What's Going on in Minsk These Days?

 (Photo courtesy Oleg Babinets)

Volume 1 of a new series concerning the various goings-on in Minsk, Belarus:

Sure we've all wanted to get lost in the new 22-story National Library built in 2006, attend a performance at the National Academic Big Opera and Ballet Theatre, explore the extensive trolleybus network, frolic in the vast primeval forest on a summer's day, and freeze our dicks/tits off in the winter while running naked in a vodka haze from discotheque to discotheque with a gang of troublesome local twentysomethings, but not all of us have the means or the stones to get to Belarus as often as we'd like.

Fortunately, Nothing Is Sacred correspondent Fabio Sandrelli generously volunteered to live in Minsk for a calendar year--on his own dime, naturally--in order to pen a weekly column that will bring the many-splendored highlights of living in Minsk to your bedroom when you need it most and where you won't be too far away from your favorite imperialist tidbits.

Please enjoy and keep reading!

-GTC

 

Fabio (right) receives his travel order from high command

11.01.2011 - OPERATION MINSK - DISPATCH 0001

Finally got my computer station set up in the houseboat. The satellite access along the Svislach River is either one of the worst I've encountered in my travels lately or I drank more vodka on the plane than I realized. Either way, I'm on the hook for at least a three-month rental of this Soviet-era icebreaker so I'll just have to make it work.

If I don't get a fire going soon I just might freeze to death tonight. As I step onto the aft deck to search for something to burn, the air hits me and appears to be on the sweeter side, while still bearing a slight trace of Mongols, Stalin, and Nazis, which are aparently a few of the more difficult scents to remove.

From what little I have seen of it so far (lunch outside the train station and a long cab ride to the boat yard), the city seems very proud of itself, of having risen where once there was nothing, of rebuilding time and time again after being ravaged by war.

Stout buildings of stone with labor-intensive architectural ornaments; grand boulevards crowded with automobiles and trams; monolithic museums, churches, and universities; smoke and noise, fur hats, hardy folk that don't talk too much and wear a lot of brown...I definitely need to improve my conversational Russian if I plan to enjoy myself here.

Anyway, nothing much seems to happening here for the time-being...wait--

I just translated the front page of a foreign newspaper in my head and it seems the government of "Europe's Last Dictator," Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko, is threatening to assume legal guardianship of a three-year-old child of one of the leading opposition candidates for President. Lukashenko had the child's father and mother (a journalist) arrested during a raid in which government agents threw 7 of 9 opposition candidates in prison on trumped-up charges relating to a police riot against peaceful protesters and it appears he would like to ensure the child does a good long stretch in a state orphanage so that his parents get the message.

The Most Difficult Gift to Buy This Christmas

Tickle-Me Elmo, eat your f***ing heart out--first Amazon pulls the book for some reason and now Phillip Greaves just sold his last copy of The Pedophile's Guide to Love & Pleasure to the Sheriff of Polk County, Florida.

How are all those lovers out there supposed to get their hands on what everybody wants this holiday season? Who the hell do they have to molest to get a self-published first-edition copy so they know what they should and should not be doing in the sack this winter? How can any substitute gift even approach the utility of this indispensable guide? Will the world drown itself in tears of disappointment this Christmas?

Stay tuned and put everything you value up on milk crates just to be on the safe side...

_

Things Were So Much Simpler Then. And Uglier. Probably.

Ah, nostalgia...how I long for you...sometimes.

Like whenever I try to remember what life was like when I was 6 and I realize I might as well try to reminisce about the Big Bang.

As much as I love to long for the far-from-perfect-but-certainly-less-complicated, artistically-vibrant world that I never experienced in the 1960s/70s, try as I might it is impossible for me to romanticize my actual past. Everything I remember about my childhood I only 'remember' because people have told me the same stories over and over and therefore they have stayed with me longer than the rest.

But these romanticized memories, from somebody else's perspective no less, are far from the truth. They are filtered, corrupted opinions; fiction masquerading as memories. Unless you are a snail or a hermit yet to murder his last brain cell with moonshine, life moves too fast to remember all the details.

It is as if I am a dependable machine stuck in 'Forward Mode', a young man eternally going West and failing to realize I have been treading over the same ground my entire life, unsure what exactly I am looking for and why I keep moving, unsure whether things are improving or getting worse, constantly reformulating theories about the world that become more depressing the more I learn about it and its inhabitants.

The curious, adventurous, social adult--the guy doing it right, I tell myself, all the while conflictingly aware that ignorance is bliss--leads a life replete with biases, uncertainty, and editing, whether he likes it or not. The relentless flow of new information into your brain not only needs to be easily sorted, but also inevitably results in the deletion of the oldest material in the storage bin, the information that doesn't matter because it isn't going to help you achieve your dreams, while the wisdom filling one of Carl Sagan's seminal tracts might help you understand things a bit better and smooth over those last few wrinkles impeding your impending success.

And then you realize you probably had all your best dreams when you were a child, all those dreams you have long-since forgotten, and a slow-burning panic sets in. Am I ruined? Does too much knowledge work against me? Have I paralyzed myself by learning too much about the world? Have I made things too complicated when simplicity is the answer? Has reality destroyed my dreams? Have I lost my unique identity somewhere along the road to wherever the hell I am right now? What am I chasing anyway?

Who knows. Knowledge? Adventure? True love? Happiness? All sound trite, but maybe triteness is closer to truth than we realize. Maybe we should grant it more respect.

All I know is I've been hard at work for twenty years, trying to get somewhere, making sure I enjoy the ride, never sure of where I'm heading or even where I've been once the initial afterglow of discovery wears off. Who am I? Where am I? What am I doing here? Is there a better way to go about all this?

So many questions, so few answers. Zero answers. Help!

Enter the Apple IIe, machine of the future, here in the now to solve as many problems as you can throw at it. 4 + 4? No problem. Starving to death on the Oregon Trail for lack of squirrel meat? Unsure whether or not reality is a dream or if the calories are worth it? Whatever your problem, rest assured the Apple IIe will solve it with only a few strokes of its custom-built keys.

I don't know about you, but I find that comforting. Hey, maybe that's what it's all about--comfort. We all know the answer, whatever it is, will be a simple one, so it might as well be the simplest.

Whatever you do as the merry-go-round of life spins its finite series of revolutions, just make sure you are comfortable doing it and you can be content that you are doing it right.

Huh. Too bad I'll forget all about this tomorrow...

_

Life Imitates Art: Anthony Hopkins Murders Wife, Stores Body in His Freezer

MOBILE, Ala. — An Alabama evangelist who authorities say terrorized his family while preaching at revivals has been sentenced to life plus 51 years in prison after being convicted of killing his wife and storing her body in a home freezer.

Circuit Judge John Lockett imposed the sentence Thursday on Anthony Hopkins, 39, who showed no remorse during the proceeding. He got the maximum sentence of life for murder and additional time for convictions including sodomy and sexual abuse.

(courtesy Huffington Post)

Okay, so...it isn't the Anthony Hopkins we all wanted it to be--cuz we all love a great hook that follows through, no matter the cost, right?--but it is an interesting story nonetheless.

Stay with me now:

During Hopkins' trial in April, prosecutors said he killed his 36-year-old wife, Arletha Hopkins, in 2004 after she caught him molesting a girl, then stuffed her body in a freezer at their home in north Mobile. Investigators discovered the body in 2008 after a young woman abused by Hopkins told child advocates about it, authorities said. Police arrested Hopkins while he was preaching at a revival in the south Alabama town of Jackson.

Defense attorney Jeff Deen said his client admits putting his wife's body in the freezer, but he doesn't know how she died.

"There's evidence in the trial that it could've been by natural causes, and it needs to be explored on appeal," Deen said.

Okay, so...there was a body in Anthony Hopkin's freezer for four years, while he was parading around the South preaching gospel to a bunch of suckers, molesting young girls, doing research for a role. Sorry.

I hate that it's the case, but this whole tragic affair in Alabama is no big surprise. I read about shit like this every day. Yes, the rise of the internet--not to mention the ready availability of audio recorders, video recorders, still cameras, traffic/security cameras, cell phones...--has been a sword with two razor-sharp edges.

Are people more corrupt and disgusting these days? Lord, no--think about the kind of shit the medieval aristocracy were up to, not to mention the Kennedys; think of how easy it was to cheat on your wife when phones didn't even exist. People today just get caught a whole hell of a lot more often, although, thanks to The People's short attention span and general ignorance, they rarely pay any price.

Anti-gay politicians busted for being gay, family-values politicians busted with mistresses/second families, deficit hawks voting for unlimited defense spending, Catholic priests molesting thousands of children, Popes kissing Nazi boots, televangelists raking in millions, Tom Cruise pretending he's not gay, Southern preachers molesting girls and murdering wives...it's all there on the internet, all there recorded for posterity, all there being ignored by 99% of the population. I wish the unwashed masses--who, unfortunately, have all the political muscle--were aware of all this shit, or at least aware of what it all means.

If you're reading, dear, dear, unwashed masses that I love more than little baby Jebus himelf, here is what it all means:

We cannot implicitly trust anybody in power to do the right thing--EVER--despite what they may or may not say with their mouths when they want your vote or get caught on camera with their dick in a small child or barnyard animal. Rather, we need to judge them based on their deeds and then hold them accountable; we need to look into the issues and identify those who act against our interests. This requires that we not only do our due diligence and read Huffington Post, Harper's, and Nothing is Sacred every chance we get, but also that we process what we are reading, come to intelligent conclusions, and act upon them.

Sadly, much like when they were in school, the unwashed were not paying attention.

They are all out there in this magnificent world, soiling theater seats as they chortle at lazy donkey-fart jokes in Shrek Again! In 3D!, petitioning the government to get their goddamn hands off their Medicare, Photoshopping fake Kenyan birth certificates, spacing out during reruns of Two and a Half Men as they reminisce about how cool high school was, playing video games, beating up fags on their way to the gay bar, staring at the wall and saying "Duh...", or taking advantage of the awesome drinkability of shitty domestic beer as they needlessly wave around a loaded handgun at their five-year-old's backyard birthday party, as part of some kind of elaborate joke nobody gets until they accidentally shoot a child in the face and they all crack up until they realize what actually, somehow, happened.


What is to be done about all this? Nothing.

That's right--nothing. Eventually, the people will do the right thing and revolt en masse. Eventually the cycle will repeat itself and people will wind up in the exact same place. It is what we do.

Why do you think intelligent people who are not also thieves and assholes always have such a frustrating time of things?

The secret is to not care, to stop giving a shit about the gross injustices perpetrated every day across this once-great (before mankind spoiled it) globe.

The rich have gotten richer, the rich will continue to get richer, evils are rewarded, and the businessmen and politicians may change but they will all stay the same. The day when naive voters are turned away from their polling places by ear-splitting, paralyzing sonic rays emitted from a Halliburton Soft-Kill Crowd-Control Cannon is nigh, folks. It is nigh.

So drink up, tune out, fuck around, and stop washing yourself so damn much.

_

Headline of the Year?

Man Hits 5 Chinese Kids With Hammer, Burns Himself to Death

BEIJING — A farmer attacked kindergarten students with a hammer, injuring five, before burning himself to death Friday in China's third such assault in as many days and prompting the government to demand stricter school security nationwide.

Wang Yonglai used a motorcycle to break down the gate of the Shangzhuang Primary School in the eastern city of Weifang and struck a teacher who tried to block him before hitting students with the hammer, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

Wang then grabbed two children before pouring gasoline over his body and setting fire to himself. Teachers were able to pull the children away to safety, but Wang died. None of the five injured students had life-threatening injuries, Xinhua said.

The attack was confirmed by an employee at the Weifang Public Security information office. But the motive for Wang's rampage was unclear. Xinhua described him only as a local farmer.

The hammer attack follows a rampage Thursday by a 47-year-old unemployed man armed with an eight-inch (20-centimeter) knife at a kindergarten. Some 29 students, aged 4 or 5 years old, were wounded, five of them seriously at the school in Taixing city in neighboring Jiangsu province.

And on Wednesday, a 33-year-old former teacher broke into a primary school in the city of Leizhou in southern Guangdong province and wounded 15 students and a teacher with a knife. The attacker had been on sick leave from another school since 2006 for mental health problems.

In all, there have been five such attacks on schools in just over a month and many more in preceding months and years – although gun crime and other extreme violence in China is comparatively rare. Sociologists suspect the recent school rampages – usually by lone, male attackers – could be copycat actions.

According to news reports, the latest attacks have prompted schools in various parts of the country to take action. In a district of southern Nanjing City, guards will be armed from Saturday with police batons and pepper spray. In Beijing's Xicheng district, guards at kindergarten, elementary and middle schools have been given long-handled metal restraint poles with a hook on the end. In eastern Jinan city, police posts are being built on elementary and middle schools' campuses.

In an editorial Friday, the English-language China Daily said that security should be tightened, but stressed the need to prevent attacks in the first place.

"It can be easy to put killers on trial and execute them but it is far more difficult to find out the deep-seated causes behind such horrifying acts. Our efforts should be focused on preventing these from happening," it said. "We should find out what propelled them to such extremes. What problems do they have? Could anyone have helped, especially the authorities?"

Accounts in China's state media have largely glossed over what motivates attackers, but experts say outbursts against the defenseless are frequently due to social pressures. An egalitarian society only a generation ago, China's headlong rush to prosperity has sharpened differences between the rich and poor, while the public health system has atrophied.

China likely has about 173 million adults with mental health disorders, and 158 million of them have never had professional help, according to a mental health survey in four provinces jointly done by Chinese and U.S. doctors that was published in the medical journal The Lancet in June.

(courtesy Huffington Post)

I know guns are expensive and difficult to acquire (outside the U.S.), but it can't be that hard to locate a sharp object for a little throat-slitting when circumstances call for it. Burning himself alive? Such pageantry!

I wonder if it will be enough for him to win this year's Craziest Local Farmer trophy, although there seems to be an impressive amount of competition out there lately...

Last year's top three entrants eagerly awaiting the final vote-tally

_

Children: Are They a Good Idea?

Most people would say yes without having to think about it, but these people haven't learned the value of thinking things through before answering a question.

Let's dissect the issue like informed adults, shall we?

Pros:
- Generally speaking, they're pretty fucking cute
- When everybody else abandons you, they will usually hang around
- They say the darnedest things
- Their love is unconditional, as long as you give them exactly what they want
- Their black-market value is consistently pretty high, which is good to know if you're the kind of chap who's often in a pinch

Cons:
- They cost a lot of money to maintain
- They cry a lot, steal things, shit themselves, and always want food
- They take up a lot of your time
- They can't take care of themselves when you want to get really drunk and/or spontaneously hop a plane to Ecuador
- They lengthen relationships that are otherwise totally endable
- They always need to be driven around
- They propagate the human race

That last one may seem at first glance like it should be a Pro, but think about this:

If there were no more children, there would be no crying babies on public transportation, 15-year-old girls wouldn't dominate the entertainment marketplace, every movie could be rated NC17, more husbands could buy sports cars with a clear conscience, single women in their late twenties could stop freaking out, everybody would either get way more sleep or party every night, pedophilia would be eliminated, adults would have more disposable income, assholes would become a finite resource, and nobody would need to worry about global warming, overpopulation, or being a role model.

It's sounding better already, isn't it? At the same time, maybe we'd better sleep on this one before we do anything rash...

_

Not-So-Talented Cats Manage to Entertain Young Children

Well, what would YOU do with yourself if you were that ugly?

Further reading about the middling adventures of a clown and his cats

_

"And the award for stupidest person of the minute goes to..."

Brett Ratner, well-known Stupid Person but NOT this minute's winner

I know the idiots are legion, but this dude Darnell edged them out by a Karl-Malden nose:

A pet Burmese python measuring more than 8 feet long broke out of a terrarium and strangled a 2-year-old girl in her bedroom Wednesday at a central Florida home, authorities said. Shaiunna Hare was already dead when paramedics arrived at about 10 a.m., Lt. Bobby Caruthers of the Sumter County Sheriff's Office said.

Charles Jason Darnell, the snake's owner and the boyfriend of Shaiunna's mother, discovered the snake missing from its terrarium and went to the girl's room, where he found it on the girl and bite marks on her head, Caruthers said. Darnell, 32, stabbed the snake until he was able to pry the child away.

"The baby's dead!" a sobbing caller from the house screamed to a 911 dispatcher in a recording. "Our stupid snake got out in the middle of the night and strangled the baby."

Authorities did not identify the caller and removed the person's name from the recording.

"She got out of the cage last night and got into the baby's crib and strangled her to death," the caller said.

(courtesy AP)

No shit, Darnell. What would you do if you were a fucking 8-ft-long hungry-ass snake cramped up in a cage all day every day, getting contact highs from you and your dropout buddies?

You'd bust outta that shit and get yourself some fresh eats! Baby eats! (they're easier to kill)

Or maybe a sheep:

This is my favorite part of the story, though:

Darnell did not have a permit for the snake, which would be a second-degree misdemeanor, said Joy Hill, a spokeswoman with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. He has not been charged, but Caruthers said investigators were looking into whether there was child neglect or if any other laws were broken.

Hill said the snake will be placed with someone who has a permit, pending an investigation into the girl's death.

(courtesy AP)

A second-degree misdemeanor? Debating whether or not any laws were broken? A foster-parent for the killer snake?

Am I living in the fucking Twilight Zone???

Darnell and his girl belong in jail for having an 8-ft (going on 26ft) Burmese python in the same home as a child--the existence of a snake permit is a non-issue.

This is a breed of snake that EATS CROCODILES!!!! How is it sane to have one around?

Rather than placed in a foster home, the snake should be shot in the face and fed to crocodiles because, let's be honest, even if this snake hadn't killed a baby, snakes are just the worst.

_

Thou Shalt Rape, Torture, and Exploit

It's an old story, I know--as old as the Bible--but I would be remiss in my duties if I failed to take this chance to slam home another banderilla into the proverbial Catholic Bull because, once again, folks--and I know this won't come as a surprise--Catholic Church, Inc. has a scandal on its hands.

Fear not, churchlovers because, once again, nothing will happen as a result (well, except perhaps for a 'no admission of guilt' bribe to prevent prosecution...).


Organized religion is just such a beautiful thing. The Catholic Church, Inc. gave all those poor Irish schoolchildren the best real-world education private-school tuition could buy:

“A climate of fear, created by pervasive, excessive and arbitrary punishment, permeated most of the institutions,” the report says. In the boys’ schools, it says, sexual abuse was “endemic.”

(courtesy NYTimes.com)

The story only gets worse:

"Some 30,000 children were sent to such places over six decades, the report says, often against their families’ wishes and because of pressure from powerful local priests. They were sent because their families could not afford to care for them, because their mothers had committed adultery or given birth out of wedlock, or because one or both of their parents was ill, drunken or abusive. They were also sent because of petty crime, like stealing food, or because they had missed school.

Many of the former students said that they had not learned their own identities until decades later. They also said that their parents had unsuccessfully tried to reclaim them from the state."

(courtesy NYTimes.com)

I'm almost afraid to keep reading this article--I don't want to get to the part where the children were fed to lions and forced to participate in unnecessary experimental brain/organ/limb transplants.

I kept reading. It got more detailed, worse:

“Punching, flogging, assault and bodily attacks, hitting with the hand, kicking, ear pulling, hair pulling, head shaving, beating on the soles of the feet, burning, scalding, stabbing, severe beatings with or without clothes, being made to kneel and stand in fixed positions for lengthy periods, made to sleep outside overnight, being forced into cold or excessively hot baths and showers, hosed down with cold water before being beaten, beaten while hanging from hooks on the wall, being set upon by dogs, being restrained in order to be beaten, physical assaults by more than one person, and having objects thrown at them.”

"Girls were routinely sexually abused, often by more than one person at a time, the report said, in “dormitories, schools, motor vehicles, bathrooms, staff bedrooms, churches, sacristies, fields, parlors, the residences of clergy, holiday locations and while with godparents and employers.”

(courtesy NYTimes.com)

But don't worry, folks--the Pope is totally on top of it and the church elders owned up to everything, begged for forgiveness, etc:

"The Vatican had no response. But leaders of various religious orders — who often argued during the investigations that the abuse was a relic of another time, reflecting past societal standards — issued abject apologies on Wednesday, taking care to frame the problem as something that is now behind them."

(courtesy NYTimes.com)

Oh, brother. I can hear the raised voice in the Vatican boardroom right now, post-gavel-bang:

"Parry! Parry, I say! You know damn well everyone will forget about this very soon and we will continue to have numberless followers, be the richest landowners in the world, never have to pay taxes, and continue to do whatever we want. Just don't say anything, don't admit to anything, and...maybe stop raping for a few weeks or so, til this all blows over."

Not only that, but a group called the Christian Brothers, who ran many of the rape clubs, I mean Catholic schools, was successful in their lawsuit to keep the names of the rapists and torturers a secret. How could they succeed in this? What possible justifiable reason is there? Are they worried people might beat/rape them to death in the streets? I mean...they kinda deserve it...


Question of the day:
What will it take for people to realize they can be as religious as they want to be without affiliating themselves with an organization that foments abject abuse of power?


The one positive thing to come out of this story is the fact that I found out this website exists:

BishopAccountability.org

Well done, Terence McKiernan--keep on fighting the real good fight.

_

Marketers Are So Creative!

My favorite sighting today, on the side of a box of Honey Nut Cheerios--

"It's where healthy, fun, and delicious can all hang out together."

Really? I didn't think those dirty dawgs could ever chill in the same crib at once...props to General Mills, Inc, for figurin' that shit out!

Hope for the Future After All

As I walked to meet a couple friends for a late dinner the other night, lost in thought, probably thinking about how badly I need a hair cut, or that I should start stuffing my drawers with a bigger sock, I was roused back to reality by the laughter of little girls.

I turned to my right and was delighted to discover a glowing two-man tent on the other side of a fence, in the postage-stamp-sized front yard of a tiny house crammed onto a small wedge of a lot, between a skeezy old church and a hair salon.

I was not delighted in the 'I'm a pervert' sense, like you might have been, pervert, but rather because this is exactly the sort of romanticized childhood activity that I did not think existed anymore--especially in 'the city.'

The girls were playing with flashlights, talking, giggling--totally unaware of the danger they were in, the tempting bait they represented to the countless pedophiles that troll around at night praying to stumble upon this exact situation.

I was pleasantly surprised to discover that there are at least two parents in this country who refuse to protect their children from life, who refuse to expect worst-case scenarios, who refuse to abandon their faith in mankind--albeit at a risk. No doubt aware of this risk, the parents, or parent, remained out of sight, but ostensibly awake and nearby, projecting their presence loudly at any would-be kidnapper/molester. All the lights in the house were on. The television blared. The front door was wide open, as were the windows.

For all I knew, however, the situation inside the house could have been any of the following:

1. A solitary mom or dad was sleeping on the couch in front of the TV, derelict of duty.
2. A solitary mom or dad was sitting on the floor by the front door, shaking from an overdose of caffeine, clutching a loaded gun, hoping they wouldn't have to use it, hoping they would be able to if they had to, vowing not to sleep that night so his/her child (+1) could have careless fun that night, wondering what that noise was...
3. Two parents were sitting on the couch in front of the TV, dead, killed for the $6 in their wallets as their innocent, oblivious children giggled in the front yard.
4. Two parents were sitting on the couch, eating popcorn, watching Leno, pretending their ears weren't attuned to the slightest changes in the sonic patterns of the cool spring evening, pretending they were cool enough to let their kids be kids without having to worry about it every second, feigning an inability to sleep so they could stay up longer to safeguard their children, thinking every second that they should probably bring the kids inside now just to be on the safe side.

Remember when such activities weren't dangerous? When everything fun didn't have a dark side? When we lived in a Norman Rockwell world of ice cream sundaes, steadies, hot-rods, and baseball cards? When parents didn't sue everybody under the sun when an accident happened? When you didn't hear about every bad thing that ever happened to a child because the news programs used to actually focus on newsworthy events like wars, politics, the economy, global/national culture, etc? When kids could be kids, and only a small percentage of them were kidnapped or raped? I do. It wasn't that long ago.

[Actually, now that I think about it, kids have probably always been safer in their front yard at night than in a church. Ha! It's funny because it's true...]

Yep, kids today sure do have it bad.

"Your grades aren't good? That's nonsense. You're smart. You must just have ADD--here, take this speed. I mean, it's not speed, it has a different name, so it's totally fine. It's medicine. You look depressed. Are you depressed? Here, take these mood-altering drugs with atrocious side effects--but don't you dare ever drink beer or smoke pot or I'll be really mad! I'll go through all your possessions to make sure you're not smoking pot, because I saw a TV movie where a kid was smoking pot and then he got hit by a car. No, you can't go outside now--it's after dark. I saw on the news that a kid in Detroit got killed when he was outside at night. I watched part of the funeral on Oprah. I didn't have time to cook tonight, again, since I'm working two jobs to pay for our meds, so you'll have to eat Burger King again. No, you can't play football--people get paralyzed playing football. Why are you always playing video games? Why are you so fat? Go play in the playground or something, they finally replaced all those scary things like merry-go-rounds and tornado slides and open spaces with three-foot-long plastic slides and really fun games like tic-tac-toe and spin-the-pointless-steering-wheel. I'll drive you..."

Hopefully the backlash has begun; hopefully the pendulum will now swing away from this over-medicated, over-protected, overweight extreme we have been tolerating for the last twenty years, back toward the kinder, gentler, carefree, healthy, grass-stained childhood I remember. A couple girls camping in their front yard have finally given me a reason to believe this might actually happen, and that's a beautiful thing.

Here's to hoping they made it through the night...