#avoiding trucker obesity

[artisticdivasworld]

Staying Healthy as a Long-Haul Truck Driver: Straight Talk

Hitting the open road as a long-haul truck driver isn’t just a job; it’s a lifestyle. And let’s be real, it’s one that comes with its fair share of health challenges. With the long hours and endless miles, staying healthy might seem like a battle. But with a bit of know-how and discipline, you can keep yourself in top shape. We talked about this before here, but feel it bears repeating because…

[schnickelbradley]

The Life of a Trucker_ A Deeper Look into the American Trucking Industry - Bradley Schnickel

Bradley Schnickel

The American trucking industry forms a pivotal part of the nation's economy, with cargo truckers serving as the invisible backbone that keeps the wheels of commerce spinning. Every year, truckers crisscross the vast American landscape, transporting goods from one coast to another, from bustling cities to secluded rural communities. These cargo truckers are not just drivers; they are the lifeline of the American supply chain, ensuring that stores have products on the shelves, hospitals have medical supplies, and factories have raw materials. In essence, the trucking industry keeps America moving, underscoring its fundamental importance in maintaining the country's economy and livelihood.

A typical day in the life of an American cargo trucker is a testament to steadfastness and grit. Their day often starts before the break of dawn, with the first rays of sunlight serving as their companion on the open road. After a quick check of their vehicle's systems, they hit the road, often facing long hours of solitude punctuated by the rhythm of the moving cargo truck.

Workdays for cargo truckers are not restricted to the conventional 9 to 5. Instead, they may find themselves behind the wheel for up to 14 hours a day, depending on delivery schedules and traffic conditions. The drive is not just about steering the wheel; it also involves managing the logistics of the cargo, maintaining the vehicle, and ensuring safe and timely delivery.

The lifestyle of a trucker is unique, characterized by a juxtaposition of independence and discipline. Their cab serves as a makeshift home, equipped with basic amenities for their comfort during long hauls. Despite the challenges, many truckers find fulfillment in their responsibilities, viewing their role as essential in the grand scheme of the nation's economic machinery. This lifestyle, though demanding, brings with it a sense of purpose, contributing to the functioning of the country in a tangible, significant way.

The trucking industry, while foundational to America's economy, is not without its challenges. Truckers face a myriad of trials both on the road and within the broader industry. The working conditions are demanding - long hours behind the wheel, battling fatigue, and constantly navigating unpredictable weather and traffic conditions, can make each trip an endurance test. Beyond the physical demands, truckers often grapple with the psychological impacts of their occupation. The long stretches of solitude coupled with the pressure to meet tight delivery schedules can lead to high stress levels and mental health issues.

Apart from these on-the-road difficulties, truckers must also navigate the complexities within the industry. Fluctuating fuel prices, low freight rates, and stringent regulations can all add to the strain of an already demanding job. Additionally, the lack of proper rest areas and the pressure to meet unrealistic deadlines contribute to the persisting challenges in the industry.

The impact of these challenges on the truckers' personal lives and health is profound. Extended periods away from family and loved ones can strain personal relationships, while the sedentary nature of the job and irregular meal times can result in various health problems, including obesity, heart disease, and sleep disorders. Therefore, the very individuals that fuel America's economy often pay a high personal price, underscoring the need for systemic changes to improve the conditions within the industry.

Despite these challenges, the landscape of the American trucking industry is undergoing significant changes, fueled by advancements in technology and shifts in regulatory frameworks.

Technological innovations are playing a substantial role in reshaping the life of a cargo trucker. Advances in GPS technology, for instance, allow for more efficient route planning, helping truckers avoid traffic congestion and reduce time spent on the road. Fleet management systems are also improving the logistics and operational aspects of trucking, enabling real-time tracking of vehicles and cargo, optimizing routes, and aiding preventive maintenance of vehicles.

Moreover, the advent of autonomous trucks promises a paradigm shift in cargo trucking. While still in its nascent stage, this technology has the potential to alleviate some of the physical demands of the job, reduce human error, and increase overall road safety.

Regulations, too, are evolving in response to the changing dynamics of the industry. Hours-of-service regulations, designed to prevent driver fatigue, are being revised to offer more flexibility, acknowledging the unique demands of the trucking profession. Furthermore, there's an increasing emphasis on improving the health and well-being of truckers, with regulatory bodies pushing for better rest areas and wellness programs.

In sum, the confluence of technology and regulatory changes is gradually transforming the trucking industry, promising a future that might better address the challenges faced by cargo truckers while enhancing efficiency and safety.

The life of a cargo trucker is indeed an embodiment of the phrase 'It's not just a job, it's a lifestyle.' They face myriad challenges as they travel across the country, ensuring the smooth functioning of the supply chain. Yet, despite these challenges, the future of the trucking industry is bright. Technological innovations and evolving regulations promise to make the profession safer, more efficient, and more sustainable. This shift not only benefits the truckers themselves but also contributes to the overall health of the American economy. As we look to the future, it's clear that the importance of truckers will continue to grow, and their role will remain integral to the wheels of American commerce. They are and will continue to be, the lifeblood of our nation's economy.

[aion-rsa]

30 Rock’s Best Running Jokes

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When 30 Rock drew its final breath in 2013, yards of column inches were devoted – deservedly so – to praising the work of creator Tina Fey. Article upon article applauded the characters, cast, performances and seven seasons of energetic, inventive, satirical comedy.

More than anything else though, 30 Rock was always about the gags. It was fruitcake-dense with jokes, regularly fitting in more quotable laughs before its opening credits than many shows manage in a full half-hour. As it returns for a one-off reunion special, join us in celebrating the many, many running gags of its seven-season history, from the fake movies, to the terrible yet incredibly catchy songs, Frank’s hats, and those godawful TGS sketches…

The fake movies 

The presence of Tracy Jordan (a bonafide Martin Lawrence meets the Wayans Brothers-style movie star) in the TGS cast opened up the world of film parody to 30 Rock.

Admittedly Jenna Maloney also enjoyed a movie career of sorts, but while she was being offered the part of “any blonde actress” in torture porn flicks by the producers who watched and rented Saw, Tracy was turning down the lead in Garfield 3: Feline Groovy to pursue his serious acting career. The latter climaxed with the release of spot-on Precious parody Hard To Watch (Based on the novel Stone Cold Bummer by Manipulate), for which Tracy received the O in his EGOT plan. Sheer class.

Over the years though, who couldn’t not smile at Tracy’s blaxpoitation-filled back catalogue, from the timeless romance of A Blaffair to Rememblack, to Sherlock Homie, Who Dat Ninja?, The Chunks 2: A Very Chunky Christmas, and last but by no means least, Honky Grandma Be Trippin’. The man is a chameleon (in that he’s always a lizard).

Two of Jenna’s TGS projects however, bring back the fondest memories of 30 Rock’s stinging movie satire: small-town legal drama The Rural Juror (based on a Kevin Grisham novel), and her GE-produced life rights-avoiding Janis Joplin biopic, Sing Them Blues White Girl: The Jackie Jormp Jomp Story.

The TGS sketches 

The quality of TGS’ output was never under question in 30 Rock; the sketch show was unremittingly bad (when the absence of their star meant a ‘Best of TGS’ series had to be run in lieu of live shows, Legal objected to their use of the word ‘Best’, and when a review dubbed it the worst comedy ever made, Liz was thrilled they’d defined it as a comedy). Liz Lemon’s opus was a fluorescent collection of fart gags, dodgy caricatures, Jenna’s songs, and misjudged celebrity impressions.

Beginning life as, in Kenneth’s words, “a real fun ladies comedy show for ladies”, TGS was Saturday Night Live’s idiot brother, the unsophisticated thorn in NBC’s side, under constant threat of controversy and cancellation. Forced to synergise backward overflow, advertise parent company products and promote GE interests, 30 Rock’s show-within-a-show satirised both the TV industry and tired trends in comedy (the always hilarious combination of a fat woman who’s sexually confident! Old ladies are crazy! Farts!).

Lemon may have seduced pilot Carol (Matt Damon) with her Fart Doctor skits, but TGS failed to win many hearts. With sketches like Pam the Overly Confident Morbidly Obese Woman, Ching-Chong Man Who Loves to Play Ping-Pong, Fat Hillary Clinton, Bear vs. Killer Robots, Me Want Food, and Gaybraham Lincoln, why it wasn’t more successful is a mystery.

Astronaut Mike Dexter 

Lemon may have ended up with James Marsden’s Criss Chros, but fictional boyfriend Astronaut Mike Dexter will always hold a special place in her heart. Handsomer than Dr Drew, less British than Wesley Snipes, less living-in-Cleveland than Floyd, and a million times better than Dennis Duffy, Astronaut Mike Dexter had it all… except of course, a corporeal self. 

The fake songs 

Over the years, Jenna Maroney’s singing career has vomited up some truly dreadful creations, and topping the list has to be Muffin Top (a big hit in the king-making music markets of Israel and Belgium). Seguing from its pop insanity chorus “My muffin top is all that, wholegrain, low-fat” into a Madonna-style spoken-word rap “I’m an independent lady, so please don’t try to play me. I run a tidy bakery. The boys all want my cake for free”, the song is a battery assault on the senses.

But is it worse than Jenna’s summer dance jam, Balls, which earned her the princely sum of $50 in royalties? Or her computer generated, generic benefit song in aid of an unspecific natural disaster, which urged viewers to donate to “help the people the thing that happened, happened to”? How about the Jackie Jormp Jomp performance she gave of Chunk Of My Lung, written by Jack five minutes before the show, containing the classic line “You know you’ve bought it if life makes you sweet food”? Or Fart So Loud, the un-Weird Al-able song she and Tracy wrote after he parodied the theme to Avery Jessup TV movie Kidnapped? Such riches…

It’s not only Jenna who’s provided 30 Rock’s musical intervals of course. Season three finale Kidney Now! welcomed an eclectic collection of stars including Sheryl Crow, Mary J Blige, Elvis Costello, Moby, two of the Beastie Boys, Wyclef Jean, and Cyndi Lauper to perform a We Are The World-style anthem at the Milton Green benefit gig. Angie Jordan famously released a fifteen-second single My Single Is Dropping, to ride on the wave of her reality-show fame, Frank and Pete’s Sound Mound came up with unforgettable rock anthem Weekend Woman, and in the very same episode, even Tina Fey got in on the action by providing excellent Joni Mitchell parody, Paints and Brushes.

The legacy award though, as in the 30 Rock fake song that will continue to bring joy to the hearts of fans decades from now, has to go to one song, and one song only: Tracy Jordan’s Werewolf Bar Mitzvah.

Frank’s hat slogans 

Off-set, stand-up Judah Friedlander favours his ‘World Champion’ trucker hat, the one he claims to have been awarded as the winner of the World Championships of pretty much all sports, martial arts, and that time he karate kicked Chuck Norris’ beard off his face and forced him to legally change his name to Charles.

On-set as Frank Rossitano though, Friedlander wears a series of self-designed trucker hats, each bearing a different gnomic slogan. Often incongruous, sometimes suggestive, and always odd, Frank’s hat slogans are part of the bricks and mortar of 30 Rock. In terms of favourites, we’re quite fond of ‘Alabama Legsweep’, or the laconic enigma of ‘And’, though ‘Shark Cop’, ‘Half Centaur’ and ‘Space Gravy’ also caught our eye over the seasons.

Jenna’s Mickey Rourke sex stories 

Like Dot Com’s intellectualism, this running gag may have been introduced late into proceedings, but Jenna’s torrid sexual history with putty-faced beefcake Mickey Rourke gave J-Mo some of her best lines. Jenna’s allusions to Rourke’s sexually deviant and murderous attempts on her life paint a fascinating picture for 30 Rock fans. Here are some of the finest:

“Your new vibe is a double-edged sword, much like the kind Mickey Rourke tried to kill me with”, “Nice try Hazel, but you made the same mistake Mickey Rourke made on that catamaran. You didn’t kill me when you had the chance.”, “I’m going to have to reinvent you. Break you down completely and build you up from scratch. Just like Mickey Rourke did to me sexually.” “Next time you’ll tell me Mickey Rourke catapulted you into the Hollywood sign.” “You know what they say, if you can’t stand the heat, get off Mickey Rourke’s sex grill.” Wise words.

Kenneth the immortal page 

To this day Kenneth Ellen Parcell remains something of an enigma to 30 Rock viewers. In later seasons, Jack McBrayer’s character went from being a simple country rube from Stone Mountain, Georgia to  the flesh vessel for a mysterious immortal with no reflection, no age, and links to a world beyond our own.

Plenty of reference has been made to Kenneth’s ageless and supernatural state over the years, including the suggestion that not only is he unable to die, but he’s also an angel, sent to oversee the transition of souls from one world to the next.

The fake TV shows 

It’s either a credit to the 30 Rock team or a condemnation of our times that Jack Donaghy’s hit reality viewer vote show, MILF Island, no longer feels like a parody. In generations to come, time will no doubt erode the boundaries between fact and fiction, and we 30 Rock fans will be telling our kids about the time we watched Deborah beat her competitors and claim MILF victory in the same breath as educating them about those people who ate kangaroo anuses for public approval.

MILF Island stands head and shoulders above the rest of 30 Rock’s fake TV shows (including TGS itself, lest we not forget), but that doesn’t mean that Gold Case, Los Amantes Clandestinos, Black Frasier, Homonym, or the inimitable Bitch Hunter deserve any less respect. Our fallen brothers, we salute you.

We could go on indefinitely listing the recurring jokes that made 30 Rock great, from Liz’s sandwich lust and desire to go to there, to Jack’s gloriously thatched head of hair and Republican conspiracies. As the show prepares to return, which of the above will live again?

30 Rock: A One-Time Special lands on NBC on Thursday July 16th at 8pm in the US.

The post 30 Rock’s Best Running Jokes appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[healmefit]

Being on the same posture for most of the time, truck drivers face various health problems. Obesity is one of them. This health condition is usually defined on the basis of body mass index. 

The fast-food culture and sedentary life style affects the overall bodily metabolisms and raise severe health risks. 

Most drivers have a microwave installed in a truck cabin that lets them heat fast food on the go.

Consuming ready-made fast food out of boxes on-the-go is not a healthy option. Without physical workout, it causes the body to gain weight and leads to obesity.

According to CDC research, seven out of ten truckers are obese in the U.S. alone. One truck driver even informed the researchers how common it was to become obese while driving trucks and long hauling vehicles. 

Most of them had eating habits limited to highway restaurants, where the food is not as healthy as home-cooked meals. Further issues that come with obesity include coronary diseases, insomnia, and type 2 diabetes etc. 

Solution: As a driver, it is undoubtedly essential to take care of your health. But, for that to happen, drivers have to take care of their eating habits.

-Eat fresh cut fruits and vegetable servings regularly

-Include mixed dry fruits and whole grains in your diet

-Avoid sugar drinks and fried food items from the list

-Balance the diet plan with enough food varieties with appropriate calories

-Avoid high energy supplying servings and opt low-fat platters

-Spent at least 15 minutes on active exercise such as walking, jogging etc.

Connect with Heal Me Fit on social media for healthy living tips and truck accident stats!

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[ayearofpike]

Whisper of Death

Pocket Books, 1991 180 pages, 13 chapters + epilogue ISBN 0-671-69058-2 LOC: CPB Box no. 1161 vol. 8 OCLC: 24856738 Released December 1, 1991 (per B&N)

At the last moment, Roxanne Wells runs out of the surgery room where she’s scheduled for an abortion. As she and her boyfriend return home, they are unnerved by the fact that their town is apparently completely empty. The only ones remaining share one thing in common — their relationship with Betty Sue McCormick, a troubled girl who killed herself four weeks ago, right around the time Rox got pregnant. And then they find Betty Sue’s stories, and the accidents start, and there is no way for any of them to get away.

At last we arrive at the book that my dear friend and follower @mildhorror​ has been looking for. As she reads along, she's looking for the short stories embedded in the novel that have gruesome and horrific deaths for their protagonists, stories that entice their living subjects into parallel fates. Look no more, my friend: it's in here.

I actually didn't remember this story at all, apart from some bare scaffolding. But Tonya Pines was on to something when she said, in her intro to Thirteen, that the swing toward YA horror was only getting stronger. This one is darker than we've seen from Pike yet, and remember, we're talking about a dude who's already written a vulture spirit girl who tears dudes apart, an immortal lizard necromancer, and a cassette-tape spirit possessing a James Dean-acting murderer. This is full-on unexplainable supernatural fear here, something I can't possibly imagine him being able to get away with if not for the success of his books and those by other authors slowly ramping up the crazy.

The story starts at the end, sort of. Rox is our narrator, writing in the first person, preparing us for the empty universe in which she now sits and how she came to be there. The recollection starts with her boyfriend, Pepper, and their brief but intense courtship in the nowhere desert of Salem, Arizona. You know how these things go, especially if you're in one of these small towns that Pike loves to valorize but still can't quite quantify: boy meets girl, girl likes boy, boy and girl have a roll in the hay (literally, in the barn at Pepper's house), girl gets pregnant while still in high school. She has an unexpectedly adverse reaction to abortion from the beginning, but Pepper doesn't want the kid so she agrees to get one. There's not a place to do it in their town, though — they have to go to a larger town two hours away, to a clinic that's open early on Saturday morning. So Rox goes into the exam room, the doctor sets her up, he gives her a shot. And then he runs out of the room in a hurry.

This is where Rox starts thinking about Betty Sue, who burned herself to death at the edge of town about a month before. The loss of life makes her instantly regret what she's doing, so she climbs up off the exam table, gets dressed, and goes back to the lobby, where Pepper sits alone. She says she's done, she wants to leave, and she wants to drive. They're on the road before she tells him she didn't do it, and that he's not going to change her mind. So he falls asleep and she keeps driving home. They're halfway home when Rox sees a hitchhiker on the side of the road, silhouetted by the sunrise. But when she tries to get a better look, the person is gone. Oh well, no ride for this person, and Rox keeps going and only stops to get gas when they get back to town.

But nobody's in the gas station. This is before the proliferation of debit cards, and maybe even before nationwide insistence on pre-paying for gas. So Rox puts $5 worth into her tank (4.3 gallons, Pike says, which sounds crazy cheap now but is still a vast overestimation of the cost of gas outside California in 1991) and goes to pay but can't find anyone to take her money. There's no one in the booth, no one in the bathroom, no one in the service garage, no one anywhere at all. Weird, but not enough to keep Rox from dropping Pepper at home and then going home herself. Which is just as empty. She expected this, as her dad is a long-haul trucker and is away most of the time, but now she's starting to get freaked out. It's worse when she turns on the radio and only gets fuzz, and the TV does the same thing, no matter how she tunes them. She calls people — Pepper, the 24-hour supermarket, her best friend in Florida — but no one picks up. Pounding on neighbors' doors likewise elicits no response.

Rox is alone.

She's yelling in the town square when she bumps into Pepper again, who's had the same issue of not being able to find anyone. They break into a nearby store to try to use the phone, calling everywhere and everyone they can think of, but there's no response. Before they can totally freak out, the school valedictorian walks in, having wandered downtown looking for anyone at all and heard them yelling at each other. He's been tipped off to their situation because he can't pick up any transmissions on his short-wave radio. Nerds, right? He wants to poke around Salem and look for others, but Pepper wants to get the fuck out of Dodge. So they compromise and decide to rob the bank to get enough money to finance traveling around until they find anyone else.

Only someone's beaten them to the bank, a big mean slacker bully with a couple of guns. He shoots out the door on instinct, hitting Rox in the leg enough to bloody her pants but but not enough to incapacitate her. They all go to the drugstore next door to get Rox a bandage, and while they're working on it the town beauty walks in looking for aspirin. Obviously everyone is freaked out in different ways that they can't find anyone else, so while they're breaking in places the valedictorian suggests the ice cream shop, so they can eat and talk about what's going on. Fat nerds, right? Did I mention he’s fat? Have I talked at all about how Pike body-shames the hell out of anybody who’s heavy? Like, he goes out of his way to describe these loads and how grossed out his characters are at the very thought of an obese person existing in their universe. Maybe I’ve avoided it because it hits me a little too close to home, but it’s rather grotesque how hard these books lay into the fat kids. 

So anyway, as they eat their ice cream (fat nerd digging straight into a gallon tub) they come to a few possible conclusions. First, the world changed right around sunrise, because Rox and Pepper saw people before that and everyone was gone after. Second, there is power and energy, but no other life aside from the five of them, as far as they know: no dogs, no birds, no bugs, nothing. Third, as they can't reach anybody outside and no broadcasts are coming to them, it may be that the world is fine and it's just these high school seniors who've been isolated in a separate dimension. And that's the fourth thing: they're all the same age, live in the same town, attend the same school. And they all (except Rox) had a connection to Betty Sue McCormick.

When the valedictorian brings up her name, everybody else gets freaked out. It's enough for Rox to think that yeah, maybe there is actually something to this seemingly-tenuous connection. She realizes, too, that what she saw of the fleeting vanishing hitchhiker (not much more than flaming red hair and a female shape) might match with Betty Sue. So they go to her house and see if there's anything that might help them out. What they find are Betty Sue's diary and a pile of short stories, neatly stacked on her desk, as though waiting for someone to find them. The diary mentions all of them (again, except Rox) and hints at the various wrongs they'd done to Betty Sue and what punishments and revenge she'd like to seek out for them. The stories are something else entirely: written in simplistic prose and rhyming verse, describing a character who is undone by a tragic accident.

We only get to see the first one — a tale of a lovely young woman, the most beautiful girl at a costume party, who burns to death when she catches fire wishing on a celebratory cake — before the beauty queen freaks out, throws the diary onto an open flame on the gas stove, and rips the stories into pieces to be scattered by the wind. She's more ready than ever to get away, and so she swipes a car and fills it to capacity and beyond with gas. But she's smoking a cigarette, even though nobody had ever seen her smoke before. And the gas won't stop coming from the nozzle, and she drops her cigarette, and the entire gas station goes up in an explosion.

So Rox is curious now. Why did Betty Sue kill herself? How has she managed to isolate and target these kids in particular? Does she really have powers beyond the mundane that can make others do her bidding? Is she even actually dead? The weirdest thing about these questions, though, is that apparently Rox has lived in the same town as most of these other people for her entire life — and remember, it’s a small town in the middle of nowhere — and she doesn’t know them well enough to piece it together. I guess if you don’t care and are unobservant, maybe, but that’s not how I roll, so it’s hard to believe.

The valedictorian does his best to answer Rox’s questions. He knew that the beauty queen was Betty Sue’s childhood friend, and that she wasn’t so good-looking when she was younger and more or less ditched her friend when she got her looks. He himself liked Betty Sue; even though he was a little scared of her he found himself going to see her whenever she wanted, even if he didn’t necessarily want to. From the diary, he learned that the bully had gone out with Betty Sue and that it hadn’t ended well, and also that Pepper was interesting to her but the burned pages didn’t reveal specifics. The most personally concerning anecdote he had, though, regarded Betty Sue’s habit of catching butterflies in glass jars and letting them die. It’s clear that the valedictorian thinks that they’ve been trapped in a jar of their own.

If this is true, they figure, then Betty Sue must still be alive and around to keep an eye on them. They go try to find her, and sure enough the bully starts catching distant glimpses of red hair. He goes after it, guns blazing, and Pepper chases after him. Meanwhile, Rox and the nerd decide to piece together the torn stories. The next one they manage to decipher is about a young man who tries to go over a wall to a place where he doesn’t belong, only he can’t jump off, and as he walks along it the wall gets thinner and thinner, to the point where an unfortunate misstep slices him in half up the middle. Makes sense that if the bully had assaulted Betty Sue, her vengeance would involve killing him junk-first. (As a personal note, this story plus a broken knee may have contributed to my paralyzing fear of slipping and tearing my groin.) And sure enough, when they manage to catch up to him, he’s still firing his gun at shadows and reflections, and when the one in his hand runs out of shells he goes for the one in his belt. And squeezes the trigger before it’s out.

Blowing off his own dick doesn’t kill him, though. Rox has to finish it. She takes the gun and shoots the bully in the head. And then they put together the next story, about a court jester who can’t tell original stories and so the queen makes him stab himself in the heart. So for some reason they let the valedictorian go into the drugstore by himself, where he slits his wrists and bleeds out. I don’t really get this either: she killed him because he was ... boring? Like, abandoning your friend is an offense. Rape is a serious offense. But ... not being amusing? It doesn’t hold. Before he dies, though, he tells Rox that Betty Sue was pregnant when she killed herself, and that she needed someone else to get into her position in order to make herself immortal. So now we’re finally seeing what Rox is doing here at all, if she never knew or wronged Betty Sue that she knew of. But who was it that got her pregnant?

See, the whole time, Rox is trying to figure out exactly what Pepper’s relationship with Betty Sue was before she died. He’s been denying that they had anything, and slowly eases up the way little kids and asshole dudes do when they’re caught, trying to cop to a smaller offense so they don’t have to admit the bigger one. Yeah, they hung out. Yeah, he went out with her a few times. Yeah, they had sex. Yeah, he got her pregnant. Yeah, it was after he had sex with Rox. This last one comes out after they’ve read the final story, about Salt and Pepper seasoning the queen’s food and Pepper ending up on her fork. They’re back in the barn while they talk about this, and in her anger (an anger that has come on more strongly than she’d have ever intended) Rox shoves Pepper out of the loft and into the haystack. Where he lands directly on a pitchfork, tines facing up.

There’s nothing left to do. There’s nothing else. Rox finds herself wandering back to Betty Sue’s bedroom, where she writes down her whole story, even as she’s not sure whether it will ever be read by anybody. 

As she gets to the end, who should appear but the big bad queen herself. She tells Rox that not only was her abortion the catalyst for Betty Sue’s revenge, but that she changed her mind too late about not having it. And suddenly, we’re in the third person, outside the clinic exam room, where Pepper is crying and praying and worrying about Rox. He really does love her, after all, and he’s worried about his selfishness causing her to get hurt. Which, good call, dickbag, because now the doctor is running around all panicky, and when Pepper forces his way back into the room Rox is dead, having hemorrhaged so suddenly and mysteriously that the doctor couldn’t save her.

There’s nothing else for Pepper to do but drive home. On the way, he picks up a red-headed hitchhiker who looks strangely familiar. And thus begins Betty Sue’s story anew.

So that’s Whisper of Death. Interesting and spooky, mostly well-told but some holes that don’t make sense. That’s the way we’re going with most of Pike’s work anyway, and this one is better than some others. It’s another one like Remember Me, where I can talk about the elements here and give a summary, but it doesn’t really do the story justice. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and even if this one isn’t quite as good it still fits that mold.

[ariasleep-blog]

Sleep apnea: hidden cause of wrecks

A five-month investigation by NewsChannel 36 finds that one factor in the increasing number of trucking deaths is seldom reported and largely unregulated: sleep apnea.

Drowsy driving kills more people on America's highways than distracted driving, a top sleep expert recently told a motor carrier safety advisory panel.

Dr. Charles Czeisler of Harvard University Medical School says sleep apnea gets a lot less attention than other factors in deadly accidents involving tractor-trailers, but accounts for one in five crashes.

The number of Candians who died in commercial truck crashes grew slightly to about 4,000 last year, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administrator recently told Congress.

"I would argue that fatigue as a causal factor in truck-involved crashes is underreported, not over-reported," said Don Osterberg, vice president of Safety for Schneider National Trucking. "Absent the commercial driver acknowledging that he or she fell asleep, law enforcement doesn't record the crash as fatigue-related."

Sleep apnea - the absence of breath during sleep - interrupts deep sleep and leads to prolonged sleepiness. Commercial drivers are easily treated, typically with a breathing machine. But an estimated 85 percent of cases are undiagnosed. Some truckers fear losing their jobs and don't want to pay for expensive tests. Often, medical examiners fail to pick up on the signs of sleep apnea.

The results can be devastating.

On July 30, near Anderson, S.C., a tractor-trailer jackknifed and crossed the median on I-85, killing the driver and two others, 38-year-old truck driver Clay LeShawn Johnson of Charlotte and attorney Jeremy Scott Wilson, 33, who practiced in Lincolnton.

Although the coroner found that the trucker who ran off the road, Eddie Wyatt, 69, of Rockmart, Ga., suffered from sleep apnea and had only recently returned to driving, the official accident report identifies "improper lane usage" as the primary factor in the crash and makes no mention of fatigue.

"It could have been avoided," said Dana Johnson, Clay LeShawn Johnson's widow. "My first thought was why was he allowed to drive?"

On Oct. 13, along I-85 in Gaston County, one 18-wheeler slammed into the back of a second tractor-trailer in a fiery crash, killing one driver and shutting down the southbound lanes for the better part of a day.

Gastonia Police released the accident report this week, saying the surviving driver was travelling only 32 mph in the left lane when he was struck at 1:47 am, killing the oncoming driver, 45-year-old Eddie Fitzgerald Lee of Greenville, S.C.

The company that owned the slow-moving truck, Saga Freight Logistics of Brownsville, Texas, received 64 fatigue-related violations in the last two years and ranked in the bottom 2 percent of the nation in "hours of service" violations.

Gastonia Police declined to comment on the role of fatigue in the October accident, pending the District Attorney's decision of whether to prosecute.

Efforts to change rules

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has tried to reduce driver fatigue by limiting hours of service to 11 hours each day, with a proposed decrease to 10 hours each day to allow for rest.

But those with sleep apnea can spend a full eight hours in bed and get back behind the wheel as sleepy as if they got only a few hours of sleep, according to experts who testified before a motor carrier safety advisory committee.

The advisory panel, and a panel of medical experts, is considering a recommendation that the DOT ask medical examiners to screen severely obese truckers for sleep apnea before giving them a biannual medical certificate that allows them to drive.

This week, Dana Johnson of Charlotte is wrestling with her first Christmas without her husband. She is suing the trucking company involved in her husband's death. But, she says, "All the money in the world won't bring a life back."

[jessicakehoe]

Ian Williams’s “I Want It All. I Want It Now.” Chapter 2: The Other Girl

Below you’ll find the second chapter of Ian Williams’s fictional story, “I Want It All. I Want It Now,” from our Summer 2019 issue. To read from the beginning, click here.

Interior

Two-Faced

You followed him to her house? Ella whispered.

I didn’t follow him. I saw him get on his bike and ride off. Somewhere.

Right, so how do you know he went to her house?

Granted. There were a few holes in my story.

My father entered. I abruptly changed the subject.

Regular volume. You’ve got enough makeup here for a year!

Working reception while he and his assistant were giving shots to kittens in the back, I ran my hand through her bag of cosmetics, picking out the new Soul on Fire palette from Watier x FASHION.

Oh, there’s more in the car. Ella put on her vocal fry voice. It was guaranteed to drive my father away like garlic on a vampire. I’m gonna turn you into a rocker chick. Like Kate Moss meets Courtney Love meets Pink meets Pink meets—

Do me now.

Duh. Listen to this girl. You can’t wear heroin chic to the office. That’s crazy talk.

My father left. We went back to whispering.

Where else would he go? I said.

I don’t know if he’s cheating or not. Ella smelled like Gucci Bloom. No, it was Paris-Riviera from Chanel. She continued, All’s I know is that he has a history.

She held a tube of dark lipstick to her nose, then mine.

You are not doing this to impress him? she asked.

Of course not.

Why are you, then?

My father came in. I raised the volume.

Your edges are on fleek. I touched Ella’s temples. Her father is from Barbados. You’re like Meghan Markle meets Rihanna meets Cardi B meets—

Stop it. You’re embarrassing me, Ella said, but she beckoned for more.

FKA Twigs meets Radhika Nair meets Amal Clooney. I made a big circle around her face with my open palm. You’re like the love child of all that fierceness.

My father shook his head and left. He called these “estrogen conversations.” But as far as I could tell, he and his girlfriend spent a lot of time talking about my 25-year-old uterus.

Ella and I went back to whispering.

I said, Even if he is cheating, I want him to uncheat.

You want him back.

Sort of.

My father called me from the other side of the door. Ella and I looked toward his voice.

You need to work—

I need to work on my feminism—I know, I know.

Photography by Agustin Fest/Eyeem

Hound

Grover was a 12-year-old basset hound with arthritis so severe his owners had to carry him everywhere, even around the house. That made him obese.

He lifted his eyes toward me. I brushed the top of his head. My father filled the syringe.

Grover, I said sweetly. I held a dog treat to his mouth.

As he was chewing, my father injected him. He tensed, then heaved a big floppy sigh, and I took him down to the freezer.

Road Trip

Right on schedule, a few days before the festival, Hudson informed me that we would not be driving together. He was going to ride with the band.

Do you even want me there? I asked.

Of course I want you there. But it’d be weird to have you in the van with the guys. He shook his head. That Yoko Ono vibe has killed many a band. We’ll hang out in Rock Creek.

I wanted (it all and I wanted it now) to cancel my trip, but that’s exactly what he wanted so he could be with his side piece. I didn’t want to be the dramatic, insecure girlfriend, but I couldn’t understand what was so bad about wanting to have a road trip with me instead of his friends. Given the same situation, I’d choose to be with him over 90—over 80, over 75—per cent of my friends. Male friendships mystified me. Guys would never wash each other’s hair. What did they talk about? Sick beats, squats, draft picks, girls they’d bang, bro, brah, bro. Hudson knew very little about the people he called his friends.

Hudson pulled me right to him, nose to nose.

Plus, Doug just broke up with his girlfriend. He’s pretty raw. He doesn’t need to see us all lovey-dovey.

Lovey-dovey. I was being manipulated. I knew it. We had not been lovey-dovey in a while. A few days before Christmas, we went shopping and he got down on one knee and proposed to me in H&M. I clapped my hand over my mouth. People clapped. We kissed theatrically. Then we kept doing it all evening. Knee, mouth, clap, kiss. Knee, mouth, clap, kiss. Exactly eight times across Vancouver, we did it. Now, he still smelled like Christmas—Santal 33. I would sometimes sneak a little from his bottle and put it on the bone of my wrist.

We need to catcall women freely, Hudson said.

I bet.

You could ride up with Ella. Bring Ella.

He liked seeing us together. Every time I told him that I had spent the night at Ella’s place, he went away to his fantasy place for a second, delaying his ability to respond, before coming back with, Oh yeah? or She good?

According to Google Maps, the festival was five hours, eight minutes from Vancouver. Ella and I took turns driving.

While I drove, she read to me from Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s new book, Fleishman Is in Trouble. While she drove, I read to her from the summer issue of FASHION. There was a story in there about a cheating boyfriend. We sang along to Kacey Musgraves  on Spotify and listened to some Caliphate podcasts. We posted selfies of our hair blowing. We took pee breaks and ate SunChips and grapes and, all glory to Alison Bechdel, we didn’t talk about men at all.

Photography by Michael Hauptman/Trunk Archive

Music Fest

Hudson’s band, The Mountains, was playing on the B-stage. The lead singer strutted onstage, ignoring the crowd; then Hudson clicked his drumsticks together four times and a wall of sound hit us. The world smelled like pine.

During the set, Ella and I leaned back on our elbows with our shirts tied in a knot around our midsection. Wearing beads. I wove a garland for her hair. She was surprised that I knew the name of the flowers—not a useful skill, I thought. I didn’t have the social justice, activist language that she did. She always knew the right side of an issue to be on, and I could front it, I could fake it, I could follow her lead.

Hudson was a good-looking man. Shaggy, long hair, sometimes partially tied up, shaved sides, a few strands falling into his face when he leaned over the drum set. Not quite the MacBook-wielding guy from Risk Management. Even then, Ella could see traces of a rock star. He sat with his legs open wide, a habit from playing drums, jeans ripped at the knees, thick thighs. He let her paint his nails one time. On the surface, Ella was testing his openness (he passed), but when I did it, I was really trying to make him less desirable to other women before a gig. He said he would let me paint his nails as long as he could choose the colour. He chose black. For another out-of-town gig, I put eyeliner and mascara on him and said he looked hot—bought him a black Queen T-shirt and silver metal chains. He went to the show like he was in a Good Charlotte cover band.

Apparently there was a famous person at the festival. Everyone was being polite-vigilant in case they happened to be talking to the famous person and didn’t know it. It’s Dolly, Ella said. Nicki’s doing folk music now, I said.

Hudson liked to introduce me as his girlfriend the model if he was talking to a guy or a woman he wasn’t interested in. If he was talking to another hot girl while I was around (always approach the hottest girl in the room first), he avoided an introduction and eventually said, simply, This is Odile.

After he came offstage, I went to see him. He was sweaty, crushing a bottle of water into his mouth. His shirt was stuffed into his back pocket. I could see the band of his underwear over his jeans—the belt I bought for him. There was a woman talking to him. Not Dolly from the grocery store, but she was exuding availability—slinky, gyrating ever so slightly to the music in the background.

The techie-cum-bouncer wouldn’t let me through.

He said, Expensive equipment, stuff gets stolen and turns up on Craigslist. We’re tight with security this year. I could tell him you’re looking for him. What’s your name?

He’s right there. I pointed. Hudson was walking away with the woman.

What’s your name?

He’s literally standing in front of us.

Rules are rules. What’s your name?

His girlfriend, I said.

The sound tech cleared his throat. He turned his attention to Ella. Have we met? Did we hook up last year?

Trust me, Ella said. You’d remember if we did.

He stepped toward her. I put a hand on his chest.

You shot your shot, bro. Security’s tight this year.

Glamour

There was an impromptu party that night. I showed up, took a puff of someone’s joint, danced for a bit, but I wasn’t feeling it. I hadn’t seen Hudson since the THOT.

I left Ella at the party and walked back to the car. I wanted to remove my makeup and go to sleep.

I checked my phone. No messages. I had a very early high school feeling. Abandonment meet FOMO.

I wasn’t always hot. I was cute as a kid, then pretty as a girl, then downgraded to OK in middle school, then fell off the attractive graph during the first part of high school. Never beautiful, never elegant. Then, in the summer between grades 10 and 11, I spiked from being OK to being hot. At the end of Grade 10, I was headline gossip because a boy who felt me up said my nipples were flat and weird like an amoeba. So that summer, as part of a revenge strategy, I gave myself a thorough beauty education with the same dedication I would give to a science fair project. I travelled around with my mom for Fashion Television, got fit, made skinny friends—Americans, Italians—posted envy on Facebook, filtered myself into oblivion. In September, I subbed for a model in a New York runway show. Later that month, I showed up for Grade 11 with long dirty-blond hair under a trucker hat—thigh gap, pronounced pelvic bones over my low-rise skinny jeans—and became unmistakably the hottest girl in Grade 11. The amoeboob scandal had messed me up until this year. I wish I could say that I came to love myself, that I had the confidence of Angelina Jolie, that I told Hudson and he kissed the amoebas. But no, I got the irregularities patched with a nipple tattoo in the same place where Ella got laser hair removal. Best money I ever spent. (Well, except for Jimmy Choos on sale in London.)

My phone vibrated.

Back in my car, I reclined the seat and tried to go to sleep. It was sweltering, but if I put the windows down, mosquitoes would come in. Mosquitoes or a killer.

I checked my phone again. One text.

Just the one text from Ella. That was all.

Late in the night, a man banged on my window. In that long, alarming second, I reached around myself for a weapon, tried to cover myself, felt around for my phone. I couldn’t see his face at first because he was shining a cellphone flashlight in my face. Odile, he said.

Hudson?

He knocked on the glass again. Opening the door was easier than lowering the window.

Why are you sleeping here? He was drunk. I have a bed for us back at artists’ hospitality.

He could have texted that easily. I didn’t know what to make of his thoughtlessness, but at least he had staggered through the night to find me. I didn’t want to sleep in the car, and I didn’t want to be with him. I didn’t want to be driving through the South on a tour bus with him and his band, but I didn’t want to be alone on a rainy night while he called me from a pay phone in Nashville either, even if he was calling to say I love you, darlin’. I want it all and I— You can’t always get what you wa-ant.

I should stay here, I said. In case Ella gets back.

Hudson turned the display of his phone toward me. It was 3:48.

Sorry to break it to you, but your girlfriend’s getting laid. He pulled me out of the car and locked the door with the remote. No girlfriend of mine is going to spend the night in a car in the middle of the forest.

Photography by TAPhotography

So he took me to a “teepee.” Inside, there were hay bales and guys passed out on sleeping bags. He pulled me down on his sleeping bag and curled up, pressed his toes up against my hips, exactly like the image of John Lennon and Yoko Ono on Rolling Stone. He wrapped his arm around my head. Then he baby talked me: You thought I was going to leave you all alone, such a silly, hiding from me, all night I’ve been going crazy, wondering, only the best for my girl.

He reached under my dress.

Too many people here, I said.

It’s OK. It’s all good. He rolled a leg on me. We can start an orgy.

He kissed me.

They’ll catch on.

He smelled boozy and weedy and sweaty—but also like his place, like the window was open and it was late fall and there were no other women in the world. And we didn’t need to check who liked our posts or followed us back, so long as we were peeling avocados together, flossing our bottom teeth together, squirting contact solution into our cases together. It’s not his kind of music, but one night he sang me an acoustic cover of Rihanna’s “Only Girl (in the World).” Slowly. Quietly. Switched up the lyrics into a promise.

Tonight, he was so drunk I could easily push him off. He was so drunk that he might have thought we had sex because he flopped onto his back contentedly and I could hear him breathing deeply within minutes. I looked at the top cone of the teepee. It looked like the inside of a breast.

Photography by Amanda Marsalis/Trunk Archive

What girl?

I woke up after Hudson. I saw him outside the flap of the teepee—in his cowboy boots, shirt off, little arch of back like Iggy Pop—talking to the vocalist from another band.

I crawled toward them. Vocals was in the middle of a story that involved donkey-punching an imaginary girl, and Hudson was karate-chopping the air like he was giving a massage.

When Hudson saw me, he stopped the conversation with a loud, There she is. He took me under one arm and kissed the top of my head. Lovey, meet dovey.

What’s going on? I asked.

Nothing.

But Vocals spilled: Some girl OD’d last night.

Wow. I yawned. Public relations nightmare, the M.B.A. in me said.

They looked at each other.

I didn’t think to ask who until that moment when I saw them exchange looks.

Wait, I said. Is it Ella?

I crawled back into the teepee for my phone.

They’re not saying who it is, Vocals said.

It’s not Ella, Hudson said.

I patted down the bags and blankets for my phone. No messages from her.

That tech guy, what’s his number?

They’ve got sausages at breakfast. Hudson tried to take the phone out of my hand. It’s not her, Odile. She’s probably back at your car.

She would’ve texted.

Maybe her battery died, he said.

Let’s go, I said.

He didn’t move.

Hudson!

A bandmate said, We’re meeting the others in 10 minutes, bro.

Why don’t you check the car? Hudson said. And I’ll go to the clinic, find out who it is.

Sure, I said. You’re totally gonna do that, Prince Charming.

Ella was not in, near or under the car.

I ran back toward the clinic, among raised roots and rocks. Through the trees, a female voice in the speakers, obscured by the weather, sang, “In the arms of the angels, far away from here.”

I found Ella on a cot in the medic cabin. Unattended. A single fan was blowing on her. The IV that should have been in her veins was lying on the floor next to a bedpan.

I got her into the back seat of my car, drove her to a proper emergency room, then all the way back to Vancouver, without sending or replying to Hudson’s texts.

Odile’s story isn’t over yet. Can her relationship with Hudson recover and how will Odile cope when work takes her to far-off places? See how it all pans out in Chapter Three and follow @the.real.odile on Instagram for real-time updates.

The post Ian Williams’s “I Want It All. I Want It Now.” Chapter 2: The Other Girl appeared first on FASHION Magazine.

Ian Williams’s “I Want It All. I Want It Now.” Chapter 2: The Other Girl published first on https://borboletabags.tumblr.com/

[fgipr]

OC’s Lexton Lawsuit Victory Against Trucker Spurs Public Warning

(Lawyer Says Deadly Case Has Lessons That All Motorists Should Learn)

The attorney representing the plaintiff in a lawsuit against a trucking company whose big rig struck and paralyzed a pedestrian in Santa Ana says that there must be greater public awareness about truckers and their lifestyles so motorists and pedestrians understand the potential dangers they pose.  Anna Tran of Lexton Law in Irvine successfully represented the family of Xuan Mai, a father and husband, who was struck and severely injured while crossing the street near his Santa Ana home.  Though Tran was able to secure a large settlement for the family, they remain devastated and do not want his injury to have occurred in vain.   “Injuries and fatalities involving truckers have risen commensurate with the explosion of online shopping that requires these massive vehicles to transport an increase volume of goods oftentimes under a deadline,�� said Tran.  “This has contributed to higher incident rates for accidents and driver deaths.” According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, truck drivers and delivery workers had the highest number of workplace fatalities in 2016, more than any other occupation. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says that, annually, in its latest survey, 4,317 people were killed in crashes involving large trucks with 72% of them being occupants of other vehicles, 17% occupants of trucks and 11% pedestrians. Tran says that since 86% of truckers are classified as overweight or obese, their reaction time is slower and they are more likely to fall victim to drowsiness.  Combine that with such distractions as texting, eating and drinking, changing radio stations, searching the cab for lost items and taking drugs to stay awake and you have a recipe for disaster. “Drivers of passenger vehicles must exercise extreme caution when sharing the road with 18-wheelers,” said Tran.  Among her safety tips: ·      Avoid blind spots & make sure driver can see you ·      Pass trucks on the left & maintain a consistent speed ·      Give trucks as much space as possible ·      Don’t pull in front of a truck as they can’t stop quickly ·      Avoid merging in front of a truck especially during slow traffic ·      If a truck passes you, decelerate slightly to minimize passing time ·      Don’t use your brights at night as they can blind the truck driver Lexton Law has earned a reputation for taking on well-known entities and emerging victorious, earning clients multi-million dollar verdicts.  The firm has distinguished itself by building reproductions of actual courtrooms in its offices complete with judge’s bench, jury box and tables for the plaintiff and defendant.  This isn’t an aesthetic consideration, but rather where the legal staff conduct pre-trials.  They hire mock “juries” to hear cases before presenting them to real ones so they can shape and reshape arguments for maximum impact.  For more information for visit www.  lextonlawfirm.com