No I haven’t gotten my H1N1 shot and I don’t plan to

I think I already talked about this back when it was still mostly known as the swine flu….but now it’s back in full effect with a new name and a new attitude and this time

Romance in the H1N1 Era

big pharma with the help of the media are ready. The media got people shook…Folks are knocking down old people and kicking babies just to get a hit of that H1N1 vaccine. It’s like crack 2K9. Okay maybe I’m exaggerating a little but they were giving out doses at my job and my coworkers couldn’t wait to get stuck.

Not I, for the following reasons:

1. I don’t like needles (my dislike for needles is so strong that I could really stop here…but for completeness’ sake  and the fact that I wouldn’t take the thing even if it came in a grape pixie stick I’ll continue)

2. I don’t trust pharmaceutical companies. Anytime improving the bottom line and keeping me healthy are in direct conflict with each other I start watching my back. I’ve seen enough conspiracy theory movies, and Michael Moore documentaries (wait is that the same thing?) to know that companies do not choose people over profits. 

3. Didn’t they come up with the thing in just a few months? I’m sure more time was spent trying to find an effective solution for dandruff. Do they know what the side effects are yet? We know how perfect big pharma’s record is for coming out with safe and well tested drugs.

4. I’ve never been sold on the idea that shooting a virus into your body is the best way to avoid getting it. Call me crazy for not wanting to stay healthy by playing tricks on my body.

5. Some of the stuff they put in the vaccine aren’t safe outside the vaccine…so explain to me how the vaccine is safe again…vaccines contain mercury? But didn’t yall tell us not to play with the inside of the thermometer???

The video below is supposed to be humorous….but like most comedy the best kind has some truth in it.

The media, as they are prone to do, is creating a panic situation and it’s causing people to put logic aside and act on emotion. Isn’t that how we wound up in Iraq?

Incidentally, I just learned from CNN that my stance against vaccines makes me an “anti-vaxer”. Who knew I was a part of a movement! LOL. But honestly I’m not so much anti-vaccine  as I am anti-big pharma. Vaccines are probably one of the greatest developments in modern medicine. And to be fair big pharma is probably one of life’s many mixed blessings/necessary evils. I could write a whole blog about how I feel about that. I probably will one day.

I never get the regular flu vaccine anyway. So there really wasn’t much chance I was going to line up to get this new flu shot they just made up the other day no matter how sexy they make it sound.  But I got asked by 4 coworkers whether I was going to get my shot and got questioned about why I wasn’t 3/4 of those times.  I should have asked those same people why they were so quick to trust someone to shoot something into their body without really having a clue what they were getting. But it was too late for them to go untake their shot so getting into that discussion would have been pointless.

Am I scared I’m gonna get the flu? Not really. I’ve had the flu before and  it sucked…..but my body did what it was supposed to do and fought off the virus and I got better…..If I got a flu shot I might not get the flu (no guarantees) but I might wind up with some unexplained neurological condition due to mercury poisoning. If I’m gonna take chances on ingesting mercury I’ll take them from eating one of my favorite foods, salmon.

Anyway I appreciate the employee health center for being expeditious about trying to protect the employees, but I must kindly say “No thank you very much” to your H1N1 shot.

More anti-vaxer pages:

Do NOT let your child get the flu vaccine- 9 reasons why

http://hubpages.com/hub/5-Reasons-NOT-to-get-the-Swine-Flu-H1N1

Parents be warned…Your president wants your kids to succeed

Have you heard that Obama has the audacity to want to encourage kids to to take responsibility for their education, pay attention in class, and God forbid… follow their dreams! He’s got a lot of nerve and some concerned parents aren’t going to take this lying down. No way they’ll be letting their kids get exposed to that garbage!  If their kids get wind of his socialist “education is important” propaganda their kids might actually get motivated or learn something or  maybe even become  critical thinkers and then their chances of becoming paranoid right wing nuts would be severely reduced. That would be a real travesty!

I mean get a load of this speech! If even a few kids take this message to heart all heck just might break loose. Who wants a bunch of kids running around feeling personal responsibility? That’s not even the American way!

Concerned parents take heed…your president wants your kids to try hard and do their part to help solve the nations ills one day. Attitudes like that could shake the very foundations this nation was built on so do your part to protect them because your inaction on this could have real consequences.

 

Be warned ...these could be your kids!

Just when I thought I had seen the bottom of the barrel VH1 showed me that the barrel can go so much lower

Every time I turn on my television I get more embarrassed for the entire human race. What must the aliens think of us??? I just had the misfortune of sitting through an episode of Real Chance of Love and I don’t have anyone to blame for sacrificing those minutes of my life that I can never get back but myself. I know it’s a sorry excuse but I was so busy on the net that I didn’t feel like pausing to look for batteries to put in my remote so I could change the channel or turn off the TV.

After sitting through it I’m just in disbelief that they actually off spun  a show with women competing for two rejects from a show  where men

lord help us all if this is what a catch looks like

 competed for a woman who was rejected from a show where women competed for a man who was a hype man for an early 90s rap duo/talking troll. Not to mention that this show was spun off from a spin off from a show about celebrity has beens. If this isn’t the bottom of the barrel, the bottom can’t be much further down.

The saddest part of the show wasn’t the women prancing around in next to nothing to get the attention of two guys who together share half a brain cell. Those girls will probably get lucrative porn careers out of the deal. The sad part was the girls who actually came on this show trying to show how much classier they were than the women throwing themselves at Real and Chance like being the classiest reality show strumpet is an enviable position.  

I’m not sure whether I’m more embarrased that these women signed up to publicly set women back 35 years, that VH1 gave them a venue to do this, or that I actually sat through an episode. I’m pretty sure it’s the third thing that embarrasses me the most. So I will try to right the universe and turn that experience into something for the good of society.

This show is an example of why we need more volunteers to mentor the youth. Growing up, these women obviously only had video girls as role models. We have to do our part to make sure that future generations don’t find themselves on a reality show modeling lingerie to a pair of half-wits only to be immediately rejected. We also need to pressure our community leaders to monitor the levels of lead in our drinking water because the levels were obviously highly elevated in the communities of every member of this programs cast resulting in the rampant brain cell disfunction on display throughout the show. Complacency has real consequences people!

I’m just trying to figure out which cause to start addressing first.

Top 5 potentially detrimental Facebook activites that must be avoided to keep the Facebook world a happy place

Probably one of the most significant developments in the evolution of human interaction since the invention of the telephone is the explosion of social media. Never before have we been able to know more mundane and highly personal information about people we never actually (and in many cases have any desire to) spend time with. This, like every great development in life, comes as both a blessing and a curse.  While social media has provided an extraordinary means of reconnecting with all the people who made fun of you on the playground, it also provides a means to reconnect with all the people who made fun of you on the playground and comes with it’s own unique set of  ways you can royally screw up your life and or the lives of others inadvertently or deliberately with a few clicks of a mouse.

Whether social media will become a permanent fixture in our lives like cell phones or whether it will go the way of the party line remains to be seen. But since Facebooking  is clearly a part of the lives of millions of people for now I thought it might be prudent to provide a public service to my fellow Facebookers by sharing a few activities that are best avoided within the Facebook environment. They are listed below in no particular order.

Exhibitionism

Thankfully Facebook has a panel of decency monitors who make sure that Facebook remains a family friendly environment. This tends to keep this activity somewhat in check. But the monitors can only do so much. Just because your pics don’t violate the decency monitors rules doesn’t mean they’re a good idea. So think twice about posting that picture of you making it to third base with some guy you met at the bar, even if he was super hot. Not only do most of us not want to see that, but that picture becomes a permanent record in the cyber-world and is ripe to be used against you at some point in your life.

Cyberstalking

When I say cyberstalking I’m not talking about obsessing over the page of that Facebook crush you’re too afraid to actually friend but who just happened to leave his/her page public. (Not that I’d ever do that) As far as I’m concerned that’s a perfectly acceptable FB activity untilit turns into the kind of cyberstalking that clues your cyberinterest and all their closest friends in that you’re a psycho. Cyberstalking activities include things such as sending inappropriate email messages about what one would like to do to your cyberinterests toes or posting potentially embarrassing comments about wanting to be the bicycle seat your cyber interest is sitting on underneath pictures of their family vacation. These types of activities will not endear your interest to you no matter how clever and witty you think they make you appear.  

Engaging in Cyber beef 

There’s nothing more ungangster than a cyber thug. Posting thugged out wall comments and passive aggressive status updates does not make one appear hardore, but it might make people unfriend you.

  Posting drunken wall posts on your ex-boyfriend/girlfriends page

There’s nothing like two long island iced teas,  an apple martini and a tequila shot to make one feel like the most loving and lovable person on the planet. So lovable that it seems unfathomable that an ex love interest wouldn’t go ga ga over a heartfelt post on their wall about how you want to lick their eyebrows one more time. Sure a two AM drunk dial can have embarrassing results, but a Facebook post that will be shared with 345 of your and your ex-flames closest friends, associates, coworkers, and these days possibly their mother can be absolutely mortifying once you sober up and see the 35 post comment thread that developed before your ex could get to their page and delete the post. To avoid this temptation it may be a good idea to hand your blackberry over to a trusted friend before the tequila kicks in.

Carrying out relationship disputes

Continuing  the theme of relationships and beef, the combination of the two is never a good look in the Facebook environment. It’s always important to remember to think of Facebook as putting a  group of your old friends, new friends, associates, coworkers, and relatives into one room. Nothing that you wouldn’t announce at a dinner party composed of those people should ever be posted on Facebook. So please refrain from posting that your boyfriend is  a selfish jerk unless this issue is up for discussion among all your FB connections. Another ill-thought out activity is posting an angry diatribe about ones ex as a status or wall post. This is not only tacky, it also clues any potential future suitors who might be perusing your page in that you are a raging nutcase before they ever get to figure this out for themselves.

I’m sure there are some other activities that could potentially threaten the peaceful Facebook environment. Some of your friends could be engaging in them right now. Avoiding these activities can help to keep Facebook peaceful or it might be more fun to go post an ambiguously inappropriate Facebook status and see how many of your friends have a sense of humor. At any rate  if anyone has any additions to this list please feel free to share them.

Rethinking all the dating advice

I’m no dating expert. I have very little experience at it and I only enjoy it about half the time. However since dating is apparently a prerequisite to not becoming a cat lady (which would be really unfortunate since I don’t like cats) I occasionally partake in the ritual. But I, like so many of my black female counterparts, don’t go on enough dates to constitute an active dating life so I’m not really writing this post from personal experience. Despite the lack of an experiential foundation, perhaps something in this post can serve as a public service to my fellow date-starved females. 

 

They love to tease us with covers like this even though they know good and well that the statistical probability of 3 or more eligible attractive black men being in the same space is less than 0.069

Essence magazine, Soledad O’Brien and I have noticed that black women marry at an abysmally low rate. I can’t help but think that other than the fact that marriage worthy black men are as rare as unicorns and Chevettes that still run,  this low marriage rate could be due in part to bad dating advice that black women are perpetually given by well intentioned friends, family members, magazines, and televangelists. So I’m suggesting that black women take a moment to collectively rethink all of the dating advice we’ve been given. Perhaps it will give us a shot at not ending up in the 60% of black women who will never marry statistic, or at the very least it might help us to not end up on the couch watching the Sex in the City box set alone on a Saturday night (not that that doesn’t sound like a pretty awesome evening to me).

So here we go…….. dating advice we might want to rethink:

You can’t meet Mr. Right in the club

Maybe you can’t maybe  you can. Who am I to say…who is anybody to say….Just because you’re in the club doesn’t mean you’re a strumpet and just because that cute guy in the wire framed specs is in a club it doesn’t mean he’s a giggalo. Perfectly nice people go to the club. And if a nice girl, like I’m sure you are, is in a club, who’s to say that your Mr. Right isn’t right there with you geeked because the DJ just put on ”Brass Monkey” just like you are. Now I’m not advising women to go to the club with the intention of finding Mr. Right. But if you like going to the club, go to the club and don’t be afraid to do the Pee Wee Herman in the middle of the dance floor.  And if a nice guy happens to come over and tell your your Humpty Dance is like none he’s ever seen don’t just dismiss him because of where you met him. Lord knows black women can’t afford to just be dismissing people on random criteria like that.

 Online dating is just for losers and psychopaths

I have no experience with this, but I strongly believe that in about 5-10 years, once the stigma has finally worn off, online dating will be the primary mechanism for people to meet each other. Peoples lives are busy, and not everybody likes clubs, or has a lot of friends to set them up on blind dates or sees cute guys squeezing produce in the grocery store 1.  I think online dating has already caught on pretty well in the white community, but as soon as you mention online dating to most black women you get an immediate “Oh h*ll no!” Most of the reasons for their immediate dismissal make very little sense to me. For example I’ve been told “you don’t know what you’re getting when you meet someone online.” Hello, like you know what you’re getting when a guy introduces himself to you at the gas pump or even when a friend sets you up with someone. Okay so maybe a friend might be able to give an endorsement but, people can lie about their identity regardless of the medium they meet you in. Now I can’t promise you that the current crop of men on dating sites are not serial killers, husbands looking for someone to cheat with, or just super lame. For one thing hot eligible black men are in so much demand that most don’t really have to turn to dating sites unless they live in East Bucktussle or they have no game. But as the Internet continues to take over our lives and people start to spend a higher percentage of their life online it’s only natural that our dating habits will gradually shift to match our lifestyle. So go ahead and give online dating a shot. Once you sign up that’s one more non-lame person on the site.

Don’t go looking for a man…you need to wait on Mr. Right to find you

This isn’t entirely bad advice. But a lot of women have taken this advice to mean that they don’t have to get out there to meet people. Mr. Right is not going to just show up at  your door unless you’re looking to date the pizza guy. Get out of the house! Go to concerts and parties. Get a hobby like stripping. Even if the hobby is female centered you might make new friends which could result in invitations to go to parties and events in a different circle, which could mean NEW men to meet. And while you’re going to these events it wouldn’t hurt anybody if you flashed some cleavage turned up the sex appeal a notch, in an ultra classy way of course. Men are visual creatures. So keep the hair tight and carry some lip gloss. (I’m not one to advocate going overboard to meet guys…and I’m guilty of  letting the tresses go astray from time to time…but I’m also single so consider the source)

Don’t give it up on the first date

I’m just playing. It’s still probably not a good idea to give it up too soon. I’ll leave giving arbitrary guidelines on what point between initial eye contact and the honeymoon is the dividing line between Jezebel and wifey to Steve Harvey.

These are just some of the tips I’ve heard recently but I’m sure there’s much more bad dating advice swarming around in the cosmos keeping black women single all over America. And I’m sure I’ve been a victim of some of it myself. But you don’t have to take my advice either. If I had a clue about dating I’d probably be out somewhere now instead of in here typing a blog. But it definitely can’t hurt to adjust your approach if the way you’ve been doing things isn’t working. A wise 2 person once said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result. So let’s stop the insanity ladies!

1 seriously do black guys grocery shop???? I NEVER see cute black guys in the grocery store. This could be due in part to the demographics of my neighborhood. But even when I shop in other areas I rarely see a cute guy grocery shopping.

2  Since I have no idea who said that I have no idea whether this person was actually wise but for the sake of this post let’s assume the person who originated that quote isn’t an idiot

I’ll miss you Michael

As the whole world pauses to remember one of the greatest entertainers the world has ever known I sit over a week after finding out that he had passed still misty eyed, still in disbelief… I have been a Michael Jackson fan almost since birth and now he’s gone. It makes me so sad that it took Michael leaving this world for people to realize what a great gift he gave us all through his music. Never in my lifetime has an entertainer been able to make the whole world pause the way that Michael Jackson has. Everyone I know has a Michael Jackson story or special memory because his music has been a contributor to the soundtrack of the lives of two, three, maybe even four generations. Michael Jackson is the only musician that I know of that both my mother and I were huge fans of. She and I went to my very first concert together, the Jackson 5 Triumph tour in 1981. I wasn’t even 5 years old yet but I remember them singing Can You Feel It. That song still gives me chills to this day. I remember my whole family watching Michael Jackson on TV when I was a little girl and seeing my, then twenty something, mother screaming and crying like a those people you see on TV at a MJ concert. I’ve never seen her react that way to any other artist since…(and she will barely admit that she reacted that way then).

For the past 15 years or so, amist all the controversy, the world forgot just how wonderful MJs music was. I never stopped being a fan but I hadn’t dug in the crates and listened to just how broad his music collection was until after he died. Two days after he died I attended a Michael Jackson tribute party and I was just amazed at how many great songs he made that I had forgotten about. How many artists can you think of that you can throw an entire party playing nothing but their music and keep the party going for hours on end. I can’t name another artist that comes close.

To touch the whole world through not only your music but also your humanitarian deeds in only 50 years on earth is a feat that not too many can claim.  I hope that I can somehow in my life time touch just a small fraction of the people he touched in some way through something I do. I’m already 32 years old so it looks like I have a lot of catching up to do. I also pray that in watching one of the greatest pass away from this world a new generation will be inspired to not just be good at whatever they do but try be the best ever at what they do. And then follow that up by taking whatever gift they have and try to make the world better.  I know I am inspired.

Michael, if you can see us, know that even though we haven’t shown it in many years, so many of us love you and will always love you. I hope you’re up there teaching all the angels how to moonwalk.

Let’s End Short Man Syndrome Now!

Some womens worst nightmare is to put on their heels to go out with their man and look like this couple

The last time I went to a club this guy who couldn’t have been taller than 4′10″ walked over to me and told me how beautiful I was. My initial reaction was “why is this miniature man talking to me.” Then I gathered myself and remembered that this guy couldn’t help how tall he was and therefore did not deserve anything short of the same polite response a taller guy would have gotten. I realized at that moment that deep down my natural reaction to shorter men is the same as those of women who are taller than me who think it’s perfectly acceptable to ridicule a man just for being under 5′ 8″ tall. This came as a surprise to me since I actually like, dare I say prefer, short men. At 5′ tall I barely clear the midget* threshold myself so what would I look like descriminating against my short brethren.  Besides what would I do with an extra foot and a half of man.

Maybe women are conditioned by nature to seek out taller men (protectors) just like men might be conditioned to look for women with bigger boobs (child nurturers). I don’t know, but for some reason women tend to think it’s a violation of the natural order of things to date a guy who is shorter than they are. This works out well for tall men, but the shorter a man is, the shorter his end of the stick is in this arrangement.  I think this arrangement is the cause of the chip that seems to be on the shoulders of men shorter than 5′6″ tall. This chip is also known as Short Man Syndrome or  Napoleon Complex.

 Short Man Complex is such an unfortunate reality for women like me who prefer the asthetics of a shorter man  because underneath their short cuteness lies a multitude of scars inflicted by the women who have ridiculed them all their lives. Many of them have spent their entire lives either trying to overcompensate for their height or wallowing in a feeling of inadequacy. So I’m writing this blog entry as a request to women of all heights to show a little love to a short man today. I’m also asking that from this day forth we all agree to refrain from saying things to short men like the following:

“This ride requires that you be 6′ tall to get on”

“”When you grow another foot give me a call”

“Aww aren’t you cute!” (while patting them on the head)

 Don’t do it for yoursef. Do it for the woman who will one day embrace this short man and have to deal with all the  short man issues that you helped to create. If women can just agree to come together and create a united front, we can end short man syndrome now.

But on the other hand if it weren’t for short man syndrome maybe we wouldn’t have a lot of the wonderful things that their need to overcompensate have contributed to the world. Would Katt Williams(5′4″) be the funny elf** of a man that he is if he were more than 3 apples high? Maybe, but I don’t think he could pull off the perm as well as a taller man. Would Prince (5′3″) be able to find purple high heeled boots in his size to entertain us in if he were taller? Short man syndrome might be at the root of the works of Picasso (5′4″), Martin Luther King (5′7″), even Ghandi (5′3″). At any rate, just because there may be a silver lining on short man syndrome there’s still no excuse for the mistreatment that short men have had to endure over the years. So I repeat. Ladies please show some love to a short man today.

 

 

* I know that the politically correct term is little person. But the term little person is so non-descript. Since I’m writing about little people who don’t actually qualify as “little people” I went with the less acceptable term midget. Please don’t send me hatemail about my insensitivity. This blog entry is all about love for vertically challenged people! Incidentally as I wrote this post I watched the new show on TLC “The Little Couple.” They’re so cute! 

** When I call Katt Williams an elf, I do it  out of love.

The coverage about Sotomayors statement just rubs me the wrong way

Every time I watch television news I get more reasons to hate everything about politics. I can’t for the life of me understand why they are making such a big deal out of the statements made by Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor  in some of her past speeches. I even saw an article that said they are actually asking her to apologize for her statements about a wise Latina woman making better decisions than a white man. Why should she have to apologize for that???? Maybe a wise Latina woman would have a different perspective on certain issues than a white male that could lead her to make better decisions. Sometimes she might make better decisions sometimes she might not . Who cares? You can’t prove a statement like that anyway. I don’t care if she said it 20 times and meant it every time. A statement like that doesn’t make her racist. Prosecuting someone just because they’re white would be racist (and I’m using the definition of racist loosely here since it’s questionable whether a minority can even be racist). People of all races over use the term racist anyway. The same word can’t be used to describe people who hung people from trees just because they were black as the one used to describe someone who just spoke their mind. If ”she’s a racist” is best they can come up with as an argument for why she shouldn’t be appointed because she made that statement, they really need to get grip on life.

Maybe all this forced political correctness is just rubbing me the wrong way. What’s the point of free speech when every statement you make will be disected and held against you even when no one gets hurt by your words. My theory is the reason they’re making such a big deal out of is is the fact that a white man couldn’t make a similar statement about another race and keep his job. If my theory is correct I say tough cookies. That’s one of the residual effects of this countries racist past. Black people have had to live with far worse residual effects of slavery since the day slavery ended. So white men can’t openly express their thoughts about people of other races. Someone cue the violins.  When the residual effects of slavery were being passed out, white men got off pretty easy.  Count your blessings and be glad karma hasn’t swung around and made you pay for your ancestors actions.

 There’s a chance that it’s not just politics that’s the problem here. I would imagine that television news is at least partly to blame for my disgust about this topic. They always pick the most divisive issue and create a whole sense of drama around it. I hope that the people who are actually making decisions about this nomination (or any other important issue) aren’t as shallow as the news channels. Maybe I’m just overdue for my periodic break from all 24 hour news.

In the name of religion

I try to keep religious debates off the pages of my blog due in part to my own mixed feelings about the subject that I would rather not discuss or debate publicly. But the recent murder of abortion doctor George Tiller and the coverage of this incident really got me thinking about some of the heinous acts that get carried out in the name of religion. It absolutely baffles me the types of acts people will justify under a belief that they are doing what God would want them to do. The absurdity of this type of thinking and the sheer danger of these types of acts is incredible. I wouldn’t call myself a religious scholar but I was brought up in (and continute to attend) church and based on my understanding of God I strongly doubt that God is behind any of these extremist acts. By strongly doubt I mean I feel like the people who carry out these acts are misguided at best, but could most accurately be described as overzealous sociopaths.  

People have been hesitant to use the term terrorist to describe the groups that advocate violence against abortion doctors, but I fail to see the difference between the acts that they advocate and the acts carried out by the 9-11 terrorists. The 9-11 terrorists believed that they were carrying out the will of God by killing people that they felt supported views they found morally reprehensible. Anti-abortion extremists justify violence because they feel as though the are killing people who commit acts that they feel are morally reprehensible. Looks to me like the only difference is the scale of the acts. Is terrorism okay if it’s in the name of a cause you believe in?

How one can advocate life and murder in the same sentence is a mystery to me. I guess the same way people can be pro-life and pro-war or pro-gun in the same sentence.

It might be safe to say that religion, or the misinterpretation and misapplication thereof, has been at the root of more murders than any other source in the history of mankind. Then again that might not be the safest thing to say since some people will justify any action in the name of their religious beliefs. So let me be clear that I was not making those statements to condemn religion. As a side note I personally don’t think God himself even likes religion. But the religion versus relationship with God debate is a blog for another day on another persons blog. <end side note> I will, however, openly condemn overzealousness in any arena, including religion.  I most strongly condemn overzealousness when it results in heinous acts committed in the name of God. If you’re going to commit evil acts don’t blame your dirty misguided acts on God. That’s the biggest cop out on the planet since I have yet to see anyone successfully bring God into the courtroom to defend himself.

If 8 kids can’t hold a marriage together what can?

Last night I watched the season premier episode of my favorite reality television show, Jon and Kate Plus 8, and I actually shed a tear. I didn’t realize how attached I had become to that family until I saw them on what appeared to be the verge of their demise. I used to marvel at how Jon and Kate appeared to be this united front, beating the odds and raising 8 happy kids together. They had become my symbol of hope that the family can survive even in these crazy times. For those who don’t know, Jon and Kate Plus 8 is one of several reality shows on TLC showcasing the miracle of raising an enormous brood of offspring without killing anybody.  The couple got pregnant with sextuplets after already having twins, giving them a total of 8 kids.

In seasons past, the Gosselins appear to be just as much superparents as they were flawed and real individuals. They had all the normal challenges of parenthood multiplied by eight yet they seemed to always work it out. Despite all the stresses of raising 8 kids Kate managed to find the time to make them heart shaped pancakes from scratch on valentines day. I can barely find the energy to toss a pop tart in the toaster some days and I don’t even have any kids. 

Yeah Kate came across as a little bossy at times, but she had to run a tight ship just to keep her sanity with so many kids to take care of. Jon had a slightly more laisez faire approach to parenting. But this seemed to bring some balance to the household. I watched them renew their vows in Hawaii just a month ago and all was good with the world. But thanks to the magic of television last night I saw the once happy couple sitting 12 feet apart on a 2 foot couch* barely acknowledging each others existence. How could what seemed to be such perfect family be falling apart literally right before my eyes???

Okay I have to admit there were some signs. Last season I saw the annoyed glances from Jon that made it clear that Kate bossing him around was getting kind of old. And raising 8 kids has to take it’s toll on any human being. But I never expected to see him on the cover of a tabloid doing who knows what with who knows who. Now the rumors are flying. Kate’s crying on national television. And my favorite reality television family could be coming apart at the seams.

And its stressing me out!  After watching the show I actually had a dream that I set out to help them save their marriage. Unfortunately I woke up before I ever managed to do that. I barely ever watch television with the exception of this show and Jon Stewart, but I might have to take a break from watching them because I have apparently internalized their pain. This is why I don’t watch television. Either it sucks royally or it stresses me out.

Maybe the blogosphere is right about their allegations that this whole drama is just a ploy to rake in higher ratings. Higher ratings = more episodes = more money. And $75,000 an episode is nothing to sneeze at. They could certainly use the money to help fund 8 college educations. So I would totally understand if that was the case. But something tells me the tension I saw on that couch was real. Hopefully for the sake of their kids and the sanctity of my sleep they’ll go to marriage counseling and work it out.

* Thanks to my friend Cam for pointing this out.