F16’s Don’t Kill People, 500 Lb. Bombs Kill People

Call me old fashioned but the first sentence of this article in the morning paper* does not make me feel any safer:

"A new SWAT team is ready to bust down the doors of the bad guys in the metro area."

Almost sounds like cheerleading. Like the person typing the report was sitting there with a big stupid smile saying, "Hey, cool. Just like TV!"

*I suppose it makes no sense to call it the "morning paper" as it is only a single edition being published. Old habit, I guess-and I tend to read it in the morning.

"Hey, this soda tastes like pretension!"

Typically, I don’t bother to read packaging unless I’m checking a list of ingredients for nuts. Having lived without television for the better part of my life, and the last three years entirely, I don’t get to watch a lot of commercials. This probably accounts for actions like purchasing store-brand instant coffee. Sure, it tastes pretty bad, but only marginally worse than the expensive bad instant coffee and really, I’m only drinking one cup a day to pry my fucking eyes open enough in the morning to read the headlines at the Journal Star before realising I just want to go back to bed and wait to die. Caffeine helps with that (the waking up part, because reading the headlines (and comment threads) at the Journal Star will always result in an intense desire to go back to bed and wait to die). I certainly don’t sit there reading the blurb on the jar telling me how sophisticated I am for drinking the instant store-brand coffee-I mean, come on.

Trapped in a car lost in the wilds of La Vista/Papillion (which the locals pronounce "pah-pill-yun") I got bored, I’d made my husband pull over at a Walgreen’s to get a soda so I’d have something to do on this little adventure down every side-street in the Omaha suburbs. Thankfully, there’s always a Walgreen’s-something like every twenty blocks. So I bought three bottles of their store brand cream soda because it was on sale.

Even before I began reading I wondered why they would sell a ginger coloured carbonated beverage in a glass bottle that made it look exactly like beer. I actually hesitated to drink it as we drove fearing we’d get pulled over. I guess it was supposed to look exclusive (in that way that only cheap American beer can). The label read: Deerfield Trading Company.

This made me snicker a bit as I went to high school in Deerfield, Illinois where Walgreen’s has their corporate offices. While I suppose the intent was to evoke thoughts of the early spice trade, I got an image of some guy in a pair of Top Siders lugging a Radio Flyer wagon full of soda over to Highland Park city hall to see if they wanted to trade for some hot dogs from Michael’s. Eventually someone is going to Google Deerfield or Highland Park and read this and they’ll be forced to admit I’m right. The idea of marketing cheap soda under the label of Deerfield Trading Company is absurd-but not as absurd as the rest of the label:

"We travel the globe searching for truly unique premium quality foods and beverages."

I wonder how far they had to go for carbonated water, sugar and caramel colour? I’m betting Glencoe or Northbrook, at least. The rest of the label blathers on about "craftsmanship" which they likely stole from the advertising department at the cheap American beer company the soda’s look appears for all the world to be copying.

So after all that, it should have been some pretty good soda, wouldn’t you think? I could hardly wait twisting off that metal cap (again, reminiscent of those teenaged years in Deerfield so long ago when we’d sit in the parking lot of the pie house (after they closed) drinking those bottles of warm Miller beer) for my first taste of the soda some executive at Walgreen’s traveled the world over (to the artificial flavouring company in Berwyn) to find so I could enjoy it in the back seat of a Volvo lost in suburban Omaha.

It was flat. As flat as the topography of Deerfield, Illinois. Flatlander soda.

At least I still had the Ghirardelli chocolate bar that suggested:

"Reflect on the simple pleasures of the day with Citrus Sunset and experience a moment of timeless pleasure as the intense chocolate lingers and time stands still."

And you know what? Time did stand still. After reflecting on my day being lost I was still as lost in the suburbs of Omaha, as I’d been twenty minutes before! I swear, it’s like magic. And my sophisticated cream soda from Deerfield was still flat. Damn, that’s some powerful chocolate. I wonder if it could make the Journal Star a better newspaper if I reflected on it long enough?

The following headline:

Is It Spring or Is It Winter?

In a spirit of fairness, I’ll post the first few lines of the piece to help you decide:

"It’s spring! No wait, it’s winter! No no, it’s spring. Oh it’s both!"

The sad thing is I have enough of these to make this a regular blog feature.

Once they began expanding the definition of "mental illness" everyone was going to qualify for the tag. That’s pretty handy, given how much money there is to be made from treating all these horribly mentally ill people that can’t stop playing video games and don’t like eating lunch alone.

THIS is sort of awful, though I’m sure a common enough practise for employers. It sounds outrageous today, but five years from now will be standard behaviour.

I sound utterly defeated, don’t I?

Ever just hear the name of an organisation and know their website will be filled with condescending rubbish? Yeah, me too. As I suspected, Healthy Families Play Outside is a consortium of interested parties from public parks and zoos that seem to think their facilities will get more use if they promote things like these tips for nature play:

Build a snowman

Make a fort.

Not that I object to either of those suggestions, or any of the others offered at the website. My objection is to the arrogance of assuming "low income and immigrant families" need to be "educated" about playing outside. Oh, please. Middle class Americans are the ones locking their children away before the telly watching Baby Einstein videos. They’re terrified to let their children go to the park because the police and their pals in the media have done such a magnificent job of making it seem there is a dirty old man behind every tree. I can pretty much guarantee that if you go to park the children you will see playing there will be either "low income" or immigrants-those are the only kids we see regularly at the park.

Really, just how do you "educate" people? By posting condescending websites telling them the children will be fat and stupid if they don’t build snowmen or go on nature walks? Ohh, scary! They trot out the old "research shows" which isn’t all that convincing since "research" is a pretty broadly and loosely applied term that can arrive at conclusions that weren’t necessarily based on the most solid scientific methods.

So there you have it you low-income immigrants…send the kiddos outside to play. Good lord.

I’ve been arguing for a while that enrolling a child in a public school in the United States is potentially placing them in a situation where they may end up with a criminal record. Because so many police are being given permanent positions in public schools it actually encourages arrests of students for minor things like doodling on a desk (vandalism) or pitching pennies (gambling). Talking back or storming out of a classroom are enough to have a student arrested and charged with disorderly conduct. A couple weeks ago I read about a four year old being handcuffed and arrested at a public pre-school in the Bronx because he wouldn’t take a nap. The list is seemingly endless.

Finally, someone is asking questions about the police questioning students (or being present in the room as the school administrators do the questioning) and what the student’s legal rights are. Being sent to the principal’s office is now a situation that has the potential to follow with an arrest. Should parents be notified before children are questioned? Are they read their rights? Do they have the right to an attorney? Can "confessions" in the principal’s office be used to charge a student with a criminal offense? These are valid questions, and I can’t believe it has taken this long to get some attention in the media. Am I wrong to think that because it happened to a middle-class white kid in a nice town is the only reason this is being covered in the Globe? How often are kids arrested in Roxbury without a care for their legal rights?

This issue is the main reason we decided to educate Daniel at home. Kids being…well, kids they are bound to talk back, stomp a foot, toss a pencil etc. Kids will say stupid things (like the kid where I lived that suggested his teacher should be "flogged" and they evacuated the school due to his "terroristic threat"). Do we really want to saddle them with criminal records for the rest of their lives? Parents used to send their children to school and worry about good grades, not flunking gym and the occasional bout of head lice. Now we need to concern ourselves with our pre-schoolers being charged with sex offences for hugging the teacher?

I don’t see this changing soon-at least not soon enough to protect my child from it, so we’re homeschooling. People who oppose home-based education like to toss out the charge that the children will not be properly "socialised." I must ask, is learning to avoid notice and being terrified of arrest the sort of socialisation we want for our children? Sure, they learn to make friends-and just as quickly learn that those same friends can be ratted out to the authorities for personal gain. That’s great socialisation.

God help me should I ever find myself trapped in a car with people like THIS. A contract, for a road trip? Really? How pathetic.

Actually, the whole idea of a family interacting like co-workers in a department meeting is pretty awful (and about as likely to get anything accomplished). I was about to suggest that "most people" don’t need to take such measures because they can communicate with one another and try to find a compromise on air conditioning level that suits everyone-but perhaps I’m the oddball here. Is it really so difficult to accommodate someone by say, putting on a sweater? Will the world come crashing to a halt if you’re trapped in a car with your father on a Saturday afternoon and he wants to listen to the entire Texaco sponsored Opera from the Met? Good heavens people-part of learning to get along in society is learning to not have your every need and desire catered to. Must we really resort to contracts? What an utterly shitty way to learn cooperation. Moreover, it strikes me as incredibly crass. Horribly crass, and lazy. One cannot hope to solve all relationship ills by forcing a signature on a dotted line.

Sick. Very, very sick.

An interesting article about charting social change by looking at telephone directories.

So after I post this link to an interview with Rick Astley ("who wrote a song so ghastly") I have to go explain it to my husband who never reads the Internets. Maybe I’ll just have him read the article instead.

The interview is pretty good, and Astley comes off as a pretty decent guy. Worth a read if you have the time.

Sort of. You probably don’t need the details. Anyway, stiff upper lip and all that.

Here are some lazy links because I cannot possibly pull it together to make a real post. Things aren’t much better at the cooking blog, though with all that leftover mutton in the fridge it isn’t like anyone is going to starve…well, except maybe me because I can’t seem to eat. Not that I’d be eating mutton even if I could.

Without further ado:

A photography contest. Raymond, I posted this for you-get over there and check it out.

A home test for bi-polar disease. Can’t possibly imagine where anything could go wrong.

Somehow, I knew this story about a suburban Chicago teacher making terrorist jokes aimed at a student was going to be in Highland Park…and whoa, guess what? Amazing how you can sense these things before even clicking the link.

Slavic Funk. No, really.

I found myself trying to explain Garfield Goose to someone that wasn’t from Chicago. Should this ever happen to you, THIS is a nice link.

Too much irony. I was going to make a snotty comment about Germans being able to recognise quality prison-manufactured goods but geez, it really isn’t funny. I mean, even if the profits go to prisoner’s charities, don’t they realise people the world over are going to have the same reaction I just did?

And in other news, my kid is trying to stall bedtime. I think it is his version of  "I need a drink of water." Danny’s screaming from his bed;

"I have a booger! Mama, I have a booger! A Booger Mama! Mama, I have a booger. Danny hates bedtime. Mama, mama, mama, I have a booger! Mama? Mama? Did you hear Danny? Danny has a booger! I have a big booger."

-Yes, I did bring him a tissue, along with a lecture about how I never had boogers at bedtime when I was his age because my parents would have beaten me with a box of Kleenex and made me sleep in the laundry room with the dog. Wait, that’s not quite right…my mother never bought brand name tissues-I’d have been beaten with store brand wipes. I’m sure Danny appreciates how fortunate he is, what with the absence of beatings and two-ply tissues in decorative boxes. These young whippersnappers today…

Buried in this barely readable article by everyone’s favourite master of one sentence paragraphs, is the following:

"Today, two police officers approach, asking to see his pills.

He produces a black bottle. Someone reported seeing him take pills from the black bottle, the officers explain, and state statute requires medication be kept in the original container.

“You’re really digging deep now,” Donovan says, riffling through his backpack to find the original prescription labels.

When someone complains, the officers say, they’re required to respond.

Satisfied, they leave — reminding Donovan to store his pills properly."

Oh, I’ll just bet someone "complained." The days of just taking your day’s pills with you in a small pill case are over now. Better be prepared to prove your Tylenol, or blood pressure medication are as claimed. I wonder how often this is actually enforced and if it holds up in court? How utterly idiotic. For some people on a number of medications this would mean carrying a totebag everywhere they go, particularly if they fill via mail order pharmacies in large quantity.

Of course, if you are caught carrying around large quantities of narcotics they will arrest you for intent to deliver.

Someone finds an oppossum in their mailbox. I don’t know what they thought the sheriff was going to do about it, but they called and reported it. The deputy opened the door and the oppossum ran away.

I sure do hope they find the young whippersnappers that carried out this crime spree.

-Ten year old girls with terminal brain cancer.

Dying girl wants to see her father before she dies, but he’s in prison serving time for meth. He’s a non-violent offender in a minimum security prison about to be furloughed to a halfway house but they won’t give him a break and let him see his daughter in her last days.

Look what you can do with shredded wheat, chocolate and marshmallow fluff.

Clerk: You look sick. You should go home.

Me: I know, I’m still sick. I just have to finish my son’s Easter basket tonight, and then I can fall over.

Clerk: Yeah, me too….‘caus I’m the fuckin’ Easter Bunny!

-or possibly parts of Alabama.

Black market sausage operation being run out of a retired butcher’s maggot-filled garage is shut down. Court says he can still process sausage for his own family, and can give others advice on processing sausage in a maggot-infested garage…he just can’t charge for his services. Mmm, sausage.

Oh, just go read the article.

I suppose it was completely predictable if only I had thought about it. Had I given it any thought, I wouldn’t have been surprised, a day after watching an Evel Knievel movie to see Danny lining-up all his toy cars and sending his Fisher-Price Little People sailing over them.

"Mama, he scrambled his brains!"

Completely, totally, predictable.

I don’t really pay much attention to our collection of videos and DVD’s. We don’t watch much, and it is only when Danny is under the weather that I go searching through the boxes of movies my husband picks up at thrift stores and library sales.

Danny politely watched about five minutes of Happy Elf before informing me, "Danny doesn’t like Happy Elf."  Hard to argue with him there, it was kind of condescending, even for a three year old. So off I go sorting through a stack of unwatched recent purchases. Before continuing, I’d like to point out that I’m not a film snob. In fact, I rather like bad made-for-TV movies.

"Hey Danny, how about a movie about a daredevil on a motorcycle?" My bored little boy stopped sulking long enough to come over and look at the package.

"Who is that guy?"

"Evel Knievel. Except it isn’t really Evel Knievel, but George Hamilton playing Evel Knievel…before he started over-tanning."

(Blank look from son. Shrugs shoulders) "Can we watch it?"

(Excited) "Sure!"

I can’t remember for certain but it seems that by 1971, when the film was made, George Hamilton was already kind of a joke. He’s such a terrible actor that it was hard to tell if he was camping it up to play Knievel (who was kind of campy in his own right) or if that was just Hamilton’s inability to act. The way some of the lines are delivered I have to think it was deliberate-at least I hope it was. Either way, I found myself laughing quite a bit whether that was the reaction the filmmaker was going for or not. I think it really must have been intended to be comedic.

To keep it from being completely awful, there’s enough footage of Knievel’s actual jumps (and wipe-outs) included to keep the thing watchable for ninety minutes. The box indicates that it has been digitally re-mastered which is great because I know I wouldn’t want to be watching this on a copy of a crummy old print.

By this point, you’re probably thinking I’m a terrible mother permitting my little boy to watch such mindless entertainment, but you’re wrong. It was educational. Oh yes it was.

"Danny, did you see him wipe out there?"

"Yes."

"That must have really smarted."

"Yes."

"Good thing he was wearing a helmet."

"Yes,"

"Do you know what happens if you fall off a motorcycle and you’re not wearing a helmet?"

"Yes."

"What?"

"The motorcyclist will scramble his brains."

See, educational. Take that, Happy Elf.

OK, I have this week’s installment posted at the cooking blog. I’m still too sick to do much of anything that requires thought (filling a pastry bag with icing is pretty mindless, really). Anyway, the cookies are posted if you can use a laugh. This week I did William Blum, Dave Lindorff, and Paul Craig Roberts.

I think I have plague.

Danny seems to be recuperated from his bout with this virus but now his parents are feeling the effects. Unfortunately, we can’t just crawl into bed and watch videos of trucks and construction equipment. I hope Danny isn’t going to get a second bout of this (it seems to take a day lull before coming back to kick our asses), as we don’t own enough videos.

In one of those stupidly stoic moments I decided to drive to the small grocer in the next town-twenty minutes away. Halfway there I realised what a dreadfully bad decision that was. I managed to get the shopping done but only after dropping a dozen eggs (which I offered to pay for but they wouldn’t let me) and forgetting to buy tissues (you’d think my running nose would have reminded me). Given the high fever and overall body pain I sure do wonder if this is one of those lovely flu variants that this year’s vaccine was useless against. Not to complain (oh actually, yes I’m going to complain) but I’ve never been hit by as much viral yuck as this year. Part of it may be due to the immune suppressing drugs I take for lupus and arthritis leaving me open to anything out there, but man, I’ve been taking these medications for a decade and have never been this sick, this often.

Unless I suddenly feel better, don’t expect much from this blogger over the weekend. To steal a line from Monty Python:

"My brain hurts."

And everything else.