People I'd kick out of the country if I could

I'm creating my own country. That country will now and forever be referred to as Snarkopolis. If I had the power to kick people out of my country, for any reason I wanted, here's my list. I don't know why I'm in an ass-kicking mood, but I am, and it's my blog. If you don't agree and want to keep any or all of these people, create your own country, start a blog and make your own list of people you'd keep. Here goes:

Kanye West: I can't even believe there's even ROOM in his house for Kim and the baby in that house due to the size of his overwhelmingly large ego. (and I don't care WHAT you say, I don't, for one moment, believe they really named their kid Northwest. I think it's some bullshit story they fed to the media for attention. Because they are attention whores).

Kim Kardashian: (actually any of the Kardashians) Again, ego being the first reason. The second, and even more important reason I'd kick her (them) out of my country is because not a single one of them have a single redeeming quality among them. They are media whores. They do no good for anyone but themselves, and they make me ill. Heck I'm not a big fan of Angelina Jolie but you have to give her props, she does take care of the children in third world countries and bring attention to their plight. She's using her powers for good instead of greed. So Kim, you're out. Buh-bye.

Justin Bieber: He's a punk. He spits on fans. I don't care what he does for charity, his actions overshadow any good he's done. So bye-bye Bieber, you're outta here too.

Carole Kane/Rosie Perez/Bernadette Peters: All of these actresses may be amazing, may do wonderful things for charity, and may one day cure cancer (who knows?) but their voices in my ears are like shattered glass under the nails that are scraping down a chalk board. So the three of them are officially out. See ya.

Pauly Shore: Never liked him. He's annoying and stupid and I want him out. I could never sit through an entire 5 minute span of any of his movies, so he's gotta go.

Tim McCarver: Sorry Tim, I loved you when you were a catcher with the Phillies, but that was a hundred years ago. Now you're a sports announcer and not just A sports announcer but one of THE most annoying sports announcers in the history of the game of baseball. You state the obvious as if we were all a room full of 2 year olds, and it's just offensive. So to quote the great Harry Kalas (now THAT was one high class sports commentator) "You're outta here!!!"

The whole Honey Boo-Boo family: I feel sorry for the film crew that has to follow this family around night and day documenting their every move. Who the hell decided that this was entertainment? I'm sorry but the show offers no positive contributions to society and they should all be taken off TV and kicked out of my country.

Seth Gold from Hardcore Pawn: He's such a bully! Seriously, your dad owns the shop, dude, stop being such a douchebag to him and to your sister. I'll admit, Ashley's no picnic but she's your sister. Have some respect for your family. Assbag. Get the hell out of here.

The Discovery Channel executive who decided to give the ax to Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe: Do I even have to explain myself here? I don't think so. Get out, you're fired. And deported. You're lucky I don't kick your sorry ass off the planet.

The A&E executives who decided to give the ax to The Glades without at least filming the series finale: Come on, guys, you film the wedding day, you film Jim getting shot and lying on the floor of the new home he bought as a surprise for him and Callie, and then you chop the show? Really? You're to even going to throw us a bone and film an ending? You probably kick puppies and torture baby kittens too, you worthless sacks of shit. Sayonara.

Alex Rodriguez: Sorry, toots, but me think you dost protest too mucheth. You've got really pretty eyes but no amount of your consistent whining and crying will ever convince me that you didn't dope up. So take yourself, your pretty eyes and your crybaby ass and get out. And take the rest of the Yankees with you. 

Bill O'Reilly/Nancy Grace: I've told you before I don't get into politics, but these two are just assholes. I don't hate them for political reasons, I hate them because they are smarmy know-it-alls and if there's one thing I won't tolerate in my country, it's a smarmy know-it-all. So out you go.

Alright, the list could go on forever but I'm going to be late for work (yes, we royals have to work too, ya know). Would you defend anyone on this list and beg me to let them stay? Who would you add to the list? Why? Come on, folks, share!

Here's an irregular post on regularity

Confused? You won't be after you check out my lasted post over on BlogHer. Trust me, you won't have to wash your hands after you read it. I promise.

Those topics you're not supposed to discuss at dinner parties?

Politics and religion, right? Two definite hot buttons that should never, ever ever ever be discussed. With politics, I don't have enough of an informed opinion (in my opinion) to form a valid argument either way. And you know what? I am okay with that. But religion? That's a different story.

16 and I were at a class this weekend at our church, because she and 14 are preparing for the sacrament of Confirmation. Yep, we are Catholic. Well, they are Catholic. I'm sorta neutral. Disenfranchised, if you will. I'm all sorts of messed up from 12 years of Catholic school. I believe in God. I believe in Jesus. It's the Catholic church and it's ever-changing policies, rules, edicts, etc. that I have issues with. Growing up Catholic, the nuns truly did a number on me.

Let's start with my sophomore year of high school. Our theology teacher, Sister Mary Hitler, came into class one day and taught us that if you HAVE an abortion, HELP in an abortion or have anything to do with ANYONE getting an abortion, you were considered excommunicated from the Catholic church. She didn't pull the 'you're gonna go to hell' card but she did make things pretty clear. I always had that in the back of my mind. Fast forward to the beginning of my time working in Atlantic City. Someone I knew when I was growing up contacted me because a. I knew Atlantic City because I worked there, and b. Atlantic City was where most of the abortion clinics were back then. Anyway, this person was in a bad way and in no position to have a baby. It's not my place to judge anyone. That's God's job. And Judge Judy's. But I also know that there are way too many babies brought into this world who don't get adopted and spend their lives in the system. So I helped out a friend and drove her to the clinic, waited until she was finished and drove her home. BOOM: Excommunicated. Sr. Mary Hitler said it, and she's got that direct line to God, being a nun and all, so it must be true.

After that, I really didn't think that the Catholic church wanted me, so I really never went back. Sure I went for the big 2, Christmas and Easter but that was pretty much for my mom, whose a completely devoted Catholic. We all want to please our parents, don't we? Mom was divorced and wanted to remarry some years later. The hoops the Catholic church made my mother jump through in order to remarry within the Catholic church rivaled that of a circus monkey. She had to have her first marriage (also performed in the Catholic church) annulled before the Catholics would allow her to remarry in their church. Now, let me say this: her first marriage was to an amazing and incredible man. I loved him like he was my own father. He and my mom differed on how much control members of the extended family should have, but they never for a moment didn't actually love one another. So custody of my brother was never an issue and when mom's ex would come to visit with my brother, he always included me, which was a wonderful thing. I loved him so much. So when the Catholic church told my mother that she would have to have that first marriage annulled, I have no doubt it hurt her but it also bothered me tremendously.

Dictionary.com defines the word annul this way:   to make void or null; abolish; cancel; invalidate; to reduce to nothing; obliterate.

That's what the church wanted my mother to do. Obliterate all ties to a man she once loved, a man with whom she shared a son. That's pretty damned harsh.

Don't even get me started on all of the sexual misconduct that has been revealed to have happened over the course of the last hundred years by Catholic priests. And don't come back at me arguing that NOT ALL priests did that. I'm not stupid, I know that not all priests are perverts. But the Catholic church hid these findings for so many years, that to me, again IN MY OPINION, the church itself is perverse for allowing it to continue.

Ok so all that being said, 16 and I were working on this questionnaire on Sunday. One of the questions was: Describe your faith. My answer was this: LACKING Her answer was: strong but it could be stronger. Then came the doozy.  The question was: what I could do to help my children in dealing with obstacles in their faith. I left it blank. I explained to 16 that I want both of them to be informed enough to make their own decisions about their faith. But I was overlooking something. How would they be informed if I don't actually give them the tools to make those decisions. I take them to mass when they have a mandatory Youth Mass in preparation for Confirmation, and then we do a church pot luck afterwards. But if we have something else going on, I really don't mind skipping church to do that something else. But that's not really helping THEM make informed decisions.

I've told them before that I don't want to make their choices FOR them, but in reality, isn't that exactly what I'm doing? They're not going to walk to church by themselves. So I thought about it for a minute and told her that I guess I really do need to make more of an effort to get them to church so that they CAN make those choices for themselves. At that point, she took my questionnaire and filled in the answer to the question I left blank: Do it for the children

She and I looked at each other and just cracked up because it really was funny. I said it sounded like a telethon or something. But the reality of it is, I DO need to do it for my children. How can they make informed decisions if I don't open the door for them to explore? So I'm going to swallow my pride and make the effort to get them to church as often as their schedules will allow. I feel like a hypocrite when I attend mass and go through the motions, reciting the prayers like singing my A-B-C's. But they need to decide for themselves what they want to do with faith in their lives.

Wow! I must be psychic!!

I feel like I brought this on. Maybe it was just too much pressure, maybe I drove him to do it. But yes, I'm taking the blame for Bieber's antics. I'm thinking he probably read my last post and just could NOT bear the thought of me changing my name because of his behavior and that drove him to go out, take prescription drugs (that his mother allegedly gave him), smoke weed, drink booze, rent a Lamborghini and do 60 in a 30. My bad, yo.

I had no idea that when I posted my blog on Monday, it would drive him to do something so drastic. It's really unbelievable to me that I wield so much power, and yet I can't get my own children to clean up the kitchen after they make hot chocolate. I must be an amazing resource for other parents. Maybe I'll start renting myself out. I'm like the douchebag whisperer! Think about it: I posted on Monday about his antics and how I don't want my name to be that closely associated with his, and BAM! As if on cue, he goes out and proves his dumbassedness!

I need to be much more careful in my posts from now on. Wouldn't it just be AWFUL if I posted a blog about how badly I wanted to win the lottery....and then like, two days later, I DID?!?! Or maybe I should re-think posting that blog about how I would desperately LOVE to meet Mike Rowe! Wouldn't it just be horrible if he showed up in my town and I met him in a coffee shop and we fell instantly in love?? (sorry honey, but..MIKE ROWE!!!) No, that would be just TERRIBLE. So I will refrain from writing a post about my meeting Mike Rowe and having him fall in love with me. The consequences would be tragic (to my husband and family, for me, not so much).

The possibilities are endless! If you're looking for me, I'm off to go work on that blog post about how Jennifer Lawrence and I should become best friends.

Why I'm considering changing my last name

My last name is dangerously close to Bieber. Lately, that's a little too close for comfort. Let me be clear:

My last name = sane, nice. 

Bieber = lunatic punk assbag. 

Need proof?

Consider, if you will, the incident with Bieber's neighbor, where Bieber and his thugs egged the neighbor's house and shouted expletives. This, my friends, is a boy who needed to be spanked more as a child. It's not too late for his mother to give him a good hard slap on the ass, because he wears his damn pants so low his ass is right there, ripe for the smacking. He had issues with the same neighbor last year over either a loud party or him driving his loud car up and down the hood, depending on which rag you read. Either way, he's a damn punk, if you ask me, which you didn't. Any 'artist' who finds it funny to spit off the balcony onto adoring fans, in my humble opinion, deserves an ass-kicking.

Look, I don't know if this kid's got talent or not, because he's become too big for his own britches for me to care to listen to his 'music'. If "Baby" and "Girlfriend" are any indication of his 'talent', then I'm gonna go with NO. There are artists out there who are whackjobs (hello? Lada Gaga, Madonna I'm talking to you) but their music is undeniably good (ok, WAS good in Madonna's case), despite their antics, you enjoy listening to them. But in this kid's case, his dumbass behavior continues to tarnish any good he could possibly be doing for himself. So unless he quits the music biz and flies to Haiti to help the orphans, or gets a college degree, becomes a scientist and cures cancer, I'm going to continue to believe that he should've been told "NO" more when he was little. Spoiled brats become entitled adults.

When you surround yourself with people who kiss your ass and tell you that you can do no wrong, you start to believe it. Look at Michael Jackson. Look at Mike Tyson. That's why I don't travel with a posse. I don't want to get too big for my own britches. I don't want the tabloids following me around with cameras, just waiting for a chance to catch me spitting on fans. No, the thug life's just not for me. 

But the blog life, that's the life for me.

Ever have a song just take you back?

Of course you have. We all have. I was driving home from taking 16 to school (yes, she did) and The Waitresses' I Know What Boys Like came on my 80's on 8. I was IMMEDIATELY transported back to 1983, in Anna's room where my group of girls were getting ready to go out. Anna had 12 clocks in her room. None of them had the right time, we never knew what actual damn time it was. We just knew that we were going out. Probably to the game room. We loved the game room. All the cool guys went there. Twinkie, Claudio & Fabio (Argentinian twins... SWOON), Chuck (Anna's boyfriend), Bob (Chuck's brother) and John. We'd go there most weekends to play video games or shoot pool and drink Coke. We'd always bring extra money for the juke box because I always wanted to hear Steve Miller Band's Abracadabra. We knew the owner so he didn't get pissed when Anna broke one of the fluorescents over a pool table because she was being cool twirling her pool cue like a baton. She made me swear not to tell anybody (we got there early, before anyone else showed up). I promised. It was our secret. And as soon as the first guy in our crew walked in the door, I immediately forgot our pact and spilled the beans. (sorry Anna)

Back to the juke box, it was awesome and had all the day's hits. But because John had a huge crush on Anna (who was going out with Chuck), we were never allowed to play Toto's Rosanna. Why? Because ANNA, duh!

Remember these?

That year there was a huge party at Marie's. HUGE. Party of the Century! All the cool kids were going. Except for me. I went to Philly that weekend to visit my brother and sister-in-law. That Saturday night I went roller skating with my sister-in-law's sister. While we were skating to Dexy's Midnight Runner's Come on Eileen,  the cops were breaking up the party. Everyone I knew was grounded. Except me, because I was roller skating. Does anyone roller skate anymore? I would imagine it's dangerous, skating and texting. Don't text and skate, kids! You could hit a wall and break your iPhone.

I think that year I wanted desperately to learn the dance to Michael Jackson's Beat It, but sadly, I was a white girl and could only do the white girl dance. Swing those hips, snap those fingers. You know the dance. That was back when Michael Jackson was still a black man, before he turned into a white woman. Ahhh those were the days. That was when I DIDN'T hate Duran Duran's Hungry Like the Wolf. At this point, you're saying to yourself, 'why no link to THAT song'?? Because I hate that song. I've only heard that song about sixty-bajillion times. Apparently radio folks think that's the only song Duran Duran ever did, so that's all they play. How about Is There Something I Should Know?  You're about as easy as a nuclear war. I freaking LOVED that one. But no, that wolf song got all the airplay. Blah.

Well, so much for that little stroll down memory lane. Time to get out of 1983 and come back to 2014. Time for me to get ready for work. Just wondered if you were ever transported back by one song. One single song that brought back dozens of memories and hundreds of smiles.

What song takes you back? Good memories? Bad? Tell me about them.

Hey, you! Do you read? Well, read on!

So Eli over at Coach Daddy participated in a literary challenge to list your favorite books and tag other bloggers to join in the fun. And while he didn't actually TAG any other bloggers, I jumped in and added my own favorites in his comments. And because I'm a lazy slug, I thought it would also make a great blog post, and rather than try to come up with a fresh, new idea, I'd use Eli's. So thanks Eli! If you are a blogger, or a cashier or a diaper changer or a wiper of other peoples' noses or if you've ever just read a book, please feel free to chime in and give your opinion on YOUR favorite books and why. You'll learn a little about me, I'll learn a little about you and if you want to use this on your own page, have at it! The more the merrier.

My faves, in no particular order:

Tuesdays With Morrie - Mitch Albom
I saw the original interview that Ted Koppel did with Morrie before he died and I was moved beyond words by what an amazing person Morrie Schwartz was. I loved Albom's book.

Night - Elie Wiesel
Mandatory reading in Catholic High School. I think I had the reaction they most certainly WERE NOT looking for, as it changed my beliefs in God forever. Haven't been a regular church-goer ever since I closed the book after reading the last page.

The Talisman - Stephen King & Peter Straub
The epic and wonderful story of Jack Sawyer and Wolf (right here and now!) that I have read at least 4 times because I love it so much. It's so funny that after having read this amazing book so many times, I always try to figure out which author wrote which part of the book. Very fun.

And now YOU go! Give me 3!

Blog U Conference. You going?? I am!

I'm going!!! I cannot WAIT until June for the Blog U Conference in Baltimore. 

Blog U Conference, June 6-8 in Baltimore, MD

Who's going to be there? Well how about this cast of characters?

Jen of People I Want to Punch in the Throat

Susan of Devine Secrets of a Domestic Diva

Bunmi of Honest Toddler

Tara of You Know It Happens at Your House Too

Anna of My Life and Kids

Ilana of Mommy Shorts

Kim of Baby Sideburns

Bethany of Bad Parenting Moments

Kim of Let Me Start by Saying

Andrea of Underachievers Guide to Being a Domestic Goddess

Allison of Motherhood, WTF?

Alicia of Naps Happen

Anna of Random Handprints

Suzanne of Toulouse and Tonic

Kerri of House TalkN

Nicole of Ninja Mom

Rebecca of Frugalista Blog

Kim of The Fordeville Diaries

Kathy of Kissing the Frog

JD of Honest Mom

Jessica of Four Plus and Angel

Stephanie of Binkies and Briefcases

Janelle of 649.133: Girls, the Care and Maintenance Of

Meredith of Mom of the Year

Paige of Paige Kellerman: There's More Where That Came From

Amy of Family is Funny

Erin & Ellen of Sisterhood of the Sensible Moms

Robyn of Hollow Tree Ventures

Kelley of Kelley's Break Room

Courtney of Our Small Moments

A bowl out of bacon? Can I get a what what?

Holy crap, Snarklings, you can make a BOWL out of BACON! Remember Sammy Davis Jr. singing "The Candy Man"? He sang "you can even eat the dishes." Well, he wasn't too far off.

Who can take some bacon
Fry it up in goo
Cover it with chocolate 
Doesn't that sound good to you

The baconman can
Oh the baconman can
The baconman can 'cause he
mixes it with love
and makes it all taste good

Or something like that. Sammy and his one good eye would've sung it better than I did.

I was drifting off to sleep the other night when I saw a commercial for "Perfect Bacon Bowls" and woke right up to see what I was missing! Dude, you can make a bowl out of bacon, put a salad in it and call it healthy! Not in the mood for salad in a bacon bowl? How about ice cream? Oh my God I'm trembling at the sound of it! Seriously, you can cook up some scrambled eggs and instead of dirtying up a perfectly clean plate, throw those bitches in a bacon bowl and you've got a delicious breakfast without the mess! (ok you do have the mess of the frying pan from the eggs and the mold you used to make your bacon bowl but whatever, shut up, it's bacon and eggs!)

As bloggers sometimes do, I had a bit of writers block and couldn't really come up with anything interesting (not like this is all that interesting but hey, it beats you reading about how many pine needles have fallen off my Christmas tree). So when a blogger finds a good idea, but it's, like, 3:00 in the morning and they don't want to run downstairs and start banging out a blogpost, they write their ideas down for later so's they don't forget. This is what I did.

I did not have a pen or paper in my room (ok I really do but they are all hiding under the dust bunnies) so I went to the dry erase board we have hanging in our hallway and wrote this down:  "theperfectbacon.com".

The next day I got to hear "Mom, what's that and why'd you write it on the board?"

Because I'm 46 and have the attention span of a gnat.

Well done bacon: the only way to fry

Animated bacon cracks me up.

Photo courtesy: www.jsayers.com

I won't really buy the Perfect Bacon Bowl maker thing because, well, I'm a fat ass and that wouldn't really do much to rectify that situation. It's just nice to know that if I ever got really tiny, and wanted to start eating my china patterns, bacon bowls would be an option. Not sure what you think, but Corelle REALLY isn't all that tasty.

I wasn't paid for this but if the folks at the Perfect Bacon Bowl wanted to pay me in, say, bacon, I wouldn't turn that down (and I wouldn't have to declare that as income on my taxes, would I?)