Lessons from the Ride to Work

As I was driving in to work today I noticed an annoyance on the road. Like a bee inching closer to a comfortable seat at a picnic, a car was slowly creeping up on my bumper…in the SLOW lane. Don’t ask me why, but the closing in of a front fender in my rear view mirror slowly (and in proportion to the closeness of the car) raises my blood pressure. Perhaps it is because I do that thing where I imagine what might happen. I might have to stop suddenly due to someone in front of me stopping suddenly, and this ass hole will ram into me crunching my bumper like tin foil. I will be sitting there rendered unable to turn my head to face her as she runs up to my window screaming “why in the hell did you stop so suddenly you %#@ing &*#@ head!!?” And I won’t even be able to answer that the reason is the same reason that SHE stopped suddenly, that I was too close to the car in front of me. The reason I can’t answer is because her stupid face wont stop yelling at me and trying to punch my windows while I sit in agony realizing I won’t be able to go to the gym for a week because my back and neck are injured.

None of that happened of course I just made it up, which in turn made my blood pressure go up, see?

So, eventually I saw my exit and proceeded to dramatically get off of the highway to make my point that she was too close. She didn’t notice because she was singing and as she drove on past I spotted her bumper stickers. Excellent, I thought, I can read said bumper stickers and consequently judge her as a person based on their contents. As I scanned the back of her car, suddenly EUREKA! I found it. A giant UofL decal! “Typical, no wonder she drives like an ass hole.” I thought to myself.

But almost immediately I realized what I had just done. I had grouped her and made a judgment about her character based on her membership in that group. There is a name for that….oh yes “Prejudice.”

People love to say “all of so and so’s fans are _________.” No they aren’t, they are all individual people cheering for their team. There are the wealthy ones who buy all the over priced team gear, sit in the best seats and can actually get just as out of hand as the country folk. There are the drunken fools who spill beer and yell insults at the ref about everything from their mom to their hair style. There are cute little kids, of all races, ages and class who will become the next generations of fans. We all have bad eggs who make the group as a whole look bad but that is no reason to judge the entire group. There is a small group of Muslims who are extreme terrorists and do awful things, but they are just that, a small group of bad eggs which most Muslims will tell you do NOT represent the groups’ feelings and beliefs.

The only difference between you and someone else is your god given personality combined with the way you were raised. Skin color doesn’t change who a person is inside and neither does the sports team which they happen to root for. It also doesn’t change their driving abilities, that comes from something else entirely.

Prejudice stems from a variety of places, but mostly it is a very ugly learned behavior, passed down through the ages because people have a need to feel better than others. I caught myself doing it today and wanted to call myself out because in discussing ugly behaviors we bring forward the reasons they exist and hopefully make our society more cohesive in the long run.

So, now that I don’t have a simple excuse for the lady who rode my bumper today, I can use my overactive imagination to decipher her reasons for doing so. She was listening to Journey and got a heavy foot picturing herself on Route 66 with the wind in her hair? She has dyslexia and gets confused on whether the far right or far left lane is the fast one? Perhaps she was trying to read MY bumper stickers and form judgments about me? Regardless, I thank her for being an inconsiderate driver because she really made me think today!

Religious Uniformity!!

Now, at the end of times, when the government is falling to pieces before our very eyes, buildings and churches are burning in flames and lawlessness has run amok so severely that we aren’t safe from ignored doggie poop in our own neighborhoods, NOW is the time to return to the good old days when religion was in bed with the government….literally.

Christians were persecuted during the Roman Empire, so it is time to get justice!! The tables have been turned and there are too many of us now. This will solve all our moral issues in this country because people who are Christian are automatically moral people! They don’t do things wrong. I mean you would never hear of a priest say, molesting anyone. Or of a conservative Christian cheating on his wife in one of those gay sex scandals, no, no no. It just doesn’t happen my friends.

Uh oh, what happens if Christianity no longer becomes the majority religion in this country? Will I have to worship Buddah or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, you ask? Nah, that is the beauty of having government intertwined with religion, we can TELL people to believe what we want them to believe!!

Conversely there are no good people in other religions, they just all bomb stuff with their terror bombs so having a Christian government is certainly the way to go for our country, and well probably every country.

Seems to me that most people will be accepting of this arrangement. So much so that perhaps we should impose our opinions and beliefs on the rest of the world. We will call it the “Great Crusade.” That is “ade” with a long aahh, as in the word façade, so it’s different from that other one, see?

This will allow us to get rid of that pesky gay marriage issue once and for all when the government itself is a Christian one! After all, a same sex marriage and partnership is NOT in God’s plan. God’s plan was to create life and love and then have humans procreate. They would then grow distant enough from God to become sinful. So then the plan was to wipe out all those people with a flood, and again allow humans to procreate, this time to a disturbingly massive number which damages the planet to the point of our own extinction. Then the plan is to take back the rainbow from the gays ( I assume by wiping them all out with another flood on pride day when they are gathered together to fornicate.) Then straight humans can go on overpopulating until I think God will just create another earth! Twin earths, how cool. Gayless twin earths.

The founding fathers meant for this to be a Christian nation with good old Christian values and who are we to challenge that? They were right about every thing, and EVERY thing should be restored in order to save this country from imploding. I mean, who doesn’t miss slavery? Slavery is fun! And I don’t really need to vote, especially when it’s cold and rainy in November. NO fun.

I’m sure everyone will agree on MY denomination, I mean it is the best. If people are pushy about being able to choose a denomination, then perhaps each state could adopt it’s own. I just hope that my group doesn’t end up in Alaska…I hate the cold.

Pets

Anyone who knows my cat, Sammy, knows that she is an extremely vocal cat. Sammy screams for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it’s when she wants to be let into her room where her food and litterbox are so that she can do her business. When the dog gets too close for her liking (usually within about 1 foot) she will scream and smack. She screams as she runs into the room to announce her presence. This is especially hysterical because the running scream becomes a staccato noise. Mah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah. When Sammy is hungry (which is all the damn day) she screams and it gets louder and louder the closer I get to the food bowl. maaw, Awww, AAWWWW, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWW!!! If you enter a room which Sammy has already occupied for the purpose of sleeping or self cleaning, then she will scream at you to let you know that she was there first. Pick her up, Scream. Pet her, Scream. Look at her, Scream! The noise sounds like a baby banshee crying in anguish.

Anyone who knows my dog, Koda, knows that she has OCD. She has a severe obsession with her tiny tennis ball from PetSmart (henceforth to be known as “Ballie.”) Ballie is the source of endless amusement for Koda. Throw it for her and you will be her best friend. She never, and I repeat never gets tired of that game…even if you do. Spread out a blanket on the floor and Koda will carefully fold ballie into the covers and then search for the buried treasure. Ballie can be hidden in Koda’s toy box and she will remove every toy in search of the precious thing and then parade it around the house with pride to show us how she retrieved it. Her most beloved game (and most hated by us) is playing “Risk.” Risk involves nudging the ballie gently towards the couch/bed/dresser (anything it could get stuck underneath) and trying to catch it before it goes under. If she is unsuccessful it has to be retrieved in other ways (i.e. barking at it until we get it out.) Koda will even take Ballie to eat/drink with her, which means that ballie waits patiently IN the water bowl while Koda drinks. The result is that eventually every ballie turns into “ugly ballie” and must be surreptitiously replaced with a new one.

This past weekend I took Koda out for a walk around the back of the condo and I noticed a ballie laying in the grass like a fuzzy neon Easter Egg. Apparently a game of Risk ended in ballie rolling off of the deck which is a frequent issue (which has recently been resolved thanks to crafty Cristy.) I led her over to grab ballie and while I was trying to help Koda sniff out the now nasty thing so she could carry it in all of a sudden I hear from above me “MMAAWWWWWWW!” I look up to see Sammy’s chubby cheeks staring down over the railing off of the deck. So I can now add to the list in the top paragraph that Sammy also screams when she can look down on you in disgust.

Anyone who knows my pets knows that they are so weird.

Political Rant

Frustrated!

*My appologies for all of the political/non-funny subject matter of late. I try to put these things on my blog rather than on Facebook because I assume that those who read my blog are familiar with my political leanings and are thus less likely to become offended. I promise to post something funny and light hearted soon*

Surveys on facebook thankfully have no scientific value and are not published as statistics, however a recent one grabbed my attention. The question is “Should people receiving government benefits such as welfare have to be drug tested?” An overwhelming majority of people replied yes.

Who do you think the majority of people who benefit from welfare are? Children. And do those children decide to be born to parents who can not provide for themselves and their families? No they do not. They have absolutely no say and if their parent can’t feed them because said parent smoked pot last week and failed a mandated drug test, then that child is helpless.

As a liberal I am frequently accused of having a “bleeding heart,” among other things, but as a liberal I can safely speak for most other liberals I know in saying that we are not under the delusion that the welfare/medicare/WIC/Foodstamps sytem is perfect. It is absolutely flawed and at times encourages recipients to stay in their current situation.

In my opinion, one of the best ways to start moving in the right direction would be to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies, thus reducing the number of people dependent on the system to begin with. There are far too many people in this country and on this planet having children who simply do not need to be having children.

So, in walks Planned Parenthood, a non-profit organization which relies heavily on the government but also on private donations (mine included.) They provide birth control, condoms, counseling, pap smears, information and support, along with occasionally providing help with abortions when needed throughout the country. However here come the political issues:

Currently our system would appear to reward people who have multiple children. This is a flaw in the system which needs to be overcome.

Additionally, our government is currently going through a massive budget overhaul, in which they are attempting to cut funding for Planned Parenthood. PP is demonized for the abortion side of its business, a very small part of the organization which receives absolutely NO federal benefits as it is.

So, in order to save money, we are cutting funds for an organization that ultimately saves our country healthcare costs, saves lives, and decreases the number of unwanted pregnancies in this country thereby reducing the number of people relying on government funding. WTF? This frustrates me, and now I have said my piece about it.

Feminist Rant

Number one

The local talk radio is a frequent subject of my rants. Why do I continue to listen to it you might ask? I have determined that my brain in the mornings needs talk not music. I am not certain why, perhaps it is like the adult opposite of lullaby’s or something. Anyway, once a week they do a segment called “Jeff Unzipped.”

I’ll give you a minute to process that. Yes, that is what the segment is called where Jeff dishes on his take on male behavior, and I gag every time I hear it come on the air. To make it worse, right after they announce the title you hear a zipping noise. Did you just throw up in your mouth? I thought so.

That being said, Jeff actually gives some good advice the majority of the time despite accidentally belittling women in the process. This was my annoyance this morning, and thus I wrote this rant in my head while I drove all the way to work with angry eyes. You know what I’m talking about, my face looked all grrrrrrrrrrrrr.

He made the comment that “women usually enable each other to stay in bad relationships.” Not all the time, he said, just most of the time. Like putting the caveat that a couple of women are not enabler saps made it not sound bad that he thinks most of them are. He thinks we coddle each other in situations so that we don’t hurt each other’s feelings.

First of all, have you met a woman? I am pretty sure a woman gets her feelings hurt more often than Glen Beck uses a chalk board to link liberals to terrorism. More often than I talk about Disney. You see where I am going with this, pretty much every time a car passes on the freeway, there is a woman somewhere saying something to another woman that hurts her feelings.

When I was going through the abominable back and forth break up with my evil ex, I distinctly remember ALL of my female friends and family members telling me that taking her back was a terrible idea. They all said it in their own way, some subtle and some well, not so subtle. But they all found a way at some point in the shenanigans to advise me that she was not going to change and that I could do better. Even relative strangers were advising me to ditch the bitch. And THANK YOU!

If at some times in my life I have not given someone the advice that they need to hear, it is only because I know that I am not the right person to tell them or I know that they will not heed my advice. Sometimes someone is in a situation with a significant other, and although everyone knows it is the wrong situation, we also know that our friend will not dump said wrong person and thus it is not worth alienating our friend to make our point. Thus it can at times be better to hold off. Not “enabling” just being supportive until the right time presents itself. In my situation the right time came when my ex repeated her offense and I knew what to expect from my friends. Unfortunately I didn’t listen until about the 8th time.

Frequently people will attempt to assign certain characteristics to females or males but we are all too different to be analyzed as a collective. Women are not like fruit, with slight physical differences but all the same on the inside. More like snowflakes, similar basic form but all so different and beautiful. Some will give advice, some will hold off, some will scream it in your face while taking your phone away from you so you can’t text someone.

I have tried very hard not to generalize about men while I rant about Jeff generalizing about women…did it work?

Number two

I hate the Mike guy on Top Chef. On top of the constant testosterone fueled competitiveness he displays weekly, last night he made an annoying comment. “She is one of the top female chefs in the country.” Why “Female,” why not just one of the top chefs? Douche bag….I hope he loses.

The Demise of Panty Hose

I would like to formally propose the elimination of panty hose as a fashion option. I myself have not worn panty hose since I was forced to in a wedding or something similar about 10 years ago. That is a long time to go without them and I am confident that my legs are grateful.

What in the heck is up with Panty Hose any way? In England they have two terms for form fitting leg wear. Tights or Leggings. I assume this is because the British are cooler and more forward thinking regarding fashion and the like and thus have foreseen the ridiculous nature of panty hose. In the U.S. however we retain the distinction of all three options, and I want the garment in question removed from shelves. Useless, flimsy, uncomfortable, unflattering (evidenced by muffin tops everywhere) and itchy; panty hose were my nemesis long before I determined that due to a lack of skirts in my wardrobe I could do without.

Technically it is someone’s choice whether they wear panty hose or not but can’t it be like with guns? You can conceal it underneath pants or a long skirt so that it is not offensive and I won’t be frightened by its existence. There are really plenty of alternatives: socks, tights, leggings, pants, or even…gasp…BARE legs. This is 2011 and I think that there are about 5 women left in the country who would be shocked by bare legs, and they probably can’t see to tell the difference anyway. Good rule of thumb, if your fashion item (something that can be plainly seen as part of your outfit) can be replaced at Walgreen’s then it needs to cease to be a part of your wardrobe… yesterday.

I have researched the following health risks associated with Panty Hose: Urinary tract infections, bacterial vaginosis, yeast infections, heat exhaustion, eczema and rashes. That’s nasty, and further proof that stretchy leg prisons are evil.

If you have recently either purchased a large amount of panty hose or bought stock in Legg’s then may I suggest the following uses for Panty Hose:

Fishing nets
Cheese Cloth
Ipad protector
Dog poop baggies
Hand puppets (there are many colors of hose so you could have a culturally diverse collection!)
Tourniquet
Sling shot

Be creative and have fun. Just remember that panty hose are the corset of the 21st century and it is time to move on ladies!! We can consciously make the decision now and look forward to enlightening little girls about the former joys of clear nail polish to stop a “run” and bare toes stuck through the end of a ruined pair. They will thank us and please remind them that it all started here!!

Imagination Gets the Best of Me

Today I had an appointment scheduled with a guy we will call John. John was to be here at 3:00 to discuss the programs and tour the college. Anyone familiar with Admissions or my job will not be surprised to hear that John did not show up for said appointment. Shocking…I know.

John was supposed to bring his wife with him to the appointment. This morning when I called to confirm the appointment the wife told me he was sleeping but that she would deliver the message. When I called to find out why he did not come to the appointment she answered again. She told me that he left home and told her he was headed to an appointment.

I immediately assumed that he must be an alcoholic. John was going out to drink on a dirty bar stool and flirt with women with big hair and leathery cleavage in a smoky hole in the wall and he used this appointment he had created as the perfect excuse to give to his wife.

I realized later that it didn’t even occur to me that he was on his way to this appointment, was in some terrible accident and is now in the hospital. This is the kind of thing I would have considered a couple of years ago…now I create the alcoholic liar scenario or one similar.

That is a really sad reflection on my trust factor these days. This job coupled with my previous relationship which ended in a tangled web of convoluted unbelievable fantasy type lies (I think I remember something about Voldomort and Ringwraiths) have rendered me unable to accept simple excuses as the truth.

I think that I need my faith restored. Someone needs to let me down…cancel plans with me to go instead to your granny’s birthday and then let me randomly find a picture of you on Facebook digitally dated the day in question with you and Granny in a birthday cake fight! Something like this could restore my faith in all humanity!!!

I also have noticed that for quite a while now I will create a fictional scenario in my brain following a set of real events. For example, I could see a man in a restaurant staring at Cristy and I and then he will look away. Then I imagine that when I walk by he trips me, then I get up and ask him what his problem is, he yells “dyke” in my face, shoves me again, causing me to bump into the table behind me, reinjuring my tailbone, at which point Cristy comes up and pops in him the nose, he bleeds all over the waitress who is trying to help. More mass hysteria follows and before you know it Cristy is in Jail.

What just happened there? Does anyone else do this or is it just me? All that never happened but I am certain that I ended up giving that man dirty looks the rest of the evening across the BW3’s. Poor guy didn’t even do anything.

I believe that all of this stems from an over active imagination fueled by a few negative experiences which have stuck with me. Fortunately the positive experiences stick, too so I do tend to generally approach life with a smile. Just make sure you smile back or I will assume that you are angry with me because my ex called you and told you that I said something that I didn’t say so that you will be mad at me and now you are going to shun me until the end of days…..Wait..that didn’t happen, either. Phew