Typical!

In a bid to take over where the Post Office leaves off (North Pole, postal code H0H 0H0) Microsoft this year introduced a Santa Claus MSN bot to chat with people via instant messenger, for kids who, presumably, have better things to do than wait in line at the mall to talk to Santa.

Then they killed Santa.

From The Register:

Here’s the whopper that Microsoft spokesman Adam Sohn told AP: “It’s not like if you say, ‘Hello Santa’, he’s going to throw inappropriate stuff at you.”

Erm, yes it is, Adam. It’s pretty much exactly like that. When we innocently asked him to eat something, Santa said: “It’s fun to talk about oral sex, but I want to chat about something else.”

The slapdash job Microsoft did on the supposedly festive chat agent was revealed when Reg reader Iain’s nieces offered Santa some pizza. According to Microsoft the girls were “pushing this thing to make it do things it wasn’t supposed to do”.

Yep, Santabot was taken out behind the sled and shot faster than you can say “Old Yeller.”

Well, you can leave him cookies and milk if you insist, but it’s clear to astute readers what Santa really wants this year!

Maybe he could settle for a Mac??

Every week, my son’s teacher, who is an organized woman as well as a living saint, leaves in his folder a small booklet that is intended to be his homework for the week. It is all of three pages, and it always has a theme, whether it be the weather or certain types of animals or upcoming holidays. To finish the whole thing with my help would take him perhaps five minutes.

However, I have a confession to make.

We don’t do them.

You are shocked, shocked, I know! I’m disappointed in me too. I also would expect me to be a more responsible mother, and because I don’t have him do these worksheets, he will be lucky if he can attend Ebay University, much less Harvard. How will he ever learn to function in the world if he does not practice the ability to find different fruits in a picture? I’m glad that I remain anonymous, for I fear a mob of angry Alpha Moms might try to come and run me out of town if they were to find out.

But deep down in my heart of hearts, I don’t think a five year old should be doing homework.

Not yet.

Kindergarten is already what first grade used to be, and sixth grade is practically high school. There will be time aplenty for homework.

I would rather have him outside, I would rather have him create art, I would rather we read together. In fact, I would rather have him do almost anything other than a worksheet. Because I think many children these days have more homework than they know how to finish in a given night, and in my own tiny, subversive way, I am rebelling against the useless worksheet trend.

And perhaps my rebel yell is really more of a recalcitrant whisper, but I still think it speaks volumes.

You might say that it speaks volumes about my stupidity, but I beg to differ.

It’s midnight, did you get your link in?

If you did, we will be determining the winner this weekend via a random number generator, and the Manolo himself will be performing the honors!

The first two numbers generated will receive one of the two $50 prizes, and the last number generated will be awarded the grand prize of $150!  The winners will be formally announced on Monday December 10, 2007.

We were so excited to have this contest, and hope that you were too!  We are all about the excitement here! Thank you so much to those who participated, and good luck!

We hope to have more contests in the future, and we look forward to seeing you there!

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