The Inmates Run the Asylum

Today was shit. The morning was one aggravation after another and just as things start to smooth out in the afternoon, new shit crops up that will have to be dealt with next week. Awesome.

And then the Cubs got spanked hard by the Dodgers. More awesome.

All of this required peanutbutter eggs. Right Stat Now.

Carrie and I were discussing my day after I got off of work. I'm pretty convinced that there's no way I can last at this job. I'm not nice enough. I'm not talking about being nice to the customers. I'm just talking about nice in general. To me, some of the people I work with (mostly at corporate) are lobotomy, stepford nice. Carrie told me that's actually normal and they're not being weird. I've just been socialized poorly and Walmart sucked out my soul, so it just seems weird to me.

I'm taking her word for it.

Overly nice people cause me concern.

This is stupid.

Basically, Santa Clara County wants to ban toys with fast food kids' meals because they contribute to childhood obesity.

From the article:

"This ordinance does not attack toys. Obviously, toys, in and of themselves, do not make children obese," said county Supervisor Ken Yeager, who pushed for the ban. "But it is unfair to parents and children to use toys to capture the tastes of children when they are young to get them hooked on eating high-sugar, high-fat foods early in life."

Now, I am not a parent, but I was once a child (and in many respects still am) and since my kidhood was sometime ago, I'm guessing the little heathens today are capable of making their own earnings and purchases, because when I was a kid, Mommy and Daddy were the ones buying me my Happy Meals.

I've never been one for tact, so I'm just going to put this one out here for you guys and spell it out plain and simple: Your children are fat because you make them fat.

I'm going to repeat that.

YOUR CHILDREN ARE FAT BECAUSE YOU MAKE THEM FAT.

That's right, parents. I'm calling you out. Because if you're not warping and dysfunctioning their relationship with food by putting them on diets when they're nine and making snippy comments about how they're getting a little belly and making really nasty, scathing remarks about the fat lady getting ice cream at Baskin Robbins, wondering if that second scoop is for her extra chin, which is why YOUR child will never have ice cream because you don't want YOUR kid getting so fat, then you're on the other end of the spectrum, feeding your kids nothing but hot dogs and macaroni and cheese because "that's all they'll eat", fixing them a separate meal because "they won't eat that", and filling them up with fast food because "it's easier than fighting with them".

And unless your precious little angels are in some kind of sport or physical activity like dance, I doubt they're getting much exercise outside of gym class, huh? Because you can't let your kids outside to play because of all the predators in the world and for crying out loud, you're too tired to go out and supervise them and frankly, you just don't have the TIME.

So instead, you plop them down in front of the TV and the computer and the gaming console so they'll be out of your hair and you can do whatever it is that you need or want to do instead, maybe, finding a way to include them in the activity, or, hey, even putting it off so you can go outside and play with your kid.

So, yeah, parents...this one's all on you. Before you go running off to blame the school lunches and the fast food industry, why don't you pay attention to what those little mini-me's you just had to have are putting in their mouths, and how much, and how much they move their growing little bodies.

You set your house right first. Then you can take away their toys.

Well, 2010 has gotten off to a questionable start for me.

While I had a great time ringing in the new year with Carrie in our low key way, I ended up staying up until after 4am because I was sick (and it had nothing to do with booze; we went alcohol-free). I fell asleep to The Three Stooges. I rarely go to sleep with the TV on. Unless, of course, I'm sick.

I woke up around 10:30 feeling fine and spent the rest of the morning and part of the afternoon switching back and forth between Looney Tunes and Barney Miller. I finally got off my ass to run to Walgreens to pick up a few things and only to get to the check out and find out that my credit card doesn't work. I don't know why it doesn't work. I've never had any trouble with it, so I don't know what's going on. With my current state of agitation, it's a mystery best left until Monday.

In the meantime, Dad gave me some cash so I could pick up the few things I needed.

It was on my way out the second time that I realized I'd forgotten to pay a bill (just the subscription to the local newspaper, but it still irks me). So I dropped that in the mail a few days late.

So much for getting a good start to 2010. I'm so cranky right now that I've already declared that I'm not making dinner tonight and I feel so jinxed that I'm surprised I didn't wreck while running errands and the microwave didn't blow up when I used it this afternoon.

If this is going to be how my year is going to roll, I'll pass.

I will tell you this...if I didn't need my computer, it would right now be laying out in the driveway, smashed into several hundred pieces, of which the bigger ones would be collected and taken out to be used for target practice.

Worse yet, I'm right where I was before I started trying to make things work.

Yeah, I could smack a bitch up right about now.

How was your day?