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Let’s talk about Breasts!

The entire Janet Jackson Superbowl stunt has been blown way out of portion. As my wife points out so well, the streaker showed more indecency and got laughter while Janet Jackson showed us the equivalent of a Victoria’s Secret commercial and received ridicule!

The entire problem is that the United States is dominated by a bunch of prudes who make sex taboo. By making it taboo, we turn sex into the mystical thing that curious teenages just have to find out about. I bet that if it was “just sex” we’d have more people being less experimental. Or in the worse case, being safer about things.

I remember being a teenage when the first bra commercial came out. Let me tell you, as a teenager that was perusing every medical journal he could find, was amazed that National Geographic was allowed in schools, and knew where Dad’s and his friend’s dad’s collections of dirty magazines were kept, this bra commercial was gold! I spent hours trying to capture it on video tape. Yes, this was long before you could go on the Internet and just download it. We also couldn’t print pictures and taking the television into the bathroom was absolutely out of the question because it took 2 grown men to move a decent sized one. Allow me re-emphasize for the younger generation that hasn’t seen our media change so drastically over the past couple of decades that in my lifetime I can remember the debate about whether to allow bra commercials to be shown on television. In the early 80s (I think) the first commercial ran that tastefully showed a woman without a shirt. It caused an uproar! Here’s a woman in a bra on television. Well, there weren’t shows doing that and to most people this was like bringing a strip show into your living room. Now, we see Victoria Secrets and Haynes commercials all the time. They are still fun to watch but the astonishment is gone. Even Kmart had a guy dancing in his boxers.

Unfortunately, people seem to have a problem distinguishing tasteful nudity from raunchy pornography. I think our society tends to lump them into the same category. Janet Jackson did tasteful nudity (granted, it may have been inappropriate for the viewing audience but that’s not what this discussion is about) including it strategically placed in an artistic presentation with the timing of the nudity coinciding with the appropriate lyrics. What we see every day in the inboxes of our email is pornography.

What gets my goat the most is that she was primarily covered up.

This article “Jackson May Back Out of Grammy Awards” notes “The fiasco also affected NBC, which decided to remove a glimpse of an elderly patient’s breast in Thursday’s episode of “ER.”” which is a shame because obviously there are people in our society that see “it’s just a breast”.

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A New Day! Let’s start the day off with a PayPa…

A New Day!

Let’s start the day off with a PayPal donation link:

This Morning

* Woke at 3am and enough energy as to start my day. Had I bothered to get out of bed I could have had some productive moments.

* Woke again with the alarm at 5:45 and 6. Got out of bed at 6:05 and got the kids up.

Feeling down today like my muscles aren’t really there. Its also cold. I didn’t seek out the coal pile yesterday and the fire died last night. Now its raining outside and I left the axe out thinking we didn’t have rain in the forecast.

Goals Today: 3rd verse, same as the 1st Let’s just try to make yesterday’s goals happen and add “no arguing” to the list.

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Half full or half empty? What’s it gonna be?

My wife and I feel we’ve begun to relate well to new found online friends in Australia. From our readings of their blogs we are two very similar families. I received an email from them tonight with an excerpt from Chicken Soup for the Soul – a good reminder to appreciate people for what they do and not focus on what they do not do (or do “wrong”). Ironically I’m between books so the connection between Autstralia and the need to refocus my outlook on life has inspired me to re-read what I feel is a great book, Mutant Message Down Under by Marlo Morgan. I understand that this book caused quite a stir amongst some Aboriginal people; for that, I do not understand the politics. I can however vouch for the spiritually uplifting feeling I get from reading the story. This book, as with most of my reading, was suggested to me. This time, instead of a friend, a total stranger in an airport singled this book out for me. On more than one occasion, airports have provided great reading references to me from other travellers.

  

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6-10pm

* I’m exhausted from the stress of the afternoon. Top that with failing to achieve any 1 of the 4 goals I set out to do today.

* I cooked grilled cheese and soup for the family tonight and kept out of everyone’s path as to not cause any more trouble.

* Wife and I watched an exceptional Smallville and we are guessing Adam Knight to be either Batman (the Knight being a reference to The Dark Knight) or a vampire (as Jordon said that he thought he had died once..making Knight a reference to a creature of the Night). Ice is thawing for us.

* Spent the past hour dorking around on the computer.

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How to Make Permalinks Work

Earlier I wrote Trying to figure out how to make perma links work as a stream of conscious/troubleshooting note taking gibberish. Clear instructions follow:

The Blogger Knowledge Base notes “<a name=”<$BlogItemNumber$>”>&nbsp;</a> should go somewhere in your post body. If you include it in the itemtitles section, your post will only get numbered if you specify a title.)”

The blogger template has this code:

<BlogItemTitle><h2><$BlogItemTitle$><a name=”<$BlogItemNumber$>”>&nbsp;</a></h2></BlogItemTitle>

however, if your blogger post does not include a title, the anchor for the permalink will not get created. To fix this, change:

<BlogItemTitle><h2><$BlogItemTitle$><a name=”<$BlogItemNumber$>”>&nbsp;</a></h2></BlogItemTitle>

to

<a name=”<$BlogItemNumber$>”>&nbsp;</a><BlogItemTitle><h2><$BlogItemTitle$></h2></BlogItemTitle>

With that in place using the “#postnumber” in the url will take you to a specific post. You can confirm this by “view source” and searching for “<a name” You should have several that appear as <a name=”postnumber”> without the “#” mark.

To get the permalink url, right click on the date in the “posted by” and “copy shortcut”.

What’s a “perma link”? These are urls that can be used to direct someone to a specific posting in a blog rather than just sending them to a top of a page. Each post has a “posted by” byline and in that there is a link which shows something like “http://cursed-juggler.blogspot.com/2004_02_01_cursed-juggler_archive.html#107594955252071847” which would be the link to this post. As an example, here’s a link to my post about Eatting Spongebob Squarepants http://cursed-juggler.blogspot.com/2004_02_01_cursed-juggler_archive.html#107589435617551149

Hope this helps someone.

More info:

Plasticbag.org Perma link origins

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4-6:30

* wife scolded me in front of the kids. I in turn scolded her in front of the kids. Decided that I needed some time alone to cool down and that got me in further hot water. Turned a great day into a bad one.

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Lunch

Whew! Had lunch then fell asleep hard. So hard I didn’t hear the phone ring but apparently it did.

Baby has awakened from her nap and is playing under her hand quilted blank (my grandmother did that for her) like it is a tent. Cute!

Going to see if I can brew another pot of coffee before she wants out.

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Trying to figure out why anchors are not working

Added Title and URL options in Settings->formating of blogger. What do these do?

Ah! Got it! For some reason the blogger template has this code:

<BlogItemTitle><h2><$BlogItemTitle$><a name=”<$BlogItemNumber$>”>&nbsp;</a></h2></BlogItemTitle>

which makes sense but in your Settings->Formatting if Titles is set to “No” in theory this means that your anchors won’t show up which means your “perma links” won’t work.

What’s a “perma link”? Each post has a “posted by” byline and in that there is a link which shows something like “http://cursed-juggler.blogspot.com/2004_02_01_cursed-juggler_archive.html#107591112713875565” which would be the link to this post. As an example, here’s a link to my post about Eatting Spongebob Squarepants http://cursed-juggler.blogspot.com/2004_02_01_cursed-juggler_archive.html#107589435617551149

I tried turning on Titles but it didn’t seem to change anything. Perhaps I had a browser cache problem or I had not republished the template or something. However, the following change DEFINITELY works:

<a name=”<$BlogItemNumber$>”>&nbsp;</a><BlogItemTitle><h2><$BlogItemTitle$></h2></BlogItemTitle>

With that in place using the “#postnumber” in the url will take you to a specific post. You can confirm this by “view source” and searching for “<a name” You should have several that appear as <a name=”postnumber”> without the “#” mark.

Hope this helps someone.

More info:

Plasticbag.org Perma link origins

Blogger Knowledge Base And there it is “(This should go somewhere in your post body. If you include it in the itemtitles section, your post will only get numbered if you specify a title.)” straight from the knowledge base.