Third world problems.

::snickers:: Though, surely these days, Jamaica counts as second world?

Also, here's a timely article about Romneycare, both how it works (and it does) and how Romney is running away from the shining jewel of his one-term governorship:

[link]

What was the second world when Third World started being bandied about? Was the the Soviet bloc?

What the hell kind of messed-up studies told the NFL that this series of weird commercials with a guy who talks in a funny voice was just what they needed? I admit I'm probably not their ideal target audience, but those commercials make me want to stop watching.

Friends are asking for help. Their four year old wants to wear "rock opera clothes" and they don't know what that means.

because They hate our way of life and Want To Destroy Us.

We're just evolutionarily imprinted for there to be an Us v Them. Family to pack to settlement to city to state to country with religion and politics and skin color and anything else that can be differentiated and thus dominated thrown in for good measure. And I personally don't think it'd be such a huge problem if people weren't so damned sure that we were special, certainly very different than every other creature on the planet and, in America according to the rhetoric, Christian and thus good. Accept that the deeper parts of your brain are mostly worried about finding dinner, passing on your biological information and not becoming someone else's dinner. Or give up on this civilization thing. My third option is always that we could find alien life and make them the Them. That is pretty much the only scenario where I see people not making it a fight amongst other humans for turf.

My first house as a child was near the train tracks, and I still fun those sounds deeply soothing.

I find racetracks soothing for the same reason. I can always nap there if there's just a little bit of room to lie down. The buzz of the cars is nice.

What was the second world when Third World started being bandied about? Was the the Soviet bloc?

That's the way that we learned it.

Why do people keep saying Jamaica isn't third world? What are you thinking of as third world? This isn't a "I don't see your race when I look at you..." thing, is it?

It's a starving kids in camps thing.

ie: is Sally Struthers trying to raise money for you?

I actually don't mind living near the train tracks -- we lived down the block from the commuter rail when I was growing up, though these tracks are closer to the house and the trains run more frequently -- but M has a lot of trouble sleeping anyway, so anything that's going to potentially disrupt his sleep could be problematic. But, not much we can do about it now, except maybe buy a second white noise machine.

Friends have come and gone, many boxes have been packed, and now I'm just waiting for Rose to wake up from her nap so she can eat and we can head to choir rehearsal. Looking like we'll be rather late...

I'm never scared by CMs that take place in the woods -- only the ones with urban single women! For obvious reasons.

I KNOW! Did you see the one where the guy was stalking the woman through her Facebook page? I immediately signed out of Facebook and vowed never to check in any where.