Unforgetable Christmas gifts and other folly from a snowed in southern girl

Nothing like a foot and a half of snow and counting to both put me in the Christmas spirit  and leave me in the house bored long enough to write a post about it. The sad thing about Christmas these days is the first thing that usually comes to peoples minds when they hear the word Christmas is shopping (or maybe that’s me…as a self-proclaimed  shopaholic the first thing that comes to my mind when you say just about anything is shopping…but I digress). Regardless of what your religious beliefs happen to be Christmas should still be more about giving love and cherishing the people who mean the most to you. My family has decided to forego off the gift exchanging this year and replaced it with spending quality time together at a cabin in the mountains. I for one can’t wait. I can barely remember the Christmas gifts*  I’ve gotten for the past several years but I’ll never forget the fun times I’ve had with my folks. 

Anyway now that I’ve gotten all that falala***  out of the way I’ll get to the point of this post. Today I thought I’d share some gift ideas for those of you who have not foregone the gift exchange, that you can give if you don’t want your gift to be forgotten! I scoured the web and some of my Twitter followers Twitpics to find these so you don’t have to.  

Shave your own baby doll

 

1. The Shave Your Own Baby Doll! I’m really not sure what the point of this is but I guarantee this gift would not be forgotten. I’m just really hoping that the hair on this gift is replacable or the fun will be over pretty quickly. Then again maybe the fun should be short lived with this gift…

Cuddling Arm Pillow

 

2. No one ever had an answer when the Emotions asked “What do the lonely do at Christmas?” Well here’s the answer! A cuddling arm pillow**. Trust me I have lots of experience with this scenario…and that happens to be one of my favorite Christmas songs.

Nothing says class like words on your %$$

 

3. Okay so maybe you know the relationship is going south. Nothing will say forget me not louder than a pair of undies from Say it With Thongs with exactly what you think about your mate printed right above their unmentionables.  In case you can’t see the words, this particular pair reads “Gold Digger.” Hey I never said all these gifts would get you remembered as a romeo.

* Perhaps the reason I barely remember these gifts is I’ve barely gotten any in years…. Santa…seriously we need to talk…I’ve been really really good

** Don’t sleep. I’m seriously considering ordering one of these for myself since I’m likely the only one who’ll be purchasing gifts for me LOL.

***Seriously I’m just joking about any implied saltiness about my lack of gifts..I appreciate all the gifts and love I’ve received over the years…and all I really want for Christmas is to spend time with my family and for everyone to be safe and happy this year

And in other snowed in news…why did I read on Twitter that a DC cop pulled a gun at a snowball fight….huh?

for real dude a gun to a snowball fight?

And if you drive a Mini Cooper and decide to venture out in the worst snow snorm in DC in almost a decade…I won’t say you deserve to get stranded…..but…..

mistaking a Mini Cooper for a Hummer = fail

Anyway if you haven’t guessed from the contents of this post…yes I’m bored.  I promise I’ll bring something thoughtful and inciteful next time….in the meantime I’m bout to go shuck some corn**** then make some hot cocoa.

****yes I’m bout to actually shuck corn

Tiger Gate…the gift that keeps on giving

I thought I had  waited too long to write a relevant and timely piece on Tiger Gate…but this appears to be the non-news story that keeps on giving. I had actually started writing a piece on my thoughts about Tiger’s transgressions last week, but I allowed the distraction of Christmas shopping and painting my toenails to keep me from posting it. But oh thank you Tiger for giving me so much more to work with over the course of those distracted days.

First let me make it clear that spreading celebrity rumors and thriving off celebrity drama are not my things …and this blog is NOT TMZ. I do however believe in finding the lesson in every situation. I think the reason God put celebrity drama on this earth was to provide the masses with life lessons and easy relatable references as reminders when faced with similar situations. Celebrity drama also opens up the doors for dialogue on touchy subjects that need to be talked about. (See Chris Brown and Rihanna)

So today I present 5 lessons that can be learned from the Eldrick “Tiger” Woods situation.

1. Never underestimate (or perhaps overestimate would be more applicable) the lame/corny/nerdy guy.

I think the only reason the Tiger story won’t go away…other than people’s undying thirst for watching people go down in flames…. is the fact that most people didn’t think Tiger had it in him to be such a man whore. By the accounts of most women I know Tiger looks kinda lame and doesn’t appear to have enough swagger to just be  pulling chicks at will. But then most women I know are black so my reference pool may be a little skewed.  I mean yeah he is a billionaire athlete, so cheating isn’t a huge surprise, neither is his affinity for white women. But Tiger’s h*e train just keeps on chugging.  His tally was up to like fittyleven last time I checked the score. I think a lot of people had Tiger on some kind of pedestal of wholesomeness because of the public image he portrays, so when the possibility that wholesome Tiger was getting it in initially came to light it got people’s attention. Little did we know that Tiger was not only getting it in, he was getting it in with as many girls as he could fit in, and sometimes getting it in sans latex shielding.  Tiger, as lame as he might have appeared to some women, just might be an insatiable freak (another possible explaination for his affinity for white women).  I’m willing to bet that a lot of guys who on first glance appear to be corny or wholesome joes have some serious behind the scenes freak in them.  Tiger proves that you definitely can’t judge a book by it’s cover.

Of course that whole being a billionaire thing just might trump all apparent lameness…and to the chicks he was pulling he just might not have been lame.

2. Lesson to black male athletes. Messing with white chicks does not shield you from drama.

This lesson should have been learned from the whole Steve McNair incident. But apparently the draw of loose white women on black athletes is so strong that even the risk of murder isn’t enough to break the spell. Perhaps 2009 is the year for breaking rich black mens long standing addiction to white women  and destroying white womens image as docile pushovers one incident at a time.

There was a little known rap tune back in the early 90s by a rapper named Kilo that had the lyric “There’s a white girl in town…name is Cocaine…get inside your brain…play you like a lame”

I always thought the white girl in the song was a metaphor for cocaine…but these incident make me think that perhaps the metaphor goes both ways….hmmm something to think about

3. The same people who will put you on a pedestal with try their best to tear you down off of it.

Please believe that when people put you on a pedestal it’s only a matter of time before someone comes along to try pull you down off it. And the coming down part is usually much faster than the putting up process.  So a good practice would be to not do stuff that makes the pulling down process easy.  Tiger managed to keep his position on a pedestal for a pretty long time but all the while he was out there planting the seeds that put the mallots in the people’s hands to help tear him down.  My guess is that he got pretty full of himself up there on that pedestal and perhaps thought that he really was invincible…so much so that he got sloppy with his wrongdoing…leaving voice messages with his name on them and whatnot.  One things for sure…having a fierce golf game does not ensure game in other areas of your life.

Invincibe? I think not

4. If you’re gonna do wrong choose your partners in crime carefully.

I don’t condone one iota of Tigers manwhoring or anyone else’s wrongdoing. But if doing wrong is what you choose to do then at least know that doing dirt with someone who has nothing to lose, but everything to gain from your downfall is never a good idea.  Tiger was messing with waitresses and porn stars, women who had nothing at all to lose by sleeping with Tiger Woods, and who could only really benefit from the experience by either  making their actions public or at least threatening to.  I doubt that any of these women had aspirations of replacing the wifey, but you best believe that somewhere in their thought processes were some dollar signs. Tiger did you really think these women were getting with you because you’re just cool like that?

5. Cheating is never really worth it.

The most important lesson out of this whole fiasco is, while it might feel oh so right at the time…..maybe every single time….the bottom line is cheating is never worth the potential consequences once the feces hits the fan. And it always eventually hits the fan.  Now rumor has it that Tiger is talking about paying his wife 80 million to stay with him for 7 years (if so why seven years? that could be another blog post entirely). Not to mention the potential diseases he could have exposed himself, his wife and children to. And don’t let it come out that one (or more) of his skankubines is pregnant.  Tiger is really lucky that Elin’s weapon of choice was a golf club.

(Maybe a if I was getting paid to write this a 6th lesson here could have been about how  ”What’s done in the dark always finds a way to come to the light”…but I don’t feel like writing another item and I like the number 5 better. Plus I got real work to do now.)

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.

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.