Don Roach: Head-Scratchers From The Past Week

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Don Roach, GoLocalProv MINDSETTER™

 

Yes, there’s plenty of bad news going on in the world. Turn on your TV and you’ll see that. Today though, I’d like to give us a little respite from the usually dreary, mostly gloomy, and always too self-indulgent political news cycle. Let’s talk about a few things I noticed this week that left me scratching my head and in some cases laughing hysterically.

View Larger +

Don’t worry – clears throat - next week we’ll get back to the serious problems facing our community. Most likely, I’ll share my interview with Commissioner Gist. Still, it’s not like high unemployment rates, high property taxes, educational squabbles, international crises, and everything else aren’t going to be there for us next week (barring, of course, an apocalyptic meteor strike. I’m not worried though, are you?).

Let me stop my rambling and get to the first item:

GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST

Is Miss America American?

Newsflash there are Americans who look like they could be from China, India, England, Brazil, Morocco, Kenya, Haiti, Russia, Albania, and just about every other single country in the world. It may sound crazy but apparently, there’s a large swath of America that’s not aware of this fact.

A young woman from New York by the name of, Nina Davuluri, won the Miss America pageant last week. Unfortunately, she was subjected to a number of nasty tweets after her victory. One liners like “How the [expletive] does a foreigner win miss America? She is a Arab! #idiots” and “Miss New York is an Indian.. With all do respect, this is America” Twitter was in an uproar over a woman born in American being named……………………………………Miss America.

Anyone wanting to claim racism still doesn’t exist just needs to go on Twitter. Don’t look for racism, racism will find you.

Crazy stuff?

What does the fox say?

If you haven’t caught onto this craze, well, you will after reading this section of today’s column.

The picture is all you need to know. But if you haven’t heard The Fox by the group Ylvis, well you need to click on this link and check it out.

Why this is head-scratcher is not because of the cheesy tunes or the fact that Ylvis intentionally tried to make a music video that was bad – no, it’s that any one of us can make a music video and become an instant sensation these days! You just need a catchy chorus like:

Wa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pow!

Wa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pow!

Wa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pow!

What the fox say?

Seriously, click on the link and be inspired!

Bono impersonates former President Clinton?

I’m a child of the 80s so I’m a U2 fan like many of you, but Bono impersonating Bill Clinton? That’s a head-scratcher if there ever was one, but it happened this week and Bono might have a career in impersonations if this rock star thing doesn’t work out. The Clinton Global Initiative – a body dedicated to tackling “the world's most pressing challenges” such as Aids and 3rd world education, was holding a panel that included both Bono and the former President, the President was late. Bono took the opportunity to mimic the President as if he were there and discussed a number of initiatives the President had been working on.

You’d think it wouldn’t work, but Bono pulled it off, sounding very much like the President. Who knew he could do more than belt out classics like “It’s a Beautiful Day” and “Vertigo”?

Don’t drink the water! Err…The water is fine? Huh

The year: 2013

The place: Cranston, RI and parts of South County

The situation: potentially contaminated water.

The year again for effect: 2013 – the World Wide Web, Cellular Phones, iPads, and these crazy things called computers are everywhere.

Monday morning, my wife told me – in near hysterics - not to use tap water when I brushed my teeth. I should note, that I’m not one of these new age folks who only drinks spring water. I’m old school. If tap was good enough in 1985, why the heck isn’t good enough in 2013?! Anyway, she told me there was an advisory to boil the water before using it. I love my tap water, but I’m not boiling 6 ounces of water and then cooling it to brush my teeth. Spring water it is because old school only goes so far.

But later that day we were informed, only Kent County Water Authority customers were affected by the advisory and some even suggested that the advisory that did go out went out too late. Again, it’s 2013 and don’t you think that our governmental agencies would be able to handle this a bit better?

As a side note, I think I could get used to this spring water tooth brushing experience.

Government Shutdown Looms…Again

Sorry, couldn’t stay completely away from our “leaders”  – and I use that term loosely  - in Washington as yet another government shutdown “looms”. You know if the government gave every American (and that includes the recent Miss America winner twitter folks) a nickel every time we had a government shutdown crisis, maybe we would have less government shutdown crises.

All these scares tell me how dysfunctional our Washington political scene is. Probably not news to anyone, and I’ve complained about this before, but I’m done complaining about it.

Even so, I still can’t understand why our two parties can’t come together to avert economic disaster? It’s like they’re on a sinking ship and fighting over the caviar. Come on, people.

And those are the five head-scratchers this week. See you next week.

Don can be reached at [email protected]. Don also joined twitter recently. He has no idea how to use it well but you can follow him @donroach34.

 

Related Articles

 

Enjoy this post? Share it with others.

 
 

Sign Up for the Daily Eblast

I want to follow on Twitter

I want to Like on Facebook