Mourners with caffeine jitters?

A Starbucks opens in a South Carolina funeral home.

This is either the greatest idea since cruise control on a road trip, or it's a sign of the apocalypse. Maybe both?

 Brought to you by the craziest state in the Union. (Anyone who has ridden on Interstate 95 along the Mid-Atlantic seaboard recognizes the gent in the pic.)

 

Enough to gag a maggot

The Freeh report chronicling Penn State's protection of pedophile Jerry Sandusky comes down.

The university and its top dogs--including Joe Paterno--showed "a total and consistent disregard…for the safety and welfare of Sandusky’s child victims."

Sandusky raped children FOR YEARS and the college turned its head.

I don't expect Penn State will have the decency to discipline the football program.

But oh god, how I wish someone with power had the guts to burn the PSU athletic complex  and salt the earth. And oh, raze that JoePa statue on the way out of dodge.

You've got mail!

Buzzfeed asks you to remember your first screen name.

I believe mine was "jrterriers," for my first partner's initials and the fact that we loved scruffy little go-to-ground dogs.

And yes, AOL was my first window to the World Wide Web, circa 1994.

Because you need a LOLcat

Mormons and money

Here's an interesting read about Mormons and money. 

I don't fear a Romney presidency because of the LDS. They've moved past cult status and now seem no crazier than other established religions (See: Catholic belief that they are eating an actual corpse during Communion and the Baptist insistence that a virgin popped out a baby). 

But boy, howdy, the Mormons know how to drop a nickel and pick up a quarter, a la multi-level marketing, sober living and a "focus on the family" (lower case lest I anger the Dobson gang).

 

 

420--smoke 'em if you've got 'em

An Esquire writer says legalize marijuana already.

His opening line: "Because the drug war is actually insane, not just seemingly insane. Alcohol abuse kills 75,000 people a year. Legal prescription drugs kill 100,000 people a year. Marijuana kills zero. The statistics for violent crime and accidental death follow the same pattern."

America--two countries

Southerners have never been sure about all this "live and let live" built into the founding of this country.


This writer picks it apart nicely.

When a Southern conservative talks about “losing his liberty,” the loss of this absolute domination over the people and property under his control — and, worse, the loss of status and the resulting risk of being held accountable for laws that he was once exempt from — is what he’s really talking about. In this view, freedom is a zero-sum game. Anything that gives more freedom and rights to lower-status people can’t help but put serious limits on the freedom of the upper classes to use those people as they please. It cannot be any other way. So they find Yankee-style rights expansions absolutely intolerable, to the point where they’re willing to fight and die to preserve their divine right to rule.