Archive for the ‘rant’ Category

Last week I was lucky enough to be invited to participate in a discussion about chronic complaining on HuffPostLive. (Here’s a link if you missed it.)

I thought a lot about why people complain. As was discussed in the conversation, women seem to do the most complaining, but men aren’t immune. It seems we’ve become a nation of complainers.

I don’t think we are bad people. We all want to be the best we can be with what we have at hand.

But, we have everyone and everything conspiring against us, telling us we are never enough and never will be without buying whatever product they are hawking.

For instance, we are being told that we might see Mr. Right, but we won’t meet him if our teeth aren’t white enough. So people everywhere are walking around with nuclear white teeth. That’s not normal. According to my dental hygienist you don’t want your teeth to be whiter than the whites of your eyes. It seems like a good rule of thumb and more people should take her advice.

A cereal seller tells us that we are fabulous and amazing, but will be even better when we eat their product for two weeks and lose an inch. Really, I’m amazing…with constraints? What does that even mean? How many people are rushing out to start the cereal diet because it’s almost swimsuit season?

You can’t wear a swimsuit unless you have a perfect body. Of course any diet company will be happy to tell you how to get that body by purchasing their programs, their foods, their products, and blaming any failure on the consumer. And we listen, completely ignoring the “results not typical” lines flashing by at the speed of light. They don’t want us to know that long-term weight loss is a myth.

Men will get women and cars if they drink certain types of alcohol. They get better jobs if they carry a certain cell phone. They’ve known a long time that the perfect car is the answer to all their life desires.

Mothers know that it’s the juice you serve and the vitamins you stock that measure your worthiness of raising a child.

See, it’s everywhere. We’re never allowed to just be..be content, be happy, be responsible, be frugal. We’re always being told that by not spending, buying new, buying often, buying the right thing we will never be happy.

So the right answer to solving the nation’s complaining problem is to stop listening to the advertisers. They do not have our best interests at heart. Not even medical studies are immune from influence when they are being funded by the very corporations that benefit from them. Turn off the commercials. Stop reading magazines. Ignore the ads cluttering up your email screen.

Despite what we have drilled into our psyches day in and day out, what matters is what’s on the inside. Try being genuine and kind. Helping a neighbor will always beat the type of flooring you have in your home. Learn what out of control consumerism does to our resources. What are we doing to our environment with our more more more lifestyles?

People benefit from our constant complaining. Yes, the people who are getting rich on our dissatisfaction that we didn’t know we had until they told us. What a vicious circle…

 

It’s taken me awhile, but I have figured out politics. I think.

See, I’ve been giving the political system and politicians to darn much credit.

That’s why I was honestly completely and absolutely shocked when the Republican party thought Sarah Palin was a valid candidate for vice president back in 2008. Her gosh-dark-oh-shucks attitude had me stumped. Yes, she is attractive, but has our nation gotten to the point that the political arena has morphed into a beauty contest? For god’s sake, she referred to her husband as the “First Dude.”

I want politicians who are more intelligent than me. Better public speakers than me. Sarah does that tongue click thing that so annoying. That’s why in junior high we made fun of our school librarian! We were young teens and recognized that was not a good thing. I can’t see how it’s OK for a politician.

I kept waiting for the Republican party to laugh and tell us it was a joke and produce a viable candidate for vice president. You know, the person who will step into the President’s shoes should something happen. Yeah, that person.

But they never did. They kept her till the end and then acted all surprised when President Obama was elected. I imagine the head Republican honchos waking up the next morning, muttering over their coffee, pulling at their hair, determined to never make the same mistake again.

The scary thing about all of this: if Sarah Palin was a viable candidate then so am I, my neighbors, you, your neighbors. She set the bar really really low for Republicans.

I was willing to give them some wiggle room, though. I thought Sarah was an anomaly.  But she isn’t. She’s actually a clear representative of today’s politicians. Yes, she might actually be the cream of the crop which is why the Republican party ended up choosing her to run in the first place.

In the day of instant news, a camera and video camera in every phone, nothing is secret any more. So we have had quite a show lately listening to actual elected officials vocalizing their complete miseducation about the female body (remember raped women don’t get pregnant…) and offering relief for poor children (make them work, even if they miss class…). Those stories were drawn from the mouths of actual political people.

States are utilizing misinformation to educate our children about sex (birth control causes cancer, abortions cause cancer…) and science (creationism, anyone?). All under the tutelage of politicians. I thought pronouncing ketchup a vegetable (wouldn’t it really be a fruit?!) was a stretch for Ronald Reagan. But since it is actually made from a real food, I’ll give him that one. But fake science being taught to our children? That’s just plain ignorance…especially since the information is so easily refuted by one Google session.

There’s media battles when politicians get all angry when tapes of their conversations get released. I mean, would you want the world to know you’re willing to go after an opponent’s past mental illness? Or that it’s news that some Republicans don’t think Rush Limbaugh is a good ally?

The stories are endless about the idiocy of Congress. Ninety per cent of the people wanted gun control so Congress refused to pass it. They’ve made it very clear that they no longer represent the American people, but the National Rifle Association (aka NRA). How do we know this? Recent donations from the NRA to congressman was well-documented. So not only are the politicians unintelligent, they are also greedy liars.

Does it scare you as much as it scares me that we have given political control to complete imbeciles? I’m sorry, that might be harsh, but it’s true for many of them. Maybe it’s time some of you regular people start thinking about running for office.

Because something has to give in Washington and the solution might be you!

Time for some more Jodi Arias chat. This time who cares about Jodi? Frankly, she’s the least important person at this point in the trial.

The defense has rested and the prosecution is introducing rebuttal witnesses. Yesterday, a former girlfriend of Travis Alexander took the stand. I believe Deanna Reid was there to salvage any damage done to Travis’ reputation through the defense’s case and accusations.

Juan Martinez, the prosecutor, asked her various questions about her relationship with Alexander. What was revealed was that he was a pretty nice guy. Yes, they were  lovers at one time. Since this isn’t allowed in their religion (Mormonism) they repented and continued with their relationship. According to Reid, she and Alexander were friends until he was murdered.

Through her testimony, Martinez was able to show Alexander in a different light than that presented by the defense. Alexander wasn’t verbally nor physically abusive. He was an attentive, caring partner. When Reid broke up with him (she was ready for marriage and he wasn’t) Alexander cried. At the end of Reid’s testimony Alexander seemed like a decent guy.

Reid was a great witness. She was steady. She answered the questions that were asked. Her high opinion of Alexander was communicated clearly.

Completely unrelated to the case: Reid looks exactly like a school mom friend of mine. Which might explain my discomfort with her treatment by defense lawyer, Kirk Nurmi.

Nurmi spent his time with Reid repeating every dirty, sexually explicit comment made by Alexander to Arias. He did it with such glee, it was unnerving! No wonder defense lawyers have such bad reputations!

The thought that kept going through my mind was that he was really getting off saying these things out loud to a stranger. He was like an obscene phone caller with a captive audience!

I won’t even repeat the questions, because I don’t want to offend anyone. I think you can handle my occasional salty language (dammit!) but I don’t think you need to hear the details of Alexander/Arias sex life. The least offensive term bandied about was Alexander’s reference to Arias as a “three-hole wonder.” (We should discuss this at another time…)

I know the defense team has to do what they can to save their client from a guilty verdict and a death-penalty sentence. But attacking a witness for the prosecution seems counter productive. It reeks of desperation. And Nurmi’s performance was just downright creepy…disturbing… I hope the jury feels the same and remembers this when they begin deliberations.

I wonder why defense attorney Jennifer Wilmott didn’t do Reid’s cross? What do you think? Did you see it?

I found this video and we all need to watch it. Enjoy!

I swore to myself that I would try to keep some of my political thoughts to myself in 2013. It should have been easy. It’s not a big election year. But the imbecile’s are still among us. Today we’re going to talk about Kevin Swanson, a radio host of a right-wing program, Generations Radio.

Apparently, Mr. Swanson failed biology. That’s understandable, because you do not have to understand science to talk. But I think you need science to graduate high school. You did when I graduated eons ago.

What I learned in biology about reproductive health is a woman has a monthly cycle for reproduction. There’s ovulation, which is the release of an egg. If the woman has sexual intercourse, the egg may or may not be fertilized, depending on several different factors. If the egg is fertilized, a baby may or may not result. If the egg is not fertilized, the woman has her period, which washes away all the lining of the uterus which would have aided in the creation of a baby. The unfertilized or unviable fertilization washes on out with the uterine lining. Voila, nothing is left in a healthy woman and the cycle starts all over again.

Now there are several different factors affecting different women in different ways. Sometimes fertilization occurs, but for whatever reasons the zygote (I might have this term wrong) cannot implant and there is no baby-to-be. Sometimes the uterine lining doesn’t wash out of the body and washes back into a woman’s internal organs, resulting in endometriosis. Sometimes the uterine lining doesn’t all wash out and builds up and a woman might require a D&C to get rid of the build up.

But what never ever ever happens is that any unfertilized or fertilized eggs get hung up in the uterus like bats in a cave. This is where Kevin Swanson is bat-shit crazy. Here’s what he has to say on the subject:

I’m beginning to get some evidence from certain doctors and certain scientists that have done research on women’s wombs after they’ve gone through the surgery, and they’ve compared the wombs of women who were on the birth control pill to those who were not on the birth control pill. And they have found that with women who are on the birth control pill, there are these little tiny fetuses, these little babies, that are embedded into the womb. They’re just like dead babies. They’re on the inside of the womb. And these wombs of women who have been on the birth control pill effectively have become graveyards for lots and lots of little babies.

See, he completely failed basic biology and sex education! Because using the birth control pill actually prevents fertilization of released eggs.

And my imagination has never been more fertile! (Get that great pun? Around here that’s known as a Jim joke, but this one is all mine!)

I was picturing Barbie and Ken dolls hanging around in my uterus. Just gripping onto whatever piece of the real estate they needed to remain connected to it. Sort of swinging there like monkeys soaring through the jungle via vines.

Then my sister Jamie told me she was picturing cabbage patch dolls lining her uterus. Which she may or may not still be in possession of. If she doesn’t still have it in her body, I wonder if someone saved it in a jar so we can actually look inside this uterus to see the dead babies awaiting…whatever.

Now I cannot help but picture the birth control pill zapped eggs as bats. They were featured in an episode of Infested I saw recently, so bats are in the forefront of my mind. The bats I’m seeing are hanging by their tiny bat feet in my uterus. I’m not sure what will make them rush out of there like bats in nature, but I’ll be watching for that to happen soon. Maybe it will happen when I have my next pap smear?!

I also cannot stop thinking about the sheer number of whatever might be hanging out in my uterus. Let’s get a little personal. I’ve probably spent around 10 years of my adult life on birth control pills. That’s 120 faux-fertilized eggs I have inside me. Imagine how many of these errant eggs are within the bodies of women who have been on the pill for decades! Yikes!

Seriously, no wonder our country has problems if the people sharing information are such morons. Did Swanson think about what was coming out of his mouth, or did he just spew it? Does he really believe this crap or is he using creative license?

Besides Swanson, who else listening to him believes the same things? That’s what scares me. Because these people are pushing policies that affect the rest of the country. They cannot be allowed a voice any longer.

PS Now I’m picturing the babies as kewpie dolls. Will this madness never end?!

 

So much time is given to the discussion of protecting our kids from bullies. We want to shield them from the harsh people that can fill their day-to-day lives: mainly their peers. We want to give them the tools necessary to survive the bullying, respond to the bullying, and to help prevent the bullying.

But what do you do when the bullies are adults? Who, technically, should know better. If adults are writing the rules on ending bullying they ought to be able to recognize bullying. Especially when they are doing it.

Monday night I unfriended someone on Facebook for posting an offensive picture. This was a full-on unfriending. Not a block from my stream. The person in question had posted a picture of two women eating and made a derogatory comment about it. Of course, she has friends who support her view point. And the bashing began.

The initial problem is that I am certain these were not women they were actually acquainted with. They were responding to a photo someone else had posted. What made these women perfect targets was one simple thing: they were overweight women seen eating a pizza and drinking soda.

If you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all. Isn’t this a lesson we learned early in our lives? But for some reason, pictures of overweight people are game-on when it comes to on-line bullying. From the people of WalMart to the headless fatties posted with every article about obesity, it’s open season on people commenting on another person’s appearance.

But when you do this, you are being a bully. A cowardly bully who gets to sit behind a computer screen and hoot and holler and post your nasty drivel about people you don’t actually know. Not that this doesn’t happen in real life, but that’s a different post for a different day.

It’s offensive to take a snap shot from someone’s life and make broad spectrum comments about the state of them as a person. Anyone can (and does!) look bad in a photograph. Here’s an example: next time you’re watching television, randomly pause it. I bet the actor is making some goofy face that wasn’t even noticeable as the show was running.

Headless fatty pictures are even more offensive. Do you realize how disrespectful it is to put unknown bodies in an article highlighting the current state of obesity-whatever? Fat people have heads; often they are even attractive! Imagine that!

My latest hobby is responding to inane articles on obesity (usually written by people who have their hands and feet in the diet industry in some way) to point out flawed information.  If there is a headless fatty picture, I comment on that. Other commenters will respond to my comment saying the headless fatty picture is allowed. After all, one person pointed out, if the article was about a car they would have a picture of a car. I responded that the car would never appear with a bumper lopped off.

Bottom line: if you find yourself getting ready to comment on anyone’s physical appearance, stop. It’s bullying just as much as some kid shaking down another kid for lunch money. If that doesn’t change your mind, imagine it’s you in the picture. Would you want someone writing these things about you?

 

 

It’s that time of year again. January first rolls around and it’s time to make resolutions. Of course, the diet industry wants to improve profits (it was predicted earnings would be over $65 billion by 2010) so they convince you that you need their services.

Watch television at night and most of the commercials are about weight loss. It’s enough to make a viewer stabby! I started counting the commercials one night, but got overwhelmed. Every company has a diet and they all want us to use their’s.

Vulnerable people will continue spending their hard-earned money on Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, Nutrisystem, and countless other companies that lead you to believe they can help you lose some weight. Unfortunately, they have no idea how to help you keep it off and how to prevent you from regaining what you lost plus a nice padding of extra weight to make it a super special experience.

That’s the beauty of being in the diet business. If more than 95% of the people who lose weight gain it back in a few years, these same people will continue needing the diet business to lose again and again and again. This has to make the corporate honchos simply orgasmic. And we, the vulnerable masses, continue to pad their pockets.

Because we just know that something…someday…somehow…will work. I mean, there are enough people who will tell us what worked for them:

• I drank iced water by the gallon
• I drank hot water with lemon
• I ate nothing but grapefruit
• I ate nothing but bacon
• I eat according to my blood type
• I eat like a neanderthal
• I eat like an astronaut (you know–those prepacked, predigested meals…)

The advice is never ending. The sad thing is that some people have tried every method mentioned above and others, and still aren’t happy with their weight.

There is another option and I hope you’ll consider it. It’s called Health At Every Size. The premise is that eating freely and getting movement that you enjoy will help you reach a higher level of health. Of course, the health level isn’t measured by a number on a scale or the size of your jeans.

It’s an easy program to follow because you need nothing special. You just have to stop beating yourself up. Take the time to really look at yourself and understand how wonderful you are. Turn off the TV, stop watching the news, and throw away the women’s magazines so you stop receiving the negative messages that are thrown your way every single minute of every day. Stop listening to the people who tell you you are nothing more than a weight or a size, and know that they are wrong.

Check out the Health At Every Size movement. Learn about movement that isn’t about pain and gain: The Fat Chick, Curvy Yoga, Heavy Weight Yoga. Check out great blogs by inspirational people: Ragen Chastain’s Dances with Fat, Living 400 Pounds, Dr. Deah. This isn’t a complete list–follow links and discover other great, supportive people to help you with this new journey.

Most of all, be kind to yourself. Love yourself enough to step off the diet roller coaster and embrace sanity instead of insanity. I’m here to support you as I continue my journey along this path. Together we can change ourselves for the better!

 

Yes, it’s true that a single man committed the atrocities at Sandy Hook Elementary school one week ago. But you would never guess that at the accusations being strewn about like unwanted confetti in a holiday card.

Apparently, it was committed by people who weren’t even in the town: gay people, non-religious people, women (simply because we have the option of having abortions)…the list is endless. Instead of showing support for the people affected by this tragedy, political pundits and wannabes instead fill the air waves and the interwebs with shrilly hurled accusations. Possibly just to get their names on the news and maybe get a contract with Fox News to be an analyst of some type.

But some of the scariest stories I’ve heard about are the ones from two women who have suggestions on how future tragedies could be handled. Let me start by saying that before this week, I had heard of neither of these women. I’m not intellectual enough to run in the same circles. I will never ever forget their insanity.

Megan McArdle suggests that we train the children to rush gunmen when they appear in schools. What the f***?! I’m guessing she has no children. Because any sane parent living in the United States knows that we don’t train our children to be little militant beings ready to tackle the insane. Human nature sends you scrambling away from danger. Kids are trained at an early age to not be aggressive. This plan is so full of holes.

I don’t care how old my children are, I don’t want them throwing themselves at anyone wielding a weapon of any kind. Not even for little Miss Megan McArdle. She can lunge at any attackers she wants. But she’s not taking my kids with her.

But wait! My kids are boys…at age 12 they were all “huskier” which fuels Charlotte Allen’s plans to have male teachers (preferably former football stars) and “husky 12 year olds” tackling gunmen. According to Allen there were no men at the school last week which is why the gunman managed to kill all those people. She forgot the male teachers and the janitors. She forgot the heroic women who did confront the gunman.

All in all, Allen managed to insult every woman in the world. What about women in the military? Are they filing their nails while the male soldiers defend them? What about women police officers? Are they plucking their eye brows in the squad car while their male partners defend our cities?

Who the hell are these women?! Again, I had never heard of them before. Now I’m sorry I have.

Here’s my prediction of what will come of the Sandy Hook tragedy: nothing. Since the only rational solution is gun control, it will not happen in our country. How can it when solutions are being suggested that all teachers be armed? Or when automatic rifles similar to the ones used last week are selling out of stores? Or when it’s easier to blame Godless people for the acts of a single man? Or when it’s easier to whisper Asperger’s?

What I’m not hearing is why did the gunman’s mother had guns in her home if she was frightened of her son? If he was truly mentally ill and exhibiting signs of it, the last thing you would want was something that made it even easier to be violent. If his own mother wasn’t frightened of him and worried, then how could the rest of the community have known something was wrong?

That’s the problem with these events. No one understands the why. When the perpetrators kill themselves there is no one left to ask why. We can only guess, point fingers, place blame, and hide our heads in the sand until it all happens again in another community.

These words sum up our society at this time, by John Oliver:

One failed attempt at a shoe bomb and we all take off our shoes at the airport. Thirty-one school shootings since Columbine and no change in our regulation of guns.

 

I have nothing brilliant to say about Friday’s tragic shooting in Connecticut.

Because there are no words to describe the sorrow and angst I feel for the families of all the children and adults involved. As a mom, it terrifies me to my very core that another mother sent her child off to school on Friday and that child is never returning. It could happen to me. It could happen to you. It did happen.

I have no answers. There are cries for gun control. There are cries for mental health services. I don’t think anyone has answers.

I do know that I see no reason why a non-military citizen of our country should be walking around with an automatic weapon of any kind. I do know that to many of our citizens fall through the cracks of the mental health system because of an inability to pay or to maintain their medications on their own without constant supervision.

But I think it’s much more than that. There’s a disconnect within people these days. Is it because of violent television or video games? Is it because of two working parents? Is it because we communicate via technology more than we do face to face?

In Maya Angelou’s words (taken from her Facebook page–I hope you’ll “like” her):

Our country is grieving. Each child who has been slaughtered belongs to each of us and each slain adult is a member of our family. It is impossible to explain the horror to ourselves and to our survivors. We need to hold each other’s hands and look into each other’s eyes and say, “I am sorry.”

I am sorry. I am sorry that life is so fragile and so unappreciated in today’s world. I am sorry that anyone suffers violence and cruelty at the hands of another.

Stealing the words of my Facebook/Twitter friend Nancy W., “Be kind to each other.”

That’s my intention. I will be kind to my family. I will be kind to my neighbors. I will be kind to the people I meet on the street.

I hope you will be too.

 

Here we are again, hovering at the edge of the fiscal cliff. News reports, tweets, articles, blogs, and the world ponder, predict, and await the outcome. Who will go over the fiscal cliff? The American people? How about the congress people who have us quivering and trembling in fear at the great chasm before us?

It’s not like this came as any surprise to our elected officials. Remember those people who have sworn to serve us, the voting public? But they are acting like they had no idea that this would really happen. Like high school juniors surprised that the ACTs are this weekend and they haven’t even cracked the study guide a well-meaning parent bought to improve their slim chances of getting into a decent college.

Instead of doing their job and solving this political crisis, the current members of congress have spent their time waging a war on women, fighting with President Obama at every turn, and genuinely contemplating the nomination of Michele Bachman for president. In other words, they’ve been skipping class and sleeping during study hall instead of prepping for anything.

So let’s make the members of Congress the ones who suffer. I’ve read suggestions about cutting salaries, healthcare coverage, expenses, etc. Let’s do it!

And in the meantime, let’s pull troops home. If we can’t balance the budget, we can’t fight wars. Stop sending things into space immediately. Stop all social services. Tell the states dependent on federal money that it’s cut off for now.

My goal is to make life so uncomfortable for the people who elect these members of Congress that they make sure to never ever ever re-elect them. It will serve them right. Hopefully, it will also send a message to anyone else considering a run for public office.

The American people are tired of elected officials phoning it in while living quite well on donations from the few wealthy people who want to control politics. We enter the voting booths and we demand to be served!