Clear and cold again this Friday morning and the big winter storm expected from earlier this week hasn’t panned out as bad as originally figured.
Of course, nothing like the horror show now engulfing middle America — Wichita, Kansas, hit with a record 14-inches of snow, and more to come.

Across the US this morning, there’s not only a sense of crazy, but actual crazy.

(Illustration found here).

Surfing the news can be sad and tedious sometimes, but the way the current narrative is flowing all the wrong notes are being played while the audience just nods. A lot of shit confounds the bigger shit — why with all the oil, are gas prices are so freakin’ high, record-high, for this time of the year, and why are Lindsey Graham and John McCain allowed to even open their mouths?
And gun killings continue — police are after a SUV after a explosion of violence in Las Vegas, shutting down the fabled strip while authorities try to untangle the mess.
Life is strange — a few selections of crazed…

People in my wage class are/were excited about President Obama’s call to raise the minimum wage to $9 an hour — however, now the real rest of the story:

The federal minimum wage was first put in place in 1938.
From that year until 1968 when its value peaked, the purchasing power of the minimum wage increased by more than 140 percent.
As a result, minimum wage workers saw a sharp increase in their living standards.
Over this 30 year period, low wage workers shared in the gains of the economy as a whole as the minimum wage rose in step with productivity growth.
If workers at the bottom had continued to share in the economy’s growth in the years since 1968 as they had in the three decades before 1968, we would be looking at a very different economy and society.
If the minimum wage had risen in step with productivity growth, it would be over $16.50 an hour today.
That is higher than the hourly wages earned by 40 percent of men and half of women.

Piss and moan — piss and moan.

Everytime I visit Rite Aid to pick up headache powders or some other pain-preventive substances, there’s signs everywhere — “Flu Shots Here – All Day” — and for me as a 64-year-old this is ludicrous:

The vaccine is proving only 9 percent effective in people 65 and older against the harsh strain of the flu that is predominant this season, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday.
Health officials are baffled as to why this is so.
But the findings help explain why so many older people have been hospitalized with the flu this year.
Overall, across the age groups studied, the vaccine’s effectiveness was found to be a moderate 56 percent, which means those who got a shot have a 56 percent lower chance of winding up at the doctor with the flu.
That is somewhat worse than in other years.
This flu season had some of the highest hospitalization rates in a decade for people 65 and older, at 146 per 100,000 people.

So go get ’em while they’re hot!

And where do you live? And are you miserable?
According to Forbes: With its violent crimes, high unemployment, dwindling population and financial crisis, Detroit was named on Thursday as the most miserable city in the United States. It toppled Miami, which held the title last year, and surpassed Flint, Michigan, Rockford and Chicago in Illinois and Modesto, California, which rounded out the five most unhappy urban areas.

Last August, a giant sinkhole started doing what it does — sinking — in Assumption Parish, La., about 50 miles south of Baton Rouge, and now six months later the spot is still mired not only in ground-breaking movement, but shit in court.
Owners of the descending hole, Texas-Brine, is appaently trying to pull away from the disaster.
State legislation committees held hearings earlier this week — local residents don’t like what they heard:

Bruce Mathews, Vice President of Operation for Texas-Brine testified that the company will not start buying homes in the affected area because it’s just not the right time.
“I know there are residents of Bayou Corne that want to be bought out,” says Mathews.
“But I know there is a group that does not want to be bought out because there’s one’s who want to stay and because it’s the right thing to do. We have to focus on response activities.”
The words from Mathews were not what some residents wanted to hear.
Texas-Brine officials say they have spent $3.5 million on residents of Bayou Corne so far.
That is about $23,000 per family.
“My house sits there uninhabited for over four months, closed up with no air circulating,” said resident Jamie Wilber.
“My interior has mold, cracks in the roof and sheet rock.
My home is destroyed and my children have no intention of going back.”

The sinkhole will only get wider and wider, and Texas-Brine will only get more hardcased about it.

And near-finally — marriage is forever, even if there’s dying involved.
Via Reuters:

An upstate New York man who died on the way to his late wife’s wake was buried in a plot beside her on Wednesday, after a dual funeral service that capped a 66-year marriage, their daughter said on Thursday.
Norman Hendrickson, 94, a retired assistant postmaster in an Albany suburb, stopped breathing in the limousine on the way to a wake on Saturday for his late wife Gwen, who died earlier this month after suffering for years from Parkinson’s Disease, daughter Norma said.
Funeral home staffers laid Hendrickson in a casket and placed him beside an urn containing his wife’s remains in a viewing room, while daughter Merrilyne posted a light-hearted sign for arriving mourners:
“Surprise – it’s a Double-Header – Norman and Gwen Hendrickson – February 16, 2013.”

And finally — happy, happy in the discovery of a way-most-cool Website: The Duffel Blog.
A tongue-way-in-cheek site in the fond tradition of The Onion, only with military themes, and with such stories as
 Navy To Apologize to Junior Officer For Shitty First Tour, and Afghanistan Declared Gun-Free Zone, well, you get the crazy picture.
(Great h/t via Balloon Juice).

All a riddle in the wad of an enigma — funny and good for a weekend’s worth of laughs.
Are you mysteriously insane?