It seems that the fine folks from Down Under are making some naughty moves regarding Santa Claus.  It was reported  this week that a recruitment firm in Sydney, Australia is instructing their part-time Santas that they can no longer use the 'H' word.

Westaff -a recruitment firm responsible for hiring hundreds of Santas for the holidays -  has told its trainees that "the "ho ho ho" phrase could frighten children and could even be derogatory towards women".

"Okay. All in favor of going on strike....."

 

Fortunately, several of the Santa have told them where to put their ho ho hos, and quit.  Good for them!  It's nice to know that these guys have integrity and realize it's not just all about the fame and fortune gained from performing weekends at Sears.

My hope is that this idiocy does not spread across the continents.  We have a lot of politically correct yahoos living in the USA who might just like this idea and decide to start petitioning for these Censored Santas.  But I also have a lot of faith in the Spirit of Christmas Present, and that Santas all across our fine land will be free to  bellow, "Ho, Ho, Ho" from their plastic thrones in malls across America.

Here's a follow-up to the last blog entry, about those poisonous toys from China.  It seems a few more children have decided to eat their toys....

"U.S. officials said Friday there are seven more reports of children falling ill after ingesting Aqua Dots toy beads containing a powerful chemical that metabolizes into a potent date-rape drug.

The children were treated in hospitals in Texas, Delaware, New Hampshire, Illinois and Utah after ingesting beads from Aqua Dots craft kits, said a spokeswoman with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. On Thursday, U.S. officials had confirmed two associated cases of children being hospitalized.

Officials in North America and Australia pulled the toys, called Bindeez in Australia and Aqua Dots in North America, after testing showed the toys' beads contained 1,4-butanediol, a potentially harmful chemical that can cause seizures, drowsiness, coma and death."

Hey, Kids!  This is a toy you PLAY with....not EAT!!!

You would think that parents who have kids who like to eat their toys might have decided to check the toy box since this story broke earlier in the week.  But, I guess not.

Wow!  China must really hate the kids here in the USA!

Just weeks after several toys from China were recalled due to potential lead poisoning, we have another toy imported from their land that is coated with a substance equivilant to the date rape drug GHB!  What's next?  Anthrax Ant Farms?!

Fortunately, no kids have died (yet) from swallowing these fun, colorful and evidently delicious-looking Aquadots.  A couple of kids have slipped into comas from eating these toys, but word is they will be okay.  Maybe they will learn their lesson to NOT EAT YOUR DAMN TOYS!

The following video gives more details about the recall, and also some possible suggestions for what to buy your kids for Christmas that WON'T poison, disable, or kill them.

Yes, it's that time again!

Time for another strike!  Time for insert organization here to realize that they want it better than they got it,  and then be ramrodded by their union into joining forces and shutting things down for a while until they get it more better.  After all, we all want some more perks if we can get 'em, don't we?!

This time it's the hollywood elite - the Writer's Guild of America members.  Obviously, I am not a member of the WGA.  Because I write for free.  On the world wide web.  Which is still free.  (Well, not really.  We all have to pay to access the highway, now don't we?).

But nobody's paying me anything for this.  That's quite okay.  I'd be doing it anyway.  Funny how you hear that a lot in Hollywood; "I have so much fun at what I do, I'd do it for free."  That's usually being said by someone already financially successful, anyway. 

So, God bless the writers in the WGA.  I hope they get everything they're going for.  The way I understand it, they want a bigger piece of the DVD pie, as well as a chunk of change if their stuff shows up on the internet.  

Meanwhile, you people out in TVLand will be stuck with lots and lots of reruns, more reality TV shows, and more...... uh, reruns and reality shows.  Thank God then, for the world wide web!  They haven't figured out how to get even more money out of us yet, then shut it down for a while until we pay more.  Everything is live, live, live baby!  And that's why it's even better than TV.  Even TV with new episodes written by writers who get paid! 

I might be a little snarky in my attitude about this strike.  Don't get me wrong, if I was getting paid for writing shit, I'd want to make sure the checks keep coming to me, just as much as the other talent that slung it all together.   It's just that I just survived a month-long trash strike here in the Los Angeles area.  You see, the fine folks over at Waste Management, Inc. realized that they wanted it better than they had it.  So they were ramrodded by their union into joining forces and shutting it down for a while until they got it more better.  

That meant that we poor folks out in Trashland who needed our trash picked up,,,,,were screwed!  For about 3 weeks!  That's 21 days of dirty, stinking, rotting trash building itself higher and higher and higher in the dumpster.   But then finally, the Incorporation and the Union decided to agree on someone's terms and they ended the strike.  The only problem was.....whoops, some of the trash haulers were replaced by temps!  And they did not get their old jobs back!   With no new perks to go with their old perks, 'cause they all lost their old perks.  Yikes!

Yes, these strikes can be risky business.  And they can also be a pain in the ass for those of us who enjoy kicking back and watching scripted television shows and creating trash we expect people to come take away from us. 

We're do WE go on strike?!!!

I caught this story on the local news today.   It almost sounds too good to be true.  So, it probably is.  But the idea of doing some simple 3 minute exercise that will make you smarter sure sounds like something I could use. 

I wonder if George W. has tried this.  I'm thinkng probably not.