According to CNN.com, Budweiser is being taken over! I feel like somebody has kidnapped my baby! More like, a 30 rack of babies every weekend. I hear all this talk of people protesting Bud by refusing to drink it. But as long as the taste doesn’t change, I’m still in. It just goes down smooth! The BL Smooth!

I understand where you’re comin from. I remember many a cigarette being the “best cigarette of my life.” Don’t take this as a “jump on the bandwagon” post. I don’t want to rub it in, but I want to celebrate my 6th month quitting anniversary by writing a post about pros and cons as I remember them. GO ME! It was tough, I’ll tell you. But it is do-able. If I could quit, anybody could. Write a comment if you need some advice. 

Pros of smoking (as a recall): 

• relieves the need to have a cigarette
• tastes good
• feels good
• looks sexy
• gives your hand something to do 
• gives your mouth something to do (i’m not addicted- my mouth is just bored!)
• no withdrawal!
• gives you a moment to take a break and contemplate things
• alone time
• speeds metabolism and helps lose weight/keep weight off
• helps you concentrate

Cons:

• After-shower smell is gone as soon as you have that after-shower cigarette
• smoke in the eyes
• burn holes on clothes
• hair smells
• breath smells
• get out of breath doing simple things
• COUGH!
• man voice (in women).
• scratchy voice
• clear your throat before you talk
• “Shit, I only have 2 cigarettes left for the night and no money…”
• “Shit, where’s my lighter?”
• “Can I please please please bum a smoke!! I’ll hit you back!”
• feeling isolated 
• not being allowed anywhere inside with your filthy habit
• people looking at you negatively… especially little kids.. and knowing they’re right
• those black lung photos
• strep throat, bronchitis, pneumonia, etc. 
• MONEY! (I have saved over 1,000 dollars in 6 months and counting)
• watching the clock
• dropping your cigarette while driving… SHIT!!!!
• worrying about your next pack
• driving/walking/biking in the snow at 3 a.m. for a pack
• prices going up and up…
• worrying about a quit date
• being controlled by a drug instead of yourself
• worrying about stretches of work, long movies, plane rides, etc. 
• needing to take a break during important things or fun things like poker games. 
• yellow teeth
• yellow fingers
• hating cigarettes and smoking and yourself for losing power. 
• worrying about blowing smoke in people’s faces
• feeling guilty about all those butts on the ground
• feeling guilty about your non-smoker friends getting smoke in their faces. 
• dealing with gross ashtrays. 
• feeling gross when you see a garbage full of empty cigarette packs
• Smoking a half-cigarette that is a day old. 

I could probably go on and on. When I quit (exactly) 6 months ago, I made a pro/con list. I wanted so badly to find that I had much more pros than cons. If I did, there would be no point in quitting, now would there? Well, I was disappointed when I could only come up with a few pros and a seemingly endless amount of cons. Just something to think about, especially since the economy in changing and shit’s getting pricey. I still have moments where I feel like I should be having a cigarette, and I’m still a smoker at heart. But I definitely feel proud for being an ex-smoker! The point of writing this post is basically to reinforce to myself that I am making the write decision. It definitely helped!

So Nintendo Wii has turned Beer Pong into a video game. It will be called “Pong Toss” and mothers are pissed. “My children will start drinking earlier now!”… “This is promoting underage drinking!” [The game is rated T for teen so children as young as 13 can get this game legally.]

First of all, I think the game looks boring. Second, isn’t this pretty much a carnival game- throwing balls into cups? Third, the kids are gonna start drinking at some point when they’re underage anyway. They’ve seen or heard about beer pong before, trust me. Getting all worked up about it is just publicizing and therefore further promoting a game that looks boring. Good job. Chill out. Just don’t buy the keg when they invite their teeny-bopper friends over to play their new Pong Toss game. The parents who are complaining are probably the parents who will watch their children like hawks until they’re 21 anyway.

Go to the Macy’s firework show next year! It’s the bomb.

According to Time on CNN.com, texting while driving is bad. DUH! 

“All of my friends do it,” says Sonalie Patel, 17, who lives in Elk Grove Village, Ill., and admits that she too occasionally sends texts despite a ban on cell phone use for drivers under 19 and adults with learners permits. “It’s like an epidemic.”

Why does Illinois think blowing out 19 birthday candles makes you a suitable candidate to chat on the cell while driving? What’s with the age/multi-tasking correlation?

Would you be more pissed if your partner cheated emotionally? Or sexually? Which one would put you over the edge enough to break-up? A study I found (Forgiveness or breakup: Sex differences in responses to a partner’s infidelity, by Todd K. Shackel, David M. Buss, and Kevin Bennett) says men and women respond differently to their partners’ infidelity. Men think it’s more disturbing when their women cheat sexually than emotionally. Women think it’s more disturbing when their male partners cheat on them emotionally. Men are more likely to break it off with their female partners when they cheat sexually and vice versa for women and their male partners. The authors suggest maybe this difference is based on evolution. When humans began, men wanted to find women who would carry their babies and spread their genes. Women wanted to find men who had the resources to take care of them and their offspring. (Things haven’t changed much, huh?) Now, let’s say a cavewoman cheats on her caveman sexually. If she gets knocked up by this new guy, her caveman now has to wait 9 months to spread his seed. That sucks for him. If she cheats emotionally, that doesn’t really change much for the caveman. On the other hand, let’s say a caveman cheats on his cavewoman sexually. If he gets these other women knocked up, that doesn’t really matter for his wifey. But if he cheats on her emotionally, he may invest more of his time hunting for his new gal, which leaves Mrs. Cavewoman and her babies depleted of resources. What do ya think?

To score my own island in THE WORLD? 

If you don’t know, this photo is of 300 manmade islands off of Dubai in the Middle East. If you click that link, it’ll take you to the wikipedia article about it. This thing cost 14 billion dollars to make. It’s going to be lots of hotels and resorts. It’s (obviously) in the shape of earth (an oblate spheroid?) and you (ha! like “you” will ever go) can swim from country to country to continent. Unfortunately, I don’t think the islands’ millionaire/billionaire owners have the hots for me. There’s a rumor Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are buying Ethiopia. HA!

 

 

 

 

I’m not gonna lie, I miss the days when friends would just show up at my door without the text! I’m guilty of it too though. Ours is a strange generation because we can clearly remember life before cell phones, text messages, caller ID, internet, etc. Now even little kids have cell phones. When was the last time somebody just showed up at your door, unexpectedly?

When I go to a friend’s house, I usually give them a, “I just left my house!” text followed by a, “I am at your house” text. Why are we so afraid to ring the doorbell/knock?

As much as I would love to return to the good ol’ days, I guess I have to accept that times are changin’ and go with it. I have to admit, though, I hate facebook, instant message, and text messages, although I am addicted to this new and strange form of socialization. I especially hate how things get misinterpretted. “Look, Rachel… look at this text message he sent me. He only added one exclaimation mark instead of two. He must not be into me.” Shit like that. Stupid shit like that. Oh, and I hate these kinds of misinterpretation: “this isn’t working.” (Our relationship? Or the phone?) What about this one I got recently on facebook from this DB I haven’t talked to in four years… “Hey baby. I’m drunk. Do you want to hook up?” Ew. Just some advice. Humor doesn’t come out right and neither does flirtation. A question mark is not sexy. 

Okay. Text messages are useful in some situations. When you have just a simple question: “what time is the party,” or statement: “I’ll call you back later. I’m in class.” That works. Sometimes, you just can’t talk. And sometimes, you don’t want to accidentally start a conversation with a chatty person. 

Anyway, just a rant. Maybe I’ll fight the urge and just show up next time. 

To the folks of Long Island- something’s gotta be done about drunk driving, don’t ya think? I mean, Newsday is the most tragic newspaper I’ve ever seen. There have been four teenage/early 20’s deaths in the past few days. (The links to their stories are posted below.) From May 27th to June 9th, 149 people in Nassau county were arrested for DWI’s. Newsday has posted all 149 of their mugshots in an effort to cause a sort of shame to deter future violations. I don’t think it’s working.

 

The newest story is about Natalie Ciappa.. Her father found her drunk on somebody’s couch the morning after partying. We don’t know what happened to her yet. The boy who lived there apparantly got really nervous when the father/cops showed up. Instead of helping her, he cleaned beer bottles and cans and will get 1-4 years for tampering with evidence of a crime scene. Yes, he did something illegal, but we don’t know enough yet to “blame” him for what happened. I guess it’s human nature to find somebody guilty when a young, beautiful girl dies. As far as I know, he was scared shitless of getting charged with her death because he provided the alcohol and he, himself, was a minor. Call me whatever name you want to call me for defending him, but I can see why a kid of his stature would panic in this situation. No matter the circumstances from the night before, he’s underage and scared. This is why the drinking age should be lowered. He was 19 years old and obviously uneducated about the law. If society was more accepting of teenagers drinking (which they’re going to do whether or not it’s legal), kids wouldn’t freak out in situations like this one. Similarly, if society tolerated abortions, girls wouldn’t freak out when they find out they’re pregnant and throw their babies in dumpsters. On a smaller level than society, parents need to be more accepting of their teenagers drinking, even though it’s illegal. It’s all about open communication and education about drinking responsibly. For example, kids shouldn’t be afraid to call their parents and tell them they’re sleeping out because they don’t want to drive drunk. Of course, I have no idea if this guy was hiding something suspicious like drugs, so I’ll post an update about this story when I find out more. 

 

WIth a population of 7,448,618 (wikipedia), I guess it’s expected there will be lots of car-related deaths on Long Island. It’s been going on here forever, but I feel like it’s gotten worse since I moved back here from college. A lot worse. I remember in drivers’ education, the class portion (versus the driving portion) was spent entirely on drunk-driving. We had to cut out three newspaper articles about drunk-driving every week and write a summary about each one. Our final grade was based on a portfolio of drunk-driving Death, basically. We watched video after video of disfigured people and sad mothers. My teacher had lost a brother to drunk driving and informed us: “…look around you at your classmates. Get a good look. At least one of you will die in a car accident by the time you’re 25.” They’re obviously trying to change things and educate us. My high-school did that whole Grim-reaper thing. They “killed” students off throughout the day to represent some drunk-driving statistic. To be honest with you, I was extremely conscious about drunk-driving that day… that week, even… but then it got pushed to the back of my mind and hasn’t popped back up until right now.

 

Long Island tries, but fails to change anything about this problem. The Nassau cops arrested 149 people in two weeks and posted their photos all over the place (whether or not they were found guilty in court), but it doesn’t seem to be changing anything. We’ve got to come up with a better solution. Our legal society is all about punishment and not about prevention. You can punish these people all you want, but we have to get to the root of the problem. Cabs? Public buses? Free anti-drunk driving services? 

-I’m not volunteering myself as a cab driver, by the way. Just putting it out there- maybe some jolly and sober non-profiteer will see this and help us out here on the Island where the booze is a’flowin’

 

Three kids on Long Island who died in the past few days. 

I just watched a horrifying episode of the show, Autopsy. A woman went to a medical examiner to prove that she wasn’t the cause of death for three of her children. She lost a baby daughter to SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) while sleeping with her. Two years later, she had twin boys. She got drunk with a friend one night and went to sleep with the babies. They died of SIDS. Of course, the cops and society interrogated her and made it out like she killed them. The medical examiner did autopsies and found out there is no genetic proof that the babies died in any other way than by her rolling over in her sleep and accidentally suffocating them. I feel horrible for the woman! But I do wonder why she slept with the twins after having lost a child in the same way. The truth it, people just shouldn’t sleep with their babies. Check this out and learn the facts if you have an infant or plan on ever having children. Don’t ever keep stuffed animals or pillows or blankets near the infant’s face while they sleep. And babies should sleep on their backs! Sleeping with your baby can be a bonding/comforting experience, but it’s not worth it!