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  • woah.

    Here's a quote you never expected to read, ever:

    "This is believed to be the first time that a civilian has been killed by a box of public information leaflets."


    Thanks, TimesOnline, for making me laugh at something sad, you evil bastards.

    Light's Out!

    "The Guiding Light," a daytime soap opera, is going off the air after 72 years. It was one of my beloved grandmother's "shows," and one of the odd ways I've always felt a connection to her, even after her death. And now, just like my sweet grandmother, it, too, will be gone.

    My grandmother's house is an oddity. Normally one would enter the house from the front porch and then walk through a sitting room and living room to enter the dining room, kitchen and then bathroom. However, the rear entry was used as a front door because that was where the driveway brought you. Everyone entered into a small 'mud room' and then directly into the dining room. The dining room itself had a huge window looking out onto the front yard, main driveway, and road.

    My grandmother never sat anywhere but in the dining room, and always at the head of the table. Within easy reach were her latest crocheting project. CB radio (they were in the sticks, and calls were expensive--heck, the area still doesn't have cellphone reception!), her typewriter, her address book and her radio.

    She did not have a television in her dining room until she bought one with a remote back when I was still in elementary school. Instead, she used a special radio which had "TV" selections, and every day she listened to "The Young and the Restless" and "The Guiding Light," in the dining room while her daughters watched "that nonsense" show, "General Hospital" in the living room. She enjoyed clucking over the misadventures of the residents of Genoa City and Springville. In between the episodes, she would make dinner, type out a letter to a friend, or polish our nails with white-out. During the shows, however, we would sit with her at the dining room table, quietly drawing or writing while the episode was played out in our imaginations in time with the radio.

    My grandmother was born before the show began, and had followed it nearly every day of her life until she died at age of 72. I think it is only fitting that if one of her favorite shows is also going to die, it should be at the ripe old age of 72.

    Expectations are down...

    ...on the realization that sometimes words don't mean what you think they mean.

    I'm shopping for a fancy dress. I'm a big girl which makes the shopping tricky. Another handicap is my attitude towards shopping in general and the mall in particular: I'd rather have my eyebrows waxed again.

    Any smart shopper is going to do a little research before heading out. I am no exception. Because of the nature of the quest, I tried to limit myself to stores normally found at the mall. I found a few examples of dresses I kind-of liked at one, and so moved on to store 2 in hopes of finding the style I think I'm into this year.

    Talk about raising an eyebrow. Now, I realize that the store is not actually a 'barn.' However, I do expect there to be some 'dresses' in it, since the damn store is called 'Dress Barn.' Inconceivable!

    Don't want to be an American idiot

    So I'm looking over some of the Facebook entries I missed during Dragon*Con, and I came across this item posted by a guy with whom I went to school:

    "I bet anybody from Germany who remembers how Hitlers Rise To POWER happened is laughing at the USA right now. Hitler plead to the children with speeches sounding soooooooo good. Just like Obama now wants to SPEAK to the children. He changed his speech when people who how to think challenged him. HE IS EVIL!!!!!!!!!!! WAKE UP AMERICA"

    Comments:

    *Even though he changed his speech, I called the school and told them my kids wouldn't be watching it there. They will watch it AT HOME with me!
    *i signed the permission form for paige to watch at school(6th grader)...i will watch today at home and compare notes when she gets home. she is pretty opinionated--wonder what she will think?
    *I didn't get a permission slip or anything stating if they were going to watch it. Ryan is sooooo anti-Obama though and he doesn't care who knows it!!! LMAO
    This guy and his regular followers are so "anti-Obama" I feel like maybe I never really knew some of my classmates at all. Mr. Obama's election to the presidency has encouraged them to loudly proclaim their opinions as facts, and that's fine because I'm an admirer of the Bill of Rights, but they sound more like parrots repeating the words of prominent pundits, capital letters and all.

    These "friends" of mine have never traveled outside of the USA, not even to visit Canada or Mexico. Back in school they were not interested in the events of the world ("Bangladesh? Oh, you mean the company that makes my shirts. What about it?") or in learning world history or culture. Our high school offered only one foreign language (Spanish) and only state/USA history. "Honors" English was about as close to "culture" or "world history" as it got. I really thought that would change once we became adults and could spread our wings.

    Or, maybe it's me.

    Maybe I really am a socialist-nazi-communist, as suggested by the person who wrote the last comment quoted above. Maybe I'm naive and think that the 'truthers' and 'birthers' out there are completely insane. Or maybe I've become the one who doesn't know what's going on, although I do try to stay informed.

    Growing up, it was vital that we watch the NBC evening news every night as a family. I think this was mostly because my dad was a controller, rather than that he wanted us to be smart. After all, girls don't need to be smart, just pretty.

    As an adult, I could not function without my daily dose of CNN, and later, FoxNews (although I did quit that completely after I realized that the hosts of "Fox and Friends" were total morons and that Sean Hannity was a rabid lunatic). I also watched the local news morning and night.

    I stopped watching all "world" news after Eric left for Iraq because I didn't want the kids to worry. Since then, I watch the local morning news, periodically check BBC Online for world events, or I watch the BBC World News on TV, but not regularly. This may have caused a problem.

    For one, I don't understand all the hatin' vs Obama. I fail to understand how a person can attend a Christian church for all of his life and be considered Muslim. I also don't understand how people think Obama is destroying our nation. Supposedly he's a socialist and ruining the Constitution. I would argue that Bush was a communist who did in fact ruin the Constitution with the Patriot Act and Homeland Security.

    Second, I sometimes worry that I'm raising children so completely unaware of the world at large, they are almost idiots.

    After school, I asked the kids if they watched a special show at school. I got blank stares. I added, "...a speech by the President..?" and got several oh-yeahs in return. The older two did not see it, the younger one did, in social studies class.

    I asked what she thought of it:

    Her: Thought of what?
    Me: The President's speech.
    H: Oh.
    M: Well?
    H: Well, what?
    M: GAH! What did you think of the President's speech?
    H: I guess it was okay.
    M: You "guess"?
    H: Well, I didn't really watch it.
    M: What else were you doing while it was on?
    H: Uh, I don't know. I think I drew a picture. Or maybe I was thinking about origami. I don't know.
    M: So, you don't know what he was talking about?
    H: Who was talking?
    M: ...

    Oy.