The Most Romantic Video For Your Valentine's Day.

Screen shot from video of a woman named
Vicky telling her boyfriend she's ready to marry.
In the foreground Jon learns Vicky's parents
approve, and Vicky in the background waits
for Jon's answer.  

It's Valentine's Day, which means we must have sappy love stories to celebrate the day.

So I found this random video. I like it because the woman named Vicky who organized it is such a romantic.

Her boyfriend, Jon,  had proposed to her a couple times, but she said she wasn't ready. Then Vicky thought about it, a little time went by, and she decided she was indeed ready to marry.

But she had to tell him. So Vicky organized the event you'll see at the bottom of this post.

This video was uploaded in late August of 2013, right around the date of my first wedding anniversary. I, too, was not initially ready to marry.  My husband waited a long time for me to propose - he wanted it to be my final decision.

Of course, he wasn't terribly shy about dropping hints.

I finally did propose, and we've been happily married for two and a half years now. My decision to ask Jeff to marry me was by far the best move I've ever made.

So happy Valentine's Day Jeff!! 

Anyway back to Vicky and Jon. I'll give you a spoiler alert. Things end up going well in the video, and it turned out Jon was ready for Vicky to be ready.

Though I probably spoiled any surprised in the video, it's still such a charming thing to watch.

I hope it inspires a few hugs and cuddles with your lover. Although caution: Kleenex alert with this video:

People Disagreeing Literally Butt Heads: Lovely Walmart and McDonald's Scenes

No, these two women are not being affectionate.  

Not everybody gets along with each other or with customers at work, as recent viral videos show.

It seems that if there's going to bad public behavior and fights, it will almost always be at a Walmart or McDonald's.

These things almost always end up on YouTube. I have to admit I share the public's fascination with these incidents.

Everybody gawks at train wrecks, I guess.

The other day I showed you the guy who was displeased about being fired from his McDonald's job. Now, we have two women who are perhaps not best friends.

The video concerning this one has really gone viral.   It involves a customer and a tax preparer in a Texas Walmart. (Admit it. There's no place you'd rather be than a Texas Walmart right now, right?)

The tax preparer works for Jackson Hewitt and has a booth at Walmart. The customer had a disagreement with the tax lady a few days earlier, says Consumerist, via television station KTRK in Houston, Texas.

The customer, Jessica Albitz,  came back to Walmart a couple days later and encounter tax worker Alice Keener. (Keener wasn't the person Albitz was dealing with a few days earlier, but they didn't get along from the start.)

Albitz said when she came back, Keener mumbled an obscenity to her. That's when maturity took a nosedive and the following stupidity erupted.

No word yet on whether the tax preparer has been disciplined. The other woman, the shopper, has been banned from that Walmart. It takes a lot to be banned from Walmart, so that is quite an accomplishment.

In the video, the nicest thing anybody said was "Yo mamma's a bitch."  Yeah, the language is NSFW.

The headbutt in the video is the highlight. Watch:

84 Year Old Lady Makes Bowling Debut. She Does OK

Hmm.  I don't know. This looks like
they're asking for trouble. We'll see. 

I remember a weird song from the 1980s called "Take The Skinheads Bowling."  

That sounds like an awful idea. I don't know why anyone would take skinheads bowling,  so instead a group in Italy took their 84 year old grandmother bowling.

She'd never bowled before, so they decided to capture her first throw ever on video. It would probably be pretty comical.

Here's what happened:

Turns Out Yoga Pants Are The Downfall Of Society

Montana State Rep. David Moore is no fan of
yoga pants. Apparently they are a menace.
Image from Jezebel.  

The State of Montana has the best fashion police, let me tell you.

The world is going to hell in a hand basket, and Montana State Rep. David Moore knows exactly why:

Yoga pants. Especially the ones that are about the same color as human skin. It makes a person look naked or something, Moore said.

According to the Billings Gazette, Moore has introduced the morality saving House Bill 365, which would expand Montana's indecent exposure law to include, as the Gazette put it, "any nipple exposure, including met's and any garment that 'gives the appearance or simulates' a person's buttocks, genitals, pelvic area or female nipple."

That list would include flesh-colored yoga pants, Moore said. Other color yoga pants would have been OK, supposedly, under the proposal, but Moore doesn't like any yoga pants.

"Yoga pants should be illegal in public anyway," Moore said after a hearing on the bill, says the Billings Gazette.

This all got started last August, when there was something called  "Bare As You Dare" bicycle event in Missoula. This kind of thing happens in a lot of cities lately where people in a group ride bicycles while naked because it's fun, people want to celebrate and promote acceptance of all kinds of body images, or they're making some sort of statement like "bicycles are good" or "fossil fuels are bad."

I'm not sure how riding a bike naked will reduce our dependence on fossil fuel, but what the hell. Nobody is getting hurt at these events, right

If you ask Moore and another Montana lawmaker named Walt Hill, this kind of naked bike ride is a terrible threat to the Good Citizens of Montana, so any kind of indecent exposure must be stopped.

Officials felt like they had to give a permit for the "Bare As You Dare" event last year because denying it would maybe make the officials run afoul of First Amendment free speech protections.

So, the effort is on to cover up Big Sky country.

"I want Montana to be known as a decent state where people can live within the security of laws and protect their children and associates from degrading and indecent practices," the Billings Gazette quoted Hill as saying.

Yeah, because I surely wouldn't feel secure unless there was a ban on naked bike rides, yoga pants and guys walking around wearing no shirts.

The wrong kind of clothing is apparently dangerous, at least in the eyes of some lawmakers.

However, Moore's efforts are for naught. According to Jezebel and the Associated Press, a Montana legislative committed voted to day to quash the anti-yoga pants bill.

At the peak of the craze of wearing baggy pants that sagged halfway down people's butts, some states and municipalities tried to ban the wearing of them. 

Too dangerous? Too, I don't know, hip hoppy?

Way back in the 1930s people tried to ban zoot suits because they, like the baggy pants, represented an urban youth culture, rather weighted toward Hispanics, that the adults didn't like.

I'm still not sure how banning certain types of clothing, instead of banning objectionable behavior is going to fix society's ills.

But I guess fixing society's ills is too tough a task, so banning certain types of clothes seems an easy way out.

Talk about the emperor having no clothes!

The Least Romantic Story EVER, Just In Time For Valentines Day

Who wouldn't fall for this guy? Well, nobody would.
Charles Manson is once again unlucky in love
as Valentine's Day approaches.  

Just in time for Valentine's Day, coming up this weekend, I have what is certainly the least romantic story I've heard in ages.

Hey, I've got to be a contrarian.

Before I go on, I have to tell you I'm not making up any of what you are about to read up. My imagination isn't that good, or that sick. Maybe people involved are making a lot of stuff up, but not me.

So here it goes:

If any of this is true, and it's coming from the New York Post, so it might be embellished, it appears the expected wedding of Charles Manson is not going to happen after all.

The news is enough to make your red roses wilt on the spot, isn't it.

Manson, you might recall, is the ringleader of a weird murder spree in California way back in 1969. He and his followers thought that if they murdered actress Sharon Tate and eight others to start some sort of race riot or revolution or something, I don't know.

Manson was sentenced to life behind bars and is now 80 years old.

But, romance blooms, even in prison, or so Manson thought. A woman named Afton Elaine Burton, 27, announced in 2013 she planned to marry Manson.

Rolling Stone magazine had all the deets on the marriage back in November, 2013. At least that's how things stood, until romance faded. So sad.

But back then the love affair between Manson and Burton, referred to as "Star" in Rolling Stone, was in full torrid bloom.  

Star and her apparently ex-fiance Charlie Manson in,
um, happier times last year.  

"Star is a (then) 25 year old brunette who's been loyally visiting Manson in jail since she was 19 years old and maintains several websites devoted to defending Manson and his pro-Earth environmental causes," Rolling Stone reported.

Too bad Manson wasn't also anti-murder, but I guess you can't have everything.

Rolling Stone goes on:

"In 2007, Star moved to Corcoran to be near Charlie, who she visits each Saturday and Sunday for up to five hours a day. 'Yeah, well, people can think I'm crazy,' she likes to say. 'But they don't know. This is what's right for me. This is what I was born for.'"

Well, she's right on one point. She did seem crazy. I guess at the time we would have congratulated Star for snagging the world's least available bachelor, and the one you'd least want to take home to meet Momma.

Burton, or Star, had some pretty strong opinions. She carved an "X" into her forehead to match Manson's lovely visage.  Star strongly resembles Susan Atkins, one of the members of Manson's "family" that carried out the horrible murders back in 1969.

Jealous lover that she was portraying, Burton, or "Star" hated Atkins. "That bitch was fucking crazy....She was a crazy fucking whore."

Alrighty, then.

But as I noted, sometimes blossoming love withers on the vine. And such is the case with Star and Charlie.

If the New York Post is right, Star's intention was not to marry out of love, but for money. Yeah, yeah, I know,  Manson doesn't have any money, given that he's been in prison for what, 45 years or so?

It turns out Star is an entrepreneur!

Her plan was to marry Manson, then when he died, she'd gain custody of his corpse. And it might not be too long before Manson dies. He is 80 years old. So Star maybe thought she was getting a quick return on her investment.

How would she make money, though?

Easy! After Manson dies, she and her pal Craig Hammond would put his corpse in a glass crypt. As the New York Post put it, "The pair figured their bizarre California version of Lenin's Tomb would draw huge crowds and make big money."

There's where I question the business plan.

It is true that California draws LOTS of tourists, what with Yosemite Park, Hollywood, the redwood forests, the beauty of San Francisco, the luscious wines of Napa Valley and Disneyland Resort (despite the measles epidemic.)

Maybe I'm closed minded, but I don't think tourists would exactly flock to see Charlie Manson's dead body. If I went to California as a tourist, that would be extra low on my bucket list. But what do I know?  I'm not the lead editor at Travel and Leisure, so my expertise in tourism might not be up to snuff.

The Post reported that a journalist told the paper that the cunning Manson found out about that Star was in it for money, not love, so Manson pulled the plug on the wedding plans.

Besides, Manson reportedly had another reason not to go along with Star's plan. He believes he is immortal, so Star would have no corpse to display. No corpse, no tourist attraction, right?

As you can see, this story isn't exactly a lovely Valentine. But now you can be cheerful.

Even if there's no romance in your life at the moment. Even if Mr. or Ms. Right hasn't entered the picture yet. Even if you're going to spend Valentine's Day alone watching re-runs of "Divorce Court," your life is still much more romantic and lovely than Manson or Star's.

You've got to count your blessings, right?

Latest Outrage: Extreme Right Wing THRILLED Humanitarian U.S. ISIS Hostage Died

The thoroughly odious Debbie Schlussel is
apparently about the only person on the planet
happy that American hostage Kayla Mueller died.  

For the past 24 hours, it seems all I heard on the news was what a great person Kayla Mueller was.

She was the 26-year-old American held hostage by ISIS, that horrible fundamentalist bunch of idiots who kill, behead, torture, and otherwise brutalize anyone they disagree with. Her death was confirmed yesterday. 

Mueller's death really does sound like a huge loss.

Everyone who came in contact with her talked about what a humanitarian she was, how she would help anybody in need, how she was a model for the rest of us to follow. How we need more people like Mueller.

Judging from the news, I'm totally inspired by Mueller. I hope everyone else is too.

But that's too much too hope, of course, because there are idiots in the world. Some people are not like Mueller. Far from it.

According to Talking Points Memo,  evil conservative blogger Debbie Schlussel is already dancing on Mueller's grave, thrilled that she is gone.

Here's the odious Schlussel's headline to her latest blog post:

"Kayla Mueller: Dead ISIS Hostage was Jew-Hating, Anti-Israel Bitch."

Why the cruelty? Apparently, Mueller's humanitarian work included helping some Palestinians. Mueller might have been sympathetic to Palestinians distrust and anger toward Israel.

In Schlussel's blotto world, that means she was basically a terrorist.

I don't know exactly what Mueller's viewpoint on Israel and Palestine was. Whatever Mueller's opinion, it's totally fine to either agree or disagree with it.

But if you disagree, you gleefully dance on her grave?   Debbie, darling, you are one sick, consumed by hate, scary ball of dark clouds, to say the least.

Oh, and I'm not done with our Debbie. Oh, no. She's got a world of hate up her sleeve.

Apparently Little Debbie is ecstatic that other American hostages died at the hands of ISIS:

"Ever single of of these hostages has been a leftist America-hater. They are anti-American 'journalists' there to tell us how 'moderate' and 'democratic' these beheaders and live-human burners are. Or are they anti-American 'aid workers' (that's like the Middle East version of Barack Obama's 'community organizer.)'"

Hmmm. Interesting. I follow the news pretty damn closely, and I have not heard of one instance of an American hostage, or anybody, left wing or right wing, tell us how "moderate" and "democratic" the terrorists from ISIS who behead and burn innocent people are.

All I ever hear is how ISIS must be stopped ASAP to stop them from committing more horrors.

But Little Debbie lives in her own parallel universe where everybody except her is bent on the destruction of Israel, and with it her sicko blog that is apparently the source of her income.

She tries to outdo everyone, so you really have to give Little Debbie an "A" for effort.

Back in 2011 she was kind of happy that a monster, Anders Behring Breivik killed 77 people in Norway, including many children and teens, because he was unhappy that Norway's ruling party, in his mind, was too multicultural and endangering Norway's identity.

Little Debbie apparently LOVES it when kids or young adults are killed by a mad murderer.

The teens that died were at a camp run by the party that was ruling Norway at the time. Pretty innocent. Very much as if the Republican or Democratic parties in the United States sponsored summer camps for kids here.

But, the campers in Norway were too leftist for her taste, so it was probably good that the kids died, in Little Debbie's sick mind. To her, the Norwegian teens were Hamas terrorists

"What goes around comes around. You support terrorists against innocent civilians in Israel, then you get attacked by terrorists who are upset with your support.

"I shed no tears for thes Hamasnik campers with a Scandinavian dialet. Perpetrators are not victims. Hamas collaborators don't get my pity. They never will."

I probably should't waste time on Little Debbie. But it's probably for the best we try to be aware of sick people like Little Debbie.

You always gotta watch out for the wackos.

Play Dolly Parton's "Jolene" At About 3/4 Its Normal Speed And You Get Awesome

Dolly Parton's "Jolene" seems to be awesome
played at any speed.  

Dolly Parton's classic 1973 record "Jolene" is awesome. Moody, desperate, passionate.

Now, get this. Somebody thought to play the 45 rpm record on an old turntable at 33 rpm. So you hear it at roughly 73.3 percent of its normal speed.

Hat tip to BoingBoing for clueing us into this

The first to the two videos below is "Jolene" by Dolly Parton, done at the speed and familiarity we're used to with the song.

The second video is the 33 rpm, 73.3 percent rate. It sounds like a guy, losing out in a same-sex relationship. But it's totally, TOTALLY awesome.

Listen to both of them. Absolutely worth it.

First: Normal Dolly Parton:


Now, the 33 rpm version of Parton singing "Jolene." Which do you think is better?