Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/103721
NEWS OF THE WEIRD by CHUCK SHEPPARD Updating "The Smell of Napalm in the Morning": A cosmetics company in Gaza recently began selling a fragrance dedicated to victory over Israel and named after the signature M-75 missile that Hamas has been firing across the border. "The fragrance is pleasant and attractive," said the company owner, "like the missiles of the Palestinian resistance," and comes in masculine and feminine varieties, at premium prices (over, presumably, the prices of ordinary Gazan fragrances). Sympathizers can splash on victory, he said, from anywhere in the world. [The Times of Israel, 12-6-2012] Government in Action The Philadelphia Traffic Court has been so infused with ticket-fixing since its founding in 1938 that a recent Pennsylvania Supreme Court report on the practice seemed resigned to it, according to a November Philadelphia Inquirer account. One court employee was quoted as defending the favoritism as fair (as long as no money changed hands) on the grounds that anyone could get local politicians to call a judge for him. Thus, said the employee, "It was the (traffic) violator's own fault if he or she didn't know enough" to get help from a political connection. Traffic Judge Christine Solomon, elected in November 2011 after a career as a Chuck Sheppard favor-dispensing "ward healer," said the ticket-fixing was "just politics, that's all." [Philadelphia Inquirer, 11-25-2012] More than 200 school districts in California have covered current expenses with "capital appreciation bonds," which allow borrowers to forgo payments for years — but at some point require enormous balloon payments. A Los Angeles Times investigation revealed that districts have borrowed about $3 billion and thus are on the hook for more than $16 billion. "It's the school district equivalent of a payday loan," said California State Treasurer Bill Lockyer, a former school board member who said he'd fire anyone who sought such loans. (Some defenders of the loans pointed to schools' occasional need for immediate money so they could qualify for federal matching grants — which, to the districts, would be "free" money.) [NPR, 12-7-2012] One of the principal recommendations following the Sept. 11 attacks was that emergency and rescue personnel have one secure radio frequency on which all agencies that were merged into the Department of Homeland Security could communicate. In November, the department's inspector general revealed that, despite $430 million allotted to build and operate the frequency in the last nine years, it remains almost useless to DHS' 123,000 employees. The report surveyed 479 workers, but found only one who knew how to find the frequency, and 72 percent did not even know one existed (and half the department's radios couldn't have accessed it even if employees knew where to look). [ProPublica.org, 11-21-2012] COPYRIGHT 2011 CHUCK SHEPHERD WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM WEEKLY HOROSCOPES BY HOLIDAY For the Week of January 20, 2013 ARIES (March 21-April 19) A strange quirk of humanity is that, for reasons too complex to sort out entirely, they often want what they won't like at all. Question your own wanting tendencies this week. Try to align yourself with a desire that will actually make you happy in its attainment. TAURUS (April 20-May 20) The anticipated future sets your mind chattering. If you're too busy trying to compute the outcome of the week's events, you will essentially lose hours, or even days, to the television screen of your mind. So stay present. GEMINI (May 21-June 21) An inner drive to get it right fuels the fury of your efforts. Getting it right isn't as important as serving the reason you took this on in the first place. You likely sense that you are an essential contributor to the lives of others and helping makes you feel rich and happy. CANCER (June 22-July 22) It's like there are two modes: calm and hurry. Maybe this is for good reason. But if you can even out the pace through good planning, you'll enjoy a less stressful existence. LEO (July 23-Aug. 22) Sometimes you do let people think you're who they want you to be. This week you'll balance out the role-play with long stretches of time in which you can do and be anyone you want to be. You'll enjoy the freedom. VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22) There's a good chance that your to-do list is a non-productive document today. If you're aware of your environment, you will be able to use what's available to support your efforts. In other words, go with the flow. ADVICE GODDESS Talk Blurty to Me LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 23) From a very early age you've had a strong sense of what's socially acceptable. Your internal filter keeps you from blurting out your initial impressions, opting instead for the most appropriate responses. Because of your manners, you'll be invited into exclusive situations. Why are women so worked up about hearing "those three little words," and why must they turn them into such a minefield? If a man says "I love you" too soon, he gets dumped because he's SCORPIO (Oct. 24-Nov. 21) It often seems a clingy, needy Nice Guy. If he waits that people care about you to the extent that too long, he gets dumped as a suspected you make their lives more enjoyable. Maybe commitment-phobe. Even when a man that's true of some relationships -- not the operates without any calculation — freely good ones. You have a loving vibration. It's innate. People feel better just being near you. and happily telling a woman he loves her — he runs the risk of some cutting or SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21) When insulting response from her or no response you're speaking to a person, that person is the most interesting of all the people in entire world at all. (I have gotten tripped up by timing — for you, at that moment. At least you behave this wrong a number of times.) Methinks as though this is the case, which explains why there's a bit of self-loathing to the women you have so many friends and admirers. who pull this baloney. CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19) You get an— Expressing Myself swers in strange ways this week. Your methods are not as unusual as you might think. It's just that you're not typically conscious of your experience on the ethereal plane, where you constantly gather information and impressions to navigate the physical world. "I love you," said right away, suggests that you have great admiration for a woman's unique and special qualities, such as being female, human and willing AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18) The one who to return your calls. is hardwired to look for the problems can be Early on in annoying to you at times, but this person is also an invaluable resource. We all have our gifts, and dating, should you find yourself the gift of discernment is a perfect compliment to your optimism now. brimming with PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20) Because you're so emotion and unable visually attuned to the world around you, there Amy Alkon to hold back, "I love will be much to see. A partner in appreciation bacon!" is a safer comes your way Thursday. Develop this tie thing to blurt out. When somebody says further by Saturday's full moon. that, even on the first or second date, By Holiday Mathis nobody suspects he's just hoping to use bacon to patch some gaping emotional void. This is probably why, no matter how soon or how fiercely you express your love for bacon, bacon will never respond by running away. To be fair, bacon also lacks feet. The "I love you" a woman does want to hear is the one that's shorthand for "I'd like to be the one who's there for you when you can't quite get the Velcro to close on your adult diaper" — or that at least indicates a desire to point the relationship in that direction and see how it goes. This is not a conclusion you hop to in a handful of dates. It comes out of feeling that who the woman is resonates with who you are and what you care most about, and takes seeing her lessthan-lovable sides and deciding that the downsides aren't big and hairy enough to cancel out the upsides. As for your stumbles in the "three little words" zone, if you've told a woman you love her and gotten an "insulting" response, could it be because you scribbled it on a dollar bill and tucked it into her G-string? Being into a woman isn't enough. First, she has to be together enough to be open to being loved. And, yes, there actually has to be a relationship between you — one developed enough and mutual enough that even if her response to "I love you" isn't "I love you, too," at least it won't be "Sorry… have we met?" Amy Alkon all rights reserved. JANUARY 16-22, 2013 UCW 19