Buzz, The Honey Nut Cheerios Mascot Disappears In Canada. A Very Noble Reason Why

Buzz, the Honey Nut Cheerios mascot, has gone
missing from Canadian cereal boxes for a very
good cause.  

If you've ever eaten Honey Nut Cheerios, or at least seen their ads, you're familar with Buzz.

Depending on your perspective, he's either cute or a bit obnoxious. Buzz if the cartoon bee who banters with celebrity endorsers about how wonderful the cereal is. He's also a big fixture on boxes of Honey Nut Cheerios.

In Canada, however, Buzz has gone missing from the cereal boxes. There's just a white outline where Buzz is supposed to be on the packages.

Buzz's disappearance is for a great cause.

Bees -honeybees, not the cartoon versions - are disappearing from our ecosystem, brought down by insecticides, environmental degradation, development and other factors, mostly caused by humans.

You want lots and lots of bees buzzing around everywhere, because they pollinate crops, which means they actually grow and we can eat them. No bees, no food for us, basically.

People are thus trying to save the bees.

As AdWeek reports:

"'This is the first time in the brand's history we've taken Buzz off the box,' said Emma Eriksson, director of Marketing for General Mills Canada. 'One-third of the foods we depend on for our survival are made possible by natural pollination work that bees provide. '

With ongoing losses in bee populations being reported across Canada, we wanted to leverage our packaging to draw attention to this important cause and issue a call to action to Canadians to help lant 35 million wildflowers - one for every person in Canada.'"

The effort, details of which you should check out at BringBackThe Bees.ca, has a very good video explaining it more. It's at the bottom of this post.

The video begins with several clips of people rescuing various animals from a series of dire straights. The words, "Helping Is In Our Nature," appears in the clip. In the background, a chorus sings the 1980s Mr. Mister song "Broken Wings," with the lyrics, "Take, these broken wings, and learn to fly again...."

Then we get information about the bee population decline. "The bees need us. Join us in planting 35 million wildflowers."

The Canadian company  Vesey's Seeds, is helping with the effort to distribute flower seeds. I've dealt with Vesey's seeds by the way. Definitely a very good company. It's worth checking out their product line.

The site, BringBackTheBees.ca  has a lot of great information on the bee population, and how to help pollinators. The advice it offers doesn't apply to  just Canada. It's great stuff for us Americans, too.

By the way, you really should plant flowers, wildflowers or any perennial or even annual that attracts honeybees. This isn't just a Canadian problem, but a worldwide one.

Buzz the Honey Nut Cheerios mascot, hasn't disappeared from American cereal boxes yet. But millions of honey bees have disappeared from the American landscape.

It's time we all help to bring them back. We rescue them, and in turn, they'll rescue us by ensuring we continue to have a full and rich food supply.

Here's the BringBackTheBees video:

Moving Business Has A Moving Side Project

The real men and women of Meathead Movers
help domestic violence victims escape their abusers.  

I'm really glad I'll never have to hire Meathead Movers.

It's not that I have anything against them, just the opposite. The California moving company founded by former student athletes sounds like a wonderful and reliable outfit.

The reason I'm glad I'll never hire them is one of the things they do is help victims of domestic violence move away from their abusers.

They work directly with Good Shepherd, a local nonprofit that helps abused women and offers them moving services at no cost.

According to LA Weekly:

"We know how hard it is to piack up someone's life and move it to a new location - but it's unimaginable to think about a woman and her children trying to pack up all their belongings and flee before the abuser returns home," said Aaron Steed, President and CEO of Meathead.

So here's a cheer to the real men who help women victimized by guys who are anything but real men.

After The Cecil The Lion Murder, You'll Want To Watch This Video

A man rescues a dog from an ice floe,
one of the incidents captured in a compilation
video of people being good to others, especially animals.

It's been a tough week for animal lovers, what with the hue and cry over the death of Cecil The Lion.

I do hope Zimbabwe manages to extradict Walter Palmer, the moron Minnesota dentist that killed the lion, to face charges there.

At least it appears that reports of Cecil's brother, Jericho, being shot by poachers are apparently untrue. 

Meanwhile, we need to remember that many people are actually nice to animals.

So, as an antidote, watch this very comforting compilation from LiveLeak. It's people being nice to others, but mostly people being good to animals.

It's wonderful to know there is some good in the world:

Here's A Prank Video That Is Actually Kind of Nice

I've complained here in the past about "prank videos," those YouTube hits in which some idiotic youth assaults or harasses people, gets it all on video for laughs and giggles and profitable viewer clicks.

The "waiter", a prank video maker, serves
a homeless woman a nice dinner in a rare
example of a nice prank video.  

Another form of trolls, basically.

But there are good prank video makers, too, like the one I found in which a young guy dressed up as a waiter in a decent restaurant,.

He showed up with a tray of food in public streets and served nice dinners, with cutlery to homeless people

The homeless people, as you can imagine, appear pretty perplexed, but grateful.

Nice gesture, and way to go!

Here's the good prank waiter video:

11-Year Old Dog Rescuer Shows WAY More Class Than Hit And Run Driver

A motorist on a busy road in Brazil hit a dog and kept right on going, the kind of infuriating local story that is all too common.

Boy, 11, braves heavy traffic to rescue
dog that had been hit by a car in Brazil.  

Geez, you can't stop for two seconds to seek help for the poor thing?

But the next thing that happened here leads me to Jean Fernandes, 11,  my best person candidate of the week.

According to the Huffington Post and various Brazilian news agencies. Fernandes dashed out into the heavy traffic, stopped cars and carried the injured dog to safety at the side of the road.

A news photographer happened to capture the incident as it unfolded.  The image, and the other images in the link are absolutely heartwarming. 

Latest reports are the dog is under a vet's care, improving nicely and should have a full recovery. Thanks to Fernandes and the compassion he showed.

Nice job Jean! Please continue to be who you are and don't grow up to be like that hit and run driver.

U.S. Government Not Working, So Chris Cox Of South Carolina Steps In, Perfectly

My new hero is a guy named Chris Cox of Mount Pleasant, South Carolina.

My new hero Chris  Cox tidied up the grounds
around the Lincoln Memorial because the
government shutdown made the landscape look shabby  

Cox. 45, is a chain saw sculptor who is in Washington DC for an art show.

The government shutdown means that the grounds around national treasures like the Lincoln Memorial are not being maintained, so they're starting to look shabby.

So Cox got to work, big time.  

He bought a $200 leaf blower at Home Depot, spent $100 on a used lawn mower at a thrift shop and got to work.

He mowed the lawn around the Lincoln Memorial, cleared pathways with his leaf blower, used his chain saw to get rid of a huge branch that fell across a walkway during a Monday storm, and cleaned out the trash barrels.

The U.S. Parks Service, which isn't doing any work except shooing people away from national monuments, shooed Cox away, too, but he got most of his work done (I don't blame the park rangers for doing this. They're kind of under orders to do so thanks to the idiots shutting down the government.)

I love this bit about Cox in the Washington Post:

"He said her does not have a political position on the shutdown. 'I'm not here to point fingers,' he said. 'I only want to inspire people to come out and make a difference.'"

"The building behind me serves as a moral compass, not only for our country but for the world. And over my dead body are we going to find trash pouring out of these trash cans,' he said. 'At the end of the day, we are the stewards of these huildings that are memorials."

Well, Chris Cox is totally the breath of fresh air we needed!

Frankly, though, it's my experience that most people really want to do the right thing. They might be imperfect, mistaken, wrong, stupid sometimes, but overall, they get things right and make things in their path better.

But when egos get in the way, it all goes south. Really, certain members of Congress seem like they would rather save face than save their country. Totally disgusting.

You want to fall into despair, but then people like Cox come along. He makes you think that maybe, yeah the idiots running the show are causing a huge clusterfuck, but maybe the rest of us can clean up the mess.

Cox used a mower, a leaf blower, and his generous frame of mind to clean up the mess. Not all of us have a mower or a leaf blower that will do any good easing this government shutdown.  I do feel a bit helpless as Congress careens out of control. But at least we had Cox to put just a tiny bit of order into the chaos.

Thank you Chris!!

New York Yankees And Their Fans Are Totally a Wonderful Class Act

Any Red Sox fan worth their salt knows they always play Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline" at the bottom of the third inning during home games.

A very nice gesture at the Yankees game last night. 

I'm not sure how that tradition got started, but what the hell. It's awesome.

Last night, at a New York Yankees home game, they did the same to honor Boston and the city's response to the marathon bombing

As Jon Stewart said this week, New York and Boston have had a long, long rivalry, but its a sibling rivalry.

When Neil Diamond himself got wind of what happened in Yankee Stadium, he tweeted:

"Thank you for playing "Sweet Caroline" for the people of Boston. You scored a home run in my heart. With respect, Neil. 

Indeed!

Here's the video:

A Lucky Find, A Smart Judge, Some Compassion, an Adoption and a Marriage

An article in today's New York Times is going super viral today. I want to share it, too, it's so good.

An unusually fantastic article in today's New York Times
deserves a good read.

I won't add much of my own commentary here. It's just an incredible story, written by playwright Peter Mercurio  about how a family, his family in New York formed through a series of odd events, some smart people, a great judge and other good factors.

It's one of the most compelling, sweet reads I've had in a long time.

Click on this link right here and enjoy this wonderful and true story. You won't regret it. 

Best Basketball Game EVER was recent El Paso High School Match

You might have seen this video already, since it's been all over the news, and Facebook, and Twitter, etc.  but I want to share it anyway.

It's a CBS report of perhaps the best basketball game ever. It contained no NBA stars, no incredible plays, no miraculous baskets, no stars, no glitz. It did have sportsmanship. And heroes. Boy, did it have sportsmanship and heroes.

I won't spoil it for you, other than to say the kids are alright. Watch the report below (Warning: a Kleenex alert goes with this video)