Tenth Musee

There are the people with a lot of rules and strict do’s and don’ts about Twitter.  Then there are the people with a personal set of guidelines. I’m not really one for telling you how to do something — I believe people should use social networking in a way that’s meaningful to them and we should go with the flow, however it evolves.  But I do have some personal guidelines for my own optimum Twitter experience, to use it in way that’s meaningful to me.

Leah recently wrote a great list of “22 Reasons I’m Not Following You on Twitter” and most of her list I agree with (especially #1 and #18), but since I recently unfollowed a slew of people in a huff, the need to expound on and/or add a few guidelines of my own. read more >

Marie over at Agent Lover had an interesting experience where a site complimented her by featuring her in a Fat Love fashion post.  I have never thought of Marie as fat and while she’s not a size 4, by her own admission, she doesn’t feel the need to declare “I’m a BBW!” from a rooftop either.   I’ve always thought she was unique and a little crazy and really daring when it came to fashion.  And I never once noticed her weight.  She’s just… Marie, hot stuff n’ all.   To quote her:

I don’t need to wear a sign around my neck and label myself as plus-size just so OTHER people are aware that I’m proud of my body. I just work my shit. And would continue to do so if I became a size 4. Ya dig?

I appreciate that. She’s just being who she is, working her swagger.  The original post, while intending to be complimentary, just missed the mark by assuming that every confident person who isn’t thin is totally cool with being the Grand Marshall of the Fat Pride Parade.

The author of the Fat Love Friday post responded immediately, according to Marie’s post comments, and offered to remove the offending post, explaining that fat doesn’t have to be seen as a negative word (”My view is that the word “fat” doesn’t always have to be used negatively. And I certainly didn’t use it that way in the post.”).  I’m in no way “villianizing” the author, she’s entitled to her point of view and I understand where she’s coming from — but I see why Marie doesn’t want it taken down. It’s because she’s making a point and removing the post would defeat that purpose.  To quote her again…

Try to change the meaning of the word all you want. Fat is fat. No woman, no girl, no matter what age is going to want to be called that.

And the Fat Love author responded with something that struck a nerve. I started to comment in Marie’s comments, but I was rambling and starting to veer off-topic, so I thought it best to give a little back-story, then vent my opinion here. The post author responded to Marie’s comment with this:

In regards to fat not being positive, I don’t think that’s necessarily true…There is an entire pro-fat movement dedicated to changing this.

I totally disagree with most “pro-fat movements” and “fat acceptance” declarations.  I understand trying to ‘reclaim’ the word, but frankly… why does anyone want it?

I don’t agree with fat-ism or discrimination against the overweight in any way.  No, indeed — that’s just rude, outright mean and something I’ve experienced myself.   But I feel the same about people reclaiming the word “fat” as I do about women reclaiming “bitch”. RECLAIMING IT DOESN’T MAKE IT UNTRUE.

Reclaiming “bitch” and putting a stamp of “empowered woman” on it doesn’t mean you’re not a bitch.  In fact, it probably increases the likelihood of it being true, in my experience.   And walking around declaring myself fat doesn’t make it any less true.  It doesn’t mean someone isn’t beautiful, but the terms “fat acceptance” and “pro-fat movements” give the impression that speaking out against discrimination of the overweight (which is generally the schtick of the pro-fat movement) is the same as saying “It’s OK to be 300 lbs.” Guess what?  It’s not OK with your liver. Or your heart. Or your kidneys. Or your back, knees or doctor.

While running PutDowntheDonut.com (and I won’t give you the song and dance about how it’s coming back — it is — when I have a minute), I was bombarded with “fat power” and “fat acceptance” and “pro-fat” protesters saying that because my site was about being real about losing weight, being candid and honest, we were anti-fat.  Uh, yeah, it’s a weight loss site — so that’s kind of the whole idea. We got a lot of “I’m 275 lbs. and I look HOT! Who the hell do you think you are?” or “I’m a size 26 and I work my ass, girl! Who the hell do you think you are?” or “I’m 310 lbs and my doctor said I was perfectly healthy at my last physical! Who the hell do you think you are?”

I think I’m someone who doesn’t really care how hot you are or how fat you are. It’s none of my business. I like a curvier woman — this is not news. I think women with more meat on their bones are sexy and I wish I was born in another era when a size 12 or 14 was considered the epitome of beauty. But I’m not and that’s the breaks, kid.  I don’t care what size you are or how confident you are — but don’t try to convince me it’s healthy to be fat.

The Donut wasn’t anti-fat people, just anti-FAT. There’s a difference.  And we weren’t anti-your fat. That’s on you… but if I want to be anti-my fat, well, that’s my own damn business.  I don’t have to accept my own fat if I don’t want to.  Improving on myself is ultimately a testament to how much I love myself, isn’t it?  I don’t care what doctor is blowing sunshine up your ass, being “fat” isn’t healthy, no matter how empowered you feel about the label.

And while I realized that Marie’s post wasn’t talking about health, but about fashion, my perception of fat acceptance is the same:  if I say I’m fat and wear the title with pride, it makes it ok that I’m deluding myself.  I’d rather not label myself something just to make others feel more comfortable about their own issues.

I know I’m overweight. I know I need to lose some weight to be healthier. But am I fabulous? You’re damn right I am. And I don’t have to subscribe to fat-acceptance or any other label to embrace that about myself, nor does anyone else.

I may have opened a can of worms, I may have just prattled incoherently, but… I needed to get that off my chest.

So I was just climbing the stairs to my apartment and while on the second landing, I heard a bunch of people coming down from the third floor, where I was heading. I paused politely to wait for them to come down so there wouldn’t be a traffic jam.

I hear them talking and one of the women says REALLY snidely, “Oh my GOD, someone keeps their water bottles on their front porch? How TACKY!”, then they all start filing down the stairs. When they see me, they all say excuse me cordially and one woman was extra sweet — Texas style. Meaning, covered in bullshit, bless her heart.

I smiled back and said jovially, “Oh, it’s no problem. I’m just the woman with the tacky water bottles on her porch.”

They looked uncomfortable and kept walking. But at the bottom of the stairs, I heard one of the women exclaim, “I am SO embarrassed.”

Good, lady. If you’re going to talk shit, keep your voice down or be prepared to be called on it. They’re 5 gallon bottles of delivered spring water, where do you suggest I keep them? Those capris you’re sporting are tacky, but you don’t hear me complaining.

I feel a little bad for firing back and embarrassing her in front of her friends — I could have let it go. But… I didn’t.

No high road for me today I guess. Given the expression on their faces, the low road is more scenic.

I figured I’d blog today… you know, to give a update to the patient people who still keep up with this blog or who don’t follow me tweets.  Matey.  That should have said “my tweets”, but we have this thing where if we typo “me (something)” we follow it with “matey”, no matter what.  So I did and… well, now you know.

For those who don’t know, I’m moving out of my apartment in a week and a half.  I am really going to miss Casa Cocktail and all the good things about it, but lately the crap has started to outweigh the good things.  To start, Slick (a.k.a. Guitar Hero) picked up the electric guitar and bass as a hobby, which he played  every day at 4pm for 2-3 hours.  Is it not bad enough that his girlfriend made sex sounds like a caffeinated baboon, he had to fancy himself The Edge at least 5 days a week?  But… a blessing!  He moved out in April and took Ape Escape with him.

But then, GFI moved out.  I don’t know who the hell she thinks she is just moving out and having a life and stuff. I mean, god, lady. Don’t you know everything revolves around my happiness?  Obviously I’m kidding, but I miss her as a neighbor.  She never made a peep, we were BNF: Best Neighbors Forever.  I could text if she needed help when I heard she might’ve dropped something, she could text me to ask if I had margarita mix, we could sit on the patio and gossip about the neighborhood and I never, ever had to hear her pee. read more >

I admit, I don’t entirely ‘get’ Facebook. I don’t understand all the fans and groups and pokings and need for 4200 applications that send me a fake cupcake.  I just don’t have that kind of time.  I login, I look at what other people say, occasionally bust some Scramble, but most of the time don’t have time to respond to every poke, every request to join such n’ such group and to be quite honest… I don’t much care to.  I try sometimes, but it just doesn’t really ‘take’. But that doesn’t mean that someone else can’t enjoy it.  It’s just not my cup of tea.  Why do I even bother having Facebook, you might ask?  Because I realize that’s where things are right now on these fine Internets.  People use Facebook. We had a book coming out and our publishers recommended a Facebook presence so, I finally caved and set one up. Whether or not I choose to “make the most of it” is my prerogative.

Similarly, Twitter.  At first (and sometimes still) I didn’t ‘get it’.  As an old school blogger, I found the idea of microblogging kind of weird.  I didn’t want to know what everyone was doing right that minute.  But then I gave it a chance and actually quite enjoy it… because I use it the way I want to use it and not how Mr. Know-It-All Blogger says I should.  Sure, it’s almost killed my desire to blog in a sense because I can spit out whatever I’m thinking right when I’m thinking it rather than try to craft a blog post around one clever thought and, like anything else, Twitter and it’s users do things that bug me, but I take it with a grain of salt. Nothing is perfect and I have to assume that somewhere someone finds my tweet-style excrutiating.  Different strokes.

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I feel like there’s almost no point to television sometimes.   I’ve known TV was crap for a long time, so it’s no big surprise.  In a 2-hour episode of The Biggest Loser, I watch probably grand total of 45 minutes — the rest I just fast-forward through.  In an hour show, I get maybe 35 minutes of true footage.

I’m so sick of all the previews.  Commercials show the whole damn show, practically. The preview they show before the show starts (for FIVE MINUTES) reveals everything we’re about to see. The preview before each commercial break shows us 30 seconds of what we’re about to see when they’re done recapping for another 30 seconds after the commercial.  Then they maybe show me 3 seconds of real show they already showed me in the preview and then preview what’s about to happen next. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Now it’s happening in the ‘info’ on cable, too. I was sorting out my shows and was checking to see if something was a repeat. I hit ‘info’ on a particular episode and it told me the entire episode in detail, down to the ’shocking surprise’. Thanks, now I don’t have to watch the show.  Assholes.

I don’t even bother going to the movies anymore. Why pay $10 for something I can see for free in the commercial?  Then the moment a movie actually hits theaters, the morning that it opens, before anyone has a chance to even see it, they show even more of it in the previews.  You just saved me $10 and my firstborn child for a box of Red Vines.  Thanks, Hollywood!

I tallied up the amount of series I have listed in my ’scheduled series’ profile and it’s something like fifty. Fifty shows.  Granted, not all at once, most shows are cyclical and seasonal and only are about 8-12 episodes. Its not like I watch fifty shows at once. But seriously… fifty shows?  As Oprah would say, what am I hungry for?   Why does anyone have that much scheduled television?  Because there’s no show in my show!  I’m entertainmentally deficient! Showtime and HBO series (and sometimes Bravo) provide actual nutrients, but everything else is just empty calories.  Television is the 64 oz. Big Gulp of media.

And on top of that, now that so many people have DVR, shows automatically run 2-3 minutes beyond their scheduled end-point so that you purposefully lose the end of the show. I think they do it to discourage recording the show since television is losing advertising dollars due to the almighty fast-forward button.  Fortunately, AT&T U-verse has a “record until 5 minutes past” feature, which is handy, but I still think it’s shifty.

Gee, perhaps all this griping will get me to whittle the series list down to a manageable 35 or so.  Probably not.  But it does make me realize I really do have time to go to the gym… *sigh*

File this under “One of those Things That Might Make Me a Jerk”, but it often bugs me when people use alternate words to describe certain colors. It just does. Like saying something is orange when it’s yellow or pink when it’s salmon… though, admittedly, sometimes salmon walks a fine line. Swims a fine line? Whatever. Or gray when it’s blue, etc.

Color-blind?  Ok, I’ll have to suck it up there – my dad was colorblind (or so I suspect of Mr. Olive Pants-Brown Shoes-Purple Shirt) – but only about 5% of men and less than 1 percent of women are likely to be color-blind so when I hear a reference to something as yellow when it’s orange or vice versa, it’s like nails on a chalkboard to me.  Hopefully, this doesn’t incite the wrath of the color-impaired.

I realize it’s the persnickety designer in me, the part that actually cares about the nuances of ecru vs. tan vs. cream vs. eggshell.  And I realize sometimes people can’t help it and color may be considered somewhat subjective, but I certainly am not going to go outside and declare the sky aubergine simply because that’s how I perceive it (that’s ‘eggplant’ or a deep purple/black with what some might call a slightly red undertone, in case you were wondering).  And no, I don’t think the sky is eggplant.

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Last night, my friend mikey came over to watch Project Runway with me and we ran out to grab some takeout before it started. We stopped at Rite Aid to pick up some beverages and Rocky Road before heading back to watch Heidi Klum walk around being gorgeous.

The line at this Rite Aid is always slow and for some reason, people always form one big line instead of lining up at each register (there are eight registers), then the next checker that is available takes the next customer.  Well, last night, there was an Asian dude in front of us holding two bottles of wine, a crotchety guy in a yellow shirt holding a box of Tucks or something, this Isaac Hayes (R.I.P.)-type guy (who we saw tip his hat at someone earlier — I love that), and then 3 registers with customers already being helped.

One cashier finished and called out, “I’ll take the next person!” and Crotchety Yellow Shirt and his hemorrhoid pads tried to dash out behind Isaac Hayes Guy, but Isaac Hayes Guy was no fool and he cut Crotchety off, taking his rightful place at the counter.  Crotchety grumbled and griped, but shuffled back into line, ahead of the Asian Wine Drinker.  While this was going on, a strapping middle-aged, tank-top wearing homosexual (not that his sexuality is relevant, but it paints a picture and I happened to be in the gayborhood) with a cart full of ammonia bottles and paper towels pulls up in line behind us.

Asian Wine Drinker keeps looking around the store, turning around and looking past us, past Ammonia Mo, all over the place. But before I could ponder what he was looking for, Isaac Hayes Guy was finishing his transaction.

This is where I kind of lost my cool.

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When I opened this post and titled it, I thought I wanted to write the whole sordid double-feature story of the Little Router That Couldn’t and The Pokey Little Cell Phone.  But I seriously don’t even want to get into what has been my own personal electronics hell for the last few days, so I’m just going to jump right into the highlight of my hell — Debbie Diapers, some miscreant mom in the parking lot of the Sprint store.

I dragged mikey to the Sprint store yesterday with me in a fit of “I’m Getting a New Phone Before I Throw This Against the Wall” and parked next to us was a fairly nice black town car of some sort.  Mike got out of the driver’s side and as I was about to exit the passenger side, I noticed a woman slowly making her way from the passenger seat of the town car.  She saw me waiting for her, but she took her sweet time.  I realized she had a very wee baby with her, so I took a deep breath and tried to be patient. Finally, she rolls out of the car with her baby and starts to walk away.

Using his Spidey Sense, Mike immediately ran over to the town car, bent over and looked underneath.  The look on his face said it all.  Oh yeah.  Diaper..  Used, stinky, poo-laden, stranger-person’s diaper left in the parking lot.  That has long been a “thing” with me… I hate littering of any sort, I hate it. But leaving a napkin on a table is a far cry from leaving feces under your Lincoln. We have laws against leaving your dog crap on the ground, you’d think that it would be understood that people crap is pretty much a no-go.

It was confirmed that yes, there is, indeed, a diaper under the car and I noticed that as the woman was walking away, she glanced back at us a few times. I was certain she knew we were talking about her.  Perhaps it was my, “She did WHAT!?” that tipped her off.

So, anyway, maybe it was my already foul mood, but I’d had enough.  I figured, “Who cares? I’m never going to see this woman again. What’s she going to do?  Shank me?” While she was still a good few hundred feet ahead of us, she entered the Sprint store. How convenient!  With purpose I marched right through the doors, right past the front desk helper girl (mike stopped to give her the dish) and straight up to Debbie Diapers, who was standing with her assumed husband at the counter.  In a voice loud enough for people nearby to hear, but not loud enough that I looked like a crazy person, it went a little like this:

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I was absolutely appalled this morning to see not one, but two women open up her car door in traffic and spit.  I kid  you not!  Spit. I couldn’t believe it.  And they were within 10 minutes of each other, too.  When I saw the first woman do it, I thought to myself, “Ew.  That’s…vile.”, but chalked it up to it being a hoochie with 2 inch roots in a Tempo and went about my day.

The second woman really sent me over the edge.  A well-dressed, extremely put-together woman in her late 20’s, maybe early 30’s in a Lexus, while sitting at a traffic light, just flung open her door and hocked one right on the concrete.  It wasn’t even discreet or ladylike in any fashion.  I thought maybe she’d found something floating in her coffee or something, but even then, crack the door, be discreet, or hell! Spit it back in the cup and get a fresh one when you get to work.  Don’t make me have to watch it!  It made me thankful my mom instilled manners in me at an early age.  Gah.

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