Bouncing Hedgehog

Archive for June, 2009

In one of my earlier posts I mentioned the absurdity of the cops in West Virginia announcing in the media that they were going to be doing drunk driver stops in a certain area at a certain time. Very specific stuff really and you’d have to be pissed as a rat to forget and drive through that area. This announcement was made both in the papers and on the TV.

Well… here we go again.

I was in Clendenin today and as I was entering a tobacco store two cops were leaving. Not too much out of the ordinary there except that… Read the rest of this entry »

I was absolutely gobsmacked to read that medical bills are the leading cause of bankruptcy in the US. I know of no other country where this is the case.

The figures are really quite staggering. An estimated 1,500,000 Americans will declare bankruptcy this year. Now many people would put that down to Americans chasing the myth of the “American Dream” and buying crap that they really don’t need and certainly can’t afford. A new study (to be published in the August issue of The American Journal of Medicine) however, suggests that 60% of those declaring bankruptcy this year will do so because of medical bills. Read the rest of this entry »

I see that Gov. David Paterson has called for a thorough investigation but has stopped short of saying that race was a factor. Ok. I will accept that pending the investigation.

He was however, quoted as adding that the shooting was not deliberate.

Not deliberate? How does that work then? Read the rest of this entry »

Further to my earlier post about gas prices and how a wonderfully accurate survey said that pump prices were expected to peak this summer at $2.55 I think it was.

$2.55? I wish!

Now of course I am sure there’s absolutely no price fixing whatsoever going on in my area, but it really does seem odd to me that every single gas station (many different vendors) in my area have got gas at $2.75 today. So I guess the survey wasn’t worth the paper it was written on as summer is barely here and our prices are already 20 cents higher than the expected peak. Read the rest of this entry »

I was interested to see that Microsoft’s new Bing search engine has come in for a bit of a hammering as it allows easy preview access to porn videos.

I know Microsoft is a favorite whipping boy for many, but why are they being singled out? Porn is readily available from any search engine and a 6 year old could figure out how to access it. A simple 2 clicks of the mouse is all it takes. Read the rest of this entry »

I am sick to death of Americans bleating that their health system is the best in the world and that universal health care in general (and the UK system in particular) is the road to ruin. At least that’s the popular conservative right-wing bleat.

It is, is it? Right, first a short story.

My mother is 75 and her partner is in his nineties and they both live in the UK. Recently he fell and broke his arm. Because of his age and the fact that he’s on heart medication an operation to set the arm was rejected and so he had to spend time just letting it mend having had it set in plaster. Read the rest of this entry »

I am always interested to see how people find my blog and up until now the number one search term has been “sharking.” Sharking for those of you who don’t know is all about running up to a girl and yanking her knickers down in public whilst somebody else films the whole thing. The result is then posted on the Internet.

Now being a man of the world I can accept that sex (and sex related topics) are the main searches on any search engine. But the latest search term to feature highly in my “hits” really makes me wonder. Read the rest of this entry »

A guy walks into a bar in Arkansas and orders a white wine.

All the hillbillies sitting around the bar look up, expecting to see some pitiful Yankee from the north.

The bartender says, “You ain’t from around here, are ya?”

The guy says, “No, I’m from Canada.”

The bartender says, “What do you do in Canada?” Read the rest of this entry »