Tonya and PQBON's WebLog
So I've gone to Target a couple times to try to buy a Elmo TMX. Once again today I was told they were sold out. I was disappointed but I really got upset when I was told that they sold a few and then a guy came in and bought the rest they had in stock. A total of 17. I was really surprised that they didn't have a limit on how many one customer could purchase. So now this guy.....who's a jerk.....gets to sell them on Ebay for hundreds of dollars and I still don't have one for Katie. Shame on him for taking advantage of parents and shame on parents who pay hundreds of dollars for a toy that should only cost $39.99. If people wouldn't pay that much there wouldn't be a market for this in the first place.
Elmo is Katie's FAVORITE Sesame Street charecter. She claps and bounces when ever he comes on the screen.
Text in extended if link fails to work...
Sesame Street lets go of its 'top gun'
By Eric Heyl
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Friday, September 22, 2006
Weary of his increasingly erratic behavior, Sesame Street producers will not extend the contract of the program's most popular muppet.
Gary Knell, CEO of Sesame Workshop, the parent company of the popular PBS program, told The Wall Street Journal yesterday that he is severing ties with Elmo.
"As much as we like him personally, we thought it was wrong to renew his deal," Knell said. "His recent conduct has not been acceptable to Sesame Street."
Knell would not elaborate. But those close to the show indicated PBS had grown increasingly irritated over Elmo's public embrace of Scientology.
Nor was the network happy when Elmo, in an interview with NBC's Matt Lauer, launched a blistering attack on the use of antidepressants to combat postpartum depression.
The final straw, industry sources said, was Elmo signing off on his spastic new likeness, TMX Elmo, which was unveiled Tuesday.
Parodying the panic-stricken movements of a typical choking victim, the latest Elmo doll doubles over, falls on its back and kicks its legs before finally rising -- cackling hysterically all the while.
"It completely undignified. It unbecoming of muppet who supposedly has intellectual acuity of 3-year-old," said a source close to Sesame Street who is not the Cookie Monster.
To Sesame Street and PBS executives, the doll also rekindled disturbing memories of Elmo's controversial appearance last year on "Oprah." The doll behaves much as Elmo did on the talk show when he passionately and clumsily declared his love for his onscreen romantic interest, the furry orange creature Zoe.
The couple since have spawned a young daughter, Silli, while denying persistent rumors that the child's father actually is the lovable blue muppet Grover.
The powerful Creative Artists Agency, which represents Elmo and many of Hollywood's other A-list stars, termed the firing "graceless and uncouth."
"This is no way to treat an artist," a CAA release stated. "This unconscionable action will cause brightly colored and highly marketable children's puppets everywhere to question whether they would want to work for an outfit that does this to its greatest asset."
Producers reportedly are involved in serious negotiations with Brad Pitt to replace Elmo in the upcoming sequel to the hit film "Elmo in Grouchland." The anticipated action blockbuster's working title is "Return to Grouchland: Oscar's Days of Rage."
Eric Heyl is a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review staff writer. He can be reached at eheyl@tribweb.com or (412) 320-7857.
Katie has changed so much in the past two weeks. She is now crawling and she has her first tooth. Last night we were playing "catch" with a ball in the kitchen.
She is only barely crawling and doesn't quite seem to like it, she looks more like she wants to walk. The straitens her legs and walks with her feet and hands. She has to focus a lot. She is good for about 3 or 4 small strides before she collapses onto her tummy and has to get up and start over. Given that I never crawled as a baby (walked at 9monthes) and that she has been walking already in both the walker (she is a little speed demon) and when we hold her hands to keep her upright she walks quite well, she may in fact start walking soon and never really crawl much.
For the past week or two we have been in teething hell. OK, hell is a strong word, but Katie has been much more grumpy the usual due to teething pain keeping her from napping. She is handling it really well when she isn't tired but when she gets tired she gets really really crabby and whiny. She has to be held constantly and frustrated very easy. Her first tooth is in and her second tooth is almost in. You can now see her first tooth when she opens her mouth if you can get her little tongue out of the way. When it first came in the gums swelled up just a little and covered it.
Picture credits go to my little sister Megan.
A lobsterman drowned off the New Hampshire coast early in August, after he got entangled in nets and dragged overboard.
A day or two before that a Washington logger was struck in the neck and killed by a log that had worked loose and rolled down a hillside.
The Gloucester fisherman monument records all the fatalities the town's fishermen have suffered over the decades. More than 10,000 names are listed.
In central California on August 5, a crop duster pilot crashed and died.
For many occupations danger is part of the job description. That is made abundantly clear every year when the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases its annual census of fatalities in the workplace.
The report for 2005, released this week, includes data on fatal work-related injuries by industry, gender, age and, especially, by occupation.
The BLS does not count combat deaths in its survey; if it did, the military would undoubtedly have qualified as America's most dangerous job last year.
| Rank | Occupation | Death rate/100,000 | Total deaths |
| 1 | Fishers and fishing workers | 48 | |
| 2 | Logging workers | 80 | |
| 3 | Aircraft pilots | 81 | |
| 4 | Structural iron and steel workers | 35 | |
| 5 | Refuse and recyclable material collectors | 32 | |
| 6 | Farmers and ranchers | 341 | |
| 7 | Electrical power line installers/repairers | 36 | |
| 8 | Driver/sales workers and truck drivers | 993 | |
| 9 | Miscelleneous agricultural workers | 176 | |
| 10 | Construction laborers | 339 |
News Update: Life-sized likenesses of Guard members ease separation pains
Lt. Col. Randall Holbrook travels just about everywhere with his wife Mary and their two sons, Justin, 14, and Logan, 5.
He's quietly in the background on family outings to the grocery store, to restaurants, camping, even on Mary's most recent visit to her gynecologist.
Randall has little to say because he's a "Flat Daddy", a two-dimensional foam board likeness from the waist up of the Maine Army National Guard officer from Hermon who was sent to Afghanistan in January with the 240th Engineer Group of Augusta.
This seems like the perfect way to screw kids up. If you read into the article some of the kids develop unhealthy attachments to the "flat daddy" that doesn't easily transition back to real daddy.
Also what do you do when it gets ruined? How do you explain to your kids that you had to throw away "flat daddy"? Or what happens if the worst happens and daddy can't come home? Isn't "flat daddy" going to make that very awkward?
Why doesn't America believe in evolution? - being-human - 20 August 2006 - New Scientist
Human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals: true or false? This simple question is splitting America apart, with a growing proportion thinking that we did not descend from an ancestral ape. A survey of 32 European countries, the US and Japan has revealed that only Turkey is less willing than the US to accept evolution as fact.
Religious fundamentalism, bitter partisan politics and poor science education have all contributed to this denial of evolution in the US, says Jon Miller of Michigan State University in East Lansing, who conducted the survey with his colleagues. "The US is the only country in which [the teaching of evolution] has been politicised," he says. "Republicans have clearly adopted this as one of their wedge issues. In most of the world, this is a non-issue."
Miller's report makes for grim reading for adherents of evolutionary theory. Even though the average American has more years of education than when Miller began his surveys 20 years ago, the percentage of people in the country who accept the idea of evolution has declined from 45 in 1985 to 40 in 2005 (Science, vol 313, p 765). That's despite a series of widely publicised advances in genetics, including genetic sequencing, which shows strong overlap of the human genome with those of chimpanzees and mice. "We don't seem to be going in the right direction," Miller says.
Does this bother anyone else? This is clearly the wrong direction to be headed in.
NBC10.com - Local News - 'Dog' Arrested At Mexico's Request
MSNBC has learned that U.S. officials have arrested TV reality star Duane "Dog" Chapman and two family members in Hawaii for extradition to Mexico.
Chapman's wife told MSNBC's Rita Cosby that heavily armed U.S. marshals arrived at the family's house today and took away Chapman, his brother, Tim, and son, Leland.
I cought a few episodes of Dog the bounty hunter when it first aired liked it but forgot about it. Then when on my honeymoon in Hawaii I started watching it while Tonya slept (she was pregnant at the time and sleeping a lot). I now tivo it and watch it.
It will be interesting to see what happens. Will Mexico let him off with a large fine or will they make an example of him and throw them in a Mexican prison?
I just think she's the most beautiful baby I've ever seen.
Her Gymboree class has been a little annoying. It's a great class, she has a lot of fun. But, she's the youngest and she's the only one not crawling. She's still working at it but doesn't have it down yet. Anyway, the first half of the class is crawling and we have to sit out and play by ourselves. Last week she noticed that she was being left out so she started screaming. Not unhappy screaming, just pay attention to me screaming. This week she didn't notice as much because they moved the time of the class without telling us and we were 30 mintues late so we missed most of the crawling part. I like her not crawling because she's not getting into everything, but I really want her to be able to participate in her class.