Reality bites, would you like some enablement with that?

In honor of WTP...

There are some major social and macro economic problems in this country that need to be fixed. The housing market is out of control. Our national deficit is higher than most of us can count. Many of us literally can't count, or read, or speak proper English. Inflation on housing, education, healthcare, etc, is out of control. Americans are fatter, more STD-ridden, and more depressed than ever. Homosexuals are being denied their civil rights. Jerry Falwell, Al Sharpton, Bat Buchanan, my fifth grade teacher, and Gloria Steinem are all still alive and kickin'.

But at the same time... we all have choices. Granted, we have a limited subset of options, but from those we are able to choose what we decide is the best option for us. Sometimes, we wish there was a broader selection in the subset or realize we made a wrong choice somewhere along the line. But if we can't realize that at least sometimes, to a degree, it's our fault, then we're never going to be able to make our lives better.

Life is unfair, and someone will always have it better than you. Nobody is "entitled" to anything they don't work for; if they still get it anyway, that's luck and you look like an immature ass to begrudge them. You never know what dissapointments someone else has suffered, and unless they directly and purposely injured you to get to where they are, get over yourself. If you're so jealous of what they have, ask them how they got that. The truth isn't always what you want to hear, but you can't fix your problems without honest understanding of the underlying causes.

And nobody's obligated to say "Oh poor baby, the world is so evil and none of your problems are your fault!"

If you don't agree with this philosophy, you're sure as hell not alone. Just understand that bitching and whining about how the world isn't handed to you on a silver platter isn't going to make anybody take you seriously or help you succeed.

The Nightmare before Christmas

Why in the hell is Christmas all over the place?! There are Christmas commercials on TV, Christmas stuff in the stores, etc... It's not even Halloween Yet!

Where have I been, I could have sworn that the big Santa ballon passing down the street at the end of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade (ever wonder how much of that, we, the Macy's customers, pay for in markup on the stuff we buy there?) was the start of the gimme gimme Christmas season.

I remember 20 years ago putting my poor parents (actually any adult with the misfortune to be within earshot) through 30 some days of "So is it Christmas yet? What about tomorrow? The next day? How about the next day after that? I was only a little kid, how was I supposed to know I was probably annoyin the crap out of these people? Now it seems that old bitch Karma is gonna pay me back, making me listen to 60 or 70-some days of "So is it Christmas yet?" from my own kid.

Such is the price we pay when we loathe liberals enough to practice Christianity and reproduce!

David's Bridal...

You sell my phone number to one more freaking telemarketer, and I'll post nasty things about you on the Internet. You got that?!? I'll be getting a dress somewhere else (I heard your alterations suck anyways) and I won't be patronizing any of the scores of vendors you so kindly sent my way, to call my cell phone during peak hours.

Asshats.

The Best Arguement for Immigration in the US, aka TMCL Has No Shame

The sweet little old Indian woman who gave me my facial this Saturday was horrified to learn I am only 27, based on the little wrinkles I already have around my eyes. They rivaled hers, and she has grandkids. Perhaps I should have mentioned, this is par for the course for the lightskinned, but I didn't. So I scored about $50 in free samples of enzyme and collagen anti-aging creams. Sweet!

Charities that suck

Because I'm a misanthropic b*tch, I passed on the opportunity this weekend to plunk down a couple hundred clams for a charity function for "the arts" (ie, for an ego-trippin', "look at ME, I'm making a difference!" stuffy, expensive dinner party). What the hell is "the arts" anyway? Because Shakespeare makes me want to stick a fork in my eye, and all paintings kinda look the same after awhile. I could give a rat's ass if going to a charity gala is "the thing to do", the place to see and be seen. If people REALLY cared about the cause and wanted to advance it, they'd take the tens of thousands of dollars spent to throw the party and donate it to that cause.

Millions, if not billions of people are going to bed hungry, dying of nasty diseases that there is no cure for, dying of nasty diseases that there is a cure for but they're too poor to afford the $20 for the medicine, sleeping in the streets, being tortured and/or sold into slavery, etc, and you want me to make sure the people of Liberal Yuppieland have a few more freakin' Monets and Picassos to look at. Where in the hell are your priorities? Get a grip!

You want to really make a difference and give someone less fortunate a better life? Then actually DO something, be all action and little talk, ie, make your MO the direct opposite of how most people in Liberal Yuppieland roll. And by DO something, I mean, make sure people's base needs for living are met. Start at the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy of needs and work up. Does everyone around you have food to eat? A house to live in? Potable water to drink? Adequate medical care? Adequate parents or caretakers? Major social problems solved? No? Then make sure that's taken care of first. Spend an afternoon at a Habitat for Humanity build. Take in a foster child. Drop off groceries at a food pantry.

And, for the love of GOD, if you are nice enough to contribute your time, money, resources to the charity of your choice... good for you, and keep it, up, but don't make the rest of us listen to it endlessly. It makes you sound like an effing tool who only does this to inflate your ego and perpetuate your own sense of self-righteousness*. And don't turn around and act like an asshole to the people you encounter in day-to-day life either - it only confirms our suspicions. You can and do make a difference by doing little acts of kindness to one random person - even if you two are the only ones to ever know about it.

*Unless you are YakLover, in which case, your idea to "get lost" and show your date the house we helped build is pretty ingenious. God help the poor people who have to live in something our team put together. I'm betting Leaning Tower of Pisa by '09.

Don't let facts and figures get in the way of self-validation...

Thanks to EvilElf, who I know sent this to me because of my bitching that I'm getting married "old"....

Which is it, New York Times? Is it that "To Be Married Means to Be Outnumbered" (the title of today's article) or is it that "Among Americans aged 35 to 64, married couples still make up a majority of all households" (caption 5 on your slideshow?). In fact, the poll comes up with married NYT online readers being 61%.

Yes, folks are marrying later. Yes, more people are divorcing. This is not a suprise. But comments like "married couples have finally slipped into the minority" make the writer sound a wee bit biased. Why is it that the happily cohabitating couples make the papers, while the relationships that end because one partner insists on marriage and the other doesn't, or the relationships that result in marriage strictly because one partner realizes that it's the only way s/he's going to be able to keep the other don't get mentioned? I know of maybe two cohabitating couples where both partners are happy with their status (most cohabitating couples I know have a situation where one person feels "in limbo" or cheated by the "just living together" status), and many married couples.

Yes, Sex and the City is a cool show. But obviously, the NYT is trying to validate the choices and situations of much of NYC's demographic of young swingin' singles. Nothing wrong with being a swingin' single if that's the life for you. But for goodness' sake, at least let people make informed choices using accurate information. You mofos are as liberal-raggy as the Washington Post and the Boston Globe!

Or they could let gay people get married. Civil rights are a terrible thing to waste.

"In all our years of searching, we have found that the only thing that makes the emptiness bearable is each other..."

Thank you, Amy, for helping make the emptiness that much more bearable. I'm glad we're friends.

Now help me think of an alias for you...

Medical unethics

So I just stopped by the health fair at work because I can't resist free pens, magnets, and candy. I'm a dork like that. I grabbed a really cool metal pen and a hershey kiss off a table and heard:

"Hi there! I'm Casey! Let me tell you all about liposuction!"

And this woman around my mom's age launches into a looooong description and sales pitch of lipo (thank you so much for telling me what liposuction is, I'd never heard of it), what she can do for people, shows me all the before and after pictures of her surgery, and asks my name so she'll recognize it when I call for a consultation.

Um. I'm a size 2, very much height-weight-proportional, to the point where my cheeks sink in a little sometimes. At my last medical appointment, the nurse even told me, "You don't need to be any skinnier." And obviously (I like to think) I look to be a younger woman, which means I'm probably not even started with, much less done with, having kids, so having any sort of plastic surgery on my body at this point would be pretty stupid unless it was reconstructive or something. (Who'd want to spend all the dough on lipo just to get all fat and pregnant again in a few years?)

Basically, I am by no stretch of the imagination overweight, and quite honestly I am APPALLED that a professional who'd taken the Hippocratic Oath would try to sell me liposuction! What the hell is wrong with people, a significant fat loss on me would probably make certian organs in my body stop functioning. Sure, businesses are all about making money, but jeez, medical malpractice suits aren't cheap either!

If you're not even engaged yet...

... then WTF are you doing on TheKnot? Apparently, there are discussion forums for those of you planning your wedding possibly ages before your guy is even thinking of marriage and/or before you may have even met said guy, or insulting us engaged women by asking us how we "conned" our fiances into proposing.

Um. Is it humanly possible that we were proposed to on our own merit? Sure, many of us were probably ready before our fiances and husbands were, and in fact these men may know deep down that we deserve nothing less and marriage/kids/house/SUV/etc are the only way to keep us.

And these women may also, be deserving of nothing less.... but it's a little hard to keep that in mind when you read:

"Hi, I'm 19 and been with my man for 3 months. He hasn't even brought up marriage yet. I'm sooo annoyed because I've been planning my wedding for four years now and I need to get married on 7/7/07, have been dreaming of it since kindergarden. Ladies, how did you make your men propose???"

"I met my BF in grad school and have been with him 16 years, lived together 14... He has never brought up the subject of marriage, why hasn't he? Should I trap him, I assume that's how you all got your fiances and husbands? Speaking of which, I'm in my mid-40s... that isn't too late to have a healthy baby is it?"

Honestly, you have no business planning your wedding or hanging out on a wedding website before you get the ring on your finger. You just aren't. And if you do decide to hang out on TheKnot before you're engaed... be understanding when you become a big fat joke. You look pathetic. I wouldn't wish being unmarried on my worst enemy. But... no matter when you meet Mr. Right or how many frogs you kiss first, a marriage is something you have to earn and continue to work at. There are many nice/normal "knotties" who are just freakin appalled by this stuff, and joke to make you and your brand of psychosis less frightening.

Now I'm not condoning the self-righteousness of some of the engaged and married women on there or in the real world at all... Not everyone who's reached their mid-20s and not found a husband is in her predicament because she's a bar-hopping, disease ridden slut, as some of these "knotties" claim. There are such things as being unlucky in love, having to kiss a few frogs before you find your prince, still getting your self/career situated in your 20s and preferring to do that on your own, etc, that happen and that people shouldn't be judged for. But reading pages and pages of crap like what's posted above, and it's easy to see how some of these "Ring on My Finger Club" ladies feel so smug and superior - Holy stereotype, you make all single women look psycho and desperate by writing crap like this.

Update (for my male readers' peace of mind): No! Not all women are like these psychos on the Knot... 99% of women do NOT start planning their weddings before they hit puberty, and 99.9repeating% of us would NEVER trap a guy. Only the morally bankrupt and desperate do that. Geez! Although Ibid, your reaction is the exact proof of my point that a very few bad seeds are perpetuating these horrific stereotypes about all womenkind. Although seriously, only a moron wouldn't notice if their girlfriend had poked a bunch of holes in a condom.)