic zombie, as well as fighting a wicked sinus headache, could you put them back in their little doggie home like mine have to be.

It’s sort of a rule here with the leash law and all,

Respectfully before I scream,

Newscoma

Bear dreams of Idol. Of course, she has the wet hair in a towel thing going which I have never been able to do.

The new million dollar glasses. I have reacquainted myself with Ramon Noodles and Milwaukee’s Best to survive.

Mabel sleeps. That’s my tattoo. Shut up.

Go Cards. I even have baseball apparel. (I’m talking to both of you.)

The blind dog, Kirby, attempts to blog. Being that she has never been able to spell, even when she was of the sighted variety of canines, so her blindness has nothing to do with her lack of skills.

The cheeseburgers at KN will make you slap your mother. Yup, they are THAT good.

This is an oldie but a goodie. I put it up a year ago, but when I transferred my old blog and when Lynnster helped me get it over here to the new digs, I lost all the YouTube stuff. It makes me laugh.

So NSFW …

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As of this writing, I have received 3,258 spam comments. Some of these have bordered on the ridicuously perverse. I do not need Viagra, I do not want any speed, and to the spambot that commented on incest porn (update: I didn’t write about incest porn (eeeck), but I was left a rather nasty spam comment that made me really, seriously want to gross out.), I might slap you if I were ever to meet you or whatever the hell you are.

In the last week, I have been googled for a variety of very bizarre things including:

• Senior Porn (which just grosses me the hell out.)
• madness baseball
• Lowe Finney (Yeah, it’s 24/7 Lowe Finney here all the time.)
• Stephen King’s Son
• Stephen King Joe Hill Are they brothers? (Don’t ask me why someone thought this as it was revealed they are father and son. I just cut and paste.)
• ACK Kleinheider
• Mannequins are good
• Ron Jeremy’s computer job
• Smiley Faces (I guess for our buddy Ceeelcee)
• High Plains Drifter
• Bass Beer Is Good (I agree.)
• newscoma.com (Cool.)
• Bigfoot Head Hunters
• stink-eye
• STINK EYE
• John Tanner Blue Dogged Democrat (Yet again, I just cut and paste)
• Trifocals
• Freedonian Blog
• Moppy Mop Haired Dogs

So there you go. And you spammers, your pissing me off with the porn crap. Knock it off.

It amazes me about the amount of spam I get, being all C-List bloggery as I am. It’s cool that Wordpress allows me to get rid of it.

But then again I have to read it.

Blech.

How could I have missed this?

There’s a big mystery in the Northern California woods. Is a Bigfoot living in a national forest? John Iander of CBS station KOVR-TV in Sacramento, Calif., reports that a California couple has found big prints in the woods and experts are saying it may not be a hoax.

So, Bigfoot may be living in Sacramento. The Terminator works there, so anything is possible.

Incidenatlly, I have no idea where I found this picture but it brings me joy.

Thanks person who did it. If you find this, let me know so I can give you credit. 

I love the Calvin and Hobbes snowmen. When I saw this little gem this morning over at Fark, I had to smile.

There are a ton of them over there at FanTent. Hysterical.

My buddy, Rack9, is in Germany. She is really a good writer, although she doesn’t think so which is nuts.

She writes this:

The plan (back before the Army when we were broke) was to get John a good-paying job that was worthy of his bachelor’s degree, and then work on finishing my degree.  It made sense, because it wasn’t a good idea for me to quit my job to go to school full-time, being that I was paying most all the bills from my job.  In fact, it wasn’t possible for me to cut back hours to go to school either.  The bills had to get paid.  And poor John with his nice big diploma hanging on his wall couldn’t get a job, even with the local police department.  He’s a great worker, there just weren’t any jobs in the area that did NOT require experience.  Note that John went to school full-time AND worked 2 part-time jobs to pay for his schooling.   He may have gotten out of college without any debt at all, but he also came out without any “usable” experience.

Adjusting to a new environment is always tough.  Adjusting to a new life in a new country while your husband is a soldier is even tougher.

Sending Rack9 a ton of love this weekend.  I sent her some other Ex-Pat blogs from Tennessee. Go over and say Hi.