A treat for Christmas

Yesterday I ordered a book from Amazon - a Christmas treat for me. I ordered it with free postage, which takes 2 to 4 working days, so of course I didn't expect to see it until well after Christmas. However, Santa and his elves must have been on the job as, believe it or not, it arrived this morning. (Or maybe I've had another Rip van Winkle moment and it is now the first week of January.)
"Hey, look!" I said to Keith, "My book's come already!"
He looked at the title as I held it up - Psychotherapy and the Quest for Happiness," by Emmy van Deurzen.
His look said it all. No words but I think 'sad' might have been in his mind.
Have a good one, everybody!

Another gem from TK

This landed in my email from TK today. I know it could be viewed as a joke but read it through and see if you don't recognise worrying elements of reality!

SCHOOL -- 1957 vs. 2007

Scenario:
Jack goes quail hunting before school, pulls into school parking lot with shotgun in gun rack.
1957
- Vice Principal comes over, looks at Jack's shotgun, goes to his car and gets his shotgun to show Jack.
2007
- School goes into lock down, FBI called, Jack hauled off to Jail and never sees his truck or gun again. Counselors called in for Traumatized students and teachers.

Scenario :
Johnny and Mark get into a fistfight after school.
1957
- Crowd gathers. Mark wins. Johnny and Mark shake hands and end up buddies.
2007 - Police called, SWAT team arrives, arrests Johnny and Mark. Charge them with assault, both expelled even though Johnny started it.


Scenario:
Jeffrey won't be still in class, disrupts other students.
1957
- Jeffrey sent to office and given a good paddling by the Principal. Returns to class, sits still and does not disrupt class again.
2007 - Jeffrey given huge doses of Ritalin. Becomes a zombie. Tested for ADD. School gets extra money from state because Jeffrey has a disability.


Scenario:
Billy breaks a window in his neighbor's car and his Dad gives him a whipping with his belt.
1957 - Billy is more careful next time, grows up normal, goes to college, and becomes a successful businessman.
2007 - Billy's dad is arrested for child abuse. Billy removed to foster care and joins a gang. State psychologist tells Billy's sister that she remembers
being abused herself and their dad goes to prison. Billy's mom has affair with psychologist.


Scenario :
Mark gets a headache and takes some aspirin to school.
1957 - Mark shares aspirin with Principal out on the smoking dock.
2007 - Police called, Mark expelled from school for drug violations. Car searched for drugs and weapons.

Scenario:
Pedro fails high school English.
1957 - Pedro goes to summer school, passes English, goes to college.
2007 - Pedro's cause is taken up by state. Newspaper articles appear nationally explaining that teaching English as a requirement for graduation
is racist. ACLU files class action lawsuit against state school system and Pedro's English teacher.. English banned from core curriculum. Pedro given
diploma anyway but ends up mowing lawns for a living because he cannot speak English.

Scenario:
Johnny takes apart leftover firecrackers from 4th of July, puts them in a model airplane paint bottle, blows up a red ant bed.
1957 - Ants die.
2007- BATF, Homeland Security, FBI called. Johnny charged with domestic terrorism, FBI investigates parents, siblings removed from home, computers confiscated, Johnny's Dad goes on a terror watch list and is never allowed to fly again.

Scenario:
Johnny falls while running during recess and scrapes his knee. He is found crying by his teacher, Mary. Mary hugs him to comfort him.
1957 - In a short time, Johnny feels better and goes on playing.
2007 - Mary is accused of being a sexual predator and loses her job. She faces 3 years in State Prison. Johnny undergoes 5 years of therapy.

BT Vision

Well, we now have our BT Vision package. This means that we have broadband, a phone and television as a package. BT Vision gives us all the Freeview channels and a lot of other stuff, much of which is 'free' although you can download films and sport at an extra cost if you wish. The best bit about it for me, though, is that we will no longer be able to access all those obscure channels which show wall-to-wall Scrapheap Challenge, Salvage Squad, Garage etc which regular readers will remember me moaning about on previous occasions. Keith is less than happy about that, but it was his idea to swap from Sky to BT Vision and it will cost us about a third of what we are paying now.
Yes, I know it's really mean of me to be rejoicing at his misfortune, but you should hear the way he complains when I watch Emmerdale and Corrie!

TK's cartoons

A couple of seasonal cartoons from TK. Sorry, I don't know where they came from originally but I thought they might raise a smile. They can be clicked on to enlarge.

Christmas madness 2008

I had to do some more Christmas shopping yesterday. I didn't want to, not because I don't want to give presents, but because at this time of year, it's all about fighting your way through crowds of ill-tempered, stressed-out people. Elder Daughter used to get most annoyed with me whenever we went shopping together, as I used to insist on going early in the day to avoid the crowds. "Mother!" she once said, completely exasperated, "If there are more than nine people in the shop, you think it's crowded!"
However, yesterday morning, I was counselling, so I didn't get out until lunch-time. Off I trundled into town to find not one free parking space in the central car parks, so I decided to cut my losses and go and park in the Matalan car-park. (Yes, I did go into Matalan as well, so I was parked legitimately.) On my way home I passed a lengthy traffic queue, not queueing to get into Tesco but waiting on the road to get into the queue for Tesco's car park!
It was December 12th, almost a fortnight before Christmas Day, or have I done a Rip van Winkle and slept through the final run up to the big day?

Welsh Blog of the Year

I had a lovely surprise the other day when I visited Yorkshire Pudding's blog and discovered that he had very kindly given me an award, not just any old award, you understand, but the prestigious and highly sought after 'Laughing Horse Yorkshire Pudding Blog Award 2008'.


Need I say more? (Cheque's in the post, YP.)

Communication?

I, in my innocence, would presume that an important, if not essential aspect of a politician's role is to be a good communicator, which means, surely, that he/she needs to give a nod in the direction of plain English. So, is this really what Ed Miliband thinks he is doing when he says,
"There will be some people saying 'we can't go ahead with an agreement on climate change, it's not the biggest priority'. And, therefore, what you need is countervailing forces.
"Some of those countervailing forces come from popular mobilisation."
Yes, well... You can see the full article here.
And just in case you need any help, look here for a definition of 'countervailing.'
Don't you get tired of the way our language is so surreptitiously being infiltrated by meaningless jargon?