Britney’s Booty and Other Rants
It’s been a while since I let off some steam, so I thought I’d let you know the things that are on my nerves as of late. Please feel free to share your thoughts as well.
Britney Spears
I was at a wedding reception last night, so I missed what is being called a train wreck of a comeback. Yes, I’m talking about Britney Spears. Let’s first get something straight. I am no fan of Britney Spears, but I was curious as to how her opening performance at MTV’s VMA awards was going to go. I went to MTV’s website and watched it for myself, after reading several scathing reviews on various news venues. While I agree that her lip syncing was completely off, and that her dance moves lacked any sort of motivation or get-up-and go, I am highly annoyed at those out there talking about the state of her body. That 25-year old train wreck has had two children in the past two years and she was on TV in a bikini. No, she’s not as cut as she used to be. Yes, she has a bit more of a booty, but cut the girl a break already! She’s had two kids and she looks THAT good!?! To quote John Stossel, "Give me a break!"
Boys and Field Hockey
I read an article in my local newspaper about a problem with field hockey in my county. Apparently, there are some schools who are allowing boys onto the girls field hockey teams. Because of this, certain schools are putting in place policies that state that their all girls hockey teams will forfeit to any team with boys playing, rather than have their girls risk injury playing in a game against boys. Last year, one of the local schools had three girls get injured during a single game against a team who had several boys playing. One of the girls even required stitches.
Now, if you know anything about field hockey, you know that there are strict rules against making body contact. Field hockey can be a very rough sport (Ask my still bruised up shins if you don’t believe me), but the injuries usually come from high sticks, and/or the ball. Apparently, it’s becoming more of a contact sport with the boys on the team.
Here’s my take on the whole thing. If boys want to play field hockey, great; but get your own team. I think it is ridiculous that boys are being allowed to play on a girls field hockey team while there are able-bodied girls sitting on the bench. If a team doesn’t have enough players, that’s one thing; but sitting girls on the bench in order to play boys is not at all fair. If Big I or Lil C ever play field hockey and a boy plays ahead of either of them, I’m going to have a serious problem with that.
While I’m all for equal rights, there are more sports for boys than there are for girls. Cheerleading does not count as a sport. (Don’t even argue with me on this one, because I am a former cheerleader. Extracurricular "activity" I’ll give you. Sport? No). There is no valid reason for allowing boys to start taking over spots that should belong to girls on a girls team. It’s not like the boys don’t have plenty of their own sports.
Studies have shown that playing sports is highly beneficial for the self-esteem of girls. Good self-esteem helps to keep girls out of bad situations: drugs, teenage pregnancy, excessive drinking, to name just a few. I don’t think that allowing boys to play on a girls team does anything to promote girls confidence, which is what girls sports are intended to do.
When a bunch of girls at my high school decided it would be fun to play football, we rounded up enough girls to make a team and set up a game with another school who did the same. If the boys want to play, they should get their own team, plain and simple.
Fantasy Football
For those of you who don’t know what it is, here are a couple definitions for you. The first one is courtesy of wiki:
Fantasy Football is a fantasy sports game in which participants (called "owners"), arranged into a league, each draft or acquire via auction a team of real-life American football players and then score points based on those players’ statistical performance on the field. A typical fantasy league will employ players from a single football league, such as the NFL or an NCAA division. Leagues can be arranged in which the winner is the team with the most total points at the end of the season, or in a head-to-head format (which mirrors the actual NFL) in which each team plays against a single opponent each week. At the end of the year, win-loss records determines league rankings or qualification into a playoff bracket. Most leagues set aside the last weeks of the regular season for their own playoffs.
Here’s my definition:
Fantasy Football is the equivalent of banging your head against a brick wall on a continual basis with emphasis placed on Sunday’s. "Owners" choose a starting line-up and then watch their bench-goers get twice as many points as any of their starters which subsequently makes them wonder why they ever thought playing fantasy football would be fun in the first place. Fantasy Football is an exercise in anger management like no other, where "owners" must either learn to deal with their anger appropriately or suffer a fantasy football related aneurysm.
Examples: BBM chooses to play Ladainian Tomlinson and Maurice Jones-Drew as her starting running backs for week one. LT scores 19 fantasy points. Maurice Jones-Drew scores 3 fantasy points. Adrian Peterson (sitting on my bench) scores 29 fantasy points. Don’t get it? Here’s another one for you: Marc Bulger scores 13 fantasy points. My bench QB, Ben Roethlisberger scores 32 fantasy points. Want another one? Here you go: Vince Young scores 9 fantasy points, while my benched QB Jake Delhomme scores 27 fantasy points. Think that’s bad? My opponent’s starting QB, Drew Brees scores 1 point while his bench QB Tony Romo scores 42 points. He’s still probably going to beat me, which makes me even more irritated.
Deep breath BBM, deep breath. . .
Feel free to post your thoughts, but keep it respectful or your comment will stay in the cave.
Only One Thing Worse. . .
There is only one thing worse than being Antonella Barba, the contestant whose racy photos are all over the internet . . .
Being her parents.
I can not even imagine what they are going through right now. As a parent of two daughters, I would be shocked and horrified if my daughter’s photos started appearing all over the internet. According to rumors in the form of news articles, the collection of photos were part of a calendar she gave to her long-time boyfriend (whom she dumped as soon as she got a ticket to Hollywood). What did she think was going to happen with those photos? As soon as she got her golden ticket to Hollywood, they became more valuable than she would ever know.
Boyfriend is a transient term; they can be here today, gone tomorrow. Truth be told, I wouldn’t advocate creating a calendar with racy photos in it for anyone, including a husband. Any and all relationships can come to bad endings and no one wants photo baggage following them around. The problem is that once those photos have been taken, they can end up anywhere. In Antonella’s case, it’s cyberspace fame and glory, but certainly not what she had hoped.
I think that she will probably be sent packing tonight after a dismal try at a Celine Dion classic, and I certainly hope that’s the case. As a parent who likes to watch American Idol with my children, I can tell you that, in my opinion, Antonella is certainly no "American Idol." It is possible, however, to learn something from her unfortunate circumstances. Hopefully young girls will consider what they’d like to become famous for, and leave the nude/suggestive photos well alone.
Soapbox time
I’ve had it up to my eyebrows with people being offended by mothers nursing their babies in public. I’ve also had it with the old "cover up with a blanket" junk, because any nursing mom knows that from the time the baby is about three weeks old, that is no longer an option. Trying to cover up with a blanket only results in a cranky baby who rips the blanket down, and frustration and exposure for all involved.
I’m not advocating that women just whip out their breasts wherever and however they choose. There’s something to be said for being discreet, which describes 99.9% of nursing mothers.
It’s not an attention getting thing. It’s a nourishment thing, as in the baby is hungry, so I will feed my baby the way Mother Nature intended. Although I am no longer nursing, I have nursed my babies in public locations many times: restaurants, malls, doctors offices, on the beach, etc. I highly doubt anyone ever realized what I was doing, and if they did they were looking a bit too closely.
I found out this week that my state, the state of Pennsylvania, is one of only 13 states that has no legislation supporting a Mother’s right to nurse in public. That has to change.
It’s not that Mom’s want to sit topless somewhere in the middle of the grocery store, or that I think they should be doing that because I don’t. But there should be something protecting a woman and her baby’s right to feed and be fed.
I would invite anyone who thinks that Mom’s should go to the bathroom to nurse, or cover up with a blanket to eat their meals in a public restroom with a blanket over their heads. I think we all need to show a little more understanding and empathy towards other human beings in general. And there’s no better place to start than with Mom’s and babies.
If you live in the state of Pennsylvania, there are many people you can contact. If you don’t live in the state of PA, find out who you can contact if your state is one of the 13. In the state of PA, the contacts are as follows. Click on the name to go to the site where you can send your email.
For more information on this topic and for specifics on what nursing Mom’s are dealing with this week, go see IzzyMom. You won’t even believe what she posted about this issue.
And just in case there are any dissenters out there, this is not your soapbox. Comments will be deleted if they are in any way rude or inappropriate. It’s my blog after all. And as a warning, IzzyMom was able to track down the employer of a rude commenter and promptly reported the threatening emails to the employer today. We bloggers are pretty computer savvy, especially when we’re ticked off!
Edited to add: Apparently there is already legislation in process in the state of PA. To make sure it gets passed this session, please contact your House Representatives. PA House Representative Babette Josephs has introduced this legislation. I’m already getting some excellent responses from the House Representatives in support of this bill, and will be sure to post the names of those in support.
Losers
While running errands today, the girls and I went to Target. Outside, there were about ten boys lined up behind a poster board that said, "Play Station 3 Line Starts Here". They had laptops, beverages, food, chairs. . . in fact, one of them even brought an unholstered wing chair for the occassion. He must have been the big deal, because he was at the front of the line in his wing chair.
While we were walking past them, Big I asked me, "Mommy, why are those boys all sitting there like that?"
"Well, Big I, it’s because they really really really don’t want to EVER have a girlfriend. That’s why." I said it loud enough for them to hear, and one of them actually laughed in a good-natured way. And then I said, "You do realize it doesn’t come out for like two more days. How will you even go to the bathroom?"
I didn’t wait around for their answer. I wonder if they thought about that before they started their vigil for the PS3.
I think they’re losers, but then again, they’ll be losers with a brand spanking new Play Station 3. (I wonder if I could get one of them to stand in line for a Wii for me?).
“Wii”diculous
Cabbage Patch Dolls, Tickle-Me Elmo, Elmo TMX (or whatever the name is). . . Do you know what these toys all have in common? At one point they were THE toy to have for Christmas. If I remember correctly, my Mom stood in line to get my sister and I each a Cabbage Patch Doll way back in the day when they were all the rage and every little girl MUST. HAVE. ONE. AND. NOW. Elmo is the little kid toy of that caliber this year, I suppose.
But nothing compares to the Wii.
Yes, you heard me correctly. Have you heard of it? Wii. It’s just a new gaming station that has a wand that you actually use instead of sitting there pushing buttons. It’s the "active" gaming system that my husband decided our daughter must have for Christmas. "It will be great!" he said enthusiastically a few weeks ago. "It will get her up and moving around. It’s so cool!"
A monotone "great." That was my response. He showed me demo’s on the internet and I was slightly swayed. I am NOT a video games type of gal. Never have been, I doubt I ever will be. But I thought it at least looked interesting.
So, like stupid first-timers when it comes to wanting the Christmas frenzy toy, what do we do? We ask Big I if she’d be interested in something like that for Christmas. Frankly, we’re up to our nostrils in princess gowns, crowns and sparkly shoes and could use a little break from all things princess for a bit. She decided that, "YES!", that would be so "a-citing!" ("exciting" in Big I-ese).
And then the worst possible thing happened. No pre-orders, or we missed them or something, because as parents, this is the first time that we’re wanting the frenzy toy. We had no clue. We checked online and at all the local stores, and none of them are doing pre-orders anymore. Each store is getting about 12 Wii’s for the non-preordering folk. Freaking fabulous.
So, Saturday night, instead of kicking back with a nice glass of wine and watching Saturday Night Live, my husband will probably be at Walmart, anxiously awaiting the midnight release of the all powerful Wii. When he arrives, I will venture a guess that he’ll be in line behind people who’ve been camping out since yesterday, people who’ve decided that peeing in public is a perfectly acceptable thing to do (or that peeing in Depends is o.k. too), people who have brought along a cooler full of candy bars and Yoo-hoo’s, totally prepared for the five day pilgrimage in the line of Walmart, people who will not hesitate to hit a person over the head with that cooler or bottle of Yoo-hoo if they even think you’re trying to cut them in line. I will also predict that the few many greedy Ebayers who preordered 15 Wii’s a piece will waltz to the front of that line, pile up their cart and rub their greedy little troll hands all the way to the bank, err, I mean, their computer where there will be approximately 196 bids for each Wii system. People will bid up to $600 dollars or more for a system that costs less than $300. Don’t believe me? Go to ebay right now and search for Wii.
Unbelievable if you ask me.
I can assure you that Mr. and Mrs. BBM will not: engage in any activities that would require martial arts skills just to get a Wii, buy Depends in an attempt to outlast the losers already in line, or pay a ridiculous amount of money to a bunch of greedy jerks on Ebay just so that our daughter can wake up with a Wii on Christmas morning.
If we’re successful getting a Wii, great. But my instincts are telling me we won’t be, and Santa is not above giving out an IOU as I’m sure the stores will be stocked the day after Christmas. Christmas isn’t about what’s under the tree; it’s about being together, as a family, on a day that’s about so much more than the gifts.
And to all you pre-ordering people selling them on Ebay for an insane amount of money. . . Bah Humbug to you!
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