Punching, Swearing and Boobs

(***DISCLAIMER*** None of the following opinions have any merit, since I do not have children, because studies have shown that if I were to have children, they would probably eat other children or at the very least scare them really badly by carving soap statues that look like their classmates then melting them with a lighter at recess, while staring blankly at what appears to be nothing, but is obviously something, or why would they be that focused on it?  And has anyone seen the class hamster?)

I hate the Parents Television Council.  My hatred starts with their name: Parents Television Council.  Now, if they were only monitoring shows aimed at children, I wouldn't give a crap what they said or did -- but they don't.  These people voluntarily watch EVERYTHING, then tell you why you shouldn't let your children watch it.  So they watch, for example, CSI.....then tell you all the reasons why you shouldn't let your kids watch CSI.  Um, how about because the entire premise of the show is murder?  Here's some helpful information, Parents Television Council: parents who will let their kids watch a show that FOCUSES ENTIRELY ON MURDER will not check your website to see if it's suitable for their children.  Logging onto your website would mean logging off of the WWE website, and that ain't gonna happen because then how would they know who will be in Saturday night's Super-Duper Ball-Punch Double-Death Match?  Plus, they don't even know what their children are watching, because it's hard to focus when you're that drunk on a Thursday night, but you're only drinking because those little brats ruined your life and you could have really been something if it weren't for them.  You could have almost finished your GED, even.  Still, these dickheads at the PTC continue to monitor and bitch about shows, often campaigning to have companies drop their sponsorships because holy shit, someone got killed on Law and Order at 9:00 last night.

So, yeah, I think they suck a whole bunch.  But their existence makes me wonder about a few things -- mainly, why do we hate swearing and boobs so much?  Violence, I understand.  Violence is bad.  Violence hurts and makes people be dead sometimes.  But swearing?  Meh.  Say this out loud: ass fuck hell damn shit.  Did anything bad happen?  Was there a knock at your door and the devil was there and he was all "Mwah ha ha!  You said ass fuck hell damn shit and now your soul is mine" and he threw a pitchfork at you and totally pinned your foot to the floor then violated you with his devil-dong?  No.  That did not happen, and if you say it did, it is because you are a liar or you are on meth or your neighbour owns a devil costume and is really weird.  Swear words do not hurt anybody.  There are worse words, but I don't need to type them here because Lethal Weapon and Kramer from Seinfeld have said them enough.  If we teach children that swear words are bad, we give power to those words that they don't deserve.  I'm not saying we should teach kids to say ass fuck hell damn shit, but by pooping ourselves every time one of them DOES say one of those words, we just make them want to swear MORE.  Do I think prime time TV dramas should start using ass fuck hell damn shit in every episode?  No.  But I also don't think kids should be watching prime time TV dramas.  Problem solved.  You're welcome.

And that brings us to boobs.  Not just boobs, but all body bits and just sex in general.  "This program may contain scenes of violence, coarse language and nudity."  We've lumped the naked human form into the same category as hitting someone in the face with a pail of hot tar.  Two characters getting their shaboink on under the covers is apparently just as bad as a character throwing darts into someone's eyes.  A shot of boob is going to destroy a child as much as a shot of a pool cue to the nuts.  In some cases, movies or shows with sexual content (I'm not talking hardcore porn here, either) receive more restrictive ratings that movies or shows with violence.  I have a theory on that: It's easier for mommy or daddy to explain why the bad man is poking shish-kabob skewers into the other man's ears than it is to explain what the lady is doing with her tongue.  "Little Jimmy, the man is peeling the other man's skin off with a knife because he is mad at him.  It is wrong.  Don't ever peel someone's skin off with a knife."  "Little Jimmy, the lady is under the blankets because........um........she's kissing his...............uh................well................she's looking for her contact lens, I think.........why is she making that noise?.............um, she's......got.............a cold?  Maybe?  Never touch girls."

I don't think we should teach kids that they should run around boinking everything they see when they grow up (especially since there are so many ugly people out there) any more than I think we should be teaching them to kick the shit out of each other, but why are we raising people to believe that sex is just as bad as violence?  Maybe we should be teaching them that it's about respect and feeling good, not embarrassment and shame.  Grouping violence and sex together, making one as bad as the other when it comes to media and entertainment, says a lot about society -- and none of what it says is good.  

So I say go forth, consenting adults of the world.  Wander the Earth, looking for other (not ugly) consenting adults -- all the while hollering our battle cry: ass fuck hell damn shit! as you (responsibly) spread love and happy feelings and vulgar words and substances (which you really should clean up afterwards - don't be a slob and don't just use a sock.  Get some paper towels, for chrissake) across the globe. 

Then we will film it and make a TV show and air it in prime time.  That should keep those fuckers at the Parents Television busy for a while.

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A Not-Funny Blog Post (with I guess maybe a few funny bits)

I don't feel like laughing about anything today.  Not even the Mystery Smell in my freezer, which, despite its obscene grossness, is hilarious in its elusiveness.  Know what's in my freezer?  Ice cubes.  So someone please tell me what the fuck is causing a smell somewhere between vomit stuck in a sink drain for a week and poopy shoes resting against a heater.  Not ice cubes, I can tell you that.

I usually feel like laughing every day, about something at sometime or another.  Dog doing something stupid ..... friend making a funny face ..... sudden memory of something funny Malcolm Reynolds said.  (Watch Firefly.  Seriously.  It's awesome, and you'll thank me for making your life 14 episodes better.)

I feel like laughing every day, except for the last few weeks, when I haven't really felt like laughing very much at all.  I've felt like crap.  I've been mopey and whiny and depressed.  I, I, I, me, me, me, blah, blah, blah, shut up already.  We all have days like that -- days when we feel like the world is throwing railroad spikes at our head, and it turns out the world is, like, Railroad Spike Shotput Champion of the Super-Olympics or something.  Days when we just want to crawl into bed and never leave, or crawl into a hole and never leave, or crawl into a friend's arms and never leave. (I recommend the last one -- it feels pretty good, if you've got the right friends.  Plus, never leaving bed = bad smelliness, and hole = um, well, it's a hole, so it obviously sucks.)

So I've spent the better part of the last few weeks feeling sorry for myself and driving a really nice friend nuts with my feeling sorry-ness.  (He knows who he is, and if he's reading this:  I'm sorry, but it's all your fault because you're a really good listener.  Maybe if you, I dunno, started clipping your toenails or punching yourself in the face or screaming "SHUT UP!!!!!" while I'm talking to you, I'd leave you alone.  Maybe.)  Feeling sorry for myself, trying to figure out what's wrong with me/why no one loves me/why I'm broke/why my dog stares at me/why I can't lose those last few pounds/why I'm such a big baby and can't just suck it up/why etcetera/why etcetera/why etcetera.  Soul-searching ... asking others to search my soul for me ... deciding I have no soul ... deciding I did have a soul, but I obviously traded it to Satan so I could get my Mustang ... wondering if I can make the hard decisions I need to make and give up the things I have to give up if I want my soul back (not the Mustang, though,  I'm keeping the damn car.)

I think I've started to ramble.  Meh.

Basically, we all have days/weeks/months when we hate ourselves and our lives and for some reason today an unfortunate grey shirt which now lay in tatters on my living room floor because the elastic was loose and I apparently thought I could fix it by throwing ninja stars or a blender at it or something.  We all go through times when we hate our jobs and those hilarious pieces of paper called "pay" stubs and our homes and our kids/pets/evil houseplants (I'm not kidding -- they want me dead.)  We want to move away to the woods and live off the land which is stupid because I don't know how to hunt and I'm not eating frigging tree bark and sticks and after 31 years, I've grown quite accustomed to toilet paper.  There are days for us all when we're pretty sure it would be easier to lay in a bathtub and wait until we shrivel up and lose necessary cohesion and leak down the drain in clumpy, fatty people-chunks.

But there are also days when you wake up and see a canary on the tree outside your bedroom window -- not singing or making weird noises and driving you nuts.....just sitting there being beautiful.

When the first person you see smiles at you, even though you don't know them.

When you turn on your iPod, and the first song it plays is the song you used to dance to with that cute boy in Grade 9.

When you get to work and someone who you didn't think even knew your name tells you what an amazing job you did the day before.

There are days when a good friend comes to your house and lets you cry in his arms.

When you get a text message out of the blue from someone you haven't talked to in months, who just wanted to say "hi."

Or when someone you can't stand finally stops telling you about his effing cellphone plan.

Days when the dog doesn't bark at the mailman or lunge at the neighbour-kids, not even ONCE!

When you realize one of your friends is the strongest, most wonderfully stubborn person you've ever met.

There are days when you stuff yourself with burgers and fries, and don't gain a single pound.

When you don't feel like working out, and you don't get mad at yourself for it.

You find a grey hair, and you don't care at all.

And when you tell a friend you love them, and they say it back.


The bad days always stick out the most, because they're the ones that hit us the hardest.  They're the days when our emotions kick us in the balls and leave big, purple ball-bruises.  The days when we cry ourselves to sleep because it hurts to just be still.

Those days are assholes, and I'm not going to be their friend anymore.

I'm going to remember the days when my friends make me laugh so hard that tears pour down my face, and the days when I go to sleep smiling because I've spent time sitting in the sun and talking with people I love who love me back, and the days when absolutely nothing happens - because those are the days when everything happens.

Hug your friends.  Tell them what they mean to you every chance you get.  Also sometimes poke them in the back of the head and tell them they smell like turds.  They'll appreciate it all (even the turd part.)




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Murderous Houseplants, Pointy Air Molecules, and Dr. Phil's Wife is Sleeping With Her Tennis Instructor: What Working Mornings Does to My Brain

I'm working mornings this week. I don't work mornings often and when I do, it's usually only for a week or two. Not NEARLY long enough to get into any kind of healthy sleeping pattern. That means I become one Warmed Brain Salad away from turning into a full-blown zombie. I swear, I cry, I try to rationally explain to my dog why she doesn't need to bark at the mailman EVERY DAMN DAY, I resort to yelling at my dog when the rational explanations don't work, and eventually (usually about a week into the morning shift) I become convinced that my houseplants are talking to me. The English Ivy next to the front door is a particularly unpleasant bitch, and also the ringleader of their insidious little houseplant gang. I am SO on to them. They don't even know.

I can feel air molecules touching me. They are pointy. Everyone on the bus looks like they want to steal my purse, but they can't have my purse, because THAT'S WHERE I KEEP MY STUFF. Everything I sit on is itchy. I can hear colours. Green is fairly quiet, but orange sounds like Bobcat Goldthwait if his throat were made of a blender and he'd just swallowed ball bearings and they hadn't gone all the way down yet and they were bouncing around in the blender blades.

If it's below 5 Celsius, I'm convinced I will freeze solid but still be alive and aware, and my dog will lick away all my skin because I'd basically be a delicious meat popsicle and it would take weeks for me to die and I would feel it the whole time as my skin is slowly licked away. If it's above 30 Celsius, I can feel the individual threads in my clothing punching me.

My eyes stop working properly......or do they start working BETTER?..... I can see things SO SMALL that they might technically not exist. Yet I apparently can't see the wall next to my bathroom, since I keep walking the fuck into it.

But nothing compares to the most horrific thing of all. The one thing most inhumane about working mornings. The one, terrible thing that – try as I might – I cannot escape. There seems to be no physical way to avoid it, even though I KNOW you will say there is. But you don't know. Oh, how you don't know. It's mesmerizing. It's addictive. It's like getting gonnorreah and herpes and ebola in your eyes and ears all at the same time, but the gonnorreah and herpes and ebola have unicorn dust in them, and it TRICKS YOU into thinking you want it.

I hate you, Daytime TV.

I hate Oprah and Tyra and Rachel Ray and Dr. Oz and The Doctors and OH MY CRAP I HATE DR. PHIL. Dr. Phil is the Asshole Neighbour of Life in General. He has an opinion on EVERYTHING and HE IS WRONG ABOUT IT ALL. Will disect him later – though, sadly, not literally. And, even more sadly, not while he's still alive and paralyzed with that stuff that leaves you alive and paralyzed so you can feel yourself being disected. I think I saw that on TV once on that show Law and Order: CSI.

Oprah is a bitch. I know it, you know it, and everyone in the whole wide world knows it. She's all understanding and interested and caring, but you just KNOW she is a bitch. And she thinks she's so awesome. It wasn't enough that she had her own TV show. Noooooooooo – she has her own magazine. And her picture is on the cover of every single issue. Gosh, Oprah, I'm sorry you weren't told enough when you were little how pretty you were, and now you have to put your face on a magazine every month to make yourself feel better. And she's going to have her own TV channel. Thank GOD. I was so worried I'd never be able to find a place to watch hour after hour of Misunderstood Celebrity Explains Why He Called Jewish People Bad Words That He Really Didn't Mean To Say, or How To Make The Most Out of Your Life Even Though All You Do Is Sit At Home And Watch a Shitty TV Network.

And Tyra. Oh, Tyra – you are so FIERCE! You don't suck AT ALL. You don't have a freakishly large forehead or misconceptions about just how inspiring you are to chubby teenagers and girls with zits. They TOTALLY think you get how they feel. You are JUST LIKE THEM!

Rachel Ray is legally retarded.

Dr. Oz is the least offensive. He at least provides useful information. Too bad his audience is filled with pantsuit-clad women who are psychotically in love with him and scream til they pee every time he shows them what the inside of their stomach looks like after they've eaten eight pounds of ice cream sprinkled with salt.

What can I say about The Doctors? Nothing much, because I black-out whenever I watch it, and when I've come to I discover I've somehow used my toenails to scratch “WHY DOES THAT MORON WEAR SCRUBS ALL THE TIME ON A TV SHOW? DOES HE THINK A MEDICAL EMERGENCY WILL BREAK OUT IN THE AUDIENCE EVERY DAY EVEN THOUGH SO FAR IT'S NEVER HAPPENED? AND HOW COME HE TALKS LIKE A SURFER-STEREOTYPE WHO'S BEEN HIT IN THE HEAD WITH THAT HEAVY LID-THINGIE ON THE BACK OF A TOILET? DOCTORS SHOULDN'T TALK LIKE THAT” into my living room floor.

If I believed in Satan, I'd believe he was Dr. Phil. As I type this, he's talking about fame whores who will do anything to be famous. Hmmm, like perhaps become Oprah's bestest friend when Texas gets mad at her for saying something (I don't remember what or really care) about cows? And then maybe start appearing on her show even though you're just a hack psychiatrist or something? And then maybe get your own show because everyone must care a whole lot about what you have to say? And then write books about how not to be fat even though you're not exactly an Olympic athlete yourself? Eat shit, Dr. Phil. Stop being on my TV. Even when your show isn't on my TV, my TV can still feel you inside it, raping it with your stupid southern twang. And everyone can tell you're wearing, like, AN INCH of pancake makeup -- even on your big, empty bald head. And that thing at the end of each show where you walk into the audience, take your wife's hand, and walk out together – I call bullshit on that. She hates you. There's no way she sits in the audience for each and every one of your crappy shows. The producers sneak her in three minutes before you're done, and they pay her to stay with you but behind your back she's having an affair with her tennis instructor Fernando. Think about it, Dr. Phil – have you ever SEEN her play tennis? No, you haven't. That's because Fernando is taking the money you give him for lessons and he's using it to buy silk sheets to boink your wife on.

If I ever get a full time job working mornings, I'm going to have to cancel cable.

And I'm going to have to kill the houseplants. I can hear what they have planned. It's me or them. If you don't hear from me after this, they won. Check in the basement for what's left of my body. And NO ONE is to give those murderous bastards ANY WATER, no matter how much they beg. Understand???

~~~

How to Be a Melanie

For any of you out there who are terribly jealous of my awesome life and often lay awake at night wondering how you can have a life exactly like mine, I'm here to tell you how you can be me in 23 Easy Steps.

1. Wake up confused about what day it is. Think back to what you watched on TV the night before. Was it 'House'? Then today is Tuesday. Was it 'Grey's Anatomy'? Then today is Friday, and last night you had a dream about Hot Redhead Doctor with Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome Who is For Some Reason Still Attached to That Horse-Faced Bitch. Was it 'Ghost Whisperer'? Then today is Saturday, and you're a fucking loser because you stayed at home on a Friday night watching 'Ghost Whisperer,' you jackass. You probably ate popcorn made soggy by your loser tears, loser.

2. Put on coffee before you walk dog so you will have coffee when you get back from walking dog.

3. Walk dog, after finally remembering that you sleep in your underwear and need to put pants on before you go outside. (At least twice a week, you will almost not remember that in time.)

4. Put on coffee, since you didn't frigging remember to do it before walking dog.

5. Have shower, since you can't have coffee yet because you are a moron. Brush teeth in shower so you don't end up with toothpaste-crust on face, because heaven FORBID you just wipe your face off when you're done. Attempt to shave legs in shower. Fall over because shower is slippery. Resort to sitting under shower head while shaving legs using $10.00 bottle of conditioner because you keep forgetting to buy $2.00 bottle of shaving cream.

6. Go downstairs for coffee. Suffer embarrassment of neighbour seeing you through open window while you are wearing towel tucked into cleavage. Wish you had better-looking man-neighbour so the embarrassment would be worth it.

7. Go back upstairs. Immediately go back downstairs because you forgot to feed dog, so dog is trying to trip you into the wall. (Dog does not understand that if you are dead, YOU CANNOT EVER FEED HER AGAIN.)

8. Open closet. Try to figure out why anyone needs that many black shirts. Open dresser drawer. Try to figure out why anyone needs that many pairs of jeans. Open underwear drawer. Immediately regret not doing laundry the day before. Select jeans and black shirt. Hope that you don't end up in a car accident today, because the doctor at the emergency room will think you're a total dork for not wearing underwear.

9. Apply make-up. To BOTH EYES. Leaving the house twice in one lifetime looking like the guy from Clockwork Orange who rapes people is enough. Yes -- twice. Shut up.

10. Where is your iPod?

11. Get on bus without iPod. Spend entire ride listening to the people on the bus. Contemplate jumping from emergency exit, screaming "I'm doing this because of youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu............SPLAT."

12. Arrive at work. Enter building and see something weird because there is a TV station where you work, and sometimes there are weird things on TV. Like mermaids. And bagpipers who start playing as soon as you walk in on the one day in a month that you wore a plaid skirt. And also once a pony. The pony crapped on the sidewalk.

13. Work.

14. Finish work.

15. Walk an entire hour to get home because you can't comprehend riding the bus again without your iPod and having to listen to those 'people.'

16. Arrive at home. Reach into purse to get house keys. Pull iPod out of purse. Punch door.

17. Walk dog, after dog finishes climbing up your leg because SHE HASN'T SEEN YOU IN EIGHT HOURS AND EVEN THOUGH YOU COME HOME EVERYDAY MAYBE THIS WOULD BE THE ONE DAY THAT YOU DIDN'T AND WHAT WOULD I HAVE DONE WITHOUT YOU AND I HAVE TO PEE AND I'M HUNGRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

18. Go to kitchen-like room that is really just a counter with a sink drilled into it and a fridge that for some reason clicks. Get out everything you need to make delicious pasta and toast and salad.

19. Eat cereal for dinner.

20. Watch TV. Remember what you watched, because you will need to know what it was when you wake up tomorrow and can't remember what day it is.

21. Go to bed. Stare at ceiling doing math in your head for some stupid reason. Why??? You hate math. You suck at math. All the math you are doing right now that is keeping you from sleeping is incorrect. You would fail high school using that math. Stop thinking about math. Start thinking about whether there might be a spider somewhere in your room. There probably is. It's probably really close to you right now. You should try to find it. Nah -- if it wants to kill you, it's going to kill you. You'll be sleeping - you'll never know what happened. Spend next 20 minutes trying to figure out what kind of IDIOT would stick that many glow-in-the-dark stickers to a ceiling. And why are half of them painted over? And why are some of them fish and some of them are astronauts? Those things don't go together. That doesn't make any sense.

22. Fall asleep and have a dream about Spider Astronauts who go to space but space has fish for some reason.

23. Go to step 1. Repeat until you die.

~~~

Observations From the Newsroom

Even people who think cats are evil aliens sent to study us for future invasion (me) go "awwww! Poor wittle fing!" when someone finds a cat starving in a box mailed from China.

Facebook is not a news source. Not, it's not. SCREW OFF IT IS NOT. The only acceptable news-Facebook relationship is the procurement of photos of murder victims where they are seen wearing a stupid hat/drinking at a cottage/holding a puppy. (There are pictures of me on Facebook doing all these things, FYI, so you all know what to do when my death-metal-loving neighbour finally snaps and sacrifices me to The Dark Lord.)

I don't care if I say the murder's name wrong. He's a MURDERER. I'd rather focus my attention on getting the names of the victims right.

Also, the guy in Guam who holds the world record for longest middle toenail on a left foot won't be offended if I say HIS name wrong, because HE WON'T EFFING HEAR ME.

Perez Hilton is not a news source. For anything. Ever. Even if he's RIGHT and he has confirmed EVERY SINGLE THING ON HIS SHITTY WEBSITE, he is STILL NOT A NEWS SOURCE.

No matter what happens, no matter what newsroom you work in or what city that newsroom may be in, you should NEVER EVER EVER ANSWER THE PHONE. I'm not kidding. No one smart is ever going to call you. Ignore the ringing until one of your co-workers answers it.

Whatever that thing is your computer just did is something it's not supposed to do.

"Canada Day" is deceptively hard to say.

So is "No, I cannot work this weekend."

And "Hunt Club Road," if you're not really REALLY careful. (Thiiiiink about it.........that's right.)

There is an inappropriate yet hysterically funny joke about anything bad that could ever happen to anyone.

The day that you pack a full lunch is the day that Dairy Queen will send in free Blizzards.

You're not stoned. There really IS a pony downstairs.

~~~

Pyjama Pants Are NOT Outside-Clothes

You know what sucks? Moving. You know what sucks more? Moving into a neighbourhood and finding out it's crawling with a wide variety of douchebags. The following are some things to look out for that might save you from settling into a new habitat surrounded by people who never use the word 'job' without saying 'blow' before it.

1. When you are considering a new neighbourhood, call the police. Ask them if they get many calls to said neighbourhood. If the officer you're talking to starts to cry or mumble insane questions like "why is that lady doing that to that dog?" then you don't want to move there.

2. Get in your car. Drive to said neighbourhood in the middle of the day. Park. Sit there for several hours. If you see:

a) more than three people over the age of 10 walking around while wearing pyjama pants

b) more than two people riding bicycles while smoking

c) a guy wearing a Bill Cosby sweater in July sitting on a step of a random building drinking out of a paper bag, or

d) a sex shop where the only people going in are people no one on EARTH would ever even CONSIDER having sex with even if there was nuclear war and only a few people were left and they had to re-produce to keep humanity from dying out and the lizard-people from taking over and enslaving the few humans left as grub-farmers to feed their wacky lizard-people grub addiction

then you don't want to move there.

(if you see all of the above, go home, douse yourself in bleach, and get yourself checked for STDs.)

3. Does the neighbourhood have some decent stores and restaurants with one lone dollar store displaying sunglasses with rainbow-y lenses and purses made of cherry-printed plastic? Yeah, that's a front for something. Don't move there.

4. Do you see any man anywhere in the area wearing pants with flames on them? That's not a good sign.

5. Does the #14 OC Transpo bus go through the neighbourhood? Also not a promising sign.

6. How many people do you see with cellphones similar to those used in the X-Files? Sure, for that time, they were incredibly technologically advanced. So was MS-DOS. And Scully's suits had shoulder pads. And David Duchovny wasn't having sex with everything yet. Never trust or live near mass amounts of people who use cellphones older than Justin Bieber.

7. Is the apartment in Vanier? Then don't

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