change.org

Nigella Lawson Update; Walmart Sucks; Putin Gay?

Nigella Lawson Update

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NigellaSelfidges.jpg

Last summer when I posted about cookery/lifestyle celeb, Nigella Lawson, I have to admit I was quietly hoping for an update like this, but wasn’t sure I would get it. However, Lawson not only divorced the idiot who used physical force on her, in a public restaurant last summer while photographers shot photos, but she left the nasty bastard without taking one cent of his money and declared her own independence.

Lawson also testified that her ex-husband was threatened by her own financial independence in their relationship. When an attorney referred to her divorce as “unfortunate,” Lawson quickly snapped: “I don’t regard it as unfortunate.”

Well done, Lawson! She also looks great in the photo.

You can read more here. The link to my previous post talks about what Lawson went through last summer.

Walmart Sucks

In the eighties there was a Tom Cruise film, Rain Man, where Cruise’s emotionally challenged brother had a fixation on K-Mart. At one point in the film Cruise loses control and tells the brother, “K-Mart Sucks.” When I found an e-mail this morning talking about something Walmart allegedly did to an employee this past Thanksgiving, it reminded me of that old movie for some reason.

Change.org is a web site where people and groups can go to start petitions online in protest of something they think is unfair and unjust. In this case, a guy’s mom filed a petition at Change.org for something Walmart allegedly did to her son and she’s looking for support. I know nothing about this, but I thought I would pass it along for people who have had experiences like this before with any large corporate structure that makes billions on the blood and sweat of people who make barely enough money to pay their oil bill.

From my inbox, with links to change.org:

Ryan –
My son Kyle is a single dad who works incredibly hard to support his two children, who are 6 and 2. He doesn’t have a car, so he walks two miles every day to his job at Walmart so he can take care of his kids.
But last week, two days before Thanksgiving, Walmart fired Kyle — just for approving a price match on a turkey for an elderly customer.
Here’s what happened: a customer came in and showed the cashier a lower price for a turkey from a competing retailer. As the customer service manager, my son authorized the cashier to match the competitor’s price. Three days later, Kyle’s manager told him he was fired because the turkey didn’t appear on the customer’s receipt at all, which is ridiculous, because it’s the cashier’s job to ring up customers, not Kyle’s!
Kyle lives in rural Kentucky, and he doesn’t have a lot of job options. He worked his way up to be a customer service manager at his local Walmart because he really needs that job to support his family. Kyle did not deserve to be fired, and his kids sure didn’t deserve to have their dad lose his job right at the start of the holidays.
Walmart has been publicly advertising its price match policy all through the holiday season, so I don’t understand why my son would get fired just for upholding the store’s own policy!
I know that Walmart has responded to Change.org petitions before. In fact, just two months ago, a disabled Walmart greeter got his job back after 1600 people signed a petition supporting him. I know that if thousands of people sign my petition, Walmart will do the right thing and give my son his job back, too.
Thank you,
Caroline Wilson

I’m not sure about whether these petitions work or not, but it’s interesting to see that we do have alternatives these days to spread the word when we think something unfair has happened. In many ways it’s another form of free speech we didn’t have in the past.

Putin Gay?

There’s a new book out that claims Vladimir Putin is gay. I didn’t say allegedly gay because I don’t consider being gay defamatory in any way. If someone claimed I was straight and they were wrong, that wouldn’t be considered defamatory, and I think it’s time to point this out.

In any event, here’s what they say about the Putin book:

He suggests his propaganda experts put out the rumors to hide his ‘latently gay’ sexual orientation. The author also says the 61-year-old president prefers animals over humans.

You can read more here.

It’s not the first time something like this has happened, where a closet case has turned in a complete opposite direction because he/she is filled with such self-loathing they can’t accept who they are. But again, whether he’s gay or not seems to be a huge issue in Russia, as if there’s something inherently wrong with being gay. And since I don’t believe there is, the only significant thing about this story is the self-loathing angle…if Putin is gay.

In any event, Putin’s spokesperson said this:

 Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov has flatly rejected the allegations. He said: ‘Belkovsky’s remarks are lacking any basis, or as we say it in Russia: They are total rubbish.’