An Impassioned Plea to Men Everywhere

Dear Menfolk:

I don’t get it. 

I don’t care if you’re a regular Joe, a football player, a politician, or a stripper – a gentleman’s genitalia is not attractive.  

So what the hell makes you think we want to, A) see it, or B) do anything with it just because you showed it to us?

I realize that most of the species in the animal kingdom pick up ladies by utilizing their impressive physical features and sexy mating squawks, but I was under the impression that we homo sapiens had become more evolved.  Sure, physical characteristics are important to us ladies to some degree, but there are better ways of catching our attention than wagging your winkie at us.  Sure, some muscles might be nice, or good hair - but how about we try dressing well, being intelligent, having good manners?  None of these things, which I’m willing to bet would interest most women, involve nudity.  A nice smile will catch my attention quicker than your crotch.  

In fact, on that note, I would like to issue a challenge.  I would be willing to bet serious money (ok, I’d bet someone else’s money, since I’m unemployed with a large amount of debt, but you get the idea) that no woman in her right mind would tell you she agreed to marry you, date you, even let you buy her a drink, all because you  just up and showed her your special parts and she liked what she saw.  Committing the crime of indecent exposure isn’t a good way to pick up chicks.  It’s also not a good way of keeping one once you catch her – I’m sure you can do some special tricks with it, and that’s great and we’re happy you can, but we still don’t need to look at it.  Not on Twitter, not in an e-mail, not on our phones, not in person.  Not only do we not want to look at it, but we’re going to get damn sick of the news headlines and late night standup jokes if you’re famous and the pictures get leaked (which, let’s face it, they always do).  No matter what kind of naughty acrobatics you can perform, it’s still the body part which most assures us that God indeed did have a sense of humor when he created man, and absolute proof that he liked Eve more than Adam.  He clearly wasn't just scraping the bottom of the barrel for leftover, misshapen parts when he put her together.

On behalf of women everywhere, I beg of you, in the name of all that is good and holy in the world – please, pretty pretty please, figure out a better way of attracting women.

Sarcasmo
Only this time, I’m not being sarcastic – I really, really, really want men to stop showing off their kibbles and bits.)

PS - This is another blog post I found that shares my confusion and distaste for such behavior.  Enjoy.  http://qcreport.blogspot.com/2011/06/ive-got-to-hand-it-to-me.html

The Unemployment Chronicles

When someone asks the relatively harmless question “What have you been up to lately?” and all you can come up with as a response is that you bought some new underwear . . . stop.  Take a look around.  This that you see?  This is a view dangerously similar to the one from rock bottom.  Best go ahead and grab a shovel.

For the first couple of days, unemployment was fun.  I am a big, big fan of Not Doing A Damn Thing, and I do it well.  I am the MVP of Not Doing A Damn Thing.  But then it got boring.  And then it got sad.  Such is the life of the unemployed. 

We only know what day it is by what shows up on our DVR.  I watched “So You Think You Can Dance” last night, thus, today is Friday.  Our best friend’s name is Netflix.  We have constant headaches, because apartment maintenance only happens during midday hours, when most people are at work or school.  We name our houseplants (my hibiscus, Glenn, says hello, and asks that you don’t judge).  Trips to Target are even more exciting than ever (and not just when it’s to buy new underwear)(and let’s face it . . . they were pretty exciting when you weren’t bored out of your skull).  We Youtube Russell Brand’s rant about the injustice of watching Cops as an unemployed man, and realizing that there are dogs who have jobs while we eat our Froot Loops in front of the TV at 11AM.  We watch reruns all day, hit IMDb when faces look familiar to make sure things aren’t just completely running together, and wind up spending the next couple of hours memorizing the entire film career of Joe Pesci.  (FYI, there were some really cool guest stars on “House” back in the day . . . Jeremy Renner, Tyson Ritter, LL Cool J . . . shame it went down the drain.)  We become so detached from current culture that we think an old guest appearance by LL Cool J is fun.  We go to bed late and sleep late, effectively reversing the idea of a normal day, and become nocturnal pod people who look forward to midnight reruns of “Will and Grace”.  We wear a path to and from the pool and to and from the beer drawer in the fridge like they’re the freaking Oregon Trail. 

I’m pretty confident that everybody in the state of Texas has my resume at this point.  I’ve applied with everyone from tiny one-man criminal defense firms to Exxon.  It’s pretty pathetic at this point.  I haven’t had a single interview.  I can’t even get the time of day to get a rejection letter from most places.  I promise I’m qualified.  I graduated law school in the top 20%, and then went ahead and got another law degree for good measure.  I didn’t have an official internship during law school, but I was terribly busy dealing with that whole “my-dad-suddenly-died” situation, which apparently doesn’t fit anywhere on a resume.  So sue me.  I worked in a District Attorney’s office all through undergrad, and was a research assistant for a professor who is totally willing to sing my praises all through law school.  Maybe that extra degree makes it appear that I am overqualified, and will be too expensive . . . I can promise you that is not the case.  I am past the point where I am looking for a job that “pays well” and will gladly accept one that just “pays.”  So I really don’t understand why I can’t even get a response from a single one of these places.  According to my resume, I have what they’re looking for.  If they choose not to hire me after an interview, that’s fine.  I have no problem with employers hating me as a person, but there’s nothing reprehensible about my resume dammit!

Like I told you, I’m in a pretty pathetic state.  We won’t even get into the issues about month-to-month rent on my apartment and the unholy amount of student loans looming.  I think you get the picture of the swift downward spiral toward rock bottom that I am currently on.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I have "Deadwood" reruns to watch.

Sarcasmo

MIA

I realize that many of my lovely readers check on a regular basis for new posts, and so must have seen by now that I have been MIA for a couple of weeks.  I'm sorry about this - I've been working super hard lately on my thesis paper for school, and it's gotten down to finals crunch time, so I've just been having to focus my attentions elsewhere.  I haven't given up on the blog - I'll get back to it very soon :)

I Wish I Could Quit You

God help me. I’m not proud of it. But I cannot stop watching "American Idol". I’ve tried so hard to quit. Every year I promise myself that this will be the year I don’t put myself through that misery, and it never sticks. I cannot help but tune in every week to see the cornucopia of bullshit to be perpetrated by these singing monkeys.

I remember being in high school when the show started (hello, dirt? Yes, hi, I’m older than you.) and totally dismissing it. That’s when it would have been totally age appropriate to get into it. But now, as a 26 year old woman? There is no excuse for this type of addiction. I can’t pinpoint when it started, but it is so, so shameful.

The real rub of it is that I don’t even like it. I hate it. All I do when I watch it is complain. So rarely do they put out somebody I could actually be a fan of. I fast forward through half of if, and then my addiction takes hold to make me rewind and watch anyway. It’s practically emotionally damaging. “American Idol” is like an abusive boyfriend to me. I get completely irate whenever they have “themed” weeks geared towards my favorite artists – I have mentally wept all through every Beatles, Rolling Stones, Johnny Cash or Frank Sinatra episode. It’s one thing to do a bad karaoke version of a great song, but these assholes pump out caterwauling death rattles where a once great song stood.

Every now and then, very very rarely, Idol takes pity on me and graces me with a great performance that I can use to rationalize 6 more years of obsessive watching. Adam Lambert’s version of “Mad World,” David Cook’s “Hello” – things like that. Singular events of vocal mastery that are so few and far between they should be viewed as total anomalies. The best I can hope for is a totally desperate train wreck who takes the Baton of Crazy from seasons past and just freaking sprints with it week to week to keep my interest. For example, this season’s Jacob Lusk or Casey Abrams. Naima has displayed impressively monumental crazy every week, but it’s the jerky kind, not the fun kind. The annoying, how-dare-you-who-do-you-think-you-are-trying-this-junk type. Jacob, on the other hand, is fantastic. His desperation shines through every week. He always looks to be on the verge of the most intense crying jag known to man, and I can’t tell if he wants to be Luther Vandross or Whitney Houston more. Although, he didn’t have the decency to wail through “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” on last night’s Elton John episode, which would have been so up his sad little theatrical background, and so, so dramatic. With Casey, my little Yukon Cornelius look alike, I vacillate between being completely enamored with his weird, quirky behavior, and being completely terrified by him.

The show is even worse this season. They’ve taken Simon Cowell away, the only real voice of reason. The only one I could count on to call a fool out on his vocal fuckery week to week. God, I so wish I could hear his comments on some of these contestants this year. I close my eyes and I can just hear his thundering condemnation of Naima’s dancing and fake reggae accent, and Scotty McCreery’s utter inability to stand up straight, hold a microphone like a normal human being, and stop making weird sex faces that are totally inappropriate for a 17 year old on TV. I need somebody to make Haley stop with her stupid angry chihuahua growls. The only ones I truly enjoy from a talent and performance based standard are Paul McDonald (and that’s largely due to the fact that he looks like Charlie Day from “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”) and James Durbin. But even they make it difficult on me. If Old McDonald wears that damn bedazzled white jacket again I’m voting him off the island, and Durbin just makes me nervous. I would like Pia, she’s a wonderful singer, but she has to be one of the most sinfully boring people to ever be on TV, second only to James Lipton.

I had so hoped that by making Steven Tyler a judge Idol would at least entertain me more, but alas, no. Every now and then he busts out with some incomprehensible crazypants talk, but mostly he just sits around in his lady blouses trying to be prettier than Jennifer Lopez, and, like me, hating his life for being sucked into this utter, despicable nonsense.

Sarcasmo

I So Win

Of course, I kind of always win. I mean, I’m no Charlie Sheen, but I always win. This particular win, however, is especially impressive.

Not so long ago, I wrote here about how it is impossible to buy my mother gifts that she doesn’t either pick out herself, or just return whenever you look away.

Well insert some clichéd motivational speaker nonsense about achieving the impossible here, because FINALLY, after years of failed and misguided attempts, I’ve DONE IT!   All by myself, I've come up with a Monica-proof present that she didn't know she was getting, and that she won’t (read: can’t) return!

Clearly, I have the powers of some type of witchcraft.

Ok, I had some outside assistance, and my sisters chipped in their part. But I am the mastermind behind it all.  I am the gift-engineering puppetmaster.

Instead of getting her wine, something for the house, wine, something to wear, something for the yard, or more wine, we created an event for her. On May 15th, mom and her BFF Debbie will be going to see Mamma Mia! at the Sarofim Hall in Houston. Lunch (and, more importantly, a creamy, cheesy dessert) at the Cheesecake Factory is on us as well, via a gift card. We even included cash to valet park at the Hobby Center, and to tip the valet on the way out. I’m very thorough. So mom gets some grown-up time on a day in the city, complete with dinner and a show.

My mom is an exceptional woman. I would totally suck as a human being without her. My powers of wit and witchcraft derive directly from her years of zooming about on her own broom.  She’s been through things I can’t even imagine, and manages to still be a great mom, and a real blasty blast to boot. I will never be able to show her how much I truly appreciate her and what she does, and will never be able to find a birthday present magnificent enough to show my gratitude. 

The best I can do is give her a day away from her damn kids.

Sarcasmo

Audience Participation

Stand back . . . I’m going to talk law. I need some assistance, and not just from other attorneys, but from any and all readers.

I’m thinking about writing my thesis paper on the after effects of government takings and condemnations. Just to give you some basic info, there are 2 types of government takings – blight removal, and economic redevelopment. In 2005, a case went before the United States Supreme Court over the condemnation of two homes that were in good shape, had been in a family for years, and were not in crime-driven areas. The homes were taken by the government so that an office park could be built as part of a city-wide plan for economic redevelopment. So, there were two legitimate sides to the story – people lost their homes, but there was a genuine probability that the entire city (which was very economically challenged) would benefit.

There was a huge reaction to this case from the public. People were, to put it simply, pissed. 43 out of 50 states following this case either made statutory changes, or went so far as to make amendments to their respective constitutions to protect their own citizens from a similar outcome. Some of them put harsher restrictions on the use of economic redevelopment takings by the state, and some of them got rid of them altogether. Only Florida, of the 43 states who acted after this case, disallowed both economic redevelopment and blight removal condemnations.

After such a movement against economic redevelopment, there has been more of a turn to blight removal. Here is where the crux of my research will be focused. When the government takes personal property, it must pay the owner fair and just compensation. But when you are in an urban slum, and your property is taken – what are you paid? The fair market value of a slum. What can you do with that kind of money? Buy into another slum. My problem is that government takings function with the purpose of cleaning places up, or making general improvements, but at the end of the day, they only serve to further a continuous circle. A statement from a Supreme Court justice in another case is what really set me off down this road – he talked about how the purpose of condemnation was equality, that no citizens deserve to live in those types of conditions, and thus it falls to the state to take them out of that situation. I found it to be fairly naïve – although people were removed from one slum, they weren’t set up in any way to go anywhere else. Furthermore, it struck me that when most states disallowed economic redevelopment takings, yet still allowed blight removal, it was a shocking statement as to how they valued their own citizens. Effectively, I see that as saying the middle class was worth protecting from governmental takings, but the lowest classes were not. Which may not be so much a reflection on the bill writers as the voting turnout, but still, it’s the effect nonetheless. Even more troubling, as time has progressed, we’ve seen a movement away from the traditional definition of blight. More and more we are seeing properties taken by the government that would not have been called a “blight” in the past, but in the absence of an economic redevelopment option, have been shoe-horned in.

So, here is where you come in, dear reader. I’d appreciate some feedback. Just give me some thoughts. If you want more information, let me know. Respond to something, anything. Pass it on to others. It may spur me on in different directions, or give me new things to think about – I do have 30 pages to fill after all! I’m very interested to see if people share my concerns, or what other views may be. Government takings may be a necessary evil in some circumstances, and may serve genuine public benefits that privatized ownership may not – but on the flip side, there are circumstances where the effects may be troublesome.

Thanks for any feedback you can give!

Sarcasmo

Currently Excited About: not about writing a 30 page paper, that's for damn sure.

Ready For Her Closeup - Part 2

As I wrote a few weeks ago (you can read the entry here) my youngest sister, Leslie, recently filmed an episode of the TV show "Majesty Outdoors".  And now, the time has come!  Leslie's episode airs at 12:30 PM this coming Monday, March 14th, on the Versus channel.  You can find it on channel 603 if you have DirecTV, and 151 on DishNetwork.  Cable watchers, you're on your own to find it.

She was featured today in the El Campo Leader News in an article about her experience - for those of you outside of the Leader News' circulation, you can read the article here.

This means you have 4 days to speak to your satellite or cable provider and gain access to the Versus channel if you don't already have it, and to set up DVR services if your work schedule will prohibit you from watching TV in the middle of the day.

Go on.  Do it.  Hurry up.  I'll check the ratings and find out if you didn't.  And you already know I'm armed.

As her sister, I implore you to watch, not only because I'm proud of her and excited for her, but because we'll get to see a giant bird fly at her head and scare the bejeezus out of her.  And that's gotta be good.

Sarcasmo

Currently Excited About:  I haven't really hidden my feelings about this year of school - I think we all know I pretty much hate it.  But I still get spring break.  And all you fools with jobs don't.  So . . . ha!