Yesterday I had a chat with my grandma about charitable giving.  She shared her experiences of helping families pick out donated toys for their children.  The organization, sponsored by the county,  had a system in place where each child got one “big” gift ($20) and three smaller gifts.  A volunteer went around with the family to help carry stuff and make sure no one went over their limit.  She told me that some people were so grateful for anything they got and some were picky about the toys–in about the same percentage as folks in middle and upper classes, she figured.  So I see this story today and I get annoyed.  I get that a private charity can have whatever limits they want–that’s their right.  But I guess I think of charity as an act of giving without condition.   If I give money to a homeless person, I don’t give a big lecture about not buying liquor or smokes or drugs or sex or whatever: it’s now their five bucks to use as they see fit.   If I give a kid a backpack filled with school supplies, I hope they use them for their intended purpose, but I’ll never know.  These acts of charitable giving may come to no good use.  Or they might.  And that’s why people do it.

I am so doing this.

.. for diversity in princesses. (see Cartman)

..so goes the nation.  Enjoy.

Any way you slice it, it’s so very sad.  I hope people can resist to urge to “create your own adventure” story and let the facts come out.   I fear that so much ugly is out there already that the facts won’t matter.  But with some of these people, the facts never do.

Anyhoo .. some chatter here, here , here and here.

Anne Frank from her diary, “Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart.”

Obama = Stalin Hitler Nixon!.

I like the idea of a socialist mop as I believe the responsibility of mopping would be shared.

From Balloon Juice

“The salient fact of American politics is that there are fifty to seventy million voters each of who will volunteer to live, with his family, in a cardboard box under an overpass, and cook sparrows on an old curtain rod, if someone would only guarantee that the black, gay, Hispanic, liberal, whatever, in the next box over doesn’t even have a curtain rod, or a sparrow to put on it.”

Back from a long rock-n-roll weekend and still catching up …