Occupy

OK, so the Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Rochester and Occupy whatever-other-cities has been going on for several weeks. How does it ever end? Do you wonder if the protesters are sitting there in their little tents week after week saying "Oh crap, how do we get out of this one gracefully? I'm ready to go home to my nice warm bed."

The last time there were widespread protests (that I remember having this much impact) were about civil rights and the Vietnam war. Once those injustices were more or less rectified (I'm not here to debate the efficacy of the rectification, seriously), the protesters packed up and went home.

How does this end? Do the "rich" (those faceless dastardly Richie Richies) trot down to Wall Street, Main Street and other places to display their tax receipts, W-2s and 1040 forms to prove they're paying more tax now? While these protests are not victimless there's no way to resolve the protesters' issues and make them go away.

Someone also posted on Facebook today asking how are these protesters surviving? And where do they get the money to pay for 48 colors of Sharpie markers to make their fancy signs if they're so destitute? Do they work? If they don't work, wouldn't that be a good start (getting a job, I mean) to at least be part of the solution and not a big part of the problem? Hopefully they're reading excellent books such as Think and Grow Rich (by Napoleon Hill) or the myriad other books about how to amass wealth so they too can be the haves rather than the have nots. Somehow I doubt it.

Anyway, I'm interested to see how this eventually resolves itself. I suspect the biting cold weather and upcoming *inter (rhymes with splinter) *now (rhymes with blow) will have a great deal to do with packing them up and sending them home.

Then both sides will claim victory. Huh.

Outta the way!

Dear Thanksgiving,

The national retailers and I have decided that your season is in our way so we're relegating you to just one day, the last Thursday in November and we're taking over from November 1st until Christmas Day.

I'm sure you won't mind and besides, you don't have any special music and just a few gourds and a lame turkey as symbols. In comparison, I have elves, Christmas trees, my very own music, snow and lots of sparkly lights that everybody loves.

The retailers need my season to make their profits for the year and, after looking at the numbers, we decided we'd just start Christmas early in November and just roll right over you this year.

Hope you don't mind.

Take care,

Santa

What have they done to Kellie?

Johnnie and I have thought that Kellie Pickler's year (2005) on American Idol was one of the best - but maybe that's because we watched the whole season. Now the show has lost its fascination and there are so many other (better?) things to watch, like Castle, The Good Wife and Modern Family. We tend to record whatever we want to watch and get to it a couple nights later. With the American Idol-format or Biggest Loser type shows, if you fall behind, you're kind of sunk and eventually it's just not worth it to wade back through weeks worth of shows to catch up.

But I digress.

Anyway, we always thought Kellie was just plain fun with her naivete and unabashed youthfulness. Once the season was over, the changes in Kellie began. Probably it all started with the gangbuster boob job (you can hardly miss them in most of her pictures these days). But compare the pictures below and help me figure out what "they" have done to Kellie and why.

Just as a point of reference, she was 19 when she was on American Idol and she's 25 now.
























It almost doesn't look like the same girl. The lower picture was taken at the Country Music Awards Wednesday evening (November 9, 2011) -- about 10 years worth of hard living and certainly not attractive (according to me). She sure doesn't look 25. So much cuter in the top picture, even though I think this one is relatively recent too.

Go back to your natural beauty, Kellie. You'll look hard like this naturally soon enough!