Goodbye, 2012!

Well, contrary to all of the predictions, the world didn’t end in 2012.  So let’s take a moment and review what we learned in the year that was:

1.       Superstorms suck.

2.       So does Carl Rove- at predicting election outcomes.

3.       And speaking of elections, that line, “the 1980’s called,” still kills.

4.       People lose their shit over the thought of losing Twinkies.

5.       If your apartment is on fire, CORY BOOKER WILL SAVE YOU!!!!!  And if your power is out, CORY BOOKER WILL LET YOU STAY IN HIS APARTMENT!!!!

6.       “Call Me Maybe” is not nearly as annoying when Missy Franklin sings along to it.

7.       Two and a Half Men got really good!  Hahahahahahahaha!  Psych!

8.       Global warming is either a myth or very real, depending on whether or not you live in reality.

9.       Facebook going public?  Meh.

10.   A man jumping out of space with a parachute is really, really cool.

11.   We have all watched that Gangnam Style video.  Nobody knows why, though.

12.   Lance Armstrong was a cheater!  Shocker!

13.   Oh, that grumpy cat. 

14.   Oh, also, that slut, Sandra Fluke!  Geez, what a slut.   

15.   She should have been thrown in a binder full of women like the other 47% and fed to Rafalca.

16.   Oh my God, I just made three amazing Romney references in one sentence!

17.   Argh, if only I’d found a way to fit in Clint Eastwood!

18.   Michaela Maroney is not impressed.

19.   A woman being brutalized by her lover was seen as sexy in 50 Shades of Grey, but a woman breastfeeding her child on the cover of Time was deemed disgusting.

20.   Guys, seriously, I think Lindsay Lohan is on drugs.

21.   Honey Boo Boo surprised the world by showing that she is a talented young lady and the epitome of a gracious southerner.  Well done, TLC. 

22.   The NRA is pro-gun.

23.   You might hate Carrie, and you might hate Brody, but you love Saul.  Everybody loves Saul.

24.   More progress on the gay agenda has turned most of us gay. Or gayer.  

25.   Regardless of your political position, or your position on marriage, we can all agree that Paula Broadwell is kind of terrifying.  Those arms!  She could kill a man with those things!

26.   The most important hostage release of the year?  Katie Holmes.

27.   In related news: no one wanted to see Tom Cruise sing

28.   With his deciding vote on Obamacare, John Roberts solidified the fact that he was not going to get invited to Antonin Scalia’s Christmas party.

29.   Between these NASA guys and Nate Silver, nerds had a pretty good year.

30.   We’re pretty sure Facebook is doing something we don’t like with our privacy, but we’re too lazy to really do much more research beyond that.  Catswithknives likes this.

31.   Something something fiscal cliff. 

32.   The London Olympics rocked in the most awesome way possible.

33.   Heaven gained a legendary coach, an incomparable singer, the best part of the movie Tootsie, and too many children for us to comprehend.  Rest in peace.

 

 

Grammar Resolutions

I attended a holiday party this year where each person was asked to provide a bottle of wine to swap and a creative New Year’s resolution. My resolution was this: I will never say “your” when what I mean is “you’re.” It was a very sincere resolution that I wanted to share with the world. But that is not the only grammar resolution that I would like to make. Here are my top resolutions:


1. I will never say “went” when I mean “gone.” It is always, “We would have gone,” never, “We would have went.”

2. I will understand that “yea,” is another way of saying, “hooray!” and “yeah,” is the slang version of “yes.” That is always the case.

3. I will never end sentences with prepositions at.

4. I will stop saying “loose” instead of “lose.” If something is loose that means it has too much space. If I lose, that means I don’t win.

5. I will learn the purpose of the semicolon; it is a meaningful punctuation tool.

6. I will never appear dumber than a second grader by misusing too/to/two or there/their/they’re. I will let slide, however, lay/lie/lain as nobody really cares about those.

7. I will learn some basic times when I should use “I” instead of “me.” For example, anytime I start a sentence, I will use I: “Roger and I went to the store.” Not, “Me and Roger went to the store.”

8. I will not tell myself the lie that spelling and grammar doesn’t matter. And I will use spellcheck.

9. I will tell myself ten times a day that apostrophes don’t make things plural.

10. I will not randomly capitalize words in the middle of sentences under the belief that it adds Emphasis and Weight to what I’m saying. I will use italics or bold for that.

11. I will make friends with adverbs, understanding that they describe verbs. As a result, I will always remind people to “go quickly,” and never to “go quick.” I may, however, still instruct people to “go real quick-like,” because it sounds adorable.

12. I will not add an extraneous letter “s” to things because I’m too lazy to listen to how it’s pronounced or cannot read how it is spelled. Bye bye, Meijers and Krogers.

13. I will not say “less,” when I mean “fewer.” Anything that I can put a number to should use fewer.

14. I will not say “impactful,” because that isn’t a word.

15. I will not say that I’m nauseous, unless there is something about me that is causing other people to feel ill. Instead, I will say that I am nauseated.

16. I will say “could have,” instead of “could of.” Because that is the correct thing to say, despite the fact that “could’ve” sounds like “could of.”

17. I will punch myself in the face if I ever use the word “literally.”

18. “Definitely.” I will definitely spell it correctly. D-E-F-I-N-I-T-E-L-Y.

Life Lessons from Matt Paxton

Some time ago, I wrote a post about my distain for sensitivenew-age guys.  You know, the guys who get all excited about Movember and who fuss over seasonal beers like middle-aged ladies fawning over a Longaberger catalogue. 

Matt Paxton is the opposite of a sensitive new-age guy.  And he is the best.

If you don’t know Matt Paxton, he is an “extreme cleaning specialist” who is featured on the A&E show Hoarders.  On a routine basis, Matt shovels shit, uncovers plastic bags full of liquefied cats, empties out refrigerators crawling with roaches, and chases rats out of crumbling walls.  He deals with some gnarly stuff.

What makes him the best, however, isn’t his apparent lack of gag reflex.  It is his absolute unflappability. 

First, let me explain Hoarders.  The premise of the show is that 3 million people suffer from hoarding disorder, which causes them to acquire and hang on to items, even if they are broken, unusable, unaccessible, and sometimes even unsanitary.  These are people who are facing eviction, homelessness, losing their children….it’s serious.  And, obviously, if their problem was as easy as just picking up after themselves, they wouldn’t be the state they’re in.  But saying goodbye to things – even pizza boxes or spoiled milk – creates terrible anxiety in them, usually related to a loss or trauma that they had suffered earlier in life that they hadn’t been able to resolve.  The show provides a psychologist, an organizer, a team of workers to help cart the stuff away, and resources so that the hoarder can receive psychological and organizational help afterwards.  All in all, they seem to do a reasonable job of respecting the dignity of the hoarders, and also creating a safety net for them after the show has finished taping.

While everyone on the show is awesome, (Holla, Dr. Robin Zasio!) Matt Paxton is the best, because he will confront anyone at any time, but manage to do it with absolutely no anger.  Three foot mound of shit rising out of your toilet?  Matt is like, “Man, that is a pile of shit coming out of your toilet.”  Dead cats stored in your refrigerator and freezer?  Matt says, “You have cat juice on the bottom of your refrigerator.”  He just tells it like it is, and then he gets to work making things right.

And that’s the best thing about this guy.  I look around, and I see people who are spectacular at pointing fingers and laying blame.  We are a nation that’s excellent at looking at things from the safety of our phones, or our computers, but who are pretty dismal at actually jumping in and solving the problems.  Matt Paxton is the opposite.  He names the problem, and then he chips in on the solution. 

But here’s the really important life lesson that Matt Paxton taught me: on one episode of Hoarders, the hoarder’s mess had spiraled so strongly out of control that he had a homeless guy living in a shack in his yard and he didn’t even know it.  This was such a fucked up situation that the homeless guy offered to help clean up because he felt bad for the hoarder!  So Matt is talking to this homeless guy, asking about his story, and it turns out that he had been a stockbroker, but a failed relationship and subsequent addiction to crack had put him in a shack in a hoarder’s awful yard.  Matt looked at the camera and said, “Man, we really are all five decisions away from shitting in a bucket.” 

When you think about it, some of us are closer than that.  And I think most of us fear our horrible thing – be it hoarding, or addiction, or depression, or loneliness….or whatever it is that we feel is wrong inside of us – will be exposed, and that the world will abandon us.  What I adore about Matt Paxton is that he’s the dude who says, “No way.  What you are right now isn’t who you are, and I’m going to help you get back to being who you are.”  We need a few more guys like that. 

Deadbeat Dad

This week, a Wisconsin judge sentenced a man who was in court for failing to pay child support for his 9 children to “not procreate until he shows he can support his children.”

Uh, I don’t think he can do that.

I’m not a judge, but I’m pretty sure that our freedom to procreate is protected by the Constitution.  Not even an amendment to the Constitution, but the actual document written by our actual forefathers.  If I’m remembering my first semester of law school correctly (and correct me if I’m wrong, lawyer friends), the protection comes from this phrase, “secure the Blessings of Liberty.”  It’s, like, in the first sentence of the Constitution.  Those blessings of liberty are considered our God-given rights, including those in our property - which includes our bodies.  That means that, if we have a right in something, then we can sell it, transfer it, give it away, destroy it, flood it, burn it, grow it, fence it off, not fence it off….it’s our property.  It was kind of a big deal to the framers of our government. 

The way I see it, the only way that a judge can FORCE a person not to procreate, is if that person is putting his or her creation in serious bodily jeopardy, like, selling their children into slavery or repeatedly giving birth to children who are addicted to harmful drugs.   But this man isn’t doing that.  He’s just not paying his child support.

I totally understand that not supporting the children you create is a horrible thing.  Trust me; I am one of a sea of women who never received a dime of child support from her child’s father.  It really sucked.  But this decision is tantamount to forced abortions.  You can’t disallow people from having sex unless they are knowingly spreading deadly disease, or in jail.  There might be other reasons.  I really don’t have the time to research this.  You can’t force people to use birth control, because that could be in direct contravention of someone’s religious beliefs, or even harm their health (latex allergy, reaction to a drug, etc.)  Also, every one of this guy’s little swimmers represents a potential human life that this judge is requiring, under his decision, to be washed down the drain or, you know, washed away from wherever it ends up.  Not in a woman’s uterus is what I’m saying.  Furthermore, you can’t just go around sterilizing people.  That’s what anti-miscegenists, racists, and people with God complexes did until 1977, and if there is a hell, that’s where those fuckers are going.  Last but not least, there are two people involved in creating a child; the judge is taking away the right of women to have children with whomever they choose.  Why are they being punished? This guy might have spectacular genes. 

And I know, most of you are thinking, “Well, I don’t want my government assistance to go to supporting any more of this man’s babies.”  Okay, you don’t get to pick and choose worthy candidates for your government assistance, so stop obsessing about who gets your tax dollars.  Also: you’re just assuming that all of these babies are now and will always receive government assistance. You have no idea whether that is true or not. 

And last, part (not all, but part) of the reason why this man feels free to go around making babies is because a) we, as a nation, do not promote birth control from the time kids start having sex, b) our society discourages birth control among consenting adults in favor of the fairy-tale notion of abstinence, and further, labels women who use birth control “sluts”, and c) our government puts a disproportionate responsibility for the care of out-of-wedlock children on the mothers – requiring them to seek child support in a convoluted and lengthy process with no guarantee of any payout.  And this judge’s decision to force this man to not procreate does nothing to make him a better or more responsible parent to the children he does have. 

I don’t know what the right decision for this man is.  But, just as I would never suggest that judges force people who get divorced, have affairs, get herpes, gamble, are assholes, spend all their time searching for memes to put on Facebook, or even those who blog about the most pointless, annoying things EVER to not to procreate, I also would never say, no matter how tempting, that forcing deadbeat dads to not procreate is the right answer either.  

God and Chocolate

On Tuesday, November 6, 2012, I did something really dumb: I made a deal with God.

You may recall that November 6^th was election night in the United States.  I had gone out to dinner with some friends, and arrived back home at around half past nine, just in time to see the returns start to come in. 

Now, I watched all of the debates on PBS, because, unlike the other network channels, and certainly unlike the cable news channels, they took a measured, unbiased approach to analyzing the debates, and they didn’t have that freaky undecided voter tracker that gave me chest pains.  But for the election, I turned on NBC, mostly because Brian Williams is smart and funny, and I figured I could take bad news from him better than I could take it from someone else.    

Brian Williams, however, wasn’t giving any spoiler alerts.  Remember, between 9:30 and 11:14, we all still believed the pundits – that this was anyone’s race to win. I, meanwhile, had made an unwise choice to have another glass of wine after returning home from dinner, such were the state of my nerves. 

Fueled by wine and in a mood to deal, I started calling on God.

“God,” I prayed, “Please let this election demonstrate the teachings of Jesus,” I began.  Because, as you already know, I totally think that Jesus was a Democrat.  A poor-loving, leper-washing, easier-for-a-camel-to-pass-through-the-eye-of-a-needle-than-a-rich-man-enter-into-the-kingdom-of-heaven Democrat.    

“God,” I prayed a little bit later, “Please let this election protect the sick, the elderly, gays, children, and those who are struggling.”  And just to be exceedingly clear, here, I am talking about providing healthcare and marriage to all, which was Obama’s platform, and not Mitt Romney’s.  And, while I think Old Testament God was sort of a dick, I think that New Testament God would agree with that platform.  People disagree with me about Old Testament God, but I kind of think he was like George Washington; he had a lot of good ideas, but it’s hard to get past that slavery thing.    

Finally, I was at the zenith of my freakout.  I turned on Jon Stewart, and started making bargains with God, the last of which was, “God, if Obama wins, I will not eat chocolate for all of December.” 

Now, for some of you, giving up chocolate may seem like no big deal.  For me, however, it is just about the biggest sacrifice I could make.  Chocolate is my heroin.  I eat it every day.  I think about it all the time.  I love it.  I’m obsessed with it.  And I made a deal with God to give it up in exchange for an Obama presidency.

A few minutes later, before I could take it back, Jon Stewart called the election for Obama. 

“You know, God doesn’t really make deals like that,” my friend Emily told me.  Yeah, that’s probably true, but God wasn’t the one making the deal.  It was me.  And you can’t just make a deal with God and then be like, “Psych, God!  Our deal probably wasn’t the reason why Obama was elected!” 

I also certainly don’t believe that the two-time election of George W. Bush was the will of God, so I don’t even know why I was making a deal like that in the first place (maybe I was drunk?) but the bottom line is that I made a promise to God, and I have to live by that promise.  Even if it was stupid. 

So now, thanks to Barack Obama’s God-pleasing policies and the will of the American people, I have to spend the entire month of December in a no-chocolate hell.  I am certain that my Republican friends are laughing right now, happy that at least one Democrat has been made miserable by this election.  And my Atheist friends are probably like, “You are going to be one surprised motherfucker when you die, and you just end up in a box, in the ground.”  Good point, Atheists.  But, regardless of whether God notices or not, this is my way of saying, “Thanks, God.  You were here for me, and I’m here for you.”  And, beloved chocolate, I will see you in January.