Based on a scan of Black Friday news stories, no one got trampled to death this year. Well done, shoppers.

I’d like to go on record as saying that I see nothing wrong, in general, with helping people.  If ACORN stuck to its stated mission of informing and advocating for the human rights of lower-income people, the extent of my disagreement with them would be about the best means to that end, like the minor fact that over-taxing business destroys jobs that the workforce (such as people trying to break out of poverty) needs.

But…and wherever you are on the political spectrum, you’ve got to agree that this was stupid…way to set people up for identity theft, guys. These documents were anonymized by the investigator who dug them out of an outdoor, open-access dumpster, not by ACORN.

Check out page 4, in particular, of this one:

And this one really speaks for itself:

Full Story

For everyone who’s stretching their money and likes books:

http://www.borders.com/online/store/TitleDetail?sku=068179237X&cmpid=SL_20091123

I don’t get a kickback from this. It showed up in my inbox and I thought some of my readers might find it useful.

This barrette is 4 inches long.  The flower and leaf are hand-sewn and all ribbon components are attached to the metal backing by hand.  The ribbon and metal backing are production-manufactured.

Item Cost: $3 or 2 for $5

Domestic Shipping: USPS First Class, $3 for up to 2, 50 cents each additional

International/Expedited Shipping: Contact me for a quote

Color variations available upon request–prices may vary due to cost of ribbon.

People who know me well know that I’m a bit broke lately. I haven’t mentioned this, but for a while, I’ve been fighting the idea of putting ads up on this blog. (I don’t want to. Mindless advertising covering the internet annoys me.)

Well…I’m not going to cave and do that, or at least not yet, but I find it necessary to do something.  So, starting this Monday, I’ll be “blogging” about craft items I make and taking orders.  In consideration of the holiday season, gift wrapping will be available for a modest added charge.  I don’t have an expedited shipping arrangement but I’m willing to research it if anyone needs it.

If you know someone who’s shopping online this year, please send them my way.

Dear Shoppers,

I know you’re not going to seriously re-evaluate your gift-giving values to prioritize “meaningful” over “cool (therefore expensive).”  You’re definitely not going to consider making something or giving to someone’s favorite charity.  However, as you spendspendSPEND!!! your net worth into an even deeper oblivion to prop up Big Retail this year, please remember what we learned last year.  Don’t trample people to death, even if that means someone else’s whiny spawn gets the last Watch Me Do Stand-Up Elmo.

For more information, see also Part 1.

The CDC has recalculated the number of swine flu deaths and placed the figure at 4,000.  Just in case it needs to be said, I am not trivializing these people’s deaths.  The end of someone’s life would also be significant if it were one of 400 or 40 or 4.

All I’m saying is, we have bigger fish than swine flu to fry.  Malaria and tuberculosis, both of which are deadlier than swine flu and get less airtime, were discussed before.

Now let’s talk about pediatric AIDS.

They’re kids, so we can’t say they should have made different choices and prevented it.  A lot of them got it in utero or breastfeeding because their moms had it.  Some of them got it from being exposed to the blood of someone who had it and was wounded by violence or animals.  Though we don’t want to think about this, some of them got it from being sexually assaulted.

And, since mid-March (when swine flu emerged), the 31 children a day who die of AIDS have added up to over 200,000.  I don’t want to trivialize the 4,000 swine flu deaths, but I’m tired of the hype-based government and news media trivializing the 200,000 child AIDS deaths, the 600,000 child malaria deaths, and the 45,000 tuberculosis deaths by not talking about them at all.

Of course, as was mentioned in comments in the previous post, those are mostly little brown kids, so they’re not an American problem.  I call BS; we keep hearing about how The New Economy Is All Global And Stuff, so what’s happening in the rest of the world is our problem, and even if it weren’t, people ought to care that babies are dying.

I would even go so far as to call the Obama administration racist, for whipping people into a frenzy over swine flu and not over things that are killing more people.  Mr. President, those brown kids matter too.

I get that people like Elmo.  Cute little furry dude, OK.

I don’t get why people are under the impression that their Elmo toy is supposed to play with them, not the other way around.  Kids all over the country are undoubtedly squealing for this stupid thing…

There was a time when stuffed toys were about cuddliness or about giving the kids something to use their imagination with.  The jump from that to “mechanical furball that does musical standup for your spawn to watch”…I guess I just don’t get it.

Dear Teacher, I couldn’t do my trig homework last week because I had coswine flu.