Category Archives: News

Tell Me Something Good

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What's in it for me?

What’s in it for me?

If the holidays aren’t about discord and disappointment, I don’t know what is. One antidote is your annual batch of UVG New Year Predictions. As always, these come from the coterie of crazed crackpots I call friends.

Predictions are not necessarily endorsed by WordPress, God, or the New Hampshire Division of Ports and Harbors. They are, ideally, to be read to Stevie Wonder’s Tell Me Something Good, as performed by Chaka Khan and Rufus.

Fashion  A new shoe will be developed that will be a lifelong possession. It will automatically adjust for growth, bunions, hammertoes, and falling arches over time. Designers are unhappy that these will also change design; manufacturers are unhappy that one pair can be worn for a lifetime. It will not help the economy.

Entertainment  The sequel to Lincoln, titled Johnson and starring Jackie Chan, flops at the box office.

John Lennon and George Harrison come back to life and the Beatles reunite.

Travel  Velcro® announces their “robust solution” to people sneaking too much luggage on board airplanes. All carry-on will be stuck to the outside of the airplane.

Math  2013 will be known as “twenty thirteen”—the old “two thousand and…” neatly dispensed with forever.

The Law  Phreaques who wash practically their entire cars at the gas pump with the trough of murky windshield fluid, further befouling that and the cleaning wand, will be charged with a misdemeanor and fined.

Congress will stand up to the NRA and enact reasonable gun legislation.

Congress will re-issue the Violence Against Women Act, which was not reauthorized in 2012 by the House after 18 years of being in effect.

The alterant marijuana is decriminalized.

The term “shout out” is criminalized.

Medicine  Men become able to carry a developing fetus to term via a transplanted uterus, though most refuse.

Celebrity  At award ceremonies, actors are banned from speaking about their co-stars’ “bravery” and “courage” while “making choices,” and from giving “shout outs.” Those making incomprehensible, rambling speeches—teary or otherwise—that confuse fellow attendees as well as viewers will be given a reality show, “Barmy Drunk Unstable People—Plus They’re Famous, Yes, Famous!”

Donald Trump admits he’s been wearing a marmoset on his head for years.

Education  The US Secretary of Education will continue to be someone who has no training or experience in K-12 academic education. Since the re-creation of the Department of Education as a Cabinet-level position in 1979 by Jimmy Carter, there has been only one educator to fill the position, Terrell Bell, who served from 1981 to 1985.

Nature  Global warming will continue at a rate far faster than anyone has predicted, hastening shuttles to imperialistic earthly colonies on planet Kepler-22b.

Three words: giant robot squid. No, make that four: giant robot squid apocalypse.

World Affairs  The United States will engage in no new wars. I mean “initiatives.”

Sports  Lance Armstrong capitalizes on admitting his use of performance-enhancing drugs by signing a $10M endorsement deal with Viagra. The LiveStrong Foundation foregoes support of cancer victims and focuses solely upon erectile dysfunction research, increasing global warming of a different kind.

Wearied by last year’s tiresome coverage of volleyball, beach volleyball, and water polo (= water volleyball), the International Olympic Committee relaxes doping regulations for these three sports.

Blue Skies  This year, what environmentalist and author Paul Hawken calls our blessed unrest will continue to help re-imagine our relationship to the environment and one another. Across our precious planet, we will see ourselves—in all our diversity and various wisdom—gathering to create specific resolutions to complex challenges, taking care of each other, changing our priorities here at home, with each other, right here in the communities where we live and love.

Tell Me Something Good indeed.  Thank you, beloved kontributors. Good year and good day.

Twitter: @uvgvt

All the News Fit to Be Tied

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Support your local paper.

Yahoo! has forever been my home page. Plenty of useful info used to be on there, like the news and movies nearby. But, as is common in modern tymes, Yahoo!’s look magically changed on me and I can’t switch it back.  All I see are inflammatory headlines like “Two stars step out in same pink mini!” (Mini what?)  or “Woman watched NASCAR with dead man” (She waited till the finish to call 911?  She thought he was asleep?)  Most fall into these Who Cares or I Don’t Want to Know categories, so I rarely click on the bait only to be forced to watch a Nissan commercial. But the headlines seem to…taunt…while denying access to real news. I’m fit to be tied.

For I have been falling behind on not only the Kardashians, but the exciting Cruise divorce plus actual news as well. The causes are (1) Yahoo! (2) an abundance of terrible news and (3) a lack of radio news in the car. In summer I listen to music when driving, so my news comes solely from NPR’s weekly current events quiz show, “Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me.”  I know; it’s no good when you’re getting your news from a game show or the bar at Harrington House.

Part of my Summer Program this year (I, for one, diagram seasonal efforts—it’s all the advance planning I can muster) was to read The New York Times daily. Yet somehow I can barely finish the Vermont Standard and the Herald of Randolph (two papers with good news inside) while juggling The Girl Who Played With Fire, The Lotus Eaters, and 50 Shades of Grey, a reported “must-read” by the ladies at Monday night’s Nine and Dine at Montague Golf Club. But someone gave me a Times tip:  just read the op-ed page.  That’s it! My new way. Another one fer ya—I asked a scholar friend how he keeps up with the news. His covert reply: “Listen to NPR for fifteen minutes a day. You didn’t hear it here. If anyone asks you if I said this, I will deny it.” Apparently, you can cheat at current events. And I will.

In New York in the 80s, there was a well-meaning attempt at creating jobs for the homeless called Street News. This was a slender newspaper written and sold by the homeless. There were two problems:  (1) the “news” wasn’t really that interesting and (2) it was sold by crazynutters at top volume on the subway. Kindly straphangers thought, “At least they’re working!” and bought one.  But when a real newspaper columnist referred to it with sarcasm as “this important journal,” well, for me at least, that was the end. If I’m laughing that hard at something, I’m probably not going to buy it.  This important journal was, sadly, not.

Newsflash: The foppish costumes the US Olympians will wear in the opening ceremony (avec giant Ralph Lauren logo on breast) were made in China. No doubt they were made there, shipped here, tailored to the athletes, then shipped back. This galls my inner efficiency monster, but not as much the American athlete-dandies will gall the world, a world that doesn’t need to see the US strolling in once again like a bunch of privileged yachties.  Next time:  Carhartts? Don’t get me wrong. I love the Olympics.

But these are only my opinions on things newsy. I did a random sampling of visitors at Silver Lake. One woman said, “Newscasters are creating issues just so they can argue, without offering any solutions.”  A gent said, “No news is good news—just stay at the lake.” Another recommended the Anne Murray song, A Little Good News. A fourth noted, “It seems there is a lot of ‘news’ worth avoiding lately, like, an article debating whether Lady Gaga is a hermaphrodite…and pretty much anything on Mittens Romney.”

I also offer no solutions. But always one to share good news, I close with this cheery west coast response to a recent column of mine: “The positive power of reality TV does seem to be an untapped resource. My daughter’s school was the subject of a school improvement reality TV show and it did, in the end, after selling its soul many times over, receive enough money to rejuvenate a woefully antiquated auditorium and a quad that used to resemble a Dust Bowl farm.  Part of this transformation included painting the school in what appear to be IKEA flagship colors that nearly gave the math department chair cardiac arrest.”

And that’s all the good news from the bar at Harrington house, where all the women are smart, all the men are drunk, and all the children have new auditoriums. This important column comes to a close.  Good day.

Ann Aikens can be reached on Facebook (ann.aikens.7), via e-mail at uppervalleygirl@gmail.com, or Twitter at @uvgvt (http://twitter.com/uvgvt). Comments welcome.

Entirely Possible Predictions for 2012

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BALLS

It’s one time of year everyone keenly anticipates—no, not Ice Dancers Interpret the Music of STYX, the Sooper Bowl, ski season, or even Oscar® season—rather, the various news outlets’ Predictions for the New Year. The below makes me think we should go deeper into the future next time…get your wheels turning for 2013 submissions.

Predictions about 2011 from a 1911 Ladies Home Journal (at http://imgur.com/bwUWM) included:  horses, rats, and mice will become extinct; coal will not be used for cooking; Nicaragua will ask to be part of the Union, Americans will be taller by 4”, autos will be cheaper than horses…plus prophetic visions of the escalator, “air ships”, medical imaging, and global wireless telephone “and telegraph” circuits, pneumatic tubes delivering goods directly the homes of the wealthy (= the Internet + UPS?), and “peas as large as beets.” We’re behind on that one.

For 2012…here you go. All submitted by friends.

From California

None this year. Bunch of laggards. You’re out of work; I know you have time.

From Florida

Lady Gaga garners the VP nomination for the Republican Party.

From Kansas

Radio stations start playing silence because it is better than current popular music.

From Massachusetts

Rick Perry comes out. (This submitted before he, er, pulled out.)

From Missouri

After a warm winter resulting in lower heating bills, American citizens begin burning more coal (by cooking???) to speed up global warming.

Greece breaks off from the Euro in order to devalue the drachma and restart its economy via tourism. Doesn’t work – no one wants to vacation in a country of starving people. Or do they?

From New Hampshire

Angelina and Brad become surrogates for Jennifer Aniston’s baby. Angelina will carry the egg(s) to term and deliver the baby(ies) on a remote Pacific island, then hand [them] over to Jennifer at LAX.

Tom Brady will get a tattoo of three green gummy bears.

“I will break up Colin Firth’s marriage.”

From New York

Mitt Romney will win the Republican nomination and do a victory lap with a dog attached to the top of his car “in an airtight kennel.”

Apple will introduce the iPhone 666® which calls whomever you’re thinking about. Which can be problematic.

Medical science will determine that post-menopausal women are predisposed to weight gain so that when old ladies fall down we have something to land on so we don’t break our keisters; insurance rates drop for plus-size women over 50.

Occupy Wall Street morphs into Occupy Arby’s nationwide.

A new Weight Watchers app delivers repeated high-voltage zaps if you approach stressors, including people, that make you overeat.

Government officials will be picked as in jury draws—via computer from a local population.  History proves that no matter whom we elect, the economy and public education stink, unemployment is high, no one can afford a mortgage, our great-grandchildren will be paying down the national debt, and gasoline prices will rise. Might as well “elect” a neighbor whose house you can TP instead of someone you can’t even talk to.

From North Carolina

In a collective pot shot at the Tea Party, at the 2012 Republican Convention the Republican Party is re-named the Beer & Cheese Party for its roots in Racine, Wisconsin.

From Pennsylvania

The Republican Party is shaken when Mitt and Newt profess their love for each other, then head to the Andes to raise alpacas.

From Texas

As more young women start dressing like Lady Gaga, prom dresses will be made of meat.

From Corporate America

Many will utilize value-added deliverables, organically, as they leverage synergistic solutions.

From Vermont

Due to extreme variations in temperatures, Vermonters will open their pools this winter, converting them back and forth from swimming pools to skating rinks as temps dictate.

Rap music will disappear while rock band reunion tours become increasingly ridiculous with older bands in tighter leather leggings and plunginger necklines with bigger, more-dyed hair and arthritically large—though delicately manicured—hands. And that’s just the men.

The ozone layer will recover so that Italy no longer goes tropical five months of the year.

And my personal favorites:

  1.  I predict Mitt Romney will get the Republican nomination.  I predict Ron Paul will run as an Independent. I predict Barack Obama will serve another term. His term will end when the world ends on December 21 of this year.
  2. Our computer passwords will never expire. That is, until the world ends on December 21 of this year.
  3. Eaton’s Sugar House will begin serving fondue.

Good day, and good year.

Sent from my Dixie Cup on a string

And 2011 closes with…

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another golden celebrity shenanigan.  Gerard Depardieu’s famously questionable rape comments — and my personal lack of comprehension at his appeal — aside, this CNN piece that’s more SNL is notable for Anderson Cooper’s snickering.  We loves to see a pro just totally lose it. And if 2011 wasn’t about losing it, I don’t know what it was about.