Cancer Awareness Instead of Lies

Imagine being diagnosed with breast cancer.  All of a sudden you’re consumed with thoughts of possible loss.  You might have to lose your hair because of chemo, your might have to have a single or double mastectomy and lose your breasts, and oh well there’s that chance that you might also lose your life too if the cancer spreads.  In other words you’re scared as hell.

You decide to log on to Facebook to check in on friends… maybe you’ll play a couple of games to help you avoid the real world for a while.  But when you log on you see posts from multiple female friends saying that they’re going on these amazing trips.  One says she’s going on a 10 month trip to Germany while another says she’s going on a 2 month trip to Australia.  Aside from being shocked that so many friends are taking huge trips you think to yourself that it must be nice to be able to plan something that big without worrying about cancer getting in the way.

Then you check your FB inbox and come across this…

Okay ladies, it’s that time of year again…support of Breast Cancer Awareness!! So we all remember last year’s game of writing your bra color as your status? Or the way we like to have our handbag handy?

Last year, so many people took part that it made national news and the constant updating of status reminded everyone why we’re doing this and helped raise awareness!! Do NOT TELL ANY MALES!!!!!! what the statuses mean…keep them guessing!!

And please copy and paste (in a message) this to all your female friends! It’s time to confuse the men again (not that it’s really that hard to do ;]) The idea is to choose the month you were born and the day you were born. Pass this on to the GIRLS ONLY and lets see how far it reaches around. The last one about the bra went around all over the world. Your status should say: “I am going to________________for___________ months.”

The day you were born should be for how many months you are going.

January–Mexico
February– London
March–Miami
April—Dominican Republic
May–France
June– St Petersburg
July–Austria
August–Germany
September– New York
October–Amsterdam
November- Paris
December–Australia

Aside from the ridiculous overuse of exclamation points and bad grammar, what really pisses you off is that not only are your friends LYING about a trip they’re taking but they’re doing it in “support of Breast Cancer Awareness.”  You’re facing a life changing and possibly life threatening illness and this is what your friends are doing to support the cause?

Don’t get me wrong… I love a good meme just like the rest of you.   If someone sends me a way to find out what my Star Wars, Harry Potter or porn name is I’m all for figuring it out and posting it on FB.  However, this bullshit trend of saying that these meme’s are in support of a cause is just that… bullshit.

Excuse my French but what the FUCK does lying about a trip you’re going to take do to spread cancer awareness?!  I get pissed off every time one of these so-called breast cancer awareness meme’s rolls around.  The purse one was fine… stupid but fine.  The bra one was insulting to breast cancer patients and survivors around the world.  Yeah let’s post on Facebook what color our bras are in “support” of women who might not even have breasts anymore… that’s fucking brilliant!  So this time around some genius thought, “Okay, we won’t use anything that’s connected with breasts this time… let’s just flat out lie!  That’ll be SO funny!”  Seriously?

Yes, these stupid ass meme’s do get press.  But what press do they get?  A one minute blurb on the news saying that women are posting “mysterious” status updates to FB in order to support cancer awareness.  That’s it. There’s no follow up that deals with ACTUAL breast cancer awareness!  So essentially the meme is a lazy ass way to SAY that you’re supporting cancer awareness while you really aren’t doing a damn thing.

Here’s what I propose… a meme that actually means something.  One that educates people, inspires people to help, raises funds for research/treatment, honors survivors, and remembers those who lost the fight to cancer.  One that includes EVERYONE.  Men get breast cancer too, you know?  They also love women who have or had breast cancer… it’s absolutely ridiculous to leave them out.  How do you think the man who lost his wife to breast cancer feels about your so-called support?

So instead of putting a lie up as your status and leaving out men do this instead.  Complete the sentence below and use it as your status.

I’m not posting about a fake trip to “support breast cancer awareness,” instead I am truly supporting breast cancer awareness by ____.

Fill in that blank with things that actually DO SOMETHING!  Things like:

… knitting/crocheting chemo caps to donate to the local cancer center.
… volunteering at my hospital/hospice/cancer center to support cancer patients.
…donating x amount of dollars to my favorite cancer charity.
…telling my story about how I survived breast cancer.
…telling my story about how scary it was when my ___ had breast cancer.
…telling you what it was like to lose my __ to breast cancer.
…getting a mammogram!
…driving my friend to get a mammogram.
…attending a cancer fundraiser with friends and survivors.
…giving a hug to my best friend who is  cancer patient and holding his/her hand.

The possibilities are endless really, and get this… you don’t have to LIE!  As a matter of fact, you don’t even need to stick to breast cancer… use the meme to support all cancer awareness!  I can guarantee that by doing this meme you’ll be much more supportive to those who have cancer, had cancer, or lost someone to cancer.

So what are YOU going to do for cancer awareness?  Leave your answer in the comments, post it to Facebook and by all means, share the hell out of this post anywhere you want!

Death of a Jump Drive

“Oh. Woe is to me, business is bad.” – My Big Fat Greek Wedding

My jump drive is dead. After using it regularly with no problem at all, I plugged it into the computer on Friday to find that it suddenly is an “Unrecognized Device” in every single computer on the planet. Some Google searching whilest throwing a massive hissy fit has pretty much led me to realize that the problem is not the computer nor is is Windows XP or Windows 7… it’s a dead freaking flash drive.

Apparently PNY Attache’ jump drives suck because they do this regularly. Google it and you’ll find that pretty much everyone who ones one of these precious little nuggets has had this happen. Of course I didn’t know this because I didn’t think to do research on the freaking jump drive that came with my Netbook when I bought it. *le sigh*

My jump drive has my ENTIRE NaNoWriMo story on it as well as several other works of fiction that are not yet finished and not yet shared with the public. In other words, if I can’t get my data recovered I’m fucked. I will have lost a ridiculous amount of work that I thought was safe because I was saving it on a jump drive instead of on the hard drive.

Data Recovery from the Geek Squad starts at $250. Greedy mofos… Another local company has quoted me with $95.00 per hour and said that it generally takes 1-2 days to recover data. Seriously? It’s almost worth it just to raise my middle finger to them all and start things from scratch. But damn it all to freaking hell, I don’t WANT to! I want to put my cute little pink jump drive with my Lego Yoda on it into the computer and know that my chapters are there and I can then safely move them to some other storage device that won’t suck ass like the Attache’.

Yeah… MASSIVE hissy fits over here.

A Little Bit of Everything

Lots of things on my mind today, read on fair blog readers!

Back to School (Again)

Two years ago I’d enrolled in grad school and then there was a problem with my transcript getting sent to the new school so I ended up not getting everything in on time.  Then I got a job that I thought was going to be a dream job so once again, school was put on the back burner and I focused on this new job of mine.  Well the job turned out to not only prevent me from going back to school but also from having much of a life outside of work at all.  I spent a year and a half on call 24/7 and my own life pretty much fell apart.  So when an opportunity to switch job positions within the agency presented itself, I took the pay cut and traded my on-call job for an 8:30 – 5:00 job and traded one type of stress for another.  I miss the money (even though it wasn’t good pay to begin with), and I miss working with the public doing what I went to school for in the first place.  But I don’t miss being on call and I don’t miss the rest of the bullshit that came along with the job.  Actually, I still get to experience all of the bullshit and more, just in a different manner and for less pay. 

Anyway, after six months of this new job, I finally decided to start researching grad school again.  I figured if I was going to be working a job that I don’t want (despite the fact that I kick ass at it), I might as well use the opportunity to also further my education so I can move on eventually.  Plus if I go back to school those pesky student loan payments that I can’t afford to make on my measly salary can go back into deferment while I go further into debt!

Here’s my problem though… I can’t move away to go to school and I really don’t want to have to commute some ridiculous amount of miles either.  So I have to find either a long distance program, or a local one.  I’m lucky in the sense that there are quite a few university satellite sites in the area, I’m not so lucky though that most of those sites don’t offer a major that I want to study.

I’d researched and talked to people and had pretty much decided that I was going to bite the bullet and apply to a program here in town at one of the more religious schools in the area.  Despite the fact that I got my BA from a Catholic university and that I work for a religious non-profit, I’m not a religious person.  But, the program they offer is reportedly a good one and despite the churchliness of it all, I figured I could deal.  That is until a good friend of mine who I’ve known since I was eleven years old and we were desk partners in the sixth grade sent me a little tidbit about the school on Facebook that I had to look into. 

It was then that I found out that the churchy school I was considering attending had fired a professor in 2007 who had worked for the University for sixteen years because she was openly transgendered.  She’d begun working at the school as a man, and had been making the change and when she told the university about it, they first dropped her pay and cut her hours.  Then they decided that she would only teach online courses so that she couldn’t spread her “sin” around to the students.  They also put restrictions on her like she couldn’t wear makeup or dress as a woman if she was going to be at any school functions.  Finally when her contract was up, they said that they would not be offering her a new contract.  After SIXTEEN YEARS of service they fired her because she was transgendered.

As a part of the LGBT community, I cannot and will not support a school that does that to its employees, plain and simple.  I wouldn’t feel comfortable hanging a degree on my wall with that school’s name on it.  And frankly, how would it look if I were to try and serve fellow LGBT clients with a degree hanging on the wall from a school that was so openly bigoted?  Not good, that’s how.

So… once again I’m back to the drawing board and to trying to figure out what the hell I want to do and where. Yay.  

 

 Court

Court is in session today for a certain someone that I used to work for.  Oh to be a fly on the wall in that courtroom.     

 

 

NaNoWhatMo?

It’s NaNoWriMo time. Time for me to once again commit to something and then struggle with actually doing it because my inner critic steps in pumped up on steroids saying “You can’t do this, sucker!”  But this year I am determined to meet my goal and accomplish the damn thing.

What’s NaNoWriMo, you ask?  National Novel Writing Month, or as the website says, “Thirty days and nights of literary abandon!”  The goal for participants is to write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November (which is roughly 1,667 words a day). 2010 is the twelfth year of the contest and at least my second if not third official attempt.  A 50,000 word novel literally is not a huge deal to me… My books tend to be much longer than that because I write for the internet where stories go on and on and on and on.  And on.  But there’s something about NaNo time (yeah, I call it NaNo because I’m cool like that…) that gets to me.  I freeze up and think, “OMG what am I going to write?!”

In years past, this freeze of creative energy just made me quit trying to do NaNo all together.  This year though, I’m going to get the ice scraper out and beat the hell out of the freeze every time it returns.  I refuse to succumb to the pressure.  I say this, but of course today is day three of the contest and what’s my word count? Big fat zero.  Nada. Zilch.  I’ve toyed with just continuing one of my newer novels that is less than 8,000 words at this point, but the whole point of NaNo is that you work on something NEW.  So despite the fact that I have a new novel to work on, it’s not November New.  If push comes to shove and I don’t get some burst of creativity by the end of week one I will most likely just “cheat” and use the preexisting novel to work on.  But my plan truly is to begin something new, and finish it by the deadline whether it sucks or not. Then I can buy a happy NaNoWriMo Winner tee shirt to wear proudly and know that I am no longer NaNo’s biotch.

Seriously?

I am not a morning person.  Getting up in the morning is one of the hardest things I do every day.  On top of the fact that I simply enjoy sleeping and I like to stay cozy in my bed, I’ve also found that medicated or not, this damn clinical depression of mine makes it very hard to get up in the morning.  I have struggled to be on time to work in every single job (and school) that I’ve ever had if the start time was any time before 10:00 AM.  It’s just how I roll. 

I do not, however, take my lack of morning chipperness out on other people.  If someone says “Good Morning” to me, I say it back.  Even if I don’t like the person and would rather act like that seriously rude dude in the McDonald’s commercial who won’t speak to anyone before his coffee.  I can’t be like that because it’s not in my nature.

So imagine my surprise when today someone who I struggle with comes into the office and asks me and another coworker “Is there a reason you two barely speak to me in the morning when I come in?”

What?

Apparently we don’t say good morning back to her with enough gusto to keep her happy.  She says we mumble or mouth the words but no sound comes out.  What the fuck ever… I know I don’t do that.  This morning when she came in and I said good morning back to her my voice gave out, but I looked her in the face and smiled.  I can’t help it if my voice tends to go in and out in the morning during the first two hours I’m awake and it chose that specific moment to fade out!  But the smile and the eye contact should count for something, right?  She says, “Maybe you guys just aren’t morning people… I know I’m not, but I try to at least say good morning.” I told her, “I know I’m not a morning person, but I do say good morning.”  She then said again that it’s usually a mumble or a mouthing of the words and even threw in a pithy imitation of how she thinks we respond to her.

Honestly, there is no winning with this woman.  Once she has it made up in her mind that she’s right and you’re wrong, there is no telling her otherwise even if you know for sure that you are right.  So nothing I can say will make a difference.  And she’s also put us in a very peculiar situation too because you know I graduated with honors from the School of Smartassedness and what I really want to do from now on when she comes in is go extremely overboard when I greet her and do my best Loud Ass Oprah Winfrey Voice for her. But I know of course this would just cause even more trouble and yet another lecture.  So what do I do?  Continue to respond in the way I always have, which according to her is not good enough, or go for overkill?

I mean seriously, who in their right mind says things like that?  Who the fuck cares if someone says good morning with gusto or not?!  Am I mean to you when I interact with you all day? No.  Am I a jerk to you like you are to me and the rest of the staff on a regular basis? No.  But you come down on me because I don’t say good morning loud enough for your tastes? Give me a fucking break!  And honestly, if you truly have a problem with it, calling someone out like that isn’t the appropriate way to make things better; all it does is make things even more uncomfortable. 

I once worked for an agency where the morning receptionist would never acknowledge me when I walked in and said hello.  It didn’t matter if she was busy working or she’d been sitting there contemplating the color of the walls, she always ignored me.   For a while I just ignored her thinking, “Well if you’re not going to talk to me, then screw you, I won’t talk to you either.”  But then I decided to kill her with kindness.  I said hello and good morning to her no matter what with a great big smile and overkill every morning until she finally started to respond to me.  And you know what?  She eventually became my absolute best friend in the agency and someone who went to concerts with me, roomed with me on business trips, and was an adopted mom to me.  But I can guarantee that had I stopped at her desk and said, “Is there a reason you don’t respond to me when I talk to you in the morning?” none of that ever would have happened.

To be completely honest, I’d like to greet this chick most mornings with a raised middle finger and some saucy expletives, but I don’t because despite being an evil bitch, I’m also a really nice person.  And yes, I know that if there isn’t drama going on this chick will find something to stir up because she simply thrives on the stuff, so today was most likely one of those “Oh gee, what can I bitch about today?” moment… but still, it just makes me so freaking mad!  She doesn’t do her own job, but she sure as hell can pick on everyone else and stir up some drama on a regular basis.  She’s like an 11 year old kid who has to narc on everyone despite the fact her behavior is worse than anyone else’s.   She can’t narc on me for not doing my job because it’s always done (and then some) but she can pick out some stupid thing like the strength of my “good morning.”  What a sad and pitiful existence if that’s all you have to look forward to at work each day.  Blah.

 ~~~~~

So there ya go, that’s what’s on my mind.  And for the record, if this were my NaNoWriMo novel, my word count would be… 2,214.

The Most Annoying Tweeters (and Facebookers)

This is going to piss someone off, I just know it.  Someone will read this and will think that I’m picking on them specifically and they’ll either:

a) pick a fight with me
b) unfollow me then talk shit about me behind my back
c) silently cry in their cornflakes about it 

The thing is, I’m as guilty of most of the following things as everyone else is.   Whether I’ve done it on Twitter, Facebook, or even in one of my blogs, the point is that it’s annoying if you do it all of the time.  Everything in moderation is okay (well, alright if you’re smoking crack in moderation that’s still not good… but we’re not talking about drugs, people!), but if you find yourself doing any or all of the following things on a regular basis you might want to check yourself before you wreck yourself.  😉  If you  however don’t have a sense of humor or you simply can’t poke fun at anything, your best bet is to stop reading right now and follow this link instead.

For those of you still here… I give you The Most Annoying Tweeters (and Facebookers)!

The Woe Is Me Bullshit Tweeter

Example: “Why doesn’t anyone care about ME?“

We’re all entitled to the occasional Woe Is Me Bullshit Tweet.  That typical (and often tacky) cry for attention that we all need every so often to boost our self esteem when our followers reply with “Are you okay? What’s wrong?”  My problem however is when these are the ONLY tweets that you produce.  If your Twitter feed looks like it was written by Eeyore, it’s time to pop some anti-depressant meds and find the happy in your life.  No one wants to read about how depressing your life is all of the time.  Shoot some rainbows out of your ass every now and then, okay?

The Inappropriate Capitalization Tweeter

Example: “This Morning I Scratched My Ass And It Felt So Good!”

I don’t know what it is about Twitter, but so many people do this one and it drives me just a little bit crazier every time I see it.  You don’t need to capitalize every word in your tweet!  In fact, if you do… I’ll consider you a complete tool and will no longer follow you.

 The I Could Have Googled This Tweeter

Example: “Anyone know where there’s a Target in East Lansing?”

If you’re sitting on your ass in front of your computer, don’t tweet something that you could just as easily look up on Google or any other search engine.  It’s one thing if you’re like me and you don’t have the internet on your phone so you tweet via text messages and can’t just hop online to look something up.  But I know for a fact that there are people who are tweeting from their computer about shit that they could find out themselves.  Stop it!  At least do a Google search first and then if you can’t find the answer tweet about it!  When I see tweets like this, you know what it says to me?  It says, “Gee, I’m lonely and want someone to pay attention to me so let me post some random question on the internet that I could find out myself and see if anyone will answer.”  Yep, I said it.

 The Four Square Tweeter

Example: I just became the mayor of Pucks Shop & Save!

I. Don’t. Care.  Not only are you posting your location for the world to see (and letting people who might be stalking you or casing your home for a break-in know where you are) it’s just fucking annoying.  I know a lot of people use Four Square and they love it, I also know there are many people who use Four Square in a responsible and safe way and if you’re one of them, then Wahoo!  But there are also a lot of idiots out there and because of them, I personally think Four Square is stupid. I prefer to make up Fake Square Tweets like “I’m the Mofo Queen of @Starbucks!  Bow down to my awesomeness! #fakesquare”

The I’ve Attached Every Single Website To My Twitter Account Tweeter

Example: “I just renewed my Cialis prescription online via Drugs.com!”

Just because there is an option to connect your Twitter account to a website, you don’t have to do it!  Just like the Four Square Tweet, I don’t care!

The What the Fuck Tweeter

Example #1: “I’m so not looking forward to this.”

Example #2: “There’s two hours of my life I’ll never get back.”

Example #3: “I hate when she does that.”

Example #4: “Just shoot me now, please.”

So if all you ever tweet is random shit that makes absolutely no sense to anyone but yourself, don’t be shocked if your number of followers goes down like a high school slut on the star football player.  What exactly is the point of using a social media website to post randomness that no one understands?  It’s one thing if you’re talking in code occasionally so not to post someone’s name or whatever… but when every single post has no clues as to what you’re talking about, why bother? 

The ALL CAPS Tweeter

Example: “WENT TO TARGET AND PICKED UP THE LATEST COSMO.”

Unless you’re meaning to yell at your followers, don’t ever, ever type in all capitals. Ever.  If you do, you’re an idiot.  Basic Netiquette 101 teaches us that all caps = yelling.  If you’re on the internet and you don’t know this by now, please step away from the Twitter and the Facebook until you can learn some common sense.

The Repeat Offender Tweeter

Example #1: “Dear @FavoriteMusicPerson please talk to me!”

Example #2: “Dear @FavoriteMusicPerson please talk to me!”

Example #3:  “Dear @FavoriteMusicPerson please talk to me!”

I can pretty much guarantee that if you tweet someone the same thing 14 times a day, they’re NEVER going to reply to you!  Wanna know why?  Because it makes you look like a stalker freak!  Not to mention that it makes you look like you’re too lazy to think of something creative to get their attention.  Seriously, people.  Would YOU answer a random person who sent you the same tweet every freaking day?  I think not.

The Clueless Celebrity Tweeter

Someone recently posted on Twitter something that basically said “if you’re a celebrity and you don’t use Twitter to respond to and communicate with fans then you just don’t get it.”  I wish I could remember who said it because I SO agree, but alas, I have no idea who said it and I’m too lazy to look it up.  Before quitting Twitter, John Mayer also said something similar to Kanye West about using Twitter to communicate with the fans not as a means of promotion.  It makes so much sense… why the hell would I want to follow someone who never EVER responds to anyone?  Some of my favorite celebrity twitters are the ones who take time out to talk to their followers.  Hate on him all that you want, but @JustinBieber is a great Tweeter.  He retweets fans, answers questions, posts interesting stuff, and also makes sure to regularly thank the fans for their support.  @DonnieWahlberg is another Tweeter who loves his fans and makes sure they know it.  A famously shitty Tweeter is @nickcarter.  Yes, I love him long time but when it comes to Twitter he sucks.  Until recently when he spent a few minutes answering tweeted questions, he pretty much never interacts with his followers anymore.  He’ll make random posts, beg for more followers and then we get nothing.   Hello, a @BackstreetBoys fan completed suicide recently over some scum who was pretending to be Carter online and he didn’t even tweet about that.  His fellow Backstreet Boy @skulleeroz did though, and even the chick who does all of the tweeting for the Backstreet Boys Official Twitter mentioned it.  A simple “RIP Lana” tweet would have been enough to show he cared.  Another famously crappy Tweeter is the one and only Sean-Puffy-PDiddy-Puff-Daddy-Sean John-Combs.  I followed him for a while because I dig the guy and respect him as a business person… but when it comes to tweeting, ALL he did was promote himself!  He would beg people to buy his current song and get it to #1 on iTunes, he’d retweet messages that other people posted about how much they loved his song, and that was it.  How freaking lame!  Listen up celebrities… if I’m following you it’s because I’m a fan!  Therefore you don’t have to remind me twenty times a day to buy your cd or go see your movie.  If you do, I’m more likely to throw a tantrum and NOT spend any money on you.  Got it?

 And finally… my Top 3 Twitter Pet Peeves

1. Reply – There is a reply function built into Twitter for a reason… you don’t have to direct message someone every time you reply to them.  If you’re that worried about people seeing what you say, why are you on Twitter?
2. Follow Friday – If you’re going to participate in Follow Friday, how about explaining to your followers WHY you think they should check out the people you’re listing?  Very rarely will I click on some random person’s username just because it’s in a #FF post.  But if you tell me why, I’ll probably do it.
3. Spoilers – I’ll be the first person to complain if someone spoils a movie for me or a muchly anticipated television show. HOWEVER… Twitter is about live micro blogging.  Let me say that again a little louder…   TWITTER IS ABOUT LIVE MICRO BLOGGING!  So if you’re planning on watching the American Idol finale on DVR, don’t you dare get on Twitter then piss and moan about people spoiling it for you.  In fact, stay off the damn internet if you’re that concerned.  That’s like saying, “Oh I’m going to watch the Superbowl later so don’t anyone post anything on the internet about it so that I can still be on Twitter and Facebook, okay?”  No it’s not okay!  It’s a live event and the internet is a live place!  Now, I’m not saying that it’s okay to be all “OMG could you belive that Sookie and Eric finally got it on in last night’s True Blood?!” (See how even my spoiler was fake? Uh huh…) That, my friends, is not cool.  And as responsible Twitter users we should always remember that not everyone lives in the same time zone as we do, so Tweeting “Ruuuuuben Studddarrrrrd FTW!” at 10:00 EST isn’t exactly fair to the peeps who haven’t yet reached the end of the show in other time zones.  HOWEVER… people watching a live show in which a winner is announced should still get their asses off of the internet, in my humble opinion.  Even logging onto your homepage for Yahoo! Mail will show you real time spoilers… do you yell at them for spoilers too or do you just leave that for people you know on the internet?

So there you have it… the things that drive me nuts on Twitter and Facebook.  Feel free to defriend me, unfollow me, and tell me how mean I am if you must. 😉