News Perusal: Heidi’s Christian Boobs

Have you ever read the news and then wondered if your time would be better spent punching yourself in the forehead? While perusing Google News today, this headline caught my attention: Heidi Montag: I’m Ready for More Plastic Surgery. Not knowing who Heidi Montag is, why the story is newsworthy, or why so many people refuse to be biodegradable, I clicked. Thank you, FOX News, once again, for the reminder that your “news” should only be allowed in print – all the better to wipe our asses with. But to be fair and balanced, it was an Entertainment story and entertaining it was.

According to the article, after a nose job and breast augmentation, Heidi thinks she needs “a few more upgrades.” After reading the rest of the article, I couldn’t agree with her more, as it seems her operating system is running a bit slower than it should…

The article goes on to say, “Montag did not pose nude” in her recent Playboy appearance “perhaps due to her ‘strict’ Christian faith.” She’s obviously learned a lot from the teachings of Christ, as can be seen in her quote that ended the article:

If women aren’t jealous of you, talking about you and cutting you down, then you’re a nerd, and I would never want to be that.

Well, Heidi, the article also says that you’ve always wanted to be a sex symbol. Congratulations – you’re a vagina!

As a woman, I shouldn’t be writing anything about what a vagina she is, because that’s what she wants. Which is the same reason why all of you non-Christians should stop harassing the believers with your “there is no God, my God’s better than your God, blah blah blah.” You have some valid arguments and the right to do so, but the only thing you’re doing is fulfilling their dreams of being persecuted.

I kid, I kid… most of them nowadays haven’t read enough of the New Testament to even know about that whole persecution thing. Because that would require reading… and reading is gay.

Anyway, all of this celebrity news leaves me with many questions, such as ‘People aren’t really wasting too much time with this stuff, right? Right!?’ Wrong. Yesterday, another blog post caught my attention: Miley Cyrus pole dancing at the Teen Choice Awards: Rather unfortunate, Yes? Being interested in all things unfortunate – and a sucker for misleading titles –, I suffered through 3 minutes and 21 seconds of video for… for… nothing. What’s unfortunate is that so many people haven’t seen enough real pole dancing to know the difference between hanging onto one for balance and showing your butthole to strangers for a dollar. Speaking of dollars, why does that post now have 23 pages of comments when 6 pages worth of ‘economy’ tagged posts have zero comments? Actually, it’s probably more pages than that – I stopped searching.

The Miley post really does address some important issues, such as the whorification of teenage girls, but what I don’t understand is why everyone finds this so shocking. Shocking! Our culture is obsessed with celebrities, plastic surgery, dog fashion, the latest fad diets, shitty music, penis enlargement, laser hair removal, teeth whitening, quick fixes, reality TV, text speak, instant gratification, and summarizing your status in 140 characters or less. That doesn’t leave much room for thought, nor does it emphasize much of anything but sex appeal. What do you get when you add all of these things together? A bunch of fucking morons. As in a bunch of morons who are fucking each other. Fucking morons. Surprise!

Maybe if we focused more of our energy on correcting the real problems in life, people wouldn’t need to focus on all things superficial. Just a thought.

Photo: © Glenn Francis, www.PacificProDigital.com

Purchase with Caution, or Die

Have you ever looked at the items you’re carrying to the checkout and realized that your standing would fall in the community should anyone see what you’re buying? Maybe you were at Wal-Mart and bought a rope, some duct tape, a bottle of lube, some candy… and a gun. The possibilities of odd combination purchases are endless. Really you were just doing some home repair, making a tire swing with your kids, planning a night of slip n’ slide with your love and then heading off to target practice. But if you look anything like most small town Wal-Mart shoppers, the handful of ‘normals’ there will burn your image into their brains and hunt for your mug on the sex offender registry. That’s a big problem for you guys, because everyone on the sex offender registry starts to look familiar once you get to page 2 of 450. I know him! That’s the guy who was buying rope, duct tape, lube, candy and a gun from Wal-Mart. Sick. Bastard. I’m calling the cops.

So then the cops check out the surveillance cameras, do some forensic face-matching-scan-stuff that only happens on TV, and they show up at your house assuming you’ve now got an alias. They pull into your driveway and see that you’ve got little Billy hogtied in the yard. Really it’s because little Billy thought it would be fun to get hogtied and you’re not one to deny your children of fun that’s more amusing for you than it is for them. Unfortunately for you, the sight of hogtied Billy is the breaking point for the cop who really wants to be a vigilante and *boom*, your brains are now splattered across the driveway. Little Billy is now scarred for life because he’ll never have a tire swing.

All of this crossed my mind yesterday as I approached the checkout with a large jug of antifreeze and a medium-sized bag of dog food. For the off chance that my cashier would also be a volunteer for the ASPCA, I almost put one of the items back, but… the car had just leaked out all of its antifreeze and my dogs would eat me if I ever failed to provide their dinner. We’re good friends, me and the dogs – so much so that I would never dream of making them antifreeze smoothies for breakfast – but something tells me they only stick around for the food and belly rubs. Dogs have needs, you know. They won’t put up with too much shit before they opt to eat you.

Anyway, the ASPCA did not show up at my door, which was good, because I was really busy trying to figure out why Youth in Asia will be part of our government healthcare reform. What do Asian children have to do with government healthcare? Will large companies pay higher taxes to cover their sweatshop injuries? Plausible. We wouldn’t want a shortage of $2 shirts that fall apart in the wash, nor would we want a shortage of $120 shoes, as that would give us one less reason to murder each other. Perhaps the Youth in Asia will be candidates for euthanasia if their production levels fail to meet consumer demands.

On my quest to find the answer to this question, 100s of fine American people provided me with an education via Internet news comment boards. Those commenters had a lot to offer, such as regurgitated political talking points and evidence that none of them actually read the bill before spewing all over cyberspace. One half was hysterical over Death Panels; the other half responded with their new favorite phrase, “Political Terrorists”; and, of course, the debates were flavored with ‘If you don’t like it, why don’t move to Canada’ sprinkles. I haven’t read the entire bill either, because a) the website won’t stop freezing [cue conspiracy theorists] and b) that would put an abrupt halt to the sense of adventure.

You’ll either be not-quite-satisfied with the system and coverage (no change), OR – here’s where it gets interesting – OR, we’ll have Death Panels for Euthanasia of Americans. I could get behind that with the right set of rules and regulations: Decision cannot be based on race, age, creed, gender, income, disability, location, or employment status. Rather, it will depend on your level of inexcusable stupidity. For full detail on definition of inexcusable stupidity, please see [insert long list of conditions that you don't feel like reading]. The Panel Judges will be…

See, this is the problem. You can’t trust the government to adhere to Euthanasia Ethics, nor can you trust anyone with that level of power. People are too easily swayed by prejudice and designer handbags. We could leave it to robots, but that brings the programmers into question. The other problem with robot executioners is that they might become self-aware and align themselves against humanity, thus starting a war. This could result in their creation of an android with huge muscles and an Austrian accent, who’s programmed to say stupid catch phrases like, “Hasta la vista, baby” and “I’ll be back.” Plus, it might be nice to see some compassion from the judges on occasion: Son, this is the last time you’re excused for using Twitter to describe the dump you just took.

But if there were some way to make it work, that would make for reality TV worth watching. It would keep people on their toes too, huh? How ’bout that.

So be careful about what you buy; be careful about what you Twitter. You just never know…

The Retarded Dilemma

As someone who is fascinated by the nuances in language, the ongoing debate over use of the word “retard” leaves me feeling slightly… retarded. What’s interesting about this debate — and every other one — is that people choose their side by way of emotional involvement (or lack thereof) without considering the depths of the issue. From an objective standpoint, it seems that some people are being a bit too touchy while others are being flagrant assholes — not to be confused in Engrish as “fragrant” assholes. Big difference.

My argument falls somewhere in the middle, as it does with most everything — not because I want to be in agreement with everybody but because people who view everything in the world as black and white, cut and dry, right and wrong are… possibly retarded.

So let’s take a look at the issue, shall we?

• Definitions Have a Purpose Driven Life

Retard (transitive verb): to slow or delay the progress of something
(noun): in music, a slowing down of a previously quick tempo

From TheFreeDictionary.com:
Offensive Slang (noun):
1. Used as a disparaging term for a mentally retarded person.
2. A person considered to be foolish or socially inept.

There are two definitions to the slang use of the word. By calling someone a retard — unless this person actually has some type of developmental disability — you’re probably using the term in its second definition. But if you are making fun of people with Down Syndrome, you are the retarded one, as in “foolish or socially inept.” The tricky part about the retards (of the second definition!) is that they often look like everyone else: walking billboards for clothing advertisements.

• The Road to Stupid is Paved with Good Intentions

There are people who are trying to have this word banned from the language, because it’s offensive. No word is offensive in and of itself but you make it so by saying it is and by fighting it with petitions and self-esteem crusades. If you really want people to stop using it in a derogatory manner against mentally retarded people, don’t encourage it by giving them all the attention they want. There is an absolutely disgusting website out there which makes fun of mentally retarded people. Am I going to link to it? NO. Will I send them hate mail? NO. Because a) people like that aren’t worth my time, and b) it would give them the attention they want.

It’s like telling a 10-year-old that he absolutely, positively better not, ever, say the word “shit.” What do you think he’ll say when no one is around or when he wants to upset someone? I don’t know, maybe it’ll be… shit? But again, words aren’t offensive unless you give them power by making them taboo. The dictionary did not originally say “retard” is an offensive word, people made it so. And by every other definition of ‘retard’, there’s no reason to ban it from the language, even if it does offend people. What about those of us who are offended by the butchering of our language? We have feelings, too.

• Our Society is FULL of Retarded People

And by retarded, I’m talking about foolish and socially inept folks. Instead of wasting your energy on hurt and anger, either learn to accept that there are multiple definitions to the word or find satisfaction in knowing that those who claim Darwinian achievement are even more retarded than those they pick on. It’s obvious to anyone who has spent time with those who have Autism, Down Syndrome and other such diagnoses that they often excel in areas where the rest of us are deficient — math, music, humor, perseverance and compassion come to mind.

• Choose Your Crusades Wisely

If you really want everyone to be on a feel-good-high, take care of the real problems. If you’re concerned with the care and treatment of developmentally disabled people, get the homeless ones off the street, get the abused ones away from deranged caregivers, support your community programs, and provide for the needs of those in your personal life. Because as much as language matters (for all the reasons you people fail to mention), some things are more important: food, housing, education, safety, etc.

You can’t rid the world of assholes by passing around a petition, nor can you make the underlying problem go away by pretending some words don’t exist. That’s like ending hatred toward black people by removing “nigger” from the dictionary. Race relations: solved by Merriam Webster. The Klan can pack up and go home now. Educate people about why it’s retarded to claim superiority over a person’s inherent characteristics, not what methods are most offensive for doing so. Geesh.

All I’m really trying to say is… don’t be so retarded. Okay? Our world is full of serious problems — one of them being people who take offense to everything so they can feel good themselves. Another, of course, is people who hijack perfectly good words and use them against other people so that they too can feel good. Seeing as how everyone is on a mission to feel good, why is there a need for the self-esteem movement?

Blogging for Dummies

Whenever you find yourself scraping for new blog topics or developing hives over the low number of “hits” to your site, it’s time to take a lesson in perseverance from those around you. Although it can be difficult and time consuming to ascertain the methods of persistent bloggers, careful comparison of randomly chosen blog posts reveals the most common strategy. Listed in no particular order, the following tips have been gathered from prolific posters throughout the blogosphere.

• Do Not Concern Yourself with Spelling and Grammar.

If you’re readers can’t intuitively tell weather you mean its/it’s, your/you’re, their/there/they’re, to/two/too, and so on, they obviously don’t get you. You want you’re audience to no where your coming from, so don’t waist you’re time trying to a peel to those word nerds. Blech! So what if your not getting any traffic, you do knot want those people hanging around you’re cite.