I know that EVERYONE AND THEIR FREAKING BROTHER is collectively tearing Britney Spears apart over her MTV video music awards show performance. I would have felt it unecessary to post my two cents as well, if it weren't for all of the comments about her weight. But first - she can't sing. We've all known that forever. The only people who ever watched her videos and bought her albums for their musical accomplishment were her fanbase of 13 year old girls who just don't know any better. And if that weird thing she half-heartedly attempted to lip-synch is the best song on the whole album? Then, well...ouch. Second - her personal life is a mess. Too much "celebrity" too soon, too little positive influence by her "people", including her own greedy mother, not enough people there to talk some sense into her when she was about to make some of the most disasterous career and personal decisions and her inability to deal with the repercussions of those same decisions...all add up to the bald, crazy-acting, emotionally wrecked Britney of the past several months. It's sad. And people just lap that up. We like to see people who should be doing so well - since they are, by all accounts (according to the glossies and tabloid shows masquerading as entertainment "journalists"), so much better than we can ever dream of being, in every way - doing so very badly.
But for people to come out and say she's fat...Seriously? And I'm not the only one scratching my head over the criticism, either. She's not the 16 year old engenue that she used to be, sure. But she's had two kids, and she's been through the emotional ringer, all in the harsh spotlight of the public eye, and that has taken its toll. I'll be the first one to make fun of her choice of wardrobe, and her choice of men. But her weight? No. Of course I can see where gossip columnists and bloggers might snipe and say that for someone with her money, and the time she would have had to prepare for this, she should have looked a little more like her old self in her career "prime". But a twenty-something with two kids is NEVER going to look exactly like their young teen self again. Ever. Celebrity or not. All the tummy-tucks in the world can't correct what babies and time can do to change your physique. I'd like to see what half of those columnists writing nasty little missives about her weight look like.
All the perfect people squeal "OMG! Britney Spears is a WHALE, har har!"
Also - Kanye West can shut up now with his "greatest album release in the history of ev-er". Over-hyped, over-produced hacks stand up and be counted.
I love how you shave time out of your busy schedule of doing very important stuff at work to accomodate someone bringing you important paperwork - that you'd asked for a week and a half ago! - and they bail on you. Not once. Oh, no. Twice. This is very freaking professional. Like I have so much spare time and I love nothing more than to sit and just twiddle my thumbs and wait for you.
Then, on top of that, they're hiring for an open position here in my office and my boss has decided that he needs no input from anyone else regarding what he needs in an assistant when determining who he will hire. The last boss did this. What did we end up with? An abrasive, overly-ambitious absentee assistant. Although she just got a promotion and nice pay raise after being here only six months, so at least this worked out for someone. I have done everything that this assistant would be asked to do (and then some), so you'd think that my two cents might come in handy. You'd think - but it seems like that as far as my boss is concerned I only exist to tell him how much money he has to spend and to solve everyone else's problems...and keep my advice to myself. And he doesn't seem to want me to tell him what is getting screwed up - just to smile and go about fixing it and just take on more and more work while I watch people get promoted for doing a fraction of what I do every day. It's a pretty sobering thought that, for as long as I've worked here now, my current boss does not really value my experience or my input. So I rarely offer it. It really sucks to wonder what all of your hard work and attempts at making a real contribution ultimately add up to...if anything at all.
The in-laws took my son to a baseball game tonight, so I'm all alone for the evening. I'm sitting here drinking Iberia brand coconut flavored soda with rum. It's like drinking a non-frozen pina colada. It smells like summer: suntan lotion and alcohol. Speaking of soda - I saw an ad for Diet Coke Plus today. With vitamins and minerals. Seriously. Are we going back to the days when a soda was consumed for some kind of supposed health benefit? I noted that there was no mention of whether it had electrolytes. In alcohol news, Pennsylvania's Blue Laws are being challenged in the State's Supreme court, so I'm curious how that will turn out. We don't have that problem, here. You want to buy a case of beer, a six-pack of near-beer, and some wine in this state, you don't have to go to more than one place. They make it pretty easy to be a lush.
Last night was spent chatting online with friends and reading zombie comics. I have a new favorite...it has zombies AND vampires, and theorizes that zombies are vampires, of a sort. Which reminds me - the new George Romero film should be out before too long - supposedly it has zombie pov. Sweet, right?
Tonight will be spent tinkering with some new software, finishing a project, doing laundry and wasting prescious time on the computer. It figures that on a night when I have no plans I would have all of this time to do something social. This is the opposite of what usually happens. For example, I was invited to yesterday's First Friday (again), but since I didn't have a babysitter in town, I didn't go (again). M wants to see me next weekend, though, and we have a whole list of activities planned out for the rest of the year.
If you have some time to kill, check out TIME magazine's 100 Best TV Shows of All Time (so far). There are a lot that I think are missing (and a few that I thought in no way should be on any "best" list ever), but I was thrilled to see My So Called Life and Mystery Science Theater 3000 back to back. These are two of my favorites, since I'm a Generation-X adult who has never quite grown out of her narcissistic teenage angst who loves to give running commentary when watching movies. And once upon a time, before Jared Leto was the poser-Goth poster boy of choice, he was every MTV viewing girl's crush, Jordan Catalano.
With bonus Shakespeare sonnet-goodness (although curly-haired-geek-boy Brian Krakow does all the talking):
You can see part of the pilot episode *here* of the single season of the show - where they dyed Angela's hair that wonderful shade of red - and she has her new group of non-conformist friends, develops her mad crush on Jordan and starts to drift away from her parents. I hated how later on it became as much about Angela's parents' issues as about her experiences navigating the pitfalls of her burgeoning adulthood. And this show totally pawns Degrassi - that show is just an overwrought soap-opera for today's way too mature tweens. Don't even get me started on the whole Disney High School Musical naked picture fiasco. It's getting tougher and tougher trying to keep a kid even remotely innocent in this age of the internet and instant access to just about anything it has to offer - good and horribly, terribly bad alike.
Here's a good dog: he'll do whatever you command. And if he doesn't understand he's ready with a snappy response to your unreasonable request. Hint: stick to things dogs know, like roll-over and play dead, bark and sing, for the best results. "Get me a beer" yields unsatisfactory results...
Here we go with the count down to Friday, all over again. I have a pile of work on my desk, one of the supervisors somehow let most of his staff terminate in the HR system then didn't get paperwork back to me to get them back in the system - so they won't get paid this payroll (I'm sure this will all become MY fault, since I didn't hold his hand and tell him explicitly what he needed to do to make sure this didn't happen, and the manager of that area acted all sorts of surprised like this could never possibly happen because he's so good at his job), I had to sit in on interviews today (one of the interviewees was quite an interesting old bird - one of her very important questions to ask was if we had a gym to work out in, and supposedly she told the manager when they were arranging the interview that she really can't use a computer...wtf, people!!), and the girl at the front desk must be invisible. A good sixty to seventy percent of the working day I don't see her at that desk. Another percentage is spent chatting with various people (read: any possibly single guy of a certain age and level of attractiveness that happens to wander in front of the door) here in the office. We sure are a functional, productive, contented group, aren't we?
Some more reasons I don't like Monday-style Tuesdays: I had a parking citation on my windshield when I left work (I left my hang-tag down for some reason - they're lucky they gave me a warning); my son left his lunch box at school (he had better hope it isn't actually LOST and is sitting in his cubby in class when he gets there tomorrow); and is it just my imagination, or is it getting dark early again? Summer just flew right by me, and we barely used the pool at all. My husband is already burning the pumpkin and apple orchard scented candles in preparation for the Autumn's festivities.
There was cake today. With oreo crumbles. I had two pieces. I am filled with shame. And oreo crumbles...
Dear co-worker with all of the junk food in her office: Please stop. I know you mean well, and it's your way of making friends. But, seriously. Please.Stop.
