Animator v. Animation

Really clever Flash animation project.

Animator vs. Animation by *alanbecker on deviantART

AIDS leaves Africa's grannies to raise children

By Barry Moody
NAIROBI, Nov 28 (Reuters) - Skinny and gap-toothed, her nose smudged with black dust, grandmother Kanotu Mumo sorts charcoal into small pots for sale on the stoop of her slum hut.
Mumo is an "AIDS granny" in Kibera, one of Africa's biggest slums. Like grandmothers all over Africa, they have been left to fend for orphans after their own children and husbands died.
Her hut, stacked with sacks of charcoal, measures 10 by 8 feet (3 by 2.5 metres) and is too dark to see more than a few inches (cm) even in the middle of the day.
Somehow she shelters four grandchildren, two great grandchildren and the child of a dead relative, who sleep on mattresses and two beds. There is no toilet or running water.
According to U.N. figures, at least 12 million children in Africa have lost one or both parents because of AIDS. This is 80 percent of all AIDS orphans in the developing world.
The number of orphans in Africa has increased by 50 percent since 1990 while falling in other regions. The United Nations says there will be 53 million by 2010, some 30 percent of them bereaved by AIDS.
The burden of this disaster is borne by extended families, most often grandmothers, who might have otherwise dreamed of returning to their home villages for retirement at the end of a tough life.
Kanotu Mumo moved to Kibera, home to 800,000 people, when her husband died about 25 years ago in eastern Kenya. "I can't remember. It has been so long. When my husband died the relatives threw me out and sold the land."
Unlike many of the grandmothers, doleful and worn down by their fate, Mumo smiles and jokes. She says she cannot remember her age. As she talks, two teenage granddaughters come and go.
Her story is typical of the everyday tragedies of Kibera. Two daughters and a son died of AIDS. Another son was stoned to death by a mob after he was caught stealing. "I am embarrassed to talk about it but it was due to the unemployment."
She lives close to the railway line that runs through the sprawling slum, acting both as a pedestrian thoroughfare and place for traders to lay out shoes and clothes.
She sells her charcoal -- the slum's primary fuel -- for a few shillings profit, after buying from a nearby wholesaler who carries it to her hut.
SCHOOL
Like other grandmothers interviewed by Reuters, Kanotu Mumo comes to the Stara school in Kibera to clean twice a week. Their grandchildren attend the school and are fed from huge vats of steaming maize porridge and beans.
The project, supplied and funded by Dutch charity ChildsLife International, the U.N. World Food Programme and Kenyan aid agency Feed the Children, was started seven years ago by a group of Kibera mothers, after friends died and left them to look after their children.
The school on the edge of Kibera houses more than 500 lively children, 70 percent of them orphans, dressed in green uniforms.
More than 30 of the children are HIV positive and receive anti-retrovirals from a nearby clinic in the slum, supplied against vouchers from the school.
The small size of the premises means classes are noisy and overcrowded, with up to 80 children of mixed ages. The school, headed by dynamic Kibera resident Josephine Mumo, has proven skilful in raising support.
Singer Harry Belafonte, Barbara Bush, mother of President George W. Bush, and actress Drew Barrymore have been backers.
Without their grandmothers and projects such as Stara, many more orphans in Kibera and elsewhere would end up as glue-sniffing street children or child prostitutes.
Josephine Mumo says that when the mothers started the school, they brought in children who had been raped as they went door-to-door begging for food.
SURVIVE FOR THE CHILDREN
Many of the grandmothers are themselves weakened by HIV as well as old age, making it even harder for them to feed their charges.
Peris Owuor, 50, is a Kibera grandmother looking after seven grandchildren. "Sometimes my body does not feel good and I cannot go to look for food," she said.
Owuor, whose husband died of AIDS in 1998, washes clothes to make money, at 150 Kenya shillings ($2.25) a day, and tries to help feed her three surviving children who have no jobs.
"But when my body is not good I just have to stay at home."
Another grandmother, Antonina Mujenge, also HIV positive, cares for five of her own children and four grandchildren. She also sells charcoal.
"I try to look after them like other children but it is very difficult because of my low income. Sometimes there is not enough for all of them," she said.
"My main aim is to stay around long enough to make sure the kids can get an education and find jobs," said Mujenge, who has lived in Kibera for 20 years.
She would love to return to her village in western Kenya. "But I am an outcast at home. They say I can infect others. I cannot go back."
Grace Atema, 65, looks after three grandchildren and her daughter, mother of two of them. She washes clothes twice a week to raise money.
"I put everything I get towards the children. But I worry what would happen if I died. How would they survive?" she said. (Editing by Sara Ledwith)

original article: http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSL27322409

Exploding Paint

This is an amazing commercial.  Again from Sony Bravia TVs.

 

Bouncing Rubber Balls

I love superballs.  Matter of fact I have one on my desk right now and several rolling around on the floor.  Hazard of my profession.

So, I love this.  100s of thousands of rubber balls bouncing down the streets of San Francisco.  They are real balls, right?

HaHa Baby Laugh

Happy Monday.

Anytime I need a good laugh I can search baby laugh on YouTube and I'll be well taken care of.

nachos, blue men, a cat and crushed Rocks

ate some nachos with tillamook ceddar,  watching a blue man group dvd, and now my cat's curled up on my arm.  Rockies are getting crushed by the Red Sox. 

tillamook cheese is great.  the best cheddar.  i went overboard with the cheese on my doubledecker nachos tonight, however.

i really love the creativity and imagery of the BMG.  pair that with great sounds and you've got me hooked.

my cat curls up on my arm when i sit on the couch with my 'puter on my lap.  i wish she'd curl up under my arm but she won't have it.  makes typing slow.

Oh gee.  the Rockies scored 2 runs.  For some reason it makes me depressed as if it's ME on the line.  I had to turn away from the wreck.  the dismembering.  I guess if anything great is going to happen with my life, i'm going to have to do it and i'll need to stop hoping for my sports teams to do it for me...haha

Technorati Tags: Rockies , tillamook , cats , blue man group

Sadness in America

i feel like crap today.  migraine...on my day off.  slept until 11.  took a long, hot shower which usually helps the 'graine go away.  warmed up some good food from the 'fridge that my lovely wife made (love you, L) and sat down on the couch to read some blogs and veg in front of the TV in the dark den of our house.
the sunlight hurts.  The TV hurts more.

first show on the tube - steve wilkos.  i think he used to be a bouncer on Springer and now he has his own show.
topic:  man that pimps his wife and makes "$6000 a day"  he' been doing it since she was 14 and now this steve guy is going to save the prostitute.
bumper before commercials "do you have a story that will make steve explode with anger?"

steve is trying to aggravate the guy to take a swing at him so they can fight on stage.  i'm betting that if the guest pimpguy takes the first swing,  steve won't be charged with assault.
"steve!  steve! steve!"  the audience chants.

The woman in this story wants out.  She "loves" the pimp guy.  She wants to stop her prostitution.  She is hurting.  Why does she do it?  "I don't know no other way of life."  2 children at home and 4 months pregnant.  She is soft spoken and sad.

(commercial: "you can live the life you want and make the money you deserve.")

Now Steve is railing on the woman.  She is weeping.  She wants to change.  She doesn't know what to do.  He is doing a "scared straight" on her.

20 minutes left.  Will she leave pimp guy?  Will Steve save her?

steve was a policeman.  chicago PD.

She wants to go to school, get a job.  "Are you ready to stop making excuses?", he demands to know.

"He always told me that if he didn't love me he wouldn't hit me"

"I'm done and I can't do this no longer."

"Shut up.  Shut yor mouth.  You better shut yor mouth and sit back in that chair.  How you eatin?  Who's baby is in you?"  Pimp.

"He's not pimpin' me no more."  She can barely raise her voice at him.

Pimp guy gets kicked out.  Woman promises Steve she's done.

Show ends.

Steve tells everyone, "Thanks for coming."

My head still hurts.

Technorati Tags: steve wilkos , migraine