Wednesday, February 11, 2009
The Old Woman Who Lived In a Shoe… 2009 Edition
Now, for those of you that are followers of Random Tandem (what up, L. Woods!), consider yourself warned that the below post is unusually serious for me, C. Please know that I will try to write about important issues like celebrity gossip (can you believe Chris Brown assaulted Rihanna!?!?) and Rock of Love Bus (can you believe Brett had Ashley sleep over in his bus, and that he told those girls they transformed from regular people to skanks stay on tour!? Crazy!), but I’ve been reading a lot about that crazy lady with 14 children, and I thought that the world (aka you) was probably dying for my opinion on the matter. Well, today is your lucky day… Plus, Gossip Girl was a repeat last night.
Have you ever babysat like more than 4 kids? It’s utter chaos. Now add ten more and imagine that you’ve got these kids all hopped up on pixie sticks and soda and you can’t leave them with someone else and go home. Oh, wait, that’s right… I don’t think you can buy Pixie Sticks or Soda on food stamps. So, maybe Ms. Nadya Suleman is in the clear. Because raising 14 children can’t be that hard, right? Especially if you love them… right?
Nadya Suleman keeps saying that she loves children and she loves her children. But, if she really loved her children would she bring them into a world when she could not possible afford to provide them with the kind of life they deserve? They didn’t ask to be born into and live in these kind of conditions: http://www.radaronline.com/photos/2009/02/nadya_suleman_octuplet_mom.php
Please don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying you need to be rich to have children, but you need to be able to provide for them (both financially and emotionally) and she clearly cannot do that on student loans (but, she can afford a publicist?). Nor can one person possibly provide enough attention and support that each child requires, especially in their developmental years. The point I’m trying to make is that if Nadya Suleman really loved her children, she would have put her desire to have children to the wayside for a bit and waited until she was financially stable and secure before bringing any children into this world, let alone 14. Why didn’t she want to save the money used for her most recent in vitro fertilization to provide for her other 6 children? One would think... but this is why Nadya Suleman is not a good mother. She continues to put her needs before those of her children. The fact that Child Services hasn’t taken these children away from her is appalling to me (maybe they’re impacted by the new forced furloughs in Cali?). She cannot provide for them on any level… financially or emotionally. She has a very childish view of love: that if you say it it’s enough… it’s not enough. I’m not saying I have all of the answers about love, I’m young and have a lot of growing and learning left to do, I’m just saying real love is selfless. Real love is when you put your needs on the back burner to make sure that the person/people/children you love are as happy as they possibly can be… now, that being said, does Nadya Suleman really love her children? Or do you think that maybe all of the couples that desperately try to have just one child and can’t, maybe would love her children more? Just some food for thought…
-C
Monday, February 9, 2009
A-Rod PR Genius
A-Rod admitted to Peter Gammons that he did steroids. Well he admitted that he was naive and that he did a lot of shopping at GNC and he really hates Selena Roberts or something like that. Regardless, this is the best move for him. He admits it, says he's sorry, answers a few other questions, and then moves on. I don't know why more players don't do this if you are getting chased by the media, camera-preening politicians, or Selena Roberts. Look at Andy Pettite. I've totally forgotten about the HGH stuff. All I can remember is how he screwed himself out of 5 million dollars this offseason. Look at Jason Giambi. He kind of half apologized for nothing in particular, now the Yankees are just glad to have him off of the payroll. But, then you look at Mark "Drugs are bad, um-K" McGwire, Sammy "No Ingles" Sosa, and Barry "Pedro Gomez has a stool sample of mine" Bonds and people just will not get over it.
This sanctity of the game argument is bogus as well. People don't care if you tried to better yourself illegally, just don't mess up their three team parlay by bribing people or throwing games. All of this "black spot" nonsense is stupid. I'm in the Jason Whitlock camp of sports as entertainment. People who enjoy sports want to see teams competing at their best. If players are juicing themselves up to entertain you, don't you think it's a little ridiculous to get mad about it. Hey, that Selena Roberts really is to blame anyway. There is a least one journalist that is writing an A-Rod article right now and then blowing some lines off of a toilet Jamal Anderson style.
Ultimately, people hate lying. They will hunt you like Ice Tea in Surviving the Game if there is pretty clear evidence you are lying. Their goal is to get you to admit it, after you do, there is nothing left except maybe jail time. Now, A-Rod admitted it, he said he's sorry, there will be a big spike in sanctimonious blowhardness about how he is a cheater, a liar, a robber baron, Justice League supervillian, and then people will get back to bitching about how he collapses in the playoffs. Roid users should follow A-rod's lead. After all, he probably has a better, more expensive PR team than you anyway. C could probably elucidate how good of a PR job that was.
Side note: A-Rod, how often do you go to GNC? Christ, it seemed like he was their supplements buyer. Selena Roberts, you just made A-Rod's list. ("Right, Peter, but Selena Roberts is a psycho muck-raker."). What is with the puckered lips for half of the interview?
-K
Monday, February 2, 2009
Playing Soccer
I was at a work party with C recently and, after standing in the kitchen eating some appetizers, I said this to her: "The hosts seem like nice people, but her kids definitely play soccer." Here's how I knew:
They fit the soccer player parent demographic perfectly. The hosts were a rich white couple (not Cribs rich, but the kind of rich that makes them refer to themselves as upper middle class even though their combined income puts them in the top 5% of taxpayers.) They also had a clean house and not just “cleaned up before guests arrive” clean, like “not lived-in” clean. The combination of these two things, to me, implies that they would never let their little Dylan or Madison play in a contact sport where their feelings, nevermind their bodies, could be hurt. Hence, soccer is the perfect egalitarian everyone just run around and have fun weak ass sport for their spoiled white kids. Now, American soccer is different from European football where there are elite leagues, training, and discipline. American soccer is mainly played by privileged white kids and South American kids who are waaay better. The parents who have kids that play soccer aren’t bad people; they just insulate their kids to a point where they cannot face any hardships on their own. So, being the over-protective hoverers that they are, they would never think to let little Julian play football, where the coach might yell at them and they might get hurt or they wouldn’t get to play as much as a kid who is better than them. These kind of parents ruin everything because they petition the league commissioner any time a coach has a curt word for their kid or any modicum of discipline is applied to their “precious” or there is one little hazing death. Every parent wants to protect their child, but isn’t the greatest accomplishment a parent could have seeing their child succeed in the real world on their own using what they taught little (insert trendy non-Biblical child name)?
As I see it, when you refer to a white kid as someone who “plays soccer”, you are basically saying he is white, sheltered, slightly out-of-touch with anything that goes on with households earning under $250,000. Again, soccer-player parents aren’t bad people, they are caring, involved, and protective, but to a fault. There are worse things to be I guess (e.g. uninvolved parents, whole other post), but ease up a little. Expose your kids to discipline, competition, life in general because yeah, Kaddy might get into Brown, but she is going to do more LSD than Hunter S. Thompson.
Please note that if this post comes off as macho in a “my kid can kick your kid’s ass” kind of way, it is not meant like that. I find the macho parents to be much worse and often think their standard response to everything of “beat ‘em up” is aggressively ignorant. They tend to force their kids into macho things to toughen them up only leading them to grow up to be quick-tempered angry boors who talk in strictly blue collar clichés…and start the cycle all over again. There are extremes on both ends, but finding a medium approach leads to well-adjusted independent productive members of society like myself. This is also not a putdown of soccer. I played a year of soccer growing up and later football. Soccer just seems to be the sport of choice for the “Lilies”. While soccer may have its better qualities, there is nothing more eye-opening and maturing than your football coach questioning your sexuality after a half-hearted block attempt.
-K
They fit the soccer player parent demographic perfectly. The hosts were a rich white couple (not Cribs rich, but the kind of rich that makes them refer to themselves as upper middle class even though their combined income puts them in the top 5% of taxpayers.) They also had a clean house and not just “cleaned up before guests arrive” clean, like “not lived-in” clean. The combination of these two things, to me, implies that they would never let their little Dylan or Madison play in a contact sport where their feelings, nevermind their bodies, could be hurt. Hence, soccer is the perfect egalitarian everyone just run around and have fun weak ass sport for their spoiled white kids. Now, American soccer is different from European football where there are elite leagues, training, and discipline. American soccer is mainly played by privileged white kids and South American kids who are waaay better. The parents who have kids that play soccer aren’t bad people; they just insulate their kids to a point where they cannot face any hardships on their own. So, being the over-protective hoverers that they are, they would never think to let little Julian play football, where the coach might yell at them and they might get hurt or they wouldn’t get to play as much as a kid who is better than them. These kind of parents ruin everything because they petition the league commissioner any time a coach has a curt word for their kid or any modicum of discipline is applied to their “precious” or there is one little hazing death. Every parent wants to protect their child, but isn’t the greatest accomplishment a parent could have seeing their child succeed in the real world on their own using what they taught little (insert trendy non-Biblical child name)?
As I see it, when you refer to a white kid as someone who “plays soccer”, you are basically saying he is white, sheltered, slightly out-of-touch with anything that goes on with households earning under $250,000. Again, soccer-player parents aren’t bad people, they are caring, involved, and protective, but to a fault. There are worse things to be I guess (e.g. uninvolved parents, whole other post), but ease up a little. Expose your kids to discipline, competition, life in general because yeah, Kaddy might get into Brown, but she is going to do more LSD than Hunter S. Thompson.
Please note that if this post comes off as macho in a “my kid can kick your kid’s ass” kind of way, it is not meant like that. I find the macho parents to be much worse and often think their standard response to everything of “beat ‘em up” is aggressively ignorant. They tend to force their kids into macho things to toughen them up only leading them to grow up to be quick-tempered angry boors who talk in strictly blue collar clichés…and start the cycle all over again. There are extremes on both ends, but finding a medium approach leads to well-adjusted independent productive members of society like myself. This is also not a putdown of soccer. I played a year of soccer growing up and later football. Soccer just seems to be the sport of choice for the “Lilies”. While soccer may have its better qualities, there is nothing more eye-opening and maturing than your football coach questioning your sexuality after a half-hearted block attempt.
-K
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