Archive for March 2016
I was seriously thinking about writing a political rant today but after giving it a little thought (10 seconds) I decided against it. While many agree that the political campaigns this year are more interesting than usual I just don’t care enough to write about them.
With that anti-political statement completed I changed over to topics that have always interested me more than politics . . . . condoms and pregnancies. I’ve compiled some stats from people like Planned Parenthood and others in my attempt to get at some truth. Lets start with a little condom trivia.
Percent of teenagers who claim to use condoms. – 60 %
Total number of condoms sold in the U.S. each year. – 450,000,000
Percent of couples who use a condom consistently and regularly that get pregnant. – 2 %
Percent of teen girls who used a condom the first time they had sex. – 68 %
Percent of teen males who used a condom the first time they had sex. – 82 %
Condom use by adolescent men during their past 10 vaginal intercourse events. – 79.1 %
Condom use by adolescent women during their past 10 vaginal intercourse events. – 58.1 %
Sexually active teens who reported using a condom along with birth control the last time they had sex. – 20 %
Percent of sexually active women with a partner who used a condom. – 93 %
Average cost of a single condom – $0.45
Percent of high school students who are taught how to correctly use a condom in their health class. – 39 %
It’s fairly obvious that there is a lot of sex going on and condom use is much higher than I thought. Next of the agenda is the percentage of condoms sold by Company.
Condom Brand Market Share
Percent
Trojan
69 %
Durex
15 %
Others
16 %
Trojans annual advertising budget – $33,600,000
Condom use has increased over the years yet people still say they don’t like to use them. Here’s the long and short (no pun intended) of condom use.
Total Number of U.S. Women in their childbearing years. – 62 million
Percent of women who get pregnant while on the pill. – 6 %
Percent of people who rely on male condoms that do not get pregnant. – 85 %
Total percent of U.S. births that are from mothers younger than 19. – 10%
Total Number of U.S. women in childbearing years that use some form of contraception. – 62%
Among those who don’t use contraception, 31% are pregnant, trying to get pregnant, postpartum, sterile or not sexually active. The other 7% take their chances. Among those using contraceptives, here’s what they use:
Contraceptive
Percent Used
The Pill
28%
Sterilization
27.1%
Condom
16.1%
Vasectomy
9.9%
IUD
5.5%
There you have it. Everything you ever wanted to know about condoms and their use but were afraid to ask. Overall people don’t like using condoms but the alternatives are much too scary to deal with or even think about.
So all of you sexual active animals out there, keep slipping them on and being sexually responsible and smart. One small personal opinion from me on female condoms. They are ridiculous. I wrestled with them enough times to know I’d sooner spend my valuable pre-entry time putting on a Ziploc bag. What a nightmare. By the time you get it properly placed the lust has dissipated, the erection is gone, and you’ve missed five minutes of the first quarter.
BUY CONDOM STOCKS, YOU MAY GET LUCKY AND MAKE MONEY TOO.
It’s 4am and my insomnia has me sitting in a comfortable chair, drinking a hot coffee, and reading one of my favorite authors, John Sanford, and enjoying his finest character, Lucas Davenport. The Prey series is 25 novels that are as well written as any I’ve ever read. If you like murder mysteries you should pick up some of these and just sit back and enjoy.
For the first time I finally have the complete series on my Kindle and I’m reading them in the order they were written. It’s now 730am and I just finished "Certain Prey", book number 10 in the series. I’m still not sleepy but I think it might be the four cups of coffee I’ve already had today. I’ll read one chapter of the next book “Easy Prey” and then I’ll get my day started.
The weather forecast is for warmer than usual temps with some sunshine thrown in for good measure. I’ll be outside in the garden shortly to begin the winter cleanup of my garden. I need to repair some minor damage to the fence which I caused last Fall and then a remodel of the frames surrounding the rhubarb patch.
‘Remove the old frame.’
‘Discard the old wood.’
I made my first Lowe’s trip for 2016 yesterday to pickup some pressure treated lumber. This was the first of many more trips I’m anticipating. I ‘ll take a few photos today just to begin the documentation of the garden for this year. I keep good records of all of my mistakes and failures so I never repeat them again accidently.
‘Replace with the new lumber.’
It’s now 900am and my main chore has been completed. I tore out the old nasty lumber, expanded the rhubarb area , and rebuilt it with new PT lumber. The job was much easier than expected because I happily discovered that the ground had thawed during the last few weeks of warmer weather. Hooray for me.
I know I’m jumping the gun a little with this garden work but it just feels so good to breath some fresh air and to get my hands a little dirty.
SPAM . . . I’m not sure who coined that term for unwanted emails but it truly is an insult to such a delicious meat. As we all know you can’t spend much time on the Net without finding yourself inundated with SPAM. I always thought I was careful about filling out forms or taking stupid surveys, a sure way to get your name out to the spammers. I’ve come to find out that I failed miserably.
Six months ago in a moment of boredom I was sitting at my computer looking for something to do. Absentmindedly I inquired of a well known mortgage company about some of the new government programs. To say the least that was a huge mistake that I’ve been paying for ever since. Over the last six months I’ve had to unsubscribe from an endless number of websites for every product currently known to man.
I spend a few minutes of each day unsubscribing the current batch of SPAM with assurances that in a week I’ll have been eliminated from their call lists. The torrent of sites is finally down to less than two or three a day but overall it has totaled more than four hundred in the last six months.
I’ve tried to backtrack many of them to a source I could contact and threaten to no avail. It’s been a frustrating effort with no one to take my frustration out on. I’ve known a lot of people over the years but I’ve never met anyone who would admit to being a spammer. People will admit to being drug dealers before admitting to spamming. At least the drug dealer is selling a product and not simply harassing and endlessly annoying hundreds of thousands of people.
‘Just so you know this is the good SPAM.’
I’ll keep trying to discover one person I can take out my anger on. I could easily be persuaded to violence against anyone who has the balls to stand in front of me and admit to spamming. It would be worth a few days in the local county jail for assaulting that someone and I suspect there isn’t a jury anywhere that would convict me. Everyone hates spammers and that might be the reason those bastards keep themselves so well hidden.
As they used to say on Hill Street Blues
"Be careful out there."
Here we are, it’s the first week of March and everyone in Maine is in a tizzy about an early Spring. I’ve been fooled too many times by that little rodent from Punxatawney, PA. Living in Maine has given me a new respect for good old Mother Nature. She can make a fool of us very easily it seems. So I thought I’d come up with a few telltale signals to help me make my own decision. How to tell if an early Spring will be coming to Maine. Here they are.
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The morning doves arrived this week, a few months ahead of schedule. Maybe they know something I don’t but then again they’re just stupid birds.
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The daffodils are an inch high and going strong even though the night temperatures have remained in the mid-twenties.
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I actually observed a number of groundhog loving idiots wearing shorts, T-shirts, and flip flops in the last few weeks. Morons!
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I’ve also spotted large numbers of maple syrup collection pots going onto maple trees all over the area.
‘Old-school equipment.’
‘New high-tech equipment.’
‘End Result’
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Snowmobiles throughout the area have been parked in driveways with “For Sale” signs attached. Always a telling sign.
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The squirrels are out in large numbers already as reflected by the increased number of road kills I’ve been observing.
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While road kill numbers for squirrels are up so are the number of bicyclists on the roads. Riding through piles of dirty snow must give them some kind of a perverse thrill.
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Of course the crazy and obsessive joggers and power walkers seem to be everywhere all of a sudden. It’s a real chore trying to drive on the roads filled with joggers, walkers, bicycles, squirrels, and the slowly melting piles of dirty snow.
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And finally now that the parka’s, gloves, scarfs, and sweaters are coming off I can once again begin my girl watching campaign for 2016. For most of the winter it’s hard to tell who are the men and who are the women.
I suppose I should mention that when I woke up this morning I walked over to the window to check things out. To my chagrin we had just enough of a snowfall during the night to whiten everything. This is Spring? I think not.
Lesson #1 – Ignore weather forecasts made by groundhogs who don’t live in the state of Maine.
C’MON SPRING
Is it just me or do blondes get a bum rap (no pun intended) in this country. I’ve known my fair share of blondes over the years and I don’t feel good about making general assumptions on their intelligence or lack thereof. It still amazes me just how much effort is put forth by our society to create bad jokes and ridiculous stories about the proverbial “dumb blondes”.
I will admit I’ve laughed long and hard (no pun intended) about certain blondes and repeated some really hilarious jokes along the way. I’ll continue to do that today because I’m just a guy, standing in front of you, repeating a joke about a cute but naïve blonde girl. That was my lame attempt to co-op a Julia Robert’s quote from Notting Hill. It apparently didn’t work but what follows will.
Joke #1
A blonde went into a world wide message center to send a message to her mother overseas. When the man told her it would cost $300 she exclaimed, "I don’t have that kind of money but I’d do ANYTHING to get a message to my mother in Poland!"
The man arched an eyebrow. "Anything?"
"Yes, anything" the blonde promised.
With that, the man said, "Follow me" He walked into the next room and ordered, "Come in and close the door" She did.
He then said, "Get on your knees" She did.
Then he said, "Take down my zipper" She did.
He said, "Go ahead…take it out" She took it out and grabbed hold of it with both hands. The man closed his eyes and whispered, "Well… go ahead!"
The blonde slowly brought her lips closer, and while holding it close to her lips she said loudly "HELLO…..MOM???
* * *
Now here’s two interesting but true facts about our blonde friends.
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In the urban west, one out of three women has blonde hair; only one in twenty is a natural blond.
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Sixty-two of the world’s richest men are married to brunettes, twenty-two to blondes, sixteen to “raven haired” women, and none to a redhead.
* * *
Joke #2
One day while on patrol, a police officer pulled over a car for speeding. He went up to the car and asked the driver to roll down her window. The first thing he noticed, besides the nice red sports car, was how hot the drop-dead gorgeous blonde driver was.
"I’ve pulled you over for speeding, Ma’am…. could I see your driver’s license…?" "What’s a license???" replied the blonde, instantly giving away the fact that she was as dumb as a stump.
"It’s usually in your wallet," replied the officer.
After fumbling for a few minutes, the driver managed to find it "Now may I see your registration?" asked the cop."Registration….. what’s that?" asked the blonde.
"It’s usually in your glove compartment," said the cop impatiently. After some more fumbling, she found the registration. "I’ll be back in a minute," said the cop and walked back to his car.
The officer phoned into the dispatch to run a check on the woman’s license and registration. After a few moments, the dispatcher came back; "Ummm…. is this woman driving a red sports car?"
"Yes," replied the officer.
"Is she a drop dead gorgeous blonde?" asked the dispatcher. "Uh… yes" replied the cop.
"Here’s what you do," said the dispatcher. "Give her the stuff back, and drop your pants.""WHAT!!? I can’t do that. It’s….. inappropriate," exclaimed the cop.
"Trust me….. just do it," said the dispatcher.So the cop goes back to the car, gives back the license and registration and drops his pants, just as the dispatcher said.
The blonde looks down and sighs, "Oh no … not ANOTHER breathalyzer."
* * *
Joke #3
A guy spent the day walking around town looking for a job. He finally walked into an adult store. "Do you have any work for me?" he asked the owner.
The owner smiled and responded, "You come as if you have been sent from heaven. I just opened another store and I’m looking for someone to mind this store for me."
"When do I start?" the guy asked.
"Now. I’m leaving for the other store shortly." The owner explained all the ins and outs and then left.
First to enter the store was a Caucasian woman. She walked around and stopped at the dildo rack. "How much for the white dildo?"
"Forty dollars," he said.
"How much for the black dildo?"
"Forty dollars."
"Give me the . . . uh, black one. I’ve never had a black one before." She paid and left.
Soon an African-American woman walked in. She too walked around and stopped at the dildo rack. "How much for the black dildo?" she asked.
"Forty dollars."
"How much for the white dildo?"
"Forty dollars."
After thinking a moment, the woman said, "Give me the . . . uh, white one. I’ve never had a white one before." She paid and left.
Then a blonde woman walked in. She walked around and stopped at the dildo rack. "How much for the white dildo?" she asked.
"Forty dollars."
"How much for the black dildo?"
"Forty dollars."
"And how much for the checkered one on your counter there?"
"Two hundred dollars."
"Give me . . . uh, the checkered one. I’ve never had a checkered one before." She paid and left.
Closing time came around and the owner returned. "How was your first day?"
"Great!" the guy responded. "I sold a white and a black dildo for forty bucks each, and I sold your thermos for two hundred."
* * *
I’ll put an end to this post with a few one liners you might appreciate. They are a bit off color but I know that’s what you’ve really been waiting for anyway. These jokes are a special dedication to the blondes living in the state of Ohio. I could explain further but I’ve already said too much. My life could already be in danger because they’re a vicious and horny bunch. Just saying!
Q: How do you know if a blonde has been on your computer?
A: There is lipstick on the joystick.
Q. What’s a blonde’s favorite nursery rhyme?
A. Humpme Dumpme.
Q. What’s the difference between a blonde and the Suez/Panama Canal?
A. One’s a busy ditch.
As a public service you should all be aware that no blondes were injured during the writing of this post.
Being a history buff has been a lifelong pleasure for me. I’ve always believed that individuals and governments have much to learn from their past mistakes and by studying those mistakes can improve their future circumstances. With that in mind I thought I’d step back in time to review and pass on to all of you a few interesting factoids on notable occurrences for March 1.
Some of you may find these items interesting and others not so much. My better-half will more often than not just roll her eyes and then turn up the volume of the music she’s listening to when I start spouting historical facts. I guess I can’t please everyone all of the time but I’ll keep trying. Here we go.
This Day In History – March 1st
1954 U.S.A. – US tests hydrogen bomb in the Pacific archipelago of Bikini, part of the Marshall Islands.
1961 U.S.A. – President John F. Kennedy establishes the Peace Corps as a new agency within the Department of State.
1932 U.S.A. – The Lindbergh baby is kidnapped when stolen from his crib at the family estate in Hopewell, New Jersey,
1936 U.S.A. – The Hoover Dam ( Boulder Dam ) is completed and turned over to the U.S. government. It supplies hydroelectricity, irrigation and fresh water to homes in California and Nevada.
1941 U.S.A. – Nashville, Tennessee becomes the home of the very first FM radio station in the country. While the FM band had less static and more range, it didn’t become popular until the early 1960s.
1954 U.S.A. – Five U.S. congressmen were shot and injured during a House session today when Puerto Rican spectators who yelled "Free Puerto Rico" fired shots into the United States Capitol building.
1962 U.S.A. – On this day, 95 people were killed in a plane crash that occurred along the South shore of Long Island, New York. The irony of it all is that this plane crash happened after the end of a long stretch of bad weather (rain and fog) that had continued for about a week-on a clear day.
1966 Soviet Union – An unmanned Soviet probe called Venera 3 crashes on Venus in the pursuit of the conquest of space.
1971 U.S.A. – The radical left organization Weather Underground bombs the United States Capitol on March 1, 1971. A bomb was placed in the senate wing causing $300,000 damage and no injuries.
1972 Syria - This was one of the significant days of the attack by Israel against the Arabs. The Israeli army launched attacks against Arab Guerrilla camps that operated in southern Syria at this time. Fighting back and forth continued on at different times after this until the present day.
1973 Sudan – The Palestinian terrorist group Black September storm the Saudi Arabian embassy in the Sudanese capital Khartoum, taking diplomats hostage. ( This was the same terrorist organization that murdered nine Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics).
1978 Switzerland - The coffin of Charlie Chaplin was stolen from a small, unguarded village cemetery in Switzerland .
1997 U.S.A. – Massive flooding occurred throughout the state of Kentucky with thousands left homeless and more than 50 people dead.
2002 U.S.A – The possibility of water still existing on Mars was made known. According to NASA, a spacecraft called Odyssey had detected it on this planet.
2005 U.S.A. – Dennis Rader, accused of leading a double life as the BTK ( Bind, Torture and Kill, ) serial killer, was charged in Wichita, Kan., with 10 counts of first-degree murder between 1974 and 1991.. (Rader later pleaded guilty and received multiple life sentences.)
2007 U.S.A. – A series of 55 Tornadoes strike the southern United States that began in Kansas on February 28th, 2007 and included Alabama and Georgia, the tornadoes leave 20 dead with the worst effected area being Enterprise, Alabama where a section of the Enterprise High School was destroyed during the middle of the school day killing 8 and injuring many more.
2008 Afghanistan - Prince Harry who was sent secretly to Afghanistan with his regiment in December at his request is forced to return to Britain following the American website, The Drudge Report, making his deployment public.
2008 United States – People have been watching the naming of the warship that was built from parts of the steel salvaged from the World Trade Center. The families of the 9/11 victims were among the thousands of spectators at the naming of the U.S.S. New York, in Avondale, Louisiana. The bow contains 7.5 tons of steel taken from Ground Zero. It bears a shield with two bars to symbolize the towers, and a banner with the slogan “Never Forget”. The New York is an amphibious landing ship with a crew of 360, and complement of 700 marines.
‘Never Forget’
2012 United States – Thursday, 1st March, 2012 : The suspected gunman, TJ Lane, in a deadly school shooting will face charges as a juvenile in the US state of Ohio. Lane was suspected of killing three students and wounding two at Chardon High School.
There’s your history lesson for today. Whoever said that March was a slow winter month was badly mistaken. Just ask Julius Caesar.
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