Alan Thicke's Son Kinda Sucks and Other Fun Music Notes.

It happened like a month ago and people are still talking about Miley Cyrus twerking in latex underpants.

Woo-frickity-hoo, people. A young pop star danced in what had more coverage than your average bikini.

Not that I enjoyed her oddly tongue-laced molestation of a foam representation of being number 1, but I think we’re all not talking about the most important thing, here.

A dude dressed as Beetlejuice sang a song about rape on national television and no one cares. His dad is all “I’m so proud of my son!” Yes, let’s be proud of your kid, who sings (did he write this?) “I know you want it. You’re a good girl. Can’t let it get past me.” Alan Thicke, if Kirk Cameron had done this crap on Growing Pains, you would not have been so nice, now would you?

This song was also featured on last week’s Glee. The teacher sang it while surrounded by his musically-inclined class sang backup. Jane Lynch’s evil character Sue Sylvester calls him out on singing a song about rape with a bunch of underage high school students.

She may be a little bit evil, but she’s not wrong. Robin Thicke: a name like a second string almost superhero, songs like an asshole frat boy.

First, I’d like to point out the sheer elegance and sophistication of today’s pop hits. Lady Gaga has penned a ballad that will go down as a classic, her lines “I live for the applause, applause applause. I live for the applause-plause, Live for the applause-plause.” just touches my soul in a way Billy Joel just never quite has.

Bruno Mars recently posited to the world: “You and me baby making love like gorillas.”

And I am not saying that the hippies are right and the music from the last generation “meant something” and was so much better and more meaningful than today’s top artists. There is crap music represented in every decade.

I love the Beatles. They had everything from meaningful to ridiculous, and it never gets old. That doesn’t mean every song was a masterpiece. Let’s take an objective look at the opening to “I Am A Walrus”

“I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.

See how they run like pigs from a gun, see how they fly.

I'm crying.”

Yes, yes, tell me more. You do not sound like you’re SUPER HIGH AND STUFF or anything. And weirdly, I like that song a lot.

Don’t freak out. I love the Beatles, Springsteen, Billy Joel, Bon Jovi, the Temptations, and a lot of other music that is not of my generation. I still rock out to Lady Gaga with my 6 year old niece in the car, sing along with Katy Perry when it’s stuck in my head. I have a slightly nostalgic lean toward the Backstreet Boys and Avril Lavigne.

I am not condemning your music choices, my friend! I would never do that. I am pointing out that we like ridiculous music sometimes, and that is not an opinion, it is fact. Take a look at some of those lyrics and try to tell me it’s the Starry Night of music.

LOGICKED.

But we often do accept lyrics from our favorite artists that don’t make sense or kind of suck, and we do it because it’s catchy. I don’t like Selena Gomez’s “Come and Get It.” It is literally a song about loving someone and just hanging out, waiting for them to come and hang out with you. Chorus: “When you’re ready come and get it. na na na na.” Line from first full verse: “Can’t stop because I love it, hate the way I love you.”

That is not a healthy relationship right there. You should try counseling or something.

I know songs about real life normal love might not be as exciting, and like I said, it’s not like I don’t dance to these songs or sing along either. I just think we should take an objective view of the situation.

I guess a love ballad like this wouldn’t be as popular:

“Sitting in my sweatpants,

Watching Law & Order with you.

Chinese food and soda,

Typical Tuesday night.

Na na na na.

Saturday afternoon

Sitting around, eating a bagel.

Let’s run off together

To Target for more paper towels.”

But if you think it would be, feel free to make it famous, though I’d like writing credit and royalties. :)

We The Young People

My first thought as my bus from DC to NYC came into the city the other night was “Grilled Cheesus Crust, I can finally get off this bus!” My butt had been numb since Delaware.

Whenever I hear someone say something like “Jesus Christ, you scared me!” or something along those lines, I always have a moment where I think about a cartoon Jesus hiding around a dark corner and popping out and scaring someone before laughing hysterically, or a creepy Jesus in a trench coat flashing people in the park.

Religion is one of those things they say it’s not polite to talk about in an interview, on a date, or out in public. I don’t know when we all got so sensitive, maybe it’s just always been that way. When someone says something that you don’t agree with, religion-wise, it certainly isn’t a personal attack on you and all you stand for. And if it were me making the statement and it WAS a personal attack on you and all you stand for...you’d KNOW it.

Something many people get wrong is that the United States was not discovered and settled as a land of freedom of religion. The Puritans came here to escape religious persecution in England, where Catholicism was the reigning religion, and England at that time believed that there MUST be uniformity of religion for a given society to thrive. This conviction rested on the belief that there was one true religion and this it was the duty of the civil authorities to impose it, by force when necessary, in the interest of saving everyone’s souls. The Protestants actually agreed with that, they just thought Catholicism needed reform, and to become more like Protestantism.  

So the Puritans came to the New World, not so that anyone could believe in whatever they wanted, but so that they could specifically believe in Protestantism, away from persecution from the Catholic leaders.

I feel like my generation is the one with the power to change the world. We are large in number, we scream for tolerance and change, and Generations X and Y was the first generations to be raised during the rise and rapid evolution of technology. We were among the first to be able to access the entire world and a wealth of information.

Today’s teenagers and young adults are spoiled from the ridiculous amount of technology and information at our fingertips. Who needs to remember numbers or how to do simple math when we can just use our phones and calculators? Who needs to actually read the classics when you can just Wikipedia the detailed summary? And why do people find it odd that I love to read for pleasure and don’t really get into video games? But whether we are spoiled, entitled, or just misunderstood in a changing world, we can change everything.

There are more people in Generation X and Y than there are in the Baby Boomer generation. The Baby Boomers are the ones currently holding office, holding the high level CEO jobs in a lot of companies, and are a lot of the ones making policies that affect our lives.

Imagine what we can do. We can literally change the world. We already have!

More young people voted in 2008 and 2012 than ever before. We voted, and it just goes to show that your vote DOES matter. Your vote helped change the direction our country was going in. Generations X and Y (Y is sometimes referred to as the Millennial Generation or the ‘Me Generation’) have live tweeted catastrophes, such as in Egypt and Israel, they have demanded information, they have found vigilante justice on the internet.

We have built social networks that literally connect the world, we believe in starting something from nothing, and we know that with the right idea, anything is possible. Our generation created Google and eBay, we have Facebook and Twitter to unite people globally at the touch of a button, we made the Hubble telescope, and the biggest strides in space exploration.

Our generation are the ones who are fighting for LGBT rights, for equal constitutional rights of them to be married. We follow in the footsteps of every Civil Rights movement in our history, which proves over and over again that we the people know what we want, and what is right, and are willing to yell and fight and work for it.

Jeff Gordinier, author of X Saves the World: How Generation X Got the Shaft But Can Still Keep Everything From Sucking, has a pretty awesome quote from when he was featured in Time magazine. Here is a short excerpt that includes it:

‘Shirking the media myth that Xers are slackers, Gordinier argues that Generation X has — to borrow a '60s term — changed the world. Citing Gen-X icons like Quentin Tarantino and Jon Stewart, along with Gen-X triumphs like Google, YouTube, and Amazon, among others, Gordinier argues that not only are Xers far from over, they might be the most unsung and influential generation of all time. "Gen-X stomping grounds of the past — the espresso bar, the record shop, the thrift store — have been resurrected in digital form. The new bohemia is less a place than it is a headspace. It's flexible enough to bypass all the old binaries. It encompasses mass and class, mainstream and marginal, yuppie and refusenik, gearhead and Luddite. It's everywhere and nowhere in particular," he writes.

In short, "GenXers are doing the quiet work of keeping America from sucking."’

(read the rest of the article here)

So, rejoice, young people. We are changing the world, we are the future, blahblahblah.

Seriously, we have the interconnectedness, the tolerance, and the ability to learn, grow, and change the entire world and how it works. We are not in the Hunger Games, we are not in The Giver or Divergent. We are not yet dystopian, but we are the future.

The Path to Halloween Greatness.

I feel like this should go without saying, but I love Halloween. Not just a little, I’m not mildly amused by it. I don’t feel like I could take it or leave it. Nope, I adore Halloween. I love the candy, the costumes, the parades, the parties, and the candy.

I have long held this theory about fireworks and Halloween. My theory is these are two of the only times that you’ll see adults, no matter their ages, get lost in something. Next time you’re at a fireworks show, take a moment and look around you. Everyone, from the smallest of 3 year olds to the oldest dude  in his 90s, are all looking up, usually in wonder, and taking it all in. People get lost in the beauty and noise of fireworks, especially if they are lighting the fireworks themselves. Then it’s even more fun! My family loves fireworks. We light them for hours on the 4th of July.

And then there’s Halloween. What other day of the year can an adult dress up as anything they want -- scary, creepy, funny, as an old person -- and it be not only ok, but encouraged? It’s the one day people don’t worry about being judged or criticized, because hey, it’s all part of the costume.

In any case, I love Halloween. I had my requisite slutty costumes in college, and that was ok. But the funny ones are so much better!

One year I was a whoopie cushion. The costume itself wasn’t that impressive, but then I bought a real self-reinflating whoopie cushion and used a belt to secure it to my stomach. Every time someone walked near me at work, I pressed it. Trust me, it was hilarious.

Told ya so.

Two years in a row, I went as a sumo wrestler. This one will always be a personal favorite. First of all, sumo wrestlers are awesome, and mine wore a red diaper. Secondly, it was a battery-pack-powered, self-inflating costume. It was humongous and amazing. Boyfriend once took a video of me wearing the sumo costume skipping down the street and trying to dance. Sumo wrestlers are excellent dancers, you know.

This one might never be topped. Could be a personal best.

This year, as every other, I started to contemplate my costume early, around August-ish. I like to be prepared, and sometimes I have to gather pieces to make the costume.

I’ve been a bit obssessed with penguins lately, so that is where I ended up, after dismissing several other costume ideas, including James Bond/Penguin (Wear a penguin suit, but carry a water gun and have spy gadgets), the Joker, the sumo wrestler, a girl Superman (not to be confused with the more lame Supergirl, or the amazing Wonder Woman. now THAT WOMAN CAN LASSO SOME TRUTH.), a ninja cat, and a transformer (too difficult to make).

I guess I can be a cat-ninja next year. Or maybe a ninja dog. Or a ninja dragon. Or a stealthy ninja penguin!

Anyway, I really frickin’ love penguins, so I went with that.

First order of business, I ordered my penguin costume online. Now, I thoroughly enjoy making a costume out of different pieces of clothing and such. Last year, I was Quailman, and it was not a store bought costume. But a penguin is different. By doing it on my own, I risk ending up looking like a girl in a tuxedo. Which is cool, but not really what I was going for.

If I'm lyin', I'm dyin'. I had the full Doug-hair, a belt, and white tightey-whiteys on the outside of my khakis. Suck it, Silver Surfer. Boyfriend was a mad scientist. For the 3rd year. No one was surprised.

Step 2: Clearly mark the shipping address as “commercial.”

Step 3: Mailman tries to deliver my package on a Saturday, and sends me a strongly worded email about how they attempted to do their job, but my silly little business wasn't open for them to deliver it.

Step 4: Try to call the mail people on Tuesday morning (because Monday was Columbus Day. There was even a parade.) and be on hold for 20 minutes, never once talking to a person or accomplishing anything other than wondering what was taking so long for USPS to die a slow, sad death.

Step 5: Be pleasantly surprised when, after no additional action was taken, package was safely and triumphantly delivered on Tuesday afternoon.

Step 6: Get very excited and rip open the package near the reception desk, and happy show off your awesome penguin costume, which includes orange penguin-foot shoe covers.

Step 7: Try on penguin-foot shoe covers at your desk. Covertly glance around to make sure no one else is watching you weirdly reenact Happy Feet at your desk.

Step 8: Almost fall over and break your face when you come to understand that penguin-foot shoe covers are not that easy to walk in. They should have some kind of warning label!
WARNING: Not for dancing, skipping, or clumsy people.

Step 9: Tell everyone that your penguin suit arrives. Strangely, none of them are surprised that you ordered a penguin suit online.

Step 10: Sadly and pout-ily realize that you can’t take your penguin suit home that day because you have a networking event after work, and you can’t be that weirdo who brought a penguin suit along to a work event. People may or may not want to do business with you after that. And it really isn't fair to judge someone’s business acumen and professionalism by a penguin suit. There should be some kind of rule about that.

Step 11: At work the next day, excitedly remember about the penguin suit and prepare to take it home with you.

Step 12: Send Boyfriend a text of a picture of your feet with the penguin-foot shoe covers on with the caption “Just a taste of the sexiness that will be waiting for you at home.” [Boyfriend later responds that he is laughing so hard that his actual butt is falling off of his body. Mentally brace yourself for attempting to not be weirded out by his butt-less form.]

Penguin suits are the new sexy lingerie.

Step 13: PARTY LIKE IT’S 1999!

Heck yes. Halloween is almost here again! Can’t wait. Party time! Excellent!

BREASTS! BREASTS EVERYWHERE!

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and how better to celebrate than to talk about breasts?

Breasts are great! There are about a million fun ways to refer to them, there are a bajillion studies about them, and about 83% of time, we can render the object of our desire speechless with them. Being that it is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, we have the perfect excuse to talk about chest-melons, knockers, tatas, and yahoos. However you want to refer to them, this post is dedicated to them!

Fun fact: Squeezing the boobs can help prevent cancer!

An actual study was done, and researchers at the UC Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that “mechanical forces and applying physical pressure on the breasts can stop the rapid growth of cancer and prevent out of control cells from turning malignant.”

Read about it here.

I think we all know that research grant money is being well spent. here, enjoy a couple more random and odd reasearch studies I came across!

Canada and Britain once teamed up to do a study on whether or not herrings (yes, fish) communicate via farts. Intriguing.

The answer is somewhere between “probably” and “yes.” At least, that is what the scientists seem to conclude from their rigorous studies.

A Russian physician and cosmonaut once ran a study where 11 men lay down in bed for over a YEAR. He actually has a really good reason for doing the study (namely to find out what happens to a person during a long journey in weightless conditions), but it’s still kind of weird. RUSSIANS.

http://www.madsciencebook.com/02oneyearinbed.htm

Babraham Institute researchers figure that sheep can recognize faces. They found this out by training selected sheep (Who selects these sheep? Did the sheep consent to this??) to associate other sheep and humans with food rewards. Apparently 20 sheep were presented with pictures of 25 pairs of sheep faces and from this they found they could recognize individuals associated with a reward by even just their profile.

I can't decide if it's creepy or cool that sheep recognize faces. When it's birds, it's definitely creepy. When it's dolphins, it's adorable. I want to go with adorable for sheep. Because baby sheep are fluffy and cute. But have you smelled adult sheep? Less cute.

Read more here.

BACK TO BOOBS!

Breasts are great. They are fluffy and are good pillows, they provide more fat to protect your tender and easily-hurt lung and chestal region, and they bounce, which can be either fun or painful, depending on the situation. Example: trotting while on horseback without wearing the proper support: OUCHIES (learned THAT the hard way). Jumping on a trampoline: meh, not really painful.

More fun facts about bazoombas!:

-No one knows why, but humans are the only primates or mammals to have full breasts without actually having ‘suckling young.’

Read more here, because you know you want to.

-All women know that it’s completely normal to have one twin bigger than her sister. However, interestingly, in 65% of women, it’s the LEFT one that is bigger.
http://jenapincott.com/why-is-your-left-breast-larger-than-the-right/

-There are FOUR different types of nipples. Plus “unilateral,” which is when each of your two are different types. ONE TYPE IS AN INNIE.

-Up to 85% of women are wearing the wrong bra size. WHOA. We should all go get measured and make sure our fluffy twin companions are as comfy and supported as possible.

I support my boobs! I support their thoughts and feelings, their names, their hopes and dreams, themselves so they aren't saggy, and I support their right to well-fitted support!

-70% of women are are down on their girls’ size, according to research published in the International Journal of Sexual Health.

That is an insanely high percentage of women who don’t like their size. On the one hand, there is surgery to fix that. On the other hand, that surgery is expensive and scary. And sometimes you end up with weird rock-hard boobs, which is offensive to all hands that like squishiness. Don't be down on your girls, ladies! Love them, be proud of them! Walk tall and thrust them forward with confidence! You are gorgeous the way you are, and you should give them a pat of appreciation occasionally, so that they know you care.

-Current sizing standards in bras were created by Ida Rosenthal and her husband William, founders of Maidenform, in the 1920s.

Way more recent than I would have suspected for standard-sizing of over-the-shoulder-boulder-holders! Although, as I wrote that, I am wondering why we are STILL NOT ON A STANDARD CLOTHING SIZE CHART. A medium at one store is a large at another, a size 8 pants in one brand is a size 4 in a different brand. Complete and utter crap. That is ridiculous and annoying and the exact reason why I don’t buy clothes online, because I always have to TRY THAT CRAP ON before I buy it. Standardized sizing would help the e-commerce industry! (Does that fit on a picket sign? Where would I picket about this?)

-Men’s Breast Fact Time! Men who are longdistance runners have to put special tape over their nipples. This is because the friction caused by rubbing against the (gross, sweaty) shirt chafes their tiny flat man-nipples.

A SPECIAL BOOB FACT JUST FOR THE MEN (consider this a thank you for reading this far into this post, which turned out to be very different than what you thought when you saw the title.)

-Staring at boobs extends a man’s life by five years!!!

Apparently it might be a hoax and not a real study, but I think we can all agree that this should be real. YOU’RE WELCOME, MEN OF THE WORLD, AND LADIES WHO LIKE BREASTICLES.

http://www.examiner.com/article/can-staring-at-breasts-really-help-the-heart

So, we have reached the conclusion of my facts about boobles. I hope you enjoyed this post, and I urge you to give your lady friends a squeeze now and then. After all...you want to help them prevent breast cancer, don’t you?! C’mon, ladies. It’s a boobshake instead of a hello handshake. I think we could really make this catch on! It can be our lady thing, like men have that stupid-looking chest bump that always looks awkward, sometimes ends in hilarious tragedy, and is even weirder when one dude is significantly taller than the other dude.

I See Your Bunnies and Raise You Otters and Penguins.

I read a funny article mostly comprised of pictures of bunnies and entertaining sarcastic comments about them. I laughed, and started to move on, before seeing the comments. There is a comment that states “The online bunny community is going to love this!”

Here is the bunny thing I saw: http://www.waitbutwhy.com/2013/08/the-bunny-manifesto.html

It stopped me cold.

There is a whole community of bunny people online? That is so weird. I mean, sure, bunnies are fluffy, sometimes adorable, and they have that whole ear thing going on. But are they worthy of a whole community? I don’t know that I can fairly answer that, as I am relatively ambivalent about rabbits and not part of any sort of community that may or may not worship their fluffy bods and misshapen ears.

And then more than one of the commenters pointed people to this website: http://www.disapprovingrabbits.com/

Guess what? Only a couple of them look actively disapproving. The rest just look like FLUFFY DANG BUNNIES. If you are going to advertise disapproving animals, I demand to feel shame and remorse and the urge to scuff my shoe while muttering "Sorry, Mom." while looking at the animals.

You know what there should be a community for? (And maybe there is. Who knows? Not me. I am not up on bizarro animal-based communities deep in the annals of the internet. Though you’d think that someone like me probably would be. And yet, you’d be wrong. So there.) Otters and penguins.

Otters are adorable and they hold hands while they sleep to keep from drifting away. They are cute dry or wet, eyes opened or closed. And unlike those bastard koala bears, they do not hide a vicious rampaging face-eating personality behind their cute little somewhat fluffy faces.

The most bizarre otter fact that I just found is that they can be “anywhere from 31 to 99 pounds” and are part of the weasel family. You know what I see when I look at an otter? Not a frickin’ weirdo weasel, that’s for sure. Otters won the evolution lottery. They can live on land OR sea, they have many adorable facial expressions, and they can be fat. Also, does anyone else think that “31 to 99” is an incredible specific ending and beginning range?

They look like they're annoyed that the photographer interrupted them while they were doing a fancy hair updo.

Is there anything more adorable than a fat fluffy animal or a fat baby? I think not. And if you think so, I can tell you this: You are entitled to your opinion, even though it is wrong and stupid.

In addition, a group of otters is called a “raft.” That is also awesome and better than bunnies. A raft of otters. Wonderful. I am currently imagining a raft of sea otters all holding hands, floating around, with perhaps a meerkat or something catching a ride on top of them, maybe even humming a sea shanty to himself as he floats on awesome toward some other destination.

Contrary to popular belief, otters do not mate for life. They are polygynous. Females tend to outnumber males somewhere around 5 to 1, and in an apparent bid to show their displeasure about not being more prolific, male otters will bite the nose of female otters they are mating with, making them bleed and scar, or even hold the female’s heads under water! Jerks.

Perhaps the male otters need a little lesson in manners.

Russia has a lot of otters right now. I do not think Russia deserves this many otters and I am considering thinking about starting a petition to make them give me some of their otters. I have a bathtub they could live in.

Oh my god. I can't even handle this. They are SO CUTE AND CUDDLY.

Another set of animals that I believe deserve more attention: penguins. First of all and most importantly, they are always dressed for a formal dinner party and they look fantastic in tuxedos. Secondly, they sit on their fluffy babies. They sit on their young to keep them warm, since they only have foofy baby fur. And they love to go sledding. So do I!

MAJESTIC.

Also, they evolved wings into flippers. That’s so darn useful, and I am still hoping that my feet will eventually do the same. The largest living species of them is the Emperor Penguin. They can be up to 3’7’’ tall and weigh 75 pounds. That’s perfect. I’d put him in one of those child-leashes and take him everywhere with me, and he would be like ⅔ as tall as I am! I think I’d name him Bond.

The smallest is the Little Blue Penguin, only up to 16 inches tall and 2 pounds. PERFECT. She would fit in my purse and I could name her Captain Wingspan. Or perhaps Corporal Flipper.

Oh dear god, LOOK AT IT. LITTLE AND BLUE.

And penguins are polite. They form monogamous pairs for breeding seasons, and they share the incubation of the eggs. One sits while the other swims and gallivants and feasts, and then they switch. I like that division of labor!

We should do that. Maybe the girl gets pregnant and they guy gives birth. Much more equal, in my humble opinion. Actually, I don’t think I’m that humble.

I’m just saying, otters and penguins are way cooler than rabbits. And they eat more than stupid lettuce and carrots. I like carrots as much as the next guy, but not for every meal. You could turn orange.

So, I have been thinking about being a penguin for Halloween this year. Here is the possible costume. But imagine me in it, and not some weirdo stock person.