Ha! Your post reminds me of that rogue circus elephant they actually hanged in Tennessee in 1916 for killing a man.  Hanged, forsooth! As though simply destroying the animal in a humane and pain-free manner would not have been enough.  Crying, "Revenge!" indeed.  Seems to me that poor old Mary hardly deserved the humiliation of her sentence.  Can animals process the emotion of humiliation? This photo has always struck me as simultaneously horrifying and (sorry to say) funny, because of the pure (ahem) overkill, and how it says far more about humans than about rogue elephants:

The Egyptian video was far less creepy to me (maybe because I could not understand what the kids were singing).   The Egyptian kids were cute; their song was musically catchy; their choreography pleasing to the eye; they looked like they were having a lot of fun.  The American kids scored far worse in all categories.  Their only advantage was their super-goofy song leader who looked beside herself with joy throughout their entire lame song. 

Maybe the message in the Egyptian video was better, somehow, too.  At least, I got this:  It's a great thing to be a kid in Egypt today; we get to do lots of cool military training; we get to spend time looking in microscopes; we even have time for clapping games with our buds.  Truthfully, my 9 y.o. daughter would probably want to join them in Egypt, if she saw that video.  The American video was depressing because it pinned a bunch of vague, platitudinal hopes to the person of a pathetically silly politician.  Far more empowered were the Egyptian children -- and that is the saddest thing of all.

I'm with the dad.  Daughter (almost 16) sounds like a snot who needs a wake-up call. Sometimes you have to go there. In fact, as a general rule, all teens on Facebook ought to have their laptops confiscated and/or shot.  Kids ought not to be social-networking.  They ought to be doing their chores, parsing Latin sentences, and working part-time at Wienerschnitzel to save up for college.

I'm thinking that the Facebook posting was the final straw on the back of a father utterly disturbed by an ever-increasing sense of entitlement and disrespect from his daughter.  How many screechings of "I hate you!" and slammings of the bedroom door preceded it? I truly doubt it was a case of finding this one post and then going ballistic.  And a public calling-out is entirely understandable.  Everything is public nowadays.  Live by the Facebook, die by the YouTube.

 I could've missed it, but: 3 pages of comments in, and nobody lists The Ref??

But, for heartwarming, ya gotta love It's a Wonderful Life and The Shop Around the Corner.

We just watched Elf again two nights ago.  I love Will Farrell.  And Zooey Deschanel is just perfect in her too small part.  What a voice!

 I've noted Destiny of the Republic -- sounds fascinating!  I know so little of Garfield.

I am re-reading Bill Bryson's At Home, which is just an excellent book -- full of witty asides and scrumptious trivia.  Bryson's innate curiosity makes most of his books fun, and this is one of his best.

If you like Jane Austen for her caustic wit and keen insights into manners and mores, give E.F. Benson a try.  His Mapp and Lucia novels are the bomb-diggety of early-20th century English village life.

Of course, when the government puts food on your table, takes care of housing, and generally supplies your wants and needs in other ways, you tend not to be taxed much or at all.  Nowadays, those who pay the taxes also need to buy their own food, pay their own mortgages or rent, etc. Your dad had a far more legitimate claim to his "candy tax."  And only 10%?  Sheesh, I think he was being generous!

My mom made no pretense of "taxing" or making it teachable in any way -- she was a Democrat.  She took most of the candy and dumped it.  The good stuff went in the freezer to be doled out in a miserly way over the next few months.  Very much like soviet communism, huh?  The fun was always more in the getting than the eating for me, anyway, so I do not recall minding a bit.  Amazing that I turned out to be conservative.  :-)

 We don't have DVR, and we don't have a flat screen TV, though it's big (ours is 36" and weighs approximately 50,000 lbs.).  We watch Pawn Stars and, occasionally, American Restoration on History Channel.  I like Mysteries at the Museum whenever I can catch it.  We watch The Middle every Wednesday on ABC.  We usually buy The Amazing Race on iTunes to watch at our leisure.  It's tough in these Responsible Years to stay up late enough to watch Red Eye on Fox News Channel, but it's a hoot and a half when I can.  My husband watches baseball and football, of course; I think he also watches the news sometimes, but I don't.

We refuse to watch any show about lawyers, cops, or doctors on principle.  And, in general, I like to watch funny things rather than dramas.  Life is dramatic enough and I like a good laugh when I invest time in entertainment.  I watch The King of Queens and Frasier over and over on DVD.

And, I wholeheartedly agree about Slings and Arrows -- one of the best series I have ever seen.

 Oh gosh -- Love You Forever is so creepy!!!  I was once at a family camp where they read that one as a bedtime story for the kids, and a father sitting next to me commented that he would, "punch [his] mother in the mouth" if she ever tried anything like that.  I wholeheartedly concur.  Of course, nearly every Munsch book is unsettling in some way.

Another creepy book to me is Burton and Dudley. It's the story of two possums that go for a walk.  We used to read it to our daughter.  The storyline was a bit -- off -- and what made it worse was that my husband would read one of the character's dialogue with a Jimmy Carter accent.

And, though not exactly creepy, my husband hates the book of impossible one-upmanship that is Guess How Much I Love You. Why does Big Rabbit have to be such a jerk?

(Reading the one-star reviews of Love You Forever on Amazon is a hoot!)