Deep Thoughts for a Tuesday

"If you have to apologize for something more than once, it's a behavior.  Don't apologize, change the behavior," I say to myself as I get ready to type 'I'm sorry' once again for not posting regularly.  Derp.

I'm seeing things around the webz that make me go 'Hmm'.  (And yes, I did have this song in mind when I wrote that.)  A lot of the things have to do with politics.  Some of the things have to do with writing or publishing.  They all make me scratch my head and wonder what the hell is wrong with people.

I saw a funny meme that I wanted to share, but FB had removed it between the time it showed up in my newsfeed and when I went to share it.  Why?  Probably because it actually spelled out the word Fucking instead of replacing the U with a *.  Means the same thing, derpy dudes.  Everyone from like 3rd grade on up knows what the f*cking means, so why be all 'oh my goodness, I need a fainting couch' about it?

Personally, I'm more offended by rampant stupidity than by swearing.  

People who use till to mean until instead of 'til irritate me.  You're shortening a word.  Use the apostrophe - don't add another letter to the end.  =op

Yesterday, I was watching that 'after the first 48' show.  (Not sure of the name, too lazy to look.)  There was this lady whose son was shot down in cold blood.  Her oldest son had been killed the same way a couple years before.  She was actually advocating for the man who murdered her second son to get leniency because she could tell he was really remorseful.  Derp.  Oh, well, she's still got two other sons.  They'll probably die in some violent crime, too, because it's attitudes like hers that keep the cycle going.  

Justice = equal treatment across the board. For EVERYONE. You get the same treatment as I do as Johnny Celebrity does as Percy Poorfolk does.  Know justice, know peace.  Ya know?

I'm full of piss and vinegar this morning. LOL, I'm actually in a pretty good mood.  I'm jus' sayin'.

Thursday This n That

Since we got the boys, I can no longer keep pens laying around.  They LOVE pens and would very much like to nom on them.  The pen caddie that used to sit on my desk is now on the top of a bookshelf and the one pen I use is in my desk drawer.  But hey, they're a writer's cats, so the fact that they love pens should come as no surprise.

I'm trying not to think about the fact that this book I'm writing has no clear direction and I have no clue where I'm going.  (And I'm pretty sure that it's awful.)  Thank goodness for edits, eh?

I woke up late again today.  Of course, late for me is 6am.  Derp.  I can't remember the last time I slept until 8.  I slept until 7 once last year.  It was a weekend, so yay.  When I was a teen, I could sleep until 10 in the summer and that was awesome.  Oh, well.  Getting older sure does have its quirks, eh?

I saw a fox in the neighbor's yard on Monday.  

Gah, the heat.  I mean, it's been a lot cooler these last couple of days because of the storms, but it's jacking back up again.  :shrug:  It is July, after all, and this is generally a hotter region than either Michigan or Colorado, so I guess it's not unexpected.  Still, we do like to gripe about the heat in the summer and the cold in the winter.  It's a national pastime.  ;o)

Why does pastime only have one S?  Since it's used to pass the time, shouldn't it have two Ss?  

Don't get me started on the upcoming election or we'll be here all day.  Okay, just one thing... if a person is not mentally sharp enough to be held responsible for their actions, then how can they possibly be sharp enough to hold the fate of a nation in their hands?  Jus' sayin'.

Sawyer is an attention whore.  And he generally prefers negative attention.  I try to give loads of attention when he's being good, but he enjoys getting into trouble.  He actually purrs harder when he gets caught being naughty.  Silly boy.  Finn on the other hand is such a lover muffin.  Yesterday morning, all he wanted was pets.  And when I stopped, he'd head-bonk me until I started up again.  And when I tried to go do something else, he followed me - head-bonking and rubbing against my legs all the way.  Also, Silly boy.

Today's post has been a kitty sandwich, I guess.  Start with cats, end with cats, with layers of other stuff in the middle.  Hope you enjoyed it.  

Ju-Lo-Wri-Mo Day 10:
Starting word count: 11063
Ending word count: 11797
New words: 734

A Morning Rant

Just because something is natural doesn't mean it isn't also disgusting.  

Case in point, I saw a commercial the other day.  Part of it shows a woman lying on her back in bed.  Then she rolls onto her side and you can see a bloody splotch on the back of her sleep shorts and a corresponding splotch on the bed beneath her.  I assume the product was feminine napkins, but... gross.  Yeah, periods are natural, but no one wants to see that.  I was eating at the time, you sick freaks.  And that which has been seen cannot be unseen.  In my brain forever, assholes.  Thanks for that.

I don't want to see people throwing up either.  Or eliminating their waste.  Or fucking.  All natural functions, but come ON, let's have a bit of decorum here.

Seriously, in what fucked up world is any of this okay to show on TV?  Or even in the movies for that matter?

Sure, the scene in Revenge of the Nerds where Ogre is pissing and it takes forever is kinda funny, but you don't actually see it - you see the back of him and hear it.  And it's that kind of movie.  There's a dude named Booger in the movie, for pitysakes.  You know pretty early on, it's going to be that kind of movie.  The scene in Pitch Perfect where the gal mega-barfs?  Not so much.  And gross.  And even then, they had to kick the grossness up a notch by having the one gal making snow angels in it. 

And if you want to see fucking, there's a whole series of channels for that.  Go for it.  But don't put it where the unsuspecting can stumble across it.  (Looking at you Direct TV with your porn channel listings that just suddenly showed up one day between Sundance and the outdoor sports channels.  The titles alone make me want to gouge out my eyes.)  

I'm old school.  Natural stuff happens, but there are more elegant ways to convey that.  Close the door, go behind a bush, use sound off camera.  Hint at it and the majority will figure it out.  People aren't stupid (well, they didn't used to be) and can figure out what toilet paper is for without being shown someone wiping their ass.  And any female over the age of puberty knows what happens when her pad isn't fitting right.  Do we really need to see it, too?

Jus' sayin'.

And another thing... what's up with the poop background choice there Facebook?  Is that really necessary to the existence of your users?  Come on.

A Pre-New Year's Eve PSA

With the biggest drinking night of the year coming at us fast, I'd like to take a moment to rant...

This morning, I read a news story about a woman who ruined an entire family because she was too stupid to not get behind the wheel when she'd been drinking.  The family was on its way to celebrate Christmas.  And now the dad is dead and the mom and the daughter are injured.  And she's facing manslaughter charges.

Drinking and driving is just stupid.  Seriously.

Oh, I've done it.  Although I never got caught.  Looking back, I'm surprised I survived doing it and I'm damn lucky I didn't kill anyone or damage any property.  That was 25-30 years ago.  I've smartened up a lot since then.  Cuz that was probably the stupidest thing I've ever done (and I've done some stupid shit).

Personally, I think one drink before you get behind the wheel is too much.  One beer?  One glass of wine?  Well, maybe, but how do you know how that one drink is going to affect you? 

I used to drink A LOT.  My tolerance level was up there, lemme tell ya.  One night I was out with friends and they convinced me to do a shooter.  Within 15 minutes I couldn't stand up straight.  I seriously thought I was having a brain aneurysm because I couldn't even remember doing the damn shooter and thought I'd only had my gin and tonic.  It was seriously scary.  Lucky for me, I wasn't driving that night.  My friends took me home and got me inside, where I crawled to the bathroom and hugged the porcelain god for a while.

Hammered by one shooter.  I wasn't even sure what was in the shooter.  Was it schnapps or was it 151 rum?  There's a big difference in the alcohol content of those two things.  Plus, the shooter mixed with some gin in my belly.  At least it wasn't mixed with any drugs - prescription or otherwise.  And there's another thing people don't think about - how the alcohol is going to mix with whatever else they have in their system.  Cold medicine, pain killers, etc. and alcohol can really mess a body up. 

Then they get in their car and drive home.  Or to another bar.  Or to a friend's house for after bar cocktails.  Woohoo.

Stupid.

So, do the world a favor.  Don't drink and then drive.  Don't get into a car with someone else who's been drinking and let them drive.  If you have to drink, find someone who hasn't been drinking to drive you home.  Designate a driver who won't touch a drop during your festivities.  Call a cab.  Get an Uber or a Lyft.  And if you can't do any of those things, don't drink.  It is possible to have a fun time without being pickled.

Don't make your fun night turn into a horrible night for you or anyone else. 

Just sayin'.

Required Reading?

The other day I read an article about some books being suspended from the curriculum due to parents' concerns.  I saw the list of books and personally, I can't think why any of them were in the curriculum to begin with.

No, I've never read any of them.  I'd never even heard of 4 out of the seven.  One of them we had in the house for a while because it was required for one of Hubs long-ago college courses.  I got rid of it years ago because meh.  All of this brings me back around to wondering why they were in the curriculum in the first place.

Some are talking about it like it's a book ban.  I think it's more along the lines of someone wasn't paying attention to what the educators were using as material and once the parents pointed out what their children were being forced to read (yeah, forced, because it was a case of read it or get an F), the district stopped to actually think about what was being read in their classrooms.

Long ago when I worked for a private school system, I brought a required-reading book to the attention of the president of the company because I thought it probably wasn't the message the company wanted for their customers' children to read.  I never did hear whether he agreed, but even if he had taken it out of the curriculum, it wasn't a ban.  It was a choice about what the school syystem wanted to be stuffed into a kid's brain under their watch.

And as I always say, be careful what you put in your brain because once it's in there, you can't get it back out again.  Think about when you have no choice but to read something and it's stuck in your head forever.  Think also about impressionable young minds being forced to read something you, as a parent, would never allow to be put in there, if you had any choice in the matter.

The book I brought to the attention of my boss was required reading for a grade.  If I had read the book first, I would've said 'hell, no', but instead, it was brought to my attention by the heart-rending sobs coming from my daughter's bedroom.  I read the book then.  And it was horrible.  Yeah, I cried, too.  It was that kind of book and totally inappropriate for the school's mission and for impressionable children's brains.  Maybe if she was 14 like the kids at the school in Texas, I would've told her to read it if she wanted to.  But to be wary.  (Which were pretty much my instructions for her reading anything past a certain age.  She was inhaling books faster than I could keep up with.)

One argument being made in the article I read was that the kids were probably going to read the books anyway.  Probably already had read the books, in fact.  And if you tell a kid they can't read a book, they're going to hunt it down and read it while their parents aren't looking.  Possibly true.  Doubt it when looking at the titles on the list.  They don't really seem like books the average kid would waste their free time reading.  And it's really not an argument for what is and isn't in a government funded school's curriculum (or even a private school's curriculum). 

These are educators.  Their mission is to educate.  Any book in a curriculum should be put there with that purpose in mind.  Of course, some educators see their mission as to inculcate rather than educate, and they choose reading material to further that agenda.  Sad, but true.  Somewhere, someone has to watch what is being used to educate and determine whether its purpose is to educate or to inculcate.  In this case, the watchers the parents.  It probably should've been the administrators, too, but in the end, the parents are the first line of defense.

And maybe the parents and administrators should be looking at the educators and their reasons for choosing certain books to put into their curriculum.  For instance, why Old Yeller and not Big Red?  They're both dog and boy stories.  One with a positive, hopeful message.  The other?  Hopeless and sad.  Hell, even Where the Red Fern Grows is better than Old Yeller.  Come on.  I guess there it comes down to your general philosophy of life.  Personally, I prefer to give children positive and hopeful messages.  There's plenty of time later - after they've got a good basis and their armor is thick - to expose them to the other crap.

Jus' sayin'.