I just wanted to post some information in case there might be someone interested... The 634 th B.S.B out of Joliet, IL is having a deplployment ceremony on Thursday August 28th, 2008. The ceremony starts at 10:00am. There are approximently 190 soliders leaving for Afganistan for 1 year. This is part of the largest deployment in Illinois since World War 11. The ceremony will be held at the Armory on Route 52 (Jefferson Street) in Joliet, IL.

mipagina.univision.com/congodeguineasoy

Well I must admit, I'm surprised.

It's been over a week since the Daily Mail and MediaWatch-UK laid into MadWorld and most of the mainstream press has yet to start a game of pile-on. After the furore over Grand Theft Auto IV at the beginning of the year, I was expecting Sega's forthcoming Wii title to become the new tackling dummy in the ongoing debate on videogame violence.

And yet a quick google news search reveals, that aside from a piece over on news.com.au most of the MadWorld coverage in the last week has been from videogame and gadget focused publications laying into the Daily Mail's article.

It may be too early to hope that hysterical (read: ignorant) reactions to games like MadWorld are a thing of the past - as Tom Hoggins recently pointed out, they're becoming quite boring. It's more likely that it's still too low under the radar for most of the media. Or it could be that most of the uproar surrounding MadWorld's imminent arrival hasn't been aimed at the game itself, but the console it's scheduled to be released on.

This is probably the first time I can remember when a console - rather than a game - has been attacked. In this case, the groups who are protesting MadWorld state that the game will be detrimental to the Wii's family-friendly image. In short, they are complaining that the screenshots of MadWorld don't tally up with the images of smiling parents and children playing the Wii in Nintendo's marketing campaign.

I'll admit that MadWorld may be a lot to take in by someone who has seen nothing on the Wii apart from games like Wii Sports and Super Mario Galaxy. But a console with a games catalogue containing titles such as No More Heroes, Resident Evil 4 and Scarface isn’t exactly violence-free.

The videogame press has been quick to point this out, and Nintendo has issued a statement saying that their console “… appeals to a wide range of audiences from children and teenagers to adult and senior citizens, anyone from 5 - 95. As such, there is a wide range of content for all ages and tastes available".

In the end, it seems that Nintendo is more under fire for its canny marketing campaign than anything else.

TechNotes home

So, I've been busy, and just decided with the few hours I do have doing nothing, I would make a tribute to HBK. It took me 3-4 hours to make, so it would mean a heck of a lot if those reading this now would watch my vid, and if they can or are willing, please rate/comment my vid.  Thanks sooo much!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1g6mzxhg0CY

IM HAPPY THAT I HAVE BEEN DRAFT TO RAW BUT I KEEP LOSING MATCHES BUT I WILL WIN AT UNFORGIVEN

Hi!  As you can see I haven't been around much.  Life is taking up all my time right now but I miss you all.  :)

SO, since you have been checking in and gettin' nothin' I thought I would post a giveaway of my new book - Cut Loose: Break the Rules of Scrapbooking.  A little something to say thanks for checking in.

To enter, leave a comment on my Memory Makers blog - click here.  I will draw a winner next week - Monday, 9am EDT. :)

Good Luck and be back soon - I promise.

Mike Brown wanted Henry back
C. Trent
Bengals owner Mike Brown wanted Chris Henry on his team again. Marvin Lewis wasn't interested. The man signing the paychecks won out. Chris Henry, the oft-troubled Bengal wide receiver, was back with the team on Tuesday. "I know at the end of the day the owner has the final say so whether or not he wants to give a guy an opportunity," Lewis said. "Mike has wanted to give Chris this opportunity, and asked we do the best job we can to prepare him and get him ready to play football, and if he can be a positive influence on this football team and help us win football games and be productive as a receiver, and get better as a receiver, and we feel that way after the suspension is over that he has a chance to win a spot. That's what he asked me to do, and that's what we're going to do."

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More on the Henry signing
Enquirer.com
The not-so-subtle and larger message of Chris Henry's return to the Bengals is that team owner Mike Brown - and not head coach Marvin Lewis - still has the power. Lewis twice in the past month said he was not interested in bringing back the troubled wide receiver, arrested five times in the Bengals' employ prior to his April 3 release from the team. Henry, signed by the Bengals Tuesday to a two-year contract, faces a four-game suspension at the start of the season for violating the NFL's personal conduct policy. Lewis didn't deny Tuesday night what he has said in opposition to Henry but acknowledged that ultimately, it's Brown's call to make.

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What do the players think?

Left tackle Levi Jones: "I'm glad he is getting a chance to right the ship and not let his talent go to waste. His talent is too much to end up on the street. I'm supportive of every one of my teammates."

Tailback Kenny Watson: "He's a great kid. He has allowed himself to be in bad situations. We'll be here for him. But it's all up to him. We know what he can do on Sunday. He can be a real positive. It's up to him to stay out of trouble, and we're going to be there to keep him out of trouble."

Defensive tackle John Thornton: "I'm glad he's back. He was on the team and was released because he got into trouble the last time. He was found innocent of those charges. Why punish him again. If he weren't here, he would be somewhere else. That's obvious he can help the field if he stays on the field. He's one of the most dangerous receivers in the league."

Offensive tackle Willie Anderson: "Beforehand, he has a lot of be thankful for. He has found the end of the rainbow three or four times. A lot of people in the organization, which I've said before, Eric Ball, Ray Oliver, Rusty Guy, those guys did a lot of things to help Chris. He should go to those people and tell then he's not going to let them down because those people busted their tails beyond duty, helping him out and assisting him in his program. There is a ton of support on this team. This team sets up a great support system for guys."

Tailback Rudi Johnson: "His locker's right here beside mine now, so I can talk to him each and every day. He's a good friend of mine, so I'll definitely talk to him on a day-to-day basis. Just make sure he understands everything and he's on the up-and-up and
doing the things necessary to be successful on and off the field. ... Talking to him today, that's where he seems to be at. He's in high spirits and he seems to have learned his lesson. ... We've all got his back, we're in his corner, we're going to respect the coaches' decision, respect Mike Brown's decision to bring him back and go from there."

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Same old story for Brown, Bengals
Fox Sports
For this city's dysfunctional NFL franchise, the words of 19th-century philosopher Henry David Thoreau still ring true.

"What is called resignation is confirmed desperation."

Cincinnati's re-signing of wide receiver Chris Henry has confirmed two things:

1. This organization is desperate. Really, really desperate.

2. These Bengals are never going to change their stripes with Mike Brown as owner.

It was quite the scene Tuesday night at Bengals headquarters inside Paul Brown Stadium. Henry made yet another mea culpa for his off-field problems. Bengals coach Marvin Lewis had to distance himself from previous comments swearing off the possibility of Henry's return. And Brown was conspicuously absent as Lewis wiped egg from his face.

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Full Training Camp Coverage
C. Trent

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U.S. Gymnasts take home plenty of glitter
USA Today
Nastia Liukin's twists and turns had the grace of a ballet dancer. Every flip was carefully choreographed and repeatedly rehearsed to get the most out of her lean body. This is how Liukin put her stamp on the Olympics and her sport. The Russian-born American gymnast won her fifth Olympic medal Tuesday. She earned a silver on balance beam behind teammate Shawn Johnson, 16, who won her first gold medal of these Games.

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One more review of Mike Brown's statement on July 22nd

"His conduct can no longer be tolerated," Brown said at the time. "The Bengals tried for an extended period of time to support Chris and his potentially bright career. We had hoped to guide him toward an appropriate standard of personal responsibility that this community would support and that would allow him to play in the NFL. ... But those efforts end today, as we move on with what is best for our team."

Brown declined to be interviewed Tuesday about his change of heart. However, during an interview last month, Brown said he still believed in giving players chances to change their lives.

"I guess the world is divided up between redeemers and non-redeemers," Brown said at the time. "I happen to be a redeemer. I think people can be made better and right. If that's a fault, so be it."

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IN THE MATCH THAT RAW GM MADE FOR UNFORGIVEN I AM GOING TO HOLD THE WORLD TITLE FOR THAT 20 MINUTES

 This is the story that started today's "Break-up Hall of Fame":

Lawsuit Filed Over Newspaper Breakup Ad

Woman Claims She Was Harassed By Former Fiancée

MOUNT JULIET, Tenn. -- A man who lashed out at his fiancée in a local newspaper for breaking up with him is facing harassment charges.

The woman scorned, Tammy Lapoint, said she's been publicly humiliated and that she decided to fight back.A blushing bride and plans for a wedding are usually what appear in newspaper announcements, but on July 9, an announcement by Paul Lee Dunkel -- better known as Pauly Bear -- in a local newspaper announced that his fiancee had dumped him.

"This guy is a complete moron. I'm sorry," said Bridal Warehouse employee Wanda Carroll.In the paid ad, Dunkel said he's happy the couple's engagement was broken and called the relationship a nightmare. He also left a cryptic message that said "I love our babies," which may have referred to the couple's dogs.Lapoint said she was less than impressed by the ad, so she filed harassment charges and a civil lawsuit against Dunkel. She's also filing suit against all the newspapers who published the ad."She was absolutely mortified to see this come out in the newspaper and to see it on the Internet. He was also on Craigslist posting comments in their rants and raves section about her," said Lapoint's attorney Tim Hatton.

For pics and videio go here: http://www.wsmv.com/news/16960039/detail.html#-

5 Best Things about My Long-Term Relationship

www.collegecandy.com

People say life is boring when you’re in a really long relationship, but who are they kidding? Personally, I’ve never been happier. I love my long-term relationship because:

1. I have a built-in best friend.
Probably not everyone is best friends with their significant other, but I think a lot of people in long-term relationships are. I don’t always think about my boyfriend in a romantic way—sometimes I just think of him as someone who I want to call and share my good news with or someone who I want to hang out with because I know for sure that he can make me laugh. He’s always there for me, and not just as somebody to love, but as a true best friend.

2. I don’t have to be perfect.
When you’re in it for the long haul, you don’t always have to put your best foot forward. I remember having first (and second, and third) dates with people where I felt like I had to try my best to be funny and pretty and all-around wonderful. Since I have been with my boyfriend for several years and countless dates, both he and I know that I’m not always that way (he isn’t perfect, either, of course), and we’re OK with that. Sometimes I’m grumpy or rude or not very good-looking, and he just doesn’t care. It makes me feel so happy.

3. I don’t have to search for guys or decode their language.
If I were single and wanting to be in a relationship, I’d always be evaluating guys in the back of my mind for how they might fit with me. That’s tiring and frustrating. I’d also have to deal with wondering if I should see somebody again if I liked him, but not that much, or if he had habits that didn’t really thrill me (fine, I’ll admit it, I’m picky).

4. I have somebody to take care of me when I’m sick.
My boyfriend and I are long-distance as well as long-term, so I can’t always have him around when I’m sick, but it’s a real luxury when I can. If you have food poisoning or awful cramps, it’s kind of awkward to call up someone you’ve only been going out with for a month or two and say, “Hey… I look like a hag and I feel like crap, but could you come over and be with me?” But because we’ve been together so long and we care about each other so much, my boyfriend will curl up with me even if I have a terribly nasty, infectious disease.

5. We have memories.
This seems obvious, but you build up memories if you’ve been with somebody for longer than a year or two. They’re mostly unspoken, but they’re always there between you. Just think about all the really unique and fun things you’ve done with your family, for example (if you like them… I love my family, so this is easy for me). Having all these memories with my boyfriend of places we’ve been and things we’ve eaten and worn and done is like having a gigantic pillow to fall back on if I ever need to just think about something happy.

I feel like I’ve probably caused at least half of my readers to gag and leave by this point, but if there’s anybody left, chime in! What are your favorite things about long-term relationships, whether you’re in one or not?

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More Women Stay Childless In 40s

Mothers Have Fewer Kids Than 30 Years Ago

AP- More women in their early 40s are childless, and those who are having children are having fewer than ever before, the Census Bureau said Monday.

In the last 30 years, the number of women age 40 to 44 with no children has doubled, from 10 percent to 20 percent. And those who are mothers have an average of 1.9 children each, more than one child fewer than women of the same age in 1976.

The report, Fertility of American Women: 2006, is the first from the Census Bureau to use data from an annual survey of 76 million women, ages 15 to 50, allowing a state-by-state comparison of fertility patterns. About 4.2 million women participating in the survey, which was conducted from January through December 2006, had had a child in the previous year. The statistics could be used by state agencies to provide maternal care services, the report said. 

The survey found that in 2006 women with graduate or professional degrees recorded the most births of all educational levels. About 36 percent of women who gave birth in the previous 12 months were separated, divorced, widowed or unmarried.

Unemployed women had about twice as many babies as working women, although women in the labor force accounted for the majority -- 57 percent -- of recent births. Only a quarter of all women who had a child over the past year were living below the poverty level.

Coupled with fertility data collected biannually, the report also revealed longer term trends, including how second-generation Hispanic women are having fewer babies than their foreign-born grandmothers and first-generation American mothers.

Differences among states also emerged. California, Nevada, Texas, Arizona, Florida, Illinois, New York and New Jersey had a greater percentage of foreign-born women who became mothers in 2006. A bigger share of women in the Southeast and Southwest who gave birth in the year prior to the survey did so in poverty.

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Top experiences to keep extraordinary couples extraordinary

www.canada.com

Sean Cunningham ,  The Nest (www.thenest.com); McClatchy News Service

There's more to life than board-game night. Check out these activities for couples guaranteed to keep the fun in your relationship (with a minimum of corniness).

1. Playing Guitar Hero. There's still the image of the husband clinging to his video games while the wife just wants him to grow up already, but this one's fun for everybody. (And if you have another couple over, you can graduate to Rock Band and get your ya-yas out like The Stones.)

2. Paintball. No matter how deeply you love your significant other, there will be times you want to blow them away. Paintball allows you to indulge this desire with no lasting damage. With arenas/fields renting the equipment you need, square off against your spouse and work out all that tension (or, if you're feeling merciful, pair up with your sweetie against another team).

3. Marathon training. There are few greater feelings of satisfaction than completing those 26-plus miles (granted, you'll first need some time to start breathing again, but the pride will arrive shortly afterward). Why not make the commitment to run it together so you can celebrate this amazing accomplishment as a unit?

4. Rock climbing. K2 is likely outside your reach, so give your gym's indoor climbing wall a try. Lightweight yet sturdy climbing equipment makes the experience more manageable than Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay could ever have imagined. As you gain confidence, you can graduate to scaling the great outdoors.

5. Bowling. Is there any better way to unwind? Between the fried food and the rental shoes, it's perfect for taking a break from your daily life and enjoying some low-key fun together.

6. Tandem skydiving. More and more couples incorporate it into their honeymoons (some even get married mid-dive). This isn't something to enter into lightly, but with a good instructor and proper equipment, it's entirely safe. And hey, what other activity is there that so nearly replicates the rush of falling in love?

7. Camping. By "camping" we mean "the two of you alone in a tent," not "cruising through the great outdoors in an RV bigger and nicer than your first apartment." It's your chance to truly get away from it all -- give the BlackBerry a well-deserved day off -- and just savour nature and each other.

8. Rafting. It ranges in intensity from Class I (essentially smooth sailing with no experience required) to Class VI (picture "The River Wild," only without Kevin Bacon). Determine whether you want a leisurely drift or a white-knuckle thrill ride, then bon voyage.

9. Test driving a sports car. You may not be able to buy a Ferrari just yet -- with the mortgage and student loans -- but you can experience one. Rent a dream ride for a day or, if you have a true need for speed, go to stock car racing school. It's just like NASCAR (minus the pileups and million-dollar paydays).

10. Visiting an amusement park. Remember how much fun it was to go to Six Flags as a kid? It's even better as an adult because you're tall enough for all of the rides and your mom's not there to tell you to stop gorging on cotton candy. Go on roller-coasters until you have vertigo; then waste a fortune on carnival games so you can win that giant stuffed elephant you've always dreamed of.

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What Celebrity do you look like?

Check out this site for examples of people who look like other people or things.

From your Sweet Spot of the Day : www.totallylookslike.com

Matt Dillon Totally Looks Like Frankenstein

Kenny Rogers Totally Looks Like The Gorton’s Fisherman

Yassar Arafat Totally Looks Like Ringo Starr

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Wisconsin Couple Each Win $350,000 In Lottery

Wisconsin Couple Each With Their Own $350,000 Jackpots In The SuperCash Lottery

(AP) This couple won't have to argue about how to spend their lottery winnings. That's because the Mount Horeb husband and wife each won their own $350,000 jackpots in this weekend's SuperCash state lottery.

Lottery officials said Verlyn Adamson bought his winning ticket at a Mineral Point gas station and his wife Judith bought hers from a convenience store in Barnevald.

Verlyn Adamson is an accountant who says he's a big fan of math puzzles. He claims he developed a secret formula that has helped him make money in the lottery over the last 20 years, although he says his winnings have been small compared to this jackpot.

He said his wife, who is his boss at work, had asked if she could play the same numbers he played.

The winning numbers were 6, 10, 11, 19, 21 and 49.

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Armed 85-year-old woman makes intruder call cops

AP- POINT MARION, Pa. - An 85-year-old woman boldly went for her gun and busted a would-be burglar inside her home, then forced him to call police while she kept him in her sights, police said. "I just walked right on past him to the bedroom and got my gun," Leda Smith said.

Smith heard someone break into her home Monday afternoon and grabbed the .22-caliber revolver she had been keeping by her bed since a neighbor's home was burglarized a few weeks ago.

"I said 'What are you doing in my house?' He just kept saying he didn't do it," Smith said.

After the 17-year-old boy called 911, Smith kept holding the gun on him until state police arrived at her home in Springhill Township, about 45 miles south of Pittsburgh.

The boy will be charged with attempted burglary and related offenses in juvenile court, Trooper Christian Lieberum said. He was not identified because of his age.

"It was exciting," Smith said. "I just hope I broke up the (burglary) ring because they have been hitting a lot of places around here."

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Suit accuses restaurant of giving man big tapeworm

Yahoonews.com

CHICAGO - A man who contends he got a 9-foot tapeworm after eating undercooked fish has sued a Chicago restaurant. In the lawsuit filed Monday, Anthony Franz said he ordered salmon salad for lunch from Shaw's Crab House in 2006 and fell violently ill. He later passed the giant parasite, which a pathologist determined came from undercooked fish, such as salmon.

Franz's lawsuit seeks $100,000 from Shaw's and its parent company, Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises, contending the restaurant's staff was negligent in serving him improperly cooked fish.

But Carrol Symank, vice president of food safety for Lettuce Entertain You, said the tapeworm didn't come from Shaw's.

"We have done a thorough investigation and we're confident the restaurant is not the source," he said.

According to the Web site mayoclinic.com, tapeworms can measure up to 50 feet long.

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Families Head Back to School on a Budget

Abcnews.com

AP “We're definitely having to get just the bare minimum this year," said Tanya Barca, a mother of two. "I'm trying to make my money stretch this year."

Barca's back-to-school budget has dropped this year from $250 per child to just $100, causing her to search for bargain buys.

In the next aisle, Wendy Powell, a mother of three, said tough times have left her with only $20 per child for her back-to-school supplies.

"They are using last year's clothes absolutely, but they're also using last year's crayons and different things that I have left over," Wendy said. "They don't get the extra folders they want or the pretty pencils or whatever they want."

It's the same story nationwide, where 71 percent of consumers say they plan to spend less on back-to-school shopping this year, according to a survey conducted by the Deloitte LLP consulting firm. The survey concluded that 79 percent said that they will buy back-to-school items on sale, relying on coupons and discount stores for the best prices.

Even just the back-to-school necessities add up quickly: a new backpack is around $20, a new lunch pail is around $10 and, by the time you add in all the new folders, pens, pencils and other supplies, you've spent nearly $50 for one child -- and that's before buying a single piece of clothing.

To help, the Kingman Unified School District is passing out donated backpacks – 3,600 so far. "Backpacks are really important to us when we're in an economic crisis," said superintendent Roger Jacks. "We want to try and help out our parents as much as we can."

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Meet the Boy Too Big for His Mom's SUV

This 12-Year-Old Boy Is Truly Unique and Truly Tall

Abcnews.com

Ellensburg, Wash., is home to a truly unique young man: 12-year-old Brenden Adams, who is more than seven feet tall and, incredibly, still growing.

He towers over his classmates and even his teacher, Gretchen Holmstrom, who jokingly quipped, "I'm 5'9," so I never look up to sixth graders -- until this year…never say never!"

And though friends say Brenden is just a regular kid, he's obviously not like anybody else. He has to duck through most doorways and sit sideways at his school desk because his knees don't fit under it.

In his mom's sport utility vehicle, he has to fold down the second row of seats, sit in the third row and stretch his legs out over the middle row in order to sit comfortably. His shoe size? 18 and still growing.

Brenden is one-of-a-kind, and it's not just his height. Everything about him is different. His mom, Debbie Ezell, said he requires a team of doctors and multiple medical visits simply to stay on top of his ever-changing and expanding frame. He has enormous joints, fatty tumors, even extra teeth, 12 of which were recently removed.

Amazingly, his dad, Willie Adams, said there was no hint of any of this when Brenden was born at 7 pounds, 3 ounces and 19 1/2 inches in length. His mom says they first started to notice something was different at his 2 month check-up. "They said, these measurements just aren't right. He's too long," Ezell said. "And at four months, he had all of his teeth."

For years, doctors continued to search for the source and an answer to Brenden's unstoppable growth. He went through multiple tests and X-rays as medical experts tried to determine what was going on inside Brenden's body.

Then, finally, a breakthrough -- when Brenden was eight years old and already the size of an adult.

"I have to say that the hematologists and oncologists here actually helped us figure it out," admits Parisi. "He has a very unusual rearrangement of his genetic material. It's what's called an inversion of chromosome-12 and it affects every single cell in his body."

Now that doctors finally figured out what was causing Brenden's skyrocketing height, they still had another mystery to solve: how to stop it? And since Brenden is believed to be the only person in the world with the condition, there was no clear-cut answer.

Then, Kletter had an idea that seemed a little crazy -- shots of testosterone to jump start puberty and speed up Brenden's growth. It's puberty, he explained, that signals the body to stop growing.

To make life a little easier at home, Brenden's mom had a home built specifically to fit someone of Brenden's enormous proportions.

"It's a lot easier going through the doors and stuff than the last house we had," Brenden said. "The doors are a lot taller and so are the ceilings."

Coincidentally, on the day ABC News visited Brenden's school, his class was working on a soul-searching exercise. Perhaps not surprisingly, Brenden wrote that he wishes people would see "how he's just like everyone else."

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I hate to poop on the Olympic parade, but the news that two Chinese pensioners have been sentenced to a year's ‘re-education through labour' for applying to demonstrate in one of the Beijing Olympics ‘protest pens' cannot go unremarked.


Wu Dianyuan and Wang Xiuying were sentenced for asking to protest

For all the world records set, for all the glorious scenes on television and Britain's justified jubilation at their achievements, these Olympic Games harbour a grubby little secret that dare not speak its name.

The two elderly women, Wu Dianyuan, 79 and Wang Xiuying, 77 applied for permission to use the protest pens to demonstrate against being forcibly evicted from their homes in 2001 but when they returned to check the status of their application they were arrested, interrogated for 10 hours and then sentenced without trial.

It is now plain that these ‘protest pens', set up at the suggestion of the International Olympic Committee, were never intended by the Chinese to be anything more than a fig-leaf. And as it turns out, they haven't even been that.

Like Mao's infamous ‘Hundred Flowers' campaign of 1956-57 when intellectuals were invited to be frank about matters of public policy and then promptly purged for their honesty, the old ladies made the mistake of taking the Party at face value.

The true shame of this episode, however, is not the behaviour of the paranoid Chinese state - it is nothing if not true to form - but the craven silence with which the International Olympic Committee (IOC), its sponsors and international partners are greeting such behaviour. It is appeasement under any other name.

Whether it likes it not, the IOC has partial responsibility for what has happened to these women, and the two men Tang Xuefen and Ji Sizun who, according to Human Rights Watch, were arrested in similar circumstances.

The protests pens (which have yet to see a single protest) are essentially an IOC invention, ‘suggested' to the Chinese at a meeting in Kuala Lumpur last April as a way of holding orderly protests without threat to the state or the conduct of the Games.

Unfortunately for the IOC and everyone else who said that awarding the Games to China would bring change on these issues, is that they now find themselves impotent in the face of China's point-blank refusal to play the game.

As Giselle Davies, the IOC hapless spokesman says at every opportunity, the management of the pens "doesn't fall under the organizing committee and games operations". This is factually correct but morally spineless.

The IOC cannot tell the Chinese state how to behave, and nor should it, but as the custodian of the Olympic ideals which it has entrusted to China for these two weeks, it does have both the right and the responsibility to condemn what is being done during the Olympic family's quadrennial jamboree.

But of course it won't say ‘boo' to the Chinese goose, a fact of which the IOC is apparently unashamed. "My clients, the sponsors and broadcasters are happy with the positive view that the Olympics is about sport and the focus is quite rightly on that," said the IOC's marketing director Timo Lumme.

‘Quite rightly?', he says, and that's precisely the problem. It's wrong, plain and simple, for little old ladies to be arrested, detained and then threatened with a year in a labour camp because they dared to ask for permission to hold a protest.

The IOC, the big corporations and the politicians who trumpet the values of freedom and democracy squirm and appease, but in the end they can't bring themselves to utter a single word of admonition.

Which is why, on the day that these arrests became public, IOC officials sat listening politely as Wang Wei, the vice-president of the Beijing organising committee, loyally relaying the polite fictions of the Party.

"The resolution of these protests were through dialogue and communication," he said with a straight face, "This is the way we like to deal with things in Chinese culture. Chinese culture always emphasises harmony."

I'm a man of the world. The West made its morally awkward accommodation with China more than 30 years ago when Nixon sent his caravans east, but the fact that in a global world we both need to do business with each other doesn't mean we have to give up on the basics of what we believe.

The Chinese state hasn't; the party's belief that dissent is intolerable, even when it comes from little old ladies, remains absolutely rock solid, as these arrests show.

So if they're sticking to their guns, why, I wonder, aren't we?

Dear Diary:

I got about five or six hours of sleep last night, which is super good compared to the previous two nights (I got three hours both nights).  However, I'm still incredibly tired, and this is dangerous.  When I get tired, I get emotional and I get unable to control those emotions.  For example, this morning my mom texted me and told me that if she wasn't in Florida, she'd come by and bring me Starbucks.  That made me start crying.  Stupid!  It's just my mom being nice, but apparently that's enough to make me break down.  I also get quickly frustrated and quickly angry when I'm overtired, so I'm trying to make my coworkers aware of what they're in store for.  Before I kill them.  And then cry over it.

Zzzzzzz. 

Lena

DICEN QUE EL AMOR ES LO MAS IMPORTANTE ¿Con qué colores dibujo la esencia del amor?

¿Con qué palabras describo tal maravilla en un verso?

En las hojas y en la brisa, en el monte y la pradera, en los ríos y en las aves puedo ver el sentimiento.

En los ojos de los niños y la sonrisa de amigos, en los días con sus noches y el azul del ancho cielo, está allí en la mariposa posada sobre la flor.

Puedo ver como renace en poemas y canciones, llenando los corazones de singular alegría, tocando con su armonía el más triste de los rostros, para quedarse allí y tornarlo poesía.

El amor cruza fronteras, no entiende nada de idiomas. Él comprende que la vida es mucho más que riquezas, es el dueño del camino cuando vas camino a casa, deja huellas de su paz por donde quiera que pasa, llenando los corazones de recuerdos muy bonitos, es canto de pajaritos cerca de tu ventana, anunciando la mañana donde puedes continuar.

No dejes que se te escape esa ocasión para amar, deja que tu mirada diga aquello que sientes, al vecino, a la familia, a los amigos de siempre.

El amor tan primoroso, tan sutil, tan genial, va rompiendo cadenas y va librando las almas, vive en el pensamiento de cosas buenas y justas, en las horas de escucharte y saber que puedo hablarte, en los anales del tiempo cuando apenas aprendía que hay vida más allá de lo malo que nos pasa.

Dios que escucha y no miente, mi vida entera es tuya, guíame en ésta senda por donde nace la aurora, enséñame sin demora como amar y nunca odiar, dale fuerzas a mi alma para siempre compartir lo poco o mucho que encuentre a lo largo del camino, que cada parte sirva a todo aquel que suspira o siente que no existes, vísteme con amor y un manto fiel de humildad.

El amor llena tu alma de ilusiones y sueños, déjate conducir, no te arrepentirás.


¿Con qué palabras describo tal maravilla en un verso?

I SPARED REY MYSTERIO LIFE BUT I BROKE HIS FIGHTING SPIRT SO DONT PANIC HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA