Parents on Strike and Other Modern Stupidities - Updated

Striking Parents
"Cat and Harlan Barnard have pitched a tent in the front drive of their Florida* home and erected signs, one of which says: "Parents on Strike!".
They say they will stay there until Benjamin, 17, and Kit, 12, start to do their share of the household chores." (From BBC Online)

This is terribly embarrassing. Reading this nonsense on a foreign country's news site is mortifying and distressing. How on earth can grown ups be this misguidedly stupid? Apparently their children are already quite comfortable with a high level of chaotic filth, this won't change much. What needed to change was their parenting techniques long ago.

*Floridians and Californians make higher than average appearances in prominent news magazines like The Weekly World News and The Star, usually for raising a 40 pound gerbil, finding Elvis in the mold growing in their shower, confessing to secretly marrying an alien. Normal stuff.

Barbara Walter's List of the 10 Most Fascinating People of 2004
It included Paris Hilton.

And she ranked above The Google guys and Mel Gibson. Paris did, um, NOTHING noteworthy. She did some things for sure, but none of it was worthy of repeating and will be forgotten in just a few seconds. Fascinating wasn't what I would call what she did this last year. Unless of course children were listening, then it would be used euphemistically only.

Remember that the Google Guys went public on the stock market and rocked Wall Street with the stregnth of it's worth. These guys have a fantastic product and are now worth buckets of money.

Remember that Mel Gibson made a very controversial movie, all with his own money, and that he rocked Hollywood with its success.

Cloned Cats:
A woman in Texas recently spent $50,000 on a clone of her favorite cat.

I'll repeat that, just in case you missed it.

A woman in Texas recently spent $50,000 on a clone of her favorite cat.

I love my kitten, to be sure. She's snuggly and fun and a fantastic kitten. I see no need however to spend $50,000 on her clone. I see the need to perhaps adopt a kitten from the ASPCA and then, if I had it to spare, give the money to charities that actually help people suffering in the wars that ravage much of our world. When my cat dies, as she must, I will get another different cat and delight in the cat-ness of my next cat while enjoying the differences between them. I don't have any idea what else this woman spends her money on, I don't even know her name. But I can ascertain something of her priorities and character from this one decision. Silly woman, she is guilty of a grotesque missuse of a wealth that has been entrusted to her.

We are meant to use our gifts and talents for good, not evil, for righteousness and not for selfish gain. There are millions of kittens in shelters who will of necessity be put to death because there are no homes for them. Even more importantly, millions of children are at risk of death through war, starvation, cold and disease. $50,000 is no mere drop in the bucket.