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Well heres two quick stories I found before I have to go to work and my performance tonight. Sorry about how long its taken me to get back to everyone lately, work and school have been dreadful! Our stories involve naughty Nurses and dissappearing towns!
Nurses Complain About Heart Attack Grill
By AMANDA LEE MYERS
AP
TEMPE, Ariz. (Dec. 9) - The Heart Attack Grill - a theme restaurant whose specialties include the Quadruple Bypass Burger and Flatliner Fries, cooked in pure lard - is making health-care professionals' blood pressure rise, and not because of the menu.
It is because of the waitresses' naughty nurse uniforms.
The waitresses wear skimpy, cleavage-baring outfits, high heels and thigh-high stockings - a male fantasy that some nursing organizations say is an insult to the profession.
Several nurses have complained to the Arizona attorney general's office, and a national nursing group has repeatedly asked Heart Attack Grill owner Jon Basso to stop using the outfits.
"Nurses are the most sexually fantasized-about profession," said Sandy Summers, executive director of the Center for Nursing Advocacy, based in Baltimore. "We're asking people, if they're going to have these fantasies, please don't make it so public. Move these sexual fantasies to other professions."
Basso shrugs off Summers' complaints, and refers to her and her supporters as prudes, cranks and lunatics.
"If anything, I think it glorifies nurses to be thought of as a physically attractive and desirable individual," Basso said. "There's a Faye Dunaway , Florence Nightingale hipness to it. Nobody wants to think of themselves as some old battle ax who changes bedpans for a living."
The most serious complaint Basso has faced was made to the Arizona attorney general's office by the state Board of Nursing. In September, the attorney general's office wrote Basso a letter informing him that he is illegally using the word "nurse" at his restaurant and on his Web site. Citing Arizona Statute A.R.S. 32-1636, the attorney general said only someone who has a valid nursing license can use the title "nurse."
Basso refused to remove "nurse" from his Web site but inserted an asterisk next to every nurse reference and included the following disclaimer:
"The use of the word `nurse' above is only intended as a parody. None of the women pictured on our Web site actually have any medical training, nor do they attempt to provide any real medical services. It should be made clear that the Heart Attack Grill and its employees do NOT offer any therapeutic treatments (aside from laughter) whatsoever."
Basso said the complaints have been good for business, "all they've done is ensure there's going to be a gajillion of these all over the country."
The Heart Attack Grill opened a year ago with a Hooters-like formula of red meat and sexy waitresses. Diners choose from among four cheeseburgers: the Single, Double, Triple and Quadruple Bypass. The Quadruple is a towering monstrosity with four half-pound beef patties, four pieces of cheese and a mound of bacon.
"Essentially, it's nutritional pornography. It's so bad for you it's shocking," Basso said.
If "patients," as customers are called, finish a triple or quadruple bypass, waitresses will push them out to their cars in wheelchairs at no additional charge.
"The service is fantastic," Steve Koebensky of Scottsdale said with a snicker. "But they're overly dressed."
Phoenix resident Amanda Price, one of the few women customers at the restaurant, said the outfits did not offend her. "You don't hear nuns complaining about pregnant nun costumes, and that's more disgraceful than sexy nurses," she said.
But Scottsdale nurse Kira Wilder, who contributed to the letter-writing campaign against the Heart Attack Grill, complained: "Why do they have to denigrate the nursing profession and sexualize nursing? It's just not necessary."
Courtney Chapman, a 20-year-old waitress at the grill, said she found nothing wrong with the uniform or the stares she gets.
"They definitely look at us, but they're guys," she said. "If our butts are coming out the bottom of our skirts, and our boobs are coming out the top of our shirts, we're kind of asking for it."
Georgia Drops Nearly 500 Communities Off Its Map
By GREG BLUESTEIN, AP
CHATTOOGAVILLE, Ga. (Dec. 9) -- Poetry Tulip has vanished. So have Due West and Po Biddy Crossroads. Cloudland and Roosterville are gone, too.
A total of 488 communities have been erased from the latest version of Georgia's official map, victims of too few people and too many letters of type.
Georgia's Department of Transportation, which drew the new map, said that the goal was to make it clearer and less cluttered and that many of the dropped communities were mere "placeholders," generally with fewer than 2,500 people. Some are unincorporated and so small they are not even recognized by the Census Bureau.
The state began handing out the new map at rest stops and welcome centers over the summer.
Gone are such places as Dewy Rose, Hemp, Experiment, Retreat, Wooster, Sharp Top and Chattoogaville, a spot in far northwestern Georgia that consists of little more than a two-truck volunteer fire department, a few farmhouses and a country store where locals fill up their gas tanks.
"We're not under obligation to show every single community," department spokeswoman Karlene Barron said. "While we want to, there's a balancing act. And the map was getting illegible."
That doesn't ease the snub to the people who live in those places.
"This gets back to respect for rural areas," said Dennis Holt, who is leading a community group that wants to restore the good name of western Georgia's Hickory Level, population 1,000, which was founded in 1828 and recently put up five new welcome signs. "I'm not sure we're going to accomplish anything, but I would have felt bad about myself if I didn't say something about it."
Mapmaking criteria vary by state, and it is not unusual for a little housecleaning over time, often to get rid of place names now considered racially offensive. But other states said it is almost unheard of to see hundreds of communities given the boot in a single year.
In Texas, few of the 2,076 cities and towns are ever deleted because of strict standards that weigh whether a spot is along a state highway, has a post office or boasts a population of 50 or more.
Rand McNally, which as North America's biggest commercial mapmaker sells its maps at gas stations and bookstores, is not going to follow Georgia's example. It said a change of even just a dozen place names on its state maps is rare.
"Our criteria for keeping towns on the map is not just population," said Joel Minster, the company's chief cartographer. "We won't take a town off the map if we can confirm there's still a landmark - even if there's no people there."
The mapmaker generally deals with clutter by varying the size and style of its print.
Because of the complaints, Georgia transportation officials said will they take another look at their guidelines for what constitutes a "community."
"It's going to take a little bit of work and time, but I think maybe we can get it resolved," said state Rep. Tim Bearden, who represents a western Georgia county that includes Hickory Level and eight other towns removed from the map. "It's about history and heritage. And if you're going down the road and you're trying to find an area that's been on the map and they're not, they make good landmarks."
Some, though, do not seem to mind that their hometowns have vanished.
Well I gotta get going tonight is my final cocert anf I'm gonna do the best I can do!
 Azalin · Sat Dec 09, 2006 @ 04:52pm · 0 Comments |
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