Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

If you happen to use dried pasta and pasta products, you might want to avoid Barilla. Boxes look like this:


Activists in Italy have called for a boycott of leading pasta brand Barilla after its chairman said he would not use gay people in adverts.

Guido Barilla, chairman of the company of the same name, told a radio interviewer the concept of the "classic" family was fundamental.

If gay people disliked the concept, he said, they could "eat another brand".

Link here.

It's kind of boggling that in this day and age that someone would say that. I'm not surprised that he felt that or planned not to hire gay actors, but to outright say it and tell customers they could go elsewhere? Someone needs to be sent for PR training.

Sometimes people are so stupid that it's painful.

Two mothers took Nutella makers to court because SHOCK! GASP! Nutella is not a health food. The mothers had blindly believed television commercials and so thought that Nutella was good to feed their kids. They were "shocked" to learn the chocolate spread was actually no different than a candy bar.

When asked why they didn't just read the product label, she said "If I stopped to read every label, I'd probably spend four to five hours in the grocery store". She claims she did it for all consumers, she didn't do it out of greed. HA.

Well, her greed could work out for you. If you bought any Nutella in the last few years, you can get a refund for it. The claim form is here, you can get a refund for up to five jars, no proof of purchase or other paperwork needed, just fill in the online form. You can get back up to 5 jars, $5 each, total of $25.

There's a difference between knowing an animal is scared and holding the cat in your arms, her body rock-hard tense and flinching at every soft little noise. I know how scared Ellie is all the time, but today a workman had to come into the apartment (her first new person she's seen other than the vet eight months ago), and it was a bad time for her. I had wanted to have her be locked in the bedroom for the visit, but the guy was three hours late (ugh) so I let her out. I had to scoop her up and hold her tight so she wouldn't get out the door. (Why these apartment people never close the door while they work...) Having her hugged to my chest, I felt every flinch she made. The noises she reacted to were so soft (to me) -- the workman putting his stepstool down on the carpeted floor, him stepping onto the metal step with a booted foot. Each one made her whole body flinch. It made me understand her fear so much better than just knowing it as a fact in my head.

WoW is suddenly busy, ICly and OOCly. Yesterday I got one name freed for my new paladin (Reed, who I keep calling Reef by mistake. Hi kaelash!). While seeking out a name for the paladin, I discovered Clove was under level 10, thus could be freed. Not a good paladin name, but I also wanted to level a warlock...

Problem was, no free alt slots. I had one mule left (to buy things from a phased area for me to sell). I don't need more gold, I keep telling myself that, so I deleted it and requested that Clove be freed. Now I have the warlock, too!

...only to discover I have zero cloth heirlooms. I had enough honor to buy shoulders, but there's no chest piece for honor that I could find, so I'm back to doing jousting dailies for the champ seals to buy it. UGH. At least I already had 30 seals all on the alts who have the achievement to unlock the vendor, so I picked the one that I thought the quests would be easiest on (DK). Turns out either I suck at DK (1000000% possible) or hunter is a lot better nowadays. I just got done doing all this on Clover the hunter, it's harder and slower on Haken.

And yes, I now have Clove and Clover. I'm already confused.

In the IC end of things, it's been like blast from the past for two days now! All the old great people I used to RP with! Greyspell, Embersong, and tonight Neru! So much goodness. :D

And now for a bit of seriousness. As most people know, I have zero problems what any two (or more) consenting adults might want to do, RL or ICly. So long as everyone involved is of age and agrees, knock yourself out. However, the other side of the coin is that you shouldn't be exposing non-involved people to what you're doing. Someone needs to tell Matty the slave about this. He was walking in the middle of Silvermoon with that RSP. You want your kinks? Want to RP being a slave? I have zero issues, none at all, it's none of my business. But an RSP like that is out of line. (Edit: Rereading the RSP, I know there are much, much worse ones out there. I'm not sure why this one bothered me so very much. Even on second or third rereading, it gets my hackles up so badly. Maybe the utter lack of quality combined with the subject matter. )

Dear Drow DK, Just stop it. I don't know what the hell you're supposed to be, but stop being it. Really. No love, Thistle

Okay, okay, I was willing to laugh at this whole 'world ends on Saturday' crap, until a news story today. One of the insane people who actually believes that is having his pets put to sleep today. Because, you know, the world is ending tomorrow.

D: D: D:

At least the guy says "that he intends to wait until the earthquakes hit Denver before he starts killing his pets" so maybe, maybe he actually means that.

This guy has serious mental problems, someone should be looking into getting him some help.

I visited the Bad Baby Names site (a collection of quotes from a board about naming your new baby) thinking it would be funny, but instead it's just so so painful and cringe-worthy. I worry about people with this little sense having babies.

Have three examples:

What is a nature realated name for a boy? I am pregnant with a boy and I already have four girls. My girls are Summer Skies, Autumn Night, April Shower, and Spring Flower. Please help I am due in November.


I am not pregnant yet but thinking about names...I just thought of the name Lourdes Solange. This baby will be 75% latina and 15% european :)


Which name do you think?
Brecklyn Kate
OR
Ridgely Mae
I'm torn between the 2.

The county I live in is going to start to license stores that want to sell tobacco. $400 for the license, then $200 per year after that. The funds will be used to help keep minors from having access to tobacco.

The morning news did interviews with stores selling cigarettes. One said "This is discrimination! We're a minority! This is a hate crime!"

Persecution, ur doin it wrong.

---

Also, a small MMO note. I realized something, WoW is mirroring FFXI when it comes to expansions. Both had their best one (FFXI's ToAU, WoW's WotLK), followed by one that changed the world (WotG, Cata). FFXI's went back in time to a war-destroyed world, WoW's went forward in time to a dragon-destroyed world.

I bet I was the only player sad to see the new login screen this morning. Come back, Arthas! You're much sexier than a silly dragon with an ugly jaw and an annoying voice!

It's really hard to take Deathwing seriously as a bad guy. He looks silly. He sounds like a whiny kid. Maybe once we kill him, the Lich King can raise him as a cool frost wyrm. :P

Fricking reality shows that are popularity contests. The winner of last year's Big Brother couldn't tell time with a non-digital clock. More than that, she does not understand how "quarters" work. "It's a quarter to two o'clock", etc. When asked how many quarters were in an hour, she didn't know. When asked how many were in a dollar, she guessed eight. But she was pretty, blonde, and popular, and so she won.

Tonight's winner (who I won't name in case anyone doesn't want spoilers), said of evolution: "Evolution can't be real because I ain't got no fur on my face like a monkey does". So, your proof that a theory that says things change over time is wrong is that... something changed over time. But he's a traditionally handsome, young, popular guy, so he won.

Blah. Just blah.

"Oh boy, our sports team won!" *riots*
"Oh no, our sports team lost!" *riots*

I don't know how far out of California this story got, but on Christmas a white cop shot a black man. Black guy (with multiple priors) was resisting arrest. Cop warned him he was going to use his taser on him. One of two things happened: The cop grabbed his gun by mistake and shot him, or he said to himself 'This guy is pissing me off, I'm going to kill him'. Trial's been going on for a week or so, jury came back this afternoon. Involuntary manslaughter. Seemed a reasonable decision to me (cop had just a couple hours training on the taser and depending on the model (department had both kinds) it could be on his left or right side, it varied by day which side it was on).

Resisting arrest is a damned, damned stupid thing to do. Yes, you shouldn't get shot for it, but still. An adult should know better. That's not the point of the post though.

The family of the man killed asked for people not to be violent, no matter how the decision went.

For the last four or five hours, various religious and other "community leaders" have been blanketing the airwaves, asking people not to be violent.

These idiots are rioting anyway. They're robbing stores in their own city, likely owned by their neighbors. They're spraypainting the "victim's" name everywhere... hurting their neighbors. This is the city that THEY have to live in. If there was any justice, the copy who were trying to stop all this would not have to live in that city, too.

Posts like this make me feel very not-liberal. I'd be all for putting these people in a cage somewhere and treating them like the animals they're acting like. (I know, I know, insult to animals...)

I just don't get how people think it's their right to riot and loot, burn, steal, do all sorts of bad things, just because they're stupid unhappy.

They're treating the guy who got shot like a hero. Women are on camera crying his name, men holds their hat before them and whisper his name. He was a criminal and he was stupid. He died because he was stupid. Not because he was a black man stopped by a white cop, but because the cop told him to do something and instead he fought.

...on second though, I suppose it makes sense he's a hero to them.

I'm torn between facepalming and wanting to shoot people. A story from Time: Eating candy as a child will make you into a criminal!

"Moore's analysis suggests a correlation: 69% of people who had been convicted of a violent act by age 34 reported eating candy almost every day as youngsters"

Correlation does not imply causation!

*pulls hair out*

Idiots! Gah! Look, I can do this "scientific research", too! Here are my findings: "100% of people who get cancer drank water at some point in their lives". Oh my god, water causes cancer!

Grrrrrrrrr.

This video scares the living crap out of me. How can anyone, anyone, be so amazingly hateful? It makes me cringe to see how normal they look. Seriously, this made me want to cry. (The song ends at 5:00, but watch the full thing, until 5:30. The last :30 seconds are the worst.)

How about two things much more positive than that? Um, sort of!

NWS! NWS! NWS! Funniest porn-ish thing I have ever seen in my whole life: That's quite a hat!

Warning: Humor based on death. Poor photoshipping skills, but still funny as heck.. I'm assuming the text says "As Planned", though who knows with white text on white background...