San Antonio police recently arrested a 30-year-old school lunch worker for literally having a "closeted sexual affair" with a senior at East Central High School, where she had worked as a "nutritional assistant" (read: "lunchlady") for 11 years..
Jenna Michelle Woodworth was booked last week on a charge of "having an improper relationship between an educator and a student", a second-degree felony. The cops allege that Ms Woodworth had sexual intercourse multiple times with the student in a closet in the school cafeteria's kitchen.
School staff found a photo of the teen in the lunchlady's work locker when they cleaned it out after she was fired shortly after her arrest. Both Woodworth and the student were interviewed by police and admitted to the inappropriate relationship, which the cops say was ongoing right up until they got involved.
During an interview, the victim stated that on earlier last week Ms Woodworth picked him up in the stadium parking lot in a district vehicle and drove him to the Learning Academy Campus. According to the student's affidavit, Ms Woodworth walked him through a back door of the cafeteria kitchen, and when she was done with her morning duties, "they went to a closet in the kitchen and had sexual intercourse."
The student told officers the same interaction happened the following day. The affidavit noted that after the sexual interlude Woodworth would wash her hands and return to her cafeteria duties.
Walt is waiting to see if Ms Woodworth raises the Costanza defence: "Was that wrong? If anybody had told me that this is frowned on..."
Yesterday afternoon, as I was watching the Cowboys fall just short of a hyuge comeback, I got to thinking of what happens on TV when there's nothing happening on the gridiron. When there's no action on the field, viewers are treated to -- what else -- commercial after commercial after commercial.
So, since there's nothing going on in American politics at the moment [Well, is there? Ed.] we feel no shame in filling this space with an ad [a parody, OK? Ed.] for that great American institution, the tank-like American SUV.
This ad parody is mentioned in Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions, by Clyde Prestowitz (Basic Books, 2003). In the chapter entitled "Running on Empty", the author has this to say about
Bubba's birthright
The standard definition of a "Bubba" is a man who feels it's his God-given right to drive his pickup truck down the highway at 80 miles an hour with the windows open, the CD payer and air-conditioning both at full blast, and an open can of beer in his lap. While he's generally thought of as a white man from the South, the truth is that Bubbas can be found from Connecticut to California among all races and both genders....
Leave aside the stereotype's nonessentials for a moment -- the music, the beer can, the large dog in the passenger seat, the hunting rifle in a gun rack behind the rear window, the patriotic bumper stickers -- and pay attention to the overpowered and over-accessorized vehicle (mostly provided by American industry), the road (provided by American government), and the sense of entitlement (provided by American history). Where do these things come from, and where are they taking us?
Mr Prestowitz's answer is the waste of fuel required to power the cars which we think we deserve has led us to a serious dependence on oil imported from countries that hate us (like Iraq) and countries which merely dislike us (like Canada). He writes:
If U.S. vehicles got the same fuel economy as European and Japanese vehicles, the United States would need to import no Persian Gulf oil at all.
He isn't arguing for the replacement of internal combustion engins by sparky cars. The fad for EVs hadn't begun in 2003, and the idea of a Biden-Harris-style EV mandate would have been dismissesd out of hand as insane. Besides, the same criticism appliesa to the American waste of electric power.
The Japanese [Mr Prestowitz again] have put such emphasis on energy efficiency that they can produce a dollar of GDP with less than half the energy of the United States.... To create the equivalent of $1 of GDP, Europeans use only about two thirds as much energy as the Americans.
If America had the same energy efficience as the EU, it could not only do without oil imports from the Persian Gulf, it could do without oil imports period.
Let us hope (and vote!) that the new Trump administration will feature Elon Musk as Czar of Energy Efficiency, in charge of making America a powerhouse again... in every possible meaning of the word!
