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January 5, 2005
WarPath
I am on the warpath and I am pissed off. I just found out that today my son was invited to an all school assembly given by McDonalds. McDonalds is so interested in getting kids to read (what their menus?) that Ronald McDonald in all his finery is going to schools and doing what amounts to a magic show and promising the children if they read 10 books and get them marked off by their teacher then (big surprise here) they get a coupon for a free hamburger. Now, let's just forget about the fact that the second ingredient in a McDonalds hamburger BUN is high fructose corn syrup and look at what this really is about. What this really is about is buying the loyalty of unsuspecting children into the McDonalds brand, using Ronald McDonald instead of the big arches (because that would simply be too in your face). If McDonalds can nab my 6 year old then they've got a customer for life and, if, as a pro-McDonalds reading program article puts it ("McDonald's intent is to associate its mascot, the clown Ronald McDonald, with preschoolers' emotions toward learning to read, and to raise awareness of Ronald as a brand icon among kids."), they can nab the positive emotions related to reading of my 6 year olds psyche then, by Goddess, they've got a McDonalds customer who will always associate Happy Meals with being happy. What upsets me most about this, however, is not that the school allowed it, not that they fell victim, willingly, to McDonalds propaganda but that I was not notified as a parent that this was going to happen, that after the fact I was told about it by my child and that I had no option to opt my child out of it. Big corporate politics at work in your local public school my friends. It sucks.
Posted by ashtangagirl at 6:27 PM | Comments (4)
Could It Be?
In the past 24 hours Ashtangi.NET blogs have not been hit with a single spam.. could it actually be that the captcha turning test is working? There were a few problems with people trying to post and being told they were spam but that was due to the scrubbed blacklist script I was trying to run and didn't finish. The other problem is that on one or two blogs (including my own), the preview button isn't functioning properly and I haven't figured that one out yet. That is a small price to pay, however, for the thousands of spam that was getting generated. Cross your fingers that this might solve the problem until the spammers catch up to us.
Last night was my book club meeting. This month's book was The Kite Runner which I thoroughly enjoyed. There's a couple things about the book club I don't like.... Number 1 on the list is that it is simply too late at night. Do I sound like I'm 35 and over the hill yet? Last night we didn't get out of there until 10pm and I had passed on the food and drink so I could practice this morning... I swear I was about to fall asleep by the end. I won't go over the other thing that bothers me because this isn't the place for it :) so I'll just say that I'd be very happy if we could start and end earlier...
While my intention was to get up for 7am Mysore today, that pretty much got nixed when I saw the clock turn midnight, then 1:30 then 2:57, then 4:45, then 5:30 then 6:30 and then I finally slept until 8:30. Can anybody practice without sleep? Is there anyone else who finds themselves constantly stretching? My husband commented to me the other day that it doesn't matter what I'm doing, reading, working, watching TV, playing, sitting, cooking... he always finds me in some contortion or another. If I'm in the jacuzzi, I'm playing with being weightless (which I'll likely never be in real life ;>). If I'm sitting on the ground, I'll stretch this way then that, if I'm in the kitchen he's likely to find me trying to see the ground bending backward or doing triangle pose. Just constantly seeing how the body feels. Is that obsessive?
This weekend my friend, Madame Fabulous, from Canada is coming down. I'm taking the kids to Disneyland on Saturday so I can hook up with her (damn, I just realized that means no yoga on Sunday which means Friday Mysore is not negotiable). Next week Cameron is coming to town and we have an appointment at Guru with Dave to finish my back and get some ink done for Cameron. After that we are going to "kick back" and then Cameron is making a nice vegan feast for us San Diego EZBoarders (of course, I need to invite all the San Diego EZBoarders first). We were going to have chocolate tub wrestling and wet t-shirt contests but opted for a nice mellow dinner instead.
Posted by ashtangagirl at 2:15 PM | Comments (2)