New Addition to my Shit List.

I am sure this is going to make me seem bigoted and narrow-minded, but for some reason this really infuriated me when I read it.

Listen, I am all for gender equality and all that shit, but this couple should probably have been sterilized before they had the chance to ruin this kid's life. 

Couple Finally Reveals Child's Gender, Five Years After Birth

It's a boy! And he's five. Beck Laxton, 46, and partner Kieran Cooper, 44, have spent half the decade concealing the gender of their son, Sasha.

"I wanted to avoid all that stereotyping," Laxton said in an interview with the Cambridge News. "Stereotypes seem fundamentally stupid. Why would you want to slot people into boxes?"

Laxton, a UK-based web editor, and her partner, Cooper, decided to keep Sasha's sex a secret when he was still in the womb. The birth announcement stated the name of the gender-neutral name of their child, but skipped the big reveal. Up until recently, the couple only told a few close friends and family members that Sasha was a boy and managed to keep the rest of the world in the dark. But now that he's starting school the secret's out."

(courtesy Yahoo! News)

Sasha better get used to that attitude...

There are about a thousand things wrong with this but I will start with some of the most obvious:

First I want to answer this asshole's question about why you would want to assign someone a gender or ("slot people into boxes").  Here it is:  Because I am pretty sure that throughout the history of the earth, this system has seemed to work pretty well for nature FOR MILLIONS OF YEARS.  There are boy bees and girl bees, and they have different tendencies.  There are even male and female parts on plants.  Who the fuck are you to thwart your little experiment in defying nature on some innocent kid who just wants to be a kid? 

Do I understand that the way we act and the things we do in life are sometimes dictated by our genders?  Yes.  Do I know that some people feel that they are not made to be the gender their sexy parts tell them to be?  Yes, and I have seen that first hand.  Do I agree that the male and female roles are something that is entirely based on a man-made construct? Well, mostly.

You see, although I know that much of gender is psychological, I also realize that men and women are physically different.  Not just because of their puzzle pieces but also because of hormones, brain construct, muscle and fat distribution and a myriad of other traits that have been more or less consistent throughout the history of the species.  It is true that there are many exceptions to this and it is true (to a point) that we are all individuals and genetically have an endless array of variations.  But I can acknowledge that perhaps the roles reflect the inherent strengths and weakness of each sex.  No matter how bad Ben wants it, he will never carry a baby (and have all the hormonal and emotional havoc associated with it) and no matter how hard I try, I will never thoughtlessly leave my socks in random places because that's where I needed to take them off at that moment.

Hey, it makes him feel beautiful, okay?

But to me, it seems there is something more questionable about this.  These parents are not celebrities.  Beck is a web editor and apparently Kiernan is a stay at home parent who likes to think of fun ways to force children into a lifetime of therapy.  That being said, who the hell is this "rest of the world" that they care enough to "conceal" his gender from?  Sasha?  The mailman?  The pedophile down the street?  It stands to reason that perhaps they were just looking for their 15 minutes (5 years) of fame because who the fuck cares about your kid and what genitals it has?  We aren't talking about simply giving a kid all the gender-neutral options here.  We are talking about purposely refusing to tell anyone (I am assuming the kid as well, because 3 year olds CANNOT keep a secret) because they have some bizarre fetish with androgeny.

But there's more to this story:

For years, Becks has been referring to her child, the youngest of three, as "the infant" on her personal blog. But guarding the public from her son's gender was only part of her quest to let her kid just be a kid.

Sasha dresses in clothes he likes -- be it a hand-me-downs from his sister or his brother. The big no-no's are hyper-masculine outfits like skull-print shirts. In one photo, sent to friends and family, Sasha's dressed in a shiny pink girl's swimsuit. "Children like sparkly things," says Beck. "And if someone thought Sasha was a girl because he was wearing a pink swimming costume, then what effect would that have? "

Ooooooh I can't WAIT to go and link over to her blog! I bet it is filled with all kinds of fun stories about the dog really wanting to play with catnip and the cat trying to fly like a bird.

Sasha can only dress in clothes he likes if those clothes are either gender-neutral or super girly.  No cargo pants (even though they make them for women) and no skulls or "masculine" things?  But sparkly skirts?  YES!  WONDERFUL!  That seems a little shady to me.  As if they are trying to force the issue that he select opposite-gender things.  What if he really LOVED skulls and lightening bolts and monsters?  I bet that would be a HUGE dissappointment to these dicks.

A big ass is not the kind of "cargo" these
pants are made for.

But there is something else. There are more kids in the house...who know what parts they have. So although little Sasha probably is too little to be aware of what ass hats his parents are, the older children have been in school and have likely been sworn to secrecy by their parents and been harrassed and teased for the he/she brother/sister they have. And kids LOVE having to lie and keep secrets from their friends. Nothing could be more fun for a kid than to have a dark secret to keep.

Sasha's also not short on dolls, though Barbie is also off limits. "She's banned because she's horrible," Laxton says in Cambridge interview.

On a macro level she hopes her son sets an example for other parents and makes them reconsider buying their sons trucks or forcing their daughters into tights. She's seen how those consumer trappings affect how and who kids play with in the sandbox.

Ohhhhhh. BARBIE is horrible. She may have porno boobs and weird feet, but at least she isn't running a social experiment on her kids.

And I believe that her dreams of setting an example is lost on me. I am pretty sure that you can just tell people "she is a girl" but still allow her to dress and play however the hell she wants.   Or you could just do what other parents do and name your kid something totally unisex like Pat or Terry or Beck or Kiernan.  

My point is that there are plenty of ways to encourage a kid to like and do non-gender specific things without sending him/her out into the world totally unprepared for the very realistic and extremely likely possibility that he WILL be put into a hundred different categories throughout his life and people WILL have different expectations of him based on those things.  Boo hoo hoo.  That's the way it is.

But the sandbox is just a precursor to the classroom. When Sasha turned five and headed to school, Laxton was forced to make her son's sex public. That meant Sasha would have to get used to being a boy in the eyes of his peers. Still, his mom is intervening. While the school requires different uniforms for boys and girls, Sasha wears a girl's blouse with his pants. (emphasis mine)


Oh Jesus Christ.  I am going to go see if anyone has set up a place to send donations for this kid's lifetime of therapy costs.

Read the full article here:

http://shine.yahoo.com/parenting/couple-finally-reveals-childs-gender-five-years-birth-180300388.html

The Shit List is back.

I am in a foul mood lately.  It might be because of all the Christmas music that is being subliminally transmitted in my brain to make me feel guilty about not feeling all "Christmas-ish".  In order to get that much more into the holiday spirit, I am going to just put a bunch of annoying things on notice. 

First up, Haircuts. Since I moved back to Upstate NY 4 years ago, I haven't had a good haircut. The last time(earlier this week), I wanted to cut my shoulder-length hair short so I showed the lady this picture:

I always, ALWAYS hate the way they style it, so when I looked in the mirror and saw myself with short hair, I figured it was just the gel (yes, GEL.  Welcome back to the 90's) the lady put in it and that would look super cute once I got home and did it myself.  I showered and blow dried my hair and this is what I looked like:

I have been to 4 different places and no one seems to be able to do what the students at the Tony and Guy academy in Phoenix could do.  And they were still learning!

Next on the Shit list are My ghetto "friends" on Facebook, who feel the need to play out all their super-ghetto drama RIGHT THERE ON the Facebook. Seriously.  NO ONE cares about your ex- boyfriend's drug charges or your cousin, who (did the world a favor and) ratted you to DSS for getting your teenage daughter high. Especially if it is going to lead to a 43 comment battle between you and the person you intended your passive aggressive comment for.  Here's a little quiz for you:
Do you know why our parents' generation would never put their business out there for the neighbors to see?  No, not because they're lame and there was no Facebook.  It's because they aren't assholes and they knew their neighbors would just think they were trashy.  (Yes, I realize some of us have parents who probably WOULD do this.  I guess I am thinking about NORMAL parents).

Next up:  The commercial I heard today.   I was driving today and heard a commercial on the radio that said, "If you give a tablet or smart phone this Christmas, the person you give it to will know that you REALLY get them."  And my immediate reaction is that are really only a few situations where someone gives a $500 tablet or a $300 smart phone are as follows:

• Parents giving it to their teens, in which case they will NEVER feel you REALLY get them,
• A spouse or boy/girlfriend giving one to a significant other in which case THAT'S WHY YOU'RE WITH THEM! Or
• A guy trying REALLY hard to get into a girl's pants.  Hey, I'm not judging.  You go girl!
• A "friend" who gives extravagant gifts, in which case please friend me on Facebook. 

Finally, there's my kid.  I know that there is strong evidence that indicates that children "KNOW" when something is off with one or both of their parents.  This causes them to throw hissy-fits and be total assholes when you are least able to handle it.  A few weeks ago I would have told you that Lila had magically transformed into a perfect little well-behaved model child. And then one day while we were having lunch, she bit her tongue and turned into Satan.  Yup.  Just like that.  And she has been behaving like a caged animal who wants out ever since.  You know why? Because I have been really stressed out at work and am exhausted when I come home.  She knows.

But here's the question:  If they KNOW that you are not really feeling at your best, then why don't they act WELL BEHAVED when you are stressed out, and like animals the rest of the time when you don't mind it so much?  What the hell, Darwin.  Shouldn't that be a survival skill that would prove beneficial to their species?  Maybe then mother hamsters wouldn't eat their babies.  This just proves that kids are stupid.

Of course this is no where near a comprehensive list, but I have to go and attend to my screaming kid now.

DRIVING me crazy

There are hundreds of things I miss from my pre-Mommy days.  I miss my body.  I miss making spontaneous plans.  I miss being able to leave the house without 2 hours of preparation and planning.  But there is one thing that I am reminded of nearly every single day, and every day I miss it more and more.

I miss being able to zone out and think while driving. 

Have you ever tried to concentrate on the road in a construction area where there is no shoulder and cars are merging in front and behind you with a 4 year old in the back seat?  Do you have any idea how nerve racking that is?

Actual conversation that took place in heavy traffic yesterday:

Kid: Mommy, what day is it?
Me: It's Tuesday. 
Kid: Is it Tuesday?
Me: Yes.  Today is Tuesday.
Kid: I think it's Wednesday. 
Me: No.  It's Tuesday.  Trust me.
Kid: Is it going to be Thursday tomorrow? 
Me:  No.  It's going to be Wednesday because today is Tuesday.
Kid: No it isn't Tuesday, it's Wednesday.
Me:  Ok... Then you're right.
Kid: Is tomorrow Friday or Thursday. 
Me: Tomorrow will be WEDNESDAY.
Kid: No tomorrow isn't Wednesday. 
Me: Yes it is.
Kid: Today is Wednesday. 
Me: No it isn't.
Kid: It's Wednesday and tomorrow is Thursday.
Me: OK.  Let's play a game and see who can be quiet longer!
(6 seconds go by)
Kid: Mommy, what day is today?

I have begged for quiet.  I have tried to make a game of it.  I have turned up the music to drown her out (which just makes her scream that it's too loud and that she has a headache).  I have explained that Mommy needs to concentrate and just needs to not have to answer any more questions while I am driving.  Nothing works.

What makes it worse is that she also constantly critiques my driving.

Why are you going so slow? 
Why did you hit that bump? 
Are we going to crash? 
Why don't you go around that guy? 

I should be thankful that she is so curious about the world. I should be glad that she feels she can talk to me. Because I know that before I know it there will be slammed bedroom doors and refusals to listen. But JESUS CHRIST, can I just have a few quiet minutes in the car when I need it???

Ancient History: 5 B.C.

I was sitting in a McDonald's with Lila the other day and overheard a woman talking about the good old days.  Back in B.C.  Before Children.

Let's take a little stroll through history, shall we?

All that's left of my life Before Children

5 years B.C. I could wake up on Sunday morning and have the whole day in front of me.  The house would be quiet and the newspaper would be waiting for me.  I would leisurely drink my coffee and peruse the paper and carefully weigh all the possibilities for the day ahead.  Those days are gone.

In 5 B.C. I could get a phone call at 7pm on a Friday and be out the door in half an hour for a night on the town where I dressed sexy and got hit on all night by various attractive men offering to buy me drinks in the hopes that I would go home with them.  That's over too.

That's me on the left in blue at a rave in 2001

In 5 B.C. if I was sick, I stayed in bed all day.  Sometimes a friend or even my mom would come over to take care of me.  I could watch movies or read or just sleep.  Not so much anymore.

In 5 B.C. I worked to buy myself nice clothes, shoes, a car, and to support my habit of buying more books than I could read.  I worked so that I could go out and eat with friends or offer to pay on dates.  I always had money left over after paying my bills even though it was just me and no roommates.  So much for that.

Me in my slutty clothes

In 5 B.C. I lived alone.  The only mess to clean up was mine (and MiMi, my cat's).  I hardly cooked because it's no fun to cook for yourself and so I ate a lot more fast food, and yet never managed to gain any weight.

In 5 B.C. I had perfect boobs, a flat stomach and minimal cellulite.  I showed off my body and if I chose to I could even sleep around if the mood struck me.  Just because I was a hot young thing.  I'm not anymore.

Me at dawn. I was 22 here.

Today, Sunday mornings are loud and my day is left in her hands.  It's impossible to have spontaneous plans pop up because I don't have a spur-of-the-moment babysitter and even if I did, I am so exhausted by the end of the day that I rarely stay up past 9pm.  If I'm sick, too bad.  Mom's don't get to call in sick.  I work to buy my kid nice things.  So that she can leave them all over the house for me to clean up.  Today my boobs are heading south, my ass is expanding to unclaimed frontiers and there is a roundness to me that I can barely identify.  It isn't pretty or sexy and I cannot remember the last time I thought about sex.

It's not that there aren't good points,  Lila is the joy of my life in so many ways.  But seriously, when you put it on paper it really makes me yearn for the good old ancient days of B.C.

 

(All photos were the result of a Bing Search and thumbnails.  But the captions are mine)

Its' a "Fuck You" Friday!

There are no where near enough angry link ups out there. 

I am not going to sit here and pretend I have any idea how to do a link up or whatever, but I highly recommend that on Fridays, you take about 5 minutes and scroll a little note about something that happened this week and say to it "Fuck you...I'm on to my weekend."  I also want to say that I KNOW it's Thursday. But I really hope that you guys will join in because it's nothing if not totally liberating!  And if you want to leave a link to your blog saying that you did it (or are going to do it) in the comments section, please do.  OR do it on facebook. 




Fuck You Fridays photo courtesy of Johnny Cash.


Today's Fuck You Friday has to do with an old boyfriend turned buddy who I gave up on as a human being this past week.

Joe was one of those guys who I fell in love with when I was like 13 years old even though he was like 18 at the time.  He ignored me back then but as soon as I turned 18 we got together and did that whole "You're my soul mate" thing until he finally told me like 5 months later that: a) he had an 18 month old son by his last girlfriend and b) that he was going to go back to her so I should forget he ever existed.

Now, at 18 I am pretty stupid. I admit as much.  I would say that emotionally I definitely rode the short bus.  So when I run into him randomly, like, 9 times in the following 2 weeks, I am convinced that "the universe is obviously telling me something" so I hold my breath and just "know he'll come back to me."  I go on with my life and date (a billion) other guys but I always believe that some day we'd randomly meet up at some fruit stand in Morrocco just like they do in old movies and we'd fall in love and live happily ever after.  I told you I was a fucking idiot. 

A few years pass and we meet up again.  This time he claims he has left that bitch for good and did all the things he was supposed to do to keep contact with his kid and minimum drama with her (custody arrangements and all that).  So I think "now's the time!  We'll be together forever," right?  WRONG.  First he fucked some awful fat girl who I THINK is my friend but turns out to be a whore.  Then he tells me about how there's this "young chick" at his work who keeps (and I quote) "sticking her ass in my face".  I tell him he's an asshole and think that if I avoid him for a few days to prove how angry I am he will feel bad and come running back.  It doesn't work.

When I try to call him a week later, the phone number is disconnected.  I go to his apartment and it's empty. I stop by his work and it turns out he quit.  That fucker vanished into thin air. 

But dumb me, I run into him again and again and every time he professes his undying love to me and then would end up going back to the girlfriend with the ass gone wild.  At one point, he moves into my apartment for a few weeks and when the larger apartement downstairs opens up, he tells me to tell the landlord we're going to take it.  He never shows up to give the landlord the security deposit and again disappears into thin air.

Around this time I become aware that he is seriously using drugs.  Bad drugs. Crack, Heroin, Meth.  I feel so sad and helpless to do anything for him.  Soon after this, I move to Arizona, start intensive psychotherapy and begin to understand just how fucked up the whole situation actually is.  I plan a trip back to Syracuse and a week before my trip he magically finds me on the internet.  He tells me he is fresh out of rehab and would love to see me when I come home. I tell him that's awesome since I happen to have some things to tell him!  I go to see him and tell him that he's an asshole for treating me like some stop-gap for half of my life, and that he can basically go fuck himself.  I don't give him a chance to respond.  I drive away feeling like I did the right thing.

Three years later I move back.  I am in Wal Mart (of all God-awful places) in my sweats and I run into him.  He looks awful but tells me he's been clean since the last time I saw him.  He still looks at me the way he used to and I realize now why I always fell for his bullshit.  I try to make small talk and he lays into me about how much I hurt his feelings that day and how he hasn't been able to get me out of his head since then.

I fucking feel bad for some reason.  But I am honest.  I have a family now.  I have a guy who is everything he never was.  I would never leave them and I would never take him back.  He is okay with this.  I tell him to keep in touch and we do on the Facebook.

One day he wants to see me and we meet for coffee and he looks like total shit.  I suspect he's using agian but he swears he's not and he tells me about his latest girlfriend and how she got pregnant on purpose and he just "isn't feeling it" and so they ended it amicably but now he is seeing a new girl.  He tells me she's 21, which is young because he's almost 40.  I laugh and offer him my advice which I know he won't follow. But I tell him the truth.  He's an idiot.  He needs to get his shit together and stop hooking up with dumb chicks and making babies.  I am brutally honest and it makes him irritated with me. There is no weirdness.  No sexual tension.  We are friends and I am fine with this.

A few weeks later I find out from a mutual friend that he OD'd on something or other and was in the hospital for a few days and is now going to rehab.  I feel awful.  Could I have helped him?  Was he trying to kill himself?  He must have been so sad!  Why wasn't I more understanding?  Why do I always have to tell people exactly what I think?

When he gets out I call him and I see him and he tells me that him and his girlfriend are trying to have a baby.  That her parents are okay with his age, which prompts me to comment on her being 21.  He tells me she's 18.  And that they're in love and they're going to get married.

I laugh.  "Really?" I say.  Because obviously LOVE is all that matters.  I tell him that he is in NO POSITION to be making this kind of decision and that no child should have to suffer with a young and obviously insane mother and a junky father.  He tells me he is in love.  I tell him that he already has 3 kids by 3 different women and that never worked out to keep them together.  He tells me he's in love.  I tell him that if he really loves her he would let this fresh out of high school child go out and figure things out and not try to tie her down with a fucking kid because after all, he IS the adult.  He tells me he's in love.  I tell him his son is a year older than his girlfriend.  He tells me he's in love.

He doesn't get it.  He refuses to even acknowledge that the facts are correct.  He just keeps telling me that he is in love with her and wants to marry her.  I get mad.  Then he makes a stupid statement.  He says "I am going to marry her.  So speak now or forever hold your peace."  And it fucking hits me.

He wants me to beg him not to do it.  Not just because it's stupid but he wants me to beg him to be with ME!  HAH!  I laugh.  Is he fucking insane?  Is he seriously fucked up?  I know the answer is yes.

So I tell him that he's on his own.  I refuse to worry about him anymore.  He obviously has no concern for himself and has no interest in functioning like a normal person.  I tell him to knock himself out: go smoke some crack, knock up some 12 year olds, and sleep under a fucking bridge.  I tell him that I am done and that I was fucking stupid to think that we could be friends because the old pattern of "I beg for you, you choose someone else" is like a drug in itself for him.  He thought I would fall right back into that role.

But the truth is that when I saw how fucked up and ugly the drugs and misery he chooses has made him, I was no longer even remotely interested.  That part of me who felt anything like a lover to him is dead and buried.  I only wanted him to be okay in the way that I would want anyone I have known for (I can't believe I am going to say this) 20 years to be okay.  I want him to choose fucking happiness.  To make a decision that isn't completely fucking self destructive.  But he thinks I still want to fuck him. 

And for that, Joe- for that I say a big, long-time-coming

FUCK YOU!!!

Thank you, captain obvious...

When did shit that is completely obvious become "news"?  Today I opened up my interwebs to find this fucking brilliant headline shocking me to attention:

Parenting can take a toll on health, study shows

Oh, really?  Tell me more!!! 
 
Health declines, particularly in moms, due to poor diet and less exercise.

My kid's idea of a balanced meal:  all the colors are there!

First off, I am shocked that it took this long for any science-y person to look around and think to themselves, "Is it just me or do mom's seem to age like 15 years in the first 5 years of their children's lives?"  Part of my not really being particularly desperate to pop a baby out had to do with the simple observation that the mothers I saw around me (not including assholes like Angelina Jolie or Kelly Ripa who can pop out 12 kids in 6 months and be back on the beach in someplace like Bali in their bikinis the next month) did not look good.  They were fat.  They were tired.  They looked pale and/or greasy.  In fact, I theorized that that glorious "glow" that pregnant women had was like the big finale at the fireworks show.  They'd never have that youthful vitality again.

Kelly Ripa on her way
home from the hospital
after the birth of her 3rd
baby.

So onto the obvious details.  As soon as I had my kid, I lost all ability to function for myself.  When she was a newborn, I never ate.  I certainly never slept.  Hell, I didn't shower. The life upheaval involved in having a baby is as stressful as the death of your former self and no one looks good when they're grieving.  I had a child that I was convinced was probably the Anticrhist because her only goal seemed to me to push me to murder.  She cried non-stop for about 6 months (that's how I remember it).  And the doctors all just said, "it's colic.  She'll out- grow it".  Well you know what?  I didn't.  I never got over it. 

As she got older, she took on the attitude of "if Mommy is standing, then I need to try harder," and her entire purpose seemed to be to wear me out.  From the running around, to climbing all over me, to demanding 4 different drinks because each one was "wrong", to refusing to eat anything I put in front of her, to needing to change her clothes 6 times because of one spot of water, to never sleeping through the night until she was 3; everything she did was designed specifically to make me into a zombie.
 
Who can exercise when they can barely get out of bed?  And who the hell are these mothers who work all day and come home and find it possible to spend an hour making a nutritious (and organic and meat-free) meal that their kids will just love rather than just throwing a frozen pizza into the oven? 
Fuck those moms. 

More importantly, besides the "news" that this study reveals and common-sense advice (because don't we all KNOW what we SHOULD be doing?) to take better care of ourselves, this article DOES offer one useful suggestion.  Unfortunately, it is buried at the very end of the article and as far as I can tell has not been repeated in subsequent articles that have been posted on the web:

...Berge said she hopes that the results will push health care providers to pay additional attention to parents.

Community initiatives could also be part of a solution, she said.

“You can’t extend the hours in the day, but by working with others in the neighborhood we can make sure that the parents are taking care of themselves, too..."

Shit..If I had a village of nannies (or even just a village of Mommy friends), I am sure I would have more time to shower and exercise and eat well too. 

To me, this "study" was simply a piece of information that serves absolutely no purpose except to remind me of how unhealthy I am.  Because realistically, until my kid goes off to college or at least becomes a bit more agreeable than the pain in the ass preschooler that she is now, I will likely continue to be too emotionally and physically drained to bother with the necessary chores of meal planning, local vegetable buying and hour-long daily workouts that would be required to get me even remotely into a condition that can be considered healthy.

Because playing WII bowling with my kid while chomping on Goldfish crackers is just not going to cut it.

Saturday Shitlist

I spent a lot of time tooling around the interwebs this week and thanks to #1, I really found a minimal amount of things to put on the list this week.  Feel free to add your own.  I will even give you a grade for participation!

1. The Cold Virus or the Flu, whatever the hell this shit is.  It LOOKS like a cold- all coughs and sneezes, but it FEELS like the Flu, in that I am so exhausted and miserable that I called in sick to work and haven't left the house since Tuesday. 

2. Harry Hunters.  Jesus H. Christ on a crutch! Have you seen these assholes?  (If not, read this )
Yeah, you're going to find Prince fucking Harry and marry him by stalking him for several weeks before his brother's wedding.  I am sure he'd be thrilled to marry some slutty American chick who has a stash of postcards of him and his brother rubber banded together and shoved in her bra. 

I think Harry said it best:

Good luck ladydouches.

3. The entire world.  Has everyone gone fucking crazy?  Because I thought that crazy was my domain.

Hot off the runway for Summer '11.

4. My local community health center.  For adding an large dollop of stress onto my already thoroughly thinly stretched finances and still not managing to cure me.  It's bad enough that I don't have health insurance and have to sit in the ghetto-ass waiting room but then you can't even get my paperwork right so I'm not billed $400 for a Thyroid test that I only got because you told me it was going to cost "next to nothing"?  AND you can't find the results!  FUCK YOU ASSHOLES!!!

5. Thomas the Tank Engine.  Wait a second!  I LOVE the NORMAL Thomas.  The simplicity of narrating a bunch of model trains around a neat little model city.  And two of my FAVORITE people on earth narrated!  FANTASTIC!  What I'm talking about is this bullshit computer animated, the trains all talk and have different voices bullshit.  Now it's just another lame cartoon.  And nothing even blows up!

And there was this.  Now it's a lame cartoon.

5. Old Navy's new annoying "Layer Player" bullshit commercial.  As I mentioned above, I have been sick in the house for several days and I don't have cable.  So on my 6 or so channels, I have seen this fucking commercial about 4,793 times.  I have broken down the dance moves in my mind.  They are playing it one every channel during every show.  No, really.  I refuse to embed it on my blog, but here's the link if you want to torture yourself with it:  LINKY

6. The Lottery Mega Millions $312 Million Jackpot.  I don't play the lottery because I am the unluckiest person I know.  But Ben did play and I would have been happy if he matched like 2 of the 6 numbers.  He played 10 different quick-picks.  You know how many of the final 6 numbers he had TOTAL on all his plays?  ONE.

The other reason I don't play the "numbers".
(If you don't get this one, you're not a Lostie)

7. Which reminds me, I am STILL FUCKING PISSED about the ending of Lost.