Hillary, Buses, and Moderate Fitness

Saturday morning, I awoke to find that some of the twigi in presidential campaigning efforts is finally getting negative press as my newspaper proclaimed, "Hurling insults now a turnoff". The article was about Hillary's comment about Barack Obama promoting "change you can Xerox."



Now, I like what Obama says about it being the "silly season" and how we are tired of the attacks and ready to hear what they plan to do. Hillary doesn't seem to get it as she immediately makes that derisive comment. Two Democrats that can't seem to get along...doesn't look to good for the Democratic party, in my twigified opinion.

Also Saturday morning I saw an article about school bus incidents and what it's like being a school bus driver. This feature story, of course, was spurred on by the incident in Cottonwood, Minneapolis where the woman slammed into a school bus with her van killing four children. Of course, it was smart of my newspaper to save that article for Saturday when students would not be on the buses they are talking about. What I can't figure out is why states across the nation have some form of seat belt law, except New Hampshire, but buses aren't required to have seat belts? That's twigi, there. I know, I know...costs. But there should be a federal push to protect our children on these vehicles.

Finally, I read how studies show that moderate fitness can help avoid strokes...Um...Duh. Moderate fitness can help just about anything if you're a couch potato. Stop wasting money doing studies that just proove what we can figure out just using common sense. Do research that says eating a spoonful of mayonnaise improves liver function, or that cheese stimulates endorphines which increase one's sense of humor. Studies which prove what we should know with common sense? Now that's twigi.

Here's a study I want to see...I want to see how the top 60 politicians from both major parties would fare in a school bus trip across America without seatbelts, and if the bus driver could tell if there was much difference between how the school children behave, and how the politicians behave.

In TWIGI we trust: Our Growing Twigiocracy

Welcome back to TWIGI, the blog that exposes how The World Is Going Insane!

A plethora of articles in recent papers provide details about Political Primaries that will leave you feeling peckish or even perturbed. I'm here to tell you that these Presidential Primaries are twigi!

Many people are discontented with the United States's political process, but I'm not going to talk to you about the two-party system (which is twigi because it's the voters that keep the two-party system going because they won't give other parties a chance). or voting machines, or how he who raises the most money has the better chance of winning, or any of that. I'm here to talk to you about how political hopefuls behave leading up to and during the primaries...

Like petulent primadonnas!

Why do we tolerate politicians who spend more time bad mouthing and dragging down their opponents (who are in the same party no less!) and less time explaining why they are qualified for the position and what they plan to do if they get elected? Instead it's "He's a waffler!", "She's a hypocrit!" "He might be a member of the Democratic Party, but if you look at his record, it shows he's a Republican in sheep's clothing!" blah blah...I don't want to hear your opinions about the other person. I want to hear about YOU!

Imagine if job interviews were like Presidential Primaries:

"Mr. Twigi, why should this company hire you?"
"Well, the last guy you interviewed...his tie clashed...I mean, wow, you know. Is he colorblind? Not to be insensitive, but clearly, if he's colorblind, he should have done something to compensate so he wouldn't wear clothes that didn't match rather than ignoring the problem. I don't think this company wants someone who will just ignore a weakness, but someone who will address it and find a solution. I'm that guy!

Also, he lives in a room over his mother's garage. Fear of independence. You won't find the next hot CEO with a guy living with his mom.

And his sister's a lesbian. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but how can he support family values with a lesbian sister?

And another thing..."

No facts about the applicant...just "the other guy". Before I continue, please note I bare no ill will towards the homosexual community. I just wanted to illustrate how politicians will use anything against an opponent and we've had people's relatives' sexual orientation called out in public against them.

In four years, if a candidate can step forward and focus his campaign on himself or herself rather than the faults of his opponents, unless he supports something crazy like Free Cellphones for the Homeless, then there's a great chance I'll vote for him simply because of his classy campaign.

Speaking of cellphones...Here's a twigi bit of society. It seems that at concerts, audiences have begun replacing the lighters held up in appreciation with...cellphones? C'mon! That's just ridiculous. That's twigi! Please dial the number of the reason it's twigi now...

*beep* 1) The first line of the linked article above says we should blame anti-smoking laws...um, no. See, holding a lit lighter up is NOT smoking...It's holding a lighter up.

*beep* 2) It talks about audience members desire to contact friends in the middle of a concert. So rather than enjoying the concert, you're taking yourself out the experience of a live performance to talk long distance with someone you speak with nearly everyday to tell him what you are seeing? Lame! And that doesn't explain the need to hold the things up like lighters.

*beep* 3) Lighters making very little noise...Cellphones do not. They beep and chirp and make their own music, and how distracting would it be to be rocking out to one song and hear somebody else's song coming from a cellphone? Rude!

*beep* 4) Cellphones are used, many times, for emergencies. So it's after the concert and you're on the way home and your car's fuel line bursts. You're stranded. You reach for your cellphone to call for assistance and...It's dead, because you've had the thing on and open and been using it at the concert. Sucker!

Come back in another week for more twiginess...Same TWIGI time, Same TWIGI channel...

The World Is Going Insane

Welcome to TWIGI!

What's that? You don't know what TWIGI is? Well, pull up a seat while I explain...

See, it all started when I noticed that I kept saying the same thing and thinking the same thing when I discovered certain news stories and feature articles. These stories and articles would be about something so bizarre that I would declare, "The world is going insane!" That phrase became so common for me that I decided I needed to condense it into one brief exclamation and that word is "twigi," which stands for, you guessed it, The World Is Going Insane. So something that is twigi is something which demonstrates in some fashion how we, as a collective world, are losing our grips on what a reasonable reality should be. So, this will not be about one person doing something crazy and everyone going, "That's crazy!" As long as most of us can recognize it as crazy, insane, and nutso, then it is not twigi. But when something happens or someone does something insane and everyone seems ok with it...That is twigi.

For example, earlier this week I heard about how Fulton County schools, in Georgia, want to pay students to attend a one hour after-school tutoring program. They will receive $8.oo for the hour with bonuses if their grades improve. That, my friends, is twigi. Article

See, first, tutoring is an act which gets paid for because the tutee is gaining something from the tutor.

Second, I've heard of parents doing the money reward for grades and I think that's twigi too. The money students will get for their grades comes after they get a job with the education they received. And if your children won't take school seriously, you can pay them...with punishment. Take those cell phones and ipods and game systems away. That TV in their room? Gone! Take everything but books, paper, and pencil away, take away the excursions with their friends to the movies, the mall, wherever, take it all, until those grades come back up. Then they can get more than the books, paper, and pencil.

Another item I heard over the radio was about how women are starting to have their bride's maids in their wedding sign Wedding Party Contracts dictating, among the possibilities, a guarantee of no weight gain, a promise to not change hair style, and a promise to not get too liquered up. Hold the stagecoach princess, let me 'splain somethin' here...It may be your wedding day, but that don't make you Lady High Mistress of my life! If you can't trust me, then I shouldn't even be invited, much less in the wedding party. And that's why it's twigi. Why can't they be responsible for their own bride's maid dresses? Who cares if they doing something different with their hair? Trust them enough to not get toasted and start slurring on about all the men you screwed in college. If you can't? Well, you need better friends.

Last twigi news story for this week...a man received 18 years for killing his girlfriend. It's not what he did that makes this news story twigi, it's that it took two years before they prosecuted him...if he was in jail all that time and was innocent, that's wrong. If he was loose and was guilty, that's wrong. Do it quick, get it over with. The fact that he drove around with his grilfriend's body in the trunk of his car, beat her to death with a bat, and was found guilty of MANSLAUGHTER because he was defending himself from his girlfriend, makes it twigi. See, the story is that she attacked him with a fireplace poker, and he retaliated with a bat. Chances are, one hit with the bat wouldn't kill someone in most cases, and worse, the fireplace poker which he was assaulted with was sitting neatly in its stand. So he beat his girlfriend with a bat because that was the only way he could defend himself, and after he killed her, in self-defense because I'm sure she just kept lunging with that poker after each whack of the bat, he then neatly placed the poker in the stand, and loaded the body into his trunk...but it was all self-defense...Now, that's twigi.

Well, thank you for checking out TWIGI. If you agree the world is going insane, then come by next week as I share more evidence that the world is, in fact, going insane. My feature discussion will be about the Presidential Primaries. In TWIGI We Trust: Our Growing Twigiocracy.

Test

Test