Trivia Time

Rightio... I have a trivia question for you all (all 6 or 7 of you now)


Where is Grosse Ile and what is it's importance to the Irish?


Answer this without googling it, people. And believe me, I will know if you cheated!!!!


I may or may not have a prize for the first correct answer.

Talking About the Birds and the Bees

Last night, Liam and I were watching a program (it was child friendly) and it said something about the "abstinence club." I had hoped that the reference went right over Liam's head, as I was not up for a talk on sexuality yesterday, but immediately he piped up with "What's abstinence?

Very foolishly, because the show was about teenagers, I said "It is what teenagers who choose not to have sex are practising." I was about to correct myself and say people instead of teenagers and I thought that would be that when I heard the dreaded question...

"How old were you when you first had sex?"

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What do you say to that? I think that I have always been very open with my children, they have always known that to have a baby a man and a woman have sex. They know it's okay if they are gay or straight, although Liam says it would be gross for men to kiss each other (but come on, he's 9, he thinks girls and guys kissing is ucky,)they also have been told that can ask me anything. But for some reason I was not expecting that one. So what did I do? I hemmed and hawed and avoided the question. I answered a question that he didn't even ask. I told him how old I was when I had my first proper boyfriend.

I look at the teenagers in my neighbourhood and I think that not one of them is old enough or mature enough to be having sex. I am sure they think they are and are acting on it. And I also know now that I was not mature enough all those many years ago. I don't think that I would go back and change anything, after all my mistakes have made me somewhat smarter, but I would hope that my children don't rush into sexual relationships. Because, frankly, I don't think their mother could handle it.

Oh Villa...how could you?

I just read the previous post and it makes no sense at all. I'll put it down to the fact that I was eagerly awaiting the Villa game and only had a minute or two to write.

There are times when I wish we had never left Birmingham and today was one of them. I would have loved to have been at the game today, even if they did let a win go in the end. There were lots of empty seats, which doesn't say much for Aston Villa fans.

Shame that it was Robbie Keane who scored the equalizer. Against any other team it would have been alright, but not against this one. Oh well. It was a great game anyway, very entertaining. I think that sometimes Aston Villa can be accused of being somewhat boring, but not today.

Chelsea 2 Charlton 0

Chelsea is my number 2 most hated team (second only to Man U) so this result was a sadly disappointing for me. I would love to see Chelsea lose a game and I am sure it will happen eventually. I hate the money some teams have to throw around, it's just like the Rangers in hockey prior to the salary cap. I LOVE the salary cap, in fact I might even watch hockey this year. I'm off topic here...I do like Chelsea's Joe Cole just because when I was in Ireland I watched some sports quiz show that he was on and he was so very stupid that it was rather endearing. I don't think he played for Chelsea then, I have West Ham in my head. Must check that one out. Will do a search now....I knew it was West Ham. Joe Cole has his own site, and it is slightly tacky.
Time for the Aston Villa game. I hope they win this one.

I Adore Quizzes

I came across this quiz on http://42yearoldloserorami.blogspot.com and thought I'd give it a go. I was a bit stumped by question 16 Abortion should be a)completely legal and available or b) restricted, discouraged or illegal. While I personally could never have an abortion I respect a woman's right to do so, but I don't think it should be used as a method of birth control. And I have met people eho have used it as such. This quiz is American and therefore some questions are moot for me as a Canadian. We don't have a policy of No Child Left Behind for schools, not as far as I know anyway, nor do we have Affirmative Action, not by title at least. And every Canadian is entitled to medical care, you'll just get bills that no one can force you to pay.
Your Political Profile
Overall: 15% Conservative, 85% Liberal
Social Issues: 25% Conservative, 75% Liberal
Personal Responsibility: 0% Conservative, 100% Liberal
Fiscal Issues: 25% Conservative, 75% Liberal
Ethics: 0% Conservative, 100% Liberal
Defense and Crime: 25% Conservative, 75% Liberal

This quiz is from http://www.blogthings.com/liborconquiz/. Do it, damn it.

I Love Michael Moore

Friday, September 2nd, 2005Vacation is Over... an open letter from Michael Moore to George W. Bush
Friday, September 2nd, 2005
Dear Mr. Bush:
Any idea where all our helicopters are? It's Day 5 of Hurricane Katrina and thousands remain stranded in New Orleans and need to be airlifted. Where on earth could you have misplaced all our military choppers? Do you need help finding them? I once lost my car in a Sears parking lot. Man, was that a drag.
Also, any idea where all our national guard soldiers are? We could really use them right now for the type of thing they signed up to do like helping with national disasters. How come they weren't there to begin with?
Last Thursday I was in south Florida and sat outside while the eye of Hurricane Katrina passed over my head. It was only a Category 1 then but it was pretty nasty. Eleven people died and, as of today, there were still homes without power. That night the weatherman said this storm was on its way to New Orleans. That was Thursday! Did anybody tell you? I know you didn't want to interrupt your vacation and I know how you don't like to get bad news. Plus, you had fundraisers to go to and mothers of dead soldiers to ignore and smear. You sure showed her!
I especially like how, the day after the hurricane, instead of flying to Louisiana, you flew to San Diego to party with your business peeps. Don't let people criticize you for this -- after all, the hurricane was over and what the heck could you do, put your finger in the dike?
And don't listen to those who, in the coming days, will reveal how you specifically reduced the Army Corps of Engineers' budget for New Orleans this summer for the third year in a row. You just tell them that even if you hadn't cut the money to fix those levees, there weren't going to be any Army engineers to fix them anyway because you had a much more important construction job for them -- BUILDING DEMOCRACY IN IRAQ!
On Day 3, when you finally left your vacation home, I have to say I was moved by how you had your Air Force One pilot descend from the clouds as you flew over New Orleans so you could catch a quick look of the disaster. Hey, I know you couldn't stop and grab a bullhorn and stand on some rubble and act like a commander in chief. Been there done that.
There will be those who will try to politicize this tragedy and try to use it against you. Just have your people keep pointing that out. Respond to nothing. Even those pesky scientists who predicted this would happen because the water in the Gulf of Mexico is getting hotter and hotter making a storm like this inevitable. Ignore them and all their global warming Chicken Littles. There is nothing unusual about a hurricane that was so wide it would be like having one F-4 tornado that stretched from New York to Cleveland.
No, Mr. Bush, you just stay the course. It's not your fault that 30 percent of New Orleans lives in poverty or that tens of thousands had no transportation to get out of town. C'mon, they're black! I mean, it's not like this happened to Kennebunkport. Can you imagine leaving white people on their roofs for five days? Don't make me laugh! Race has nothing -- NOTHING -- to do with this!
You hang in there, Mr. Bush. Just try to find a few of our Army helicopters and send them there. Pretend the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast are near Tikrit.
Yours,
Michael MooreMMFlint@aol.comwww.MichaelMoore.com
P.S. That annoying mother, Cindy Sheehan, is no longer at your ranch. She and dozens of other relatives of the Iraqi War dead are now driving across the country, stopping in many cities along the way. Maybe you can catch up with them before they get to DC on September 21st.

A great big complaint

I worked today. And not at my nice cushy job where I am only working for the clothing discount, not the crappy pay. This was at my real job, where I earn real money (well as real as it can be when you didn't bother to go to university, you stupid fool.) I also earned really serious pain today, as I literally walked almost nonstop from 6.45 am until I walked in the door at 4.20. Yes, it was a bloody long day and now I have to work tomorrow and Friday. I am feeling rather sorry for myself, as one tends to do quite often. It has been a long time since I have had to do so much walking. On a positive note, it should be rather easy to shed the last of the baby weight. One must always look for the pluses, when one is busy feeling sorry for one's self.

2 Canadians, 1 American and the freaky Australian

INXS Rockstar is almost over. Marty, quite fittingly, sang Radiohead's 'Creep' tonight. But of course, the best one was JD. And that's all I have to say about that.

Ach for fecks sakes!!!

Bloody, bloody, bloody Villa. Honestly, losing to West Ham??? What is wrong with that picture? It's a shame is what it is. But I still love them. The useless bastards.

A bit more Rockstar

Well, the sexy JD had the encore tonight and was in the bottom three so I got to watch him sing twice. Knowing that there was no way INXS would get rid off him, it was pleasurable to see him perform Mystify. God, he's lovely.

It was Jordis that was sent home. I question why Mig wasn't in the bottom three, I thought he was terrible last night.

It's down to the final four now- Suzie, JD, Marty and Mig (he has it as MiG, but I refuse to write that, it's like when Prince was called the sign thingamajinger. Ridiculous.) I think that the final two will be JD and Suzie. Marty, though an excellent singer, is not an INXS singer and frankly is just scary looking. And Mig...well, Mig is just Mig, dull and slightly odd. And extremely annoying.

Heigh ho heigh ho it's off to work I go

Only 4 more days until I return to work. Sad days, indeed. I have a new job. And my old one, as well as my other old one. I thought I had been fired from that one, but it was just a file mix up and I am free to book shifts as soon as I want. I'd rather not but I may be forced to work the odd night shift if I do not get enough shifts at the other two jobs. My ass wiping days may not be over, after all. Though I do actually enjoy the patients themselves, if not their bodily functions, so I suppose it will not be too bad. I have really loved being on mat leave, it is a shame to return to work and lose the small fortune I was earning just by staying at home with a baby and going shopping.

...for Canada is the best football team

Or not. And while the title certainly would not apply to the mens soccer team, the women usually seem to have at least a chance.

They played Germany in a friendly yesterday, and were up 2-0. Germany scored before the end of the first half. They scored again (well, it was actually an own goal) and then they scored again AND again. Then a Canadian got a red card and they were down to 10 for the last 10 minutes. Canada scored one more goal, but couldn't pull off a tie. Shame, for it was a great game.

Those German girls fall like Wayne Rooney. It was terrible. It was comparable to watching a Man U match. Shameful, really. And, no offense to any Germans who may come across this (none so far according to statcounter), but a few of those German girls are some harsh looking.

Soccer madness

I never ever win anything. So imagine my surprise when I received an email saying I had won a pair of tickets to the Canada v. Germany soccer game. I had been thinking I might take Liam, as he loves soccer, even if it is only women playing (that's from Liam, not me) but Taylor wanted to go as well. So I bought an extra pair of tickets and tomorrow we are off to Commonwealth to watch the game.

In other soccer news, Northern Ireland finally won a game!!! It's been a long four years.

A Bit of a Bastard

Tonight I watched a man on TV answer a question that was posed to him about the slow reaction of the American government in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. This is what he said- "On Tuesday, the levees broke, on Wednesday, we...ummmm...., on Thursday, we started to evacuate."

He looked as though he was hiding a smile, something he does quite often.

Kanye West said "George Bush doesn't like black people." I tend to agree with him. If New Orleans hadn't of been two thirds black, what would have happened? Why have a zero tolerance policy towards people who are taking food to feed their children?

It's all a bit strange I think.

Stolen from Rosie

GUESTWORDS: By E.L. Doctorow
The Unfeeling President
I fault this president for not knowing what death is. He does not suffer the death of our 21-year-olds who wanted to be what they could be. On the eve of D-Day in 1944 General Eisenhower prayed to God for the lives of the young soldiers he knew were going to die. He knew what death was. Even in a justifiable war, a war not of choice but of necessity, a war of survival, the cost was almost more than Eisenhower could bear.But this president does not know what death is. He hasn’t the mind for it. You see him joking with the press, peering under the table for the weapons of mass destruction he can’t seem to find, you see him at rallies strutting up to the stage in shirt sleeves to the roar of the carefully screened crowd, smiling and waving, triumphal, a he-man.
He does not mourn. He doesn’t understand why he should mourn. He is satisfied during the course of a speech written for him to look solemn for a moment and speak of the brave young Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country.
But you study him, you look into his eyes and know he dissembles an emotion which he does not feel in the depths of his being because he has no capacity for it. He does not feel a personal responsibility for the 1,000 dead young men and women who wanted to be what they could be.
They come to his desk not as youngsters with mothers and fathers or wives and children who will suffer to the end of their days a terribly torn fabric of familial relationships and the inconsolable remembrance of aborted life . . . they come to his desk as a political liability, which is why the press is not permitted to photograph the arrival of their coffins from Iraq.
How then can he mourn? To mourn is to express regret and he regrets nothing. He does not regret that his reason for going to war was, as he knew, unsubstantiated by the facts. He does not regret that his bungled plan for the war’s aftermath has made of his mission-accomplished a disaster. He does not regret that, rather than controlling terrorism, his war in Iraq has licensed it. So he never mourns for the dead and crippled youngsters who have fought this war of his choice.
He wanted to go to war and he did. He had not the mind to perceive the costs of war, or to listen to those who knew those costs. He did not understand that you do not go to war when it is one of the options but when it is the only option; you go not because you want to but because you have to.
Yet this president knew it would be difficult for Americans not to cheer the overthrow of a foreign dictator. He knew that much. This president and his supporters would seem to have a mind for only one thing — to take power, to remain in power, and to use that power for the sake of themselves and their friends.
A war will do that as well as anything. You become a wartime leader. The country gets behind you. Dissent becomes inappropriate. And so he does not drop to his knees, he is not contrite, he does not sit in the church with the grieving parents and wives and children. He is the president who does not feel. He does not feel for the families of the dead, he does not feel for the 35 million of us who live in poverty, he does not feel for the 40 percent who cannot afford health insurance, he does not feel for the miners whose lungs are turning black or for the working people he has deprived of the chance to work overtime at time-and-a-half to pay their bills - it is amazing for how many people in this country this president does not feel.
But he will dissemble feeling. He will say in all sincerity he is relieving the wealthiest 1 percent of the population of their tax burden for the sake of the rest of us, and that he is polluting the air we breathe for the sake of our economy, and that he is decreasing the quality of air in coal mines to save the coal miners’ jobs, and that he is depriving workers of their time-and-a-half benefits for overtime because this is actually a way to honor them by raising them into the professional class.
And this litany of lies he will versify with reverences for God and the flag and democracy, when just what he and his party are doing to our democracy is choking the life out of it.
But there is one more terribly sad thing about all of this. I remember the millions of people here and around the world who marched against the war. It was extraordinary, that spontaneous aroused oversoul of alarm and protest that transcended national borders. Why did it happen? After all, this was not the only war anyone had ever seen coming. There are little wars all over he world most of the time.
But the cry of protest was the appalled understanding of millions of people that America was ceding its role as the last best hope of mankind. It was their perception that the classic archetype of democracy was morphing into a rogue nation. The greatest democratic republic in history was turning its back on the future, using its extraordinary power and standing not to advance the ideal of a concordance of civilizations but to endorse the kind of tribal combat that originated with the Neanderthals, a people, now extinct, who could imagine ensuring their survival by no other means than pre-emptive war.
The president we get is the country we get. With each president the nation is conformed spiritually. He is the artificer of our malleable national soul. He proposes not only the laws but the kinds of lawlessness that govern our lives and invoke our responses. The people he appoints are cast in his image. The trouble they get into and get us into, is his characteristic trouble.
Finally, the media amplify his character into our moral weather report. He becomes the face of our sky, the conditions that prevail. How can we sustain ourselves as the United States of America given the stupid and ineffective warmaking, the constitutionally insensitive lawgiving, and the monarchal economics of this president? He cannot mourn but is a figure of such moral vacancy as to make us mourn for ourselves.
written 9.9.04 for the east hampton star