Uncle Dave's Grace

©1999 L&P Berryman.
Words by Peter Berryman, Music by Lou Berryman

Thanksgiving day Uncle Dave was our guest

Who reads the Progressive* which makes him depressed

We asked uncle dave if he'd like to say grace

A dark desolation crept over his face

Thanks he began as he gazed at his knife

To poor Mr. Turkey for living his life

All crowded and cramped in a great metal shed

Where life was a drag then they cut off his head

Thanks he went on for the grapes in my wine

Picked by sick women of seventy nine

Scramb'ling all morning for bunch after bunch

Then brushing the pesticide off of their lunch

Thanks for the stuffing all heaped on my fork

Shiny with sausage descended from pork

I think of the trucks full of pigs that I see

And can't help imagine what they think of me

Continuing, I'd like to thank if you please

Our salad bowl hacked out of tropical trees

And for this mahogany table and chair

We thank all the jungles that used to be there

For cream in our coffee and milk in our mugs

We thank all the cows full of hormones and drugs

Whose calves are removed at a very young age

And force-fed as veal in a miniscule cage

Oh thanks for the furnace that heats up these rooms

And thanks for the rich fossil fuel it consumes

corrupting the atmosphere ounce after ounce

But we're warm and toasty and that is what counts

I'm grateful he said for these clothes on my back

Lovely and comfy and cheap off the rack

Fashioned in warehouses noisy and cold

In China by seamstresses seven years old

And thanks for my silverware setting that shines

In mem'ry of miners who died in the mines

Worn down by the shov'ling of tailings in piles

Whose runoff destroys all the rivers for miles

We thank the reactors for our chandelier

Although the plutonium won't disappear

For hundreds of decades it still will be there

But a few more Chernobyls and who's gonna care?

Sighed Uncle Dave tho there's more to be told

The wine's getting warm and the bird's getting cold

And with that he sat down as he mumbled again

Thank you for everything, amen

We felt so guilty when he was all thru

It seemed there was one of two things we could do

Live without food in the nude in a cave

Or next year have someone else say grace

 

CHINA: Wal-Mart Allows Unions BBC News November 24th, 2004

Wal-Mart, known for its anti-union stance, has come under pressure from Chinese authorities in recent months to modify its position.  The All-China Federation of Trade Unions has threatened legal action against foreign businesses over the right to organise workers at their Chinese operations. Unions currently only operate at one Wal-Mart store, in Canada. Wal-Mart had previously said that it would not allow unions to operate, saying that it preferred to deal with its 20,000 Chinese employees directly. "Currently there are no unions in Wal-Mart China because associates have not requested that one be formed," the company said in a statement. "Should associates request formation of a union, Wal-Mart China would respect their wishes and honour its obligation under China's Trade Union Law."  Earlier this year, China's national legislature conducted an investigation into how companies were complying with the country's labour laws. It found that several leading multinational firms, including Wal-Mart, were resisting efforts to set up union branches.

 

St. Paul cathedral damaged in apparent anti-gay exorcism

An informal exorcism performed at the Cathedral of St. Paul was directed at gay Catholics, police and church authorities said Tuesday. They said the ritualistic sprinkling of blessed oil and salt around the church and in donation boxes amounted to costly vandalism and possibly even a hate crime.

The damage was discovered after words were exchanged between members of the Rainbow Sash Alliance, a gay rights group, and the opposing group, Catholics Against Sacrilege.

The groups are at odds over gays participating in communion. A report was filed with St. Paul police, who said the case could be prosecuted as a hate crime.

 

Kidnappers steal baby from mother's womb

November 24, 2004 - 9:39AM

A woman who was eight months pregnant had the baby snatched from her womb after kidnappers drugged her and performed a rudimentary caesarean section.

Sol Angela Cartagena told RCN television she was drugged at a hospital in Girardot in Cundinamarca province and carried by a woman to a remote place on a hillside where the caesarean was performed and her infant abducted.

Cartagena said she arrived at the hospital with her two-year-old daughter for a pregnancy checkup and drank a glass of water she had left unattended for a few minutes. Immediately after drinking the water, she began to feel ill, she said. 'I felt I was falling asleep, and when I woke up, I was on the hill with my two-year-old daughter by my side,' she said. 'I felt as if they had thrown hot water on me, and then I saw a stream of boiling blood,'

Cartagena said. 'My little girl began to scream and call me. Then she told me the woman had wrapped the baby in a sheet and had left quite calmly.'

Physicians at the hospital confirmed Cartagena's story.

 

 

By ELIZABETH WOLFE, Associated Press Writer

Curtis Sathre said it was like a bomb going off. His 13-year-old son Michael stood stunned, ears ringing, hand gushing blood after his cell phone exploded.

Safety officials have received 83 reports of cell phones exploding or catching fire in the past two years, usually because of bad batteries or chargers. Burns to the face, neck, leg and hip are among the dozens of injury reports the Consumer Product Safety Commission has received.

U.S. phone makers and carriers note that in a country with some 170 million cell phone users, the number of accidents is extremely low.

 

 

Thanks for Kittens

Last born, smallest, and unnamed until dingus5 asked us to name one of the kittens after him, Dingus is the one Doug and I intend to bring home with us about three months from now.  Dingus might be a funny name for a girl, but he asked, and... well, we were fresh out of inspiration. 

From SuSu

 

 

Thursday, November 25, 2004

Bill would allow slaughter of wild horses

By FELICITY BARRINGER
THE NEW YORK TIMES

WASHINGTON -- In a reversal of three decades of government policy that protected all wild horses, a provision approved by Congress last weekend would allow them to be sold to slaughterhouses.

Horse advocates were furious that the legislation passed without a public hearing. Tina Kreisher, a spokesman for the Interior Department, said yesterday, "We did not ask for this language."

The Bureau of Land Management has for years rounded up horses and offered them for adoption.

Before this measure, which the president is expected to sign, older or unadoptable horses in the bureau's holding facilities were returned to the range.

 

 

Carpet flesh fest
By Toby Forage
November 26, 2004


RESEARCHERS in the UK have discovered a rising trend among celebrities towards showing skin at red carpet functions.

Memories ... Liz Hurley, that dress and that red carpet moment / AP

A study, commissioned by cinema giant Odeon, has revealed that celebrities today are exposing 59 per cent of their bodies, and if current habits continue, by 2010 that flesh flashing figure could hit an eye-popping 75 per cent.

Even in the free-spirited 1970s, celebrities exposed as little as seven per cent of their flesh. That had risen to 13 per cent by 1980.

By the 1990s, Liz Hurley decided enough was enough and arrived at the Four Weddings And A Funeral premiere on the arm of its star Hugh Grant in an infamous Versace gown held together by "designer" safety pins.

Others followed, taking the average skin exposure to 39 per cent across the decade.

 

Cake Lyrics

End Of The Movie Lyrics

People you love
Will turn their backs on you
You'll lose your hair
Your teeth
Your knife will fall out of its sheath
But you still don't like to leave before the end of the movie
People you hate will get their hooks into you
They'll pull you down
You'll frown
They'll tar you and drag you through town
But you still don't like to leave before the end of the movie
No you still don't like to leave before the end of the show
People you hate will get their hooks into you
They'll pull you down
You'll frown
They'll tar you and drag you through town
But you still don't like to leave before the end of the movie
No you still don't like to leave before the end of the show

 

Sleepwalking woman had sex with strangers

15:46 15 October 04

NewScientist.com news service

 

 

 

Sleep medicine experts have successfully treated a rare case of a woman having sex with strangers while sleepwalking.

The behaviour had disrupted the lives of the woman and her partner. At night while asleep, the middle-aged sleepwalker left her house and had sexual intercourse with strangers. The behaviour continued for several months and the woman had no memory of her nocturnal activities.

Circumstantial evidence, such as condoms found scattered around the house, alerted the couple to the problem. On one occasion, her partner awoke to find her missing, went searching for her and found her engaged in the sex act.

She stopped her night-time excursions after psychiatric counselling.

 In 1987, Ken Parks, drove 23 kilometres from his home in Pickering, Ontario, to his in-laws house, where he strangled his father-in-law unconscious, and stabbed his mother-in-law to death. He was acquitted of murder because he was sleepwalking at the time.