rainydaynews

Okay, sometimes the news of the day just baffles me.

Recently a woman in Georgia was awarded $150,000 from her ex-fiance because he called of the wedding.  She claimed that he set a wedding date, gave her a ring and asked her to leave an $81,000 a year job to move back to Georgia and marry him.

Then, within a few months, he cancelled the wedding and the two split up. She has replaced her old job with one making $31,000 a year and blames her ex for the loss of salary among other things.

I understand her anger and I have definitely seen engagements break up when one person deserves to be compensated by the other. One friend broke up with her fiancé after he proved that he couldn’t put her first. She left the relationship much poorer, having put numerous mutual expenses and even child support for his son from an earlier relationship on her credit card. All the bills in their shared apartment were in her name and he never paid his portion of those either. In all, when she left she was about $5,000 poorer than when they met.

But she learned a good lesson and paid off her bills. She went on with her life. Technically, she was the one to break off the engagement and he was devastated. Should he have been able to sue her?  Legally, she probably had standing to sue him as a non-paying roommate, but what about the heartache?

I think my friend would agree that the woman in Georgia made a dumb move giving up a good-paying job for the man she thought she was going to marry. My friend might even agree that the woman suffered because of the breakup, but I doubt she would agree that the spurned lover deserved a $150,000 settlement.

It seems to be too much like a reversion to the bad old days when women thought men were supposed to take care of them forever and never took responsibility for their own lives. Unfortunately, this woman made some horrid choices, but they were hers to make. She gave up that salary for the chance at happily ever after. The fact that she did not get it just makes her a part of mainstream America, not a victim.

This should join the McDonald’s scalding coffee lawsuit as further evidence that American society is far too litigious and people need to take responsibility for their own actions!

In an effort to fight the housing market and offload a house with incomplete renovations, a couple now living in Florida are sponsoring an essay contest to get their money back out of a failed renovation effort in Danville, Illinois.

That’s right, for the cost of $100 and a 500 word essay, you can have a chance to win this four bedroom, two bath house.  The contest details are here: http://winourdanvillehome.googlepages.com/

The couple claims to have made $50,000 in renovations and the house looks beautiful, so I believe it. They admit there is work still to be done and the house needs a new roof, but theya re even willing to pay closing costs to get this gorgeous and historical house off their hands.

One of the owners said they came up with the idea after looking at different ways to market the house in a poor economy. If they get 750 entries, they will give the house away. If not, they will return the money of everyone who entered.

That’s only $75,000 for the house. So, ever mindful for the scam, I started wondering if this wasn’t just a great marketing ploy. Get a bunch of free publicity and people looking at the house and then say they didn’t get enough entries and turn around and sell the house to one of the many people who looked at it because of the contest.

Yes, that might be what they are up to, but they might really also be going to give the house away. After all, you could be suspicious of all giveaways, right?

I don’t know if they will get the 750 entries that they are looking for, but I am certainly considering sending them one. Even assuming that there is $10,000 work that needs to be done on the house, the return for my $100 and entry would be well worth it. Should I waste my money on this kind of a gamble?

Probably not. But really, isn’t life always a bit of a gamble?

I try on a regular basis to listen to Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hnnity. More often lately, it seem to be Hannity as he is on later in the day when I need a break from work and decide to run errands.

Sadly, that means I am listening to less talk radio.

I can handle Rush. I don’t often agree with him, but most of the times his points are salient and well-thought out. I wish I could say the same for Hannity. He seems like an angry bulldog who can’t stand the fact that Barack Obama will be the next president of the United States.

Mostly though, the reason I can’t stand Sean Hannity for more than a few minutes at a time is his willingness to say anything today to get himself ratings and then completely ignore it tomorrow. For example, Hannity is a huge critic of polls and has often claimed they prove nothing except that it was a slow news day. Polls are simply another way the mainstream media manipulates the populace.

Yet on Fridays, or at least on a semi-regular basis, like today, he brings pollsters on to his show to argue about the significance of the latest polls. Generally, he looks to Zogby and Rasmussen as more accurate polls and anything sponsored by Time, Newsweek or the major networks as suspect.

Clearly, there is some bias in any opinion poll. Anyone who has taken a basic statistics class can argue that. But seriously, hating them all one day and using them to boost ratings the next? I guess I wish that Hannity had the integrity of Rush Limbaugh.

And, currently, I object to Hannity because of the Stop Obama Express. Not because I don’t think he has a right to campaign against Barack if he wants to—I’m all for both sides of the story being told—actually it’s because I’ve gotten bored with his diatribes against Obama.

Today the object of his ire was a change in Obama’s schedule while in Germany. He had been scheduled to visit wounded soldiers and opted out after the Pentagon said the stop could not be used as a campaign event. Hannity thought that in his role as a United States Senator Obama should have gone anyway. He complained that there is never a bad time to visit wounded veterans and that Barack chose to go workout instead.

Well, okay, his basic premise seems sound. It is always good to visit our soldiers, wounded or otherwise.  However, Barack was not in Germany as a representative of the United States government. He was there on a trip paid for by his campaign. The entire trip was, shock and faint!, a campaign tour.

I would like to think that Hannity could recognize an exercise in ethics when it occurs. The Pentagon said visits to the wounded could not be used as a campaign event, but Barack was in the midst of a huge campaign event. Had he continued on to the hospital, even without the press entourage, there would have been official photographs of him with the soldiers and someone, probably Hannity, would have accused him of exploiting the wounded for his own gain.

I realize that Democrats simply are not allowed to have made the right choice during a campaign season, but really this is going too far. Obama visited the troops at his campaign’s expense, not at the cost of the American taxpayer, and not under the false claim that he was doing it for the good of his Senate vote.

In March, Media Matters reported this about the last McCain trip to Iraq.

“During a discussion on the March 11 edition of CNN’s The Situation Room of Sen. John McCain’s upcoming taxpayer-funded trip to Iraq, congressional correspondent Dana Bash noted that McCain claimed he wanted a “firsthand look at what’s happening on the ground” and quoted from a statement about the trip in which McCain said, “Had I not traveled to Iraq, I doubt I would have been informed enough to understand what we were doing wrong and what we should do to correct our mistakes.”

Hannity likes to claim that McCain was going to Iraq before he even knew he was going to run again for President.

Poppycock, Mr.  Hannity!

Senator McCain did not simply wake up one day last year and decide to run for the Presidency anymore than Senator Obama did. We all know that the planning that goes into a presidential campaign begins years before the actual deed. If not, the candidate will never survive the process of being vetted.

Yes, I know Hannity would complain that I used Media Matters as a source. But the point is, some of us read and listen to both the right wing and the left wing. Unfortunately, at the moment, some of the right wing is pretty hard to swallow.

I am all in favor of freedom of expression. My livelihood and my happiness as well as my entertainment and much more are tied to that mythical freedom perhaps endowed on Americans by the Burger Court in the 1960s and 1970s.

However, I am also in favor of responsibility and common sense. Too often, lately, it seems that one cannot engage in freedom of expression and still exhibit responsibility and common sense. Some is done in the name of art. Don‘t get me started on Piss Christ and other so-called artwork meant to cause shock and get talked about rather than add anything of artistic merit to the world.  What was the artist’s contribution to societal advancement? Oh yeah, it was pay me for shocking people and offending people’s religious beliefs.

Remember when art was used to uphold people’s beliefs? Sure, that was during the Renaissance, but still, there’s a reason those artists are considered the best of all time.

Anyway, back to the concept of freedom and responsibility. Recently, an unmarried couple friends of mind were anticipating the birth of their first child together. Neither of them has particularly flattering surnames and neither intended to take the others or even get married. So they debated creating a new last name for their child. The name would have been something completely unique and made up just for him.

I thought this was the dumbest idea I had ever heard. Thankfully, the father remembered what it was like to be a child and have other children pick apart every little thing they could to mock you about. The eventually decided on his last name.

Thankfully they came to their senses, but the list of parents that don’t is quite amazing. I know another couple with a newborn son that they name Verity Azul. The poor child also has the name of the patron saint of his birthday added in their too, but apparently his parents, who want to have many children wanted to include a trait they hope the child will have and a color and a saint name in the given name of their children. Obviously, neither of them was mocked enough as a child to anticipate the emotional scarring this will inflict on their child.

Sadly thought, this is not the worst offender. When I worked in a doctor’s office, we had a patient whose mother named her “America”, spelled just like the continents. But when the office staff called the child by the pronunciation, the mother haughtily corrected us that her daughter’s name was “AmerEEEka”. She seemed offended that we read it as it was spelled.

We’ve all heard jokes about parents who do this to their children, but nobody ever did anything about it until now. Today, a judge in New Zealand legally changed the name of a girl whose parents rthought “Talula does the Hula in Hawaii” was an appropriate name for their child. In the midst of a custody suit, the judge chastised the parents and legally changed the girl’s name. She had been so embarrassed by the name, she refused to use it or tell it to anyone. She told people to call her “K”.

On the one hand, I am offended that the legal system got involved and changed this child’s name. But I am more offended by her parents. I think the judge may have missed the mark by changing the child’s name. Perhaps he should have assigned equally ridiculous names to her parents and then sent them back to junior high school.

Over the weekend, The Dark Knight set three or four records for movie history: biggest midnight showing box office receipts, biggest three-day weekend box-office receipts and maybe some more.

To me personally, that mean that when I went to see the movie at 10 p.m. on a Sunday night, the show was nearly sold out. Friends who had attempted to go to an earlier show were there still at 10 because it was the only show with tickets available.

I got there my standard 35 minutes before the show and had to sit far closer to the screen than I prefer. I also had to sit next to some dorky recent high school graduate who couldn’t keep his mouth shut about who the characters were. It would have been a thoroughly horrible movie going experience (I really like Sunday night generally as I often see the movie with one of two other people) except that the movie was so very good!

I hoped it would be. I thought that it might be. But living up to the hype was going to be hard. Too often, when a movie has been well publicized, the movie itself is something of a let down. I was encouraged when the said Heath Ledger studied The Killing Joke graphic novel as his inspiration for The Joker and when I read Sir Michael Caine saying that his first encounter with Ledger in character had frightened him.

I was encouraged when I heard that Gary Oldman, another actor I deeply respect, had said that Ledger’s performance was Oscar worthy despite the “genre” of the movie.

But I was discouraged when I read that the movie had three villains in it. Shades of Batman and Robin haunted me and I feared that the Nolans had failed the intelligence test for writers of superhero movies. Too many or too few super villains ruin movies.

I think that my hubby hit the nail on the head when he said after the movie that this worked because it was not really a movie about Batman. It was Batman as an antagonist in the story of Harvey Dent. Aaron Eckhart was in many ways the real star of this movie.

That is not intended to denigrate Heath Ledger or Christian Bale. Both, as well as Michael Caine, Maggie Gyllenhall, Morgan Freeman and of course Oldman, give stellar performances. But this was the story of Harvey Dent and as such Aaron Echkart should have been the star.

I was thrilled to see the initial box office reports indicating what a huge reception the film received. I was also happy to see that Mamma Mia, with a release specifically timed to coincide with The Dark Knight, also set records as the biggest release for a musical. What saddened me was that last week’s number one movie, Hellboy II: The Golden Army sank like a stone, all the way to number 5 and just $10 million in receipts. The shame of this is the timing. At another point in the summer Guillermo del Toro’s wonderful film might have spent weeks as the top box office draw. Instead, it fell below Hancock, a far inferior movie, and Journey to the Center of the Earth.

Clearly, it was a matter of timing. There are only so many action/superhero movie watchers and their movie of choice this week was The Dark Knight. And, as much as I love the new Hellboy movie, the opening week numbers for The Dark Knight are hard to argue against.

Still, I hope that the marketing executives at the studio are smart enough to realize that Hellboy’s second week numbers are not a reflection on the quality of the movie, but are a shame of timing.

Have you ever noticed the split personalities of most women’s magazines? 

I’m not talking about Cosmo  where we all get to dream abut being young and single in a manner that we never were. You know, the single girl who lives a glamourous life and has satisfying six on a nightly basis with the hunk of her choice. Oh, and has an unlimited budget for clothes and shoes.

The truth is we all know that Cosmo is all about fantasy and not real life. so we’re not talking about Cosmo. We’re talking about magazines like Woman’s Day  and  Woman’s World, magazines that are purported to be for the average American woman.

Sadly, these magazines have a split personality. On the cover, there is almost always at lease one story promising a new way to lose 20 pounds without dieting or walkoff your excess weight and then in aother part of the cover is a lovely food dresser experiment that looks better in a glossy magazine than it will ever look in you home.

Yup, it’s the double barrel shotgun, split persoanlity approach to magazines: here’s the fat-filled gourmet meal of the month and then some fad diet to get rid of the excess fat that we just told you to eat.

I am not saying anything about the women who read these magazines other than the idea that we, like our magazines have split personalities. We all want to eat the rich, yummy desserts and somehow remain (or get) thin without working at it.

It’s a lie that we tell ourselves that we can have it all and it will be easy.

I should be more worried about that, but I’m not. Right now, I’m more interested in how to make guilt free chocoloate bon bons and lose weight while sleeping.

My dear friend Emily has a daughter serving in Iraq. She’s been there about a month. And, Emily called today to tell me that Bekkah had been “wounded.”

Now, the quotes around the word wounded should have let you in on the secret that it took me a bit longer to grasp. Emily called and told me that she thought she should let me know that she had just gotten a call from Bekkah.

Since I am writing a series of articles about Bekkah for a local newspaper, I wasn’t all that surprised. I get emails and updates regarding Bekkah on a regular basis.

“She’s been wounded..”

Emily didn’t stop talking, but I did interupt with a huge gasp and “Oh my god, is she alright?”

“…she forgot to duck.”

Okay, my brain was addled with the thought that this lovely young Army Reservist had been injured in Iraq, but still I caught the Reagan refernce. For those of you up past your bedtime, that’s what Ronald Reagan said after he was shot. “Honey, I forgot to duck.”

So I began to get a bit suspicious, but was still primarily concerned about Bekkah. I should have heard in Emily’s voice that Bekkah was fine.

In the interest of full disclosure, Emily never actually lied to me. As I pointed out to her, it’s just that the connotation of what she said and the dennotation of what she said are fairly different.

What she meant is that Bekkah, who is a heavy equipment operator, had a run-in with a dump truck. She forgot to duck, well, raised up too soon, and got hit in the head. She may need stitches.

 So she was technically wounded in Iraq–a head wound even–technically.

After I gave Emily a hard time for her trick, she said she and her husband had chosen me to play this dirty trick on because they knew I would forgive them.

I will. Eventually.

Actually, I find it gratifying to know that these people who are working hard to raise their grandson while his Mommy is in Iraq can joke and play. Hopefully, it helps them get through the day just a little bit easier while they worry about their little girl who is “over there.”

But, I may still kill them.

This weekend, Hellboy II was number one at the box office. Don’t expect it to stay there because before the week is out we get to meet The Dark Knight.

So far this summer, Hollywood has made me remarkably happy. I was surprised happily, by how good a movie and how much I liked Iron Man. Keep firmly in mind that I recognize Tony Stark as the asshole that he is, but somehow the movie pulled off charming, lovable and misunderstood asshole better than any of the comics, even The Ultimates. And, then there’s Samuel L. Jackson. I think I would watch that man read the contents of a can of peas. Heck, I even saw Snakes on A Plane just because of him.

After Iron Man, we had Prince Caspian, a very good movie that was released at a very bad time. It had to follow up Iron Man and precede Indiana Jones. Though no one expected much from Indiana Jones, and they were right, seeing it was as much about the beginning of summer as flags and Memorial Day. Honestly, I wish I had kept the $5. Yup, I saw it with Kerasotes Theaters $5 club, two weeks after the opening and still think it was over-priced.

I like Harrison Ford and Shai LeBouf, I just thought that the movie itself was too far over the top–and I like sci-fi!  I’d just like you to throw in a little bit of reality for good emasure–like the laws of physics or atomic energy.

I saw “Don’t Mess with the Zohan” because it was in the $5 movie club and was again surprised by how much I liked the movie. Adam Sandler returned to the type of comedy he does best and sent out a message as well. Funny stuff, even if the hummus jokes were a bit over the top.

We also saw The Incredible Hulk. Edward Norton is absolutely believable as Bruce Banner and Liv Tyler is great as Betty Ross. The only shame of this movie is that the studio and Norton haven’t worked out their differences so he will be back for the next one.

I saw Wanted, which I hoped I would like, and was again disappointed by the difference between the movie and graphic novel. I’ll take the novel please.  It’s not that the movie isn’t fun, it is. Angelina Jolie is always a joy to watch in this kind of role and parts of the story are interesting. But the bullet-time and absolutely ridiculous shots that are made make it funnier than cool.

Then, we saw Hancock.  Yes, I do see a lot of movies. I liked it, but it could have been much better. The studio did not learn from the last Hulk movie and realize that superhero movies need a super villain. The story had potential, but the editors seemed to get lost in the middle somewhere. Good acting made this movie!

This weekend, it was Hellboy II: The Golden Army. This movie had so much going for it that it would have been hard to screw it up, so they didn’t. Mike Mignola and Guillermo del Toro wrote the script together, playing to del Toro’s visions for the screen and Mignola’s loyalty to his creations.

The script works. Ron Perlman, Doug Jones and Selma Blair are great together and Seth McFarlane made a fun addition to the team. It grossed something like $38 million in its opening weekend, which is disappointing until you know that is 1.5 times the opening weekend of the first one.

As always, the fantastical creatures from the mind of del Toro are worth the watch. His troll market makes the fantastical creatures of the first Star wars cantina scene look like child’s play. There is a moral here too, but it is gentle, not given via sledgehammer.

Hellboy II ranks right up there with Iron Man as a must see movie of the summer!  Next up, Batman!

They thought they were being funny and tongue-in-cheek, but The New Yorker blew it when they published a satirical cover featuring Barack and Michelle Obama in the White House, bumping fists to celebrate a presidential victory.

The problem is that the satire also features them buring the American flag, putting a picture of Osama bin Laden over the fireplace and Barack dressed in traditional Muslim attire. Oh yeah, and they gave Michelle a machine gun to complete the picture.

Rush Limbaugh said the problem with it was that liberals have no sense of humor. The cover, he said, rolled all the things that are said about the Obamas into one satirical cartoon.

He’s right in that it does seem to mesh all the things that are said about Obamas into one picture. He’s wrong that it is funny. In truth, it is sad. Just as there is no need for the snarky comments regarding the current president’s pronounciation of words like “nuclear”, there is no good reason to bring all the stereotypical nonsese together in one place and certainly not on the cover of The New Yorker.

Sadly, I can almost hear the discussion that went on in the editorial board room over that one.

“Some people won’t get that it’s satire,” said Franco, the worldly, but young intern.

“The peasants won’t understand, but our readers will,” Jasques, the hoity-toity editor, proclaimed.  “People who don’t get it don’t read The New Yorker anyway.”

Of course the problem is that a picutre or a cartoon is worth a thousand words or more and the cover is being flashed and discussed all over the place. Whether anyone who reads The New Yorker would actually get it or not is completely irrelevant. The fact of the matter is that readership is no longer confined to subscribers and sadly, most Americans simply look at the pictures.

The elitist nature of The New Yorker led to a liberal magazine playing right into the hands of anti-Obama organizers.  I read somewhere a comment from a conservative talk show host that he was making a list of the things Obama hadn’t been accused of int he whisper campaign against him. Sadly, the list is pretty damn short.

The truth of the matter is that Republicans and John McCain must really be running scared, because the only thing they haven’t said about Barack and Michelle is that they are fine, upstanding citizens with two bright children.

Last year, Illinois went nearly two months without a budget as the Democrat-controlled General Assembly and the Democrat governor argued about money.  This year, in a move that even his lieutenant governor called petty and vindictive, Gov. Rod Blagojevich decided that slashing human services, education and pretty much everything else willy-nilly was the best answer.

He even threatened to cut funding for Amtrak, the major means for students to travel to various in state colleges, including the local Southern Illinois University. He hasn’t done that yet, but don’t be surprised if he tries it later.

The big confrontation in Springfield comes from three overgrown Chicago idiots who can’t seem to reach a consensus about the state’s needs. They all agree that the state is in dire financial straits, but the governor and the senate preisdent absolutely refuse to work with the speaker of the house.

There was a three-way war last year, but this year the governor has bought off the Senate President, giving his wife a high paying state job and a substantial raise, so that leaves Speaker Mike Madigan looking like the bad guy. Madigan’s daughter, Lisa, is the state’s attorney general, so to say that the in-breeding of Illinois politics is causing a problem is a huge understatement.

Speaker Madigan is the most politically savvy of the three top officials, but still managed to get himself in some lukewarm water with the press by circulating a secret plan to have the governor recalled or impeached. The nature of the memo and the secretiveness of it might have cause more problems if half the state didn’t already agree with Madigan.

Blagojevich was elected to a second term at a time when national sentiment opposed Republicans and Illinois had just sent his Republican predecessor to federal prison. Sadly for the very qualified Judy Baar Topinka, she had been state treasurer under the corrupt governor and in the name of party unity had appeared with him several times before his indictment. That was used effectively against her.

Furthermore, Topinka inherited a scattered and weak Republican Party. In the previous U.S. Senate campaign, the party had to resort to moving Alan Keyes into the state to run for Senate after its first candidate resigned because fo a high-profile sex scandal involving his ex-wife and television star Jeri Ryan.

The disarray carried over into Topinka’s gubernatorial campaign and many who opposed Blagojevich weren’t ready to trust the Republicans either. Green Party candidate Rich Whitney garnered an unprecedented number of votes and Gov. Rod was re-elected with a pluarlity of the vote.

Since then, the state has been through utter hell. School districts are not receiving funding that they have been promised and that they are entitled to under the state constitution. State prisons are underfunded and under-staffed. For awhile this spring, the state highway department stopped mowing grass and picking up dead animals along state roads in order to save money.

The Illinois budget is unbalanced and depending on who you listen to, the state is as much as $5 billion in debt.

I can only hope that in November the voters will remember this mess — except that the primary architect of the disaster is not up for re-election yet.  We are sentenced to at least two more years of this.