Unlike the Harry Potter books, this Series of Unfortuante Events has no end in sight. Lemony Snicket has published 11 unhappy stories already.
February, 2005:
Does CA Lotto Still Benefit the Schools?
I never hear Lotto commercials end with that tag “Help Our Schools” or whatever. And lately schools, parents and teachers are complaining about being underfunded, overcrowded,etc. And people are accusing the state of cutting funding in education. So I assumed that the Lotto was not helping anymore.
I did a little investigating.
Turns out the Lotto generates over a billion bucks for schools per year.
And they give the schools unclaimed prizes ($537 million so far).
And (while I’m at it), Arnold’s 2005-2006 budget gives schools a 7.1 percent increase or $2.2 billion more than the current budget. But, it’s less than was expected, which means now both sides get to interpret this to mean that they are right.
So, either the complainers are just a bunch of money-hungry greedy bastards, or a billion Lotto dollars only out of context sounds like a lot. Which means we need to get out there and encourage more people to develop gambling problems. Keep them from pouring their hard-earned money into Lost Wages (a non-California entity, by the way) and divert that wasteful pasttime toward our needy children. I think pandering to the public’s greed will work a lot faster than getting a bunch of blowhards to agree on the state budget. But that’s just me.
Where Are They Now?
So just yesterday, I was asking someone “I wonder what happened to Demi and Ashton.” I mean, are they still together or was it all a publicity stunt to promote their movies?
And then today young Mr. Cutcher appears on Oprah looking every bit of his 19 years (or is he 20 now?) talking about his successful relationship with his mom- I mean Demi. And how her kids call him M.O.D. (or maybe it was Mod - I didn’t have my headphones on at the gym), but it stands for My Other Dad. Isn’t that precious?
Lame Book Review: The Wife
You know, when I check submission guidleines for various publications, many of them say “Please no stories where the character is a writer.” Yet, half the books I read involve at least one author in the story. Regardless of the rules, I enjoyed this one by Meg Wolitzer. Halfway through when I wasn’t sure if there was a plot, I had my doubts, but the end was rather satisfying.
Lame Book Review: White Teeth
Is it me, or do many books suddenly have Indian or other middle-eastern characters all over the place? Like the House of Sand and Fog, Bee Season, anything by Jhumpa Lahiri, etc. I see them in a lot of literary magazines’ short stories too. It’s intimidating, I don’t know a damn thing about any other culture than my own boring whitebread middle-of-the-road existence. Here’s an excerpt of my Great American Novel:
“…and then we went to Old Navy for some pants…”
