Celebrity cupcake face

Suri Cruise gets all the media attention when she has cupcake on her face:But Catcher Her in the Wry started the trend 23 years ago and did a much better job:

And there's more shitty news

Never underestimate the people of Central Illinois. We know what suckers will buy:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081128/ap_on_fe_st/odd_reindeer_ornaments

Welcome to my pad

Politicians and diapers have one thing in common: they should both be changed regularly and very soon they are all full of shit.

Daughter #1's birthday was a few days ago. As a new mother a quarter century ago plus one year, there were two things I was sure of: I wasn't going to breast feed my baby and my child would wear disposable diapers. Today,of course, I would be totally politically incorrect. I'll leave the breastfeeding arguments for another time, so let's get down to the dirty business of diapers.


Cloth diapers were the only choice when I was growing up. I remember helping my mother change my brother's diapers: first they were dipped into the toilet to rinse the solid stuff off, then stored in a pail until laundry time. Odors of baby feces, urine and bleach still permeate my memories.

By the 1980's there was a revolution in baby diapers - it seemed changes were occurring weekly. Pampers, Huggies, and Luvs were competing and redesigning relentlessly. The result was better fitting, more absorbent and thinner nappies that could simply be tossed in the garbage quicker than the time it took to change a baby.

I thank those companies for making life more convenient and less stressful for a new, older, working-mom. I also thank them for all the other luxuries we've gotten from additional ultra-absorbent thin pad technology: Depends, sanitary napkins, and Swiffer Wet Jet pads. Not to mention surgical pads, meat juice pads, environmental leakage pads, and much more.

For all those young mothers out there who refuse the technology of disposable diapers, just try literally "being on the rag" once a month or scrubbing your floor with a bucket and sponge on your hands and knees.

I personally embrace changing technology. There is no way I want to regress to living as my parents or grandparents did. Any problems that new technology brings, further innovation solves. Humans invent and reinvent continuously to make their lives better.

So my message to Daughter #1 is please don't put me in cloth diapers when the time comes. Depends will suit me just fine, unless of course something new and better is on the market.

Australia - the movie

Mid-Thanksgiving afternoon we decided to head to the big city to see Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman in the new release "Australia." Here's my short review:

1. beautiful scenery and camera shots
2. movie should have expanded the desert crossing and ended the movie before the bombing raid
3. writer tried to put too much into one movie; was it an Austrailian Outback western or a WWII movie? Comedy, romance or drama?
4. should have avoided the Aboriginal assimilation plotline; there are much superior movies which address that issue (i.e. Rabbit-Proof Fence)
5. My rating: 3 out of 5 stars

I really wanted to see Daniel Craig as James Bond. It would have been time better spent.

Happy Thanksgiving

Washing away the sins of youth

A group of high school teenagers was happily washing windows of the stores in the downtown business district. Most of the kids were from good families and seemed to be enjoying both the work and the camaraderie. Owners of those establishments, including myself, were caught off guard with this generosity. Many of us offered them some compensation for their work, but they refused. The business community was abuzz about the fine young people we have in our community.

By happenstance, I discovered the truth weeks later. All of these kids were in a required community service program through the county probation diversion program. All had been drunk and arrested while attending an under-aged party out in the country. If they performed community service, charges would be expunged from their records.

Yesterday, I attended an event in which a county probation officer, explained the diversion and Restorative Justice programs the county offers to juveniles and adults. It was explained that these programs are highly successful and that the recidivism rate in our county is only 21% after one year of completing the program. The probation officer emphasized the word "shame" as a large contribution to the success rate. Doing community service and facing your victims in private controlled confrontations supposedly "shame" the perpetrators into being sorry.

Skeptic that I am, I questioned some of the statistics and the public "shame." First of all, these programs are voluntary, meaning the perpetrators can opt out and go straight to court taking their chances with a good attorney, so the success rate might be skewed because you have willing participants, some who may be genuinely sorry in the first place.

Secondly, I questioned the "shame" put upon these perpetrators. I sighted the above example in this post. The downtown business people certainly saw no guilt in those teens washing windows; they were having a great time. In fact, they were admired by those observing them. They were not humiliatingly marked with a scarlet letter telling the public they were bad boys, and I certainly did not see a probation officer in the vicinity as they were working. Perhaps he was hiding.

In the Restorative Justice program, the meeting between perpetrators and victims is closed to all outsiders, except a mediator and several other community members. Nothing decided in that meeting is made public. The "shame" only occurs if the perpetrator later happens to meet the victim or those other community members elsewhere. There is no real public shame.

The speaker mentioned that several 13-14 year olds recently went on a vandalism crime spree and were facing 5 felony counts. They went through the Restorative Justice program so now they have no criminal record. The victims have been compensated. Although a perpetrator can go through a county Restorative Justice program only once, there is no database, so if he commits a crime in another county he might receive another get out of jail free card. If the family moves often enough, a 13 year old could commit numerous felonies and not ever have a record by the time he's 18.

The proponents of these programs overlook a couple of things in my opinion:

Monetary or service compensation does not put a victim back into the same emotional position as before the crime. Fear, mistrust, and stress cannot necessarily be resolved through compensation. So the program doesn't help the victim emotionally any more than a trial.

Shame should be more public and it will have greater effect. Shame should not be vague and misunderstood. It should be blatant.

Sign of the times

A phone conversation of an elected official overheard recently at an area court house:

" Oh, don't worry about that. You can do anything you want once you get elected."