Thank you, Lyra. Me too.

Alibelle, I think you might need to find another place to work. I would not work at a place that had a known rat problem so bad that open trash cans were not workable. Rats are not an acceptable side-effect of working in an office.

I am seriously considering it right now. Despite the fact that my job is really easy, low stress (outside of this), has little supervision, has extremely flexible hours, and decent pay.

Alibelle, they have to keep the vegetation, I was just saying that so you would know that the rats live OUTSIDE. Like coyotes and opossums and all the other city-adapted creatures we have around here.

Oh, I see. I would still like all of them to be completely and totally gone, though. To the point where I wouldn't mind snakes, so long as they made the rats be gone. And I'm not thrilled with the idea of snakes, either, but they freak me out so much less.

I don't know whether Jackson is guilty of sexual abuse.

I do know that he is an unfit parent. Point-blank. Anybody else in the world who hung an infant out of a window would have lost custody so fast it made his head spin.

But I can't imagine being so sure about that, that I would take any chances with my children.

But what if he was a good friend? You might not give a fig what anyone has to say except your kids.

He's not just a freaky-deaky famous guy, he's somebody's friend too.

OTOH, I don't think that keeping my kids, had I any, far far away from MJ is necessarily a signal that I think he's guilty, either. That, I can't know. What I can know is there's a) enough reason to wonder and b) more than enough reason to know that this is a man with some serious problems and in no way a healthy environment for children, unattended or not. No child of mine would be within a mile of him if I could help it, and his guilt or innocence on these particular charges is pretty much a side issue to that.

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My feeling on the parents who are still letting their kids hang with MJ is this: if, like in Trudy's example, your kid's Little League coach has been accused of pedophilia, I frankly feel that the parent has a much better basis for judging whether or not the allegations are true. Because a coach/teacher/clergy member is a part of your local community, in a more or less everyday way.

But the parents who are sending their kids off to Neverland Ranch -- I honestly don't think they have that kind of social, locally based community with Michael Jackson. So how would those parents really know if the allegations were true?

And, legally, of course he's innocent until proven guilty. However, particularly in a situation like this, where these parents aren't hanging out with MJ, or with people who know him well enough to vouch for him -- even though, legally, he's innocent, why would you take a chance like that with your CHILD?

Anybody else in the world who hung an infant out of a window would have lost custody so fast it made his head spin.

People say that a lot, but I don't think it's true.

Holding a baby up over a balcony is a dumb-ass thing to do to be certain, but the courts don't permanantly remove custody for one fleeting dumb-ass thing. There's parenting classes and home visits and blah de blah... but probably not if it had happened in another country.

I do know that he is an unfit parent. Point-blank. Anybody else in the world who hung an infant out of a window would have lost custody so fast it made his head spin.

Nope. Unfortunately people do a lot stupider things with their kids and retain custody. And a lot more dangerous things.

I agree, I overspoke. He probably shouldn't have lost custody for that alone.

However, anybody who would do that should not have sole responsibility for children, which by all accounts Jackson does.

But what if he was a good friend? You might not give a fig what anyone has to say except your kids.

Even if I had known him for 20 years and loved and trusted him absolutely, I probably still would not let my children be alone with him. There's just no way to take back a mistake if I was wrong.

Also, I don't get the impression most of the parents of the kids he hangs out with are people he's known and socialized with for years and years. They seem to be largely local parents, often either poor or middle-class, who could easily be dazzled by his celebrity. I think Nicole Ritchie is the only child of an MJ colleague I've seen talk about being at Neverland, and a)that would be 20 years ago and b)she's a girl.