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Tomorrow is Mother's Day, yet another pantheon to American screwiness. How this day changed from a day of protest and honor to commercialization is beyond me, but it's typical Americana. Beyond that, my mom gets to spend a slightly belated Mother's Day with us soon as we make a trek to South Carolina for a family reunion, and her first with Sam as her Gramma.
The big one is that my wife gets to have her first official Mother's Day.
My problem with Mother's Day was not that there was such a thing, but that it fell so close to my mom's birthday that it sometimes threw me off for gift ideas.
I have no problem with celebrating Motherhood - after all we even call this planet "Mother Earth." Maybe that's why we take it for granted. Who knows.
I do know that I find it funny then that we have a "Father's Day." "Daddy's Day" would be far more appropriate. After all, as I've said before, anyone can be a father. It's being a daddy that's the hard part. My wife made some comment about Father's Day the other day and I actually had to think about it. I haven't had a father in my life at all, save her father for the brief time he was in my life, so Father's Day was one that was never really on my calendar. Now that I am a father... Sorry... Daddy, I guess I have to think about it. But even then, I still think about how ridiculous it is as a concept.
Think about how much the man does, and how much the woman does, just in the production of a baby alone, and you realize that you could just as easily have "Mother's Day" and "Turkey Baster Day."
Kind of puts things into a different perspective, really.
So...
To all of you ladies out there that have endured the great strain of passing a frozen turkey through a drinking straw just to bring another wonderful life into this silly, screwy world...
Thank you.
My life is better for it, and I hope all the other daddies out there understand it too.
Click below on the "play" button to see Sammy's Mother's Day greeting. (Keep in mind, she's still working on that whole talking thing...)
IN OTHER SCREWINESS THIS WEEK...
Poll Fault According to a recent poll conducted by National Geographic Magazine, when asked to participate in a general knowledge test, the average American produced the following results:
- Knowledge of a second language is not considered important
- Less than 30% believe knowing where countries are is important
- 30% believe that the most heavily fortified border in the world is between the U.S. and Mexico. (It's actually the one between North and South Korea. Remember? That Mission was accomplished in the 50s... According to M*A*S*H.)
- 75% could not locate Israel on a map of the Middle East
- 47% could not find India on a map of Asia
- 48% could not find Mississippi on a map of the United States
- 33% could not find Louisiana on a map of the United States
- 60% could not find Iraq on a map of the Middle East
Now, I will cut Americans some slack, since (a) our government couldn't find Louisiana either, even when nearly everyone in it was standing on rooftops with red flags. Apparently it's only visible from Girls Gone Wild cameras. And (b) our government has a new plan to personally show any American the way to Iraq, free clothes and outdated defense equipment included.
Jose, Can You See? George "Decider" Bush has his knickers in a twist about the fact that our national anthem is being recorded en español. I can see his point, actually. After all, if the Hispanics start translating his national anthem, what's next for their evil translators? What other great American words might they turn their pens to? Ranch? Salsa? What in dear lord could be next?
(By the way - apparently Bush's Spanish is not as good as he would like us to believe. Combine that with his horrendous English, and one has to wonder how he would know which version he could properly identify anyway.)
What kills me is that a reporter asked Laura Bush what she thought, and she was fine with this, until they told her about The Decider's position, at which point she changed her tune faster than a Canadian can cross the northern border unnoticed, eh.
The one thing no one is addressing here is that, yes many of these people came here "illegally." No one is asking why. Think about it: why are they willing to risk their life to cross the border to enter this country and work for so little without insurance and benefits to help their families? Clearly there are stories here not being told or understood.
If many people have their way and these immigrants are sent back and all of these jobs are made available again, it leaves me with one question: do we really think that the owners and managers will happily hire American citizens at twice the rate (plus benefits) that they were able to pay the immigrants? Particularly when the immigrants were probably better workers?
Just a guess, here: Not likely. No, we'll probably drop back down to minimum wage levels without benefits, which will keep hampering the recovery of the current economy, which will tailspin as the government struggles to find more and more tax cuts for the wealthy.
One word of advice to our government: If you're going to keep up this kind of crap, at least have the decency to scrape off the words on the base of the Statue of Liberty. I don't think we've ignored them this much since we turned our backs on the Jews in the 30s and 40s.
No Lee-way Oh crap... My wife TiVo-ed another food show for me to rant about. She loves to find stuff for me to watch and see how long it takes me to want to torch the paper, leap at the telly, et cetera.
This time, it was über-twit "celebrity non-chef" Sandra Lee. Sandra Lee claims to be a graduate of Le Cordon Bleu culinary school. The only possible way this could be true is that we also have evidence that George Bush graduated from Yale. Anything is possible. Why do I doubt her claim? Her knife skills are so bad, DNA evidence is required sometimes to identify the results. Moving on. Sandra Lee is the queen of "toy food" or lazy cooking. She relies heavily on pre-cooked components, canned foods, seasoning packets, et cetera.
Why am I re-addressing this twit now? Because on the episode in question, Lee claims that she strives to use "only organic" ingredients.
I heard that, and nearly had an aneurism.
She made breakfast pizzas with organic eggs over pre-made pizza crusts (preservatives to make them shelf stable for at least one month), pre-shredded cheese (sprayed with an anti-clumping agent and preservatives), pre-cooked sausage (minimum two preservatives, MSG, "flavorings"), more pre-shredded cheese, and chopped organic tomatoes.
Gee. I feel so much healthier already. Those wonderful organic ingredients will come in real handy, as they make my blood so nice and red, which a great thing because it will be much easier to see when the medics try to find the source of the massive internal bleeding caused by the chemicals ingested from the other ingredients.
She really is a flaming idiot.
Speaking of Flaming Idiots... I have just the thing for a flaming idiot: massive dunk tank, filled with water and a moronic teevee magician. In case you missed the oh-so-subtle media blitz, "illusionist" David Blaine immersed himself in a fishbowl for a week in an effort to break the record for longest time spent underwater, and then tried to break the world's record for longest amount of time holding one's breath underwater. (It would have been more impressive if it were a normal-sized fishbowl, though.)
He broke the first record, and missed the second by about two minutes or so. I lost interest at the beginning of the week, when I found out he would have a catheter from the outset. See, I say if you really want those of us with brains to actually pay attention or care, don't use a catheter. We'll be far more impressed if you can stay in a fishbowl for a week while the water gets greener and then yellower.
Hey Blaine, for your next trick, try this: see how long you can stay off teevee before anyone notices.
A Strategic Petroleum Reserve of One As so many Americans complain about gas prices being so high (try this: drive a little slower - we drive on roads, not NASCAR tracks, okay?), I thought about the fact that Bush has remained steadfast about not dipping into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. This made me wonder something. It would be a really great political maneuver to dip into it, even a little, for even a small bit of relief, so why not do so?
My brain came up with a really screwy answer: what if it's gone? The Bush administration has several huge motorcades, and what if they've been using the reserve to fuel their motorcades? Or, what if they've been using the reserve to fuel the vehicles in the fights in Iraq?
Another thought on why this administration is so reluctant to get involved: this administration is made up of two oil guys at the top (Bush and Cheney), and many of their cronies. Has anyone looked into their stock portfolios lately? It might be time to look into how much Exxon stock they own.
Flippin' the Bird So, the government has decided after months of analyzing the aftermath of Katrina that the best course of action in a disaster is to let CNN and the NFL Players handle everything.
The strategy plan released last week all but says that the federal government's plan is to run and hide and "please dear lord don't breath anywhere in our direction!" At what point is Michael Brown going to come out from his myriad open houses (he still hasn't been able to sell his Alexandria, VA home) and say "Um... I have an idea..."
What's frightening is that more people may get their ideas of how to deal with this "impending pandemic" from a bad teevee movie than from rational thought and experience.
According to the government estimates, several millions are certain to die from the bird flu. Really? Well, last time I checked bird flu had not mutated to such proportions in an area of the world where they are far less paranoid about such things and as such much less stringent about food safety.
Asian nations are actually burning entire flocks of birds because they suspect the birds might eventually contract the disease. (Similar measures have been taken for birds that have contracted viruses, even if the strains have not passed on to humans.)
The primary lesson here is that this administration is totally unprepared for anything, even a war they concocted and initiated. When things start to blow up in their face, they are forced to turn to the only card left in their deck: fear.
Even in the days of Bush senior and Gingrich the Republicans did not resort to this level of blatant and ridiculous use of fear to try and win elections. Unfortunately, the Democrats have yet to have a candidate that has any character or charisma to stand up and honestly challenge the Republicans. (Feingold, now's the time. Don't let the Dems hand this puppy over to Hillary... She is not the answer.)
By the way, apparently the only safe place in the actual event of a bird flu pandemic is in fact a Hummer on I-95 traveling over 75 mph.
But only if you have enough gas...
PHOTO TIME!
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