Thursday 10 November 2011

Lollipox and Poison

The world has gone completely mad. No, I’m not talking about the Eurozone crisis. I was reading the paper this afternoon over a bowl of soup and a roll, when two articles I read jumped out at me, slapped me round the face with their utter lunacy, and irritated me for the rest of the day.

Ridiculous Article Number 1
Some genius in America has come up with an idea to help parents who are keen for their precious little ones to catch chicken pox at an early age in the belief that it’s less serious when caught young. No, it’s not parties where people are invited to mingle with pox-ridden children in the hope that they catch it too - apparently these are already quite common place. No, it’s one giant American step further than that. She is selling ‘lollipox’ on the internet. Catchy name hey? Well these little beauties are certinaly ‘catchy’ – they’re  lollies that have been licked by a pox-infected minor. Yes, you heard me correctly. Oh and not only is she selling germ-covered lollies, she’s charging about £30 a pop!! Speechless!

Ridiculous Article Number 2
A certain lady who writes for a well-known paper has a column in which she regularly rants, raves and ridicules people. Today, she turned her wrath on women. Or more specifically, women who have the audacity to take maternity leave or have days off sick.  Firstly she vents about receiving an out of office reply with a maternity leave message with a list of alternative contacts. Then, she raves about some poor contact of hers who has been off unwell for a few days. Now, what really got my goat about this was that after explaining the scenario, she went on to say “I just don’t understand the lack of work ethic in young women today”. Er, hang on a sec, isn’t that a bit of a dramatic leap?? She then ends this poisonous article by concluding “if ever I employ a woman again, I’ll make jolly sure she’ll have already gone through the menopause”. Great, well that’s a wonderfully rational comment isn’t it? And so helpful for women everywhere who work their arses off every day competing with men in the workplace. Oh by the way,  did I mention that the journalist who wrote this recently admitted to trying to trick her partners into getting her pregnant when she was younger.  She failed. But maybe her articles would have been more pleasant had she succeeded.

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