Another Sunday night after another eventful week: State of the Union, Egypt uprising, Stock market dive, Glenn Beck cried, Charlie Sheen checked into rehab.....Lindsay Lohan checked out of one.. All worthy subjects but I thought I would just clear my head of these items:
#1. Several of you have asked how can you use the comment feature. Go to google and simply create a google account. No strings, nothing sent to you just a filter to eliminate me getting ads, and nutty people trying to slip other things in. Once you've done this you can comment all you want.
#2 Uprisings in Tunisia, Yemen, and Egypt. Many hail this as a good thing and I truely do hope any bad in those countries will be replaced by good but before we pop champagne corks and send out congratulatory notices maybe we ought to see what the NEW will be. I'm hopeful of a better leadership but let's not forget we didn't get that in Cuba, The Dominican Republic, China, Venezuela, Russia and about a dozen African countries. Plus, let's not forget the poster child for a good idea gone bad and was the 1789 French Revolution that saw the peasants rise up, throw off the shackles of oppression only to institute their own Reign of Terror. Thousands of innocents died in an orgy of revenge and violence. (OF course that was France and they never do anything right)
#3.Once again we have to put up with the insufferable week long orgy of words about the Super Bowl which will be played this next weekend. I can't take it. I don't want to know what the right guard had for breakfast, I don't want to know if Ben Rothlisberger still feels bad for feeling up that woman over a year ago. I don't care if the coach of the linebackers had a polyup removed. What is Green Bay's center's astrological sign? I don't care, stop asking about it, stop writing about it and why must we have 9 hours of tv coverage on the day of the game? It's a football game for God's sake not the return of Harry Houdini! How much analysis do we need? No wonder people eat food and drink booze, it's our only distraction from the non stop blathering.
Speaking of annoying things here is my current list of the most annoying stupid expressions I hear all the time:
"Have a good one" Good what? A good bank robbery? A good drug deal? A good dinner? A good kick in the nuts? It means nothing! Just social chit chat. Can't we just say goodbye? And do we really care if they had a good one? Do you call them up later and ask if they had a good one? NO!
"MY Bad" oh really? your bad? Well numnuts don't compound your bad by now putting your bad into my head, consciousness and thereby making your bad my bad.
" Hi, it's good to see you"
At the Shell Gas Station in California when you pull up to the pump a tv screen and recorded person comes on and says " Hi, it's good to see you"
This precorded corporate clown tells me he is happy to see me, again. He always says that to me. Well, I always tell it the same thing: Fuck you clown, you don't even know me.
"It's all good" really? All of everything is good. The entirety, the whole thing is good. Nothing isn't good. Every last thing is good. I won't have to worry about anything ever being bad again because "It's all good"! UGH
"You saved 24.50 today Mr. Bailey"
The worst is when I buy groceries and the clerk says this to me at the end of the transaction. Really, I did? I thought I just spent money, didn't I just give you money? Now if you gave me my groceries for say one dollar then I guess I would be saving something but you didn't. I'm just not paying the 24.50 extortion fee you would have added to my bill if I hadn't given you all my personal information like e-mail addresses, bank information, phone numbers, who I am dating and my blood type. I love it when they take their marker and circle the 24.50 as if I'm too stupid to find it on the receipt myself. No wait, that is only the lesser reason for the circling. It's really intended to distract you so you'll look at this mythical savings instead of the reality of how much you did spend. That way if you were double rung up or in some other way cheated you'd not notice. I hate this, hate this, hate this. It's a cleverly thought out piece of manipulative bullshit. I don't say anything to the clerks because I know they have to do it but they are so "perky" and "chipper" when saying it to you like "Gosh darn it Mr. Bailey it's a fact, you saved money"!! It's the shell game, three card monty, bait and switch all those rigged games rolled into one.
I also hate: "Big Box Stores", " Handling Fee", "Shipping and Handling", "Baggage Fee", "Easy Terms", "Mail in Rebate", "Player", "Process and handling Fee", "carrying baggage", "blended family", "What would Jesus do", "he got game", "get in the game", "app" and so many other stupid sayings.
Which ones grind your teeth?
Monday, January 31, 2011
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
With Guns Ablazing
It happened again. Another angry, frustrated person resolves to shoot his way into everyone's consciousness. Have you seen his creepy smiling face in his mug shot? It's rather like the look on the kid announcing to his mother he just poisoned the neighbor's dog. "See what I can do", he seems to be saying. The only difference this time (as compared to Virginia Tech, Columbine, El Paso, etc) is he was captured before he could put the exclamation point on his stupid rage by killing himself.
It's news but did it stop anyone from their daily pursuits? Of course not because we've seen it so many time in the past 3-4 decades. It's all too damn familiar. Troubled childhood, rejections pile up, girls think he is weird, schools kick him out, throw in alcohol and drugs and presto you have your new nut job with a full metal jacket. I hope this time we fucking find out what he was or was not thinking. When these gunmen kill themselves they take their thought processes with them. We can't ask them, "what the hell were you thinking"?
Also, all the talk about how we've become an angry nation frankly makes me angry. We've been an angry nation for decades, but more and more people act out their anger in some sort of macabre reality show of their own. They see their violence as their "final statement" and their "piece de resistance". It's like they think well, I've added up to nothing and don't see myself as ever adding up to something so I'll go out in a purple haze of violence sure to get me in the history books. Didn't Bonnie and Clyde, John Dillinger, Billy the Kid? Lee Oswald (allegedly) did that with JFK, James Earl Ray killed MLK, Sirhan Sirhan killed Bobby Kennedy. But this type of random senseless violence is more reminencent of what CHarles Manson did with his followers: the drama, the kabuki theater of blood, the crazy reasons given as to why, the savagery. Is Loughner any less crazy or brutal than the poster boy of crazy Charles Manson?
It's not talk radio that's causing all this. I grant you political talk shows (believe me I've listened to them) are filled with stupid comments, irrational ideation, and drama. Most of that talk is angry to be sure but our forefathers understood (with the first amendment) that you have to let people rant, talk, get their frustrations, fears, stupid as they might be, out so they DON"T resort to violence. Do you really think smiley Jared Loughner listened to radio at all let alone political talk? Did the Virginia Tech killer react to Glenn Beck? I don't think so and even if they did 99.9% of the people don't. It's just talk. If you are so weak minded that anyone or anything can talk you into calmly shooting a cute 9 year old girl then you are beyond talk show censorship.
I think it's interesting that with the advent of Political Correctness where everyone is expected to self edit / regulate their behavior and speech we've become an angrier nation. The more we pretend civility and hide our true thoughts and feelings the more frustration and rage grows. The forefathers gave us the freedom to speak so please people stand on the corner and shout, blog til your fingers bleed, smack your pillows at home but get it out. Rant all daynlong if you want but leave the rest of us alone.
Final two points: Our mental health facilities and law enforcement agencies are letting us down tremendously. Jared Loughner had a long history of weirdness, he'd been told to leave college and not come back until he had a letter from a therapist indicating he was normal again. What more do people need to know he is a ticking bomb. We always think, "well, they wouldn't do that"! Here is a big clue everyone ..."That is exactly what unhinged people do"! They do it also because they know their smiling crazy face will be plastered all over the world news. Jared Loughner goes from an anonymous deranged man to a famous deranged man in the span of 24 hours. We have to get these people off the front section of the newspaper,off TV and put into institutions.
That leads to my final point we can't afford as many prisons and mental health institutions it would take to keep all of us safe. So we all just "take our chances" when we go out. As the so called deranged news reporter Howard Beale (played by Peter Finch) in the classic movie NETWORK (1976) so eloquently said, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore". Apparently,and sadly in real life many others share his fictional sentiments.
It's news but did it stop anyone from their daily pursuits? Of course not because we've seen it so many time in the past 3-4 decades. It's all too damn familiar. Troubled childhood, rejections pile up, girls think he is weird, schools kick him out, throw in alcohol and drugs and presto you have your new nut job with a full metal jacket. I hope this time we fucking find out what he was or was not thinking. When these gunmen kill themselves they take their thought processes with them. We can't ask them, "what the hell were you thinking"?
Also, all the talk about how we've become an angry nation frankly makes me angry. We've been an angry nation for decades, but more and more people act out their anger in some sort of macabre reality show of their own. They see their violence as their "final statement" and their "piece de resistance". It's like they think well, I've added up to nothing and don't see myself as ever adding up to something so I'll go out in a purple haze of violence sure to get me in the history books. Didn't Bonnie and Clyde, John Dillinger, Billy the Kid? Lee Oswald (allegedly) did that with JFK, James Earl Ray killed MLK, Sirhan Sirhan killed Bobby Kennedy. But this type of random senseless violence is more reminencent of what CHarles Manson did with his followers: the drama, the kabuki theater of blood, the crazy reasons given as to why, the savagery. Is Loughner any less crazy or brutal than the poster boy of crazy Charles Manson?
It's not talk radio that's causing all this. I grant you political talk shows (believe me I've listened to them) are filled with stupid comments, irrational ideation, and drama. Most of that talk is angry to be sure but our forefathers understood (with the first amendment) that you have to let people rant, talk, get their frustrations, fears, stupid as they might be, out so they DON"T resort to violence. Do you really think smiley Jared Loughner listened to radio at all let alone political talk? Did the Virginia Tech killer react to Glenn Beck? I don't think so and even if they did 99.9% of the people don't. It's just talk. If you are so weak minded that anyone or anything can talk you into calmly shooting a cute 9 year old girl then you are beyond talk show censorship.
I think it's interesting that with the advent of Political Correctness where everyone is expected to self edit / regulate their behavior and speech we've become an angrier nation. The more we pretend civility and hide our true thoughts and feelings the more frustration and rage grows. The forefathers gave us the freedom to speak so please people stand on the corner and shout, blog til your fingers bleed, smack your pillows at home but get it out. Rant all daynlong if you want but leave the rest of us alone.
Final two points: Our mental health facilities and law enforcement agencies are letting us down tremendously. Jared Loughner had a long history of weirdness, he'd been told to leave college and not come back until he had a letter from a therapist indicating he was normal again. What more do people need to know he is a ticking bomb. We always think, "well, they wouldn't do that"! Here is a big clue everyone ..."That is exactly what unhinged people do"! They do it also because they know their smiling crazy face will be plastered all over the world news. Jared Loughner goes from an anonymous deranged man to a famous deranged man in the span of 24 hours. We have to get these people off the front section of the newspaper,off TV and put into institutions.
That leads to my final point we can't afford as many prisons and mental health institutions it would take to keep all of us safe. So we all just "take our chances" when we go out. As the so called deranged news reporter Howard Beale (played by Peter Finch) in the classic movie NETWORK (1976) so eloquently said, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore". Apparently,and sadly in real life many others share his fictional sentiments.
Sunday, January 2, 2011
French Model Dies, For What?
Isabelle Caro, a french actress and "model" died Nov. 17 of complications from anorexia. She was age 28. At her death she reportedly weighed around 60 lbs. Also, a Brazilian model died of the same reason at age 21 recently.
Caro wrote a book (published in France in 2008) titled: The Little Girl Who Didn't Want to get Fat
To her credit Caro realized she was way off center and in the last year and a half of her life she agreed to do a publicity campaign for saying "NO To Anorexia". Some photos of her the last year and a half are shocking and disturbing.
What is going on here? Well, let me tell you what I think is going on here? It's generally thought that women are most likely the victims of obsession with beauty. But now a days men frequent salons almost as much as women. What is beauty by the way? We know what non beauty is, I mean few would argue that the Hunchback of Notre Dame was attractive, but for the vast majority of people attractivness is in the eye of the beholder. It shouldn't be based on an invented (by Madison Avenue) "set image". Yet women, it seems, have an obsession with perfection and are told that perfection is what the model represents.
Yet the models today are ghastly thin. I want to believe no woman would look at these models and say, gee I wish I looked like that BUT I know many do. Really look at the ads in magazines and inserts and pay attention to what the "models" look like. They are not attractive. They have a woman's face on the body of an unnaturally tall ten year old. That's weird! Imagine women, a picture of a man with Tom Brady's face on a body of a ten year old boy. Attractive?
It got this way because people are willing to accept the idea that freakishly tall, freakishly thin women represent the ideal but they don't; not anymore than 6 fingers on one hand is perfection or 3 ears would be considered perfection. Women especially are victims of this thinking because women have centuries built up of conditioning that their survival depends on "getting a man" and getting a man means looking as close to perfect as possible.It's true that more and more women today reject that idea but then there is trap number two and that is do you want to have kids, a family? Well, in most cases that means getting a man and I refer you back to the previous point made.
It's a cruel joke because women buy into the concept that if they buy the clothes worn by the model they will approximate the model that wore them. They don't actively think this; it's more on a subconscious level, but it's in there. The answer is NO you won't. It's no more valid that a man buying a sports car and then thinking they have become James Bond. NO...let me say it as clearly as I can.....NO You will look like you in a sports car or nice clothes. That's it! But that should be enough!
I'm not saying working out to be fit or staying trim for your health and self desteem is wrong. We should all do more to be healthy and fit. That is good. What I'm talking about here is when you hate yourself if you aren't like the model in the ad, or stave yourself to look more like the model in the ad. When you cross over to obsession and most of the time aren't happy with yourself ....you are going Caro. (my new word)
We all are accomplices in this obsession for perfection in a way because we place so much attention on attractivness when finding partners. The clothes people wear create an image, a brand. We are attracted to the image, or the brand not the person. Later, often after getting married, you realize the person you are with didn't turn out to be the image they projected. Then disappointment sets in. Next thing you know you are out there looking for another "image" to latch onto.
We have to be careful with this image selling and with buying into crazy ideas like clothes make the person, with starving ourselves to look good. Nothing attractive about starving yourself to death, physically, emotionally or spiritually. Ask Isabell Caro...oh yeah, you can't.
Caro wrote a book (published in France in 2008) titled: The Little Girl Who Didn't Want to get Fat
To her credit Caro realized she was way off center and in the last year and a half of her life she agreed to do a publicity campaign for saying "NO To Anorexia". Some photos of her the last year and a half are shocking and disturbing.
What is going on here? Well, let me tell you what I think is going on here? It's generally thought that women are most likely the victims of obsession with beauty. But now a days men frequent salons almost as much as women. What is beauty by the way? We know what non beauty is, I mean few would argue that the Hunchback of Notre Dame was attractive, but for the vast majority of people attractivness is in the eye of the beholder. It shouldn't be based on an invented (by Madison Avenue) "set image". Yet women, it seems, have an obsession with perfection and are told that perfection is what the model represents.
Yet the models today are ghastly thin. I want to believe no woman would look at these models and say, gee I wish I looked like that BUT I know many do. Really look at the ads in magazines and inserts and pay attention to what the "models" look like. They are not attractive. They have a woman's face on the body of an unnaturally tall ten year old. That's weird! Imagine women, a picture of a man with Tom Brady's face on a body of a ten year old boy. Attractive?
It got this way because people are willing to accept the idea that freakishly tall, freakishly thin women represent the ideal but they don't; not anymore than 6 fingers on one hand is perfection or 3 ears would be considered perfection. Women especially are victims of this thinking because women have centuries built up of conditioning that their survival depends on "getting a man" and getting a man means looking as close to perfect as possible.It's true that more and more women today reject that idea but then there is trap number two and that is do you want to have kids, a family? Well, in most cases that means getting a man and I refer you back to the previous point made.
It's a cruel joke because women buy into the concept that if they buy the clothes worn by the model they will approximate the model that wore them. They don't actively think this; it's more on a subconscious level, but it's in there. The answer is NO you won't. It's no more valid that a man buying a sports car and then thinking they have become James Bond. NO...let me say it as clearly as I can.....NO You will look like you in a sports car or nice clothes. That's it! But that should be enough!
I'm not saying working out to be fit or staying trim for your health and self desteem is wrong. We should all do more to be healthy and fit. That is good. What I'm talking about here is when you hate yourself if you aren't like the model in the ad, or stave yourself to look more like the model in the ad. When you cross over to obsession and most of the time aren't happy with yourself ....you are going Caro. (my new word)
We all are accomplices in this obsession for perfection in a way because we place so much attention on attractivness when finding partners. The clothes people wear create an image, a brand. We are attracted to the image, or the brand not the person. Later, often after getting married, you realize the person you are with didn't turn out to be the image they projected. Then disappointment sets in. Next thing you know you are out there looking for another "image" to latch onto.
We have to be careful with this image selling and with buying into crazy ideas like clothes make the person, with starving ourselves to look good. Nothing attractive about starving yourself to death, physically, emotionally or spiritually. Ask Isabell Caro...oh yeah, you can't.
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