As per Wonkette: Affleck and Bush Go Head to Head. She calls photos of pols and wonks holding up young sproggen “baby-eating contests.” Makes sense.
However, we childfree types have been eating babies for years. And trading recipes. Ah, the good old days, I remember reading that when it was fresh and new.
BARTLETT — A Bartlett couple were charged with felony forgery after their daughter was caught Sunday trying to use fake tickets for rides at a carnival, authorities said.
In a generous move, they had distributed free tickets to 20 needy children.
Yes, charity begins at home – with a color printer and some card stock.
You have to read the whole thing to get the full-bore comedy gold: Selling Son’s Beloved Play Station 2 For Punishment!
The funny part to me is not that the kid broke something they had up for auction on eBay or that he drank some beer and wine, but that the parent is more upset about the cost of the stuff he broke/consumed more than the fact that he swilled as much booze as he could get his 13-year old, 6’3″ mitts on.
And I see the problem with that, don’t you?
It’s good to be childfree.
We went with Steve to the big new Meijer store near us, because he thought it would be neat and cool and would have a difficult to find product he’d been looking for. I told him I thought it was more of a cross between a really big Target and Sears with a grocery store on one side. And that when I’d been there before, it seemed like a lot of tacky people and their badly behaved kids seemed to congregate there.
Well, for once, I was right. I am so rarely right where Steve is concerned. He called later to admit whole-heartedly I was right.
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A long-planned hike to Starved Rock today nearly came to naught because I, unlike Ronnie, am not the Great Communicator. However, we made it to the park and hiked, which consisted mostly of walking up and down stairs and along boardwalks. There are normal trails also, but the area is underlain by a layer of soft sandstone that erodes VERY easily, so the high-traffic areas are boarded.
We met up with Steve and drove down to Starved Rock to join Jill and her friend Gina. I screwed up by not checking directly with Steve to be clear on a change of plans that I had emailed, but we got there eventually. As it turned out, Jill had gotten a later start than she’d intended, so they didn’t wait SO very long for us.
The visitor’s center at Starved Rock was heavily air-conditioned, a fact that we noted in passing. We walked up toward the rock itself.
At the bottom of the trail to the rock, we had a choice – up the to the rock, or along another trail to various places along the ridge. We chose “up” to the rock.
Very soon, I was panting and trailing far behind. Damn sedentary lifestyle. Damn blog. Panting and sweating, I went up the stairs. Finally reached the top, but didn’t take any pictures. I thought it would be cooler up there, but it was muggy and getting muggier. We returned to the trail junction, and decided we really did need the bug spray David had seen, so we went back down to the visitor’s center.
“Ahhh!” we all said as we stepped back into the air-conditioning.
We sprayed bug juice all over ourselves just outside (“Yuck!” we all said as we exited the air-conditioning) and went back to the junction. I bought a bandana and soaked it with water to wrap around my neck. It helped.
When we went up the side trail to the base of the waterfalls in Wildcat Canyon, we found a family already there – the father was trying to get a rather scared girl to join him and another daughter out on a rickety little board where the mom could take their picture in front of the falls. Right in the middle of the shots we wanted to take. So we waited and looked around. Presently, they backed off and we took our shots, but had to aim carefully to avoid getting the junky looking board and log construct that somebody had put out in the pool. David’s shots came out better, mine are just, well, pictorial records.
As we were getting ready to leave, the dad and the little girls took off and climbed up the side of the canyon along a ledge – totally off trail, totally against park rules owing to the damage and erosion it causes. I griped loudly to David within the mom’s earshot – “Is that off-trail? Yep, I think that’s off-trail.” The mom ignored me, my passive-aggresive comment apparently fell on deaf ears. The line “Teach… your children well” popped into my head and the song stayed there for the rest of the day.
The temperature continued to climb and the mugginess increased until finally we decided we’d had it for the day (we had always planned to quit by 1 or so to avoid the worst heat) and headed into Utica for lunch.
First, though, we went to the visitor’s center for a quick pit stop. “AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!” we all said as we stepped through the store.
We had already decided to eat there rather than at the lodge because the town had been hit by a devastating tornado, and there was still plenty of evidence that they were repairing and clearing away wreckage. Again, we took no pictures, but I found a website that has a series of storm and aftermath pictures that really tell the story.
Several of them look like they’d be award winners to me – they really tell the story. I think the best of the bunch is the one that’s got the lamppost with the “Utica” banner and US flag on the right of the viewer, and the brick wall close along the left hand. Good shot, that one.
We had lunch at Duffy’s Tavern – it’s the little Irish bar at the tip of the old triangular building with the round Victorian tower. The front windows were still boarded up and the fallen bricks from the facade on either side have been stacked up ready for re-use. But as the sign out front says, “Stop! You’ve just passed Duffy’s! We’re OPEN for lunch,” so in we went.
It’s a GREAT little place, full of funky things stuck on the walls. Great food and good beers, too. I’d like to go back again sometime if we ever overnight in the area.
If you’re ever going through Utica, stop and shop somewhere and leave some much-needed tourist dollars behind. The folks there will be grateful – they’re tough and they’re putting their lives back together, and they’d probably appreciate it more than a government handout.
cow orker n. [Usenet] n. fortuitous typo for co-worker, widely used in Usenet, with perhaps a hint that orking cows is illegal. This term was popularized by Scott Adams (the creator of Dilbert) but already appears in the January 1996 version of the scary devil monastery FAQ. There are plausible reports that it was in use on talk.bizarre as early as 1992. Compare hing, grilf, filk, newsfroup.
There are co-workers and cow-orkers. I work with both types. Many of the latter are parents and think that everything that their child produces is interesting.
I beg to differ.
It’s difficult to feign interest in baby poop just to foster good working relationships. I try, but I have my limits.
The rest of this post was edited for reasons of my own – one of which is a nice positive one. One of my co-workers (note spelling) is trying to quit smoking.
I’m an asthmatic non-smoker allergic to smoke, and I approved this message.
But the woman’s family are insisting that the militiamen will continue to occupy the hospital until they are compensated for the removal of her womb.
The family is demanding 50 camels, which is the traditional Somali compensation offered for the death of a woman.
The woman’s family say she is as good as dead because she can no longer bear children.
This has been bothering me all day. I realize that this woman comes from a traditional culture, in a place where survival is everything. She would have died had a doctor at a free clinic in Mogadishu not removed her uterus. She was carrying a dead fetus, and with the lack of medical care in Somalia, she was probably in extremis when she finally got to the hospital. So the doctor removed her womb, and then waited to be thanked for saving her life.
Only, it seems that in the views of her family and many traditional elders, she’s already dead anyway, because she is now incapable of bearing children.
So now, in lawless Somalia, other people are going without medical treatment and many may die because the woman’s family and the gunmen they hired are convinced that they’re owed a blood debt by the doctor that saved their kinswoman’s life.
Yes, yes, as a “rich” selfish childfree Western woman, I see that my choice was not hers. Having children in her society confers status (no matter how I may cluck disapprovingly, I do know this) and can bring prosperity or at least survival. You have to have enough young people in your village or clan to do essential work raising crops and protecting stock from predators (and from hungry groups of militiamen).
It’s a simpler society. Life is lived closer to the edge of survival there, and choosing when or if to have children is often not an option (especially thanks to our government’s aid policies). Women get pregnant; they either give birth or die. Some choice.
All of which makes me feel really, really lucky to be able to choose to be childfree.
But even if I weren’t childfree, I’d still be a feminist… and I’m horrified that the equation in this story seems to work out to “woman=uterus” and nothing more.
However, the bigger problem is that Somalia is currently a failed state, and the rest of the world (meaning the US and the UN and a lot of NGOs and so on) seems not to be able to do anything about it, or care very much. We suffered terrible losses there, and left Somalia to its agonies. So now stories like this are going to be more and more common… if the international news people still care enough to report them. However, it’ll probably be just the most bizarre stories that will get any press, like the tale of a woman without a womb who’s now as good as dead to her family.
That doesn’t seem right to me.
You know, for a hotel/motel that seems to cater to the outdoorsy/mountainbike/cool dude demographic, there sure seem to be a lot of screaming kids and barking dogs. There’s a big deposit for pets in the room, which someone seems to have paid, and I’m not sure but I think the screaming kids and barking dog are all in the room next to us, which adjoins ours and thus has no soundproofing to speak of owing to the connecting door.
All I’m saying is there’s a whole lot of squabbling, screaming, and barking going on. David says they’re in one of the suites that has a kitchen. Damn, I should have asked about other types of rooms when I called in to book.
Well, they seem to be settling down to a dull whine… I will be ever vigilant for noise incursions the rest of the night, though. Constant vigilance!
And finally, because I was fooling around with Elements just now, here’s the diaper cake that my niece and sister took to a baby shower a few weeks ago when we were visiting in March. I’m sorry, I’m just really glad to be childfree when I consider that people actually spend time and creativity and thinking up gifts like this… and giving them.
I mean, really. Ewww.
On one level, it’s really cute and quite pretty, and and a clever way to give a practical gift. On another, let’s all dress up the poop and pretend it doesn’t stink. It’s the kind of thing that makes women go “Awwwwwwww!” in that high, nasal whine that CF women like me reserve for puppies, kitties, and sinister ducks..
What was funny was when we arrived at Tim’s house, I noticed the cake without really seeing it, and thought “Wow!! Elaborate cake. Lot of icing though. Kind of slumped over.”
I wonder if anybody at the shower made the same mistake when they brought out dessert?
Or, Don’t Mess With Texas: Yahoo! News – Jury Acquits Texas Mother Who Killed Sons
What is it about Texas, religious mania, and murderous moms, anyway?
Sheesh, glad I’m right out of the running.