What do YOU think?

Today one of my co-workers presented me with a situation and wanted my reaction. I'm curious as to what YOU, my friends and Internet vagabonds, might think. Here it is:

James volunteers with Big Brothers, and his "little brother" is 16 years old. Let's call this kid Pete. This week, Pete walked into a local computer store and bought a laptop for $1300. It turns out that Pete's mother had given him this money so he could buy a ticket to go visit her in Hong Kong. Whoops.

James' argument is that the store should not have taken that much money from a 16-year-old kid (and a young-looking one at that) without so much as a phone call to the kid's parents. They are using this argument to try to return the laptop and to get the money back (the laptop was sold on clearance, so initially they wouldn't let Pete return it).

Please weigh in here - is expecting a clerk or store owner to not take over a thousand dollars from a 16-year-old an unreasonable or overly idealistic thing to ask? I am truly very curious to hear what you have to say.

Worst Family Feud answers

Some of these are hilarious, for example:

Question: Name something you'd buy for more than a thousand dollars.
#1 Answer: House
Worst Answer: Pleasure equipment

Those sharp, loud cackles you've been hearing? Umm, yeah, that was me. Sorry, but it's funny!

Funny

People often write me and ask how I keep my wood floors so clean when I live with a child and a dog, and my answer is that I use a technique called Suffering From a Mental Illness.

- Heather B. Armstrong

Mind-boggling

Gwyneth's Paltrow's Solo in Movie Infamous

A wonderful performance ... check it out.

Stephen Lewis on gender inequality, AIDS, and the UN

From a speech from one of the most articulate and well-informed people on the planet, well worth the read:

... one of the most startling statistics is the revelation that women now constitute 61% of the infections in Africa … close to 14 million women infected. There are no words. It’s a catastrophe rooted in gender inequality, and everyone in the highest citadels of the United Nations knows it, but virtually nothing changes.

We have a report from a High-Level Panel on UN Reform, pointing out the lamentable UN record on women, and recommending the creation of a new international agency for women. The proposal lies dormant on the order paper of the General Assembly, crying out for leadership from the Secretary General. The Deputy Secretary General has spoken, strongly and bravely although, given the inevitable and nasty internal rivalries, her words are too often given to rhetorical sleight-of-tongue.

Where is the UN Secretary General when the AIDS pandemic rages, and the women of Africa need him most? No one pretends that the women’s agency is the sole answer, but you can bet that things would not be so excruciatingly horrendous if women had an international vehicle to draw upon, with resources and voice.

So, too, women in conflict zones. My colleagues and I carefully watched the Security Council debate on Resolution 1325 just a couple of weeks ago, and have read carefully the proceedings of the Security Council debate this week on the protection of civilians in armed conflict. The speeches are getting better: more feeling, more informed, more urgent (that is particularly true of the Undersecretary General for Humanitarian Affairs; on the other hand, the Secretary General’s speech last Tuesday on the protection of civilians in armed conflict was so pro forma as to make one weep. He managed to mention Sudan , Somalia , Afghanistan , Iraq and a passing aside to Darfur . Not a syllable on the Democratic Republic of the Congo ).

When you have a savage war on women, as in the DRC, with huge implications for transmission of the AIDS virus, speeches are the road to hell. When will the United Nations actually take hold? There are suggestions cited of the Secretary General leading a new campaign to eliminate violence against women. I recently saw an early draft of this potential Secretary General initiative, and I can categorically say that in more than twenty years of association with multilateralism, I’ve rarely seen anything more vapid, fatuous and insubstantial. It was as if the illusion of progress, dressed up in the Byzantine underworld of United Nations processes was sufficient unto itself. Public relations for inconsolable grief ...

One less bigot running for president

Thank goodness. But how does such a throwback get a national and international platform for as long as he did????

It's true - they don't make insults like they used to!

See here.

A few of my favourites:

"Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?"
Mark Twain

"His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork."
Mae West

"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it."
Groucho Marx

"This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force."
Book review by Dorothy Parker

Yours?

One of the great things about living in a world-class city

... is getting a message like this one: "My girlfriend and I have tickets to Handel's Messiah tonight, but we can't go. Do you want them?"

Hell yeah!

:)

Double-take

One of the things, since becoming a vegetarian, that always makes me pause and think, Can I really do this? And not regret it later? is the immediate recycling of glass jars. I used to keep an assortment of them under my kitchen sink to be used when I cooked meat and needed something to keep the fat and drippings. Now, not so much ... :)

Weird. But pretty awesome. :)

One amazingly patient dog

Click here for the video, here for the background story.

Minimal blogging tonight

... because in the mornings I can relate far too well with the calf in this video. And no, it's not because there's anyone licking me (although that could be fun, depending LOL). Rather, it's the whole I think I can muster the strength to get up sentiment, quickly followed by a faceplant. And repeat. Several times.



Time for bed, y'all.

Watch as I emasculate myself

In an e-mail to a friend in a group of friends driving during this blizzard:

I want you all to be safe and sound so I can yell at you all for worrying me! ;->

Only kidding, I can't remember the last time I yelled at someone ... I've spoken sternly, though - be very afraid of my speaking sternly!!! :)

Now wouldn't you be scared of me???

Smells so good ...

... baking banana bread. Awesome banana bread. Got the recipe from the wife of a jackass trainer in Texas of whom I have no other positive memories, but they say everyone comes into your life for a reason. I guess his was the banana bread recipe. :)

ZenDenizen does NOT make my bunny cry

I've had a new visitor (an Internet vagabond, if you will) who's been leaving really great comments on various posts, which I really appreciate. Friends and Internet vagabonds, please welcome Zen to this little corner of the blogosphere!

Friends and Internet vagabonds: HI, ZEN!

Excellent work, folks!

Naturally, I've taken some time to take a look at ZenDenizen's blog, Debonair Debacles, and it's very cool! Be sure to click on the link and wander over!

One of the things you might notice is this graphic on her blog:

Oh, that's what I should have been doing all this time? Use a mix of guilt and cuteness to get more* of you to comment??? [slapping forehead] ;-D

A mini-adventure with nature

Yesterday, before the snowstorm hit, I stopped by a conservation area where they feed the birds over the winter. I had a cup or so of sunflower seeds and another handful of peanuts.

At the edge of the wooded area where all the feeders were, a chickadee literally buzzed my head. So I grabbed a handful of sunflower seeds and held out my palm – right there in the open – and immediately two chickadees were perched on my gloved hand, daintily selecting a morsel with their thin beaks before buzzing away, only to be replaced by others, and then some more. I had up to three birds on my hand, with another perched on my head (I was wearing a hood) or briefly hovering over my hand as they waited for the others to clear some landing space. I couldn't believe how brave they were.

After a few minutes, I briefly closed down “operations” so I actually walk into the shelter of the trees (there was a biting wind from the lake), and then the feeding frenzy was resumed. I quickly lost count of the chickadees. A couple of them (or was it the same one, just at different times?) would try to dominate the area around my hand so the others couldn’t get any more seeds, but I made sure that didn’t last too long. The variations in their chirps and whistles boggles my mind.

There were other birds also clearly visible in the bare trees, but none of them was brazen enough to venture close to me: nuthatches, blue jays, some kind of red-capped sparrow, and gorgeous cardinals (did you know that female cardinals are mostly grey with just a bit of red/peach? I don’t think I’d ever seen one until yesterday! There's an excellent photo of one here.).

People think that I’m a bird-watcher because of the bird rescues that I’ve done this year, but nothing could be further from the truth – I have a terrible time seeing birds when the trees are in leaf, and then if I do see them, I just don’t have any eye for the detail that would help me identify the species. The only reason why I could identify the birds that I did yesterday was that they were either very common and unmistakeable (like the chickadees, blue jays, and cardinals) or I’d seen them dead from building collisions and had time to study them up close (e.g., the nuthatch) in order to identify them for the FLAP database. But in this particular place, in the winter, in a concentrated area where they have basically been trained to have less fear of humans, THIS is my kind of bird-watching! LOL

There were several squirrels dashing around the wooded area as well, but they would not take the peanuts that I offered from my hands. (The chipmunks who definitely would, and in the summer might even climb up your pantleg to do so, were presumably hibernating.) Instead, a couple of these squirrels fastened their beady, melancholy eyes upon me as if to say, I know many people would consider me to be a pest and rodent, but if you could perhaps cast that peanut in my direction, my growling, empty belly would be endlessly grateful. Needless to say, the peanuts were gently scattered for their consumption at a safe distance. And that’s when the blue jay actually showed up, descending with raucous cries from some unknown branch in a blaze of brilliant blue, snatching up one of the peanuts and then immediately darting back up to a high branch for safety.

It was all unforgettably beautiful. I wish I could share the wonder of it with each of you.

The perfect photo for a blustery day

Via CuteOverload.com:

Now, if that doesn't melt your heart, even on a day like today, I don't know what to do with you! :)

What's next????

It's especially funny when the dog tries to roll over on the cat ... Be sure to have your speakers on! :)

Why sometimes it's better not to drive

So I was supposed to drive to my hometown this weekend to have the big Christmas feast with my parents and relatives I haven't seen in months if not years, and then this storm started developing over Texas ... it's predicted to hit southern Ontario tomorrow (Sunday), and it's just too stupid for me to drive or to encourage anyone else to, for that matter. Instead, I can watch this video from LAST winter of idiots who didn't know enough to just STOP DRIVING. Seriously, watch it - you won't believe your eyes. (By the way, it helps when you're watching the video to understand that there's a hill involved, which is hard to tell from the camera angle, but which becomes apparent anyway by the end of the video.)

A perspective on Italy

Apparently one of my cousins is now living in Italy (which I would not have known if it were not for Facebook), and offered up this article as an insightful description of the challenges facing this proud country. Definitely worth a read. The bit about the very low birth rate reminds me of the movie, Children of Men.