This, of course, is the merit badge for surviving the apocalypse. I swear, I'm pretty sure I saw this exact scene in The Day After.		You get a badge for identifying different trees? How hard can that be? Here, I'll do it right now. The one on the left: trunky. The one on the right: untrunky. There. Give me my badge.		I don't know what a Girl Guide has to do to be awarded the Ashoka Chakra, but it had better be a damn sight more impressive than pointing at a couple of trees.
	Bridget says this one's for refusing to let rickets hamper your joie de vivre.		This one's the Spuds Mackenzie Memorial Badge for Superior Merit in Partying.		Like little girls need another reason to get fixated on horses.
	Yeah, great, "peace." You know, if the fucking Girl Guides had their way, Saddam would still be in power! WHY DO THEY HATE AMERICA?		Mastery of the TRS-80 will get a girl far in this world.		I can't even guess what this thing is. It looks like something the Vietcong might have used as a booby trap. Really, I have no clue.
	You get this one when you throttle the kid everyone hates.		This one's for putting up with Gramma.		Duuuuuude.
	This one is for penning a grand declaration that will finally free Canada from the tyranny of the British monarchy. They're still waiting to award the first one.		You get this one when you can explain what happens when a boy fish loves a girl fish very very much.		"I'm afraid the tests confirm it — your daughter's pregnant. On the bright side, she gets this great badge!"
	This badge lets you give a speech if your Girl Guide troop is ever marooned on a deserted island.		I think this one sums up pretty concisely why eating tuna will now kill you.		Even Girl Guides get bipolar disorder.
	I'm glad they're teaching the girls exactly how unsubtle they will have to make their hints before boys will pick up on them.		No matter what they tell you on the Internet, do not look directly at the sun with your telescope.		I wonder if the other Iron Chefs laughed when Hiroaki Sakai showed up for his first day of work wearing one of these.
	I don't think a four-cent stamp is going to get your letter much past your driveway. (Especially if it's four cents Canadian.)		You might not have thought there was any connection between Girl Guides and interactive fiction... but if so, you've never seen the plot summaries of some of those xtrek games.		I guess someone in that house is still working on getting that fried egg right.
	Yes, yes, I know we want to avoid the curse of low expectations, but I still think this sort of public works project is a bit much to ask of ten-year-old boys.		Once you finish the dam, get to work on the rocketship.		You get this one for returning carefully collected solar particles to earth without crashing your $264 million probe into the middle of the Utah desert. Sorry, NASA.
	I'm pretty sure this one's for fishing, which makes me wonder why they've made the fish you're killing look like your talking aquatic pal.		At the opposite extreme, this wolf looks like one bad mofo. No wonder you get a crown of laurel leaves for triumphing over it.		I have to think these guys just dumped a body in the river. And are those banjos I hear...?
	You know, in the US, this sort of thing actually disqualifies you from being a scout leader.		This too, in certain southern states.		But even in Canada, Boy Scouts are not allowed to masturbate.

Also, across from the Girl Guide shop I saw this sign, and I couldn't help thinking, yeah, isn't that the way most holidays develop? You start of with a commemoration of some solemn event and gradually the frivolous elements creep in so you end up with egg hunts on Easter and cookouts on Memorial Day... I would not be remotely surprised if a hundred years from now September 11th is celebrated by handing out clown tigers to the kiddies.

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