Archive for Oddities
Guest Blogger: Marsha O on Hysterical Paroxysm
Admin note: As always, guest bloggers are welcome here at Existensis.com. Just email me with what you have and I’ll happily share it. Today’s guest blogger is Marsha O’Brien, a fitness consultant, healer, and also my mother. You can find her blog at http://marshaobrien.wordpress.com/
Hysterical paroxysm
Have you heard of this? I was rather (to say the least), shocked by this. In the Victorian era women were thought to have a malady called hysteria. The signs of it were fainting, dizziness, weakness, a real plethora of complaints.
Most physicians were of the male gender in Victorian times. The treatment for hysteria?
Oh my, hide the children!
The physician gave women manual stimulation with vibrators, massage, or wateruntil orgasm. It was thought that is why women had all these symptoms.
Can you imagine the doctor? I bet he kept this little remedy rather closed mouth; didnt want to share the wealth, if you know what I mean. Of course it became known ultimately the whole thing was ridiculous.
I know a few crabby women who are a bit hysterical because they are not with a kind, patient, and caring man who knows just what to do, but I think it can be worked out between them.
You know most doctors are still practicing physicians I bet the doctors worked long hours in those times – without a complaint!
I think Im feeling faint! :)
Popularity: 12% [?]
Odd Big Bear Lake
It’s a strange place that I grew up in. The strangest thing is that it hasn’t changed at all since I last lived here 22 years ago. The same businesses, the same houses needing paintjobs, the same old time miner 49er beards on different quirky Big Bear types.
If anything, the place seems smaller but that’s just because I’ve seen a lot more of the world than I had when I was 15 years old. My childhood home looks the same, the same a-frame house next door, nobody is mowing the grass at Community Park still and the same grumpy guy works behind the counter at the Community Market.
My cousins and I used to go in there in the winter and stuff our moon boots full of candy and then go to the park and divvy up our ill gotten spoils.
People here still drive Pintos and most of the men seem to work in construction and grow what I call Mike Rafferty mustaches.
The main industry here still seems to be making ugly log furniture and carving animal totems with chainsaws. I haven’t had the chance to go hiking yet, but I’ll be sure to take some pictures when I do. In the meantime, this will have to do.
About 15 years (1860) after Bear Valley was discovered by Wilson , prospector Bill Holcomb discovered gold in nearby Holcomb Valley . After abandoning his prospecting and mining efforts in Northern California and Oregon where he spent 10 years searching for gold, Holcomb and his partner Jack Martin came to Bear Valley in the winter of 1859. Although the partners worked hard they made only a modest strike. Martin returned to Los Angeles to get his family.
Meanwhile, towards the end of April, while Bill was hunting bear, he crossed the meadow in the center of Bear Valley and climbed up the west side of Bertha Peak and saw what he described as the most beautiful mountain valley I have ever seen. A few days later, he returned to that valley with companions, and while tracking a grizzly he had wounded, along what is now Caribou Creek; Bill noticed glittering specks of gold in a quartz ledge.
News of his find spread fast and soon prospectors began staking and working their claims. The population of Holcomb Valley swelled to over 2,000; buildings and businesses sprung up, including a General Store, Saloon, Grocery Store, Blacksmith Shop and the famous Octagon House where the glitter girls danced and otherwise entertained men in small dimly lit cubicles. As more and more prospectors came to Bear Valley in the hunt for gold and silver ore, the Bear Valley Mining District was founded.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Clown-Jazeera
Frankly, we, the scary arab clowns, are happy to have a little break from Vago. That doesn’t mean we will stop posting though…boy, as if the economic worries aren’t enough, here is one more reason we don’t want to become American citizens:
A man armed with two handguns killed 13 people at an immigration services center before apparently turning the gun on himself, authorities in Binghamton, New York, said on Friday.
Police Chief Joseph Zikuski told a news conference the gunman blocked the back entrance of the building with a car, walked in the front door and shot two receptionists, one of whom died, before entering a classroom and killing 12 more people and then apparently committing suicide.
Just imagine, those twelve people loved your country enough to want to take tests and oaths and what reward? Shot in a classroom where they were learning about the bill of rights…hmmm…well done America.
In a report underscoring the economy’s distress, the Labor Department said employers slashed 663,000 jobs in March and revised prior data to show job losses of 741,000 in January, the biggest decline since October 1949. February’s drop in non-farm payrolls was unrevised at 651,000.The report showed it has become increasingly difficult to find new jobs, with the number of Americans experiencing long spells of joblessness rising by 265,000 to 3.2 million. Nearly one in four of the unemployed had been jobless for 27 weeks or more. Rising unemployment is cutting into household incomes, which already have been decimated by the collapse in housing and stock prices, restricting consumers’ spending ability.
And it looks like your President is really doing a good job. As we said before, we like him, but doubt he can do all he is expected to, but then again, maybe he is the return of Jesus.
We like the g-20 protestors but we have to agree with Vago that Protest is no longer an effective means of changing things. Not that we discourage it though. Protest in the modern technological police state is simply a way of putting dissenters in tightly cordoned protest areas and then taking many pictures of them.
We find it curious that Vago is in Europe at the same time as Obama, he denies that there is a connection but we have seen his Agent 808 profile.
We expect that there will be a massive selloff on Wall Street when we prove that there are no stigmata on Obama’s hands.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Apologies from Scary Arab Clowns…and threats
We the Scary Arab Clowns aplolgiwe for not doing a very good job containing Vago. We acknowledge that we have not kept very good tabs on him and have allowed him to get into all sorts of mischief. First of all, we turned our backs for a moment and he became engaged to a Moroccan girl. We know, we never should have let this happen and if we were paid employees in charge of watching him, you would probably fire us, but to be fair, we like the girl and for the most part, she has made our job easier. Then, we leave him alne for a moment more and suddenly the madman has become a rabbit farmer and is talking of buying a donkey! It’s too late to stop the engagement or the rabbits, but certainly we won’t let him ride around in a djalabba on a donkey! He is our prisoner and we won’t let him parade around as if he is some sort of wandering jew or good samaritan, nor even like he is a berber tribesman. As to his plans of the Sahara…we will see about that. We may send him to France instead just to punish you American pig dogs for not making any contributions to this site! We will have him eat freedom fries until his heart explodes!
Enough of that…
We also apologize for our lack of updating the news and threaten to tell you more about the failings of your foolish economic ways unless you pay us!
Your bailout is working…but not the way you thought it might!
Embattled bank JPMorgan Chase, the recipient of $25 billion in TARP funds, is going ahead with a $138 million plan to buy two new luxury corporate jets and build “the premiere corporate aircraft hangar on the eastern seaboard” to house them.
And we are laughing about the new Obama plan to create a market for toxic assetts, isnùt that what created the problem? Traders creating a market for toxic assetts? It’s funnier than 35 sheep in big shoes crammed into a tiny wagon!
The Obama administration will announce details of a plan today to expand the $700 billion rescue of the financial system that will rely on enticing private investors to buy the troubled assets clogging banks’ balance sheets.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who will unveil the Public Private Investment Program today, has crafted an approach using up to $100 billion of bailout money to spur investment funds to purchase — and banks to unload — the illiquid securities and loans that have caused credit to dry up. The Treasury, Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. will all play a role alongside private investors in aiming to buy between $500 billion and $1 trillion of troubled assets.
“By providing a market for these assets that does not now exist, this program will help improve asset values, increase lending capacity by banks, and reduce uncertainty about the scale of losses on bank balance sheets,” Geithner said in an op-ed piece published in today’s Wall Street Journal. “The ability to sell assets to this fund will make it easier for banks to raise private capital.”
Backwards just like in India where the maker of the worlds cheapest car took out massive loans to buy Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford and thus made the cheapest car unporfitable. Nice work India, Henry Ford, who you just bought Jag and Land Rover from is laughing in his grave at your stupidity. By the way, we project Ford to be the only major U.S. auto company in five years.
Tata Motors Ltd. will begin taking orders next month for its Nano, the world’s cheapest car, after a failed effort to build a new factory for the vehicle delayed production. The low price and late sales mean the car won’t generate enough revenue to refinance by June $2 billion of a bridge loan Tata used to buy Land Rover and Jaguar from Ford Motor Co.
And can you make sense of this, if so, you are right to be scared!
Economists see the Fed’s balance sheet ballooning to $4.5 trillion this year, with its announced purchases added to existing lending facilities. That’s trillion with a “t.” And it would be five times the size of the balance sheet in the first eight months of 2008, before the Fed cranked up the printing presses.
Popularity: 1% [?]
