There has always been something of a mystique associated with psychics. The notion is that such people possess a special ‘gift’ that enables them to see the future. It's also important that not everyone should have the ‘gift’ because then being psychic wouldn't be particularly special or of any value whatsoever. Although there are some books out there that promise to increase your psychic abilities, such as “Being Psychic for Dummies,” clearly this can't work or psychics would be losing their jobs left, right and center.
But according to the Psychic Network, becoming a psychic takes almost no time and little training. The New York Times reports that their welfare-to-work program has been used by the Network to put operators onto their phonelines. The Human Resources Administration, HRA, who implement the welfare-to-work program received copy from the Psychics giving details of the type of employee they were seeking.
Surprisingly enough, “being psychic” was not a prerequisite. According to the Network, employees would be given training on how to read Tarot cards and make predictions about the future! This lead to over 25 women being helped into employment with the Psychic Network.
As home-based “telephone psychics,” new employees earned around $10 per hour by answering $4.99 per minute phone calls. Surely even a non-psychic could see that someone was going to make a lot more than $10 an hour with this deal? At this rate, after funneling $10 to the psychic, another $290 goes to the Network.
The HRA has now decided that it will no longer include the Psychic Network in its list of prospective employers. Maybe this came as no surprise to the Network. Or then again, maybe it did.
Beam me up, Mr. Scott!
Deciding how to spend money is a perennial problem. How do you decide between a new car or a set of teeth? Or what about between new shares or a new suit? And is $10,000 on new breasts more valuable than the same amount invested in a 401K Pension Plan?
Two sisters in Columbia had to make a decision along these lines, but with tragic consequences. 15-year-old Ingrid Catalina and her 21-year-old sister Nubia had a father with a heart of gold. Jorge Alvardo had been saving money for the girls for some years so they could either go to the US and learn English or have liposuction.
The girls decided that being stupid and beautiful was more important than being bright but fat. So, they headed for the nearby city of Neiva to have extra blubber removed from their thighs and abdomens. For a girl as young as 15 years to want this indicates a severe self-image problem.
Following the surgery, the girls were allowed to remain in a recovery room until they were fit enough to go. Sadly, they never left the room and died. Although the cause of death has not yet been formally identified, it looks like the surgeon is going to face charges of negligence.
So, maybe bright and fat is better than pretty and stupid. Or even pretty and dead!
The case of young Elian Gonzalez is becoming something of a pain in the rear end. The kid is being used as a political football by special interest groups and Cuba's President Castro. Milking it for all he can, Castro has been bleating for weeks about this little hero of the republic, held hostage by the decadent US, forcing him to endure horrors such as Coke Cola, TV and other such capitalist fodder.
Now he's enlisted the unwitting help of the boy's grandmothers. After their visit to Washington last week, the grannies went back to Cuba to find themselves part of a “caravan of victory,” a “spontaneous” event organized by the government. People lined the street to wave and cheer the women who, according to the government-run news agency, had done some “brave and extraordinary work in the United States, overcoming great obstacles and transmitting a persuasive message to the US people.”
Ha, what a joke! The bravest thing they had to do was suffer the snow that clogged up the East coast. The only extraordinary thing they did was actually to be allowed out of Cuba to go to Washington, and ten-to-one odds that they didn't pay for the ticket.
The biggest irony is that if you take out the political elements, the case is almost a no-brainer; a child's mother dies and the father is still alive, so to whom does the child go? The child's grandparents are also alive. Why should a bunch of aunts and uncles even get a say?
Maybe the relatives don't like Cuba. Maybe the US government doesn't like Cuba. But that isn't the point. Castro is in a win-win situation and the longer the US holds out in shipping the kid back, the more points he scores. And when the boy is returned, Fidel will no doubt claim a magnificent victory over capitalism and proof of the supremacy of communism. In the meantime, yet more freedom-loving Cubans will try to leave the “island paradise” to seek shelter in the decadent West, giving Castro one more slap in the face. And slowly, but surely, enough slaps will bring down the “Tobacco Curtain” just as dramatically as the old “Iron Curtain” in the USSR.
So, pack the kid up and ship him back - post haste!
Back from the wilds of California, the Editor has now taken control of the reins. Rather than give readers the 'whole story' so to speak, I will be adding commentaries from last week's trip in stages. It's a pathetic attempt to get folks to come back tomorrow for the next installment. When possible, images have been added to enhance the presentation. Note that the Editor did NOT take a photographer on the trip because (a) it would be double the cost and, (b) the Carny doesn't have a photographer!
So, take a look at the following:
Come back tomorrow for more!