Humans have a special talent for the cruelty. Though, I don't know, insects do so many horrific things as a matter of course that I'm not sure they get a bye.

Insects do many horrible things, but pretty much always directly linked to their own survival and propagation. There's no cruelty for the sake of it. For that you need more intelligence, as per cats or killer whales.

There's no cruelty for the sake of it

So you say! But I've looked into a Mantis' eyes and he was pure evil.

Thanks Bonny, but you're giving me whiplash from the doubletake at "pooch stew". Um. Bartleby's right there, and on all fours and frisky, right?

Heh. You gave me such a laugh right there. He is awfully sweet...

Nah, he isindeed right here. A bit more more sacked out than frisky at the mo. A couple of long walks in the beautiful weather today did him right in.

The whole raison d'crock pot in this house is the pooch. I've been given the mandate to remove all grain from his diet, so frequent stews have ensued. Usually turkey (a 20lber, most recently), sweet potatoes, carrots, celery, greens (collard & kale). Sometimes beets, green beans or, frankly anything headed south in the veggie bin.

I love the crock pot for making it so easy. Chop...wait...grind...freeze. Like magic.

Just not the clean up.

I am home! YAY! I am so glad to be home, with my cats and all my stuff. I had a really good tome with my family, but 10 days is just too long to be away. I cam home and my house seemed kind of strange.

I had a very long bus ride sitting behind a rude woman who kep slamming her chair back further and further and hit me hard in the leg so hard TWICE I actually said "Ow!" really loudly. When I asked her if she could not push her chair all the way back, she clamed she needed it for her bad back, but she also pushed the empty chair next to her back all the way...so I had no legroom. And then she proceeds to give me dirty looks for the rest of the trip. What a bitca!

Oh! And I forgot to mention possibly my best Christmas gift: A Trixie Belden Mystery-Quiz book! It's my old book, but I only wrote in the answers to a couple of activities, so I still have hours of fun ahead.

So jealous!!! I had those books. I had almost all the Trixies Beldens...except for those last few that are pretty rare...and my mom gave them/threw them away. I've recovered some, but not many of the later ones.

Sue, my mom did that with the orignial blue-with-orange-silhouettes Nancy Drews my great-aunt gave me. I went to some expense to try and replace them, I remembered loving them so.

Then I read a couple of them and was appalled at the casual racism and classism of the originals. Selling them now, I don't want them. I hope the Trixie Beldens are a happier experience.

I don't know where the bulk of the books are -- possibly sold at a long-ago yard sale, possibly still in the parents' attic somewhere. I will say, this quiz book includes a lot of Actual Information, like, the first quiz asks what's included in the Miranda warning!

Re-reading the Trixie Belden's (which I did a several years ago now) I was struck mostly with what a white and privledged world they live in...Trixie is always calling her family poor next to her fabulously wealthy friends, but I am pretty sure they were comfortably middle class--her dad was a bank manager.

Then again, both my grandfather and great-grandfather were bank managers, and we're not rich. (Though allegedly we used to be richer--damn Vichy gov't.)

When Nancy, who was a fifteen year old child, scolded the housekeeper and essentially treated her like an idiot child, I lost all interest in reading more of the books. Yes, white and privileged covers it.

Nancy is much more disturbing than Trixie, I think. It is more that they are always talking about her family as poor, but it is a poor in that they do not have nanny's or horses or new cars for all the kids (just Brian's jalopy that he fixes up). Nancy is sort of casually racist, as are the Bobbsey Twins.

I am at work. I do not want to be. There is no coffee cart because the people who run the coffee cart fired their worker, and the School is annoyed at the people who run the coffee cart! So I am having really bad coffee with powdered creamer

It's a big issue with old children's books which is a real shame because I was getting a nice collection going. I had several Hardy Boys and Nancy Drews from the 40s/50s/60s but got rid of them before mac even came home after reading one of each. There wasn't even the racism mentioned above, but a general out-of-synch-ness with life today that I found jolting and I was pretty sure a new to this culture boy like mac would not understand. For example: the Hardy Boys as very young teenagers head out of town on their own and confront potentially dangerous adult men to start off one of the books.

The racism has come from the more classic "stories for children" collections I had. Arabian Knights was particularly bad, with the evil bad guy in almost every story being a "large negro" or "black genie". I was changing language structure and vocabulary as I read it. We did make it through the whole book, but I have since gotten rid of that volume. We haven't made it through many of the volumes, I should probably check them at some point, but since mac is not a reader there is virtually no chance that he will just pick one up.