Open Thread – Ditto
Happy December, Mudflatters! Here’s the simple way to outdo the neighbors.
December 18, 2024
Thursday, August 3, 2023
The Quitter Returns! -Monday, March 21, 2022
Putting the goober in gubernatorial -Friday, January 28, 2022
Happy December, Mudflatters! Here’s the simple way to outdo the neighbors.
Forgot to add—–“Ginger” was on.as his guest. I don’t know how Herman is going to explain all of this to his wife and family. Whew!!!!
If you didn’t see the Last word with Lawrence O’Donnell——-you can see/hear it here.
http://thelastword.msnbc.msn.com/
Lawrence O’Donnell – msnbc
Well, for those of you who commented on my story about “Nutcracker, The Untold Story” last night, I though I’d give you an update. That was the movie that the 3rd and 4th graders in my school were scheduled to watch today to kick off our Nutcracker holiday theme for December.
Like a good little educator who cares about my students, I dutifully reported to the office first thing this morning to warn the principal about what was in the movie (which she had never watched herself…yikes!). After listening to my concerns, she decided to show the other movie, a filmed version of the ballet with Macauley Culkin as the Nutcracker/Prince.
While I’m sitting on the stage next to the screen, interpreting for my deaf students, she told the kids that my concerns were the reason they were watching this ballet movie instead of the one she picked…and she hoped they wouldn’t be bored. Nothing like setting them up to hate the movie AND be mad at me!
Ten minutes later, she stopped the ballet movie and told the kids that she and the classroom teachers had decided to show them the other one instead. During the movie, most of the teachers were busy working on their laptops and either missed most of the bad movie or were afraid to complain that it was inappropriate. She even decided to show it to the higher grades that she had planned to show the ballet movie to.
The two other interpreters were horrified by the movie (their noses weren’t buried in laptops like the teachers so they saw the whole thing) and agreed with me that it should not have been shown to ANY of our classes. Then I heard late this afternoon that one of the teachers, who is Jewish, was deeply offended by the movie, because of the Nazi/Holocaust references. Just before I left, I heard the announcement calling her to the office. She’s one of the only teachers in our building brave enough to argue with the principal (who must ALWAYS be in control and is very vindictive if you cross her), so I would have loved to be a fly on the wall for THAT meeting!
In the meantime, I have been very firmly put in my place and will think twice – or ten times – before offering my opinion again. Too bad that this time I was trying to protect the students from violent images AND protecting her from potential parent backlash. I would hope she has learned to follow district protocol and always preview a movie before showing it to students…but I doubt she has!
The one positive thing about this horrible piece of film garbage was that it actually made me appreciate the Barbie Nutcracker movie that I interpreted for our primary kids this afternoon…and I never thought ANYthing could do that!
Oh dear. What a mess. What a crummy administrator. Poor kids. Yech.
What a shame! The Nutcracker ballet is a wonderful way to introduce children to classical dance and music. Every other year the students at the Interlochen Arts Academy perform “The Nutcracker”; I love to watch the children who come, all dressed up and just enthralled by the end of the performance.
It’s really a shame that the principal of your school is such an obstinate and ignorant person. Why show children a movie that is just more of the same violence they see so much of on television, in the movies, and on their internet and video games all of the time?
“In the meantime, I have been very firmly put in my place and will think twice – or ten times – before offering my opinion again.”
Oh, Leenie, don’t you dare stop sticking up for what you believe! Think of what will happen if everyone just rolls over and bows down to this tyrant. Yes, tyrant. Talk about “My way or the highway”!!
I enjoy your posts!
The Marquis de Sade(or the female equivalent) works in mysterious ways.
Tired after a long day. Had to share a story or two from when my kids were small and I was broke. One year we couldn’t afford a tree so I took the lights and stung them on the wall with tape and push pins in the shape of a tree. The boys loved it so much that the next year, they wanted to decorate all the houseplants instead of getting a tree. I had a small tree one year I got from the tree lot at the ymca. The boy scouts were running it as a fund raiser. The dad in charge that night said they were having a special and I got $10 off for each kid. I only had to pay a total of $10 for our tree and our holidays were truely blessed that year. Times were tough as a single mom, we had many angels.
Your memories made me smile. Me too, single parent, some tough years along the way but lots of fun too. 🙂
It’s drizzled all day long and now the drizzles are mixing with fat, wet snowflakes. I’ve spent the last two days, when I would normally have been digging through the Christmas decorations and wrapping packages that have to be mailed, drawing pictures of a black dog, named Lily, elves and Santa to illustrate a story I wrote over the weekend for our kindergarten grandson. It was great fun, a superb way to procrastinate, but next week I’ll have to get to work! Hopefully seeing our grandson this weekend will put me into the proper Christmas spirit. There is something magical about being with small children before Christmas.
I love that picture. In other seasonal news the ironic “tree” constructed of shopping carts is back up at Edgemar.
I get to do my first tree in years down here. Or 25% of one — I found a corner tree online last week and can’t wait to get it set up.
[insert appropriate/inoffensive seasonal salutation of choice], Mudflatters!
dang,college football season has ended(badly too,I might add)
One of the prettiest trees we ever had (from the outside) was not a tree at all. We were not going to be home for Christmas, and didn’t feel like going through all that just to come home and take it all down and pack it all up. Neither did we want to be the Grinch in the neigborhood!
So.. we nailed a large nail in the middle of the molding at the top of the window, and did the same (only smaller nails) all across the bottom of the window at about 3-4″ apart, then strung fairy lights .
Working across the window, stringing from left to right up over the one at the top. It took up the whole picture window, and looked fantastic from the outside!
We all seem to have forgotten the real meaning of Christmas. I know I have,so I’ll just stick with it is better to give than to receive. While I’m waiting for tons of gifts,I’ll check and see if I can afford to give.
Well, you give plenty of laughs. What do you receive in return?
LOL – I love it! The other day we drove to a friend’s house and saw the decorations one of his neighbors had up right after Thanksgiving. It was way more elaborate than the one in the picture above. Our friend told us he would be putting up some decorations but they wouldn’t be anything like the house on the corner. I seriously think that some people go to the store and buy every possible yard decoration. No matter that their yard and house aren’t big enough to handle all that extra holiday cheer. 🙂
oops sorry everyone. i got the above quote from:
http://www.politickerny.com/2011/11/30/mayor-bloomberg-i-have-my-own-army-11-30-11/
Mr.Bloomberg needs to go to one of his many mansions and chill out. forget about the White House Mikey it is already occupied.
Next time we have a rwnj occupying the White House,I am personally gonna tell him/her to kindly remove their occupying selves,we are a sovereign nation and don’t want rwnj anywhere near the source of power.Remember we aren’t occupying Iraq as dumbass dubya once opined.
this from Spiegel International this is serious and alarming. just a taste. the article is devastating and i hope it goes viral.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,800850,00.html
It’s horrifying because these eight so-called, would-be candidates are eagerly ruining not only their own reputations and that of their party, the party of Lincoln lore. Worse: They’re ruining the reputation of the United States.
Yesterday morning,Rick Sanitorium was on Fake Noise and they had him listed on-screen as Rick Perry. Poor guy can’t catch a break even from his friends.They all suck.
They all look alike . . .
Thanks for posting this, bubbles. The comments were devastating.
The Senate votes to keep provision allowing military to lock up Americans without a trial or being charged. From what I understand—–we can still write our Senators about this bill. Also–President Obama could veto this bill. I am not clear on this, but think it is something we should all be very concerned about.
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2011/11/30/us-senate-votes-to-keep-provision-allowing-military-to-lock-up-americans-without-trial-or-being-charged/
yes indeed Lady. i am worried also but the president will not let it go through he said. this not good and the number of Democrats that supported it astounds me.
also it seems New York got a clear and very present warning from our own CEO aka Mike Bloomberg. he’s got his own army and the U.N. so there.
***********************************************
I have my own army in the NYPD, which is the seventh biggest army in the world. I have my own State Department, much to Foggy Bottom’s annoyance. We have the United Nations in New York, and so we have an entree into the diplomatic world that Washington does not have,” Mayor Bloomberg said.
Last year around Thanksgiving I landed in the ER and was recouping through December. Didn’t have a lot of ooomph so decorating ended up consisting of a 2 foot decorated tree that was dropped off by one of my advertising clients, many, many candles, a red and green woven basket filled with a cookie bouquet, 2 stockings that have been in the family since the adult kids were wee ones and garland wrapped around a horizontal wooden pole that is up near the ceiling of the apartment. ( we have no idea for the original purpose of the pole but it looked really nice wrapped in gold garland and reflecting the light from the candles )
I was still recouping after the holidays so the decorations stayed up through April. We still had snow and the festive colors and candles were lovely, so why not ? Sometime in May my daughter stopped by and said, ” o for gawdz sake Mom. It’s nearly Memorial Day! …. ” She moved the Christmas tree to the kitchen cupboard with instructions that it be bagged and stored. Moved the woven basket and stockings to a corner in the foyer with the same instructions. She looked up at the garland pole and just rolled her eyes. She knew there was no arguing about taking it down.
Today, Dec. 1st, I grabbed the tree off the cupboard where it has been since May, picked up the basket and stockings from the foyer, put the last of the candles up onto the mantle and I’m looking up at the garland pole as I type. tada! 10 minutes later, done for 2011 !
Love this! Well done! Hope this holiday season is more joy and less illness filled.
great story Buffalogal. i remember how ill you were. i am very glad you are feeling much better. now you need to get more cookies,
That’s great – and I’m so glad you are feeling better this year. I wish my decorating was so easy and all done. I love decorating but these last few years the “kids” just aren’t over here much, so I find myself wondering why I go to all that bother. But hubby and I both enjoy it, so that’s a good enough reason.
Hubby put up the lights on the front of the house – well, half of it. He quit putting them on the part that requires him to hang over the edge of the roof. Since it looks rather incomplete, I now put lights on the bushes on the other half of the house – but we aren’t sure where they are. So it looks a bit bare. I do have the wreath on the front door and a green light bulb in the light by the front door. That’ll have to do for a while.
You gave me my seond good laugh of the day, the picture being the first.!!
Love it, eyerolls and all 🙂
Watch this (disgusting) ad for Dr. Pepper 10 (10 “manly” calories), and let me know if you think ol’ whatsername will drink it?
http://www.care2.com/causes/new-dr-pepper-drink-is-not-for-women.html
Dr Pepper has been unfit for human consumption since they got rid of 10 or 12 ounce glass bottles,way back when.
Do you drink it? 🙂
Not since they started using cans and plastic bottles. When it comes to soda,I’m a purist or fussy old coot.I must confess when Coke first started selling cans out of vending machines,I drank quite a lot of Coke. The old machines allowed you to stick your arm in through the delivery door on the bottom and pull cans out one at a time without paying. The old chest-type bottle dispensers with the top lid would allow you to line up two bottles at the gate and pull the second one through immediately after the first one. As long as we are here, the old type cigarette machines had small holes beneath the pull-handles where you could stick a foot-long piece of straight baling wire in and knock down every pack of cigarettes in the machine in about five minutes. Of course I never dreamed of stealing pop or cigarettes myself(snark).
You realize that you can get your dollar back from a lot of vending machines by attaching a long piece of clear tape to it and pulling it back out after the product is dispensed, don’t you?
I worked in a juvenile detention facility. I learned a lot of tricks from my students–which I’ve never used. One other trick is that if you wear baggies, you can get an AK 47 down inside them and no one will ever know until you start shooting.
Used to snitch empty soda bottles from one gas station and carry them over a bridge and sell them at the next gas station. I draw the line at smuggling guns. I sorta have some standards.
Reminds me of the Christmas we visited my daughter outside Atlanta. Really upscale neighborhood,and it was almost obscene the lengths they went to to decorate. Then, all of a sudden we came upon a house with no outside decs at all. Just a spotlight in front of a small cutout reindeer which was projected on to the door of a 3 door garage. A true case of Less is More!
Does your bank fund Big Coal? Here are the top 20 filthy fossil fuel funding banks on earth:
http://understory.ran.org/2011/11/30/as-durban-climate-talks-get-underway-new-report-highlights-top-bankrollers-of-global-warming/
Bank in billion Euro Ranking
JP Morgan Chase 16,540 1
Citi 13,751 2
Bank of America 12,590 3
Morgan Stanley 12,117 4
Barclays 11,514 5
Deutsche Bank 11,477 6
Royal Bank of Scotland 10,946 7
BNP Paribas 10,694 8
Credit Suisse 9,495 9
UBS 8,217 10
Goldman Sachs 6,770 11
Bank of China 6,323 12
Industrial and Commercial Bank of China 6,182 13
Crédit Agricole / Calyon 5,637 14
UniCredit / HVB 5,231 15
China Construction Bank 5,110 16
Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group 4,980 17
Société Générale 4,742 18
Wells Fargo 4,523 19
HSBC 4,432 20
(Data provided by Profundo)
If you haven’t yet moved your money from these bozo banks, what’s taking you so long? When you take your funds to the local credit union or bank, let these malefactors know why they can’t have access to your money anymore: COAL is filthy.
After I carefully lined up the figures above, using the space bar, my formatting was destroyed when I posted. You’re smart, you can figure out what’s what.
Yes, move your money, people.
The MA AG is suing 5 banks for using that BS known as MERS and also look at this:
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=8947
On a lighter note,Mikey visited Granddaughter Numero Two-0 last night. Molly Rose is a budding Mudpup at heart. She wrote and illustrated a story for her second grade class about a seal having its first birthday. Since seals are rare items in Iowa she must be thinking frozen tundra type areas of the world-Alaska perhaps? She then presented a happy Grampa with her story to keep and cherish forever. BTW-Molly reads at fourth grade level and reads so fast I can’t keep up with her. But,she loves Grampa and that is all that matters in the whole Universe.
Mike – you have 20 granddaughters? Pretty fertile family you have! (Tee Hee – had to do it!)
you beat me to it Tigerwine. hee hee.
I see my latest Molly Ivins immitation flopped rather nicely.
you have a darling little one Mike. you are part of her universe. a very special part.
Exactly. I am constantly amazed by our Grandgirlies.
Hey, AZ muddies! This is a great family photo op! Check out what you can have for your family holiday greeting!!!!!!!!
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2011/1130/In-Arizona-families-can-get-photos-with-Santa-and-an-AK-47
This is a *facepalm* moment for those of us who live here. 😉
Good chuckle to start my day!
Ditto
Good morning. No time to decorate. I have been helping my brother get 5 rental units ready to be rented today and tomorrow. There is a long story behind this that I will share with you after things slow down. Gotta run, it’s move in day for one homeless man and two single moms. I feel terrific that I get to help make Christmas merry for some by providing decent, safe, affordable housing. Tomorrow it’s a grandma to the single moms and a disabled woman. We are building a community.
That’s the spirit! The true spirit. 🙂
that’s our Merrycricket! she is an amazing pup. a lovely human being.
Looking forward to hearing the story . It’s got that warm n’ fuzzy feeling already !
That’s the kind of experience that makes you wake up and go to sleep with a smile on your face. And just imagine all the smiles you’re putting on other people’s faces, too!
🙂 <—- See! You even put one on mine!
Ditto.
Bravo!
Hilarious! I have my 4 year old granddaughter is helping me decorate, so it’s taking me three times as long. 🙂 Her favorite “help” is to stuff the stupid cat in an empty box and put the lid on. You would think the furball would have run and hid after the first entrapment.
From my limited experience, 1 kid, many kitties, cats have a higher tolerance level for small persons than for big persons.
Of course anything over zero is higher 🙂
Am thinking both one of our dogs and the kitty would think that ANY game with a little one was fun and stick around for more. Playing hid the animal would be highly popular given their past love of diving under things!!
Nice to have such a good kitty and the time with GD:-)
I love this! Reminds me of certain children- now in their mid- thirties! Thank you.
Lord,you can say that in lights. Oh wait. Somebody did. With Rethuglicans on the warpath you have to have a sense of humor.
Perfect! I am thinking the theme of the inside of our house this year might be “Crates and crates of pretty stuff strewn all over the house because I am busy, and if it bothers you, grab something/hang it up/hush”, but am wondering if I can get away with that. Probably not. Best get moving.
Of course you can get away with that. Just say it in your mom voice and that will be the end of it.
That is what I love; a little sarcastic humor that really says it all. Awesome!
Either these folks have an awesome sense of humor, or a very tight budget this Christmas, or both. Come to think of it – when times are hard and money is tight – a great sense of humor is more likely to get one through than crying in one’s really cheap ACME beer.
I love this, can I adopt them?
Perfect!
Happy Month before Everything to Everyone!