Teeny Manolo

Very few people know this, but there are more circles of Hell than Dante revealed. It’s true: in his original manuscript for the Divine Comedy, he revealed the existence of the mysterious “Eleventyth Circle” of Hell. A zealous editor excised the chapter in question, on the grounds that it was too terrible a secret to reveal.

We are now going to expose this great secret, right here on a parenting blog where his editor would never think to look for it. We are going to tell you just who it is who dwells and suffers eternally in the Eleventyth Circle of Hell:

Car games fascists.

My friends, I have had some agonizing road trips in my time (I particularly recall the longest four hours of my life, spent riding shotgun west of William’s Lake with a man who used every second of that time to harp upon the perfection of the political party of his choice, a group of knuckle-walking, syphillitic graft-mongers so vile that when they toured the prison system even the germs cut them dead) but nothing, my friends, compares to the excruciating, yet regrettably rarely fatal, experience of being locked in a car with someone who insists that everyone plaster a Team! Spirit! Smile! on their faces and Have! Awesome! Fun! Playing! Cool! Car! Games! Right! Now! Or! Else!

Should you feel like quietly looking out the window counting ponies, or reading your Shakespeare which isn’t going to get any shorter if you let it wait, working on your theory reconciling Aristotle and Kant, or staring at the map purposefully, sighing extravagantly, and making darting glances at the passing roadsigns in order to freak out the driver, you will be yelled at, poked, and very likely even called a spoilsport by the little Mussolini in charge.

Whereupon I recommend my own favorite car game: stop at Dairy Queen and drive away while he’s in the bathroom.

Even a never-pregger like myself can understand that nine months of growing a whole new person inside yourself, followed by one of the most physically demanding and painful experiences known to humanity, might entitle one to a reward.

I am not, however, sure this is the right reward.

At www.baby-moon.eu you will find luxurious babymoon packages and pregnancy spa treatments, especially designed by the finest hotels in the world. Our company approaches luxury hotels and resorts worldwide to create awareness of the babymoon concept and to represent babymoon packages on the BabyMoon website.

Do people really do this? Do they really decide that, what they truly need in the last trimester of pregnancy is to bid adieu to those humdrum surroundings, friends, family, and support systems (like doctors) and fly halfway around the world in search of relaxation? Are they that eager to wear the snazzy lead-lined smock they borrowed from the radiology department through a crowded airport?

Am I completely out of touch, dear readers? Is this now de rigeueur among the reproductive set? Help a clueless maiden aunt out in the comments section, if you would.

Do your worst. No, seriously, DO IT!

Cast your minds back, dear readers, to a more innocent time. When things were quieter. When people were nicer. When the deer and the buffalo roamed.

Sorry, lost the thread.

Yes, cast your minds way, waaaaaay back, to this time last year. That was when we blogged about David Shepherd and Travis Price, two students in Nova Scotia who, outraged by seeing a fellow student bullied for wearing a pink shirt, took arms against a sea of bullies and, by opposing, ended them.

They started the Pink Shirt movement.

They used the Internet to encourage people to wear pink and bought 75 pink tank tops for male students to wear. They handed out the shirts in the lobby before class last Friday — even the bullied student had one.

“I made sure there was a shirt for him,” David said.

They also brought a pink basketball to school as well as pink material for headbands and arm bands. David and Travis figure about half the school’s 830 students wore pink…

“People say you’re famous, heroes or celebrities,” added Travis, who plans to take criminology next year. “We’re not, we’re just two kids who stood up for a cause.”

And now the government of Nova Scotia has declared the second Thursday of every school year to be Pink Shirt Stand Up Against Bullying Day. This year, that is today, but if you miss it there’s an International Stand Up Against Bullying Day on Friday, November 21st during anti-bullying week.

“The actions of these two young men, along with their fellow students who wore pink to school in support of another student, are showing all Nova Scotians just how much of a difference individuals can make,” Premier Rodney MacDonald said. “It is an honour to acknowledge their creative and selfless efforts by proclaiming a day at the outset of each school year to relay such a positive message against bullying.”

Join the Facebook group and upload photos of you and your kids flaunting your pink, or just go ahead and stand up to bullying right here in Real Life by wearing your pink with pride!. Blog it, forward it, wear it, flaunt it!

Now that’s Superfantastic!

It’s Boy Day on the ol’ TeenyManolo blog, my friends, and we poor femmes can do nothing but go along with it, lest we be swept under and carried quite away on the tide of testosterone. And so, to properly set the tone for the ragingly macho celebrations which today rock this great continent from the driest deserts of the South-West to the farthest frozen reaches of the Arctic, we present the following, frighteningly macho video from perhaps the most famous boy-man group in history. Hang on to your ovaries; this is not for the faint of heart! NSFEstrogen!

Mondays child is fair of face,
Tuesdays child is full of grace,
Wednesdays child is full of woe,
Thursdays child has far to go,
Fridays child is loving and giving,
Saturdays child works hard for his living,
And the child that is born on the Sabbath day
Is bonny and blithe, and good and gay.

Notorious pitching star and supermodel Naomi Campbell has the all-clear for reproduction!

Naomi underwent an operation to remove what she thought was a small cyst,but turned out to be something more. …”[doctors] thought it was a cyst. When they opened it up they realized it was more.I was not able to have children up until March. Now it’s in God’s hands. I would love to have a family but it’s up to God. I do want to have kids. I’m 38 years old.”

It’s in God’s hands, but I do hope her parole officer at least gives testimony at the hearing.

Our evil nemesis Elmo has inspired our captioneers with his unique brand of debauchery and sadism, so naturally it was a dirty battle for the top spot, but we have a winner!

Bellamama Says:
September 7th, 2008 at 3:12 pm

Though he originally claimed it was a simple translation error, investigators have now revealed that Elmo signed a multi-million dollar contract with the hand soap companies in Japan.

Congratulations, imaginary swag, and effective sanitation to Bellamama! What shall we present as our virtual prize? I think this occasion calls for something a little different. Something powerful, yet feminine. Something irresistable. Something Prada
:

It’s back to school and that means back to alarm clocks for the kidlets, formerly hardwired to Cartoon Time (or is that just all the kids I know?). So I’ve searched the world over and found some suggestions for you. While I can understand the market for the vibrating alarm clock, we are naturally keeping it somewhat more PG if not actually G on this blog, and have found the perfect alarm clock:

the Glock Clock!

Oooh, how badly I, personally, need one of these, especially on certain mornings. What a way to set the tone for the day ahead!

Alas, all I can find here in North America is this somewhat less brutal, therefore less satisfying, laser shoot ‘em up alarm clock:

It’s the 21st Century, my friends, and we are ALL jaded, including the kidlets. Oh, they may not hang around streetcorners wearing berets and quoting Camus (except behind your back) but they, too, affect poses of ennui and world-weariness.

Which is particularly amusing when they are four, but don’t tell them. You know how they sulk!

So they turn to the Dark Side. And not just Darth Tater.

Emily Strange had her day.

Bad Batz Maru is my personal favorite (”Don’t mess with me: it’s a BAD FEATHER DAY!”).

But no flash in the pan shines as brightly, nor burns out as fast, as a jaded hipster trend and it is my solemn duty to report that all of those are, like, SO TWENTIETH CENTURY.

These days we’re all about the Ice Bat Ugly Doll.

Now that Ms. Spears is back, slimmed, extended, tanned, rested and ready, the tabloids are begging to know her diet secrets (what, “chainsmoking, three hours of daily rehearsals, and not eating” doesn’t work for them?). We here at TeenyManolo have sussed out the situation, made contact with not a few shady characters (are there any else in her life?) and discovered the secret.

Here, at last, via Meg Tucker, is the long-rumoured recipe for Britney Spears’s Cheeto Chicken Casserole!

Britney’s Cheetos Chicken Casserole

Ingredients:

4 to 6 chicken breasts cooked and cut into bite-sized pieces
1 can of cream of chicken soup
4 hard oiled eggs
1 onion diced
1/4 c. mayonnaise
1/4 to 1/2 c. chopped celery
1 bag of Crushed Cheetos for topping

Directions:

1) Mix above ingredients together and put into casserole dish
2) Crush enough Cheetos to cover top
3) Bake in 350 degree oven for 30 minutes.

Or just adapt a page from the great Samuel Johnson, who explained that “A cucumber should be well sliced, and dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out, as good for nothing.”