Lethal Dose

I deleted … just in case. But it’s still around if someone wants to read it.

My grandmother worked at Sears so the Wishbook was always a BIG DEAL. I would pore over it endlessly … and now people have scanned them in their entirety for our enjoyment.

I had “Crissy”, not Tressy. Then I got Crissy’s little sister, “Velvet,” and later, “Cinnamon.” God, these dolls sound like strippers! Crissy’s hair pulled out, just like Tressy, and you were supposed to pull a little string and it would go back up in the hole in her head. It never really worked, though.

Ewww. My least favorite star - Mickey Rooney - is still pounding the boards at 87, this time
in England, doing “Panto.” Some highlights from the Telegraph’s recent interview:

“THE SPICE GIRLS?” booms Mickey. “Who are the Spice Girls?”

“You know who the Spice Girls are, honey!”

“I don’t,” he says, with a dismissive scrunch of the nose. “And I don’t like anything with a name like the Spice Girls.”

“What’s wrong with their name?”

“I’m sorry,” he says waving his hands in the air. “I’m from a different era. I’ve done film after film… Black Stallion, Boys Town. I’ve done musicals with Judy. Nineteen Andy Hardy pictures. I’ve known Sinatra and Sammy Davis Junior. I’ve worked with June Allyson and Perry Como…”

What follows is a fascinating romp through his depleted memory banks: entertaining the troops during the Second World War, earning a medal for his bravery which he is wearing today on his tweed blazer; how he reported at the Nuremberg trials for a newspaper; a visit to Hitler’s lair.

Read the rest here.

Have their own blog!

Three little piggies and Mum.

You can only guess what the “Intimates” section is like in the Vermont Country Store catalog when they refer to things as “personal discomforts.” Check out these swingin’ items for your next sexy night in …

Should “love,” “acetate,” and “panties” ever be used in the same sentence? Do I want acetate anywhere near my nether regions?

Cover that waist! I’m guessing these are for those types who wear their pants straight up to their boob line … if you can even distinguish it.

The others also point out their “nonbinding comfort” … I guess for under those muumuus and “floats.”

PS. They were out of black xmas trees at Borders (I know!) That sort of gives me hope. I bought a “deep purple” one instead, and put a devil-duckie on the very top.

No, not wiglets, though I love that word (and wiglets and piglets.) These:

NEWBORNS FIRST CURLY PIGLETS IN COUNTY FOR 50 YEARS
08:00 - 05 December 2007

A litter of rare Mangalitza piglets are the first curly-coated porkers to have been born in Lincolnshire for 50 years. The perky piglets are a distant relative of the renowned, but now extinct, Lincolnshire Curly Coat - the last pig breed to have died out in the UK.

Born a week ago on a rectory outside Fulletby, near Horncastle, the seven hairy beasts are the size of rabbits and are stripey grey and cream in colour. At the moment they are keeping close to 700kg mum Ginger in their makeshift wooden home, although they have begun to walk and open their eyes.

And the births have also been an eye-opening experience for owners Brian and Sylvia Codling. Although they had been preparing for the birth of the pigs, their calculations had led them to think the due date was in January.

Now the retired couple are having to go through a crash course in rearing the first pigs they have ever owned. Brian said: “I can’t sleep at night. It’s a bit like having children. For the last week both of us have been waking up at 2am, wondering if they are all right.”

After hearing that 15 rare Hungarian Mangalitza pigs had been brought to the UK, he decided to buy four - Ginger and Mangel for breeding and Pepper and Wurzel for their meat. (NO!)

For Brian, breeding the porcine rarities is a way of bringing back a relative of the Lincolnshire Curly Coat, which died out in 1972.

Please don’t smash the pigs!

Piglets’ mum, Ginger.
****
Better than a lump of coal, these things are actually poisonous (of course, they are from China.) From the EWG:

CSI Fingerprint Toy (dangerous powder included)

Beware if your children put the CSI: Crime Scene Investigation™ Fingerprint Examination Kit on their holiday wish lists. It doesn’t take a sleuth to detect danger in these kits — the fingerprinting dust contains tremolite, one of the most lethal forms of asbestos.

Even worse, children are supposed to blow on the asbestos-contaminated powder after dusting for fingerprints, which means they will likely inhale lung-damaging, cancer-causing asbestos fibers.

Get it while you can, because it’s still on shelves. Yep.

I’ve found gifts for everyone this year - everyone I don’t like! Most of my readers know how much I dislike Santa Claus and all “Xmasy” things. Now that I’ve found a black xmas tree, I’m ready to put these horrors underneath - I can only imagine the joy on people’s faces when they open stuff like:

Melting Santa - I can’t wait to strike the first match:

think of the fun if you replaced the label with an ivory soap one:

isn’t this stuff illegal?

For the crackheads in my family (multiple jars, please)

and their parents.

that strange relative with the “hannibal lecter” obsession:

let’s start a new family game: SMASH THE PIG!

“after a holiday dinner, the pig is broken”

here’s a handy double set for the older relatives:
goodness - WOODEN q-tips?

i love this description:

hmm … women? money? liquor?

now, on to getting ready. first, i’ve got to do my hair … but what style?
french roll? hair rat?

well, i’ve already decided what I’m going to wear. first, this handy germ-and-icky-relative- drunk-breath-kiss preventor:

and this stylish number, in “mental patient blue.” i found it before i discovered their “muumuus and floats” section.

all i need is a pair of slippers (rubber soled, natch) and i’m ready … we’ll end it all with large helpings of that DISGUSTING xmastime tradition that everyone hates, but pretends they like when someone gives it to them:

Download before they remove the link! Too late. Find it on 1010WINS site. Italics all mine, natch.

NYC Catholic Coloring Book Warns Kids About Predators

NEW YORK (AP) — A new coloring book being distributed by the Archdiocese of New York uses a cartoon guardian angel to warn kids against predators in what is apparently the first such effort by a Roman Catholic diocese in the United States.

But the head of an advocacy group for victims of abuse by priests said the book should say explicitly that trusted adults — including priests — may be the abusers.

In the coloring book the perky guardian angel tells children not to keep secrets from their parents, not to meet anyone from an Internet chat room and to allow only “certain people” like a doctor or parent to see “where your bathing suit would be.”

In a comic book version for older kids, a teenager turns to St. Michael the Archangel for strength to report that two schoolmates are being sexually abused.

Joseph Zwilling, a spokesman for the archdiocese, said the books are new this fall and have been distributed to about 300 schools and 400 religious education programs to use as a resource.

“It’s to help young people to know situations they should not get into,” he said. “How to be safe — but to try to do it in an age-appropriate and sensitive way.”

Zwilling said the coloring book grew out of the archdiocese’s “safe environment” training program for adults such as coaches and parent volunteers who interact with children.

He said that as far as he knows, the coloring book is the first of its kind to be produced by church officials.

David Clohessy, national director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said he, too, was unaware of any similar effort.

Clohessy said that while he welcomes any attempt to teach children how to stay safe, he believes the coloring book should state more clearly that the predator is more likely to be a trusted adult than a stranger.

“There continues to be a bit of an overemphasis on stranger danger,” Clohessy said. “I think it would be most effective if it would say, ‘Not only strangers molest kids. Even adults you like and your parents respect — teachers, doctors, priests — can hurt kids.”’

Clohessy, who emerged as the most prominent victims’ spokesman after accusations of widespread abuse by priests shook the Catholic church in 2002, said the church’s steps to address the issue “were undertaken belatedly and begrudgingly and under external pressure.”

But Zwilling said the vast majority of priests are “good and holy men,” and he said it would have been inappropriate for the coloring book to single out priests as potential abusers.

“You don’t want to frighten children,” he said. “You also don’t want to stigmatize any group.”

The closest the coloring book comes to directly addressing the church abuse scandal is a picture of a second angel — not the guardian angel — grinning at a priest and an altar boy through a wide open door.

“For safety’s sake, a child and an adult shouldn’t be alone in a closed room together,” the text reads. “If a child and an adult happen to be alone, someone should know where they are and the door should be open or have a big window in it.”

Well, that doesn’t help - everyone knows angels can fly, stupid.

Taking some style tips from Chick Tracts?

ROME (Reuters) - If you are a Catholic looking for a saint in heaven to protect you, you no longer have to carry a small “holy card”. You can get the image sent to your cellphone.

A company in Italy started offering the service on Tuesday but ran into opposition from some Catholic Church leaders who think the idea is crass and commercial.

“We found a need and filled it,” Barbara Labate, who came up with the idea with her business partner in a cellphone services company based in Milan, told Reuters by telephone.

Many taxis, private cars and trucks in Italy have a small picture of a saint — known as a “santino” or little saint — taped to the dashboard. Millions of Italians also keep wrinkled and worn “santini” in their wallets or handbags.

“We are merely catching up with the times. I think this will appeal to young people as well as grandmothers,” Labate said.

The company started the service with 15 saints on offer and Labate said the hallowed catalogue will grow. The downloading service, done by sending a text message to a phone number, costs three euros ($4.42). The Web site is santiprotettori.com

Nearly every shop near the Vatican sells paper “santini” but not everyone in the Church thinks cellphones and saints are a marriage made in heaven.

“This is in really bad taste,” Bishop Lucio Soravito De Franceschi, a member of the Italian bishops conference committee for doctrinal matters, told the Turin newspaper La Stampa.

“It is a distortion of sacred things … selling ’santini’ for cell phones is horrifying,” he said.

But Labate, who is Sicilian and recalls how her mother gave her a “santino” to put in her luggage when she traveled, rejected the criticism.

“We are simply offering a service to the faithful. We are doing this with the maximum respect, dignity and professionalism for believers,” she said.

One popular saint in Italy is St Christopher, the patron saint of safe travel. Other favorites are St Lucy, patroness of good eyesight and St Pio of Petralcina, the 20th century monk who was said to have had the wounds of Christ.

Labate has also put “possible future saints” in her initial catalogue. They include the late Pope John Paul, who has already been put on the road to sainthood, as well as the current pontiff, Pope Benedict.

Jesus and the Madonna are also for sale.

Now, wait - didn’t they get rid of St. Christopher? What’s wrong with a santini on your phone? I’d get one … I put little saint stickers all over everything anyway.

Mark and I walking thru busy parking lot Sunday. A Ford Explorer drives by, slowly, with windows down. A woman leans out:

“Excuse me, do you speak English?”

“Yes,” we say in unison. She has a baby on her lap and begins her schpiel: “My boyfren’ was arrested for domestic violence after he beat me up and my father had to come pick up me and my baby and we have to go to Pomona and our tank is on empty.”

“Sorry we have no money,” we both quickly say, again in unison.

“God bless you.”

The “father” behind the steering wheel couldn’t have been older than his early 30s, at least from what I could see behind his shades. She better dig up an older guy if that’s her con line. And no matter how bad off anyone is, they sure as hell don’t want to go to Pomona. Unless they’re going to the fair.