Twos are Terrible, but Three is Just Plain Asshole

My friend Stacy was on the phone exasperated. She couldn’t quite put her finger on a description of her three-year-old son’s behavior.

“He doesn’t care. He just doesn’t fucking care. He tells me what I want to hear, and says, ‘Mommy, your hair is so pretty’ and its all bullshit. He tells us off and he’s just, he’s just…”

“An asshole.” I say giving her the perfect description for her toddler.

“Exactly!” she exclaims with a joy only felt through mutual understanding.

Every book, unwanted advice giver, family member, and all forms of media seem fixated on the terrible twos. Two-year-olds are tantrum-ridden demon spawn, but they don’t tell you what happens a mere 12 months later when their birthdays come around and two, two and a half, two and three-quarters, gives way to age three.

Today I will reveal the secret. I will lift this veil of fallacy. I will be the truth-teller who broadcasts the news to all who will hear me, and bring warning to those parents with sweet infants. Twos may be terrible, but at age three, your kid will turn into a complete asshole.

I remember waiting for the shit-storm that was supposed to be the terrible twos. Rachael was 26 months and still a pretty decent little girl. She would be fussy at times, but nothing awful. I thought for a moment that maybe I lucked out, and this whole “terrible two” thing was just one of those myths. The screaming and wailing seemed to come from out of nowhere. Rachael began kicking and flailing over something trivial sending chills down my spine as I knew I was looking at a bonafide terrible two.

We are less than a week away from Miss Rachael’s third birthday, and the tantrums are coming less and less. Unfortunately, the assholeness that is age three is taking hold with a vengeance. You can almost empathize with a two-year-old’s fits, because they lack the knowledge of language to verbalize their wants and needs, but by age three, they have not only mastered the spoken word, they know how to use it to get what they want.

Three-year-olds are masters of manipulation telling you exactly what you want to hear. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve sent Rachael to time-out only to hear her yelling, “I want to say ‘I’m sorry.’” She usually follows it up with, ‘I’ll be a good girl’ or ‘I love you, Mommy’. Of course the moment she is released from her three-minute time-out, she’s back to her same old bad behavior.

Three-year-olds are also completely narcissistic. They think only of themselves and walk around like mini emperors trying to test your limits. Stacy’s son will walk around the house during naptime telling his parents nonchalantly that he’s “sorry” about not hanging out in his room. Rachael will put her hands on her hips and tell me what she wants to do, and also inform me what I need to do.

“Mommy, make me peanut butter and jelly.” she’ll say. “I want it with some juice, and I want it now. Put it on the table.”

This is the same child who a mere two and a half years ago was my sweet, cuddly infant who would coo and smile and only fuss when she was hungry or wet. Now she can cry on command and throw herself against the couch in her best Vivian Leigh as Scarlet O’Hara moment. She will smile, act coy, and charm the daylights out of you, but if you cross her, Rachael will turn downright evil in two seconds. Frankly, it’s the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen.

We will celebrate her third birthday this weekend with all of the pomp and circumstance she has demanded and detailed extensively. However, I don’t know about the days that will follow. I will do my best to make that girl honest and put the kibosh on her asshole behavior, but like with everything else I’ve discovered in my parenting adventure, there will be no guidelines, no rules, and especially, no guarantees.

A Note to the Dora Marketing Bastards

It started so easy; my daughter’s love of Dora the Explorer. In the beginning, Rachael was 18 months and responded to the animated Latina’s annoyingly cute songs and brightly colored clothes. My little munchkin loved Dora’s sidekick, Boots the Monkey, and by watching Dora she could learn a little Spanish as a bonus. It seemed so harmless; after all, what real damage could an hour of Dora during the week do to a child.

Rachael’s love of Dora began turning the dangerous corner when she was nearing age two. Rachael wanted to watch Dora videos all of the time. Jeff and I tried to pepper in some Maisy, with a little bit of Miffy, and even tried to get her turned onto a little of our nostalgia with School House Rock, but she was having none of it. Maisy would last for a half hour, Miffy was fine for 20 minutes, but it always ended with Rachael screaming her devotion to Dora.

For her second birthday party we did a Dora theme, and little did I (the media scholar) realize we were enabling our girl’s addiction. Now, as we are coming to Rachael’s third birthday I am ashamed to admit that I have a fully functional Doraophile as a daughter.

Rachael informed us a month ago that her party was to be Dora-themed. She wanted a Dora cake, a Dora pinata, Dora plates, Dora napkins, Dora party favors, and all of the other Dora shit on the market. Fortunately, the branding ogres have thought ahead, and haven’t missed a beat creating all things Dora for a little girl’s birthday party.

Of course, it gets worse. I realized that my daughter’s obsession was getting out of hand when I was at the store at 10:00 PM on a Saturday night spending an ungodly amount of money on the Dora castle. If I was a heartless corporate marketing whore, I’d give a big “hats off” to those bastards who created the Dora the Explorer Magic Castle. Jeff and I managed to get the castle on sale at Toys ‘R’ Us for a low price thanks to a $3 off coupon, and $45 in gift cards. The catch is that the castle, much like a new home, is unfurnished.

Each room of furniture for the castle was $10, times five rooms, plus the royal characters, which also are sold separately, and at the end of the day, you’ve spent a disgusting amount of money on a toy. Jeff and I thought about slipping in another, generic dollhouse, and just buying the Dora castle figurines, but unfortunately, all of those hours of Dora have made our girl smart, and we weren’t going to get away with slipping her a fake castle. Rachael managed to memorize all of the cool things the Dora castle does by studying the display for 10 minutes. As I pushed her in the cart she went on and on about how you can use the special magic wand to make the Dora castle do fun things, and how the Dora castle talks to you.

My daughter’s obsession with Dora is now complete. She has all of Dora’s movies, most of the Dora dolls, Dora bath toys, the Dora talking kitchen, a set of Dora bedding, Dora games, Dora books, and now the over-priced Dora castle with the furniture and characters. To my credit, most of the Dora items in her playroom were gifts from family and friends. However, I should have put the kibosh on this a long time ago, but how could I have known that the innocent looking cartoon sweetie teaching my girl to count in both English and Spanish was really the figurehead for a mass marketing evil empire.

You may have won this round, marketing bastards, but this mommy is now wise to your game. I’m keeping an eye on my girl’s childhood obsessions from here out. In fact, I’ve already started her on a book series called Sweet Pickles. The Pickles are wholesome, teach good lessons, and are no longer in print. I buy her these second hand books from eBay and used bookstores. There are no Sweet Pickles bathroom sets, Sweet Pickles toys, Sweet Pickles DVD players, and best of all, no fucking Sweet Pickles magic castle with furniture and characters sold separately!

Weekly Recap 11/19-25: Rupert Loves O.J. & Racist Kramer

Headline News Recap
The biggest story this week wasn’t the war, the colossal national debt, or even a natural disaster that hit someone somewhere. Hats off to the media for contributing nothing to the collective IQ of the nation as they went non-stop with O.J., O.J., O.J. This week O.J.’s book, which some speculate is a confession, was shelved by Judith Regan’s publishing company, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s evil empire, News Corporation. News Corporation also pulled the multi-hour interview special from its Fox channels, claiming that the whole exploitation would have been bad for the reputation of the company. Reputation!?! Considering that this is the same company that aired that midget dating show, this whole boycott of all things O.J. is pure bullshit. The book and the interview will come out, and due to the controversy, it will end up making five times the original income projections. Rupert Murdoch doesn’t give a flying fuck about offending people. This was the same guy who two weeks ago said that the loss of only 3,000 American troops was insignificant in terms of a war. O.J. is an asshole, but Rupert is an evil bastard, and neither one of them deserve a dime of hardworking people’s money.

A big blow to democracy and peace came this week with the assassination of Lebanese Cabinet Minister Pierre Gemayel. The anti-Syrian Gemayel was brutally gunned down in Beirut, making him the sixth anti-Syrian politician murdered in the past two years. Gemayel had a lot going against him; he was a Christian which rubbed the wingnuts in Hezbollah wrong, he was anti-Syrian which pissed off the Syrian occupiers, and he was a democratically elected official, which doesn’t seem to go over too well in that area.

Wednesday lactating mamas held “nurse-in” rallies at over 30 airports to protest an incident where a mom and her family were kicked off a Delta Airlines flight, because she offended a flight attendant by not throwing a bulky, smothering blanket over her nursing infant’s head during the breast-feeding process. The woman and her family were escorted off the plane and re-assigned to a different flight the next day. To the flight attendant who was offended I say, “Get a life, you miserable cunt!” and to Delta Airlines, “You are giving flight attendants way too much power.” There is a big difference between a possible terrorist and a mama who is nurturing her child in the most natural way. Sorry people, but boobies aren’t just for looking at.

Hunger no longer exists in the U.S. A new report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture has decided to drop the word “hunger” from its lingo claiming that the term “very low food security” was a more accurate description. Under this new U.S. government language re-assignment we can say that the Hurricane Katrina survivors aren’t “homeless” they are “currently in residential transition” and that America doesn’t have an “obesity problem” it simply has citizens who “enjoy a leisurely lifestyle and a chemically-enriched diet a little too much.”

Former Russian Spy, Alexander Litvinenko, died Thursday night after being poisoned nearly a month ago. He had been a vocal critic of Vladimir Putin’s government, and had been investigating the murder of a Russian journalist who was investigating Putin. I guess the old Soviet ideal of “shut the fuck up or we’ll kill you” isn’t dead after all.

In Local News
Last week’s Blackest of the Black tour was amazing. If you are on the West Coast and have a chance to see it, do yourself a favor! Jeff and I saw the movie, Borat, and laughed ourselves silly. The scene with the fat, naked guy is a little gross, but we nearly pissed ourselves through the entire flick. Do yourself another favor and see this movie.

Even though it’s Black Friday, and there are a lot of good deals, I’m not going shopping. It’s not the crowds or the competition or the long wait in check out lines keeping me away, it’s the Christmas music. If I had the choice between gouging my own eye out with a plastic spork from KFC or listening to two straight hours of “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree”, I would end up crying in a corner, babbling to myself like a crazy person, and fidgeting with the spork’s plastic wrapping. Seriously, that annoying song and “Santa Baby” make me want to gun down the mall elves.

Celebrities Who Amused Me This Week
Michael Richards, the actor who portrayed the beloved character Kramer on the show Seinfeld, became the darling of every morning zoo radio talk show this week. Apparently he was performing at a club where two black guys were heckling, and then Richards went off on an “n-word” laced tirade for several minutes. He is now pulling something of a Mel Gibson claiming that he isn’t a racist, and just lost his head. Michael, I’ve lost my head a few times, and like Mel, I’ve been pretty drunk, but unlike either of you, I have never gone off on a hateful, racist tantrum. Most of the time I’ve just ended up laughing myself silly, and making out with the ugly guy.

Fox News said there are plans in the works to come out with a right-wing version of The Daily Show. This will prove to be both interesting and challenging since right-wing lunatics usually don’t have a sense of humor.

Fox News seems to be on a roll this week as their own bespeckled blowhard Neil Cavuto claimed that the new kids movie about penguins, Happy Feet, was nothing more than an animated version of An Inconvenient Truth, because it had the nerve to feature an adult penguin with one of those plastic six-pack holder things stuck around its neck and talk about ice caps melting. Not since the whole “The purple Teletubbie is a fag” thing have I heard such asinine shit. However, there is a message to be heard, so for the last time; Fox wants nothing to do with truth, obvious, inconvenient or otherwise! No more truth!

So-called Magician, David Blaine, did another “trick” this week by escaping from a gyroscope hoisted above New York’s Times Square after two days of being strapped to the spinning device. As with all of David Blaine’s “magic tricks” I have to ask, ‘what about this is magic?’ If I wanted to see someone vomiting atop a building in New York City, I’d watch a model during her photo shoot lunch break.

Quote of the Week
“We’re going to have tough days ahead of us.” – Ken Johnson, spokesman for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America on the recent elections where many of their Republican allies lost House and Senate seats to Democrats.

Good! This was a whole article about how lobbyists who work for drug, oil, and environmentally damaging companies are shaking in their boots, because the Dems might not be as susceptible to the bribes for lenient legislation, unlike their Republican predecessors. I truly hope this is the case, because democracy isn’t democracy if they aren’t working for we the people. Besides, they’d better watch their ass, because when democracy fails, the politicians and the power elite are usually the first ones to get gunned down in a violent, citizen uprising. Alternative history books don’t lie; unlike the whitewashed shit they made us read at school.

Hey Kids, How About an Ice-Cold Draft

Representative Charles Rangel said he would initiate legislation that would essentially revive the draft. Rangel wants all able-bodied Americans between the ages of 18-42 to serve two years of mandatory military service. My first reaction was, ‘you’ve got to be kidding me.’ However, before the Republican media bandwagon and anti-war activists start sharpening the stick at both ends for the Representative’s head, we should look at his reasoning (albeit misguided) as to why he would ever want to do such a thing.

Rangel says the main reason he is calling for a requirement of military service is that perhaps those in Congress wouldn’t have been so quick to support Resident Bush in his war lust if it was their kid who might be sent to Iraq. He also says that minorities and the lower income Americans bear the largest burden of service, and by instituting mandatory military service, it will even out the playing field.

I completely understand Rangel’s frustration at watching young people die while realizing that many of them come from low-income households where it’s often military service or unemployment. I also realize that the bulk of the Americans dying in Iraq don’t have white faces, and I agree with Rangel’s desire to bring about some urgency to the issue of war in general, but instituting mandatory military service will accomplish none of his goals.

The Resident is the best example of why Rangel’s policy will fail. During Vietnam, Bush served loosely in the National Guard, because Resident Bush Sr. was rich and powerful enough to get his idiot son out of being exported to Southeast Asia. Perhaps Daddy knew even then that Georgie wasn’t cut out for intense stress, and after all, the idea of G.W. with a machine gun is enough to scare the daylights out of even the bravest person. Our own president got out of his duty solely, because of influence; therefore Rangel’s idea that Congress won’t be so quick to vote in war is mute. The power elite will always be able to protect their own, and they will still not care about sending anybody else’s kids to war. Do you honestly think Donald Trump’s children will have to wake to the sounds of trumpets before dawn or do a 20-mile hike in the rain? Can you realistically see Jenna and Barbara Bush in boot camp?

The burden of defending this country, even if Rangel’s policy had a prayer (which it doesn’t), will still fall on the minorities and lower classes. The only thing that would change would be the impact on the middle class, which is already being squeezed into extinction. Regular kids from the ‘burbs would end up serving, but I guarantee it wouldn’t be for long. Their Baby-Boomer parents would turn out in droves to vote for the first candidate that agreed to repeal mandatory military service, thus creating a huge bureaucracy to institute the program, then another to dissolve it.

The fact is the majority of this country is made up of lazy, spoiled brats who love their freedom as long as they don’t have to get off their asses or forego an hour of PlayStation to do anything for it. Less than 40% of those eligible to vote turned out for this last election, which confirms my ‘lazy bastards’ theory. Most countries have a mandatory two-year military service requirement for all able-bodied citizens, so in the United States we have gotten off relatively easy.

I understand where Chuck Rangel is coming from. For years, we have watched this terrible war waged for oil, power, and elitist corporate profits at the expense of 3,000 dead kids and 10,000+ injured civilians whose medical expenses us working folks will have to cover. However, if the volunteer military system has worked for this long, then there is something we are doing right.

At this point, we need to focus less on staffing the war, and more on giving a boot to the asses of those who got us in the war in the first place. We need to involve a coalition of Middle Eastern countries to help us solve this mess, because we obviously can’t deal with those crazy bastards and their civil war, so we might as well admit we fucked up and get the people in place who know how to end this thing.

Mainly, we need to put Rangel’s idea of mandatory military service to rest, because the last people I trust with making decisions about my kid’s life are the same group of schmucks who started this all of this bullshit to begin with.

Divorce, Hollywood Style

Hollywood and the pop culture media loves a big, beautiful, expensive, celebrity-filled wedding. They do major spreads in magazines, talk incessantly about the betrothed couple, and even interrupt actual news to give a synopsis of the happy occasion. For the entire month leading up to the Tom Cruise-Katie Holmes wedding hours of airtime and many column inches of press have been dedicated to talking about everything from the cake to the dress to those crazy Scientology vows. Even the CNN ticker has been working overtime tracking the couple’s whereabouts. By now, the only thing the media loves more than a glamorous celebrity wedding is a knock-down, drag-out celebrity divorce.

They make it look so easy; the whole getting divorced business. All Brittney had to do to was text message her husband with the bad news (far better from having to have an actual heart-to-heart conversation), get a trendy, new haircut and a designer black dress that showed off her boobs, and she was off, hitting the town and living her “new life”. Never mind the fact that the couple has two kids, one of whom is only two months old. Brittney needs to start dating again; after all, it will make for much better drama in the exciting new divorce show.

As someone who has been through a divorce, I can tell you that it isn’t as simple as Hollywood makes it out to be. There is a lot of paperwork, uncomfortable conversations, you have to appear in court, and oh yeah, there’s the whole emotional aspect. I’m not naïve and I don’t expect Hollywood to portray anything like it happens in the real world, but the same media that snickers with headlines about Brittney vs. Kevin is the one that keeps asking why the divorce rate in this country is out of control.

Now that Tom and Katie are hitched, and since Jessica Simpson seems to be keeping her dating low key (the nerve of her), we are likely to be watching divorce dramas clear into the New Year. Whether it is Spears/Federline or Witherspoon/Philippe, the media is planning a heyday of epic proportions with heroes, villains, heartbreak, and fake, exaggerated tears complete with Barbara Walters soothing the sobbing party.

To fast-forward you through all of the bullshit, here is how the Brittney/Kevin divorce will play out in the media. Brittney is currently revealing her “new, single” self, and waving her prenup like a victory flag. The only thing Miss “Ooops” forgot was that 50% of her kids is made up of her soon-to-be ex-hubby’s DNA, which means he’s not going to go away, and by law, he doesn’t have to. Now Kevin is showing the brains we all didn’t think he had, and giving Brittney’s mom fits by asking for custody of their two kids. The sick, sad thing is that this guy has two other kids by the chick he dumped, while she was pregnant, to hook up with Brit-Brit, so the custody thing is basically about money rather than love for the kids.

They will be back and forth in the media over the next few months. Brittney will play the victim, and do the whole sobbing to the same reporters she was smiling at only three months ago while talking about how she was happy just being a married housewife with kids. Kevin will switch from bad guy to victim on a month to month basis doing his own interviews whining about what a superbitch Brittney could be, and how he was just trying to be the kind, dutiful husband to a demanding diva.

In the end, after court battles that make lawyers rich and celebrity pundits wet and hard, it will finally end with the failure of Brittney’s “comeback” album (especially since her audience is well over puberty age and she has nothing to come back to), and Kevin being relegated to the same trivia status enjoyed by guys such as Kato Kalen, Larry Fortensky, and that kid who got caned in that Asian country for spray-painting cars.

The world won’t be a better place, everyone’s I.Q. will be lower than it is now, and somewhere there will be some dingy broad who thinks that all she has to do to end her marriage is get a fun, new haircut, and a dress that shows off her boobs, and hit the town.

Weekly Recap 11/12-18: Cold Nerd Balls & Jail Bait

Headline News Recap
Nerds everywhere are freezing their unused balls off this very moment waiting for the release of PlayStation III. Earlier in the week, Microsoft released its challenge to Apple’s iPod called Zune. I’m sure the nerds were excited about this as well, but they didn’t feel it was worth icing their scrotum on a hard sidewalk. The next time we are likely to see a bunch of grown men with no lives waiting in line to shell out an assload of cash for something that gives a lot of promises, but only wastes your life, will probably be the lobbyist train courting the candidates in the 2008 elections.

Pakistan proved that it was a lovable and cuddly country again this week by telling women that their word, physical and DNA evidence might be enough to bring rape charges. Under the old Islamic law, a rape victim had to bring four male witnesses to vouch for the rape. If rape was not proven, such as having only one or two male witnesses, the woman could be tried and convicted as an adulterer. I don’t know what books they’ve been reading in Pakistan, but usually when four guys witness a rape, it’s because they’re involved in it, hence the Catch 22. Of course there were mass protests by Islamic clerics, because, damn it, if they can’t stone a rape victim to death for speaking up, then what ever will they do for entertainment on a Friday night? You know, the next time someone tells me that Islam is a peaceful religion, I’m just going to shake my head and walk away in disgust.

Speaking of disgust, the Republicans (also trying to prove they are lovable and cuddly) welcomed Trent Lott back into the leadership fold by making him the Senate Minority Leader. Republicans, don’t you get it? The country doesn’t like your neocon regime! Didn’t that little election thingy last Tuesday tell you something! We want these assholes gone, do you hear us, gone!

Since we are on the subject of assholes, the final Enron executive to be tried was sentenced to 5 ½ years in prison and fined $1.25 million dollars. Richard Causey was Enron’s chief accounting officer, and took part in altering the books, so that he and the other crooks could rob the company blind and leave its hardworking employees broke and pensionless. Hey Causey, enjoy your time in prison, and don’t drop the soap.

Continuing the topic of prison, Jack Abramoff, the Republican Party lobbyist who bribed politicians and traded favors for political influence began serving his six year sentence for fraud. Abramoff, you are an embarrassment to the Jewish people, and all those who hold the idea of democracy close to their hearts. I hope you and Causey have a great time behind bars, and once again, don’t drop the soap.

The Socialist Party in France has backed Segolene Royal as its nominee, which means their victory would make her the first female president. England has had a female Prime Minister, Germany has a woman as its leader, and even many African countries have ladies running their government. Okay, United States, by now you must realize that you don’t need a penis to run a country, so if I don’t see more ladies on the ballot in the next go ‘round, then you are going to force me to seriously think about running for office, and trust me, the last thing you want is a foul-mouthed punk voting on legislation.

In Local News
The 10-day weather forecast has given me the inspiration to complete the final construction of the ark. It’s been raining like a son-of-a-bitch, more so than normal, here in the Seattle area. Roads are flooded, basements are filled with water, and I haven’t been able to wear a decent pair of Mary Jane shoes in nearly a month. I’m all for a little of the wet stuff, but not when it makes my hair look like a Brillo pad. Enough already!

By the way, I’ll be at the Blackest of the Black show on Friday night featuring Danzig and Lacuna Coil at The Fenix. I would encourage anyone in the area to grab some black clothing, $27, a good set of earplugs, and come on out to the show. I’ll be the one in the long, purple jacket standing on my toes, craning my neck, trying to see over the 7’ tall guy who always ends up standing in front of me.

Celebrities Who Pissed Me off This Week
O.J. Simpson is back in the news, because the world didn’t quite get its fill of him during that damn murder trial. He has a book, and there might be a confession, and Fred Goldman is on TV pissed off again, and aren’t we completely sick of this whole story yet? The guy probably killed his wife, and got away with it, because the prosecution was inept and his defense used the race card. The whole situation is an embarrassment to the American justice system, so let’s bury it for good, and move on.

In case you are blind, deaf, and living in a remote cave in the middle of nowhere, Brittney Spears dumped her deadbeat husband, Kevin Federline, and (what a shock) the divorce is getting ugly. She claims to have an “iron clad” pre-nup, but get real, she filed for divorce in Los Angeles where lawyers have made finding loopholes in “iron clad” pre-nups an art form. Brittney, take my advice, pay him off, keep your kids, and move on with your life. No amount of money is worth his sorry ass hanging around.

If you are still living in a cave and happen to still be deaf and blind, then you also don’t know that Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes are getting married in Rome. Who the fuck cares! They had a kid, they aren’t letting press into the wedding, and frankly, the guy in his underwear from Risky Business marrying the chick from Dawson’s Creek just doesn’t do anything for me…accept annoy me.

Quote of the Week
“If this was any other coach…this would be a non-issue.” – Commentator Fran Fraschilla to ESPN about Texas Tech Basketball Coach (and raving lunatic) Bobby Knight slapping one of his players during a game.

I think this might go under the “No Shit” file, but not for the reasons Fran is referring to. He thinks the slapping incident is only an issue, because of Bobby’s unique and “heavy handed” or “controversial” coaching style. This belongs in the “No Shit” file, because Bobby’s coaching “style” is abusive. If he didn’t win games, he would be in jail! I would never let my kid play on a team coached by this man, because I don’t hit my kid and I don’t want anyone else to either. Isn’t it sad that our society is so in love with sports and winning sports games that we let guys like Bobby Knight continue to work with kids, when he clearly can’t keep it in check? Bobby, you’re a fucking lunatic and you don’t belong coaching kids. Tony Robbins has an “unorthodox” coaching style, you are just an asshole.

Have a great Thanksgiving everyone! And to those outside of the U.S., bond with your American brethren, eat a turkey sandwich on Thursday and think about large balloons floating down the streets of New York City.

She May Have Your Eyes, but She Has My Sick Sense of Humor

I stood there watching my toddler stare at the television in hysterics. It wasn’t her amusement that had me in a slight state of worry and shock, it was the reason she was laughing. I had been flipping channels in an attempt to reach her kids’ shows when I clicked to one of the movie channels and ended up pausing on Transporter 2. I was talking to Jeff, and didn’t think Rachael would be interested in anything non-animated, but I was wrong.

Transporter 2 is a European-esque film that is basically Pulp Fiction meets James Bond with a touch of Jackie Chan. In the scene my little version of sugar and spice thought was hilarious, the lead character proceeds to kick the living shit out of five guys at some sort of building re-model worksite. Rachael stood there staring at first, and then laughing when the Transporter’s foot made contact with his victim’s face. She then proceeded to dance around yelling, “yeah, yeah” and throwing fake punches.

The sick, sad thing is that I was somewhat amused by the situation. Jeff, however, didn’t share my feelings, and told me to turn the channel, which triggered a screaming fit from our mini violencemonger.

Since Jeff seemed a bit worried about his little girl’s apparent amusement at scenes of extreme violence, I didn’t have the heart to tell him the extent of which his offspring has inherited her mommy’s sick sense of humor.

I’ve always been able to laugh at the most morbid things, and I’ve never been quite sure why. Perhaps I’m more of a goth than I thought, or slightly more twisted than I want to realize. I’m the girl who was cheering for Freddy Krueger when he was bringing about the deaths of vacant suburb dwellers in A Nightmare on Elm Street. I’m the one who heckles horror and “ultra violent” movies adding potent and humorous sub-dialog lines. A few of my favorites include:

• “Gee, six horny teenagers, a creepy cabin in the woods, and no communication with the outside world, what could possibly go wrong.” – After the opening scene from Friday the 13th, Part II.
• “Besides, I should be the right amount of dead weight you need to get a few of those Eastern European guys with no scripted lines killed in mere seconds.” – Howling II, right after the scrawny, sheepish girl insists on going along with the team of experienced werewolf hunters.
• “And you thought Van Gogh was a sick fuck!” – Right after the scene in Reservoir Dogs where Michael Madsen cuts off that guy’s ear.
• “That is the most creative and disgusting use of a curling iron I’ve ever seen.” – Right after that scene in Sleepaway Camp where the killer…well, if you saw the movie you know already.

In addition to my enjoyment of mocking the gruesome deaths of movie serial killer victims, I really like dark humor and off-color animation. Drawn Together is one of my favorite shows, no matter how sick and wrong it gets. Aqua Teen Hunger Force rules, I mean, where else can you find a character called Meatwad! I still have a healthy appreciation for Ren & Stimpy, and so does my little morbid angel.

One night my munchkin and I giggled away at an episode where Ren and Stimpy decide to dress up as monkeys and live in the zoo. It was disgusting, especially the grooming scene, but we just laughed like there was no tomorrow.

On some level, I should probably be concerned, but I’m not. Maybe if my little one has my sick sense of humor, she will also inherit my ability to examine the 40,000 media messages slammed in our face every day, and realize that they aren’t reality, just a corporate-driven attempt to fool us into buying shit we don’t need or make us feel like we have to go on a diet.

For right now, I’m good with her odd view on what constitutes humor, and hey, as long as she’s not attempting to decapitate the dog, we’re okay.

You Want Me to do What!?!

In the spirit of never being content, I’ve been job hunting. I had one positive interview for a position that I am very qualified for, and all seemed to go well. I gelled with the young gal who served as the human resources screener, and at the end of the interview she told me she would be sending me a couple of tests to complete via email.

I didn’t mind the first test; it was a personality test with a lot of situational and bizarre questions. When it comes to personality tests, I don’t try to think about them too hard, and always answer honestly. Frankly, if I have a personality that conflicts with the rest of the office, the sooner it’s discovered, the better, no matter how much I want the job.

It was the second test I had a problem with. I know the little HR screener was just doing her job, but asking me to take a basic skills computer assessment is a bit offensive. At the bottom of my resume I list quite an impressive array of computer programs I have experience with. One should immediately deduce that if I stand up and say I’m proficient at In Design, Illustrator, and specialized auction software, maybe, just maybe, I have the mandatory brain cell capacity to master the Microsoft Outlook calendar or sorting a list on an Excel spreadsheet.

The problems persisted when I couldn’t open the test. Apparently the online company that administers the test has to have a receiving computer with a very weak firewall that allows a shitload of cookies and pop-ups. Since we get a tremendous amount of junk mail, as well as virus-infected mail from Jeff’s brother (which he claims it’s not him…yeah right), Jeff installed two firewalls and every other anti-virus software on the market. The end result was that I couldn’t log onto the site and take the basic computer assessment.

I tried again today from one of Jeff’s office computers, and still couldn’t get access, and now (how spoiled is this), I don’t even care about the job anymore. I understand that the HR assistant has to have her little boxes of “to do” items checked for each qualified candidate, but I’m to a point in my life where I don’t feel like dealing with one ounce of bureaucratic bullshit.

I was up until 5:00 AM on Friday night designing display boards for an auction. Does any HR assistant have that on their fucking checklist! How can a basic computer skills assessment tell anyone that I’ve worked on nine auctions and have raised a collective $5.5 million? Instead of wasting my time asking me to show you how well I can use the Bold function in Word, why don’t you ask me how I manage to coordinate a team of volunteers after working a 100-hour week, and pull off a splendid party for 400 people that raises money.

Perhaps I have a bad attitude, but due to this detail gone wrong, I’m no longer even interested in the job. I am currently with an organization that is so steeped in bureaucracy that it gives their employees the shaft on a regular basis. Do I really want to work for another “by the book” employer? Maybe I’ve become spoiled by the cool organizations that I’ve worked for that were wonderfully non-conformist and didn’t care what you did, how you did it, or when you did your job, as long as you met your goals and performed.

To be fair, I emailed the little HR gal back, and maybe I’ll hear from her. If I don’t, then I’ll accept it as something that wasn’t meant to be. Besides, I have another job interview next Monday for a position that would be way cooler, and hopefully, they won’t ask me to take a lame-assed basic computer skills assessment.

Adios!

Yesterday was one hell of a glorious day for democracy. People turned out in droves to tell the Bush Regime not to let the door hit them in the ass on the way out. Not only did the other party take the House (and possibly the Senate), but also the South Dakota Nazi-like abortion measure failed, voters in my state did good by the environment by voting in new energy conservation legislation, and this morning, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld resigned.

Despite the joy, there were a few disappointments. Dave Reichert won his congressional seat back, with no help from anyone in my household, of course. Sorry, Dave, but if you want my support, you may have to catch the Northwest’s worst serial killer in history in under a quarter of a century. Four states passed bans on same-sex marriage, and (what a shock) one of them was Idaho. This seems a bit ironic to me having grown up there, since I knew more closeted Nancy boys in the Gem State than I do openly gay guys here in Seattle.

Speaking of Nancy, for the first time in United States history, the Congressional member from San Francisco walked into the House this morning and was greeted with, “Good Morning Madam Speaker.” Score one for the ladies; we officially have one of our own as the Speaker of the House. All I have to say is, it’s about fucking time. We make up nearly 60% of the population and only have one woman sitting on the Supreme Court, so we were owed more representation.

In terms of women ascending to power, this is how it should go down: I want a wonderful lady filling the Vice Presidency in 2008, and before I’m 40, I want to see a woman at the desk of the Oval Office (instead of under it). Good luck Speaker Nancy, you made history, now make us grrls proud!

I want to wish a “Good Riddance, Motherfucker” to the following:

·Katherine Harris, you are the nutty bitch who screwed up the 2000 presidential election and laughed about it, but are you laughing now Kathy? Didn’t think so.

·Rick Santorum, your loss last night made gay men everywhere get up and dance (not that they really need a reason). The only reservation I have about your leaving is that now when the pictures of you wearing a garter and kitten heels come out, it just won’t mean that much. However, I know a power monger like you isn’t gone for good, you’ll be back, and unfortunately will try to oppress people who haven’t done anything to you, because you think Jesus shares your hate-filled agenda. Until then, at least you’ll have plenty of down time to continue thinking about gay men having sex, which you seem to do more than most gay men I know.

·Mike McGavick, the Republican challenger who decided to try to unseat Washington State’s amazing Senator Maria Cantwell. What were you thinking, man? You were the head of an insurance company running for election the same year as the Hurricane Katrina disaster. Didn’t you see those Spike Lee documentaries where all of the Katrina victims talked about getting completely fucked by the insurance companies? Get a clue!

Yesterday, my faith was restored in my country’s ability to be the strong, independent-thinking nation I knew it was. The neocons spent six long years playing the fear card, but yesterday, Americans everywhere stood up, became fearless, and told those thieving bastards to fuck off giving them the most fitting of punishments.

The spanking was so harsh that today, other than Rummy’s resignation, the first George Bush sent a team of his friends, including James Baker, to the White House to bail out his idiot son, yet again. Although I don’t know how much the Democrats can do to dig us out of this horrible hole left by six years of unchecked, corrupt power; at least they have a chance to try.

Just in Time for the Election

Saddam Hussein was sentenced to die by hanging, and what a shock, it came the weekend before the mid-term elections. Although this was long overdue, because Saddam is quite the evil bastard, the timing of his sentence was impeccable. While I’m happy to see this brutal man get what’s coming to him, before anyone runs out into the monster truck rally to wave the American flag, we need to put this situation into perspective.

In order to reach the verdict of death by hanging, the United States, along with other democracy-observing world allies, had to start a war with a country that never had the means to become a viable threat to anyone. Our government, including our president, falsified information, lied to the United Nations and the American people, and squandered the budget surplus to depose a leader who was nothing more than a trash-talking asshole. 2,800 American troops have been killed, tens of thousands of young American troops have sustained life-altering injuries (i.e. amputated limbs, injuries sustained to major organs, severe burns, traumatic brain injuries, extreme mental health damage, etc.), and it is estimated that over 100,000 Iraqi civilians have died. Don’t even get me started on the economic clusterfuck that has resulted from this war. Little Rachael’s grandchildren will be paying for Resident Bush’s family vendetta, and that pisses me off to no end.

All of this leads up to the election this Tuesday. I want everyone to keep this so-called victory over the tyranny of Saddam in perspective. There are a lot of assholes in this world who do not serve the best interest of their people and insist on operating with G-d-like powers. Unfortunately, a few of them are running our country.

When the 2000 election happened, I was not cool with the end result. The Electoral College made sense back in the day when most of the country was rural, and not every citizen could make it to the polls. In the golden age of the internet, cellphones, PDAs, and information access, it seems a little bizarre that we should have to rely on a group of politicians to decide our elections. Despite the questionable rise to power, I was willing to let the Grand Ol’ Party have their victory. My thought was, Okay GOP, you have absolute power, now go out and do all of the glorious things that you always said you wanted to do, but couldn’t, because you had the Democrats opposing you.

In just six short years, they have fucked up the prosperous economy, violated the Constitution, shit on the Bill of Rights, made the majority of the world hate us, started an expensive and illegal war, and made Teddy Kennedy and Al Sharpton look relevant and sane. Basically, they were hired to do a job and failed miserably, therefore the only thing to do at this point is to fire them, and hire a group that is far more competent to begin digging us out of this enormous hole.

Not that I’m a huge fan of the Democrats. They have been pussies during this whole process apologizing for every little remark that gains an ounce of controversy. I’m not under the delusion that they can solve all of the problems, but at this point, we are left with the lesser of two evils. The Republicans in power are not my stepfather’s GOP. My stepfather’s GOP would have never racked up an enormous debt, expanded the government to a colossal size, and invaded the privacy of citizens the way this government has. My stepfather’s GOP was never into telling a woman what to do with her body, because that should be between her, her family, and her G-d, and would not have sent soldiers to die needlessly over a family vendetta and corporate profits.

I have already cast my ballot via absentee, but before I jump off my soapbox, I want to give one shout out to the ladies to please go out and vote. You are your sister’s keeper, whether you like it or not, and your sisters have not been doing all that well.

Every week the bodies of nearly 60 women are found on the streets of Baghdad and other Iraqi cities as a result of the civil was between the Sunnis and Shiites and the emergence of radical Islamic mullahs who are now enforcing Sharia Law. Sharia Law is condoned by the new Iraqi constitution, which was written, largely, by our American government. Their constitution also provides corporate tax shelters that would blow your mind. It makes Swiss Bank accounts and offshore St. Bart’s banking transactions look tame.

This government has pumped millions of dollars into abstinence education for adults up to age 29, while cutting welfare benefits to struggling families, student loans for college and trade schools, funding for community and veterans hospitals, and tax relief for working adults with children. However, they have given huge tax breaks to anyone raking in over a million per year, so no matter where their religious affiliations fall, their loyalty is to one G-d only, and it’s green, not Jesus.

I’m not telling you who to vote for on Tuesday, but I am telling you to think before you punch your ballot. Put a twist on the old Reagan-era question, and ask yourself, “Is your country better off now than it was six years ago?”

Weekly Recap 10/29-11/4: Stupid Jokes & Scary Appetites

Headline News Recap
The mainstream (and so-called liberal) media’s panties were all in a bunch this week over a botched joke former presidential candidate, John Kerry, made that loosely insinuated that people serving in the military were from the uneducated segment of American society. Of course the neocons jumped all over this like a closeted Republican congressman with a hard-on and an underage page’s email address, and have been talking about it non-stop. What I want to know is, does anyone other than Fox News and neocon media give a fuck, because I don’t. For starters, 103 American soldiers died in Iraq last month, and we are still pissing billions away on this war. The economy is heading for a bad patch, because the real estate bubble is bursting everywhere, which means when all of the folks who bought houses at those great 5-1 and 7-1 arm interest rates are going to be up shit’s creek when their adjustable interest rate goes up. In about 18-20 months it will be foreclosure city, and all the media can talk about is a senator’s lame ass joke. Kerry isn’t even up for re-election!

This week Takeru Kobayashi took home his third straight championship title in the Krystal hamburger eating contest by downing 97 burgers in 8 minutes. This is the same little Japanese man who wins the Nathan’s hot eating contest every year. Does anyone else find this disturbing? Only in America could we come up with the sport of competitive eating! By the way, I’m not surprised it is an Asian man who is the champ. Sure, with their thin figures, size 4 butts, and quiet nature, they look unassuming, but I have many Asian friends and those people can eat. Don’t be fooled by their size, especially when it comes to hot dogs and sugar-free cake.

Evangelical Christian leader, Ted Haggard, admitted today that some of the claims made by a male prostitute who claimed he had an affair with Haggard were true. Aaaaaahhhh. I love the smell of hypocrites burning at the stake in the morning. This group of bastards was so ruthless and cut-throat in condemning homosexuals in the last election, and using blatant hatred to keep their hold on power, that this is a very fitting end to them. A rabbi once told me that G-d doesn’t directly interfere with the day-to-day conflicts of man, because everything has a way of working out in the end.

The New York Times published an article claiming that scientists have discovered that calorie-restrictive diets will slow the aging process. I can’t believe that someone who sits on their ass for 12 hours eating McDonalds and playing X-box will age (i.e. die) quicker than the person who consumes veggies and walks their dog daily. You know, maybe scientists should think of focusing on curing something rather than confirming shit we already know.

Whole Foods, the grocery chain that specializes in organic and health conscious food for rich socialites, saw its stock tumble this week as people finally wised up to the fact that they were paying $10 for organic grapes that are $6 less per pound than the organic grapes at Safeway, and had no difference in taste whatsoever.

The U.K. hired former Vice President, Al Gore, to be their environmental advisor this week. Kudos for England, and a big bitchslap to the U.S. Here we have a homegrown expert who can’t even offer his wealth of knowledge to his own country, because Dark Oil Overlord Cheney, and his sidekick The Saudi-loving Kid Bush run it.

In Local News
If the King County Elections Board wasn’t so incompetent I would suggest they come up with a way to flag any household that votes via absentee ballot. In the last week, I have received at least five trees worth of political mailers. I voted two weeks ago via absentee ballot, so now I’m just left to deal with more junk mail than any human should have to bear. As someone who recycles, and is conscious of environmental issues, I don’t like political candidates wasting the earth’s resources to accuse one another of bad shit that they probably didn’t do. Stop sending me crap or include an extra $7, so that I can pay my waste disposal service for the extra trash can I’m going to need this month.

How screwed up is this: I’ve been eating at least three Milky Way candy “bites” and one Hershey’s fun size bar each day, and I’ve lost weight. What the fuck!

Attention Whores Behaving Badly This Week
Brittney Spears’ husband Kevin Federline’s big concert was cancelled due to lack of interest. Later in the week he wrote a 1,500-word article for a major paper boo-hooing the fact that people don’t like him. Why can’t these people just go away! She’s well past her prime, and his presence adds nothing to society as a whole. Go away! Brittney, can’t you just fade into obscurity like a normal flash in the pan, resurrecting yourself only for the mandatory Playboy photo shoot?

Country singer and Nicole Kidman hubby, Keith Urban, went into rehab this week. I don’t care; he’s still nice to look at.

Actors Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillippe called it quits on their marriage this week. Although they’ve promised to keep divorce proceedings simple and civil for the sake of their children; that’s not likely to happen, right Sir Paul.

Sacha Baron Cohen’s character Borat seems to be pissing off someone new on a daily basis. The movie opens in most cities this week, and I can’t wait to see it. Any Jewish guy who can play a rapper wannabe and a Kazakhstani television reporter with a moustache overdose to complete perfection is well worth my two hours and $10. L’Chaim!

Quote of the Week
“Paula, like women everywhere, had come to hate [Tom Cruise].” – Viacom Chief, Sumner Redstone in Vanity Fair magazine on how his wife, Paula, might have influenced his decision to fire Tom Cruise.

I’m a woman, and I don’t hate Tom Cruise. I think he’s nutty as a bag of granola, but he’s just an actor, and as of today, one of the heads of United Artists studios. My point is that if I don’t like something that Tom does, I won’t see it, and it really won’t affect my daily life, as opposed to having lunatic lawmakers who can do way more damage than wasting two hours of our time on Mission: Impossible III.

Halloween in Suburbia

When I was a kid, Halloween was my favorite holiday. Between dressing up like my favorite superhero, Wonder Woman (no shock there), the cheesy horror flicks, and the ungodly amounts of candy, it was the type of holiday that made the Fall season worthwhile. Now that I’m a grown up and a parent, I still love Halloween, but I have a bit of a different spin on the spooky holiday.

Last Halloween Rachael was still just a little thing. She went to a few houses for trick or treat, but with the cold, rainy weather and her inability to understand the concept behind Halloween, she wasn’t really into it. This year was a different story. We began priming her a couple of weeks ago by talking up the whole ‘say “trick or treat” and they give you candy” thing, and encouraging her to take an interest in recycling her costume from last year. It still fit, and she didn’t wear it very long, so why spend the money on a new one. By last night, Miss Rachael was dressed as a little piggy and ready to go.

I let Jeff take her around the neighborhood for a couple of reasons; first off, I loathe cold weather, and last night it peaked at 32 degrees, and secondly, I had a great fear of what might happen if no one was at our house to hand out candy. Our neighborhood is filled with enough of a little bastard element that if we failed to produce candy, we would most likely find the pumpkins I worked so hard carving, smashed to pieces in our driveway.

The biggest danger, of course, was that I was manning the candy bowl. I am a notorious sweet tooth and a chocoholic; so having to handle bite-sized candy bars for two hours was a recipe for disaster. However, I did learn something quite valuable. It is not possible for a 33-year-old woman to overdose on chocolate. There you go, my contribution to science for the year.

I also realized that cheap bastards run all the candy companies. When I was a kid, the “fun size” Halloween candy bars were half the size of normal candy bars, now bunny turds are bigger than what passes as a “bite”. Not that I should be consuming as much chocolate as I did last night, but I do feel like the 5 lb. bag should be worth the money.

Kids seem to be turning into smartasses earlier these days. Last night I encountered several kids from the ages of 7-10 years old who came to my door, said “trick or treat”, then followed it with some kind of smartass remark. Maybe they are getting on the computer earlier in life, or all of the growth hormone in the meat has made them more advanced, but I didn’t have smartass skills or a grasp of sarcastic humor until I was at least 12 years old. Most of the comments weren’t bad, just annoying.

It was nice to see that all of the kids dressed as Paris Hilton were boys. At one point, four 9 year old boys came to my house dressed in identical hot pink shirts, miniskirts, blonde wigs, and carrying around stuffed little dogs. I tried to figure out who they were and asked stupidly if they were dressed as Cindy Brady. One boy looked at me with the normal reply of “Who is Cindy Brady?” While the other laughed and said, “We’re Paris Hilton.” The last boy just looked at me as if to say, Old woman, it was nice of you to try and make small talk, but we don’t come from your era, so just make with the candy and wish us a ‘Happy Halloween’.

The trick or treaters dried up earlier than expected leaving us with way too much leftover candy. Thankfully, Rachael’s 3rd birthday is just around the corner and we have a piñata, so I won’t end up eating it all after a bad weekly weigh-in. I ended the night with a workout, because after you’ve consumed too many fun sized bars to count, you’d better find away to get your sick-stomached ass on that elliptical machine.

For the record, I did dress up, but not as Wonder Woman. To keep the spirit of Halloween alive, I pulled the inflatable pumpkin costume out of the back of a closet, and wore it for a couple of hours. I purchased it the year I was pregnant with Rachael, and it was perfect. It gave me a ton of room to move around in, and was inflated by a little battery-operated fan that blew cool air up my back, which was perfect for a pregnant woman with a 100-degree body temperature. This year, however, it just made me cold.

Next year, perhaps, I’ll invest in a new costume. Rachael will be too big to wear her piggy outfit, and since she is a staunch individualist with a tendency towards temper tantrums, it is highly unlikely that Jeff and I will have any influence over her costume choice. Maybe, I’ll go for the Wonder Woman again, but that all depends on whether I can stay on the elliptical and away from the fun size bars.

Frankenstein Nation

When I was growing up we spoke in hushed tones about my Grammy’s facelift. Upon completion of every whispered conversation my mother and I had about it, she would always end with the threat that I would be skinned within an inch of my life if I ever said anything about it in front of Grammy. My, oh my, how the world has changed.

Perhaps I’m sounding like an old fart, but I remember the day when celebrities were ashamed about their plastic surgeries and went to great lengths to hide public knowledge of their procedures. There used to be an air of mystery to the ol’ nip/tuck, and regular, average joe type of folks never thought twice about having anything done, because it was too expensive or it was the type of thing that was only done in Hollywood or New York City. The crazy thing is that these days I speak of were less than 20 years ago!

If someone would have cornered me in the hallways of junior high and told me that instead of Miami Vice, people in 20 years would be watching real women having nose jobs, facelifts, and tummy tucks on television, I would have been stunned out of my big hair and acid-washed jeans. What I’m left trying to figure out at this point is how we, as a society, in less than 20 years became so obsessed with our appearance that we are willing to undergo Spanish Inquisition-style tortures just to achieve an ideal.

First off, I don’t want to generalize. There is a world of difference between a 50-something woman who has a facelift, because she was ill informed about the dangers of sunbathing as a teenager and was left with a prematurely aged face as opposed to a 20-something woman who is working an entry-level job, and maxes out her credit cards to pay for an eyelash transplant (oh yes, this is an actual procedure).

I’ve heard arguments for and against the plastic surgery craze. Of course, the against looks at the issue as an inherently sexist one arguing that women have had an unrealistic image of beauty pounded into their heads for so long that body modification is merely the next step in the evolution of trying to live up to that poisoning image. This makes sense, and I do believe there is something to it, but the side that is for plastic surgery has their own weigh in. They reason that women finally have a way to fix what they don’t like about themselves, and the fact that they are doing it means that they have become financially viable enough to create an industry dedicated to them. While I’m happy that women have enough money and power to influence a segment of the economy; I just wish it wasn’t in a field that catered to making them pretty.

I also get a bit skeptical at an industry that claims to be driven by female consumers, yet allows some women to have multiple surgeries to the point where a doctor’s loyalty to the Hippocratic Oath comes into question. Also, I would argue that some of the procedures don’t seem very female driven such as the surgery that allows women to reconstruct their vaginas, so it will have a tighter teenage look, or the whole inflate-boob thing.

I must confess that I have personally taken an interest in possibly having a breast lift after I’m finished having children, because none of those wonderful, mommy-to-be instruction books ever warned me about the devastating effects childbearing would have on my tits! However, if I do opt to fix my boobs, they will remain the same size. I have seen those inflate-boob women, and they just look silly (that’s right Pamela Anderson Lee Rock Whatever; your boobs will embarrass your kids in about 10 years). How could a teenager ever feel cool about having their parents chaperone a dance when mom looks like she’s ready to strip at The Lusty Lady on “Over 40, but Still Fabulous” night.

If a woman with the means to do it wants to have a little something done here or there, more power to her, but I fear that the vast majority of women going under the knife are doing it, because they feel inadequate. They believe that what they have isn’t acceptable to the greater society, and that by doing a surgery, their whole life will be transformed. This sets them up with an unrealistic expectation, which for some leads to multiple surgeries, an assload of debt, and a person who still feels bad about who she is.

I’m not sure exactly what has changed from 20 years ago, but somewhere along the line as women were gaining higher professional positions, more wealth, better opportunities for advancement, and a collective voice, that annoying group of jocks who told them they weren’t pretty in high school reared their ugly heads via negative societal influence and made successful women feel bad about not being prom queen. The result has been a thriving plastic surgery industry where a nip and tuck might make you look younger, but will never make you feel better.

Weekly Recap 10/22-28: Rush to Judgment & Dirty Ads

Headline News Recap
Rush Limbaugh proved, once again, that he was nothing more than a human piece of garbage by lashing out at beloved actor, Michael J. Fox. Mike recently filmed an ad in support of Missouri candidate Clair McHaskill, and her advocacy of stem cell research. In the ad, Michael J. appears fully medicated, yet still suffering the tremors and spasms, while talking about how stem cell research could really help people afflicted with Parkinson’s. After the ad appeared, Rush accused Mike of acting, purposely not taking his medication, as well as using his disease to stump for Democrats. To absorb this whole scenario, I feel it is only fair to give the two men a healthy comparison.

·Michael J. Fox – Happily married to his wife, Tracy, for nearly two decades, father of four children.
·Rush Limbaugh – Currently in his fourth marriage, no kids, but constantly criticizes people who are “anti-family values.”
·Michael J. Fox – Through his extensive acting career gave us lovable characters such as Alex Keaton, Marty McFly, and Mike from his last show, Spin City.
·Rush Limbaugh – Gave us negative, hateful talk radio and ushered in an era where telling blatant lies on-air to influence public opinion sunk politics to a frightening new low.
·Michael J. Fox – Currently takes a cocktail of medication prescribed by doctors to reduce the uncontrollable muscle spasms caused by Parkinson’s disease.
·Rush Limbaugh – Regularly hit up his Hispanic housekeeper to score OxyContin for him, while publicly criticizing drug addicts as a detriment to society on his daily radio program.

Once again, Rush is a piece of shit, and I really hope there is some new research and technology out there that Michael J. can utilize soon or that guy isn’t going to make it to 50.

White House mouthpiece Tony Snow came out back peddling in a fervor claiming that Resident Bush doesn’t use the term, “stay the course”. Hmmm…you would think that Tony Snow, having worked in the media all these years, would be aware of these new fangled thingamajiggers called cameras, and that some of these fancier cameras can record sound and movement as well as taking pretty pictures. Nice try, Tony, but your boy Bushy is to “stay the course” as peanut butter is to jelly.

Scientists have discovered the cause of why champagne is bubbly, and I have discovered that sometimes people with big college degrees and buttloads of research money have way too much time on their hands.

Television campaign ads sunk to a new low this week in the congressional race in Tennessee between Republican Bob Corker and Democrat Harold Ford, Jr. The ad features a blonde bimbo type talking about how she met Ford in the Playboy mansion or some weird crap like that, anyways the NAACP went apeshit when they saw it claiming that, because Ford is black, it plays on the whole racist fear of black men dominating white women. Normally, when someone cries about someone else not being politically correct I think they are a bunch of whiners, but I saw the ad, and it was totally racist, and the Republican National Committee can talk until they are blue in the face, but they meant every racist innuendo that was suggested in this ad. The RNC says they had black people look at the ad prior to it airing to let them know if it was racist, but c’mon guys, Condoleezza would give the thumbs up to anything to keep her power.

The mystery over how the crap got into the lettuce and spinach may be over. It was discovered that wild pigs have been the cause of the E.coli bacteria contamination of spinach and lettuce crops in California. My recommendation is to sharpen a stick at both ends, and send Jack after him (i.e. obscure Lord of the Flies reference).

In Local News
I’m still a touch exhausted from attending the Placebo show last night (Thursday night) at The Showbox. They were opening for some shitty, new band that I didn’t stick around for. Placebo was fantastic, and most likely, if you are from the U.K., you know who they are. Placebo was one of the headliners of Bob Geldof’s Live 8 concert series, because they are that big in England and Europe. Over here, no one really knows them, so I’ll kindly direct my fellow Americans to check them out at www.placeboworld.co.uk. They rock!

Things I Don’t Give a Fuck About This Week
I don’t give a fuck about Madonna’s adopted Malawian son. If the woman wants a baby from Africa and went through the whole paperwork and courts bullshit, then more power to her. They say that the adoption went through quickly, because she’s a celebrity. Of course it did, because that’s what happens when you have money, fame, and power. If Michael Jackson can be the legal father of two blonde-haired, blue-eyed kids, and one black one for the whole image thing, then Madonna should be left alone.

I don’t give a fuck about Kevin Federline’s latest acting role, and while I’m on the subject, why does anyone still give a flying fuck what Brittney Spears does, says, or looks like. She and her trailer trash hubby and her cock tease act are so over.

I don’t give a fuck about Snoop Dogg getting arrested for weapons and drug possession. He’s Snoop Dogg; of course he’s packing a gun and has pot on him at all times, he’s Snoop Dogg. What did you think you were going to find a box of tic tacs and some hand lotion?

Quote of the Week
“We believe there has been a misunderstanding.” – Spokeswoman for Naomi Campbell after she was arrested for attacking her drug counselor making this incident her eighth arrest for assault-related charges. There is no misunderstanding here; Naomi is one crazy bitch. She may look pretty, but this chick has serious issues. Not only should she be locked up for a while, but she is in serious need of anger management training. The world may be her oyster now, but in 20 years she will just be old, violent, and crazy, and that’s never a good combination just ask Courtney Love.

Is There Anything They Won't Make Into a Reality Show?

I just saw a commercial on TV for a new reality show called Intervention. Each week this show will highlight someone who has ruined their life with drugs and alcohol, and how their family and friends gather for an intervention right before they haul the intoxicated bastard off to rehab. Enough Already!!!

I will be the first to admit that I am a documentary junkie. I've always believed that real life is way more fascinating and stranger than fiction, but there's a world of difference between watching the woman with the 200 lb. tumor for a couple of hours where you witness her go from start to finish with her ordeal, as opposed to week after week of her drudging around with this huge thing attached to her body. A documentary has a beginning, an end, and a bit of shock value, after all, how does one end up with a 200 lb. tumor in the first place. However, reality shows just seem to drone on and on making big deals out of the littlest things.

Survivor was an interesting experiment, but I was never into it. If I wanted to watch a bunch of oddball people struggle to get away from a shithole, I'd move back to my hick town in Idaho. Jeff and I did get into The Apprentice for the first couple of seasons, because Jeff was going to business school, and I was at home with a newborn, which meant I had to live vicariously through others. It was an okay show until Donald Trump's ego took over, and the producers decided to focus more on the catfights and negativity turning it into every other reality show on the tube.

Now, the television has gone wacky with the sheer volume of reality television, and I'm convinced that there isn't anything they won't make into a reality show. Case in point, Little People Big World; a midget couple has three normal sized kids, one little person kid, they own a farm, run a business, go on vacation, and do the same day-to-day crap that everyone else does, but because they are midgets their lives are supposed to be more interesting? This show is a bit unsettling for me, because it harkens back to the P.T. Barnum/circus freak show days. I understand that this family's motivation is to increase awareness that people with dwarfism are just like everyone else, but there is something that just seems so wrong about it. Then again, it could be that I'm only 4'11", so I'm unable to appreciate the lives of short people as much as someone who is a more normal height, but I don't think so.

Most of the reality shows seem to boil down to fighting, whether it's two skanks fighting over Flavor Flav (why? no, seriously, why!), two guys fighting over the bachelorette, a person of size fighting over their addiction to donuts, or that asshole on The Amazing Race who spent every challenge yelling at his wife. How is this interesting? If I wanted to see a guy yell at his wife for an hour, I would show my husband the balance on my personal Visa statement.

Just when you think that perhaps the reality show craze is over, along comes a new batch of Andy Warhol disciples who want their 15 minutes no matter how much of an ass they look like on TV. The new crop includes a show called Monastery where it appears that five criminals are put into a group of monks. Is this a good idea? I'm not sure what the legal ramifications are when a monk gets beaten bloody with a sock full of batteries, but I guess we'll find out by episode three. Gene Simmons of Kiss has a show called Family Jewels that shows the day-to-day interactions of his common law wife and two kids. Although it's slightly more interesting due to Gene's celebrity status, I don't know if I ever wanted to have the mental picture of a 50-something, Jewish rock star bunking down to bed in footy pajamas.

I do find some reality television appropriate such as the home improvement shows on The Learning Channel, or the show about how gay people came out to their family on the LOGO channel, or even VH-1's Where Are They Now, because in the back of my mind I did always wonder what happened to the guy with the freaky hair from Flock of Seagulls. However, it seems these days that television executives have gotten lazy and will throw anything on the screen just to see if it sticks.

At this point, I should have hope. Reality TV has hit a low, and it appears to be on the way out, but that was the dream I had three years ago, and I'm still bombarded with commercials for the new season of America's Next Top Model. Maybe we just have to admit we are godless voyeurs, and wait for the inevitable day when one of the contestants from Survivor ends up getting eaten by a Gila monster. The family will sue for millions, and then this whole reality TV trend will be over. Until then, I'll focus on the most depraved, outrageous, disturbing reality show on the air, CNN's Headline News.

Size, Schmize

At what point did strong, confident women who successfully manage careers, households, families, and active personal lives; women with the world at their feet, sell themselves short over a little number on a random piece of fabric?

For the past couple of weeks there has been a big ruckus over Madrid’s and London’s Fashion Weeks banning models that more closely resemble greyhounds and whippets rather than real ladies who like stylish clothing. By the way, hats off to the mayors of these cities, because today’s catwalk models look really, really bad. I’m not one of those jealous chicks who have a bad word to say about every woman with an ass smaller than mine, if I was, I would be one miserable girl, but the extreme thinness of this latest batch of runway models is downright disturbing. Did I miss some sort of memo declaring that the latest look should be less Heidi Klum and more Auschwitz survivor?

The crazy thing about this whole thin/fat/small size/large size craze is that women have allowed themselves to become controlled by a number on the inside of their garments. Countless times when I’ve been shopping I’ve overheard remarks like, ‘I can’t believe I’m a 12, I used to be a 10, now I want to kill myself’ or ‘If I can’t fit into this size 6, then I don’t want to go on living.’ These are comments from grown women in their 30s who are out shopping with friends at upscale department stores, yet the fact that they have a friend to be with or money to spend on clothing pales in comparison to the joy that will come to them if they are able to adhere to the number on the fabric.

Don’t think for a moment that this size issue has missed the fashion industry. I read an article a few days ago where the fashion industry has readily admitted to screwing with women’s clothing sizes. They have acknowledged that as women get larger in America, they have been expanding the definition of what a size means. They play it off like they do it so that women will feel good about themselves, yet this same article talked about a new size that the fashion world has come up with; Size 00. For all of you who stay up at night worried that Nicole Ritchie is no longer able to stuff her boney bod into a Size 0, along comes Size 00 to remedy the problem, and set a whole new standard for adolescent girls and Hollywood actresses to starve themselves down to.

I may not be a brilliant woman or have all of the answers, but I’ve come up with my own way of giving the finger to the fashion industry and their issue of sizing. When I go to a store and find a garment that I like, I take a size 10, 12, and 14 into the dressing room. Most of the time, I’m a size 12, but depending on the cut of the garment, the fabric, and how the thing looks on me, I could be as little as a size 10 or as large as a size 14, and I could care less. If the outfit looks good, and I don’t have to pay retail, then I will walk out with my size 12 slacks, a size 10 shirt, a size 14 jacket, and be a happy girl. My suggestion to other women is that you do the same, and start teaching this method to your daughters ASAP!

As I said before, I don’t have all of the answers and solutions, but this method of ‘the best of three’ has worked for me for quite sometime. It has zero effect on my self-esteem and allows me to have positive shopping experiences. As an additional benefit, I don’t have to wish death on myself if all of my clothes aren’t that magic size 10 as would the women I overhear while I’m shopping.

Women have been held to an unrealistic standard for decades in terms of size, and today, it seems that the extreme of what we should look like, and what we really are, are on the opposite ends of mall. Despite the best efforts by London and Madrid requiring that all runway models have a normal Body Mass Index, according to the BMI charts a woman who is 5’9” only has to weigh 125 lbs. to be considered “normal.” The average woman in the U.S. is 5’7” and weighs 160 lbs. The fashion industry and mass marketing has set us up for dramatic and tragic failure and we have fallen for it.

Much like the ‘girl-next-door’ celebrity that turns out to be a coke whore, and confesses tearfully on Oprah, there is a way to battle back. Us gals have to adopt the ‘best of three’ method in the dressing room, and the ‘see if I give a rat’s ass’ view to size and enjoy our physical quirks. Somewhere in between hippo and Holocaust is a range of weights, heights, body types, and figures along with clothing to fit them, and once we become less dependant on the little number on the random piece of fabric, we will actually be able to spend the rest of our lives enjoying who we are, which is the kind of happiness the fashion industry will never market to us.

Weekly Recap 10/15-21: CBGB R.I.P. & So Long Habeas Corpus

Headline News Recap
CBGB, the legendary club that nurtured the American punk movement, closed on Sunday night after years of battling property owners over the lease. Patti Smith took the stage to give a final performance paying tribute to groups like Ramones, Voidoids, Talking Heads, and New York Dolls. Never fear punks, the new CBGB will soon open in Las Vegas, and with any luck, pop culture poser addicts like Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, and Tara Reid will show up just to front like they are down with the punk scene. Therefore, I would like to invite all of my fellow Vegas punks out to the commercialized, corporate fucking shill that is supposed to be the new CBGB (as if), and ask that they give it a real breaking in the way they did in the Bowery. Extra points for those who bring back that special aroma of piss and vomit to the new CBGB bathrooms.

Just when you thought your Habeas Corpus was safe, along comes Resident Bush to, yet again, wipe his ass with the Constitution and write into law legislation that condones torture, while at the same time, efficiently doing away with due process. Under the Regime's new rules, people can be grabbed right off the streets of their little town here in the States, thrown in jail for an indefinite amount of time with no opportunity to legally challenge their detention, be convicted and put to death based on coerced testimony. They are calling it the Military Commissions Act, but I think a better name would be the Gestapo Act or the Gulag Act or maybe, the Khmer Rouge Death Camp Act. This act is so bad that even religious groups showed up to protest.

Enron bastard, Ken Lay, who was convicted of defrauding his company of millions, then died before he could begin serving his sentence, had his conviction erased this week. What the fuck! This guy deserves to be publicly shamed for the rest of history. While he was spending millions and with full knowledge, running Enron into the ground, good people were working hard and relying on company pensions to support them in their retirement. Now that his conviction is erased, the government cannot go after millions he had in assets and investments to re-pay the workers. You got to love those compassionate conservatives hard at work for the American people (the American people that make up the top ten percent of the wealth, that is).

I'm not sure what humanity did to piss off the stingrays, but we'd better make amends and fast! They sent us a big warning by offing the crazy and lovable Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin, but we didn't listen, and now, much like the Iraqis who were supposed to love us, the stingrays have gone on the offensive. On Thursday, a stingray jumped into the boat of a Florida man and stabbed him in the chest. The 81-year-old man was enjoying a little boat trip with his granddaughter and her friend when the attack happened, and he's now in critical condition. I'm not sure what the hell is going on, but Al Gore's movie never warned us about this side effect of global warming. We'd better make right by these fish fast, because they're pissed and they're coming for us.

In Local News
I learned the true definition of irony this week in a phone conversation with my friend. He is an IT specialist who has worked like a dog for his company for the past several years. It wasn’t unusual for him to be on call, and actually receive calls at all hours, nor was it unusual for him to be shipped off to New Jersey for long and boring training sessions, so that he could come back and train others at his company. Here’s the kicker: my friend is Indian (that’s right, an Indian guy who specializes in IT, how rare). Anyways, he just got laid off, because they outsourced his job to India! It’s a good thing he has hated his job for the past two years, and got an excellent severance package, or my “In Local News” might have read something like: ‘One of my good friends, who happens to be Indian, went ape shit this week when they outsourced his job to India, and proceeded to spike the “going away party” cupcakes with that curry sauce his wife makes causing third-degree burns to most of his co-workers.’ After this incident I can’t quite tell if irony or karma is the greater bitch.

Attention Whores Behaving Badly
Details of the divorce between Heather Mills McCartney and Sir Paul McCartney accidentally leaked to the tabloids this week (yeah, accidentally my ass). In Heather’s complaint she said that Sir Paul would get stoned and become abusive (hard to believe from a guy who only smokes pot), was callous about her amputated leg, and even stabbed her with the broken end of a wine glass. I find this a little far-fetched given his multi-decade marriage to Linda, who was one tough cookie in her own right and wouldn’t have hesitated to drop kick him if he started acting like a dick. Heather, here is a free Psych 101 lesson, guys don’t just become violent assholes overnight, they actually develop a pattern of abusive behavior over the course of several relationships. Prior to Linda there was Elizabeth Asher, who has said positive things about her affair with Sir Paul, so either both those gals are lying, or you are really going after some serious cash. In the end, Ms. Mills McCartney might end up with some money, but you don’t fight a music legend on his own soil without being the most hated woman on the block.

Casino mogul, Steve Wynn, accidentally put his elbow through an original painting by Picasso valued at $139 million. I can only venture to guess that someone is hating life right now. As if Steve didn’t feel bad enough about the blunder, every pretentious art fag within a continent had to sound off on TV about what a tragedy this was, so much so, you would have thought Steve had joined Al Qaeda or something. Back off assholes! The guy just screwed up an expensive work of art, and he’s Jewish, so he’s probably been walking around in a delusional fog wearing his pajama bottoms for two days while crying profusely and mumbling ‘139 million, oh G-d, 139 million’. I know that’s what my Jewish guy would be doing in the same situation.

Quote of the Week
"I think I'd just commit suicide." - Sen. John McCain on his response to a Democratic sweep in the upcoming elections. I used to like this guy, but after watching lay down and spread like a cheap whore for the Bush Regime, all I can say is, "Hey Johnny, when you cut, don't go horizontal from one side of the wrist to the other, go vertical beginning from the base of the hand towards the inside of your elbow, and don't forget to really make it deep." You’ll be doing everyone a favor, schmuck.

Bratz and Barbies and Princesses, Oh My!

I should have known with all of the godless marketing that exists Rachael would inevitably end up face-to-face with the “pretty” dolls. Barbies all lined up in a row, smiling perfectly from their bright pink boxes; Snow White, Cinderella, Princess Jasmine in a Charlie’s Angels-like trio with smiley faces printed on toddler-sized dress up clothes; skanky Bratz in their gangsta bitch glam snaring from the top of a mini-makeup kit. Rachael moved back and forth in a sideways pace from one end of the toy isle to the other.

“Ooooohhh Mommy! Day are soooo pwetty.”

I used to hate Barbie, and vowed to never buy her if I had a little girl. I believed she gave girls an unrealistic picture and narrow definition of what beauty was. In Barbie’s world, if you weren’t thin, blonde, and had colossal, plastic boobs, then you were merely a Skipper or a Kit follow up character. This idea of what constitutes gorgeous might be the standard in L.A., but I wanted my girl to have a scope of beauty that included curves, shades of dark hair, ethnicity, non-button noses, and a range of boob sizes, real boobs, that is.

Just when I thought Barbie was the most disastrous thing to hit the burgeoning self-esteem of young girls along came Bratz. I just about shit the first time I went through the toy isle as a pregnant woman and came across these things. Bratz make Barbie look like wholesome fun. I know they tried to market them as a punk-like alternative to Barbie, but as a punk I can proudly say that I would never buy my daughter a doll that conveyed that image. Instead of Barbie’s dream house, the Bratz hang out on a street corner complete with seedy, spray-painted, brick wall and a standing street light. Perhaps the message to girls is that if you don’t end up a trophy bride in a dream house like Barbie, you can sell your ass to a john or hustle drugs on the street corner like the Bratz. What the fuck!

One would think that after browsing through Barbies and skidding past Bratz, one would be able to take refuge in the sweet world of the Disney princesses, but not I. Unfortunately, having a Cultural Studies and media background doesn’t allow a person like me to just go with the flow and accept elements of popular culture for face value. I have to scrutinize and keep a check on the big picture, and princesses are not part of my plan.

I have never really accepted the whole Cinderella story even when I was a girl. My mother would tell the story about Cindy getting her prince then forgiving her stepmother and stepsisters, and something in my head would wonder why the hell she did. Here was a girl who was mentally abused by her stepfamily, then is just supposed to forgive them and live this charmed life. By the time I was 11, I had created an alternative ending where Cinderella ended up suing her stepmother for back wages, taking an extended engagement with the prince just to make sure she wasn’t marrying the first guy who asked her out, started her own cleaning solutions business, and worked with the Fairy Godmother to help other girls in domestically abusive situations.

As for Snow White and Princess Jasmine, well, I feel relatively uneasy having pretty cartoons telling my little girl that all of her problems will be solved if the right guy comes along, and that she is completely helpless until the moment the doors open revealing Mr. Handsome. Also, most GQ-looking guys that I knew, the ones who most resembled Prince Charming, were the dating raping jocks that were the kind of egotistical dicks you’d never even want your worst enemy to get involved with let alone your own daughter.

I let Rachael have her oogling moment in the toy isle, while I squirmed and wondered what I could offer as an alternative. She is now into baby dolls, which is cool. Perhaps the Groovy Girls will be the route I go for satisfying my little one’s hunger for pretty dollies. They seem wholesome, while at the same time offering an array of outfits that Rachael can dress them up in and strip off two minutes later in some sort of toddler runway show. The Groovy Girls come in a variety of colors, hair shades, ethnicities, and they have the traditional stuffed bodies rather than molded plastic, “here’s what a real girl’s figure should look like” thing going on.

Maybe I’m over-thinking this whole doll situation a bit too much, but I’d rather be a concerned mom who nurtures her daughter’s self-esteem from the beginning then one who lets her play with Barbies, Bratz, and the Princesses and ends up having to nurse her through an eating disorder at age 13. All I have to say to Corporate America is that you can take your flawless, L.A. beauties, your glammy street skanks, and your co-dependent royalty and shove them straight up you ass. My little girl deserves better.

Hey Geoff Tate, Let's Make a Deal

I don’t wax nostalgic too often. My past is my past, and it is something I’ve had to reconcile at my own pace. However, every once in awhile I have a great experience that brings back fabulous memories while, at the same time, making me smile at the thought of what the future will hold. Tonight was one of those nights.

18 years ago I remember a bizarre, 30-second television commercial. A black and white illustration with a strange symbol in yellow that I had never seen, a crowd of people screaming, and a voice exclaiming, “Do you want freedom, or do we want equal rights…”. It caught my attention, and the next day after consulting with my friend Shane, who in my little teenage world, was the expert on music, I hopped on my 10-speed bike, hauled ass to the mall, and bought my first Queensryche album, Operation: Mindcrime.

Despite my tender age, I had already developed a healthy distrust of the government, and my favorite book was George Orwell’s 1984, so the storyline in Operation: Mindcrime was (disgustingly cliché pun) music to my ears. Two days later, I got back on my bike, hauled ass to the mall once again, and bought Queensryche’s three prior releases. I’ve been a fan ever since.

A few months ago, when I heard that the band was releasing Operation: Mindcrime II, I was all over it. The first one had left a mystery of an unsolved murder, and since it was 18 years later, they had to reveal who killed Mary, right. I bought the album, this time foregoing the bike trip, record store visit, and instead opting to order it over the internet. I listened to Mindcrime II twice, yet I still didn’t know who killed Mary. Now I was just fucking annoyed.

Queensryche is from the Seattle area, so part of me felt like just tracking them down and calling them up, or cornering them at the grocery store, and asking them to do some explaining, but that would have been a bit psycho. About the time that I was going to send a random email to their fansite, they announced a tour, which would feature a live, theatrical performance of both Mindcrime albums. I bought my ticket in two seconds, and tonight attended the show. I now know who killed Mary, and kudos to Queensryche, because I didn’t see that coming!

Aside from great music, I was also taken for a ride of pleasant nostalgia that I hadn’t expected. The entire first album brought me back to my small town in B.F., Idaho, riding my bike around with friends, listening to cassette tapes in a boom box while all of us walked home from school a group of ten kids enjoying the sun, and dreaming of the day when I would pack my bags and head to Seattle for good.

Who would have thought that in 18 years I would have earned two degrees, traveled to all over Europe and down to South America, achieved my dreams of working in the music industry, met nearly every famous person I’ve ever wanted to meet, gotten married, made it through a divorce, then got married again (this time doing it right), became a mom, and ended up living in the ‘burbs. The amazing thing was that when I heard this great music it evoked the same reaction it had the first time I heard it 18 years prior.

I have often struggled with the life I lead now wondering if sometimes I have lost myself in this suburban existence where motherhood, wifely duties, and my job seem all consuming. Tonight I was able to realize that I am all of those things, but I am also that optimistic person who is not afraid to push herself to make her life have relevance, and I like feeling that way.

Since I don’t want to lose that optimism, here’s the deal I want to make Geoff Tate. Geoff, if you, the rest of the guys, and I are still alive and well in 18 years, keep your pipes in shape, encourage the guys to keep their game up, book a show at The Moore (or whatever theater is standing that isn’t owned by Clear Channel or House of Blues or some bastard hybrid of the two), and I will be there. I don’t know if I’ll be living in Seattle, but I will drag my butt back here for it.

Sure, you might be one year away from qualifying for the senior discount at Denny’s and I’ll still be reeling from celebrating my 50th birthday the year prior, but if we are both still able, grab Scott, Eddie, both Mikes, and Pamela, and let’s all come together to celebrate an amazing work of music that should, in no way, ever be forgotten. I can promise you that more than a few ‘Ryche fans will be there to join me, but I can’t guarantee we will all be standing through the entire performance next time. What do you say, Geoff, The Moore Theater in Fall 2024? Unless I’m dead, I’ll be the first online for a ticket (or however they get tickets sold 18 years from now). Do we have a deal?