You Have The Right To Free Speech, Not The Right To Be Beligerant!

I'm a huge news junkie. Every day I watch CNN, I read the newspaper with my morning cup of coffee and cigarette, I watch the local news (when I'm able to) - Hell, I'm a fifty-year-old trapped in a nineteen-year-old's body. Every day as of late, I turn it on to see even MORE people practically rioting at town hall meetings over health care reform all across the nation. I have just one question for these people:

WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?

You claim to be good people, good Christian people with good morals, yet somehow verbally attacking a congressman/congresswoman whom you don't even know personally fits smoothly in between those morals? I think somebody needs a reality check! Standing up to voice your opinion in a respectful manner is perfectly OK. After all, that's what free speech and the right to peacefully protest are all about. How in the Hell can they sit there and feel good about themselves grabbing the mic and screaming to someone who works for the government, and then THEY get angry when the other party fires back? Either way, I'd say most of the people who SAY they've read the bill really haven't, thus making themselves look even more stupid. If you'd shut the Hell up, NOT believe all the right-wing lies about health care reform and just read it for yourself, and THEN stand up and respectfully state your opinion, you'd probably get a better response, now wouldn't you? I bet you're proud of yourself that everyone got to see your screaming fit on national television.

Just something for you all to think about.

Bitch Be Crazy (And Other Things)

I was browsing a forum earlier, when another member (and a friend of mine) brought it to our attention that Rihanna is apparently taking Chris Brown back. Bitch be crazy.

Now I'm not much for keeping up with celebrities and such. I figure, hey, I've got enough drama in my own life - I'm not going to waste my money on rag magazines that will only expose me to more drama. But I digress. This story just infuriates me though because people have kept making up excuses for Chris Brown about how he "learned" to be abusive from his father. Yes, it's sad that he grew up watching his father beat the shit out of his mother. BUT HE'S NINETEEN YEARS OLD. He's not a little boy anymore, he should know right from wrong, he has the ability to make conscious decisions, and he made one by choosing to beat Rihanna. I don't care if I don't really like her music, no one deserves that.

I do understand anger management issues though, as I can honestly say I have a few of those myself. I've never beaten someone to a pulp though, let alone beaten them so badly that they had to be admitted to the hospital. And I certainly could never find it in me to beat someone that I "love." (Admittedly, I am female so probably wouldn't stand much of a chance trying to beat up a male, but in that last sentence, I am speaking generally - family, friends, a lover, etc.)

What I can't understand is why she's going back to him. OK, maybe she does love him, and that's cool. But if he did it once, what's to say he might not do it again? It's cliche but it's true - they say they won't do it again, and yet they do.

Chris Brown says he's sorry. Is he really sorry, or just sorry that he got caught?

Huge difference people.

Newsflash: Cheeleaders Do Enjoy Giving Everyone Who Will Look A Peek At Their Cookie

A while back, I had a conversation with a friend, whom I will call Friend A. I am a well-known football aficionado in my group of friends. While discussing this, Friend A, a very witty person indeed, posed a question to me.

"It's cool and all, but I wonder, why would guys want to play a sport where they wear tight pants, get all sweaty, and touch each other?"

Having found this hilarious, I decided that this was a good question to pose to another friend, whom I will call Friend B. Friend B, now a recent college grad and also a very witty person who has an answer to everything, played football in high school, and since high school football was the subject at hand when Friend A stated her thoughts, he would be the perfect person to ask, yes?

Our conversation went something like this....

Me: I have a question. And I do have a good reason for asking this.
Him: OK.
Me: Why did you play football in high school?
Him: It was fun.
Me: Oh, OK.
Him: Why?
Me: Because someone and I were talking about football the other night, and she said, "Why would guys want to play a sport where they wear tight pants, get all sweaty, and touch each other?"
Him: The same reason that cheerleaders wear short skirts and yell "Go team!" while showing their crotches to everyone.

'Nuff said.

Breastfeeding a six-year-old? (And breastfeeding in general....)

How about a nine-year-old?

I just saw the most interesting story on 20/20. (I'm a news junkie, OK?)

They spoke to three women who were still breastfeeding their children well past the normal age that most children ween off of the practice.

OK, I say, hey, that's their choice. One woman said it was her way of comforting her child. Another said it was just they way they did things in their family - and who am I to judge how these people are raising their children? My only problem with this would be, personally, that I wouldn't be able to bring myself to breastfeed a child once they got teeth. Can we say OUCH?!?!

But this got me to thinking about public breastfeeding. You know, most people think it's pretty gross. Most people want women to cover up - and I can understand why they'd want that. But, then again, our boobs are used to sell everything from beer to automobiles. This wasn't their intention - the actual use of our boobs are to provide nourishment for infants. On a sidenote, if it weren't for the man who started the Nestle company, we might ALL still breastfeed our kids, both publicly and privately. (I'll post the story behind that at the bottom of this post.) Is it so wrong for a woman to feed her child in public? The kid's hungry, feed it. No one objects when a woman breaks out a bottle to feed her kid on the bus or in the park, so why pitch a fit if she breaks out a boob to do it? After all, that's what it's actually there for.

(The Nestle Story:

The Nestle company began when the man who started it, Henri Nestle, invented infant formula as a way to feed infants who, for one reason or another, could not nurse. I'm not saying this is a bad thing - I mean, what would you rather have, a child who's eating formula or a child who's going to starve to death? Personally, I'd rather have the former. But, it begs the question, if he hadn't invented formula, would we still be breastfeeding 100% of the time?)

Some Advice For Plaxico....

If you're illegally packing heat, at least turn the safety switch on.

(At least you're not a Steeler anymore.)

I swear, if Lauren Conrad said breathing isn't cool....

Half of the girls I can think of would be dead.

My question is, can you not think for yourself? Sure, I'm not the most glamorous person in the world. In fact, most of the time I look like a college student who woke up too late for their first class, decided to sleep through their second class, and arrived at their last class of the day a half hour late. Yes, you've guessed correctly - jeans, a hoodie, and hair that's just sort of thrown up into a pony tail. I do not go to extreme lengths to make myself look oh-so-freaking-irresistable. But hey, at least someone can spot me in a crowd, right? (Mostly from my hoodie, I'm the only one around here with one like it, but that's another story.)

I'm not saying it's a crime to wear your huge sunglasses and your Uggs (which I think stand for fUGGly) and your jeans tucked down into said boots. I'm just saying it's a crime for me to not be able to spot you. "Oh, she's the girl in the Uggs." Yeah, that makes it easy to spot you. "Well she was wearing those really big Nicole Richie sunglasses, too." Thanks for narrowing it down.

I've honestly never felt much of a compulsion to look exactly like someone else. That's not to say I'm completely comfortable in my own skin - I'm not - but at least I can truthfully say that I don't try to look like I could be an extra on "The Hills" while I live in WEST VIRGINIA.

Here's a piece of advice, ahnkay?

1) Let your hair go natural. Blonde ain't for everyone, dear. Not to mention that your roots and your eyebrows are completely tattling on you.

2) Put the Uggs away. For one, they're not THAT in style anymore, and two, if it's July - well, that's just stupid. Oh, and you can't sit there and say you love all the little animals when you're using THEIR fur to line YOUR feet.

3) Chuck Yeager called - he wants his glasses back.

4) Jeans tucked down into your shoes are slowly becoming the equivalent of having toilet paper stuck to your shoe.

5) Lay off the tanning. This gets me the most, actually - do you not actually know that while you may look good and healthy today, your skin will look like some exotic animal's hide in about ten years? Or do you just not give a shit? My guess is the latter.

I'm done!

The Fatal Flaw In School PE Programs

Running.

Don't get me wrong, I love running. When I'm feeling stressed, frustrated, agitated, or downright pissed off, I can pound those feelings out on the concrete and asphalt of Philippi. I do it just to do it - and it helps make you fitter too, which is a big plus.

However, have you ever noticed something? Most runners either run for speed, a la sprinters, or they run for endurance, a la marathon runners. It's either endurance or speed, and while they play a factor with each other, you really can't combine the two rationally.

Thus comes the fatal flaw of the school PE program. They train us to think that if we can't run a mile in just a few minutes, that we're no good as runners period.

But what if we aim for endurance, not for speed? Then what? OK, so it may take me seven minutes to do a mile, whereas it takes the star athlete only three or four, but he's in it for speed. I don't care how fast I'm going, I just want to remain at a running pace for so long. Most runners don't actually RUN either, minus the sprinters. They more or less jog.

It wasn't until I was in high school that I had a PE teacher who said, "It's OK to just jog, to just pace yourself, you don't have to be the fastest, just make sure you don't stop running."

In middle school I had a PE teacher who told us to just push through any pain, which leads me to wonder if this woman even knew what she was talking about when it came to running. If you're in pain, you're supposed to STOP! Isn't that your body, yelling at you, telling you to stop, that you're hurting it? Why would you tell a kid to just run through pain, which could result in a really messy injury - not to mention if it happened during PE class, the school could be held responsible?

That's why I never gave running a thought until I was in high school. I thought that I had to run as fast and as hard as I could, or it wasn't running at all. When I learned that true runners pace themselves, that made it so much easier for me to get out there and run. Actually, if you want the truth, I thought it was kind of funny to see all these kids showing off how fast they could run their mile, as beginner runners, only to end up running out of steam halfway through because they never paced themselves and I (along with my little group of friends who also realized that pacing was good) just kept on going. Maybe that's mean but it's true - by far not their fault though. They probably had douchebag middle school PE teachers too.