August 16, 2002
Wheee! I love the shopping page. Since the holidays are going to be here before you know it, YOU should get to love it too! Drop me an e and tell me if there's anything else you'd like to see on that page. I've tried to stay away from crap like credit card offers and things like that.Let me know what you think. I'd love to hear from you!

Well, life has been interesting. The tagsales haven't gone as well as we'd like, but that's okay. We've been discovering more and more things that we can certainly afford to get rid of, so OFF to the Goodwill they go! Thankfully, since I've taken up being an Avon Chick, there are plenty of extra boxes in the house in which to haul things off!

Yup. That's right. Avon. Hey, I still haven't heard anything worthwhile from the Weasel (sample email "nothing yet. will let you know if I hear anything."), and I'm apparently "overqualified" for retail (grrr), I decided to take matters into my own hands. I figured that since I'm such a cosmetic and skincare junkie, this would be perfect for me. Well, guess what? It is! I had no idea that it would be so easy, or so much fun. If you're interested in selling Avon and finding out for yourself, feel free to drop me an email and talk to me about it! If you're interested in buying Avon (or just browsing the online catalogue), check out my Avon eRepresentative Site and register with me (click on Order) using the passcode: crickett . You can browse and shop from the current catalogue as well as the past two catalogues. Also, if you happen to be in the NY/NJ/CT area and have an organization that's looking to do a fundraiser, send me an email and let's talk! Avon does great fundraisers. I've been having a lot of fun with this, and been quite surprised at how easy it's been to reach the goals I've been setting for myself. I'm shooting for President's Club in my first year, which is quite a feat, but it means that I get to go on an Alaskan Cruise. Picture my fuchsia head on an Alaskan Cruise, and you'll get why this idea amuses and inspires me so much.

Mike and I have also been busy getting our company off the ground, and we've already snagged a couple of jobs! That's right. Chirp Productions is starting to get noticed, and I couldn't be happier. Keep an eye on the site, because soon enough we'll have clips up of some of the video work that we've been doing. YAY!

And now, on to the crankiness. What am I bitter about? Personal responsibility, for one. People are suing fast food restaurants because they didn't KNOW it was BAD FOR THEM???? This has *got* to be some kind of elaborate joke. I mean, one of the plaintiffs has had TWO heart attacks. One would think that after the first one, the doctor would have advised that eating McShit 5 times a week was perhaps a bad idea. Another excuse is "well, I'm single and I'm not a very good cook". WHAAAAT??? I'm not a very good cook either, but you don't have to be freakin' Julia Child to make yourself a sammich! I may be a disaster in the kitchen, but I can open a can of soup, I can nuke a baked potato, and I can shred lettuce in my hands to make a salad. This has nothing to do with food addiction, as some have posited, because that's a completely different disease all together. I'm sorry, but there's no agent in french fries that make them addictive. Food addiction is about FOOD of all kinds. This lawsuit is about remaining completely ignorant by choice. It's about the pursuit of convenience no matter the cost. It's about not asking them at the counter for the nutritional information that they're REQUIRED BY LAW TO GIVE YOU. Don't tell me that the fast food companies are being reluctant with telling people what's in their food, because I've seen nutritional information posted on the WALL of some McDonalds. Don't tell me that you don't have options, because not only is Subway *everywhere* these days, but every single fast food place has options these days. You can get a salad at BK. You can get AWESOME HUGE salads and baked potatoes and chili at Wendy's. I don't wanna hear it. It's lame excuses. It's a way to get money for your personal laziness, and ignorance. It's getting paid for lack of personal responsibility.

Which brings me to my next issue. There's this moron woman who got herself a "low-budget website" and is asking the world to bail her out. From what? Her own monstrous credit card debt. Like, $17,000 in credit card debt. Seems that she just couldn't have enough Prada shoes and Burberry bags (although now she's trying to sell some of them on her site and on eBay), but she just wasn't getting paid enough to be able to afford them all! :::blink blink ::: She's astonished to find that sometimes, a makeup remover from Walgreens works just as well as one from Clarins. She's asking everyone to send money, donations, to her PayPal account. She won't sell her body, she won't go out to dinner with you, she just wants your money. Because she was living a lifestyle she couldn't afford. Because she was, I suppose, a victim of the fashion industry. Because she's a self-centered sheepy bint who HAD to have those up-to-the-minute shoes and couldn't wait for them to go on sale.

And then we have the paaaaarents. Due to the media feeding frenzy about kidnapped children (remember last year, everyone was being eaten by sharks?), people are coming up with some horrendous ways of keeping track of their children, even when said children are old enough to be driving and having cellphones. My head nearly exploded last night when I saw a news program that showed one man who had rigged his house with a million cameras so that he can be at work and still watching (via the internet) every move his children make. Then, there's the "black box recorder" type thing and the in-car GPS spy system. The black box not only records every move the car makes (saved on a memory card so you can print it out and beat your children later with it), but also makes an annoying noise when one: brakes too hard, hits the gas too hard, hits a bump, or takes a turn too sharply. Nice, huh? Especially for a new driver, who is easily startled, to have somebody cut them off in traffic, they slam on the brakes, and THIS HORRIBLE NOISE shrieks throughout the car. Lovely. It'd make *me* drive into a wall. We also have the GPS installed in the cell-phone, so that Daddy knows when I've gone to the beach instead of the mall. The tracking devices in watches and backpacks. The computer program that monitors every keystroke on the computer, so you know just what exactly your child is talking on AIM about. The kicker of all of it, though, is what is basically a LoJack system for your kid. You actually have it installed *under the child's skin*, so that the child can be tracked. Now, I'm imagining some horrible horrible things with this. Suppose your child is, on the off chance (and yes, it IS an off chance. Kidnappings are actually DOWN, they're just receiving more publicity to stir us into a panic), kidnapped. Suppose said child has LoJack. Kid knows it, and says to the kidnapper that he'll be found because his parents can track him. Well, pretty easy for a kidnapper to either dump the child (dead OR alive) or maim the child trying to remove the LoJack him/herself. Nice, huh? And what do all of these devices teach children? That they can't be trusted to make good driving and chatting decisions on their own. That Big Mother is watching, even though the actual parents can't make the time to be with the kids. That safety is more important than privacy. That if you're under 18, you don't deserve privacy OR trust. I'm imagining kids running away, using other people's cellphones to tell their friends where to meet them, so that they can remove that damn LoJack themselves. Kids leaving home because they can't even take a dump without being caught on camera (because kidnappers, y'know, are gonna steal you right off the toilet). A horrendous cycle of mistrust and "do as I say and not as I do".

Oh, there's more. Yet another program showed me the extremes to which parents will go to brainwash their children. Teens. As we know, when you're a small child, life is a pretty happy-go-lucky affair for many. When one hits puberty, one changes. One is riddled with carbonated hormones that make you depressed, bitchy, an asshole, defiant, rebellious, and disrespecting of an authority that hasn't done much to earn your respect in the first place (if the above examples are any indication). However, if parents pay attention to their JOB, which is PARENTING first and foremost, then these things are able to be gotten through with very few scars. Vigilant parents talk to their kids, know what's going on with their lives, and build trust with their kids. Vigilant and smart parents know that their kid is probably going to come home either drunk or high at least once in their teens. Non-vigilant parents pay no attention to what's actually going ON with their kids, and will let things go as long as things appear to be okay. When, suddenly, they find out that their kid is depressed to the point of suicide and therefore using heroin and crystal, or that their kid has a drinking problem, or their kid suddenly just "isn't my lovable happy little boy anymore", they are now sending them on "treks". Stolen from their homes at the parent's behest, these kids are packed up, brought to a place they don't know, outfitted with camping gear, and made to hike for twenty-one days in silence (except for night-time group therapy sessions around the fire). Carrying a 65 lb. pack and hiking up incredibly steep inclines in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest. The kids are bewildered and pissed at their parents, and yet are told that they have no right to be angry with their parents since it was the KID'S actions that got them there in the first place. Nice, huh? So, gods forbid I should have a child, I can just ignore it's needs and wants (as long as everything "looks* okay) and when it grows up to give me attitude, I can send it away up into the mountains where psychologists will tell my child that they don't get to be pissed at me! WOOHOO! Suddenly, parenting sounds like the easiest job in the world, albeit costly.

So, personal repsonsibility is dead. Clearly, we can blame peer pressure, convenience, evil kidnappers, and everything else for our laziness, shortcomings, and mistakes. Awesome, huh? Now we know. It all started with that bint who went driving off with a hot cup of coffee lodged in her crotch *with the freakin' LID off* and now we all have to see that stupid warning on the cup that says "CAUTION: Liquid inside is VERY HOT". Well, no shit. But, if ya can't beat 'em, JOIN 'EM!

See, I've got bills to pay as well. Even though I've applied for jobs and tried to get assignments, and am finally selling Avon and busting my ass to market my own company, I've still got bills. Wah! Don't you pity ME? You should. I have the most rude bill collectors calling and harrassing me. They call all the time. They make me so upset that I can't sleep without anti-anxiety medicine, and you know THAT ain't cheap. Neither is the medication I should be taking for my stomach, but can't afford. Then, of course, there's the special weight-loss foods I'm supposed to be eating since my only visit to a gastroenterologist said that all of my problems are because I'm fat. I have to feed my cats. Mike has to eat. Avon can't pay for this ALL! So send ME your money! Everyone else is rejecting any idea of personal responsibility, so why shouldn't I??? I accept PayPal (PayPal ID: bug@crickett.net), and as soon as I get enough money to get a PO Box, I'll post that address as well, in case some people wish to send well-concealed cash, cheques, or money orders. I promise you that the money will go toward medication for me, food for the house, drinks on karaoke night, bills (to get those rude bastards off of my back), and the Vacation Fund so Mike and I can go to St. Maarten in October. Oh, and my birthday's coming up too, so maybe I'll use some of it to pay for a nice present for myself. I'll keep a tally here on the site as to how many donations I've gotten, and I'll thank you all personally via email. What a deal! So send your donations today, to further my increasing lack of personal responsibility. Thanks in advance!

NOTE: I don't hate all parents, and I don't think that just because you spawn that you are evil incarnate. People who don't do their jobs as parents, however, really burn my onion. I was raised by a woman who went above and beyond to raise kids that were responsible, smart, and made good choices. Kids with manners and courtesy. Kids with common sense. She succeeded. However, too many parents these days have kids just so that they can get some of those cute miniature clothes at Baby Gap(athetic) and throw showers to get gifts, since they've already had a wedding or a graduation or whatever. It makes me mad that those of us who have no children and aren't seeking to have them any time soon get harped on and told that we really don't know ourselves. Told that we really WANT kids, and that all of our feelings will change once we catch that sexually transmitted disease known as pregnancy. People who scream about abortion being wrong and yet wouldn't adopt a child if their lives depended on it. I'm tired of seeing people make a lifestyle choice such as having a child and being rewarded for it (paid time off, tax credits, other benefits too numerous to mention) and those of us who make a lifestyle choice such as wanting to take a college course to better our minds are lucky if we can get UNpaid time off, etc. Why, when you have a baby, do you get a gift pack of stuff from the hospital, and if a woman goes in for a tubal ligation she doesn't get, say, gift certificates for a bookstore or a nice restaurant, to use with all the blessed extra time and peace of mind she'll have to enjoy such things? Either way, if you happen to be Childfree By Choice or are interested in reading about how unfairly the scales are balanced between the childed and the childfree, read this book. It may surprise you greatly.

The Baby Boon: How Family-Friendly...
Enjoy! It may make you cranky at the world, or cranky at me, or it may open your eyes. Either way, it's information, and that can't be bad.

Yes, I'm still on the Hat Head thing. I've been wearing hats and bandanas on my head, and I've found that the bandanas give a FIERCE hat-head! It's awesome. Got any good Hat Head stories of your own? EMAIL ME!!! I wanna know how you're having an effect on the trendoids in your town. Let's do it!

Speaking of kids, a hearty congratulations to the couple (who will remain un-named here) who have just announced that they will be having a baby. I am only pleased because I know that you will be awesome parents and won't be perpetrating any of the crimes mentioned above.

Okay...that's all for now. Stop back every once in a while if you feel like checking on the progress of the HatHead Revolution, or if you just feel like doing some shopping in your underwear (not that you have to be in your underwear to shop at my site). Go outside, enjoy the lovely weather...there's gonna be a harsh winter soon enough.