Ha! you beat me to it ... was going to do an Open Thread about Canada's bizarro holiday:

"Boxing Day retail bonanza brings out the worst in some shoppers":

The spirit of giving was pushed aside for the fierce pursuit of a bargain Monday as nearly six million Canadians braved the cruel cold and at times crueller crowds for the annual Boxing Day shopping blitz. ...

I'll be danged.  They're usually so polite.

P.S.  I read once what Boxing Day is for, but I forget.

(I think Atrios's open thread notes are cute ... they make me giggle regularly ... perhaps one needs a strange sense of humor?)


Hickok: "You know the sound of thunder. Can you imagine that sound if I ask you to? Ma'am, listen to the thunder."

Did you see this story?  Apparently the military is paying for TV news in Iraq as well as print.  And they are recruiting pro-war bloggers to come to Iraq and get embedded with the troops so they can buck up all the arm chair generals back home:

BAGHDAD -- Retired soldier Bill Roggio was a computer technician living in New Jersey less than two months ago when a Marine officer half a world away made him an offer he couldn't refuse.

Frustrated by the coverage they were receiving from the news media, the Marines invited Roggio, 35, who writes a popular Web log about the military called "The Fourth Rail" ( http://www.billroggio.com ), to come cover the war from the front lines.

* * * * *

Pool said he spends a growing portion of his time working to dispel what he calls erroneous tips from insurgents to reporters, including regular reports of Marines taken captive or helicopters downed.

"We now take all of these rumors seriously," he said. "We also use different [media] to get our messages out."

He said he recently began distributing his news releases to military bloggers and organizations such as veterans associations. The Marines also took a more direct approach by inviting Roggio to cover their operations.

"A thorough review of his work was taken into account before authorizing the embed," said Pool. "Overall, it has worked out really well."

Pool also praised the work of Michael Yon ( http://michaelyon.blogspot.com ), an independent author and blogger who embedded for almost a year with a U.S. Army unit in the northern city of Mosul.

"His reporting was objective, credible and compelling. But most of all, it was independent," Pool said. "He didn't have to worry about some editor back in the States altering what he wrote before it got published. Plus, he had no competition from other news sources to churn out a 'marketable' product on a day-to-day basis."

After military officials in Baghdad said Roggio could not be issued media credentials unless he was affiliated with an organization, the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative-leaning research organization in Washington, offered him an affiliation, according to an entry on Roggio's blog. He and two other bloggers launched a new Web site a month ago ( http://threatswatch.com ), where he has posted many stories about his time with the Marines. Most provide detailed accounts of patrols or other outings on which he accompanied U.S. forces.

When news organizations began reporting about the insurgent activity in Ramadi on Dec. 1, Roggio posted "The Ramadi Debacle: The Media Bites on Al Qaeda Propaganda."

"The reported 'mini-Tet offensive' in Ramadi has turned out to be less than accurate," he wrote, citing information provided by Pool. "In fact, it has been anything but."

On Dec. 15, when Iraqis voted in nationwide elections, Roggio reported from Barwana, a Western town where turnout was far heavier than in Iraq's constitutional referendum held Oct. 15.

"Barwana, once part of Zarqawi self declared 'Islamic Republic of Iraq,' " he wrote, "is now the scene of al-Qaeda's greatest nightmare: Muslims exercising their constitutional right to chose their destiny."

A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward. Franklin D. Roosevelt

If your lineage from Lucy was one of those who followed the herds yearly and you don't follow any herds anymore, you're all fucked up right about now!  At least that's my excuse for why I would write something similiar and why I'm so fucked up today.  Shopping Christmas Sales.....who in the flying hell does that, I can't even find my ass today.  I'm going to follow the neighbors cows around for awhile, seems to make sense today.

PMS Purchase More Shoes

Just 'cause it's too weird to keep to myself:

Eat 4 Today: Just today I'm not going to take seconds & not eating between meals

so I am whupped and more to come.
What IS it about New year's Eve that drives people to try to have 'too much fun'?

This actor died, according to Raw Story:

"Character actor Vincent Schiavelli, renowned for his eccentric roles in such films as One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest and Ghost, has died.
... Read all."

I never knew his name, but I sure knew that face.

Hickok: "You know the sound of thunder. Can you imagine that sound if I ask you to? Ma'am, listen to the thunder."

First there was The Exploding Cow...now it's Whack a Penguin

click on picture then click to "drop" penguin and again to swing the Yeti's bat....best personal score 321.1

Passive aggression mgmt....:{)

Later

Peace

the revolution will not be televised...

My daughter felt badly for me that TV fare sucks so badly right around now, so she rented me a movie as a treat.  It's "City of God," which I've read about and was anxious to see.   She'd also seen it, and raved about it.

Well.  Hell's bells.

I found it very hyper.

And I also had a very hard time reading the subtitles at the same time I had to watch what the people were doing.

I kept wishing they'd dubbed the film.  (Even though that's a no-no.)

I suppose all of you thought it was fabulous.

Hickok: "You know the sound of thunder. Can you imagine that sound if I ask you to? Ma'am, listen to the thunder."

I'm a big fan of Atrios's instead of Atrios' ... you punctuate correctly, imho.  

I think the extra s should be added if that's how it sounds when it's said.

Hickok: "You know the sound of thunder. Can you imagine that sound if I ask you to? Ma'am, listen to the thunder."

.

Sharon to Undergo Heart Surgery

Sharon New Party Kadima Wants to "Fix" Borders of Israel

"Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason."  

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.
Indonesia One Year Later - Visit of Aceh Tsunami Disaster Area by Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono - SBY.

Tsunami News

  «« click on pic for story
Indonesian President SBY speaks
with students at a Medan school

• DISASTER STRIKES ASIA - QUAKE 8.9 - TSUNAMI WAVE
  ◊ by creve coeur @dKos Dec. 26, 2004
  
• Worse, Much Worse Beyond Any Imagination

EARTHQUAKE 7.6 NE Pakistan Disaster - 42,000 Dead - Chinooks Arrive
Fri Oct 7th, 2005 at 11:25:55 PM PST

"Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason."

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If anyone is in need of a laugh, Olbermann has a special on right now - an entire hour of "The Best of Oddball"

  Good night -
 

miino biimaadizi

From the Los Angeles Times

OBITUARIES
Patricia Van Tighem, 47; Wrote Book About Near-Fatal Grizzly Mauling
 By Valerie J. Nelson
 Times Staff Writer

 December 25, 2005

 Patricia Anne Van Tighem, who was almost mauled to death by a grizzly 22 years ago but survived to write a harrowing memoir about the brutal assault and her struggle to cope with it, has died. She was 47.

 The lasting psychological and physical effects of the attack she chronicled in "The Bear's Embrace" led to Van Tighem's suicide Dec. 14 in a hotel room in Kelowna, Canada, her family said.

 "What we keep reflecting on is not why she died when she did but how she lasted this long," said her brother, Kevin. "She'd had countless surgeries, chronic pain and major episodes of post-traumatic stress."

 In 1983, Van Tighem was hiking with her husband, Trevor Janz, in the Canadian Rockies near Montana when a grizzly protecting her cubs and an autumn meal pounced on Janz.

 With staccato sentence fragments, Van Tighem recounted in her 2000 book the horror of watching the bear savage her husband: "Two more steps forward. I stop. A bear? From the side. Light brown. A hump. A dish-shaped face. A grizzly. Charging. And Trevor. Fast. He half turns away. The bear's on him, its jaws closing around his thigh, bringing him down."

 When she climbed a tree to try to get away, the grizzly clambered after her. The bear swatted her down and began inflicting the damage from which Van Tighem would never recover.

 "Crunch of my bones," she wrote. "Slurps. Heavy animal breathing. Thick animal smell. No pain. So fast. Jaws around my head. Not aggressive. Just chewing, like a dog with a bone."

 Two hikers stumbled upon the couple and helped them to a hospital, where each spouse was desperate to find out how the other was doing.

 "Trevor finally just ... bellowed, 'Trish, how are you?' " Van Tighem said in a 2003 documentary on Canadian television. "And apparently, I yelled back, 'I've had better days.' ... The whole emergency staff had a good laugh at that one."

 Her facial injuries were extensive. The left side of her face was nearly destroyed, her cheekbone absent, her left eye blind, the eyelids gone. The back of her scalp was missing. "I feel sick to my stomach," she wrote about looking in the hospital mirror. "What I see isn't even me."

 Her husband's injuries were not as disfiguring. The third-year medical student's jaw and nose had been broken but his spirit was still intact.

 "I was young and wild, and I thought ... lightning never strikes anywhere in the same place twice. I'm virtually immortal now, and isn't it great to be alive?" Janz, now a doctor, recalled in the documentary.

 Surviving the bear attack was "the easy part," Van Tighem said in the same interview. "The hard part is what came afterward."

 Van Tighem endured more than 30 surgeries, crippling pain, mental illness and unending emotional anguish.

 She began writing her book as a form of therapy to help her deal with the trauma. To her "humble surprise," her family said, it became a Canadian bestseller.

 Every day, she wrote, the attack replayed in her mind. In a recurring nightmare, a bear performed surgery. She was haunted by the happiness she once knew.

 The Times review in 2001 called it an important "reminder of what it means to be vulnerable in a world that has little patience for vulnerability."

 She was born Aug. 22, 1958, in Calgary, Canada, to Jack Van Tighem, a school board superintendent, and his wife, Eileen, who raised 10 children.

 It seemed only natural that "the gentle soul at the heart of the family" would study nursing, her brother said.

 After completing the nursing program at Mount Royal College in Calgary, Van Tighem earned a bachelor's degree in nursing in 1989 from the University of Victoria in British Columbia. At Calgary's Foothills Hospital, she worked as a nurse.

 Three years after the attack, the couple began building a family and had four children, including twins. They moved to Nelson, Canada, in 1993.

 The children, who range in age from 8 to 19, were her "saving grace," Van Tighem once said.

 "It's quite obvious that what kept her going this long was her determination to give her children the kind of life and mother they needed," her brother said. "What bumped her back a lot was her frustration at not being able to be that kind of mother."

 When a daughter was diagnosed with Down's syndrome, Van Tighem learned about finding the value "and beauty in people who are so-called imperfect," she told the Bellingham (Wash.) Herald in 2001.

 She became involved with a resource group for families of children with Down's syndrome and also established the Calgary branch of About Face, a support group for people with facial disfigurement.

 In "The Bear's Embrace," Van Tighem wrote of the attack in a snowy forest as a constant companion. "People can tell me to stop dwelling on it, to get on with my life, but I am getting on with my life. They can tell me the attack is in the past, but it isn't. I will deal with it every day for the rest of my life."

 In addition to her brother, husband and children, Van Tighem is survived by two sisters, five other brothers and her mother.

Hickok: "You know the sound of thunder. Can you imagine that sound if I ask you to? Ma'am, listen to the thunder."

This is a great op-ed by Robert Steinback in the Miami Herald.

Link here.

Denial is our most dangerous adversary.

This is scathing--http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n01/print/wein01_.html
Sorry, you all know I am a lame about linkies

(Which if you've seen a certain cartoon, is very very funny....)

The long-haired cat was in the same nest in the green wet grass in the backyard today! I snuck out the front door, around the house, and got close to it to take a pic.

It was sleeping, but its ear was twitching... as the rain fell on it! Dangest thing.

"Would any of you like to guess what was driving the commentary and all the chatter in all the talk shows in Western Europe that weekend?" Ms. Hughes said she asked. "You know what it was? It was the death penalty case in California!"

VIENNA (Austria) - The name Arnold Swarzenegger has been removed from the country's most important Soccer Stadium as a result of Austrian criticism for California Governor Swarzenegger.

  «« click on pic for info

Terminator Terminated!

Stadt Graz - Austria

Fran's Breakfast Article @EuroTrib :: Spiegel Online
SIEGEL'S DAILY TAKE - Schwarzenegger Terminating Ties With Austria
Tue Dec 20th, 2005 at 10:01:01 PM PDT

"Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason."

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