OK, let’s move past my incredibly terrible pun and get to the heart of the question…

The 4th of July is coming up, and we here in the States will be celebrating by busting out the grill and eating tons of ribs, encased meats, and beef in various forms. And of course one of the ubiquitous side dishes is corn on the cob. I was at the grocery this morning buying my mandated 6 ears ($.10 each, yea!), and I had to elbow my way through the crowd standing around husking (shouldn’t it be “de-husking”?) their picks right in the middle of the produce section, tossing the husks about and getting corn silk all over the floor.

Is this a recent phenomenon? I just noticed it a few years ago, when the store near us put up signs asking people to PLEASE DO NOT HUSK CORN IN STORE. The sign went ignored so they finally said fuck it and put out a big garbage can. Which shoppers managed to deposit husks into about as efficiently as my 4 year old deposits clothes in the hamper.

Why? Why do people do this? I’m usually trying to get through my shopping as fast as humanly possible, I certainly am not going to be standing around doing dinner prep. Are they checking to see if the corn is any good? Pulling back a tiny bit of husk usually takes care of that, not to mention the fact that I think I’ve bought one “bad” ear of corn out of 300 — and at a dime a piece I like to live a little and get a few extras just in case.

Any of you huskers out there, can you enlighten me?

In the Spanish version of the Dora the Explorer DVDs, does Tico the Squirrel only speak English?

Today, The Imperfect Parent presents the first of a three part series about online predators and their reach into the mainstream. This is specifically geared towards parents who belong to parenting websites and blogs, as you may be surprised at the way pedophiles online think, their various antics, and how they use the internet to support their criminal behavior and provide information on our very own children.

Makes me wonder if technology has presented a danger that provides the venue for child predators to bring child exploitation to an unprecedented level:

Most parents certainly have an awareness of the threats of children being online, where they can easily fall victim of their own naiveté. We may even feel fully informed of the dangers that lurk within the bandwidth, as shows like “To Catch a Predator” gain popularity and stories of internet predators become common place within the news wires. But these stories only scratch the surface — parents might be surprised to learn that pedophiles, in their desperate attempts to be close to children and prey on their vulnerability, are using the anonymity of the internet to organize themselves in a united front and are now attempting to infiltrate parenting sites and blogs. They cloak and misrepresent themselves in order to gain trust so that they can plead their cases in effort to influence society’s reaction to child molestation; their goal is to normalize and mainstream pedophilia.

Read the rest….

UPDATE: The other 2 parts of the series are now online:

Cyber Warriors - A new breed of superheroes battle online child predators.

Chris Hansen - The famous face of the To Catch a Predator series talks about his motivation, his new book, and the most disturbing thing he’s witnessed during production.

Wow, given the giant stick up her ass I figured the bitch hadn’t gotten laid in years.

Word on the street is that Nancy Grace, of bug-eyed, mega-attitude, Tammy Faye makeup fame, is expecting twins. Ms. Grace has already deemed herself to be the exploiter, er, protector of child victims everywhere, so she’s sure to be a good mother. Doesn’t seem like she’s the type that would become unhinged over the presence of a certain undesirable method of hanging ones clothes at all…

From Access Hollywood (home of credible news, of course!):

NEW YORK, NY (June 26, 2007) — TV’s legal eagle, Nancy Grace, has revealed that she is four months pregnant with twins. But that’s not her only headliner: she also snuck off and got married!

“I always said I wanted a family,” Grace told Access Hollywood. “I grew up in happy, loving family [and] I wanted it too. But until now I just thought it wasn’t meant to be for me. And as part of God’s mysterious plan, I’m given this wonderful blessing late in life — and I could not be happier.”

47-years-old, and happier than ever! The CNN “Headline News” host married Atlanta-based banker David Linch in April. The couple reportedly met when they attended Mercer College together in the late 1970s.

Huh, just curious, does “God’s mysterious plan” include Clomid?

Many of us parents with older kids know the slack-jawed, glossy-eyed look that’s involved with an intense video game session. And we also know that some days we have to drag them away from the console kicking and screaming because, let’s admit it, video games are fun and often more attractive entertainment to a kid than reading or riding their bike. But would you ever think that a love of video games is a bona fide addiction? A leading council of the American Medical Association does.

The council is trying to persuade the AMA to lobby to have video game addiction classified as a psychiatric disorder and have it added to the American Psychiatric Association’s diagnostic manual. They want to make the public more aware of this supposed disorder, even making treatment for it covered by insurance. According to them, it’s a wide spread epidemic possibly affecting up to 5 million kids. One mom describes her ordeal with her teenager’s addiction:

Joyce Protopapas of Frisco, Texas, said her 17-year-old son, Michael, was a video addict. Over nearly two years, video and Internet games transformed him from an outgoing, academically gifted teen into a reclusive manipulator who flunked two 10th-grade classes and spent several hours day and night playing a popular online video game called World of Warcraft.

“My father was an alcoholic … and I saw exactly the same thing” in Michael, Protopapas said. “We battled him until October of last year,” she said. “We went to therapists, we tried taking the game away.

“He would threaten us physically. He would curse and call us every name imaginable,” she said. “It was as if he was possessed.”

Besides the threat of violence, does this sound that far off from the daily battles with stubborn teenagers that take place in homes across the globe? Comparing alcoholism to an obsession with video games seems a bit of a stretch, even if I don’t necessarily buy the whole “alcoholism is a disease” bit.

But even so, these teenagers wouldn’t have become “addicts” in the first place without a little enabling from their parents. An alcoholic wouldn’t become one without having access to copious amounts of booze. A kid won’t become a sugary cereal addict without being constantly served it for breakfast. And a teenager won’t become addicted to video games if strict limits are enforced as soon as the Xbox enters the house (if it’s even allowed to invade in the first place).

My version of treatment for “video game addiction” involves a sledgehammer, a garbage can, and a swift kick out the door into the backyard.