Oozing hot smoke and sassafras well beyond legal limits, it's...
T H E J U I C E A N D G I N
Tuesday, September 06, 2005
Term XXXIX, Issue 1 (#164)
Weather outlook:
Slippery.
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* Contents *
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- Editor's Blurb
- Ongoing Events
- Photographia
- Greg's DTK
- Humour
- General Info
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* Editor's Blurb *
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Hey all
Welcome to Fall 2005! Well, that's what I would be saying if all the
new co-ops had working email addressees. Most of them don't, so they
may be receiving this a little bit later than the rest.
So, instead of wasting space blathering on like I usually do, I'll cut
it short this week. Lack-O-Content (new this Hallowe'en!) completely
coincidental. Really.
Until next time,
All work and no play would make me... you.
Michael (mailto:nutsinfo$yahoo.ca)
And now, the rest of the story...
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* Ongoing Events *
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[See the Event Calendar on the web site for full descriptions.
--Ed.]
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Pool League
===========
Mondays
http://www.solutionsatsource.com/pool
Contact: Larisa and Michael (mailto:pool$solutionsatsource.com)
View the current players' statistics at:
http://nutsevents.topcities.com/events/pool/index.html
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Indoor Rock Climbing
====================
Thursday evenings
Contact: Claire (mailto:Claire.Mettier$alcatel.com)
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* Photographia *
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Since we've run out of event pictures... it's back to me punching the
crap out of stuff.
http://nutsevents.topcities.com/pictures/Punch/index.html
http://torpedo.ca.newbridge.com/mirror/pictures/Punch/index.html
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* Greg's Deep Thought Korner *
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"New Orleans is sinking man, and I don't wanna swim" -- (What? Like you
need an attribution?)
Especially in water with about ten thousand human bodies floating in
it. The disaster in New Orleans has to be one of the strangest and most
horrific I have ever seen. The death toll will be terrible, once the
counting is done, but it's not just that. It's also the people starving
to death in the middle of the wealthiest, most powerful country in the
world. It's the bizarre spectacle of people shooting at ambulance
helicopters.
Why does such a thing have to take place?
The answer, we are increasingly becoming aware, is that such a thing
absolutely did *not* have to take place. The disaster management groups
in New Orleans were emphatic, first of all, that the levees in New
Orleans were not up to the task of stopping a Category 5 Hurricane.
Scenario after scenario predicted the levees breaking and the Gulf of
Mexico flooding in. A state of emergency was declared two days before
the hurricane even hit (putting a lie to the Bush administration
statement that the feds had their hands tied by a failure of the
Louisiana government to declare such a state).
Yet, in spite of all this, people were still in the city. The city was
flooded. People drowned. They got sick. They starved to death.
This seems very mysterious, especially to us naive Canucks. If the
government told us to get out of the City of Ottawa because some great
calamity was coming, we'd all get in our cars and drive to some friend's
house out of town. Those without cars would hitch a ride or grab one of
those buses that the government would be constantly cycling to points
further out. (The fortunate thing in New Orleans is that it's never so
cold that you couldn't live in an army tent anyway). The army would be
sending in food to camps around the city and everyone would be mildly
inconvenienced but otherwise fine.
But seriously, let's look at New Orleans. The budget for SELA, the
organization that maintained the levees, was hundreds of millions of
dollars short of what it needed to be, that money having been sent to
tax rebates and foreign wars. One third of Louisiana's national guard,
and the majority of its vehicles, had been sent to Iraq. The troops at
the nearest Air Force base were, mysteriously, playing basketball, not
having orders to assist in any way. A large chunk of the two thirds of
the population that wasn't white did not have access to transportation
out of the city. FEMA, the american federal relief agency, was capable
of very little (after speeding to the "relief centres" indicated by
FEMA, even the cheerleaders at Fox News were disgruntled to find nothing
there).
The fact is that the federal government of the United States had so
stripped itself of cash that it didn't have the resources to deal with
the problem - either in prevention or in relief after the fact.
The name of this disaster is not, as some have had it, global warming.
That can only explain the weather. The name of this disaster is "tax
cuts". The goal of the conservatives in the US has been to shrink
government to nothingness in order that corporations can run the country
under the guise of letting citizens "keep their own money". This
mantra, a shield supported by the american media, was so strong that the
poor people have been tricked in to voting for a weakened education
system, a weaker health system, and weaker infrastructure.
So the next time some jackass politician complains that we pay too much
in taxes relative to the United States and claims he can cut your taxes,
make sure you ask him which services he wants to cut. It might be
something we really need.
Greg.
[Send responses to DTKs or new Editorials to mailto:nutsinfo$yahoo.ca]
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* Humour *
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[Forward any good jokes or interesting web sites you see to
mailto:nutsinfo$yahoo.ca]
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Mistaken Identity
=================
A man standing in line at a check out counter of a grocery store was
very surprised when a very attractive woman behind him said, "Hello!"
Her face was beaming. He gave her that "who are you look," and couldn't
remember ever having seen her before.
Then, noticing his look, she figured she had made a mistake and
apologized. "Look," she said, "I'm really sorry but when I first saw
you, I thought you were the father of one of my children," and walked
out of the store.
The guy was dumbfounded and thought to himself, "What the hell is the
world coming to? Here is an attractive woman who can't keep track of
who fathers her children!"
Then he got a little panicky. "I don't remember her," he thought but,
MAYBE... during one of the wild parties he had been to when he was in
university, perhaps he did father her child!
He ran from the store and caught her in the parking lot and asked, "Are
you the girl I met at a party in university and then we got really drunk
and had wild crazy sex on the pool table in front of everyone?"
"No," she said with a horrified look on her face. "I'm your son's
second grade teacher!"
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* General Info *
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Contact the NUTS Committee:
mailto:nutsinfo$yahoo.ca
The NUTS Website is:
http://nutsevents.topcities.com
http://torpedo.ca.newbridge.com/mirror (for people within Alcatel)
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