when issues are forced

yesterday, i had a conversation with a friend and asked her if she'd created any new year's resolutions. she said no, she hadn't. i stated i hadn't either and settled on the fact that i didn't really think i needed to make promises to myself to change anything.

then today, a few moments ago actually...i took a reader's survey on a blog i read regularly. question number 8 crystallized the wackness of my existence right now:

(click to enlarge)

so apparently, all i do regularly is watch tv, drink wine, surf the web, and die a little bit everyday...i'm in desperate need of a life overhaul.

damn.

and i thought things were going so well...

hey Mika? Dr. Laura wants her schtick back.

Mika Brzezinski, the long suffering eye rolling co-host of Morning Joe, wrote a blog today on Huffington Post. in it she revealed some of the tips she shares with "young women about life lessons and TV career choices." for the most part, it read like the script from Up Close and Personal, but things really got good when she got to her coup de grâce: don't "forget" to get married and have some kids, girlfriends! and start in your 20s if you have to!!!



oh, yes she did.

Mika explains that if you think finding a good job is hard, wait until you get a load of how hard it is to find a descent mate to marry and procreate with:

"Bad news, girls. The odds are definitely better on getting the right job than getting a good partner for life...Don't push away that chance if you're one of the lucky ones who find that partner. And remember, you can always change a job. I hear it's much harder to switch out a husband."

and


"But let's talk about the greatest gift a woman can receive: being a mommy. For professional women, there simply is NO good time to have a baby. Putting it off only makes the challenges greater. Having babies after 35 increases medical risk and is, lets face it, exhausting. It is also trying on a marriage and a career."


*headdesk headdesk headdesk headdesk!*


here it is, 2009, and some people refuse to grasp this very simple concept: not every woman is foaming at the mouth at the idea of being someone's mother. and the false belief that a woman who isn't worked up about the notion is lying to herself is insulting and boneheaded.

no really: some chicks couldn't possible care any less than they do about having children. so please.

and how antiquated is the advice of "if you find a good man, girls, you better latch on and never let go because there might be plenty of fish in the sea....but most of them are floating by dead"?

another newsflash! not everyone is 1) HETEROSEXUAL and 2) INTERESTED IN GETTING MARRIED!

and also? Mika? having a baby at any age is exhausting, i don't care if you're 15, 25, or 35. you still get your world jerked around when you have to function under extreme sleep deprivation. i didn't burst into tears at the social security office while trying to get a rush job on my kids' cards because i was 35...i did it because i was delirious with exhaustion. don't even go there!

she managed to be insulting, patronizing, ageist, out of touch, and hetero-privileged in one neat little maddening blog post. in a way, isn't that too a victory?

Mika and Huffington Post could have completely missed me with this. but there is one idea that has definitely crystalized for me. Between Joe's smarmy frat-boy smirk, Pat Buchanan playing the role of everyone's favorite insane racist uncle, and Mika's Donna Reed outlook on what REALLY matters to working "girls," i need to just keep watching the Today show Blue's Clues (keeping it real).

BREAKING NEWS

Barbara Walters said she is believes black women relax their hair to look more like white women.

meanwhile, Barbara keeps getting plastic surgery to look like Madame.

or fix it second...or third....

poor dear, why doesn't anyone have the heart to tell her??

Of course she did

Kerrine Steffans was on the Hoda and Kathy Lee Wasted an Hour of My Life Today Show recently talking about about her newest book. she has written about how to find, seduce, and keep a man.

of course she did.

anyhoo, she called herself giving Hoda, who she called "mature," some relationship advice. allow me to paraphrase:

if you don't slow down your bossy ways and let a man be a man, you are gonna end up alone for the rest of your life because no man will want you.

oh, yes she did.

Hoda made this what in the F face when Karrine said this that basically summed up my thoughts: superhead finally got eddie winslow to marry her and now she thinks she's in a position to give Hoda Muhfkn Kotb DATING...WAIT... ANY ADVICE???

"i'm super smart! and i'm very witty!" - actual quote

Karrine "i put my man's anal beads on blast in a video i posted to the internet" Steffans?

Karrine "i wrote not one but two books about how i had sex with anything moving in the rap game but i'll get pissed if you mention it now" Steffans?

well, alrighty then. Karrine Steffans is now an expert on relationships because she's handled more dick than a 900 year old rabbi.

sure. i'll buy that for a dollar.

the sanfords are wack

just when i thought the clusterfuck that is mark sanford imploding and basically sending love note missives to his maria in arhentina through hastily assembled press conferences couldn't get any more clusterfucky, now the one person i was hoping had a grasp on reality has let it be known that she too is a total loontard.

Picture it, South Carolina, 2009....your husband sneaks out of the state for 5 days, flies to Arhentina to visit his mistress, then comes back and tells everyone with a microphone the mistress is his soul mate but he's gonna try to fall back in love with you, refers to his affair as a love story at the end of the day, tells everyone how he even tried to get you to meet the mistress once or twice or eight times, and then further puts your business on the street by admitting there were other women floating through your marriage of 20 years.

so what do you? well if you're jenny sanford, you say something cuhrazy like this:

"Mark has stated that his intent and determination is to save our marriage, and to make amends to the people of South Carolina. I hope he can make good on those intentions, and for the sake of our boys."

ya hearing this? he SAID it's his intention of saving the marriage...even though he lied about his whereabouts over father's day weekend to fly to south america to kick it with maria belen. AND AFTER HE WAS EXPRESSLY FORBIDDEN TO DO IT, THAT CAD!

well there ya go, that's got sincerity written all over it.

Jenny Sanford: going from American Hero to typical politician doormat in 1 easy step.

Pop Quiz

well, now! this kitty cat appears to have a sour attitude, care to guess why?

a) it just occurred to him that if he'd shaved his mustache, he might have slipped through the police checkpoint.

b) he specifically asked for the new york times. THAT is a usa today. who's the wiseguy?

c) he just found out he'll be serving his life sentence in Brokedown Litterbox and it wasn't even his hash!

d) all of the above

e) none of your business, nosy a** motherf***er.

us, weakly...

foolishly, in my thirst for celebrity gossip, i have allowed Us Weekly access to my email address. this makes it possible for me to receive breaking news from one of the industry's most reliable journalistic sources. without these emails, how else would i know that Jen and Brad recently met up for a 1 am hotel meeting, Ashley Simpson is still a moron, and Madonna's cashier's check was accepted for the purchase i mean adoption of little Mercy?

but mostly, Us Weekly helps me keep track of The Bickersons. you know: Jon & Kate Plus I Hate Your Stinkin Lying Cheating Bitchy Guts.

today's THIRD email (really, Us Weekly? 3?) shared this tidbit with me:



well, whattaya know! it's Jon & Kate's 10th anniversary! but they're still battling marriage problems! AND new cheating allegations! gosh, it's really tough to tell whether the two will be celebrating...

UNLESS YOU LOOK IN THE CENTER OF THE PAGE where Us Weekly helpfully puts us out of our misery by telling us that Jon & Kate Celebrate 10th Anniversary Today! and the magazine gets the ball rolling on that celebration by showing us pics of the happy couple unhappily separated this spring! that's JUST as romantic a gift as aluminum or tin!

as you can tell at the bottom left of the page, Kate appears to be absolutely shocked that it's been ten years already! i hope she's not worried about how she and Jon are gonna celebrate their one score together....



well. apparently, she's getting the party started by murdering one of their kids. JUST as romantic as aluminum or tin!

thanks, Us Weekly. your helpful emails have managed to help me waste more hours on the job than the squiggle haired boss from Dilbert.

modeling FAIL

nice effort, but not everyone needs to be modeling scoop neck jumpsuits. especially those of us who have stretch marks on our necks.

next time, maybe ihop?

in these tough economic times, it's completely normal for those of us who have avoided the unemployment chop to become hyper-sensitive regarding our work product. and depending on the culture of the work environment, even the simplest criticism can cause a marked increase in resentment and defensiveness.

and then there are cases like that of Yakeisha Ward.

MANNING, S.C. -- A Waffle House employee has been arrested and accused of shooting a customer who complained about the service.

The Clarendon County Sheriff's Office says 29-year-old Yakeisha Ward of Manning is charged with assault and battery with intent to kill.

Deputies said Ward worked at a Waffle House restaurant in Manning and was involved in a fight about 4:30 a.m. Sunday. Lt. Tommy Burgess says the fight started when the customer complained about the quality of service in the crowded restaurant.

Burgess says Ward went to her van to get a gun. He says a 27-year-old woman was hit in the arm.

worked?? awww, don't tell me on top of getting arrested, Yakeisha got fired too! so perhaps an addendum needs to be added to the Waffle House Employee Handbook: don't shoot customers.

the thing that stuck out immediately for me is the fact that most Waffle House restaurants are about as big as shoeboxes. If Yakeisha had missed her target, that bullet could have ricocheted around the inside of that place like a pinball machine.

she could have killed everybody in there!

so let this be a lesson to us all: you may hate your job, hate your coworkers, and even hate your slow computer. but you'll hate going to prison for assault and battery with intent to kill even more.

you dizzy yet?

so, yesterday i was reading a blog on the website Jezebel in which one of the writers responded to a lambasting written about the site and it's writers by Linda Hirshman on Salon's new offshoot feminist blog XX.

in Hirshman's piece, she discusses her problem with Jezebel, its impact on its readers, and how the attitudes and behaviors they seem to advocate actually do more harm to the feminist movement than they may realize. one sticking point in particular for Hirshman is the Jezebel writers' stance that a woman who is raped is not obligated to report the crime but yet rail at institutions for not doing more to decrease instances of rape:

"Moe Tkacik was apparently date-raped and says she has had unprotected sex, and Tracie Egan, in her words, 'decided to go home with someone I never would have, had my vision not been impaired by 14 hours of drinking.' Jezebel editor Megan Carpentier was raped and did not report it to the police. ...How can writers who justify not reporting rape criticize the military for not controlling…rape? It’s incoherent."

"Suggest that women report the men who rape them for the sake of future victims, say, or that women should be asked why they stay with the men who abuse them, or urged to leave them, and the Jezebels go ballistic. Judgmental, judgmental!"

Megan wrote for Jezebel in response "Sigh. As many know, today a Slate writer offered that someone assaulted at the age of 17 who didn't report it should never be taken seriously or, really, allowed to write about the subject. What?"

she then goes on to discuss the problematic conclusions Hirshman comes to based on her readings of Jezebel and basically concludes:

"I assume that Hirshman's attack — based solely on my experience with sexual assault and my audacity to suggest that haranguing victims of violence to leave their abusive partners might not be helpful — isn't meant to show the Jezebel audience that I'm not to be trusted to speak about sexual assault in the military or anything else. I assume it is an attempt to shut me up. And as much as she throws the occasional firebomb at Ross Douthat or Chris Matthews, she seems to save her real rhetorical ire for women with opinions different than her. "

i love how smart women duke it out in a tsunami of words instead of razorblades and high heel shoes...

so to sum up: a writer on a blog wrote about writers on another blog, saying they didn't have the right to write about the problem of rape because they'd been raped and didn't even report it.
and the writers of that other blog said "hey, just because we all got raped and didn't report it don't mean we can't talk about the problems of rape! get it right!"

i can dig it....and yet....

via Jezebel, same day, in the post How Hair Affects African American Girls' Self-Esteem:

Taking a cue from Chris Rock's documentary Good Hair, today's Tyra examined how black women — including little girls — feel about their hair, and the (at times painful) lengths they go to alter it.

I have no idea what it's like to have hair that's considered difficult to manage (aside from flatness), but it was easy to empathize with the little girls on this show because, as women, most of us are subjected to the idea that we're not measuring up to certain standards of beauty, whatever they may be. And while I could understand Tyra's outrage over a mother who chemically relaxes her 3-year-old daughter's hair, TyTy's stance on the hair issue was confusing, since she's just about the weaviest person on the planet; in fact, she regularly gives white women weaves on America's Next Top Model.

you still with me? ok, once again from the top:

a writer who blogs about writers on another blog, saying they shouldn't be talking about the problem of rape because those writers were raped and didn't report it is TOTALLY OUT OF POCKET.

but then those same writers write about a women on a tv show who's topic is loving your hair texture, stating she shouldn't really be taken seriously because she wears a weave.

being raped, not reporting it, and then complaining about rape, according to Hirshman, is "incoherent."

having a weave, giving white women weaves, then hosting a show whose topic is hair's impact on african american girls' self esteem, according to Jezebel, is "confusing."

to quote Megan: "what?"

why, that's just plain old hypocrisy, ammiryt?! stop it right now.

just an fyi...erm....just because you see a black woman wearing a weave, it's not an automatic that she's doing it because she hates her own hair texture or believes straighter hair is "good hair." and i certainly don't think it disqualifies her from stating her opinion about what the western standard of beauty is doing to the psyche of young black girls and women in this country.

but we all knew that, right? .........ammiryt?

when your backseat smells like pickles.

there is a car rental commercial that shows older cars parked and lonely wondering why their drivers prefer to rent cars than drive them. as the voice-over drones over the many reasons for the preference, one always pops out:

"maybe it's because your backseat smells like pickles."

the whole commercial is poking fun at the many thoughts that go through (usually) a woman's mind when she's trying to figure out why her mate has cheated on her. and that particular line always reminds me of a comment i once read on a blog. allow me to paraphrase:

"you gonna have hard time finding a man and keeping him from cheating on you especially if your pussy stinks!"

harsh.

but rest easy! the Chinese have invented a device to help regular girls become ladies of the etiquette!

your backseat never has to smell like pickles again!

It's always the darkies that mess it up for others...or....i coulda been somebody!!

true conversation....

light-skinnded: you know, it really surprises me that this type of discrimination still occurs.

dark-skinnded: yes, it's sad.

light-skinnded: you know, honey: i have LIVED through a LOT of discrimination. i mean when i was younger, i had to enter the kitchen through the back doors when i wanted to eat.

dark-skinnded: really!

light-skinnded: yes! i literally had to go through the back doors, because you know, my sisters were dark-skinnded so yeah, i had to go through the back doors too.

dark-skinned: .....zat right.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

dear light-skinnded:

allow me to apologize to you on behalf of your sisters and all dark-skinnded brothers and sisters in this country. but for our existence and, more egregiously, our familial relations to you, you could have walked with your head held high through the front doors of that restaurant, perhaps proving to the nice whites that you are just as good, smart, pretty, etc. as they found themselves to be.

but here we go with our "hey, sis," and our "mama said to get milk on the way home," and our "girl, why you standing way over there," blowing your cover. so close was social freedom you could literally almost taste it, am i right light-skinnded?

so, again: sorry about that. perhaps there is a such thing as reincarnation and we'll come back as dogs or goldfish or something. but then again, if we aren't around, who you gonna blame when you still get called nigger?

oh, of course! with us out of the way, there won't BE any niggers.

right, of course.

so, again...sorry, light-skinnded! didn't mean to ruin your day/life. whatever.

sincerely,

blackie mcdarkyson

be kind to yourself.

...and stop wearing high heels, too.

word.

Let's Throw a Ticker Tape Parade in Honor of the Weave!

when did they start making weaves out of kevlar?

Speeding Bullet Stopped by Hair Weave

KANSAS CITY, Mo., Feb. 19 (UPI) -- Police in Kansas City, Mo., said a woman's tight hair weave stopped a bullet, rescuing her from injury and likely saving her life.
Officers said they arrived at the Country View Market at about 11:30 p.m. Wednesday to find the woman's boyfriend had allegedly shot out the back window of a car, KSHB-TV, Kansas City, reported Thursday.
Investigators said the woman wasn't injured after her hair weave stopped the bullet and her boyfriend was taken into custody.

chick had Super Weave by Jorel Industries. i bet this stuff is flying off the shelves at the local dollar general store!

i once had a bad hair weave attached to my poor little scalp by that demon spit known as weave glue. and while i was convinced that i could swing my head a certain way and use the yaki locks as some type of kung fu weapon of extreme defense, i had no idea that little piece of dog hair coulda saved my LIFE!

let this be a lesson to those of us who turn our noses up at our sisters in weaves. what's protecting YOUR scalp?

Now You Done Made Me Mad!

octomom, she of the "no income, except for the non-welfare welfare she receives, but who totally plans on temporarily supporting her kids via student loans because everyone knows a woman with 14 kids has SCADS of time to get a degree" fame has now taken her crazyshow to the next level:

behold: Octomom Pimpin.

the sight of those kids struggling to survive while she shills for cash is what really makes me want to get her ass kicked. can someone PLEASE give chris brown her number and address?

mamasaymamasahdon'tstealmyshit, mamasaymamasahdon'tstealmyshit!

rihanna has unfortunately discovered what many of us came to realize well before she was born: michael jackson will lead you down the path of unfortunate skin bleachings and financial destruction!!!

well, like they say in texas: now i hate dr. phil too.

i tried to watch dr. phil last night and just couldn't take it. his guests at the beginning of the show were ann coulter and alan colmes. and while i'm used to seeing ann on talk shows, i am not used to watching shows in which she has a large amount of support coming from the audience. it seemed like the more outlandish and offensive she became, the more some in the audience absolutely loved it.

and of all the people he could have had on the show representing counterpoint, he chooses alan colmes?? well, that was useless.

gone are the days when ann coulter had to shut the hell up because her jaw was wired shut. she's going from show to show using the same lines over and over again....(yes, yes, last 12 kings of Swaziland, i've heard that one 3 times already)...basically making herself and her career relevant again on the coattails of President Obama.

when i heard those people in the audience cheering as she defended sarah palin's vacuousness as authenticity, i just kept reminding myself of one thing ann wrote last year:

In an April 2, 2008 column, she characterized Barack Obama's book Dreams From My Father as a "Dimestore Mein Kampf." Coulter writes, "He says the reason black people keep to themselves is that it's 'easier than spending all your time mad or trying to guess whatever it was that white folks were thinking about you.' Here's a little inside scoop about white people: We're not thinking about you. Especially WASPs. We think everybody is inferior, and we are perfectly charming about it."

ok, so it's clear that i'm not her audience. and i'm not even going to go there about someone who says that but then runs her trap about the horrors of jeremiah wright (wait, who?). but now that dr. phil has given her a welcome platform for her nonsense, i'm not part of his audience either. and that's a shame, because dr. phil has some of the best make-up artists and hairstylists out there! his team can take a guest with 2 pieces of hair and 5 teeth and make them look like marilyn monroe! AND THOSE ARE THE MEN!

i guess i'll just have to find other crappy tv shows to watch at 8 pm.