A quick question.
Feb 4th
Are there any politicians left who don’t have issues with their taxes?
You’d think they get caught often enough to be concerned about that sort of thing.
What about the children?
Feb 3rd
Is anyone else as tired as I am of this question?
Why should I have to live my life based on the needs of your children? If you don’t want your kids to watch “filth” on television, get rid of your TV set. Or your cable. And your computer and internet access. It’s not my fault you chose to have children.
Recently Michael Phelps was photographed mouth-to-bong. In all the uproar, the thing I hear most is, “What about the children?” One man called into a radio show last night to ask, “How am I supposed to tell my 15-year-old son, who is a swimmer, that he can’t do those things if he wants to swim like Michael Phelps when Michael Phelps is doing them?”
I don’t know. Just do? You’re the dad, figure it out. Michael Phelps is a human being. He is not bound to live by some imaginary set of laws set about to protect people’s children. Oh, wait. Actually, he kind of is.
You see, swimmers don’t make money swimming. Michael Phelps makes money from endorsements. And guess who might not have that lucrative McDonald’s endorsement now that he’s been caught smoking pot?
The problem is that smoking pot is illegal in the first place. It shouldn’t be. No more than smoking cigarettes or consuming alcohol.
So unfortunately for Michael Phelps, his indiscretion will probably cost him. Of course, maybe that McDonald’s endorsement isn’t so great after all. When he first started doing those commercials, people tried to sue him for making their kids fat.
Maybe it’s time we start teaching our kids about the evil that is advertising, instead of trying to blame their obesity on Michael Phelps. He’s not fat, kids. You know why? Because he works out harder than almost anyone, and he does it everyday.
Relationship Police
Feb 2nd
Someone should really establish a “Relationship Police Squad.” This way, selfish pricks could be punished for their selfishly prickish behavior.
I’m not sure how exactly it should work yet, but I think public humiliation and a hit to the offender’s credit are in order.
Do I sound bitter? Yeah, that’s because my selfish prick boyfriend up and broke up with me (after saying “I’ll always be there for you.”) when I told him that my feelings were hurt about something. This man should come with a warning.
Oh wait. He does. He’ll tell you himself, I suppose. But not really soon enough and you won’t really believe it. Plus there’s the added bonus that most of your friends will take to him like fat boy to a rice cake. But will you listen? No.
So I’m the idiot. I’m the idiot who trusted when I was told “I love you” and “I’ll always be there for you” and “You should tell me when something bothers you” that these things were true. They’re not.
After a year and a half my asshat boyfriend quit because he was too cowardly to come up with another solution. And to top it off, he got angry with me for telling him my feelings were hurt.
And the worst part? He’s fine. It’s like I don’t even exist. He doesn’t even hurt, because he won’t let himself. So while I can barely walk into my apartment and continue to breathe because I hurt so much and while I am still trying to deal with the death of my dog a couple of months ago and while I am dealing with a bunch of family crap, this guy who supposedly loved me and would always be there for me just left. And it doesn’t even bother him.
In a couple of weeks, he’ll have found some new girl to fuck, then fuck over. He’ll be bored with her in a week or two. But it doesn’t matter, because no matter how awesome she is and no matter how many times he tells her that she makes him happy and that she’s a good girl, it’s all a lie. No matter what she does, he will hurt her.
Nice guy, eh?
Get over it.
Jan 23rd
For the last two days, every time I turn the radio dial to anything besides NPR, everyone is talking about one thing. Nope, it’s not that we have a new President (Woohoo!), or that our new President is black (Really, he is!). It’s not the economy. It’s not the closing of Gitmo (Yay!). It’s that a couple of private high schools’ girls’ basketball teams played each other and one beat the other 100-0. For two days.
So now I’m going to bore myself with talking about it some more.
Granted the story gains a little more depth when you find out that the team who got beat is a school for kids with learning differences (Honestly, I’m not sure what differences means in this scenario…we all learn differently. I suppose it’s just become politically incorrect to say “learning difficulties” or “learning disabilities.” So be it.), and that they only have 20 girls in their whole school, and that they’ve had a girls’ basketball team for four years without once winning a game. But there it is.
Now, I’m all for sportsmanship. I think it totally sucks to run up the score in a prickish manner (a la New England Patriots), but in my opinion, you can’t really blame or punish the girls on the winning team for their victory. Their coach can take a hefty chunk of the blame, sure. But those girls were just doing what they’ve been taught to do in sports all their life. Go out and play your hardest. To tell them they did something wrong is just silly. It’s a competition. They’re there to compete and play their best. That’s what they did. End of story.
The coach made a bad judgment call, clearly. After half-time, there probably should have been a bit of a different game on the court. Put in your B squad, do some drills you’ve been wanting to practice, force more passing, hold the ball for longer, whatever. And seriously, it’s a bad idea to say, “It just happened.” It didn’t “just happen.” It was four periods of picking on the little guy. He wanted to put 100 points on the board, so he left all his starters in. A win is a win, no matter what the final score is. Bad judgment.
But I don’t think it’s fair to say that they should have let the other team score. It’s the other team’s responsibility to score. I don’t think we should be defining “good sportsmanship” as “let the other team score.” Losing builds character. Losing in a crappy 100-0 game against a school who never took their starters out builds more character. That team has lost every game for four seasons, but they still have a team. If they were quitters, they would have given up on having a team long ago. And it seems to be common consensus that they played their hardest, even when they saw the insurmountable score in front of them. Why aren’t we celebrating that? I think those girls are pretty awesome. I probably would have just stood on the court after half time.
The girls on the losing team aren’t crying about their loss. Even their coach is taking it pretty well. And at no point did he go over to the other coach and say anything during the game.
The lesson we should all take from this is not that competition is bad. Competition is good. It’s why we’re all here, evolutionarily speaking (but far more complicated). The lesson, in my opinion, that we should take from this is: No matter how bad the outcome appears, try your hardest. Be the best you can be (Ugh, now I feel almost like an ad for the ARMY. Bastards!).
Oh, wait. I forgot. This is the most important lesson: If you do something questionable as a coach, remember that there will likely be a media shit storm all over your ass, with people asking for your head to roll or possibly for you to be strung up and quartered or tarred and feathered…all because you didn’t think hard enough before making the decision. Just ask Wade Phillips.
The Empress's New Clothes
Dec 16th
Fellow Blogger, Andre wrote a blog a couple of days ago. My comment was so long that I decided to just post it as a blog.
The proposition was that Michelle Obama’s inauguration dress should cause the same media stir that the McCain campaign’s ostentatious new wardrobe for Sarah Palin did. Go read it for yourself, though, because I could be totally off-base. These are my thoughts:
Using campaign funds to make yourself over is completely different from being extravagant with your own money. I know Palin said she didn’t know about the clothes, but that’s just…well, hard to swallow. Even if you didn’t know someone was going out to purchase them for you, you sure as hell knew about them once they were dropped on your lap. I’m not saying it was all her fault, but c’mon…don’t use ignorance as an excuse. That’s pathetic. Not to mention that it’s not really what I’m looking for in a vice presidential candidate.
In addition to that, who’s to say that Michelle Obama is actually paying for the extravagant dress? Which doesn’t even exist yet, by the way, so it’s hard to say how extravagant it will be or how much it will cost. Lots of designers design clothing for celebrities to wear on the red carpet, let them borrow said clothes, then sell them for crazy amounts of money as “The Dress worn by so-and-so at the Oscar’s! A must have for the season!”
Michelle Obama hasn’t even done anything wrong yet, and you’re going to jump all over her (and the media) because some moron from Alaska got busted using campaign funds for a ridiculous amount of new clothes during a presidential election and it made the news? Should they report on the possibility of her buying an extravagant dress?
And the percentage of the budget isn’t really the point, in my opinion. If Obama had gone out and used campaign funds to buy himself a hooker in Las Vegas, would it matter that it was only 0.0000000000000001% of his total budget? Unlikely.
The irony is that McCain himself sponsored a bill on campaign finance reform and then his running mate gets caught with $150K of campaign funded clothing. Is it against the rules? Apparently not. But it makes him look bad. She made him look bad. Over and over and over.
Not to mention the overwhelming irony that blossoms up when the McCain campaign has been accusing Obama of being elitist and out of touch with regular people. So in order to be more in touch with regular people, Sarah Palin (Average Joe Hockey Mom Golly Gee) needed $150K in new clothes for the campaign? McCain can’t remember how many houses he owns? It’s just…ridiculous. And probably the reason they got such media attention about it. If you call someone out on something, you should probably be sure you’re not guilty of the same thing first. Nearly all politicians are out of touch with us regular folk.
I hate to say it, but I think the comparison is apples to oranges. Or actually, apples to elephants. They’re not even remotely the same to me. Do I think spending thousands of dollars (or possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars) on one dress for one night is a smart use of your money when the entire country is in financial melt-down? No. But it’s not my choice and she isn’t using my money to do it. Brides and celebrities do it all the time. And she hasn’t even done it yet. And the story is out there, or neither of us would know about it. Has it made national news? No. But if she was using campaign funds to buy it, you can bet your ass that it would make national news. Don’t worry, the national news tends to cover Paris Hilton’s every sneeze. We’ll hear about it.
