July 2007 Archives

All the Young Pervs

By David W. Boles on July 31, 2007 7:42 AM | 9 Comments

Sexual harassment and felony sexual assault are serious crimes in society and the bent of most reasonable people is those found guilty of those infractions must pay a harsh penalty in the loss of face in the community and serious jail time and a lifetime branding for some as "registered sex offenders." What happens, however, when the social norms and the ongoing tradition of a sub-culture in a community accepts anti-social behavior and inappropriate touching as a normal interactional expectation?

Continue reading All the Young Pervs.

The Blistex Urinal Cake

By David W. Boles on July 30, 2007 7:07 AM | 23 Comments

The never-ending quest to find the best lip ointment led me to discover a delightful -- but silly-named -- balm called: "Blistex Lip Infusion Cherry Splash." The great thing about this Blistex sheer liquid balm is its giant ball-bearing applicator that glides over your lips like a whisper of butterfly kisses. You are not only soothed, but besotted as well! There is, however, an odd smell embedded in the Blistex lip infusion. It is advertised as "Cherry" but it has a more familiar tang to it than just plain fruit. There is something medicinal about the cherry aftertaste. It tends to leave a bad aroma in your mouth. Oh, if I could only place that old-time familiar smell...

Continue reading The Blistex Urinal Cake.

Subscribe Via Google FeedBurner

By David W. Boles on July 28, 2007 10:53 AM | 12 Comments

Now that WordPress.com no longer offers RSS feeds stats analysis, you can try to work around that deficit as a Blog owner by signing up for the just-purchased-by-Google FeedBurner Service. All the keen "Pro" FeedBurner features are now FREE! RSS feed stats can be valuable in telling you who is reading your blog and through what method. FeedBurner allows you to "re-burn" your default RSS feed.

Continue reading Subscribe Via Google FeedBurner.

Behavior Control Through Conditional Explosion

By David W. Boles on July 27, 2007 9:00 AM | 12 Comments | 1 TrackBack

Have you ever lived with, or worked for, an Emotional Terrorist? I call those people "Incredible Hulks" because their mantra for keeping peace in their lives is to terrorize your with this reminder: "Don't make me angry! You wouldn't like me when I'm angry!"

Continue reading Behavior Control Through Conditional Explosion.

A Shot Heard in Far Rockaway is Felt in Fulham

By David W. Boles on July 26, 2007 9:09 AM | 22 Comments | 3 TrackBacks

Two days ago a Haitian immigrant friend of mine -- who recently landed in Far Rockaway, Queens to find a better life and to chase the American Dream -- heard a fight in the street below his apartment. He then made the fatal mistake of the curious and went to his window to see what was happening. A stray 9mm bullet shot from the street blasted through his window, ricocheted off his collarbone, and punctured his heart. He was dead before his body slumped to the floor.

Continue reading A Shot Heard in Far Rockaway is Felt in Fulham.

Who Are You?

By David W. Boles on July 25, 2007 9:09 AM | 24 Comments | 1 TrackBack

Who Are You? That seems like a simple question to answer, but if you think about it, that inquiry is much more wide-ranging and deep than we first suspect. In America, we are taught at an early age that we are our jobs. We are defined by the work we do and to seek definition beyond the 9-5 workday is to not have value in society and your essence isn't allowed to linger long beyond the cubicle unless you are staked to a family.

Continue reading Who Are You?.

Just Say No to Customers: The Allergy Dealer

By David W. Boles on July 24, 2007 10:56 AM | 12 Comments

The other day I tried to buy my favorite allergy medicine -- Claritin-D 24 Hour -- and I was treated like a criminal drug dealer by my pharmacist as if I were detained on a Citizen's Arrest while waiting for incarceration and prosecution.

I wasn't handcuffed or fingerprinted, but I was detained and required to show my state-issued photo ID as well as a major credit card. I also had to sign my name and provide my address in a pharmacy book before they'd take my money and sell me my "over-the-counter behind-the-counter" allergy relief medicine. I was only allowed to purchase 10 pills.

Continue reading Just Say No to Customers: The Allergy Dealer.

Nixon and Bush: How Contempt and Dismay Form Unity in Dissent

By David W. Boles on July 23, 2007 9:05 AM | 18 Comments

Some political pundits are making connections between the tragic presidencies of Richard Milhous Nixon and George Walker Bush. Those political wunderkinds earn their livings as purveyors of analysis-for-profit and they are now finding similarities in the corruption of the Nixon and Bush administrations -- and they openly question aloud with building ferocity -- why Nixon was prosecuted and why Bush takes no leave and offers no sword upon which to impale himself for his own misdeeds.

Continue reading Nixon and Bush: How Contempt and Dismay Form Unity in Dissent.

Is Carrie Underwood a Jesus Invoker or a Vigilante?

By David W. Boles on July 22, 2007 11:30 AM | 9 Comments

Carrie Underwood is a big star and she exploded as one of the winners of American Idol. I find Ms. Underwood to be rather boring and without an invigorating personality, but the fact that her debut country album sold over 6 million copies says something about my taste in music or what country music fans find valuable in the promotional package that is Ms. Underwood's carefully crafted good-girl facade made of peaches-and-cream and lots of virtuosity in the name of God and His only son.

Continue reading Is Carrie Underwood a Jesus Invoker or a Vigilante?.

Roy Orbison is Singing in the Shower and Crying with k.d.

By David W. Boles on July 21, 2007 10:56 AM | 14 Comments

Twenty years ago Roy Orbison and k.d. lang -- making her first, big, mainstream media appearance at the tender age of 25 -- appeared on the Tonight Show together to sing a live duet of Roy's classic song, Crying.

Continue reading Roy Orbison is Singing in the Shower and Crying with k.d..

A Life Left to Live: How We Remember

By David W. Boles on July 20, 2007 8:37 AM | 24 Comments

I am always fascinated how we choose to remember things and events in our lives as well as how involuntary memories are pressed within us. Memory sustains us while emotion destroys us. Do we choose our memories or do they choose us?

Continue reading A Life Left to Live: How We Remember.

Why Do Unions Murder Their Young?

By David W. Boles on July 19, 2007 11:20 AM | 24 Comments | 2 TrackBacks

When we do not understand the cause in our human lives, we can look to the Animal Kingdom for clues, insight and an explanation of human nature in the driving, evolutionary, animalistic and ruthless behavior, that is evident in the preservation of the individual being in purpose and want.

Continue reading Why Do Unions Murder Their Young?.

Google Custom Search Business Edition Review

By David W. Boles on July 18, 2007 7:09 AM | 12 Comments | 1 TrackBack

Yesterday, The Google announced the availability of their Custom Search Business Edition and I immediately signed up all my websites for inclusion in that keen opportunity.

BEWARE: You can only add THREE domains per Custom Business Search! If you have lots of unified domains across more than three domain names, you will have to split up your domain searches -- and pay for them -- in groupings of three domains per search box. I added logos to all my Custom Business searches so my visitors will semiotically know which of my sites they are actually searching!

Continue reading Google Custom Search Business Edition Review.

The British Created an Indian Holocaust

By Kathakali Chatterjee on July 17, 2007 5:42 PM | 45 Comments

Kathakali Chatterjee wrote this article.

We all know Hitler caused the biggest genocide on earth; he eliminated approximately six million Jews and half a million Gypsies. The Holocaust is the most widely known and despised event in world history. I argue that during World War II in India, the undivided Bengal witnessed the greatest passive-Holocaust in the world and it was all courtesy of the British who were "administering" India at the time.

Continue reading The British Created an Indian Holocaust .

Urban Education Warfare

By David W. Boles on July 17, 2007 6:39 AM | 14 Comments | 1 TrackBack

When we consider education inequities, many of us quickly think of inner city public schools despair compared to peer private schools -- but few realize the real inequity in education is between rural schools and city schools and the main crevasse between "The Haves" and "The Have Nots" is technology caused by geography. The web.

Continue reading Urban Education Warfare.

A Million a Molestation: The Catholic Church in Ecstasy

By David W. Boles on July 16, 2007 6:25 AM | 29 Comments

Today, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, the largest in America, announced it will pay $660 million USD -- $1.3 million USD per child abuse claim -- to settle lawsuits filed by 508 victims. For four years the lawsuit has dragged along the court system and, interesting enough, just two days before Cardinal Rogery Mahony -- seen below -- would have been required to testify under oath in court trial, the settlement was announced.

Continue reading A Million a Molestation: The Catholic Church in Ecstasy.

Full Commenting Restored

By David W. Boles on July 15, 2007 10:18 AM | 7 Comments

We are pleased to announce today the full restoration of comments here on your favorite Urban Semiotic blog. We had a period when we needed to close comments to only registered users due to a great influx of Spam but we have been able to remedy that now and we have many more secure processes in place to fight that kind of junk from ever touching your eye again.

We're already seeing a return to form with new readers finding us again and placing comments and we welcome them as we welcome you back!

Bad Baby Signs

By David W. Boles on July 14, 2007 12:26 PM | 20 Comments

After the wild success of our book, Hand Jive: American Sign Language for Real Life, for Barnes and Noble Publishing, Janna and I have been searching for just the right project to continue our perpetuation of, and love for, ASL. We are still building our Online ASL Classroom and we thought about doing a traditional Baby Signs book, but we felt the market was saturated and the money and contracts we were offered were never quite right with any mainstream publisher. We love the idea of going against the mainstream meme and providing an antidote -- an antithesis, if you will -- to the Baby Signs Movement by creating Bad Baby Signs: Words No Infant Should Know!

Continue reading Bad Baby Signs.

The Wonder With Guts

By David W. Boles on July 13, 2007 4:19 PM | 8 Comments

We learned earlier today that Michael Chertoff is our das Homeland Gutless Wonder. Now we are inspired by Peng Shulin -- as our Wonder With Guts with new robotic legs -- as he proves to us what it really means to inspire people and a nation and all while filling the world with hope and belonging:

The Gutless Wonder

By David W. Boles on July 13, 2007 12:32 PM | 11 Comments | 2 TrackBacks

On Tuesday, in Chicago, das Homeland Security Chief of the

Americas, Michael Chertoff, claimed he had a "gut feeling" we were all in for another terrorist attack because "al-Qaeda likes to strike during the summer."

Chertoff's crude assertion -- a cruelty where instinct becomes reason, when wonderings are warnings and scaring has no rationale -- have now proven without a moment of pause for purpose that we have no sort of accountable national leadership when it comes to serving the true protection of das Homeland.

What Chertoff's off-the-cuff comment fails to realize -- but can never quite forget -- is how many of us have been sick to our stomachs for over five years.

What took him so long to share our sickness? Are there others in the current administration who are similarly ill but we don't yet know about them?

Contrails into Chemtrails: Are We Being Poisoned From the Sky?

By David W. Boles on July 11, 2007 10:17 AM | 21 Comments | 1 TrackBack

As we cock our heads skyward to wonder at the jets above us and the beautiful plumes of white they leave behind as godly evidence of their whirlwind trip into the heavens, there are some scientists who believe we are being slowly poisoned by those white plumes -- those contrails -- by chemicals that are being seeded into the sky in those beautiful, twisting, tufts of man-made trailing clouds.

Continue reading Contrails into Chemtrails: Are We Being Poisoned From the Sky?.

Graves for the Living; Lives for the Dead

By David W. Boles on July 10, 2007 9:59 AM | 19 Comments | 2 TrackBacks

Have you met a person who has given up on life and is just marking time until their death? They are joyless, without light and come across as bumps of flesh and bone. I'm not talking about the sick or the elderly. I'm talking about the ordinary person who just walks through life with no hope except that it will all end soon.

Continue reading Graves for the Living; Lives for the Dead.

Global Warming and Amarnath

By Kathakali Chatterjee on July 9, 2007 6:07 PM | 12 Comments

Kathakali Chatterjee wrote this article.

Amarnath temple is one of the most popular pilgrimage destinations in India and also incredibly picturesque. The beauty is breathtaking but the 5 days journey of approximately 40 miles back and forth is extremely strenuous.

Continue reading Global Warming and Amarnath.

Salome in Antiquity: To Cure To Kill Today

By David W. Boles on July 9, 2007 6:38 AM | 31 Comments | 2 TrackBacks

We are fast moving into the world of quick curing so we may better kill and that is a strange disconnect in a society where we are required to claim our care for each other. Like Salome in antiquity -- who was rewarded for her dance with the granting of any wish from King Herod -- chose a false cure for a certain death and a killing from her own curse. John the Baptist never saw his beheading coming until he appeared on a silver platter.

Continue reading Salome in Antiquity: To Cure To Kill Today.

iLove for the iPhone

By David W. Boles on July 6, 2007 7:52 AM | 43 Comments

A week ago iPhone iMania swept the Free World. Yesterday my iPhone arrived from Shenzhen, China and my iLove was born. I've been reading a lot of iPhone coverage over the last week waiting for my slice of the American Dream to arrive, and I am still astonished by the online complaining and crybabyism in the official Apple iPhone Discussion Group and how that environment is so disconnected from the reality of the device.

Continue reading iLove for the iPhone.

Of Southern Democrat Men and their Nancy Boy Haircuts

By David W. Boles on July 5, 2007 6:53 AM | 38 Comments

What is about Southern Democrat men and their Nancy Boy Haircuts? We are quite familiar with Bill Clinton's $200.00 USD haircut on an airport tarmac -- it has become a legend unto itself as part of a Harvard University lecture note on grammar -- but the Nanciest Boy of them all is John Edward and his two $400.00 USD coiffings and his frosting by his YouTube follicle futzing.

Continue reading Of Southern Democrat Men and their Nancy Boy Haircuts.

Is Freedom Wrung from Five and Fourteen?

By David W. Boles on July 4, 2007 9:38 AM | 11 Comments

Amendment 5 - Trial and Punishment, Compensation for Takings
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Continue reading Is Freedom Wrung from Five and Fourteen?.

Habeas Corpus: Rescuing the Original Writ

By David W. Boles on July 3, 2007 7:26 AM | No Comments

We know bad news is released on Friday and last Friday was no exception when the Supreme Court made history by reversing its previous decision on April 2 -- and will now hear the case of Guantanamo detainees who argue they are being illegally held as "enemy combatants" without access to due process in the American federal court system. That Supreme Court reversal -- authentic and historic in itself -- is Bad News for the Bush administration even as Hamdan v. Rumsfeld rumbles in the distant hearts of many.

Continue reading Habeas Corpus: Rescuing the Original Writ.

Summer of Terror: London and Glasgow

By David W. Boles on July 2, 2007 6:45 AM | 11 Comments

The terror bombing threats over the weekend in London and Glasgow remind us how tenuous our lives are in the new mixed world of internationalism and religious fanaticism. Are we, as some news media sites claim, in for a Summer of Terror?

Continue reading Summer of Terror: London and Glasgow.

« June 2007 | Main Index | Archives | August 2007 »

Kathakali Chatterjee: It depends David! What if they are just incapable to read more
David W. Boles: I guess you need to be mindless to just accumulate read more
Kathakali Chatterjee: That's a lot of hard work David! Most people want read more
David W. Boles: What is wrong with thinking hard, Katha? Why is that read more
Kathakali Chatterjee: Heh! Thanks David! I agree. Majority do not want to read more
David W. Boles: If you'd asked me two days ago, Katha, I would've read more
David W. Boles: I am remembering your Cityscape likes, Katha! SMILE! A true read more
Kathakali Chatterjee: One question about the image David, it seems very familiar...from read more
Kathakali Chatterjee: Hi David! Sydney did look better than Nashville - for read more
David W. Boles: Hi Nicola! I love your Mona Lisa story. I'm right read more

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