Come Back, Shane! ... Come Back! - The Sequel

Good Afternoon Garlic Fans;

Thought we'd pop in today to explain our AWOL status the past few weeks, or more.

We've been going through a lot for almost a year, first diagnosed with a Herniated Disc, the failed Injection Program, the drugs that didn't work, and now, being in the hands of a Neurologist, we have embarked on a Steroid Treatment Program. as said Neurologist believing that the re-diagnosed "Bulging Disc" is not the culprit, but rather inflamed nerves, a General Nueropathy, that is in play here.

The last week of February was our first, and that was followed by six-nights of no sleep... Zero sleep .. Zip ... Nada ...

While there were a whole host of side-effects that could have hit, Insomnia rolled out, like a 2x4 over the head (actually, as things played out, a 2x4 over the head would have been welcomed)

It took three days additional, squeezing out a few hours sleep per day, while waiting for the new script of Ativan to kick in, now tipping me in the other direction, of marathon sleeps, minimum of 8-10-hours, and those can easily slide into 12+hours, followed by leaving me with a feeling of tiredness the rest of the time while upright and awake.

We had to postpone the second Steroid Treatment last week, due to the sleep situation, and are slated for it tomorrow, and, will be going with only one-half gram, as opposed to the full gram previously dripped into my vein, so, hopefully, we can get back into the writing groove.

We'll know that soon enough.

So, in the case we stay on the sidelines, there's plenty of Archived Posts to read, or revisit, over along the left sidebar.

As well as bevy of links to other great blogs - go check some out.

An Update, and A Pointer ...

The Update

Well, it appears, for now, anyway, we won't be seeing any "Tweety for Senator" signs popping up.

We wrote yesterday, the rampaging rumors that Matthews was gearing up for a 2010 run, ostensibly, against Republican Arlen Specter, should Tweety survive the college-prank-overstuffed phone booth, that likely would have surfaced for the Penn. Dem Primary.

Word comes via Nate Silver, at FiveThirtyEight.com, that Matthews has "flatly denied our report indicating his active hiring for the Pennsylvania Senate seat currently held by Arlen Specter.

"It is absolutely not true," said Matthews, in a statement."

Guess he's not feeling that thrill up his leg ... Yet ...

For, if we want to make like the Big Dog Pundits, spending hours parsing his statement, we could point to the fact that he didn't actually say he wasn't running, just that he was denying the reports that he is hiring staff for such a run.

Stay tuned Tweety Fans ... I'm sure this isn't the last time we'll have "clear-cut signals" of Tweety shopping for soap boxes to deliver campaign speeches from ...

The Pointer

I am still revoltingly shocked at the death of that Wal-Mart employee yesterday.

It's almost incomprehensible that people would be that rabid, over, making a purchase, mind you, this wasn't some free giveaway of Soylent Green, or anything.

Just what was so compelling, that X-amount of people lost all of their social bearings, their humanity, over?

Items on sale at the Valley Stream Wal-Mart included a Samsung 50-inch Plasma HDTV for $798, a Bissel Compact Upright Vacuum for $28, a Samsung 10.2 megapixel digital camera for $69 and DVDs such as "The Incredible Hulk" for $9.

Cheap consumer items, more than likely, all manufactured overseas, by people in dreadful factories, being paid sub-livable wages, in jobs that, perhaps, once were based in this country, but farmed out under the flag of downsizing, and free trade quotas

The inventory listed above comes from an AP article, that offers a potential of righting this horrible wrong;

Sought: Wal-Mart shoppers who trampled NY worker

NEW YORK – Police were reviewing video from surveillance cameras in an attempt to identify who trampled to death a Wal-Mart worker after a crowd of post-Thanksgiving shoppers burst through the doors at a suburban store and knocked him down.

Criminal charges were possible, but identifying individual shoppers in Friday's video may prove difficult, said Detective Lt. Michael Fleming, a Nassau County police spokesman.

I truly hope that the Nassau County officials pursue this vigorously, as well as bringing criminal charges against Wal-Mart.

This should not be swept under the carpet, as "too difficult".

There is, apparently, video of the stampede, there's certainly numerous still photos (the photo gallery offered yesterday), and, presumably, X-amount of those animalistic shoppers used debit and credit cards, to make their blood-soaked purchases.

They actually complained about the store closing, due to the death of the employee;

"When they were saying they had to leave, that an employee got killed, people were yelling `I've been on line since yesterday morning,'" she said. "They kept shopping."

Larisa Alexandrovna, on her At-Largely blog, goes to the heart of it, in "Wal-Mart and the sick around it...";

Here is what happens when you get a bunch of American shopper's together without supervision - and of course, it would happen at Wal-Mart where everything is from China, polluted and tainted, and where employees are treated like slaves. When you willingly support a company with such little regard for human rights, worker rights, and so forth, the community that springs up around it will be just as contaminated. The worst is yet to come, however ...

Snip ...

My god, for shame! People around the world are dying of starvation and this polluted populace could not wait to buy electronics to the point of killing someone? For shame!

Snip ...

You read that right. Even after these people learned that their actions lead to the murder of a store clerk, they refused to leave the store and wanted to keep shopping. Oh, and as for Wal-Mart? Well, like I said, pollution feeds on pollution and sick feeds on sick. Sure they closed their doors long enough to get the dead-employee off their pretty floors. But then they re-opened shortly after.

What, Wal-Mart could not lose some money from one store where employees were traumatized, where an employee had been killed, where such a thing occurred? They could not take a day off to at least, if nothing else, to teach the community a lesson? No, because what can sick teach sick? For shame!

We give the last word to Will Bunch, over on Attytood;

There've been a lot of stories in the last week or two about what Great Depression II will look like, but I think trampling people to get bargains at a discount stores is pretty much it.

Hey Brother, can you spare a life?