Tag Archives: rant

Video Vigilante: Hell Hath No Fury Like the Internet

I’m a product of the internet age, but I also know what life was like before the internet too.
When you fucked up, you did so with the knowledge that only a few folks might really know about it. You’d go down the rabbit-hole of bad behaviour and would rise to live another day.
These days, not so much. There’s often a camera in proximity. The internet is rife with people experiencing their worst moment while some fucker with a camera has caught it all to share with the world.
Facepalm Girl
I understand there are all kinds of wrongness with being judged for our worst moment. Lord knows I’d be pink-faced if mine got posted. But I’d also deal with it, because like it or not, I was the one who had the power to stop that ball from rolling. I was the one who lacked manners, empathy, grace, or whatever it theoretically might have been that got me shamed on the intertubes. I’d suck it up, own up to my crap, apologize, and move the hell on.
There are all these web pros who talk about just how awful it is that your prior bad act should taint you forever, and how this is some new public-shaming horror we’re living with, but accountability was a big thing in most of history.
Back in the day, newspapers printed the arrest blotter weekly, letting it be known who was busted and for what, often with mugshots there too. The fear of getting caught on the blotter often inspired good behaviour.
Pretty basic, that: Don’t want to be exposed for law-breaking, being an asshole, or other crimes of poor judgment? Then behave like you’re a citizen in a lawful society. With good behaviour in public, your chances of being shamed on the internet decrease dramatically.

If I Can Restrain Myself, You Can Too

I might be a loudmouth on the internet, and I may even speak with bravado and edge in public, but I’m also restrained, polite, and gracious. I hold the doors open for folks, I thank shop staff for allowing me to browse, and all that kind of stuff.
Hell, even when I found out that I was in for a 17-hour flight delay on my 4-day weekend in Vegas to celebrate my brother’s wedding, I started off with “Oh, for FUCK’S sake.” Then I said “I know it’s not YOU inconveniencing me, but–”
I handled it with a couple swear words followed by tact. I think that’s acceptable. Of course we can’t keep every emotion in check. But the way some people behave is not okay, it’s not within the “acceptable” outburst parameters.

Newsflash: Decency Isn’t a Modern Creation

And here’s the thing: It’s not some NEWSFLASH that it’s uncool to harass people or treat them like shit. It’s not like you’ve been on the planet for 30 years and then someone changed the rules and said “being a dick ain’t cool, yo.”
“Oh, man. I can’t be an asshole now? God, why don’t I get these memos?”
We’re taught from KINDERGARTEN that we have to be nice and polite. How are people missing this?
If you’re past the age of 20 and you haven’t figured out what basic human decency involves, maybe you deserve to be shamed on the web. Maybe that’s the only way it’ll get through your thick skull.
If you have outbursts like these and rage issues, then you have a problem and you need to deal with that shit. Because guess what? The rest of us are tired of dealing with it, and we have omnipresent video cameras now.

You Go, Girl: Indian Women Fight Back

highfiveTake this incident on an Indian flight where a creepy old man thought he was entitled to touch the legs/ass of a woman sitting next to him. She had enough. She stood up, turned the camera on him, and shamed him.
There is no way a man gets to age 60 not understanding that it’s not his right to touch women. There is no way this behaviour is an “oopsy-daisy.”
Or how about these two Indian sisters who went viral last December for raging against the men pawing them on a public bus?
I’ve been on the bus when a man has fondled my ass. I only wish I had the guts THEN to do this. I sure as hell would NOW. I’m over 40 and I’m over that shit.
In India, a culture of rape has been practiced by some and ignored by the law and most other folks for far too long. The internet is giving these women the chance to fight back for the first time ever, with what is a very powerful weapon in their culture: Shame.
Shame is a big deal in India, much more so than here in North America, and I have no doubt this man will suffer consequences with his family and friends as a result of this outburst. Do I pity him in the blowback he’s about to experience? Not really.

Suck it Up, Buttercup

YOU are accountable for your actions. When YOU act like an ass and then you experience consequences for it, the world isn’t to blame. You are. If you had just taken 10 seconds to think about your behaviour before acting on your basest instincts, then the world wouldn’t have had to take you to task for it.
If you thought for a split second, “Would I want this treatment returned to me?” maybe you would’ve pressed the “no asshole” button and backed off. Are we really saying that modern life is SO HARD that people can’t stop for a split second to consider the consequence? Come on! Get real!
I’d rather live in a world where everyone gets to make mistakes and grow from it the old-fashioned way, but when it comes to men like this and their feeling of entitlement with harassing women, or people who shout and rage at others just doing their jobs, or who are knowingly acting incredibly petty and mean, then maybe this is the only way we, the decent folk on the planet, can say “DUDE, it’s NOT OKAY to do that.”
Because, dude, it’s not okay.
with-it-you-shall-deal-yoda

Everything is Stupid: A Rant from the Edge of Pathos

I’m currently stuck in that place between hating everyone and thinking I’m too brilliant to be in gen-pop.
There are no sharp objects on my desk today. This is good.
middle-fingerI’d be all Hulk-smashing the shit out of everything if only I could give enough of a fuck to do so. It’s that double-edged sword of anger and apathy that comes only from a really righteous chemical imbalance. Oh, PMS. A monthly license to hug all that is dark and vengeful within me.
Fortunately, I use my PMS evils for good — I blog. Sometimes. Rage is a lot more fun if you pepper it with humour, then share it with the world so others can commiserate and rail against the stupidness.
I’m trying to stay off social media, like Twitter, because I keep reading normal people saying normal things and then I want to punch the desk and shout YOU ARE A STUPIDHEAD. WHY ARE YOU ALLOWED TO BREATHE?
Then I start wondering things like if there was some little ethical justification or litmus test where we could employ eugenics without incurring the wrath of the United Nations. Like, say, sterilize only people who are completely asshattedly-moronic but who have every opportunity to educate themselves and learn sciencey, facty thingies.
Then I remember that it’s hard to be immune to stupid people and even stupid people could wind up in charge of a eugenics program and start sterilizing people willy-nilly, and so I give up on this little Utopian stupid-free fantasy of mine.
Still, one could argue that the skyrocketing population of  7 billion humans on Earth might suggest that maybe, just maybe, a little indiscriminate stupidity-suppression could improve the planetary futures. Less stupid people, more oxygen, better climate control? Sounds good to me. I know I don’t need them adding more carbon dioxide to the mix with their ignorant antics.
1154794_origTake stupid people who don’t believe in Climate Change, who insist on things like “coal rolling” to make this ignorant fucking point scream loudly, they make my head explode. Everything I think is wrong with the planet, people like them are causing it. They’re a carte blanche raison d’etre when it comes to unpopular ideas like eugenics and sterilization.
Or maybe we could just sterilize all the annoying entitled people. You know, the kinds who snap “Don’t you know who I am?” — especially when they’re just another asshat with a healthy following on social media. Or other entitled folk who feel there’s nothing wrong with embezzling, theft, and all those other groovy crimes.
Then there’s racist assholes. We don’t need them, either.
I’m just tired of all the jerks in the world. And the stupid people. And the stupidity with which jerks are explained away by stupid people who don’t have the guts to end it.
photo 1
For instance, Ray Rice, who plays football for the Baltimore Ravens. In a supposedly “mutual” attack in May, the big, hulking football star was found on tape dragging his unconscious wife out of an elevator. The NFL thought this horrible thing was so horrible they decided to make him miss a whole horrible two games as punishment.
But what galled me today was hearing that his arrival on the gridiron at training camp resulted in fans cheering loudly. And I’m also annoyed the team has yet to delete a tweet from May 23rd in which they state the wife “regrets” her role in the “incident.” Because, yeah, getting hit is so inconsiderate. Being dragged across a hall, that’s just rude. How dare she?
At least some of the fans called out the organization for their ridiculous victim-blaming. Way to rock the public relations game, Ravens.photo 2
Or, hey, maybe it’s just all my feministing raging hormones that are stupid, and this kind of assoholic behaviour is the norm. Maybe I need to suck it up and accept that we live in a world of narcissistic asshatted entitlement, and that’s just the way it rolls.
But no.
Lucky for us all, I’m Irish-Canadian and too stubborn to think those stupidheaded assholes are in the right or deserving of tolerance. In my world, it’s not okay to be entitled, violent, ignorant, stupid, rude, bullying, or mean.
Those behaviours will never be okay.
And if it’s only once a month that it unleashes a Hulk-Smashy-Ragey thing in me so I scream and rail at the gods about the Stupidheads Wrecking Everything, then so be it. Once a month I will rail and curse the cosmos and demand better.
Anger — it’s a good thing. If it causes just one person to recognize their ignorant, stupid ways, and it helps them be a little less of a dick, then it’s all worth it. I’m more than willing to Hulk-Smash my way to a better, kinder world, one stupidhead at a time. Are you?

Of Bloggers And Trolls: Oh, My!

Sometimes all it takes to get back into writing is to sit down and do it.
Got a comment this morning that I promptly deleted, since I’m just getting too old for that shit.
If you want to call me out objectively on anything I’ve written, step right up, my friend. Let’s have a beer and chew that chat, all right? I’m down with dissent, constructive criticism, and I don’t shy away from debating anyone I know. I call it like I see it ‘cos I’m too lazy to keep up with lies.
Love dissent and debate, in the real world. Online, who wants to type that much? Still, I try to engage.
But when the extent of your entire comment is “you’re rambling lately,” the delete bin is for you. I used to be one of these “Hey, I’ll publish every comment!” types who purport to be encouraging dialogue, but then I realised that, um, no, it’s just encouraging stupidity.
The older I get, the more I think they might’ve been onto something with eugenics. I’m very aware that, while the internet is giving much-needed voices the airplay they deserve, it’s also broadcasting some real fuckin’ tools.
Here’s the deal. If you go around commenting on posts all the time, and you don’t have a blog, and you’re always antagonistic and IN YO FACE BEYOTCH about it, then just shut the hell up. Really. Do some self-medicating, find a mountaintop guru for advice — I don’t care what you do, but just find a purpose in life, ‘cos it’s just sad, sad, sad to see what some folk get reduced to in life… commenter.
Thank god for the nice people who comment to share stories and are awesome and open and rah-rah-rah, because they’re the reason we keep pushing “publish.”
Them’s the new house rules. No more troll comments published. Dissent? Okay. Be smart and respectful and tell me I’m wronger than than wrong, I’m down with that.
Otherwise, hey, don’t like the writing? Don’t read it. Don’t like my opinions? There’s the door. There’s only 100 million blogs in the world, I’m sure you can find some carbon-copy of you out there somewhere. Good luck lookin’, Skippy.
Life’s short, man. I’m living it as me, writing what I want to say, and that’s the way the blogging cookie crumbles. If I gave a fuck about pleasing anyone in specific, I’d be checking my Google Analytics more than once a month. And probably swearing a LOT less.
Instead, I write or I don’t.
Sometimes the writing blows monkey chunks. Welcome to the “I’m a real person” thingie. Creativity isn’t a tap you turn on and it rushes out. We’re lucky to tame the whirlwind once in a storm season. Now and then: Brilliance. The rest of the time? It’s why sailboats come with motors. Sometimes you’re gonna coast a while.
And that’s blogging. A less-than-selective writing process.
You want consistency? Read a book.
You want real-time accuracy? Snapshots of a person’s life in weekly digestible bits, largely a little less censored than they ought to be, flaws hanging out for the world to see? Read a blog.
You want to be the loser that just writes negative comments without anything of value, lacking useful critiques? Don’t.
As much as many bloggers are self-involved twats, there are a lot of bloggers are ripping off Band-aids most publishers wouldn’t pay to publish. They’re being brutally real about their lives, thoughts, and worldviews.
Bloggers started this whole firestorm of openness and communication that we haven’t figured out how to use for the betterment of mankind yet — Twitter, Facebook updates, blogs, video blogging. It was all born because some dude began journaling on the web a couple decades ago.
Maybe blogging hasn’t definitively changed the world yet, maybe there are lots of twats making it look ugly to others, but I still believe in the power of blogging, the quest for individual truths, the dynamism of millions of voices saying what needs to be said if only for a dozen other people.
And when people who might be timid otherwise finally have the courage to click “publish” and start their blogs, they don’t need spineless hacks pissing on their parade.
There’s a growing call to remove “ANONYMOUS” comment ability. Having one’s name on their vitriol doesn’t make it any more valid, just not as despicable. Maybe one day I’ll remove anonymity here, too.
In the meantime, I blog on the things I think are interesting, important, or that I’m just obsessing about.
Because that’s what blogging’s for. We now return you to your scheduled silence.
I thank those of you who’ve read me (inexplicably) for years, who’ve shared your experiences and opinions. You’re awesome.

Mental Health: In Which Steff Calls a Spade a Spade

A couple months ago, I proposed to talk about writing for therapy, how to kinda “go there”, via blogging.
The conference was yesterday. It was an “unconference” put on by end-patients and people who work on the peripheries of mental care.
Why did I want to get involved?
For a million reasons. I’ll get to most of them shortly.
But, first: I proposed my talk without knowing the conference’s “reputation” or anything like that. I just wanted a forum to talk about depression.
Unbeknownst to me, I stepped into the thick of a controversial “unconference.” It wasn’t until Friday that I really realized just how controversial it was. Whether it’s because ballsy speakers like Steven Schwartz speak in dismissive vernacular, saying edgy-yet-funny adjectives a lot of boring people object to, or because of who was organizing it, or even the press some of us speakers were getting, the reactions were ridiculously sharp and pointed.
Late Friday night, I saw comments some anonymous dumb fuck left on the Mental Health Camp’s website, and I got pretty riled up. Since then, all the comments were deleted, which I take serious issue with.
Me, I never would have deleted the comments. We convened the camp to fight stigma against the “idea” of mental illness, so why would you delete, and not fight, that stigma when it stands up and attacks you? Deleting and silencing the attack does nothing to neutralize it. But that’s where I stand and it’s not my blog. So, yeah. Moving on.
The asshat’s comments varied, but the most offensive of them all were that a number of those involved in the Mental Health Camp were doing so only to propel their image and get their allotted moments of Warholian fame. Media whores, basically, all faking their interest to get noticed.
Heh. Yeah, okay. Fucking shrewd, that.
A line in the comment made me wonder if I was one of the people they alluded to, just because I had the audacity to do an interview with CBC about the conference.
Here’s the deal, all right?
I’ll be the first to admit there were organizational issues with the conference. That’s what happens with not-for-profit amateur/volunteer organizers, people who have organized a conference just to have discussion and don’t have experience organizing them.
Oh, well. That’s life. It happens. But it’s not about the organizing.
It’s about the messages explored — mental health, stigma, and the fact the lives are destroyed by mental illness every moment of every day, and the fact that EVERYONE in their lifetime will experience mental illness at some point, and YET we don’t talk about it.
Well, I do, and I have for years.
I’ve been writing about depression, weight issues, self-esteem, lack of confidence, and everything else I’ve battled in life since 2005, and blogging since 2004. I’ve been getting real fuckin’ raw and honest since 2006.
There are a whole lot of things I’m willing to do to have success as a writer. Do you know what the least smart of them would be?
Letting myself in any way be any kind of poster girl for any mental illness.
Let’s see, when was the last time a Hollywood publicist suggested their celebrity client embrace their mental illness for the public as a means of netting better starpower in the press? Um, never.
Know why?
No one wants to be thought of as “nuts”.
Why?
Because people who are strong, intelligent, articulate, engaging, and well-liked don’t come out and admit their mental illnesses. They don’t talk about them. So stigma exists because all we see are the nutty fucks you try to avoid in hallways, or the whackjobs they put on television shows.
But those are extremes.
When assholes like that anonymous commenter attack a conference whose only purpose is to bring the overly-shamed and constantly-silenced issue of mental health to the forefront only because they dislike the people behind it, and they use that opportunity to suggest it’s basically Starfucking by those involved, it’s an insult to the seriousness of the issue.
It also suggests they have no fucking idea what it’s like to have been, in my case, an otherwise strong and intelligent person who took the wrong medication and considered suicide before spending the next year-plus trying to claw my way out of the depths.
It suggests they have no idea what it’s like to live under the clutches of your mind, body, and chemistry’s whimsy on a day-in, day-out, year-by-year basis, never being able to rise above a sick world of fear, chaos, and hopelessness that can’t manifest outwardly, that you hear inside your head every time you wake or lie down to sleep.
It suggests they don’t fathom that mental illness is the most costly and insidious of sicknesses in society — it destroys the fabric of life, of all the lives around the sufferer, not just the body of the afflicted. It ends relationships, destroys marriages, causes debt, and is the largest reason for employee leaves of absence in the modern workforce.
I don’t WANT to talk about depression.
But I need to.
Because what happened to me can happen to anyone.
Because it happened to my mother, and, as a 17-year-old girl, I walked in on her attempting suicide with the very pills that caused her chemically-induced depression — one like I myself would experience 17 years later.
Because doctors will tell you birth control pills don’t cause depression.
Because I know my birth control made me want to kill myself and feel like life could never have hope again.
I need to talk about depression because I’m tired of bi-polars, schizophrenics, and other more acute or rare mental health concerns having the limelight in “mental illness,” when it’s depression that’s most likely to touch, and destroy, the average life.
I feel like their more “stereotyped” afflictions make it less likely for seemingly average Jolenes like myself to come out and say, “I’m not that afflicted, but it still really fucked me up, too, and no one saw any big signs…”
I am a good writer. I’m a really, really good writer. I’m a passionate speaker who will not mince her ideas. I don’t back down from a fight. I’m engaging, funny, and even self-deprecating. I’m a great communicator with friends, family, everyone.
And yet depression almost took me out of the game of life.
But I survived.
I made it to the other side. I’m stronger than I’ve ever been. I’m happy most of the time.
Still, I’m surrounded by people I see who are skating through life with the cool indifference of someone struggling with depression. I see it everywhere. And we’re NOT TALKING ABOUT IT.
You want to attack my IDEAS? Go for it.
But don’t fucking attack ME or any of those people who’ve had the STRENGTH to write about all the things YOU make fun of, that YOU won’t trust, or YOU can’t admit about yourself.
We’re out there only for the reason that we can’t be silent anymore. Society can’t AFFORD our silence anymore. We need to hear our thoughts expressed on the page, we believe our experiences are real and representative of the whole, yet largely ignored by the mainstream.
And we’re not going to be quiet about it.
Not anymore.
Until you’ve lost your job — like I once did — for writing in the public eye about your darker self, until you’ve had the courage to write without tempering your weaker thoughts and fears, until you’ve been able to admit you have an affliction the majority of society can’t understand and doesn’t know how to act around, you have no right to criticize us for the moments of acknowledgement we might finally receive after years of having the courage to tell our stories no matter what the prices have been.
Now it’s easier for me. But where the fuck were you in 2006 when I wanted to commit suicide only 9 days after writing the most harrowing things I’ve ever published? Where were you when my traffic dropped to nothing as I used my blogs to work through my depression? Where were you when I lost a job and nearly my home for having a voice on less acceptable topics? Where were you when I struggled to maintain faith in speaking out? Where were you when I constantly had to lower my voice when I said what I wrote about?
Sure, now you know about me, but I’ve been doing this for a long fucking time and I’ve paid a LOT of steep prices for my honesty.
But I’ve paid ’em and now you can’t shut me up. Just try it, honey. You’ll only wind me up more.
If I finally have an audience and a wider means of getting my message out, you’d have to be a fucking moron to think I’d walk away from that opportunity.
Oh, and being single and getting press for having gone nuts, been suicidal, and longterm depressed? Yeah, that’ll be a fucking brilliant way for me to get laid. I hear men are wild about that shit.
Marketing GENIUS, clearly.
Whoever you were, you anonymous spineless motherfucking commenter: Grow up. You’re a fucking idiot. Open your eyes. See that some battles need to be waged with faces on them.
At least I have the guts to show mine.

RANT: Can I *JUST* Talk?

It’s worth reading the note at the end of this if you really ARE in my life, because what I want online versus from people in the flesh are very different. Thanks.
This morning I’m feeling a bit hamstrung by the life I’ve carved for myself.
I know even saying this is going to ruffle some feathers, and I just don’t give a shit.
First off, I love the relationships and dynamics Twitter and blogging have offered my life. I love the fact that it has opened me up with both friends and family.
But here’s the reality.
This is where I use my voice — here and in Twitter.
Just because I say something doesn’t mean I want you solving my problems. It doesn’t mean it’s a cry for help. It doesn’t mean I need your guidance or moral input. It’s just something I wanted to say.
It also doesn’t mean you have a fucking clue what I’m talking about, world. Continue reading

RANT: Guilt-Tripping: What Friends Don't Do

I had a classic big ol’ Twitter fight with an insensitive fuckwit last night, who I haven’t blocked because I’m not in Grade 5 anymore, but it basically came down to me saying, “No, I’m not coming out because I need some time to myself.”
Long story short: I’ve been up at 5 the last four days, have worked in four days what I usually work in 5, still have to work today, am trying to get back onto a fitness regime & healthy diet, and have slept far too little all week. Add to that that today I should get my period and was therefore a grumpy cunt last night, plus I worked 10 hours during the day on a very mentally-draining couple of projects, then, yes… I thought staying home was a good plan.
Asshat, however, thought he should keep pressuring me on Twitter to come out. I kept saying no, then got more forceful about it. Asshat finally got the point. I said “Toldja,” and asshat got offended that I was such a smug bitch about it.
Oh. So, you, in your insensitive and fuckish way, get to bang a drum that’s totally self-serving, because your cock somehow seems to think it’s necessary I attend a party, but when I bang any kind of a drum, I’m suddenly a cunt. Uh-huh. Ass. Continue reading

Miss California: The Boobs Are on the Job

I had to doublecheck my old-school calendar just now. Holy fuck, it really is 2009. Who knew?
Clearly not the folks running the Miss California Pageant.
Yeah, Miss California. You remember her? Perez Hilton went all “oh, no you didn’t [SNAP]” as a result of the ass-backward beauty’s anti-gay marriage stance she posited while she grinned and pointed her perky breasts at the —
[record scratches]
Right, the perky breasts. The now-to-be-infamous perky breasts paid for by the Miss California Pageant, so their homophobic girlie could have her cake and totally, like, not eat it at the Nationals. Continue reading

Should Irwin Have Changed After Kids?

So, earlier I asked if you have the right to ask a risk-taker to tone down their lifestyle once you get hooked to them.
My opinion? No. You do not. And if they tell you you can go ahead and tell them how to change; don’t. You’d fucking with what oughtn’t be fucked.
In a nutshell.
My posting was inspired by the death of Steve Irwin. There are those who apprently think he should’ve “settled down” since he had kids. Yeah, as a kid, the first thing I wanna know is that my father gave up almost everything he loved so he could raise me — sit in a fucking armchair with a remote and tell me how he “used to be like that” once.
Terri Irwin got a precious gift that most of us might never, ever, ever receive: She fell in love with someone who kept all the qualities that made him so loveable as the person he was when they first met. Bloody sweet, that. And she had it for a while. And then it got snatched. Love happens, death happens, it all is what it is.
Life’s a truckload of hurts some days and there’s no getting around that.
The point is, it’s hard enough to be ourselves in the face of everyday life. It’s harder still to remember who we are when we get lost in the arms of someone else. To be able to hang on to your identity despite your love for someone else and your wish to be with them, why, that’s as downright admirable as it gets.
To hell with those who think otherwise.

_________________

In other Croc-Hunter news, let me go on record to say that, while Germaine Greer periodically says something intelligent, I:
a) think she can be a complete twat who has done as much to hinder feminism as she has to further it. She’s arrogant, dismissive of men, flighty, inconsistent, hypocritical, and far too militant for my tastes. (Despite my believing I’m a feminist, thank you very much. Ain’t no fucking eunuch here, baby.)
b) think she’s a far bigger bitch than I’d thought before now that I’ve read her comments on the death of Steve Irwin.
I do not believe that to be a strong woman I need to demoralize men. I believe that, as a strong, independent chick, I can exalt men in my life and cater to them as I wish, because I fucking well know who I am when I go to bed at night (most of the time; we all get a little too lost in our relationships some of the time). I take no backseat to any man. But I’ll hold the door open for ’em if they’ll let me, because I have nothing to prove. I’m empowered by the mere fact that I don’t need to seek power, all right?
I’d get into my whole beef about how feminism has been executed, but I’m too tired and it’d take too damned long. Suffice to say that while I fight for my equality, I don’t think it needs to come at the cost of emasculating men. There’s room enough for us both, and I don’t think chicks like Greer understand that concept, but then I don’t like her enough to read her work. I listen to others gripe about her and praise her, so I’m ignorant, but by choice.

RANT: On the Rag with The Goddesses

Okay, I’m into the whole love-yoself-sistah feminist self-worship thing and all that, to an extent.
This sort of thing blows my mind. Personally, if I was 12 or 13, and I had a granola-chomping mother who was foisting this “love your period, love your womanhood” crap down my throat, I’d spontaneously combust.
I hate when people take something that’s really inconvenient and annoying and try to exalt some greatness into it. Sure, having a period is a reminder that we’re female and a conscious realization of our ability to create and bear life. Nice, fabulous, wonderful. Will that get the stains out of my bedsheets, too, or is that just a lovely little inconcrete and essentially useless euphemistic piece of bullshit?
Oh, I say it’s the latter. These people are right up there with the fucking naive twits who think a bird shitting on you means good luck. People will tell themselves anything if it means pocketing the cash for another therapy session.
Fuck, man. All I need to remind me that I am woman, ergo I fucking rock, are my tits. That I have a twat is just bonus, okay? My whole fucking body tells me I am woman, ergo I roar. I don’t need to pull a South Park, bleed for seven days, and miraculously stump the odds by living just to know that I’ve got the DNA freebie strand, okay? My period is the bane of my existence. I fucking hate it. I wish I never had to bleed again. I’m presently in the middle of trying to suppress my period for three months at a time, but the three months has been split into six weeks thanks to an unwanted period this week.
Now, a bloody tangent. So, I’m, you know, there on my throne, unwrapping the first of a new pack of pads, and the Always “Wings” adhesive cover tab has “Have a happy period” written all across the fucking thing.
Happy? You want me to be happy about cramps, bloating, irritability, alcohol sensitivity, and the constant risk of staining undergarments, clothing, and sheets for the better part of a week? Yeah, sure, okay, and while we’re at it, you want me to be thrilled about losing my paycheck, crashing my car, and finding my husband in bed with his secretary? Fuck right off.
Goddamned marketers.
But back to the initial topic: I’d like to send a big fuck you out to all the women who try to make me feel guilty about the fact that I think having menses is the absolutely worst part about being female. It doesn’t mean I hate my femininity, it means I hate mood swings and pain and messes and feeling unclean. How is that wrong? Fucking sanctimonious crap is what that is. Get off your high horse and join the rest of us on this little plane we like to call “Reality.”

RANT: Another Fucking Bad Hair Day

I should be leaving for an appointment right this very second, but I’m SO mad! I HATE my hair.
There is nothing worse (esteem-wise) than bad hair days. Except maybe bloating days, but We Don’t Talk Of Such Things.
I splurged. I came into a few bucks and went to my fancy-pants expensive hair guy, paid him a ridiculous $65 about 3-4 weeks ago now, and got the cut I have. Which I hate. And in the process? Had to put up with the dresser being, essentially, a stereotypical “pissy queen.”
My best friend is GayBoy. I love him to death. Gay? Not an issue. But standing there and being a negative, pissy bitch of a man while getting paid more per hour than I’ve ever gotten is pretty much a fucking affront to anyone. Worth it, MAYBE, for a good haircut.
Which this is not. Unusual for my fancy-pants coif-man, but there it is: It SUCKS.
And because he spent the whole fucking hour whining at me about life and people and traumas, I won’t be going back.
Know what? Here’s a fuckin’ memo: Shrinks get $120 an hour, or more, to listen to people bitch, piss, and moan. Know why? Because they fucking DESERVE it. Whiners suck! Issues suck! Who wants to hear them? Not many people. That’s what best friends and lovers are for. Not fucking hair-dressers!
Now I’m gonna make myself even later by dunking my head under the tap and hoping it dries in better positions when I put my motorcycle helmet on. Fucking people. $65 for a whine-at-me session and a bad haircut.
When I say I like to get screwed, that’s not exactly what I have in mind. GRR!