Dictators

Have you all seen J.C. Penney's Hitler tea kettle? Voila!

A picture of the kettle on a billboard in Southern California has left some drivers "steamed" because in glancing quickly up at the board, they thought for a moment that they were looking at a huge picture of the dictator's face, rather than a water-boiling vessel.

The article led to this exchange which appeared on my Facebook news feed among people I don't know, but would embrace if I ever meet them at a bad puns convention:

Dispatches from the Diamond

Friday night I had my first taste of a little league baseball tournament and I was in people-watching heaven. I have a minor obsession with subcultures and hardcore baseball families fed that obsession perfectly. I'm not talking about people whose kids play baseball. I'm talking about people whose entire identity is little league baseball. They wear shirts like this:

And shoes like this:

And get this pedicure:

Third Grade Picnic

Happy Memorial Day Weekend! In keeping with my trend of being not able to do anything more than just report on my activities because I've been too busy to think, let me tell you about the Girl's Third Grade Picnic. If this is the kind of stuff that holds no interest for you, then just move along (but check out the picture of the ice cream truck menu at the end of the post). On the off-chance that you might have to plan some kind of similar event, then this might be one of those actually useful posts that I write from time to time, mostly by accident. About six weeks ago, someone clued the two other third grade room moms and me that we had to plan a party for the third graders to celebrate their "graduation" from elementary school. The PTA gave us a budget and some minimal guidance and we were on our own from there.

One of the other room moms reserved the pavilion at our local park, which is within walking distance of the school. We kept our fingers crossed that it wouldn't rain because our plan B was to beg one of the churches to let us use their gymnasium for a couple of hours in exchange for allowing them to convert all the children. JK!

Here's a picture of Tim Tebow to make up
for the religious joke.

Play Ball!

Because I know you've all been wondering, the Boy's team won their league championship 19-15. Go White Sox! The boys were all thrilled:

The little boy in the blue shirt is the younger brother of one of the players and became the team's batboy/mascot/good luck charm. He awesomely wore a Chipper Jones jersey, baseball pants, and a batting helmet to nearly every game and every practice. I'm not sure if the kid owns any non-baseball clothes.

May Madness

Literally Dozens of Loyal Readers: Where have you been? Where are these tips that you promised? We're waiting and we're a little disappointed in you.

Me: I'm so sorry. I know that the last you heard of me I was revealing the source of senior citizen vibrators and then I vanished off the face of the earth. The end of the school year and sports season hit last weekend with special intensity. Let's just say that you know that you're busy when you don't even have time to complain about how busy you are on Facebook.

Let me tell you about about my Sophie's Choice (writ much smaller and less dramatic) for last Saturday morning. The Girl had a soccer tournament about an hour away, with games on Saturday at 8 and 12:30. The Boy had a playoff game for baseball at 9 and the Baby had her ballet recital also at 9. The K coaches the Boy's team, so he had an easy time picking the baseball game. That left me with deciding whether I should force the Girl to drive to the tournament with a teammate or miss the Baby's first big girl dance recital. Tip: If you have to choose one child to disappoint, pick the one least likely to remember. So, Mom took the Baby to her recital.

They are measured for their costumes at the beginning of the year and she's grown two inches and gained five pounds since then, so that tutu is basically a very cute tourniquet.

Boobs

Just to get you caught up on the week's breast news, on Monday Angelina Jolie wrote an op-ed in the New York Times revealing that she'd had a preventative double mastectomy because she carries a faulty gene that gives her a 87% chance of getting breast cancer. Angelia has come a long way since the days when she wore a vial of Billy Bob Thorton's blood around her neck and French kissed her brother. Once she became aware of the plight of refugees, she became a Special Envoy for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and is very involved in human rights issues. She has used her celebrity to bring attention to important issues, and her op-ed is another example of this. She could have remained silent about her surgery probably no one would be the wiser, but by publicly acknowledging the surgery and her reasons for having it, she highlighted women's health issues, which is never a bad thing, IMO.

On the lighter side of talking about boobs, did you all see that Disney gave some to Merida, the heroine from Brave?

Photo: Disney/Pixar

Sound Advice

The Internets were buzzing this week about the story of the Swedish man who died from multiple bee stings after trying to have sex with a wasps nest. Only, then it turned out not to be true. My faith in the human race was momentarily restored and then I saw this:

That's a grown man who got stuck in a highchair at a McDonald's in Ireland and had to be freed by the police. You'll be shocked to learn that alcohol had a role in the incident. Apparently, he sat in the highchair, then consumed a McCwrap and was unable to extricate himself from the seat. (I just made that up.)