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/32317
NEWS OF THE WEIRD by CHUCK SHEPPARD The cure for emphysema is cigarette WEEKLY HOROSCOPES BY HOLIDAY smoke piped directly into the lungs, according to chemist Gretha Zahar, whose clinic has treated 60,000 people in Jakarta, Indonesia, in the past decade. Zahar (with a Ph.D. from Padjadjaran University in West Java) modifies the tobacco smoke with “nanotechnology” to remove “free radicals” and adjust the mercury levels — and touts her “divine cigarettes” as cures for “all” diseases, including cancer, with only a wink of the eye from the government (which opposition leaders say is in the pocket of Indonesia’s tobacco industry). Though 400,000 Indonesians die yearly from smoking- related causes, nicotine “addiction” was only reluctantly and subtly mentioned in recent regulations. One pharmacology professor said he had never heard of anyone dying of smoking, which he called a “good, cheap alternative” to expensive drugs. [Agence France-Presse, 4-12-2011] Unclear on the Concept Marla Gilson, 59, was fired in April after her employer callously rejected her offer to work from home in Chevy Chase, Md., at reduced salary, while she recovers from chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant for her leukemia. Gilson’s job was chief executive of the Association of Jewish Aging Services of North America, which serves 112 facilities that help frail and elderly Jews during their final years. Gilson’s termination also made her health care much more expensive and potentially made her uninsurable in the future if her treatment is successful. (Nonetheless, the board of directors thanked her for her service and wished her a “speedy recovery.”) [Washington Post, 4-4-2011] Thomas Cavender, 60, of Bessemer City, N.C., pleaded unsuccessfully with a judge in March to remove him from the National Sex Offender Registry, to which he had been assigned as part of his sentence in 2000 for molesting a third-grade girl. Cavender told the judge that he had become a preacher and evangelist and that it “hurts my ministry when you’re in the pulpit, and someone goes to the computer, and there you are.” [Gaston Gazette, 3-7-2011] In April, two police constables in North London, England, threatened Louise Willows with arrest for criminal damage and forced her to clean her artwork from a city sidewalk. Willows had cleared off 25 deposits of droppings that dog-walkers had failed to remove and in their place drawn pink cupcakes in chalk (with a nearby message, “Dog owners, Please clear up your dog’s mess. Children walk here”). [Daily Mail, 4-8-2011] Can’t Possibly Be True The notorious U.S. military contractor KBR, prominent for having earned several billion dollars from no-bid contracts during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and which has been accused of numerous employee sexual harassment cover-ups (including nine pending lawsuits filed by female employees), has apparently been voted by readers of Woman Engineer magazine as one of the top 50 places for women to work. (KBR and other companies on the list made announcements in April, but at press time, Woman Engineer’s issue containing the list had not been published.) [Mother Jones, 4-7-2011, citing an undated KBR press release of early April 2011] COPYRIGHT 2010 CHUCK SHEPHERD 20 UCW MAY 25-31, 2011 ARIES (March 21-April 19) You don’t always think of yourself as being an offi cial leader, though you are doing much these days to infl u- ence those around you and shape the way they think and behave. TAURUS (April 20-May 20) You will work hard to meet and exceed the expectations of others. Will others do the same for you? Whether they will or won’t has nothing to do with you. It has to do with their own character. Choose to deal with those who have proved in the past to have values and standards similar to yours. GEMINI (May 21-June 21) Your mind is a beehive, always buzzing and working to produce the sweet honey that makes the people around you so happy to know you. Then there are those who fear your process because they don’t understand it or they see you as a threat. CANCER (June 22-July 22) Often the efforts a person makes to be attractive and fi t in will have the opposite effect. What really “fi ts in” is a person who accepts and knows who he or she really is. The happy result of your self-accep- tance is that you waste little time on efforts that don’t matter. You just have fun. LEO (July 23-Aug. 22) Your words may be fi tting and make complete sense to you. However, because the very nature of language is abstract, the one you are trying to reach may come to an entirely different understanding of matters from the one you intended. VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22)Acting “as if” is an ability that is crucial to your success in the weeks to come. Since you’ve yet to experience a role fi rst-hand, you’ll just have to pretend. Lose your self-consciousness and dive into the improvisational spirit. ADVICE GODDESS Under the Cover of Night Club LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 23) When people aren’t sure what’s appropriate, they ask you. Diplo- macy is one of your superpowers. However, you should note that this is one of those rare weeks when being too polite is a danger. So spice it up with a little bad, or at least unex- pected, behavior. SCORPIO (Oct. 24-Nov. 21)It may feel like you have to change yourself in some way in order to fi t in with an organization. Perhaps you’re forcing yourself into a set of values that you don’t really espouse to. There is a way to be yourself and still be of service to others. SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21) You’re the quintessential travel companion. If it’s a long journey by car, you offer to share the cost of fuel. On shorter trips, you cover parking or cab fare. You’ll apply those same principles to the travel you embark on this week, though the journey may be more mental or spiritual than physical. CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19) For a glori- ous moment, you will forget yourself because you are so lost inside the story someone is tell- ing you — not an actual narrative, but a living message this person sends you with his or her presence, voice and being. In short, you will be enchanted. AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18) The problem is that once you start to learn about something, you don’t want to stop until you know every- thing about it. This week the rest of the world seems to stop completely in order to let you study, explore and gain some expertise in this new area of interest. PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20) You consistently do the job to the best of your ability. This is true even when you know the arrangement is only temporary, or when the job seems to be taking forever and the glamour has long since worn off. Do your best. I met an amazing guy — the kind I swore didn’t exist: thoughtful, caring and incred- ibly secure. He seemed to love me. We were together exactly nine months when he called and suggested we go dancing. Ten minutes after I arrived at the club, he broke up with me. He claimed he didn’t know what had happened, but he just couldn’t be with me anymore. I left, heart- broken — a complete wreck. Two weeks later, he called to see how I was and said, “Everything about you is what I want, but for some reason, I just don’t want you.” I’ve had a history of going for men who treated me like crap, but he treated me incredibly well. The lesson I’ve gleaned? Even if a guy’s really good to you, you can’t trust him. Help! I don’t want to become some bitter, jaded old woman. — Devastated By Holiday Mathis What changed for him? Without drilling a hole into his brain and watching all the worker ants running around the factory, it’s hard to say. Maybe his feelings just fi zzled, or maybe he was only up for romancing you into a relationship and not the relationship itself. Whatever his reason for leaving, he sure didn’t need to pop up again to reiterate that he doesn’t want you — just in case you missed that when he was teaching you his cool new dance move: twirl the girlfriend around and kick her to the curb. Amy Alkon Ask yourself whether it’s actually out of character for Mr. Wonderful to rather cruelly and abruptly transform into Mr. I’ll Be Wandering Off Now. Getting impatient in your search for a great guy can lead you to stick a bag over the head of a sorta-great guy or even a not-so- great guy and insist you’ve got your man. Your therapeutic professional would call this “confi rmation bias” — favoring information that confi rms some belief you hold and shoving away any information that doesn’t. So, maybe you tell yourself that a man’s treated you really well when he just treated you to some romantic dinners and did some of those nice boyfriend things like bringing you fl owers and repairing your garden hose. Any guy can learn to do that sort of stuff by reading 10 Ways To Make A Woman Cross-Eyed With Lust For You in any number of men’s magazines. To fi gure out whether a man is more than the sum of his smooth moves, look at whether he’s compassionate, whether he shows empathy — for you and others — and especially when he doesn’t think anybody’s looking. Of course, getting to the truth takes being okay with the truth — even if it ends up setting you a lot freer than you wanted to be. Since it’s always possible the candles and moonlight are a prelude to the track shoes, it’s best to live with the hope that love will last but without the expectation that it will. That’s probably the single best way to avoid becoming that “bitter, jaded old woman.” Then again, somebody’s got to take care of all the neighborhood’s stray cats. Amy Alkon, all rights reserved. WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM