respublica

Funny lines

I've been reading the Twitter feed of a woman who writes for SB Nation, a sports website, and she can come up with some funny stuff as long as she stays away from politics...which she doesn't always.

"The internet should change its name to Here Is Why the Thing You Like is Bad"

"Watched NCAA basketball with my family and my aunt was really concerned about players balding and now I can't stop focusing on hairlines."

"Hell is listening to a dude on the train ask his girlfriend if she liked the new "sweeping character arcs" in his edited manuscript."

"A mascot isn't really something you could buy at a store. The mascot should have a person in it imo."

"It's literally not a mascot. It's a stuffed person."

Tally rising

Tally update, Mattresses 38 Ladders 28

This is 1 more mattress and 3 more ladders on St. Louis roadways than on Wednesday. Sure are a lot of people driving around with mattresses attached to their vehicles. And the reality is more of these probably hit the roads and aren't reported. Crazy.

Watch out pj pants lady

Great tweet from Lance Hildebrand today as he helicoptered over St. Louis traffic.

"watch out the pj-pants-clad lady walking on the Lake St. Louis Blvd. ramp to westbound 70"

Too good not to share

A tweet this morning from @lifesite (Life Site News) ""Nano," a 20-year-old Norwegian woman, says she realized at 16 that she is, in fact, a cat."

And a great response from @brithume (Brit Hume) "Preview of coming attractions in a world where people self-identify."

Funny plane story

I was wandering around Twitter this morning and came across a tweet which ended up with lots of funny responses. The original tweet was hard to believe, but maybe not if you fly at all.

"Hey United, when I pay through the nose for 1st class so I can get work done, one of the things I like from my power outlets is electricity."

Someone asked, "did you ask the flight attendant about this?"

"Yes. She says the electricity cycles around the plane so everyone gets a turn. Seriously, I told her my turn hadn't come for an hour."

Then the comments:

"Maybe if the pilot tilts the plane some of it will run down to your seat."

"Listen man, we have enough power to run your laptop or the flaps, which do you want?"

"Translation: "You Republicans have too much power already. Use a pencil like the heroic, energy-frugal NYT journalists do!""

"Are you sure she wasn't talking about the "air", and not electricity."

"something broken. the flight attendant gave you the brush off. you already know this. AC inverters do not operate in this manner"

"Sounds like a blown fuse on the convenience receptacle distribution network."

 

 

Best Tweet from yesterday

This from Mark Hemingway

"I'm at that stage where I keep looking at words that are spelled correctly, thinking they're not."

I do that too! One the other hand, there are words I always have trouble spelling correctly and end up doing a search in the google bar. One is souvenir and another is bizarre. Writing this right now, I again spelled souvenir wrong, you'd think after working in the Collinsville Italian Fest Souvenir stand for over 20 years I'd have it down pat by now.

Odd tweet of the day

A Belleville News Democrat reporter, Brian Brueggemann, tweeted this morning: " We're checking but as far as we can tell, there was not an asteroid or meteor that hit a roadway this a.m. in west part of Clinton County."

Well, that got my attention and checked his twitter feed to see what preceded this tweet, but there was nothing. Actually his most recent tweet ahead of this one was 4 days ago. So I googled, "What hit a road in Clinton County Illinois." And the first thing that popped up was a story about a black cow loose on Fisher road. That was December 1. So what in the world was Brueggemann talking about? How many places did I have to search to get to the bottom of why someone might have thought an asteroid had fallen to earth in Clinton County.

There is nothing on the Belleville paper's media updates either so maybe Brian was tweeting from his sleep and it was all a dream.

Let's talk turkey related injuries

Vox.com tweeted this headline to a story link yesterday: "There’s a clear age bias in turkey-related emergency room visits". That subject made me click the link to see what age bias had to do with turkeys. The actual story headline was: "The most dangerous part of cooking a turkey isn't the deep fryer."

Ok now, two entirely different subjects and the highest number of injuries requiring emergency room visits came from using a knife. "we have data on emergency room visits at about 100 hospitals, and of the more than 358,000 recorded visits in 2015, 47 involved turkey-related injuries. Forty-seven injuries is thankfully low, but of those 47 turkey-related ER visits, nearly half involved a knife."

If you're like me you're wondering just why this was worth tweeting about. In one year only 47 turkey injuries, most with a knife, so why did the headline even get involved with a deep fryer. Here are the stats for the 47:

20-Knives

7-stove top or oven burns

6-deep fryer burns

5-refrigerator or freezer mishaps !!!

4-strained lower backs from lifting turkey

2-wild turkey attacks !!!

2- random kitchen accidents

1-instance of smoke inhalation

So far in this story there is nothing about age but almost all turkey related injuries occur in November. Duh! Finally after scrolling the topic of age (51-70) comes up briefly: "Older Americans experience more turkey trauma" but not all that many actually. The story then goes on to relate that injuries to men and women are about equal.

Certainly knives are understandable what with all the carving and peeling. And, I would hav thought back injuries would be higher. Frozen turkeys are really heavy as anyone knows who has moved them around while trying to find the right one in the grocery store bin. Then the lifting from car to fridge to defrost, moving it again to unwrap and wash down and lifting again into the roasting pan and finally hauling it out of the hot pan to the carving board. That would bother anyone's back no matter the age.

In the end, though, the story headlines and the stories don't really match up and they turned out to be much ado about not many people statistically speaking.

 

 

She nailed it

Notice the plural on Clinton's own tweet?

 

The best tweet of the day

"If Theo Epstein can make the Red Sox and Cubs World Series Champions, let's make him POTUS and see what he can do with the country."

I am behind this sentiment all the way.