Tuppence a day:
Pounded and strained by heavy traffic and weakened by missing bolts and cracking steel, the failed interstate bridge over the Mississippi River also faced a less obvious enemy: pigeons.
Inspectors began documenting the buildup of pigeon dung on the span near downtown Minneapolis two decades ago. Experts say the corrosive guano deposited all over the Interstate 35W span’s framework helped the steel beams rust faster.
TMI?
An unprecedented study of sex and seniors finds that many older people are surprisingly frisky – willing to do, and talk about, intimate acts that would make their grandchildren blush. That may be too much information for some folks, but it comes from the most comprehensive sex survey ever done among 57- to 85-year-olds in the United States.
Sex and interest in it do fall off when people are in their 70s, but more than a quarter of those up to age 85 reported having sex in the previous year. And the drop-off has a lot to do with health or lack of a partner, especially for women, the survey found.
Okay, maybe I’ll quit smoking.
So, people keep asking, not, what kind of trip we had. Well, in Wisconsin, we went to the museum, the zoo (both excellent), went boating, to the Brewers’ game with Uncle Bob, then to Kopps. I saw my bros, their kids and spouses, hung out with M&D (she suffering from frontotemporal dementia and he from macular degeneration and (dry) glaucoma) at the lakeside place that they’re trying to sell because of the outrageous WI taxes that it’s subject to–a place that Mary, the kids and I love. It costs them about $1000 per week during the half year per year that they live there, in their own house, which they’ve paid for, in tax. And that means, as I’ve pointed out elsewhere, the only folks who really can pay for lakeside property there are DINKs or exceptionally wealthy. A shame, because growing up on the lake was great fun for me. Wisconsin is all set to compound the insanity by instituting single-payer socialized medicine in the state, and driving out the remaining businesses. Alas. Still, I’m sure that the true believers will have nothing but warm feelings for Doyle, the Governor, and Feingold.
I saw my buddy Bob, his partner Hal, my friend Mircea, my friend Bennet Wang and his beautiiful family.
The City of Milwaukee has a proud socialist tradition, part of the reason that, unlike Chicago, virtually the entirety of the lakefront belongs to the City. Back then, though, the social safety net was a safety net, and not a method of addressing all varieties of outcome. The unions were strong because the manufacturers, Harley-Davidson and Milwaukee Tools and Allis-Chalmers and Oscar Meyer, Miller, Schlitz, Blatz, and all the rest were concerns that were earning enough to pay their employees the wages they deserved and still turn a profit. Now the most powerful union in the state, by far, belongs to the teachers.
Goodbye, U of Wisconsin. You were a great flagship land grant university, but you are done. Goodbye, my hardworking friends, Packers season ticket holders who waited decades to get those seats. Goodbye well-tended houses and front laws. Goodbye charity and love expressed through the thousands of churches. Goodbye variety. Goodbye society. Goodbye, Wisconsin. I loved you.
We flew into Jeff’s home town, Baltimore, and took a cab to the NIH. We had our blood taken, our brains scanned, we did tests, Aidan had an interview. We went to the Jefferson Monument and to a seafood restaurant. We drove to St. John’s where Brendan thinks he wants to go to college, in Annapolis. We visited vets at the Naval Hospital in Bethesda. We checked out Aidan’s old ward at the clinic, and the Smithsonian. Frankly, I’m tired.
We used to rely on pigeons to disseminate news.
And now they want to make it. i guess they’re all journalists.
Corrosive little shits.
Just so long as the ( operatives dressed as ) hobos weren’t dropping cordite saturated cigarette butts over that same twenty years , I’ll try to accept your somewhat lame explanation …..
I would say this elevates them a little above the “rats with wings” label. How long before the leftards start with the “not aaallll pigeons collapse bridges with their shit” apologizing?
Bumper sticker: Keep your city clean, eat a pigeon pie a day.
“Okay, maybe I’ll quit smoking.”
Then what’ll you do after the sex?
Ahhh… Kopps… How I miss the artery clogging goodness.
Birdsplat makes good fertilizer for organic farming, which contributes more C02 to the atmosphere than Better Farming Through Chemistry.
And makes bridges fall…
What a messed-up world, what a messed-up world.
Those avian pests are a menance. There is a guy in Illinois that claims to be a “bird whisperer”, and he gets the pigeons to leave an area, for a pretty salty fee. Apparently, he makes it happen.
Personally, I am still trying to find ways to get rid of those damn Canadian geese that shit all over my house and lawn. I cannot kill them, and it is impossible to scare them away. I may just give up, and let their shit accumulate until it becomes a health hazard.
Paintball gun? Might annoy them into leaving, provides a reasonable amount of sport for all concerned, and if they still don’t leave, at least you’ve now got yourself some stylish LeRoy Neiman/Jackson Pollack -esque geese…
Dan, you need to quit smoking. I did it six months ago and now I have earned the right to nag you and generally be superior to you, you poor drug addict. Don’t pay the G and Joe Camel their filthy lucre, dude. Get Free!
– Dan….you might try applying a smidgen of astrolube just before liftoff. I’ve discovered it cuts down on shaft wear, and smoking is all but eliminated…..
>>>An unprecedented study of sex and seniors finds that many older people are surprisingly frisky – willing to do, and talk about, intimate acts that would make their grandchildren blush.
Ah, bullshit. Old men are conservative, right? Well, it’s clear they aren’t secure in their sexuality, and the whole having shitloads of sex thing is just overcompensation because the old men aren’t, y’know, secure in their sexuality like Niewart. Typical conservatives, to be screwing their senile old brains out.
Speaking of quitting smoking … if I heard correctly, I believe Pfizer came out with a new smoking cessation medication. I wondered if anyone had heard of it, tried it, etc …
– JD – Yes….I think its called Arsenic…..
Well done. I think I saw that in one of those anti-smoking commercials. You know the ones, the ones that are about as subtle as a brick to the forehead.
That’s very sad about Wisconsin. ack…
But they are the #1 cranberry state.
I’ve often wondered where all this Midwestern socialism comes from. Nearly all the people I know (mostly relatives) from places like Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan are very conservative.
(Then again, my maternal grandparents–from Illinois and Michigan–were lifelong New Deal Democrats.)
happyfeet,
Maybe when you have a left-controlled senate and a loony-left Governor, the best you have hope for is some good old-fashin’ gridlock. Spending going on at current levels sounds pretty good under those circumstances.
I lived on the north side of Milwaukee for a couple years in the mid/late 90’s – right up the bluff from Bradford Beach. Nice town.
Chantix.
Thanks, Sarah. I’ll give it a try.
SeanM,
Midwestern folks are only conservative on social issues but they’re pretty liberal on role-of-government and business type issues. People in my neck of the woods (NE and IA) are pro-military, pro-life, pro-gun, pro-marriage and the like, but they’re also pro-union and absolutely in love with farm subsidies, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and any other government benefit people can get. The whole area, from NE to OH, has some of the highest business tax rates in the country.
In the cities the socialist thing comes from universities and unions, but outside of urban areas it’s mostly left over from populist-type farmers that dabbled in socialism. The early 1900s populist movement was huge here and organizations like the Grangers and agricultural cooperatives were everywhere.
In Milwaukee’s case, the socialism thing came over with the great influx of Germans and Eastern Europeans in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Once again, the Weekly World News was ahead of the journalism curve on those sexy seniors…
“A rest home has been forced to close and the owners are expecting to get their brains sued out after 18 nurses, aides, assistants and orderlies got pregnant following a “Viagra party” for the facility’s elderly patients!
“It was supposed to be a morale booster — and now we’re out of business,” says Mary Stinson, a receptionist who lost her job when the owners of Merry Rest Retirement Home, in Los Angeles, announced they were shutting down under pressure from the State of California.
“I told them they were crazy to give those old goats all those pills, but did they listen to me? No!”
The party that was held in mid-August lasted as long as the erection drug held out, which, according to sources, was about four hours.
Although there were plenty of elderly women the old guys could have lured into the sack, they went instead for curvy young nurses and aides, many of whom, it is reported, were drunk.
A spokesman for Merry Rest confirmed in a prepared statement that 18 employees are now pregnant and that DNA testing to match them with the fathers is now under way. “
Dan – sad, but true… Wisconsin is doomed. Hard to explain how bad it is, really. My folks pay lower real estate taxes on their place in FL than we do for our modest home in the burbs of Milwaukee. And my folks, as Dan mentions, are being forced out of their home due to taxes. Let’s put it this way: they pay the equivalent of a decent professional salary in property taxes for their leake home… the land which they purchased 40 years ago for the purpose of spending their golden years in. This while some 50% of all wage-earners pay zero income tax.
I can tell you: I am all for paying some taxes… but it is really getting bad. The govt does not include in its inflation figures costs for groceries or gas… and my greatest concern while changing jobs was not to break the AMT (Alternative Minimum Tax). That is to say, when I did the calculations, including taxes assessed, et cetera, I was far and away better off taking the job which paid several grand less. How in hell does that make sense.
Now I am not crying here… I feel blessed to be employed… but if you told me 20 years ago I would be living check to check on the income I make (with all the vacations we are NOT taking… all of the dining out we are NOT doing, all of the new cars we are NOT driving)… well, shit, I wouldn’t have fucking bothered.
I hate Wisconsin.
We’d be happy to annex everything west of Wausau, but you guys just refuse to root for the Vikings.
I’m sure you’ll come around sooner or later.
Let me tell you something about taxes. Do not fuck with the government. I thought I was getting screwed on my proprerty taxes at $12,000 per year, so I contested them with the auditor’s office. Now, I am paying $14,220 per year. Bend over and take it, and just pray they take mercy on you and lube up first.
Squid – now while I am able to gripe about WI, as I live here… you are not allowed to do so. 1) because you are a Vikings fan, 2) because you are a Vikings fan, and 3) because while WI might be Socialist, it is not yet totalitarian like Minnesota (with her smoking bans and all that crap). We may only be a few years behind in this regard… but nonetheless there are a few states which are overall worse prospects in my mind… MN is one of them, followed closely by IL, and sorry to say this Dan, VT.
I’ll go a step further and say that there are only a couple of states I would rather live in… Idaho (I don’t know why, so don’t ask), North Carolina, Iowa, and Michoacan. Is that so wrong?
Matt – Monatana, Utah, and Colorado (outside of Boulder) are great states, as is the great state of Tejas.
I was kinda hoping that the population of western WI would help us overthrow the shackles of our evil DFL overlords. A guy can dream, can’t he?
The other hell Wisconsin is going to in a handbasket is victim disarmament. The Governor is talking of local preemption on gun laws. I’ve suggested county carry permits but what it is about is a handgun ban for the law-abiding residents of Milwaukee. Oh well, I’ve been trying to convince my wee wifey we should move and this would do it.
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