What were people in fundamentalist Islamic regions of the Middle East doing to each other just before they took up explosive vests? Were mass shootings the last stop before suicide bombings? Are ever-worsening mass shootings an evolutionary phenomenon of a disintegrating society? How long before irate Earth Firsters or right wing American zealots start blowing themselves up in crowded restaurants?
With regards to my Oregon shooting-related comments on homicidal infamy and the American Dream, posted the day before the incident in Connecticut, sick, dumb animals are out there right now paying close attention to the degree to which Adam Lanza’s killing spree has broken America’s heart – and wondering what it’ll take to top it.
Did Kevin Clash, the voice of Elmo, have a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old boy? Apparently unaware that it’s still gross, Clash claimed things started only after the boy turned 18. What, did he wait for the kid’s “special” birthday? And WAS ELMO THERE? Sesame Street Workshop execs have known about the situation since June. Did Elmo protect the man who operated the puppet for more than 27 years? Will our furry red friend go out like Paterno, disgraced and weakened, or will he persist, forever a symbol of parental awkwardness?
And who’s going explain Elmo’s sudden, if slight, voice change? Read more
Whitney Kropp – Photo credit, Dale G. Young/Detroit News
So who is this Whitney Kropp person, and why do we care? Well, the Michigan sophomore was elected to Homecoming Court by her winner schoolmates in an effort to humiliate her — no doubt for something egregious like failing to buy the latest handbag or iPhone.
Until recently, Whitney wasn’t too popular. She apparently keeps to herself, wears a lot of black, colors her hair, and has Kropp for a last name. So her being ridiculed by catty princesses and Brownshirts on the football team isn’t too surprising. But what these products of idiot parenting didn’t realize is that putting a spotlight on an underdog in the hopes of embarrassing her only really results in spotlighting the underdog.
So when the West Branch dust settled, these “cool” kids found they’d actually succeeded in making an unpopular girl the most popular one in town. Simply put, there’s no excuse not to love how this is turning out. Read more
From one of my favorites, Shaun Usher and his site, Lists of Note
In 1933, author F. Scott Fitzgerald ended a letter to his 11-year-old daughter, Scottie, with a list of things to worry about, not worry about, and simply think about. It read as follows.
Things to worry about:
Worry about courage
Worry about cleanliness
Worry about efficiency
Worry about horsemanship
Things not to worry about:
Don’t worry about popular opinion
Don’t worry about dolls
Don’t worry about the past
Don’t worry about the future
Don’t worry about growing up
Don’t worry about anybody getting ahead of you
Don’t worry about triumph
Don’t worry about failure unless it comes through your own fault
Don’t worry about mosquitoes
Don’t worry about flies
Don’t worry about insects in general
Don’t worry about parents
Don’t worry about boys
Don’t worry about disappointments
Don’t worry about pleasures
Don’t worry about satisfactions
What am I really aiming at?
How good am I really in comparison to my contemporaries in regard to:
(a) Scholarship
(b) Do I really understand about people and am I able to get along with them?
(c) Am I trying to make my body a useful instrument or am I neglecting it?
If you’re not familiar with ’em, Buckyballs are magnetized BBs packaged with instructions and shape-making challenges. They’re weirdly hypnotic, s0 we leave ours on the bar to see who makes what during idle chatter ’round the kitchen; they’re a hit with friends and guests. This week the Federal government issued a stop-sale order for Buckyballs ’cause too many parents fail to pay attention to what their kids put in their mouths and too few know the difference between kiddie toys and adult brain teasers.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) called Buckyballs a serious “ingestion hazard” and convinced 10 retailers, including Amazon.com, to stop selling them (the manufacturer has refused to voluntarily withdraw the product from the market). I say, kudos to manufacturer Maxfield & Oberton: idiot parenting’s the real hazard here. Yet we’re left with a panel of stiffs in Washington again protecting us from ourselves.
Why have Americans been surrendering their sense of personal responsibility at such a disturbing rate? Soon we’ll all end up a bunch of trained seals with our heads tilted back, lolling from side to side and waitin’ for someone to drop a fish into our mouths. Read more
Q: Are we, who admit to being too selfish for childrearing, freer to enjoy the company of others’ children?
A: Damn right we are, especially with so much predatory marketing keeping parents’ envious eyes on each other. As moms and dads everywhere condemn the current wave of weirdo parenting while trading assurances that their own kids are free of transmissible dysfunction, it’s only gotten that much more entertaining.
I don’t really care about last week’s Time magazine cover of a confused oaf takin’ a pull off his ma’s tap. I don’t care about extended breast feeding’s quasi-cat lady proponents or this beyond tragicomic “pre-mastication” trend. Yet it’s all fodder for the current national yakkety-yak and it’s overtaken my parent-friends’ usual election year/Facebook/reading list talking points. I listen in, but all I seem to hear is how superior they feel for not going to extremes themselves (while their kids kick shit over and scream “shut up!” when someone interrupts their iPhone game).
My wife and I laugh about how parenting can be as extreme as energy pills made from dehydrated placenta. We see the decision to spawn as extreme to begin with, and no cultural child-worship (or pressure from my wife’s mom) is gonna convince us otherwise. Read more
Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her Council on Foreign Relations-sponsored task force have issued a report that calls America’s fat dummies a national security threat. That’s us folks, we’re the Freedom Haters, our own terrorist jihad against the U.S.A. If you’re acquainted with Def-Con 1, stand by for Def-Con Loved-One.
The U.S. public education system is so failing to do its job of cultivating learners and educating our children that America’s long-term security is at risk. Because of a lack of a high school diploma, obesity, or criminal record, 75% of American youth don’t qualify for the U.S. armed forces. Among those who do, 30% can’t pass the military’s aptitude test. It’s a test I did well on (some years ago), but I was amazed that some of the guys around me were able to pass it at all. I’m not saying our armed forces are dumb, but as an Army PFC I didn’t like being bossed around by borderline morons. Kids who fail that test today make my ‘ol redneck sergeant look like a researcher at Acta Mathematica. Read more
There’s never been a better time for a feature-length documentary giving viewers an intimate look at how bullying affects kids and families. So why isn’t the MPAA on board?
Though it’s already won multiple awards for accuracy, effectiveness, and candor, “The Bully Project” (set to be released March 30 by The Weinstein Company) has just received a final R rating by the Motion Picture Association of America, effectively blocking its screening in schools across the country becauseof “some language.” Really?? Language? Do the voting members of the MPAA even know any teenagers? As the death toll from Northeast Ohio’s Chardon High School shooting rises to three, as here in Los Angeles 10-year-old Joanna Ramos is mourned after succumbing to blunt force head-trauma at the hands of a schoolmate, this is a seriously bad time for the MPAA to demonstrate its disconnection from the young moviegoers it aims to protect.
It isn’t as if the film is simply capitalizing on alarmism or fear-based, reality show-style hype. No throbbing music leads to a nine-year-old flipping her classmates the bird; no Junior Tarantino action stars run around with shotguns intended for ravage and rape. There’s nothing about any of the movie’s advertising that suggests the audience will have a good time with bad words. This is about fragile faces and hurt hearts learning that “the power of hearing one voice in solidarity with you can be transformative.”
“The Bully Project” is a marketing tool, sure, but it’s more of an awareness campaign with a documentary film used to highlight its central theme. It’s encouraging, not selling. “The Bully Project” exists – all by its lonesome – to advocate for everyone’s involvement, to re-imagine education as an instrument of “social and emotional learning” where empathy and responsiveness are “built-in” to the classroom. It is guaranteed to provoke strong emotional reactions from its audiences regardless of whether or not it contains foul language.
Bullying is a crisis that is choking the life out of more young people than most of us realize, and the film’s point is to prompt us to start realizing it before it’s too late. So listen up, MPAA: Telling teenagers they’re too dumb to differentiate between language and a need to be heard makes you part of the problem, not part of the solution.
For more information, check out these links and the Bully trailer.
Change.org’s petition to the MPAA to change “Bully’s” rating to PG-13
Nicole Leszczynski left a supermarket without paying for a sandwich she’d eaten because she says she was suffering a “Mommy-brained moment.” In the process, she needlessly exposed her 2-year-old to removal by state Child Welfare Services. So is she absent-minded, full of it, or both? And why are so many “customer service” employees bored and petty little Napoleons?
Allegedly, this incident sparked a “nationwide outrage,” but then 60 of those happen every week. Plus it happened in Honolulu, Hawaii. If it got past you, too, here’s the deal: Read more
If I had an eight-year-old son to use as a designated driver, whether for making it home before the wife does or for a balls-out run across state lines, I’d at least give the kid a fake mustache, a funny hat, or even an eyepatch to wear. If the police are gonna find me passed out drunk in the front seat with my child at the wheel, I’d sure rather get a wake-up jab from a cop trying not to laugh than by a trooper so angry he tazes me in the ear. I mean, I’d even try writing something like, “Proud Son of a Probation Dad” on the kid’s forehead. Anything’s better than letting a mug shot like this one do all the talking.Read more
What were people in fundamentalist Islamic regions of the Middle East doing to each other just before they took up explosive vests? Were mass shootings the last stop before suicide bombings? Are ever-worsening mass shootings an evolutionary phenomenon of a disintegrating society? How long before irate Earth Firsters or right wing American zealots start blowing themselves up in crowded restaurants?
With regards to my Oregon shooting-related comments on homicidal infamy and the American Dream, posted the day before the incident in Connecticut, sick, dumb animals are out there right now paying close attention to the degree to which Adam Lanza’s killing spree has broken America’s heart – and wondering what it’ll take to top it. 
