Don't Get Me Started with Linda Sharp

Let's Celebrate Jennifer!

Happy Birthday To Cheryl!

Stupid Is As Stupid Duhs

I read this piece this morning and it perfectly illustrates so much of what is wrong with the voting populace in this country.

Lewis Black has said that "Our two party system is a bowl of shit looking at itself in the mirror."

I believe at this point that bowl is full of what voter's brains are.

We see it daily - people repeatedly posting total crap on Facebook because they are too lazy to do even the minimum of research.  The last Presidential election cycle saw the willingness of people to mindlessly forward emails not because the content was true, but because the content (read: lies) reinforced their own inner narrative.

People. Are. Lazy.

And politicians bank on that.  They build entire campaigns around it.

I said it then, and as we head into another year long election cycle, I say it again - if you do not do your research, if you are not willing to engage in FACTUAL discourse even if it contradicts your inner narrative, and if you are not willing to hold your candidate accountable for the crap that comes out their pieholes - YOU SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED TO VOTE.

Bottom line - We cannot hold our politicians to any standards if we do not even hold ourselves to the simplest of any.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/09/27/opinion/granderson-broken-government-voters/index.html?hpt=po_bn1

Read and discuss...

Your Warm & Fuzzy For The Day

These adorable panda babies are at the Giant Panda Breeding Centre in Chengdu, China.

While the lives and the longevity of the Giant Panda species are being endangered by loss of habitat, poaching, and breeding difficulties - this morning, they are in danger of only one thing:  Being ooohed and ahhhed to death.  :O)

Time to Celebrate Aiyana!

Grout, Damned Spot!

As in the past, when I stumble upon a product that lives up to its promise, I want to shout it from the DGMS hilltops.

This time it has to do with grout.  If you have tile floors, you have grout in between the tiles.  And unless your grout is black to start with, you struggle with discolored, stained, impossible-to-get-clean-again lines throughout.

We have beige colored tile in several areas, including our kitchen.  And the grout, at one time, was a light offwhite.  Clean, bright, worked well with the tiles.

Fast forward 5 years.  Ugh.  Ughly.

Until today.  Finally fed up with the various methods I had tried to clean it, I Googled again and ran across a product called Grout Shield.

WOW.

I am only about 1/3 of the way through the kitchen, but had to share.  It's simple, fast, and it is not only a colorant - it is also a sealer - meaning it will resist staining in the future.

If you hate your floors the way I have been hating mine, it is worth the $39.95 (They carry a wide variety of colors.)  See for yourself...

Grout Shield

 

It's Jamie's Day!

 

Facehooked

Why are people so ready to believe crap, and so lazy about investigating BEFORE believing crap?

People constantly get taken, hook, line and sinker by things easily disproved with a modicum of curiosity and a few simple mouseclicks

If you are guilty of posting/reposting THIS on Facebook, STOP.

FACEBOOK JUST RELEASED THEIR PRICE GRID FOR MEMBERSHIP. $9.99 PER MONTH FOR GOLD MEMBER SERVICES, $6.99 PER MONTH FOR SILVER MEMBER SERVICES, $3.99 PER MONTH FOR BRONZE MEMBER SERVICES, FREE IF YOU COPY AND PASTE THIS MESSAGE BEFORE MIDNIGHT TONIGHT. WHEN YOU SIGN ON TOMORROW MORNING YOU WILL BE… PROMPTED FOR PAYMENT INFO...IT IS OFFICIAL IT WAS EVEN ON THE NEWS. FACEBOOK WILL START CHARGING DUE TO THE NEW PROFILE CHANGES. IF YOU COPY THIS ON YOUR WALL YOUR ICON WILL TURN BLUE AND FACEBOOK WILL BE FREE FOR YOU. PLEASE PASS THIS MESSAGE ON IF NOT YOUR ACCOUNT WILL BE DELETED IF YOU DO NOT PAY.

 

It is NOT true.  Do yourself and those you immediately piss off by being gullible a favor - investigate something before you just repost it, forward it, BELIEVE IT.

http://www.snopes.com/computer/facebook/fbcharge.asp

Til Death (of Trust) Do Us Part

Cheating.  It's an ugly word with even uglier real world implications behind it.

We learn from a very young age that cheating is wrong.  Math tests, Monopoly, card games, even cutting in line.  If taught properly - with immediate consequences for our less-than-stellar actions - we tend to cheat less and less, and begin to value what we see being chipped away at with each subsequent stab at shortcutting:  our trustworthiness in the eyes of others.

If taught properly, we grow up less likely to cheat on real world things that have serious, long lasting real world implications:  drug tests, our taxes, relationships.

Yet sadly, it's that last one where so many people still choose to roll the dice - gambling that they are James Bond enough to keep their bad behavior off the radar; choosing to play with fire, convinced by their seriously stoked super egos that they will never get burned, much less burn down the people around them; so sure that because it feels good and their partner doesn't know, that no one is getting hurt, that it's OK to continue to indulge.

They are very seldom successful.

Whether an affair takes place in a marriage, or simply in a one-on-one relationship - the same component is the victim: TRUST.

Followed in short order by love.

HuffPo ran an article last week in which the writer expressed almost tacit support for affairs.  Making it out to be a good thing, perhaps the best thing that could happen to a marriage.

The writer is full of shit.

As full of shit as are the cheaters who float blithely along the rivers of deception, or hike the Appalachian Trail.

Cheating is the ultimate violation in a relationship.  It strikes at the fundamental core of what holds two people together - TRUST and LOVE.

Trust that the person you are with will care for your heart above all other considerations, temptations.  And love - that the feelings they have for you are FOR YOU, not something they compartmentalize, rationalize while making out with a third party.

Look, I get that many marriages and relationships succumb to boredom, begin to wither from neglect, stay together merely out of inertia.  

That still doesn't make it right to cheat.

Cheating is the ultimate form of cowardice.  And the rationalizing a cheater does is pathetic - THEY are pathetic.  If no one is getting hurt then why are you sneaking around?  If it's a good thing, then why must it be conducted under cover of darkness, on prepaid cell phones, out of sight of your spouse, significant other?  

If it's ok, then it should be something you talk about over dinner.  "Boy, Jeannie, you should see the ass on the lady I'm banging these days.  Whoa."  "That's wonderful, Howard, you should invite her over for tea."

But it's NOT ok, which is why cheaters go out of their way to manipulate, deceive, LIE, cover, and spin.  They know there is a severe consequence for their actions, yet most will choose the action over the abstract threat of the consequence.

And then when they get caught - they are SHOCKED!  Shocked, I tell you!  Oh, and then they are sorry, so, so, so very sorry.

Yeah.  SORRY.  THEY.  GOT.  CAUGHT.

Because had they not been caught, they would still be banging that fine lady's ass, or rolling in the deep with Howard.

I love the ones who immediately begin to throw up every reason in the book to somehow justify their behavior.  Like something will make it less bad that they are a selfish, spineless, self absorbed prick. (Or prickess, for you ladies who cheat.)  The bottom line is simple:  You cheat because you want to cheat, because you'd rather indulge yourself than protect someone else.  You cheat to stroke your ego, caring not that you are killing someone's heart.  It's no more glamorous than that - you cheat because YOU WANT TO CHEAT.

And if you are among the "monogamy is not natural" crowd?  Fine.  Good for you!  I couldn't care less how many bodies you bang.  Just don't drag someone else through your charade of prince or princess for a day, have a big party wedding, then commit the first crime of opportunity who struts by.

Fidelity is not hard.  If your committment means anything to you, it is not even a consideration, much less some trap you feel caught in.  Fidelity is a promise - it's what you stand at an alter and give to your soon to be Mr. or Mrs.  It's the "contract" drawn up between two people who have been dating, but decide to stop dating around.

It's the offer of safe haven to another's heart, and the acceptance of that heart into your own.

Now, if your marriage or relationship has soured, hit the skids, devolved?  Does that make it OK to stray?

In a word:  NO.

In many words:  Of course it doesn't make it OK for you to go out and find someone who will buy your "My husband/wife just doesn't understand me." bullshit.

If it is that bad - look that person in the eye, open your mouth, and either commit to working on the problem, or say you want out.

Yes, that involves stoning up, doing the hard thing (that affair is the pathetically easy thing), and actively hurting the other person - but it also strips away the cowardice, and in the end, the person who is left will respect you for the honesty.

But again, people who cheat are far from honest individuals.  They are cowards, they are juvenile, they are self indulgent prima donnas, and they are THOUGHTLESS.

They casually discard the person they made their promise to, caring not about the pain sure to come, the destruction of the life they have built together.  No, they'd rather indulge in the feel-good moment, the covert ops, the excitement of sneaking around and then coming home and looking that person in the eye, LYING TO THEIR FACE, and getting away with it.

It's all very exciting.  Until they get caught and their house of cards comes tumbling down around them.  

Do you stay with a person who has cheated on you?  As far as I am concerned, no.  That is my choice, one I have employed in my own past life.  It has to do with TRUST.  And once that is broken, casually dismissed, neglected and marginalized by another person, they don't get a second chance.  Because when someone cheats, they have shown their character cards to me.  And the message is clear:  THEY. HAVE. NONE.

An affair could be the best thing to happen to a marriage.

I think not.  In fact, that writer needs to look around.  With a divorce rate over 50%?  I'd hardly call an affair a shot in the arm.

It's more of a bazooka straight into the heart.

It's Michelle's Day!