Sweet Pea, get back into bed.
Why did you come to put me back in bed instead of mom?
Because I think you’re adorable and I love you very much.
Can I have mom?
No. Sleep tight, Sweet Pea.
15 minutes later…
Sweet Pea, bedtime. Get back in bed.
(back in bed, lightly touching dad’s cheek with her hand, presumably to soften the blow) Um, dad? I know you think I’m cute? And that you love me? But can mom come next time?
It was on the radio this morning, and will likely be all over the gossip TV shows later today, and it has me seeing red. But not for the reasons you might think.
Miley Cyrus (Hanna Montana) had some half-naked, sex kitten photos taken by Annie Leibovitz, renowned celebrity photographer (and now, pornographer), for an upcoming Vanity Fair issue.
What’s making me mad? Not Miley Cyrus. She’s 15. She’s entitled to make some stupid decisions every now and again, but being a celebrity, I have to think that every move, positive or negative, is amplified ten-fold. Nah, she’s not making me mad. Billy Ray Cyrus, following in the pimp-my-daughter footsteps of Papa Joe (Look At Her Cans!) Simpson, was present for the photo shoot, was even in the frame for some of them, so I have to assume he approved (and even encouraged) the shoot. “C’mon, Miley - make daddy proud and show ‘em them boobies.”
Seriously - Billy Ray is closing in on 50, yet he keeps the hair and face like he’s due on the set of Real Housewives of Orange County. Creepy. Moms, hide your underage girls if Achy Breaky is touring with Hanna Montana. A quick tour of his wikipedia page shows that he spreads his seed around.
Miley also has an agent. Maybe dude gets his freak on with pictures of underage girls, and lucky him! He represents one. “Let’s see if I can lube the wheels of media to make a sexy photo shoot with my client a reality” he thought to himself. Kudos on the big score.
The reason they don’t let kids of this age make some of the really big decisions is because they may not be capable of understanding the consequences that may come down the line. That’s why they (and the law) rely on their parents or other adults looking out for their best interests. Glenn Gulino (agent) and Miley’s dad failed her.
Now I’m off to go put another layer of clothing on Agalia, and tell her to never trust a boy with streaked highlights in his hair.
It may have been, and you don’t even know it. If you’re running an older version of WordPress (the current release is 2.5.1), the odds are pretty good that someone’s been coding behind your back.
About 10 days ago I noticed it on a couple other blogs I have, then I found it on someone else’s blog that I visit pretty often.
How to tell if your blog has been hacked? You’ll need to view the source code for your site. You can do this by right clicking the home page of your site and choosing “View Page Source.” Even if you don’t know code, you’ll be able to spot this - it’ll be about 40 or more consecutive links to pharmacy or gambling sites, usually hidden right in the text of your posts. a <u style=’display:none’> will preface the links, making then not appear in your browser. That’s why nobody sees them when they visit your site.
To fix the issue, you’ll need to edit those posts to remove the links, then upgrade your WordPress to the current version.
I’ve been haunted with pangs of guilt lately and need to get something off my chest. I have a client who has an adult son in his 30’s who has leukemia. His son needs a bone marrow transplant. From what our client tells me, they’ve run his son’s biological data against all of the registered bone marrow donors (some three million), and none of them are a match. He’s receiving chemo, but they don’t know how many rounds of chemo a person can have, and if it that answer was infinitely large, the chemo won’t cure him. Only a bone marrow transplant has a shot at chasing this disease from his body.
Like any good father would, during any contact he has with people outside his family, he’s telling them about his son’s situation and not quite asking, but implying that he’d really like people to sign up for the registry.
I haven’t done it, and not sure I will. After I got off the phone with him telling me about his son’s dire situation, I Googled bone marrow transplants to see what I might be in for. Sounds like it may include general anesthetic and for someone like me who earns their living in a rather physical job, I may not be able to work for a few weeks.
I’m kinda feeling like a sissy for not jumping in and signing up, but at the same time, we’re not millionaires. If I’m not working for three weeks, that’s three weeks that we’re drawing from savings. And then the risk (albeit slight) of having complications from the procedure or the general anesthetic.
What would you do if you were in my shoes?
For the first time this week, she was alone in the house. After dinner, Dad Clay had taken little Jack and his sister Beverly out to karate class or soccer practice or something - she couldn’t remember - and with the close of a single door the din of a young family vaporized like a magic trick. Poof - it was silent. She could hear the clock above the sink ticking. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been able to hear that clock tick. Had it been weeks? Months?
She sat at the kitchen table just to absorb the soft rhythm, letting each iteration of the second hand chip away at her stress like a masseuse gently thumping on clenched muscles. After a few minutes the ticking of the clock reminded her that her supply of quiet was limited, and she’d better get busy with the cleaning she wanted to accomplish before her Progenitors Of Dirt returned home.
She was in the kitchen, and that was as good a place as any to start her cleaning. As she filled a bucket with hot water and soap, the phone wrang. It was her mother, just calling to chat. How lucky she felt to have an extra long cord on the kitchen phone; she could clean and chat simultaneously! With the phone nestled between her cocked head and her shoulder, she began kneading a soapy washcloth into the kitchen table, scouring out the ground Cheerios and cottage cheese stuck in the table’s delicately etched details. Twittering away with her mom about nothing in particular, she glanced at the new couch in the living room. Eggshell with a floral print. It made her happy just to gaze upon it. But her pleasant state turned to horror almost immediately.
“Oh my God, Mom. I’ve gotta go.” She dropped the phone to the floor and raced to the kitchen sink, where in a single motion she spun six or seven sheets from the roll of paper towels hanging under the cabinet, turned on her heels and raced back to her beautiful couch.
“That damn dog!” she cursed. For a fugacious moment she wondered how that puppy could have even jumped onto the couch, but the screaming flood of rage and mushrooming sense of loss quickly forced that thought out of her head. She had damage control to do, and every second she waited would only make things worse. She ripped the length of paper towels in half and knelt at the couch, a wad in each hand, cupping them together as she tried to gently scoop the soft, oozy dog crap from her beautiful new (expensive!) couch.
As the paper towels raised the poop from the cushion she noticed that despite it’s soft appearance it was holding together nicely. Maybe the couch wouldn’t be ruined after all. Come to think of it, the poop was really light, too. Like it was hollow in the middle. Almost like
Rubber.
She stuck her finger right into the middle of the brown pile, and the message her finger’s tactile sensors sent to her brain nearly made her head explode. This was not the act of a dog. It was a prank of a soon-to-be-deceased little boy! She threw the hollow rubber replica to the floor and started plotting a homicide.
Edit: I forgot to add - even now, almost 30 years later, I giggle when I think about this prank.* Mom was furious about it, and if it hadn’t been so damn funny, I’d probably be dead.
*It should be noted that I also own Beavis and Butt-Head DVDs.