soapbox

The proof:

(1) In light of this last storm’s snow/ice/flooding, the IRS will allow East Coasters another two days to file their taxes, with the new deadline being midnigh, April 19th.

(2) As pointed out by ‘Cecelia’, the Chocolate Manufacturers of America and Hershey Co. are lobbying the FDA to change the rules of what can legally be called chocolate, with the new definition allowing for the substitution of cacao butter with vegetable oil and milk substitutes for nutritionally superior milk. (As if American chocolate isn’t crappy enough already.) Here’s the protest link – dontmesswithourchocolate.com.

The recent issues with Iran have made me wonder more than a little bit if they’re trying to pick a fight so that we’ll march in and make things better. Just imagine a speech to their people once we leave, “You may think you want more person freedoms, but look how horribly the [big devil] Americans did. You’d much rather have a strict Islamic state, wouldn’t you?”

That made me think of The Mouse that Roared by Leonard Wibberley. If you haven’t read it, it’s about a tiny little country with monetary issues in post-WWII Europe who decides that the way to fortune is to declare war on the US, lose, and then get tons of support. In the end, they accidentally win and much hilarity ensues. It was a great read in middle school.

Anyway, I bought the book from amazon and now they point out other books that would match similar searches. This brings me to The Mouse that Roared by Dwayne Murray Sr. An electrician from New York who now dabbles in thriller novels. The interesting thing here is that Amazon now lists out “Statistically Improbable Phrases” for books. Basically, they’re phrases that should be more or less unique to a given author, clever turns of phrase unique to the book. Dwayne Murray Sr. apparently used the phrase “bully club” several times in his book while no other work of fiction contains that phrase. It kind of makes me wonder what exactly it is… is it a club for bullies to join so they can sit around and discuss proper bullying methods? a club specifically designed to stop a bully in his tracks? or, is it, as I fear, a repeated error in the book because the author doesn’t know what a billy-club is. That answer doesn’t bode well for the book as a whole.

It seems that wherever I live, there are big dump truck accidents.

About a year ago in CT, a truck lost it’s brakes about 5 miles from my house and ended up killing 4 or 5 people as it skidded across an intersection, tipped over dumping rock onto rows of cars stopped at the light, and then caught fire trapping the driver and burning him to death.

Today’s accident wasn’t as bad, although it was closer to my house. I don’t know if this driver lost his brakes or if someone cut him off or what, but he was on a steep downhill section of Northern Parkway and had to take his truck up onto the grass shoulder in an attempt to stop. It worked, but it also tipped over the truck and spilled small-car-sized rocks across the road.

I think I drove by fairly shortly after the accident since police cars were still showing up. It didn’t look like there were any major injuries though… no smooshed cars or fleets of ambulances picking people up.

None of the local news outlets have anything yet, I’ll see if I can find some pictures when they do.