Mike Argento, a York native and graduate of York Suburban Area High School and Penn State, first came to the York Daily Record in 1983. He even had gray hair back then. After stints covering everything from cops to city hall to state government to the environment, he began writing a column for the paper, three times a week, in 1989. His column can be about anything and so is his blog, which encompasses life in York County and beyond. And, for the record, as he told his wife the other night, he wishes people would stop asking him, 'What's wrong with you?' He really doesn't know. Word comes that Chris Hayward, one of the orginial writers for "Rocky and Bullwinkle," has died at age 81.
Hayward contributed to one of the great cartoons, and great satires of our culture, ever produced. I've long held that everything I know about history and culture comes from old Bullwinkle cartoons.
One of the greats.
Read his obit here.
December 2006 Archives
The York County office of emergency management issued its annual press release suggesting some Christmas gifts.
Among the items: A first-aid kit, a flashlight and a fire extinguisher.
Wow, a fire extinguisher! Just what I always wanted! Let's set the tree on fire and try it out!
(Stunts performed by professional journalists. Do not try this at home.)
The war on Christmas, played out in the Seattle airport.
Read all about it here.
We have a new slogan designed to win the war in Iraq.
Read all about it here.
A woman in New York got a blob of whale vomit from her sister.
Seriously.
And it's worth about $18,000.
Here it is:
Read all about it here.
OK, so there's this company in Southern California building a fence between the United States and Mexico.
And it gets in trouble with the government.
For what?
If you guessed hiring illegal immigrants -- Mexicans -- to build the fence to keep illegal immigrants -- Mexicans, again -- out of this country, you win!
Read the NPR story.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Americans are the fattest people on the planet.
At the same time, though, the bureau's 2007 Statistical Abstract points out, we're also getting taller so it just may be that our height hasn't caught up to our weight. Or vice versa.
The bureau also reported that Americans now spend about eight and a half hours a day watching TV, goofing around on the computer or generally sitting around on their fat posteriors.
Think there might be connection between that and the fat thing?
Read the New York Times story here.
If you don't know the name, you should. Ahmet Ertegun, founder of Atlantic Records, is the music executive who can claim a great deal of responsibility for shaping American music for the past 50 years.
Ahmet discovered Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin and Otis Redding. He worked with the Rolling Stones. He was a giant and a rare breed in the music industry, an executive who actually stuck up for artists and treated them well.
An indication of that is he remained friends with Ray Charles even after Charles left Atlantic for a more lucrative deal with ABC. Another indication: Frank Zappa, no fan of music excutives, named his son Ahmet after Ertegun.
My favorite anecdote is Otis Redding called Ahmet "Omelet," knowing full well what the man's first name was. It was Otis' way of having a bit of fun with the man.
He died at the age of 83 after suffering a head injury in a fall backstage at the Stones' performance at Bill Clinton's 60th birthday party. Really.
Read the New York Times obituary here.
Morton C. Orman, remember the name.
He is the Rosa Parks of the ugly pants set.
Orman, of Sparks, Md., was cited for disorderly conduct for urinating on an East Hopewell Township golf course in August 2005. He was convicted and ordered to pay a $25 fine.
Orman appealed the case to the Pennsylvania Superior Court, which overturned the conviction and preserved the age-old tradition of golfers relieving themselves in the rough.
Prosecutor Bill Graff, an avid golfer himself, said, "Golfers can feel a little safer."
So golfers everywhere, rejoice. One of the sacred traditions of the links has been preserved.
Read the full story here.
The Washington Post reports that White House press secretary Tony Snow frequently responds to questions with "I don't know."
"When Snow took over as White House press secretary earlier this year, reporters found it refreshing that he was willing to admit when he didn't know something," wrote political columnist Dana Milbank. "This has become rather less refreshing as Snow, while claiming access to Bush's sanctum sanctorum, continues to use the phrase -- more than 400 times so far in televised briefings and interviews. Sometimes, it seems more of a tic than a response; usually, it's a brushoff."
OK, the guy's job is to answer questions and he doesn't know anything?
Why would you hire a press secretary who doesn't know anything?
I don't know.
A California entrepreneur is marketing an energy drink called Cocaine, which contains more than twice the amount of caffeine as coffee, to people seeking “extreme refreshment,� the New York Times reported. ¶
He’s also coming out with a drink called Marijuana that makes you want to sit around and play video games while eating a bag of Doritos.
Or so I've been told....
The blind would be allowed to go hunting under this proposal.
Still, I'd rather go hunting with a blind person than, oh, say, Dick Cheney.
If you happen to win college football's most coveted individual award, don't expect to carry it on the plane.
Read the story here.
Thank God the airport security people are keeping us safe from Heisman Trophy-wielding quarterbacks.
You can eat Rudolph. Read about it here.
Mmmmmmmm...Blitzen-dog...
Read about here.
Horses are at the center of the Lauxmont Farm debacle. Read about it here.
You know, nobody's ever won putting their money into a big animals with tiny brains.
Read all about the fall of the infamous personal injury lawyer, here..
It's a sad story, a tragedy that has no winners, only losers.
Turns out Dover is the center of the universe. Go figure. Read about it here.
It's known as the Hog-Maw-centric theory of all creation.
You can buy the Charlie Brown Christmas tree from Urban Outfitters.
Twenty-four bucks.
Every now and then, a reader will send me an e-mail purported to have been written by Andy Rooney, railing about minorities and women and just spouting all sorts of nonsense.
It's not true.
And Andy doesn't like it one bit, as he says in this story.
On a personal note, I got to meet Andy Rooney at a National Society of Newspaper Columnists conference and have a few drinks with him. Nice guy. Very witty. Drinks bourbon. You can trust bourbon drinkers.
Jennifer Aniston. Vince Vaughn. Uranus.
According to AOL Horoscopes, Jen and Vinnie's break up apparently had something to do with Uranus. Go figure.
Check it out here.
On Monday, Robert Gates, the guy replacing Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of defense, said we're not winning the war in Iraq -- even though President Dubya has been saying we are.
So later, Dubya's mouthpiece, Tony Snow, was asked about this contradiction by reporters. Here's the exchange:
Q But his statement is inconsistent with what the administration says. The President has said, we are winning. You from that podium said, we're winning --
MR. SNOW: Right.
Q -- but we haven't won.
MR. SNOW: Right.
Q He said -- he agreed that we are not winning. So how is that consistent --
MR. SNOW: And he also said we're not losing....
So there you have it. We're not winning. We're not losing. I guess that means it's a tie.
We have a winner for headline of the day, here.
.
So, the geniuses of the Iraq Study Group, who were supposed save our butts, come out with a report that says Iraq is a mess and there's no way out.
Wait a minute, didn't the president say "Mission Accomplished"? I remember seeing it on an aircraft carrier or something a few years back. Geez, how's that working out?
Anyway, Iraq Study Group: Masters of the obvious.
Here is CNN.com's report, with links to video of various officials trying to make this thing sound like an all-new and improved way out of the quagmire in Iraq.
A lot of questions remain about the death of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko from radiation poisoning caused by an isotope that sounds like something from Rocky and Bullwinkle. Who killed him and why are the most pressing questions, of course. But here , Slate magazine answers a question that may, or may not, have occurred to you: Why did he lose his hair, but not his eyebrows?
Who knew?
On Monday, a man brandishing a knife robbed the Dairy Queen on South Queen Street.
Dairy Queen?
Who robs a Dairy Queen? In winter.
Well, we aren't exactly talking about a member of Mensa here.
The Associated Press review of Mel Gibson's new flick, Apocalypto, includes this line: "If you've ever wanted to see a jaguar bite off a man's face, this is your movie."
For your Christmas enjoyment, here's the arrival of Santa.
OK, they don't want Little Kim of North Korea to have Harleys. What, are they crazy? Send him more. Just no helmets. Read the rest of it here.
Here's my take on Newt Gingrich's assault on the First Amendment.
Exercise your rights in the comment section.
Here Is a story about zombie chickens.
In the sequel, the Zombie Chickens will terrorize a group of people hiding out in a shopping mall.
Actually, it's pretty gross. The story begins, " In this rich agricultural region of Northern California, ranchers have been turning chickens too old to lay eggs into compost at a rate of a half-million hens a year.
"But some chickens not properly euthanized have been seen crawling out of the compost piles, earning them the name 'zombie chickens' -- and hatching a debate over what else might be done with them and other 'spent hens.'"
