If You're Missing a Toe, Don't Wear Sandals

I’m no rocket scientist, but I’m very perceptive. This is a good quality, but it lends you to a life of observing the asinine tendencies in others, while existing in a constant conundrum of whether to let the chips fall where they may, or stating the obvious, which makes you look like a judgmental asshole. Since I’ve made a vow of trying to live my truth, let the asshole games begin.

My dwindling respect for CNN has hit its final low with a new analysis they plan on doing in honor of the birth of Brad and Angelina’s daughter. It’s called Hunting Angelina. Yeah, the title makes me sick, too. It’s supposed to be a show about the forces behind celebrity worship, and how the powers that be get regular people to care about “glamorous strangers.” I’ve never understood the whole celebrity worship thing, and since I was a scholar of media studies in my college years, I might actually make an effort to watch this. However, the fact that this show is made by the same producers who kept the play-by-play report of Brad and Angelina’s lives in our head on a daily basis via the running news ticker at the bottom of the CNN screen makes me skeptical regarding the analysis’ integrity.

Let’s put this Brad and Angelina situation in a different, non-celebrity light. Take a guy who is married, leaves on a business trip and has a fling, impregnates the business trip fling, and then returns back home to give his wife divorce papers. To make matters worse, he doesn’t even have the decency to marry his fling, he just shacks up with her. She’s no prize herself given her tendency for homewrecking. She also happens to be a single mother with two kids. They move in together quite quickly and she, somewhat irresponsibly, lets him bond with her kids while they wait for the birth of their child. When the baby is finally born, it’s born into a household where there is no guarantee if the parents will be together next month. Not too glamorous when you take away the whole “celebrity actor” thing, in fact, it seems like something you’d see on Jerry Springer.

We expect this extreme bullshit from the world of entertainment, but we should demand slightly more from the elected officials that big pharmaceutical lobbies purchase for millions of dollars. They passed, what’s been termed as, “sweeping immigration reform”. It’s the type of legislation that will help nothing and doesn’t have an ounce of practicality, but could be used in November to get either the incumbent or challenger elected, depending on the strength of the candidate’s spin doctor.

In this new legislation, they require everything federal to be in English, and essentially list English as the national language. Of course, they don’t bother to fund or expand English as a Second Language programs, and they are aiming this squarely at Hispanics forgetting that in my little neck of the world known as the Pacific Northwest, there are over 50 languages spoken in most of the local schools. The assholes in Washington D.C. are also requiring illegals who are now referred to as “guest workers” (cause it might be a little nicer) to pay about $2,000 in fines in order to receive citizenship. These are people who work for less than minimum wage, which, I believe, is at the heart of the original problem, so my guess is that they don’t have a spare two grand lying around.

Finally, since I’m on a roll in terms of stating the obvious, if you happen to have some sort of slightly peculiar deformity, please be courteous and try to cover it up if it’s a little icky. There is nothing more annoying than being forced to sit through a meeting, while having to stare at something slightly deformed. This happened to me last week. I was trying to participate in important conversations, brainstorming ideas about raising awareness and money for The Facility, but each time I looked across the square of six foot long tables all I saw was a pair of sandals and only half of a big toe on one of the feet. I’m not a big fan of feet in general, they are unattractive, and a little gross to look at, no matter how well groomed. Missing or partial digits doesn’t make them anymore attractive, and having to stare at one during a lunch meeting, of all things, is just a bit ooky. I don’t go out of the house and parade around in a string bikini, post pregnancy, and the person with a half of a big toe should at least consider a comfy pair of socks. I’m not trying to be a heartless bitch, because I know bad shit happens to good people, and sometimes they are left with scars that don’t heal, and that’s okay, but feet are another story. Maybe it’s just my own deal, and if so, feel free to ignore me on this.

That’s all for now, but I’m sure I’ll come across other interesting observations, until then, I’ll be in my room covering up my lightly roadmapped tummy, and gearing up my pessimistic, critical eye for that CNN special.