Why should I pay for your “Fat Pride?”

There was an article from the Times this morning about the growing activity of “fat pride” advocates in regards to the health bill which just passed the House.  Apparently, these extremely overweight people were offended at the suggestion that there should be certain limitations and penalties imposed on those Americans who are very overweight for a reason other than genetics.  They don’t like it being implied that they should lose weight because, for some strange reason, they actually like being fat.  Or, so they say.

 

I honestly don’t understand their argument.  Why should I have to pay for their future diabetes or heart attacks simply because they couldn’t lay off the McDonalds?  If your weight is the cause of genetics, that’s not your fault, so go ahead and put it on the communal tab.  But why should I pay for someone else’s lack of willpower or intelligence?  It’s not that I’m biased specifically against fat people.  I think limitations should be imposed on all of those people who willfully indulge in health-harming behaviors: smokers, alcoholics, and druggies, for example.  Why should I pay for their health care when they’re the ones who put themselves at high risk?

 

Conflicts like this are the reason that I’m not 100% for universal health coverage.  I know I’m biased because I’ve always been lucky enough to have it, and would want it if I didn’t, but I as a Capitalist and business student, I can’t help but think about the money side.  My friends in Austria give 35% of their income for their “social safety net.”  I’m not willing to part with that kind of money if it’s going to be paying the bills of people who put themselves into the hospital.

 

I have to admit, I’m also extremely bothered by the idea that certain groups have began to accept obesity as being okay.  Obesity is not okay!  It shortens your lifespan and–as previously mentioned–increases your risk of several medical problems.  Raising kids to think that it’s perfectly fine for one person to weigh as much as three or four normal people do, instead of teaching them to eat healthy and exercise, just makes the problem worse.  And that’s without even going into the aesthetics of the situation…

Oh you silly Christians…

So I saw a sign in the subway that just made me lol. It was from an organization called “Bible Crusade” and it said that “Satan deceives us into thinking our good deeds will get us somewhere with god. In reality, our good deeds are no good. The only way to win favor with god is to put you trust completely into Jesus Christ.”

So, their philosophy seems to be that it’s worthless to do good deeds because they don’t get you anything. In fact, good deeds are actually the work of the devil….. Sounds to me like they’re just lazy, selfish people looking for an excuse to justify their behavior.

Drama-rama

I used to pride myself on keeping the amount of drama in my life down close to zero.  Yet, since I came to NYC, that number seems to be dramatically rising.  I think the reason I was able to cut almost all drama out of my life before was that I had many friends, and even more acquaintances, so when one of them got a little too dramatic for my tastes, I could simply ease them out of my life and still have many other people to turn to.  I’m not talking about small bouts of drama–we all have those–I’m talking about prolonged drama, often instigated by the person in question because, as much as they say they hate drama, they really can’t live without it.

The problem with NYC is that my group of friends/acquaintances is not nearly as large as it was in IL.  After all, I’ve only been here a little over a year, I lived in E’ville for 10.  Plus, it’s so much easier to make friends in high school, because we’re all stuck in the same building for 8 hours a day, and many of us had multiple classes together each year.  At my commuter business college, however, we all basically go there specifically to go to whatever class we have.  We don’t go to socialize, we don’t hang out before or after, we just go to class and leave.  There aren’t any dorms to make up for this lack of socializing, and many of us work nearly full-time, so instead of making dozens of new acquaintances every year, it’s limited to one or two or three people who move past the obligatory “what’s up?”

The consequence of this smaller group of friends/acquaintances is that I’m reluctant to cut anyone out.  While I’m definitely more of a loner than a socialite, we all need to hang out with other people now and then, and I really don’t feel like being all but isolated.  I’m not that much of a misanthrop

There are a few people I’m genuinely friends with up here and wouldn’t consider letting us drift apart, even if I knew every person in NYC.  However, there are also people I’m friends with who always seem to be caught up in some drama or another.

Now, let me make something clear before I continue.  In my mind, there are two types of drama.  The first is amusing drama.  The person involved doesn’t really take it that seriously, and it’s more of an interesting/funny story than anything else.  The second is annoying drama.  This is the one I absolutely loathe. This is the one where the person involved either creates the drama, or makes it worse, then complains about their life to anyone and everyone who will listen, always painting themselves as the victim, of course.  They’re looking for sympathy and agreement, and feel that if you’re not 100% with them, you’re against them.

I’ll be the first to admit that I bitch a lot on this blog.  That’s because no one is being forced to listen.  They can read it or not read it at their discretion.  I try to only bitch/rant about certain topics to certain people who I know can genuinely sympathize or who will be amused.   It’s very rare that I bitch just to bitch, because I know how annoying it is to be on the receiving end of that.

My view on life is that it’s too short to spend it hating the world or hating yourself or both, so whatever your damage is, you should really just get over it because, to be bluntly honest, when all you do is bitch and complain, you become the person that no one wants to be around and who everyone else bitches about.

Flakes

As I’m sure this blog has made clear, there are several types of people I can’t stand.  I suppose I just have a narrow scope of people I can deal with, and tend to hate the rest.  One group that I hate and like to drop from my circle of friends/acquaintances, are the flakes.   These are the people who pretend to want to make plans with you and hang out with you, but when it comes to finalizing plans, they suddenly have “a lot of school work” or their “parents won’t let them” or “they’re just oh so busy, but another time.”  The worst is when they actually do make plans, then back out at the last minute.  When I don’t actually want to hang out with you, I’ll let you know in a nice way.  If you ask me to go to a party or movie, I’ll simply say that I can’t.  I won’t hem and haw and lead you on, then screw you over right at the end.

I’ve encountered this many times throughout my life, and it’s so fucking annoying!  Like the friend who was really excited to go to a game, and told you to send them the dates you were available so that you guys could pick one ASAP, and as soon as you do, they don’t know if they can afford it or if their schedule will work, blah, blah, blah.  Or, even better, the person who makes plans to hang out, then doesn’t show up and leaves you waiting there for an hour, and since they don’t answer their phone, you don’t know if they’re blowing you off, dead, or just 5 minutes away.

It’s not that my feelings are hurt that some people don’t really want to hang out with me, or anything like that.  There are plenty of people I’d rather not hang out with, especially just the two of us.  But it’s the fact that they don’t have the spine to tell me that they can’t or think it’s fun to play games that really pisses me off.  Grow some f-ing balls, people. Seriously.

How did this happen?

I’m sure everyone has heard about the shooting at Fort Hood in Texas yesterday afternoon.  If not, here’s a brief summary: a military psychologist named Nidal Malik Hasan who had been “mortified” about being deployed, who had been taking every step to try to prevent it, and who had been trying for years to get out of his military contract because he said he was harassed for being Muslim after 9/11, took two handguns, entered the Soldier Readiness Center (where soldiers get last minute checkups before being deployed overseas), shouted “Allahu Akbar(god is great),” and killed 13 people, wounding 30 in the process.  He was shot 4 times, but is still alive.  For the moment.

What makes this even worse (and it’s hard to think of something worse than American soldiers getting gunned down in an army base on American soil by “one of their own”) is that Fort Hood not only houses 50,000 soldiers, but also 150,000 family members, children included.  Luckily no child was killed, but just thinking of how much worse this could have been makes my skin crawl.

What I really want to know is who the hell this guy thought he was.  He joined the military to get his undergrad and medical school paid for, knowing that joining up meant the possibility of deployment, yet when his time came, he took the coward’s way out.  And he took 13 people down with him.  I get that hearing the horrors of war can make you realize that it’s definitely not something you want to witness firsthand, but you signed a contract knowing the risks, so man up and deal with it.  Or go AWOL and end up in prison instead.  Don’t go on a fucking shooting spree to take down those who are braver than yourself.

My father went to Baghdad in 2007.  He served as civilian support to the military, his Navy Reserve contract having been up several years before, and when he came back early with a hurt leg, he also came back with PTSD.  I won’t go into the details, but I read the journal that his psychiatrist made him keep, and I know what happened, and I can only imagine how hard it would be to go over there knowing details like that.  But, my dad is ready to go again and would be there in a heartbeat if he could.  If he–who has a history of depression and who already lived through it once and suffered the mental consequences–can find that bravery, why couldn’t this guy?  He was a psychiatrist, for crying out loud, it’s not like he was going to be out on the front lines.  He would be sitting in a hospital doing almost the same exact work he was doing here.  The only difference is that he’d be halfway across the world.

What really ticks me off is that this might have been stopped. There were internet postings made by someone with the same name as this guy which glorified suicide bombers, comparing a Muslim who kills 100 non-Muslim enemy combatants to a soldier who throws him/herself onto a grenade to protect the people around them.  The military knew about these postings and said that the shooter was “under suspicion,” but no real moves were made.  Perhaps if they had investigated a little bit harder, or been suspicious of his frequent heated arguments with other soldiers about how he didn’t believe in the wars, and hoped President Obama would end them both before he was deployed, perhaps this wouldn’t have happened.

I’m not religious, so I can’t say that I’ll pray for those killed and their families, but my thoughts are with them, and I only hope that the gunman lives so he can receive the punishment he deserves for such a heinous, cold-blooded act.

Utter Stupidity

I read an article from the NYT this morning about a “bomb detection” device used by the Iraqis, which American and Western European military personnel call “virtually useless.”  Yet, the Iraqi army has purchased $85 million worth of these devices over the past two years.

The device, called an ADE 651, is not used by any major developed countries today.  It is not battery powered.  The user must “be rested, with a steady pulse and body temperature,” and has to “walk in place a few moments to “charge” the device.”  They then have to hold it at a right angle, and see if the wand moves.  If it does, they search the car/person for bombs.  If not, they let them pass right on through the checkpoint.  Boy, I bet the Iraqi people would feel really safe if they knew that their army was swearing by bomb detection devices that aren’t even powered by electricity…..

The makers of the wand, ATSC, claim that it can “find guns, ammunition, drugs, truffles, human bodies and even contraband ivory at distances up to a kilometer, underground, through walls, underwater or even from airplanes three miles high.”   Right……if you buy that, then do I have a bridge to sell you…..

And if the extreme claims made by the company aren’t enough to incite suspicion, how about the fact that just last year, “the James Randi Educational Foundation, an organization seeking to debunk claims of the paranormal, publicly offered ATSC $1 million if it could pass a scientific test proving that the device could detect explosives.”  No one from the company took up the offer.

I just can’t understand how the Iraqis can be so f-ing stupid!  The lives of their people and the well-being of their country are at stake, and they put all of their faith into a piece of plastic that can’t pass scientific testing to prove that it works.  Just a couple weeks ago, a truck carrying two tons of explosives passed through at least one of these checkpoints before self-destructing and killing 155 people.  Yet, the Iraqi officials blame the operator of the device, not the device.

I think Colonel Bidlack said it best when he stated that ““It would be laughable, except someone down the street from you is counting on this to keep bombs off the streets.”

Gross!

There’s this girl who I was casual acquaintances with in high school.  She and her twin sister always had problems with their weight, which they said were related to their genetics.  They always complained about how no matter how much healthy food they ate, they couldn’t lose any weight.  After college they kind of exploded–to put it lightly–and used the same excuse of genetics.  Apparently, they forgot that facebook has a tendency to reveal people as the liars they are.

I saw on one of Mamie’s statuses that she needed her friend’s recipe for coke cake so that she “could make a good cake and save on eggs.”  I wasn’t quite sure what a coke cake was–and hoped it wasn’t what it sounded like–but the reality was even more disgusting than I imagined.  Apparently, to make a coke cake, you mix a can of Coke with Betty Crocker cake mix.  Not only does that sound completely disgusting, just think about how much sugar and fat is in that!  Her friend also suggested that “if you want it to be healty, use Diet.”  Yeah, that doesn’t make it healthy! If you think it does, you’re really not too bright.  Geez, and you wonder why you, your sister, your husband, and many of your friends have weight issues!

Torn

For some reason, my plans to leave NY for IL after I graduate have come up multiple times in the past few days, and each time the person is either completely sure that I won’t really leave, or completely sure that I’ll come right back.  I try to brush these comments off, but they just force home the fact that, one the one hand, I don’t actually want to leave.  If I’m honest with myself, I love NYC.  With its museums, landmarks, parks, beautiful architecture, etc, it’s hard not to.  But at the same time, the most important thing in my life–my family–isn’t here.

I hate feeling so torn.  I know I’m going to leave.  That’s all but a guaranteed fact.  Saying it is so easy right after I come back from a visit home, but harder as each week goes on and I become re-accustomed to my routine up here.  I love being able to go to Central Park on the weekends, or down to Battery Park, or Union Square, or a museum, or anywhere else I can think of.  NYC definitely has many more things to do and places to see than IL/STL, and I love it for that.  But every time I go home, it’s literal torture to come back up here.  I live through it once, and re-reading my blog posts makes me relive it again.  It sucks so fucking much. But, I’m a master at adaptation and doing what needs to be done, and I know that I can’t live in a perpetual state of misery, so after a few weeks, I let it go and move on normally.  And gradually I forget how much it hurt, until I go home for the next holiday and live through it all again.

Many people have told me that I’ll regret going back home, but I know I never will.  I’m leaving to be with my family–the most important people to me.  I never really understood the quote “friends come and go, but family is forever,” until I didn’t have my family right there anymore.  I’m sure I’ll miss NYC, which is why I plan to visit at least once or twice a year, but I don’t see myself moving back here at least until all my sibs are in college.  And even then, my mother is my best friend, and leaving her hurts just as much as leaving my three year old sister.  Not to mention leaving the friends I’ve known since grade school.

Who knows?  These people could be right.  I could boomerang back to the City so quickly that it’s like I never left.  I don’t think it’s likely, but two years ago I thought I had left the Midwest for good.  I don’t mind that people say things like that and are so sure of themselves–because it is a possibility–but it sucks that they never seem to understand just how hard of a decision it is.  Most of them have lived in NYC their entire lives (and have their families within a twenty minute subway ride) and therefore have that common NYer mentality that no other place in the world has anything even remotely better than NYC, so they see my decision as no decision at all, while I feel like I’m being torn in half.

Zero Tolerance

I think this semester has really started to get to me. Four days a week I go from class to work then back to class. When I get home, I usually eat dinner and go straight to bed (except for the nights when a Rangers game is on, because who can pass that up? lol). On the weekends I do homework, study, relax, and recharge. The result of this harsh, grinding schedule? My bullshit tolerance has plummeted to zero.

Things that used to merely slightly annoy me now piss me the hell off. This weekend I was ready to flip out on my friend in France because she forgot we had planned to Skype, and I ended up just waiting for her to log on for like an hour. Then my roommate started whistling loudly in the kitchen while the hockey game was on, and I was ready to tear her throat out…..

And it didn’t stop at work either. I was kind of swamped today because I got projects from LJB, SJG, and SER all with the due date of right now. It wasn’t hard work, just tedious, and there were some parts I didn’t understand. When I had a quick question about a DHCR rent roll, I went to ask J (who I seem to be blogging about quite a lot lately….), because I knew she would know and it would take all of five seconds. I stood by her desk and waited for her to finish what she was writing before I said anything, when she stops and looks up with a loud, dramatic, annoyed sigh. I almost flipped out on her. I told her that I would just go ask someone else, but what I really wanted to say was: “look, J, I know you (incorrectly) think that you’re the only person in this office who has work, and that you always get more than anyone else, but seriously, drop the fucking martyr complex. You have a couple intakes to do, a couple LD requests to write, a handful to follow up on, and some misc stuff. It’s really not that fucking much if you would get off g-chat and facebook and do it, or give the calling to someone else, like AC, who probably wouldn’t mind.” What makes this even worse is that she would bitch if she didn’t have any work, so why the hell is she bitching because she does have work? Ugh! I could go on, but I think you get the point, lol.

I feel like I should work on my sudden anger issues, but I just don’t have the energy. The worst part about this is that I can’t even blame it on PMSing, which is like the universal cop-out for women

“Women’s Work”

If there is any two-word phrase in the English language that immediately pisses me off, it’s that.  Men who consider cooking, cleaning, laundry, etc to be “women’s work” and refuse to even learn how to do it because of that are delusional.  I’ll cook, clean, etc because I’m better at it than you are, but the second you tell me it’s my “job,” or “it’s just what women do,” you’d better hope the couch is comfortable, or that your friends are willing to take you in.

I admit, there are some “guy things” that I don’t know about.  I should learn more about cars (ie: how to change a flat tire), but I do know how to mow the grass, fix the computer, fix a leaky faucet, etc.  I didn’t refuse to learn those because they’re “guy jobs,” and I expect the guys in my life to have the same attitude towards “women’s jobs.”

What spurred this rant was when my roommate’s bf came home after a “long day at work” (apparently 6.5 hours is a very long day, who knew….?) and was upset that dinner wasn’t ready.  She started apologizing, saying that she didn’t know he’d be coming over–you know, since he hadn’t told her–and she was too tired to cook, so she had just eaten leftovers.  He kept bitching and moaning about how hungry and tired he was until she was like “fine, let’s go out and get you something.”  My response to the situation would have been completely different.  You can think in your little mind that cooking is my job, but if I’m too tired to cook once in a while, you’d better not fucking bitch about it.  I’m your gf/wife, not your mother.  You are perfectly capable of making a sandwich or going out to get yourself dinner.  Stop acting like a helpless pathetic idiot, for crying out loud.  It’s embarrassing.

Another pitfall to this mentality that some guys have is that some women are just as hopeless at “women’s jobs” as most men are.  My friend EK, bless her little heart, can’t make a piece of toast to save her life.  But that’s okay, because she’s going to be a lawyer and marry rich, so she’ll be able to afford a cook and a maid