You've heard all the hoopla over the new iPhone 6s bending. Well, a couple of kids took it upon themselves to act as 'testers,' because, you know, they owed it to the world to see if the rumours were true. So, Kylie and Danny sallied into an Apple store and began deliberately bending phones. For kicks. And, of course, being 2014, they filmed and shared their escapades on Reddit.
The young men not only shot each other's faces and called each other by name, they posted their forays into vandalism. Though they eventually clued into deleting the footage, a mirror version captured their own #bendgate.
With the new phones retailing at $649 off-contract, the daft duo wrecked at least four 6s in the space of four minutes. That's $2,500-worth of criminal damage, or a whole lot of paper rounds.
The really warped (pun notwithstanding) part of the story is that the boys seemed to realize what they were doing was tantamount to criminal damage, but act like they are performing a public service and should be thanked for their valiant efforts.
"I don’t even care to be honest, because it’s Apple’s fault,” said one of the kids in the video. Seriously? This is a worrying train of logic. It starts innocuously enough, with maybe some littering and 'lite' vandalism, because there's this assumption that it's someone else's job to clean/fix it up, so it doesn't matter.
Kids need to learn early on that if we don't want our world to look like a cesspit, we all have to keep it from looking like a cesspit. I hope it's not too late to inject a healthy respect for personal property in these young men. Never say never.
You tell me: How would you see them made accountable for their actions?
This teen thought it would be fun to deface a 3,500-year-old artifact.
Canada sure does love itself a tangle of red tape. As someone who married a 'foreigner,' and through sheer grit and determination eventually dragged him back to the homeland, I can only empathize with an American woman threatened with deportation following her husband's death.
Tarra Barnett (born Kromminga) had served her application, and expected her permanent residency to come through by 31 October. However, her Canadian husband Clinton Barnett passed away suddenly on 12 October. He was 30 and had no previous health indications.
To add insult to injury, his wife was three months pregnant at the time of her loss. Ms Kromminga and her now six-month-old daughter Sophia are being told to leave the country by Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC).
In a move that seems somewhat crass given the circumstances, the CIC has told Ms Kromminga she will need to reapply for permanent residency "to be assessed on humanitarian and compassionate (H&C) grounds" even though she was likely mere days away from having her original application completed.
"Ms. Kromminga did not submit documentation that would show that she would face unusual, undeserved or disproportionate hardship if she and her child were to return to the U.S.," said the CIC.
Seems like the CIC is intent on driving the mom out of the country by making it awkward and complicated for her to stay. Presumably Kromminga has family here—her late husband's family—and friends. She has made Canada her home. It seems absurd to threaten this mom with deportation because a 'T' wasn't crossed.
I remember all too well the 40-odd page application, and an intentionally confusing and complex process. Perhaps the CIC should concentrate its energies on deporting illegal immigrants and harboured criminals instead of penalizing the spouses of Canadian-born citizens. Just a thought.
You tell me: Did Canadian Immigration get its priorities wrong in this case, or is it just sticking to standard protocol?
This mom had to fight for the right to attend her son's funeral.
He's back. The man who brought you the most profane picture book has a new request for children of the world: You Have to Fucking Eat. Like Go the Fuck to Sleep before it, Adam Mansbach does what he does best. He penned a children's book that isn't actually a children's book so much as an ode to angst-ridden parents everywhere:
So why the fuck won't you eat?
Mansbach's offering is so simple that it's genius. Available for pre-order before its November 12 release date, Eat already has bestseller written all over it.
Like many concepts that capture the public conscience, Mansbach won over a new generation of parents. We're not the Cleavers or the Bradys. We're done with pretending that little Bobby is a real champ or that little Susie is made of sugar and spice. Today's moms and dads like a splash of realism (or Baileys, I won't judge) with our morning coffee. We're tired and cranky. And we're frankly tired of being preached at by the slews of 'experts' out there telling us how to raise beautiful human beings.
We love our kids to pieces, yet we can also acknowledge in the same breath that they drive us to use expletive-laden language and guzzle copious amounts of Sauv Blanc.
Mansbach hit a nerve here. From kids who won't fall asleep to kids who won't eat their food—parental exasperation transcends all languages and cultures. No wonder Sleep sold over 1.5 million copies sold worldwide.
"You Have to Fucking Eat breaks the code of child-rearing silence, giving moms and dads new, old, grand-, and expectant a much-needed chance to laugh about a universal problem," reads the writeup on Amazon, and indeed Eat is poised to make the perfect stocking-stuffer or shower gift to your pregnant bestie or even an early holiday, you-deserve-it gift to yourself.
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