Who can resist a sleeping baby, anyway?

Ahh, the holiday season. One more chance to be bombarded with the best marketing multiple ad firms and their clients have to offer, 24×7. There’s one commercial I just wait for, though. I’ve seen this one several times before, and it stops me in my tracks. It’s just some babies, fast asleep, and someone singing “Silent Night”. Anyone who’s ever held a sleeping baby probably stops in their tracks, too. Even if we don’t have kids, I’m a former nanny. I remember that slight weight in my arms, the sweet, clean scent of their skin and the tiny fingers and toes. They’re pretty irresistible.

Welcome to one minute of heavenly peace.

-S

Black Friday: A worker dies after being trampled this morning at a Long Island Wal-Mart

I’m sure there are those who will believe that Black Friday “doorbusters” are worth whatever one must do to get them. At the same time, the last Black Friday death was over a $39 DVD player.

Are loss-leader electronics worth someone else’s life, Wal-Mart?

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2008/11/28/2008-11-28_worker_dies_at_long_island_walmart_after.html

A Wal-Mart worker died after being trampled when hundreds of shoppers smashed through the doors of a Long Island store Friday morning, police and witnesses said.

The 34-year-old employee, a temporary maintenance worker, tried to hold back the unruly crowds just after the Valley Stream store opened at 5 a.m.

Witnesses said the surging throngs of shoppers knocked the man down. He fell and was stepped on. As he gasped for air, shoppers ran over and around him.

This makes me sick to my stomach.

“He was bum-rushed by 200 people,” said Jimmy Overby, 43, a co-worker. “They took the doors off the hinges. He was trampled and killed in front of me. They took me down too…I literally had to fight people off my back.”

Something similar happens every year. Of course, the stores involved are not negligent, are they? After all, it’s not their fault that people are acting like maniacs because there are a tiny number of the advertised items on sale, is it? It would seem to me that Wal-Mart, a multi-billion dollar corporation, could afford to put even rudimentary crowd control measures (local cops, forming a line, etcetera) in place each Black Friday morning, but hell, there’s a $128 Blu-Ray player on special! Isn’t that more important?

Of course, we have a suitably contrite statement already.

Wal-Mart spokesman Dave Tovar called the incident a “tragic situation.”

“The safety and security of our customers and associates is our top priority,” Tovar said.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with them and their families at this difficult time.”

Nice to know that “security” is a top priority, when (again,) people are injured at the least every year in Black Friday stampedes.

-S

p.s. Of course, this brings to mind those who would step on someone who was already lying on the ground. I’m sure their holidays will be extra-merry this year because they couldn’t wait ten seconds to help the guy up or make sure he got medical attention. I can’t even imagine.

Thanksgiving is here

We are home from Aunt Suzie’s house. There were seventeen of us at the table this year. Aunt Suzie gives the best Thanksgivings ever. The food was delicious. The cousins got a chance to catch up. Mostly, we spent time with the people we love, talking and laughing with our feast.

We’ll see them again soon.

-S

“You can call me Barack”: President-Elect Obama hands out food on Chicago’s South Side today

Photo: Chicago Sun-Times

http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/obama/1300994,Obama-food-pantry-112608.article#

President-elect Barack Obama and his family spent an hour handing out Thanksgiving food to poor families on the South Side this morning after introducing his latest economic advisors.

Many of the poor and homeless — some who come there for food every Wednesday — screamed in disbelief as they entered the parking lot of St. Columbanus at 71st and Calumet and saw Obama, his wife and daughters standing ready to pass out food they usually get from volunteers.

Just one more thing we are thankful for this year — someone who leads by example.

-S

The official Thanksgiving post — well, till tomorrow.

Our table does not look like this.

I wish I had something deep and meaningful to say about Thanksgiving. Mostly, I’ve been reflecting on Thanksgivings over the years. When I was younger, it was my mom and my aunt Marilyn making the feast. They’d cook for days. They’d get out the china and the crystal. The family would inhale everything, and Mom and Aunty Marilyn would wonder why everyone was asleep in the family room twenty minutes later.

I’ve been making Thanksgiving dinner for the past fifteen years or so. Tomorrow, we’re going to our Aunt Suzie’s house, but typically, I’m wrestling a turkey in our kitchen sink about 8 a.m. on Thanksgiving morning. I also keep half an eye on either the Macy’s parade or the early football game. We’ll probably make another turkey at home on Friday morning to get the leftovers.

I am not Martha Stewart, so there have been a few disasters over the years.

The first year I made a turkey, I couldn’t find the waxed paper bag with the giblets in it. I kept looking. It evidently was concealed in such a manner that it was invisible to the naked eye — well, till the turkey came out of the oven and we cut into it at the dinner table. Oops. The other guests laughed and ate it anyway, but we had one guest who was Highly Displeased. Everyone lived. I’ve conducted an overly thorough body cavity search of every turkey since. There are other oddities that have happened over the years, but mostly, it’s gone well, and the food’s been delicious.

While I’m cooking on Thanksgiving morning each year, though, I’m thinking about my mom. I never made Thanksgiving dinner till she was gone. I wonder to myself what it would have been like to make the dinner for her instead. There have been so many times over the years that I wished I could pick up the phone and talk to her about something, or maybe hear what she was up to. (I’ll bet she would have known how to unearth those giblets…) I know that there are so many who miss loved ones who are no longer with us over the holidays, too. I can make the same recipes or do things like she’d do them, but it’s not the same.

Tomorrow, I’ll be remembering how thankful I am for my mom, among many other things and people. Obviously, I wouldn’t be here if she hadn’t had me. She taught me a lot of things. The most important lessons, though, were the things she had to let me learn on my own.

I hope that everyone who reads TLPC will sit down at a table tomorrow with those you like and love, have some food, and reflect on all the wonderful things and people in your life, too.

Happy Thanksgiving,

-S

Michael Vick thought dogfighting was “funny to watch”

I saw this article last night shortly before we went to bed. I’m still fired up about it, twelve hours later. I’ve read the trial balloons over the past couple of weeks by a certain NFL team hoping to sign Mr. Vick when he is released from prison.

I wonder if it’s occurred to Roger Goodell yet that allowing Michael Vick to play one more down in the NFL will not only bring protests at every NFL game he plays in, any attempt to reinstate what most people would consider a monster will give the league’s stamp of approval to dogfighting. Think about it, Mr. Goodell. While you’re at it, you might want to refresh your memory with another reading of your “player conduct policy”, which you’ve had no problem ignoring in the interest of profit, have you?

http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/27850103

Michael Vick put family pets in rings with pit bulls and thought it was funny watching the trained killers injure or kill the helpless dogs, a witness told federal investigators during the dogfighting investigation that brought Vick down.

In a 17-page report filed Aug. 28, 2008, by case agent James Knorr of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and released Friday under the Freedom of Information Act, a person identified as confidential witness No. 1 said Vick placed pets in the ring against pit bulls owned by “Bad Newz Kennels” at least twice and watched as the pit bulls “caused major injuries.”

The witness said Vick and co-defendants Purnell Peace and Quanis Phillips “thought it was funny to watch the pit bull dogs belonging to Bad Newz Kennels injure or kill the other dogs.”

Oh, yeah. It’s a laff riot. How neat is it to put someone’s beloved pet in a ring with an animal that has been mistreated to the extent the animals owned by Bad Newz Kennels were? How damaged does another person have to be to find this entertaining?

Peace, who also was convicted in the case, said there were times he suggested that dogs unwilling to fight be given away, but that Vick said “they got to go,” meaning be killed.

The dogs were killed by shooting, hanging, electrocution and drowning, and in at least one instance, according to one of the witnesses, when Vick and Phillips killed a red pit bull by “slamming it to the ground several times before it died, breaking the dog’s back or neck.”

Wow. What a tough guy. “They got to go”, huh? Those around him must be so proud.

Again, Mr. Goodell: When are you going to make Mr. Vick’s “suspension” a permanent ban from the NFL? If you aren’t willing to do so, why not?

-S

Things I am thankful for today

Of course, with the above title, I have to come up with something brilliant, don’t I? No pressure, huh?

There are so many things to be thankful for, no matter the situation. Just like lots of other people, we’re in a weird place right now. This, too, shall pass. We have more than enough food to eat, we’re sleeping inside, we’ll get through this.

Okay. Five things.

1. We’re going to Aunt Suzie’s house for Thanksgiving dinner. We love Aunt Suzie. Besides being a wonderful person, she works to get foster kids into a better living situation. This is urgently important and heartbreaking work. She makes a difference, one kid at a time.

2. Again: We sleep indoors. We have enough food to eat, clothes to wear, each other. We have friends and family who love us, and we love them in return.

3. Costco has a new prescription drug program for people who either don’t have or have lost their health insurance. If we weren’t already favorably impressed with Costco, (picked on by Wall Street because they believe in paying their employees fairly and offering a good benefits package, not to mention all the cool stuff they sell,) this alone would do it.

4. Our friend Elizabeth is going to the Inauguration. She doesn’t have a ticket, but she’s going to be there, and we can’t wait to hear the eyewitness account of four million people crowding onto the National Mall to witness history.

5. There is always hope. Always.

-S

Times are tough all over: Rich cut back payments to their mistresses

You can tell it’s a hard-hitting news day at TLPC when I’m mining a news item I saw yesterday. Then again, it’s from the Wall Street Journal, so it must be important, right?

I have another confession to make: When I can tear myself away from those adorable Shiba-Inu puppies, I’m currently transfixed by Bravo’s “Real Housewives of Atlanta”. Hoo-boy: Now THIS is craptastic TV at its finest. It’s hard to believe that anyone can spend the kind of money these women seem to on a daily basis, much less brag about it. I’m also fairly interested in what’s going on with their husbands — one of them is staging a NFL comeback, and another is in the process of retiring from the NBA due to career-ending injury. There’s a reunion show next week I’ll be watching if I’m on life support. (Think “Jerry Springer Show” in Dior and some show-stopping jewelry.)

What does this have to do with the article and the subject above, huh? There’s a woman on the above-mentioned program that was, allegedly, somebody’s mistress.

Let’s take a look, huh?

http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2008/11/18/rich-cut-back-on-payments-to-mistresses/

You know times are tough when the rich start cutting costs on their mistresses.

According to a new survey by Prince & Assoc., more than 80% of multimillionaires who had extra-marital lovers planned to cut back on their gifts and allowances. Still, only 12% of the multimillionaire cheaters said they plan to give up on their lovers altogether for financial reasons.

“Rich people are getting hit, and they’re all expressing the need to curtail unnecessary spending,” said Russ Alan Prince, president of Prince & Assoc., a wealth-research firm based in Connecticut. “Lovers are part of the same calculation.”

There is a limit to the whole “cutting back” thing, isn’t there?

Susan Shapiro Barash, who teaches gender studies at Marymount Manhattan College and wrote “Little White Lies, Deep Dark Secrets,” about why women lie, said women value their lovers more than men in a time of economic trouble. “For the women, lovers matter more than ever now because the rest of life is so dreary,” she said. “For the men, they’re just cutting across the board.”

Ms. Barash added that women may value their lovers more today because their husbands are so miserable. “If your husband lost his job on Wall Street and he’s miserable, you need the escape,” she says.

I never thought of it that way. Then again, I don’t have a private jet, black AmEx, $50,000 in plastic surgery… plus, The Dauphin hates it when I date.

The duration of the relationship also seems to play a role in the economics of high-end cavorting. The study found that more than two thirds of the millionaires who had been with their lovers for three or more years planned to cut back. That compares with less than half for those with a tenure of one to three years.

It’s important to keep things fresh, isn’t it?

Obviously, these people are adults. Their lives are their business. They’re free to do as they’d like. I did think it was interesting that the WSJ would find this such a phenomenon they’d write about it, though. I wonder to myself what kind of dollars extramarital affairs, especially those conducted by the extremely rich, put into our economy.

When I’m not spending thirty seconds musing on this one, the stock market made another precipitous drop today, millions are out of work, our economy is at a standstill, and Thanksgiving’s next week. It would be better to spend some time thinking about the things I’m thankful for this year, and I’ll be writing about some of those over the next few days.

-S

It’s a bad day for Seahawks fans: Patrick Kerney’s season is over

:sniff:

As the president for life of the unauthorized Patrick Kerney Fan Club, I’m required to report on these things.

We have tickets for Sunday’s game. Unfortunately, we won’t be seeing Patrick the Magnificent terrorizing the Redskins’ quarterback. He’s just been placed on IR for the rest of the season.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/football/388524_kerney20.html

Kerney had a “clean-out” procedure two weeks ago on his surgically repaired left shoulder and it was decided to let him heal completely rather than rushing him back into the lineup with the team 2-8.

It was almost a year ago that Kerney began a late-season surge that ended with him leading the NFC with 14½ sacks and finishing second in voting for NFL defensive player of the year.

The dentist this morning, now this? Not good!

-S

The Casa de Dauphin/Strategerie Ford test-drive

Okay, this is a photo of the 2009 Ford Focus coupe. I failed in my quest to find a photo of the 2008. Just picture this car with metallic gray paint, okay?

I have a lot of things to talk about today, but I’ve been reading the commentary about the Big Three automakers and their appearance in DC yesterday. Well, I’ve been reading between peeking in on the crack that is the Shibu-Ina puppies. I’m going to need an intervention by the time they get sent to their new homes. They just woke up from their mid-morning nap, and they’re tearing up the neighborhood!

http://www.ustream.tv/videoplayerpopup/channel/317016

Where was I? Oh.

The Dauphin and I drive our cars till they die. We’re not big on the whole “new year, new car” thing, unlike others in our neighborhood. Let’s face it: We both grew up in blue-collar homes. Our self-esteem isn’t predicated on whether or not we drive something that’s costing us the GNP of a small country each month. As a result, my car (1994 Nissan Sentra, 0-60 in ten minutes,) has been in the shop over the past few days. Luckily, the repair isn’t hugely expensive, and the place we took it to has a MAJOR deal with a car rental place. We’ve been driving a 2008 Ford Focus as a result, which marks the longest period of time I’ve driven a domestically-made car since I was single. (My ex-roommate, Megan, had a fire-engine-red 1964 1/2 Mustang. I was the designated driver. I loved that car.)

There’s been a several-years-discussion now about another car. I wanted an Outback. The Dauphin dislikes them. He wanted a SUV. I tried driving one and said, “No.” Plus, by then I was really interested in a Prius. Of course, by the time I decided this, there were surcharges and six-month waits. We abandoned this idea. We’ve now heard that the incoming administration may offer additional tax breaks to those who buy a hybrid vehicle, so we will be revisiting the idea at a later time. Or, we may buy a Focus when we’re finally in the market to buy something new.

We both like this car. It’s not flashy. It doesn’t have German engineering (sob) or a navigating system, like my friend Judy’s super-cool BMW. We’re not burning them off at the stoplight. At the same time, it’s comfortable. It’s a nice ride. It’s easy on the gas. It has enough pickup to drive on the freeway and up Novelty Hill. (Those who live in the area will surely understand.) It also offers a back seat roomy enough to bring two friends, if you’d like. Most of all, the price isn’t bad. Let’s see here: Toyota or Honda hybrid — minimum $20K, right? Focus starts at under $14K. There’s also the added benefit of helping someone in the US keep his or her job.

We’ve known people that would be rolling their eyes at this point and insisting that they’d never be caught dead behind the wheel of something so utilitarian. After all, cars are a statement of who we are, right? We both loved Kate Walsh’s Cadillac commercial: “When you turn your car on, does it return the favor?” Plus, I like to drive. At the same time, I was pleasantly surprised by this car. I’ll drive one again. Even more, I would buy one. I think it’s a good value for the money. Despite the fact it’s not a hybrid, it gets good enough mileage that it would be a great choice.

I said all this without any prompting from Ford Motor Company. I didn’t receive anything for free. The Focus and I have a hot date in a little over an hour, though — I have a dental appointment.

Have a great day!

-S