But you can’t call yourself human and not feel something at the sudden (and probably horribly painful) deaths of a huge number of people. Numbers are impossible to estimate at this point, but they’re talking 50,000 – 100,000. People. Dead. That’s the size of a decent city. And THREE MILLION people in Haiti are affected by the earthquake in some way. Tons are homeless. Their tarpaper-and-spit shacks collapsed, not exactly being up to earthquake building code requirements. And now they’ve got nothing.

So, total dickwads like Pat Fucking Robertson aside (really? Haiti is cursed because it made a pact with the devil? is that the best you could come up with, Pat?), where do the rest of us stand on Haiti?

1. Fact. Haiti is a dinky country located where it’s hot and humid much of the time.

2. Fact. Despite being the first independent nation in Latin America, which sounds all civilized and shit, Haiti — like most of the world — has had an incredibly fucked-up history including pirates, slavery, smallpox, revolution, more slavery, dictatorships, coups, crushing poverty for most and incredible wealth for a few, and US military occupation.

3. Is this a reason to ignore Haiti? Most of us haven’t been there, have no family ties there, have enough shit to worry about…

Three fucking million people. That’s about how many Presbyterians live in the U.S., living right next door. You’d help them, right? But here, have a look at these photos. People’s homes. Lives. Gone. If you’re breathing, you’ll feel something here. Fucking help Haiti.

So, what’s it gonna be? Don’t give me any shit here. Three easy ways to send help to Haiti:

1. RIGHT NOW, you can text “Yele” to 501501 to donate $5 to Yele Haiti. It’ll be charged to your phone. Yele Haiti is a foundation created by musician Wyclef Jean to help impoverished people in his home country. So easy. Just fucking do it. (Hint: this works more than once.)

2. So you can get into this texting for Haiti thing, right? Then text “Haiti” to 90999 and you’ll be sending $10 to the Red Cross. Not as hip as Wyclef Jean, but whatever.

3. Want to give money the old-fashioned way? Fine. CARE is focusing on rescuing children trapped in the rubble of the schools they were attending when the quake hit. Next, they’ll focus on bringing water and food to those who need it. OXFAM is another highly respected aid organization, focusing for now on getting clean water to quake victims.

Go on. Go. What are you waiting for? Already gave money yesterday? Fine, great. Then give up your latte today and DO IT AGAIN.

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You know this world peace thing that has people holding hands and kumbayah-ing all over the place? It even has the evil corporate sellouts Starbucks on board with a trite-but-effective Hallmark moment on Youtube.

What? The Starbucks thing was for African AIDS awareness? Oh, whatever. SAME FUCKING THING.

Jeez.

Where was I?

Oh, right. The world peace bullshit. C’mon, people, we grow through conflict. Hasn’t anyone ever mentioned that before? “Turn the other cheek” never meant be a pussy and walk away from potential conflict, it meant BRING IT, BRO! BRING ME SOME ASS TO KICK!

But hey, I can profane the Bible in so many other ways. We’re talking world peace shit here.

Which I have a solution for.

Sure, I think the whole idea of peace is a little silly. After all, war gives people something to do. It helps keep the population down. It gives people something to fret about. It causes shitloads of karma. That stuff can’t be bad, right? I mean, without war we’d be, like, happy or something.

But hey, have it your way. And because I’m brilliant I have the solution. To end war.

Inflatable boxing gloves.

BOP. Put a pair of these bad boys on and whack away. Think about it: your boss, your wife, the dude with 11 items in the 10-items-or-less line. You name it. BOP. Conflict ENDED, man.

Issue a pair of these to every man, woman, and child (and the ambiguously-gendered; wouldn’t want to leave anyone out here) and you have your world peace within about two weeks. Just insist that any conflict be resolved with the inflatable boxing gloves or we’ll be cutting balls off.

Simple.

Effective.

So. Fucking. Brilliant.

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And now the pressure is on. Fine. In the last eight months or whatever, The Bitch has had plenty of time to hone her already razor-sharp wit, to fine-tune her startlingly astute opinions, and to separate out the New Age bullshit from the sweet sweet perfume underneath the steaming pile.

Which is why we’re talking about Signs and Omens today.

How many times have you heard this:

“I was seeing these plus signs everywhere, just EVERYWHERE … blue ones! Especially on those little white sticks that Xerxes kept insisting I pee on. Isn’t that wild? It was totally a sign, that’s what I kept telling Xerxes, a sign. And next thing you know we’re engaged. Want to see the ring? I told Xerxes that he was supposed to spend two months’ salary on it, and he said something about paying for it with blood, something about ruining his life forever? But whatever, I mean, we’ve already set the date and all, and I have all those darling blue plus signs to thank for it!”

Or this:

“11:11. It’s EVERYWHERE. The microwave. The alarm clock. In the car. We’ve been seeing it for weeks now. Eleven eleven. So we’re going to name our daughter that. Eleven. It’s a sign.”

Sound familiar? Another nutzoid making important life decisions based on what they think a clock is telling them.

ALL HAIL THE CLOCK OF WISDOM!

I’m sure that darling little Eleven (or Evelyn, as her parents will sheepishly change it to a few months later, or perhaps Elven if they’re total LOTR freaks, and if you know what LOTR means then you might be one too, but you’ve already named your kids Frodo and Arwen which means I just cannot help you, sorry) will appreciate someday knowing that her parents were slaves to a hunk of plastic that plugs into the wall.

I can hear you whining already in that miserable pleading voice, “But Bitch, I KNOW that signs are telling me something! I just know it!”

Yes, and they are. They might be telling you that you need more fiber. Or that your mouthwash is, apparently, not doing its job. Or that you need to sell all your belongings and dress in long shapeless garments made of handspun hempen flax and stand barefoot at freeway exit ramps, attempting to stare passing drivers into submission with your newly-acquired laserbeam stare.

Or, they might be telling you nothing of consequence at all.

You have to decide which.

Signs do have meaning, though. Let me explain. First you have to understand that the You as you know yourself to be is just a small and puny part of the overall You That You Are. So say that we are all actually M&Ms. The part you know yourself to be (“Mr.Personality”) is the colored candy shell — thin, easily cracked, and melts in my mouth, not in my hands. And the bigger, wiser, and frankly more substantial part (“Chocolate Soul Brother,” or just “Soul” for short) is what’s inside the candy shell — complex, has a wider perspective, hangs out on the astral plane, etc.

Mr. Personality is kind of stupid. Well, one-dimensional. He gets caught up in day-to-day life, like about who gets to eat the red ones, and forgets the big picture. Soul, on the other hand, has got it goin’ on. Soul sees clearly the whole big picture and then some. Soul has this loose plan-thing, stuff he’d like to accomplish in a given lifetime, but he’s got to keep Mr. Personality from getting too distracted by things so they can get anything done. Soul is more or less the brains while Mr. Personality is the brawn. Soul can’t do much on the Earth plane because Soul doesn’t have physical form except as expressed by Mr. Personality. They need one another. This works pretty well except for one thing. Communication. The thing is, they don’t speak directly to each other most of the time. It’s weird — you’d think that chocolate and a candy shell could talk to one another, but they don’t speak the same language.

So they resort to signs.

Say your soul needs to tell you something. Like maybe it’s time to stop picking your nose and scratching yourself and to start doing whatever this big Life Plan stuff was that you signed up for. Since your soul doesn’t actually have arms, it can’t wave them wildly in front of your face to get your attention. Instead, you get little nudges. Like to look at the clock once a day, say, at 11:11. After several days (or maybe weeks, depending on how dense you are) of this, you suddenly go “OMG A SIGN!” and then madly start Googling 11:11, soon becoming convinced that the world is ending IN JUST TWO YEARS and you’ve got to help prepare, so you sell everything and move to New Zealand, where you hope that both the proliferation of sheep there and the space-time continuum regarding reverse drain flow in the Southern Hemisphere is going to save you.

Now, if you had been paying attention, and trusted yourself instead of Google The Omniscient to determine the course of your life, you might have taken those 11:11’s for what they were:  nudges. And then, if you were smart, you’d simply start listening for more. You’d ask questions like “What is this sign really telling me?” (hopefully you are not asking this out loud in the presence of your boss) and then wait for an answer to take shape. Doing this, frankly, takes trust in yourself and also in the connection you have to yourself on a soul level.

“But Bitch,” you whine again, a confused puddle on the floor, “How do I KNOW? What the signs are telling me? Can’t you tell me, pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease?!!!!”

Well, sure I can.

But do you really want to trust me with The Rest of Your Life? How do you know I won’t tell you that you need to shave your head, paint yourself green, and become a lamppost in order to find enlightenment? People are so quick to give up their own power and just hand it away to some stranger. Use yours. Trust The Bitch — you do have inner wisdom.

“But Bitch!” (this whining thing is getting out of control) “What about Omens! YOU SAID OMENS!!!”

Oh. Yeah. Those.

Okay, two, no three, schools of thought on omens, which are signs foretelling the future, right?

1. School #1. Time is simultaneous (that’s right: past, present, and future are all in this one big amorphous Now), which means that omens telling the future, or at least pointing to a possible future, are not a crock of shit and can exist. CAVEAT: like signs, omens also mean what you think they do. In other words, their entire meaning is the meaning you give them. If you think, for instance, that seeing two crows walking hand in hand (wing, beak, whatever) across the street means you’re going to meet this fabulous guy to walk hand in hand with for the rest of your life (or until one of you gets tired of it, which is reality people, let’s face it, and we’ll talk about this “forever” nonsense another time), then SO BE IT, IT IS SO, it is done, amen.

2. School #2. Omens don’t mean shit and you can’t predict the future.

3. School #3. OMG! I live my life doing everything the signs tell me! Also not stepping on cracks! And holding my breath in tunnels! And OMG black cats! And ladders!

(HINT: The answer is not #2 OR #3)

TO REVIEW: Signs are a way of your soul kicking you in the head. Pay attention. Then listen. They mean what you think they mean. Don’t ask other people what they think your signs mean; your signs are for you and if you ask other people you’ll only get their opinion and why are you giving your power away like that? Listen to yourself, pay attention, and be cool.

Also: in the U.K. please substitute “Smarties” for any reference to “M&M’s” in this post. We apologize for any momentary confusion.

Now go forth and spread the wisdom! Also tell everyone you know.

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True story:

I was driving down a deserted country road somewhere in New Mexico, or maybe upstate New York, last December. I hear this WHOMPWHOMPWHOMP noise at 70 mph and I pull over. Yep, the left rear tire is flat. Shredded. Oh, fuck, I think, do I even have a jack? How many years has it been since I changed a tire anyway? And what about my nails?

Fuck. I get out of the car. It’s cold and I know my fingers are going to freeze off.

I’m digging around in the trunk trying to remember what a jack looks like when I hear a car approaching. I look up. Scratch that — it’s not a car, it’s a pickup truck. Filled with big burly dudes in plaid hunting jackets. This could get ugly. The truck stops. The big burly dudes sit in the cab of the truck, three of them. Do I even have an umbrella in here? Any sort of weapon? I knew a judo throw once. That might work. I consider the use of my 5-inch leopard heels as ninja throwing stars.

Suddenly there’s a HUGE ELECTRICAL ZAPPING SOUND in the air right above my head. I look up and see something huge, shimmering, can’t tell what it is, right above my head about 100 feet up. No shit. Burly dudes don’t seem to hear the sound, don’t see it. They’re still conferring on the best way to roast juicy thighs of New Age Bitch over an open fire.

And then …

ZAAAAPPPP

The pickup truck is lifted, I AM NOT SHITTING YOU, right into the air. Burly dudes and all. Into a giant alien spacecraft.

Oh, and also my flat was fixed.

So I got down on my knees and thanked the Baby Jebus for fixing my flat tire and then I went and did what anyone would do in this circumstance, which is to go straight to the National Enquirer and sell my story, which I did for $250 and a coupon for the Olive Garden, and then I got a job at Wal-Mart, which is where I was until yesterday when someone cashed out my drawer and took my red smock and nametag and POSED AS ME so I figured it was about time to start blogging again.

Oh.

What?

Not believable enough? Which part was it? It was that my flat got fixed, wasn’t it? I wondered if anybody’d call me on that one.

Okay, so true story:

I was driving down a deserted country road somewhere in New Mexico, or maybe upstate New York, last December. I hear this WHOMPWHOMPWHOMP noise at 70 mph and I pull over. Yep, the left rear tire is flat. Shredded. Oh, fuck, I think, do I even have a jack? How many years has it been since I changed a tire anyway? And what about my nails?

Fuck. I get out of the car. It’s cold and I know my fingers are going to freeze off.

I’m digging around in the trunk trying to remember what a jack looks like when I hear a car approaching. I look up. Scratch that — it’s not a car, it’s a pickup truck. Filled with aliens. No shit! Little green dudes in plaid hunting jackets. They rolled down the window and looked at me. They said stuff.

Dld;dd;;fioijsdjsjitiur5u.  Iotityutiiititrjttuyyyydfofofoeeeikkkklllpp. gj? yyywww&&%^mmbNNifdlgrjkncdxk@@.

I performed my Amazing Mind Reading Trick and was able to understand what they said. Perfectly.

“Hey, get a load of that!”

“Yeah, can you believe those shoes? In this weather? Five-inch heels and snow just do NOT mix! Plus, NOBODY is wearing leopard this year. That’s so 2007!”

“You’re so gay, ZZryyp.”

“I know you are, but what am I?”

“Shut up, both of you! We need to convince this human to return with us to our planet to help propagate our species. Our search for someone who can understand the complexity of our nine different genders and three different species densities  must be successful! You know as well as I do that without help we’ll all die. Can you both shut up long enough for me to talk her into going with us?”

“I will if HE will.”

“I’m making no promises.”

“Fine. Whatever.

They looked at me. I looked at them. One of them cleared its throat. Choking sounds started coming from it, like a cat being strangled underwater.

“Fine,” I muttered. “I’ll go. Just have me back by the end of the year, okay?”

The alien dudes turned a brighter shade of green, which since then I’ve come to know is their way of showing pleasure. Whatever. Save an alien race? Sure, I could do that. And I’d be back by the end of the year.

I forgot to specify WHICH year.

So, whatever. Life went on without me. I used to be on Alltop. Now, apparently not. I used to have a readership. Now, well, hi.

But The Bitch is BACK, baby. And we’re gonna have us a time, talking about things. Like breast implants. And toothpaste tube middle-squeezers (you know who you are). And climate change. And new age woo-woo crappiness (not to be confused with new age awesomeness, but if you’re good I’ll tell you how to know the difference).

So, are we cool? Tell your friends.

P.S. Do not, DO NOT, under any circumstance ever utter the phrase “Anal Probe” in my presence. Do NOT. Unless you come prepared with lube.

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Not only that, but The Bitch is just effing tired. Heh, I said ‘effing’ when I go ahead and say ‘fuck’ in the title. That’s irony. Either that, or The Bitch is just freaking tired. Too tired to type proper profanity.

So what’s new with you?

You know what? I should probably care about SEO optimization and all that shit but I don’t. I’m just downloading what’s in my head here. We don’t even spellcheck.

So when I start talking about my real topic, you won’t be surprised, will you?  So here we go:

Last week there was an election. Remember that? And a whole bunch of people were like crazy happy, because in one day, ONE FREAKING DAY PEOPLE, the world changed. Colors were brighter. People smiled at one another. People hugged each other (except for the gays in California, who are still not allowed legal hugging) and remembered what it was like to hope.

Hope.

Hope is a fucking transient thing, people.

[I should mention here that while a whole bunch of people were chill about the electionary outcome, a whole bunch more were pretty pissed off. It usually goes like that.]

[But fuck them since I know who I voted for anyway.]

Hope. What’s up with that, anyway? One day we’re all boo-hoo-the-world-sucks, and the next it’s like dude!-look-at-all-the-colors!-shiny! You know? And what’s happened since then? Seriously. I want to know. What’s happened?

The sun still comes up, right? And it still goes down? And you’re still paying off your mortgage (or not) and working at your job (or not), and things are pretty much the same as they were the day before the election. Right? Still drinking the same coffee? Still have two-legs-two-arms-two-eyes-a-brain (or not)?

I’ll tell you what’s different.

Hope.

You thought things would change, and so your perception of things changed. That’s all. Your perception. Remember this, will you? Because next time you’re all boo-hoo about something, remember it’s not the THING that needs to change for you to feel better about it, but YOUR PERCEPTION OF THAT THING. That’s all. An attitude adjustment. Change your brain, change your life (without the extra helping of judgment that there is something WRONG with your brain, okay?). That’s all it takes. Looking at things differently.

What, not convinced?

Fine.

An example, then.

Two people. Person A sells or gives away all his shit. All of it. Every last bit. He doesn’t make a ton of money from the selling, and he’s careful to give his shit to people who might love it the way he did. He’s left with what fits in his car. People ask, “WTF?” and he says, “OMG, I can’t believe what’s happening to me. I feel so fucking powerless. I had to sell all my shit and now I don’t know what the fuck I’m going to do. THIS SUCKS.”

Person B sells or gives away all his shit. All of it. Every last bit. He doesn’t make a ton of money from the selling, and he’s careful to give his shit to people who might love it the way he did. He’s left with what fits in his car. People ask, “WTF?” and he says, “DUDE! I feel so free! This is totally awesome, like, I am CONNECTED with the universe! You should try it.”

Okay, maybe this one is too obvious. But who is, um, happier? Who has hope? Who seems more open to the possibilities that life might just be sort of okay after all, even when things sort of suck?

Now, I’m not asking you to go all Pollyanna here, but seriously: who do you want to be, Person A (the realist), or Person B (obviously on hallucinogenics)?

See? It’s all in how you look at it.

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So let’s talking about whining, shall we?

Ugh, already I’m feeling that little edge of disgust, the one you get when you’re talking to somebody with LOTS of extra drool in their mouth, when you feel like if you only watched long enough, a big wet glob of that drool would ooze its way out of their mouth while they talk and you’d watch it plop wetly and silently right onto their collar, where it would slowly sink in, leaving a wet snail-trail slime spot of shiny mouth-ooze.  And you Can’t.Look.Away.  You are mesmerized by that mouthful of slobbery wetness.  And you’re totally disgusted at the same time, not only at what you’re watching, but at yourself for watching it.

That’s what fucking whining does to me.

And people whine All The Fucking Time.

Hello!  Whiners!  Instead of TALKING about it, why don’t you DO something about it?  Or just do SOMETHING period!

But no.  It’s far easier to just complain about stuff than it is to own it.  Owning your shit takes guts.  Owning your shit takes the courage to LOOK at your shit to begin with.  And who wants to do that?  No, it’s far easier just to sit on that couch holding the remote in one hand and your dick in the other, picking your nose with your other [and magically manifested] hand, yelling at whoever’s in the kitchen to HURRY IT UP FOR CRYING OUT LOUD THE SHOW’S ABOUT TO START GODDAMMIT, than it is to put your dick away and put down the fucking remote, get up, and walk into the goddamn kitchen yourself.

But the Wal-Mart generation has bred a bunch of illbred inbreeds who find it far easier to complain about the smell of everybody else’s shit than to notice that they’re sitting in a pile of their own.

The other day was Blog Action Day.  More than 12,000 bloggers wrote about poverty.  Many of them solicited donations for the Global Fund, Feeding America, Donors Choose, Project Peanut Butter, and others (how can you not give money to support the development of peanut butter?).  Others banded together and made microloans to people in need of a helping hand all over the world through Kiva.

And while on the one hand you can make the case that each of those 12,000+ bloggers was whining about poverty, the idea was to make the whining count for something.  So much mass whining all on the same day has an effect.  If you read blogs, and you read on Blog A about Blog Action Day and on Blog B something else about Blog Action Day and on Blog C something yet again about Blog Action Day, then either:

a) You unsubscribe from blogs A, B, and C because who wants to hear about poverty? Especially when it’s not mine! Bring on the LOLcats!

or

b) You fucking Get The Point, and like everyone else you are affected by what you read and decide to get up off that couch and go Do Something, like maybe donate that jar of pennies or something, or maybe make a microloan of your own (they’re an excellent return and change people’s lives, one sad shitty life at a time.  What’s better than that?).

But that’s about the only example of Whining For Good that The Bitch knows about.  All other forms of whining are shit and need to be eradicated from the planet.  Immediately.  Before they do more harm.  In fact, The Bitch can make a case for the theory that global whining is the CAUSE of global warming.  All that fucking hot air.

So next time you hear some fuckwit droning on about the gum-snapping woman in the airplane seat next to him, or about the guy in front of him at the supermarket who had ELEVEN items in a 10-and-under lane, do something.  Because all that whining is seriously using up all our air. Tell him to either quit his bleating and shut the fuck up or stop breathing up all our air.

It’s us or them, people.  Global whining is a serious matter.

*Fellow Brilliant Blog-Type person is Christa who wrote some funny shit about the time she rear-ended a dwarf (oh get your fucking mind out of the gutter! Not THAT kind of rear-ended!) and also some serious shit about, well, go see for yourself.  You need to.

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Fuck, I don’t mean now. Finish THIS post first, and THEN click. *Eyeroll*

Anyway.  I got to the end of Tim’s post where he’s talking about phrases to use instead of the garbage some of us usually fill our heads with, and when I came to “I want…”, fucking lightbulbs were exploding ALL OVER.  Seriously!  You know that mythical “aha!” moment we’re supposed to have when we think of something brilliant?  Well, picture that times like a thousand, because The Bitch is THAT brilliant.  Brilliant times a thousand.  And that’s like a hundredth of the actual lightbulbs.

I want.

Say that a couple of times, will you?

I want.

How does that feel?  Kind of weird, right?

See, the thing is, we’re all sort of fucked up when to comes to “I want.”  Lots of us, when we’re kids or something, are told in one way or another that saying “I want” is a bad thing.  Selfish, maybe.  We should think of others, not ourselves.  Think of those poor starving kids in China while you choke down those cold congealed peas!  And next time eat everything on your plate!

So “I want” has judgments.

And then we put “I want” away.  We don’t know what we want, because we’ve hidden it away in a dark closet somewhere.

Or, we go crazy with “I want.”  We run up enormous credit bills filled with “I want,” each trying to make a dent in the emptiness we feel inside.  We fill bigger and bigger houses with boatloads of crap destined to take over our landfills, and still it’s not enough.  We still feel that emptiness, even when surrounded by everything we thought we wanted.

The trouble is, we still don’t know what we want.  We’re running after something, sure, but we haven’t gotten to the heart of it.  “I want” is still hidden.  It’s underneath that pile of crap, hidden below a stack of credit card statements.

Oh, we talk about what we want all the time.  “I want world peace!” we chirp, or “I want a warm house in a safe neighborhood where I can raise my family!”  We talk about wanting stuff, but it’s the stuff that it’s okay to say we want.  These things are socially acceptable, so we are conditioned to want them.  A 4 bedroom 2.5 bath house in the suburbs, 1.7 kids, an iPhone and a Prius.  That’s what we want.  And while we’re at it, we want good government, adequate and available health care, world peace, an end to climate change, our health, and maybe some more Doritos.

We want what everyone else wants because it’s okay to want that.

But we still don’t know what WE want.

What do you want?

Feel that?  You had to take a deep breath, didn’t you?  You know why?

Because you don’t know what you want.

Most of us don’t know what we REALLY want.  Knowing what you want takes WORK.  You have to dig deep.  You think about what you want and then you go deeper:  WHY do you want that?  And digging deeper takes guts.  It takes courage.  It takes the strength to really look at yourself and answer questions with honesty.  And most of us aren’t all that willing to do that.  It’s hard.  It brings stuff up.  It feels icky.  And it reveals answers that may not fit within the image of ourselves we thought we had.  It reveals a person we didn’t know we were.

Is that what you want?

Do you want to find out who you really are?

Then start asking yourself, What do I want? And start listening to the answers.

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I hate that word.

It’s a beautiful word, when said in sincerity, but frankly the meaning has become fucked up.  No one means what they say.  It’s rote, routine.  Meaningless.

I no longer accept it.  I am done, finished, finito, kaput.  C’est tout.

Instead, you can just say what you mean:  “Fuck you, bitch!  I totally meant to pull out in front of you in traffic today because YOU SUCK!  And I’m just generally pissed off!  For no apparent reason!  And apologizing seems to placate you!  And saying it makes me socially acceptable instead of being seen as the fucktard asshat I really am!”

There.  Doesn’t that feel better?  Say what you mean.  It’s all there anyway, why hide it?

You know what REALLY pisses me off?  Parents who forcibly make their kids apologize.  “Johnny, tell Aunt Mimi you’re sorry for scuffing her floor with your shoe!”

Johnny’s not sorry because Johnny had no idea he did anything wrong.  Even if he had asked Aunt Mimi why she is so fat he was doing nothing more than being a kid.   A curious kid.  A kid who wasn’t issued a copy of the Holier-than-Thou Manual of Grownup Social Mores and is clueless about having done something wrong.  And even if he did something that he knows is wrong, like, say, breaking one of Aunt Mimi’s 12,000 Precious Moments figurines, why humiliate the kid?

True Story?

Try to imagine The Bitch at age 4.  Tiny Bitch.  Like most really really smart kids, Tiny Bitch is a little socially retarded.  Not a lot of friends at age 4.

So Tiny Bitch is out front in the driveway washing her tricycle, the green one that was a step up from the tiny red one.  Its almost time for a two-wheeler with training wheels, but not quite.  All Tiny Bitch has is her tricycle, and she’s fucking proud of it.  Mom and Dad wash their car, so why not wash that tricycle?  The garden hose is handy for that sort of thing.

Here comes Prissy, the 3-year old baby next door.  Tiny Bitch knows Prissy is a bit of a weenie and a baby, so she doesn’t usually do more than ignore her.  But Prissy is interested in the tricycle-washing process.  It’s fascinating, really, this idea of washing one’s tricycle.

So Prissy comes back over pushing her own tricycle.

Tiny Bitch has warmed up a bit to Prissy by this point and is feeling magnanimous.  Handling a garden hose in the warm sunshine can have that effect.  Tiny Bitch is feeling so magnanimous, in fact, that she wants to help Prissy wash her tricycle.  Tiny Bitch and Prissy, they’re bonding now.  Over tricycles.  And a garden hose.  It’s really quite a beautiful thing, this thing they’ve got going.

Prissy isn’t very good with the hose.  She accidentally sprays Tiny Bitch a tiny, wee bit.  Tiny Bitch thinks this is funny.  After all, she’s the one who makes real pies out of dirt and mud sometimes; why wouldn’t playing with water out there in the warm sunshine also be fun?

Tiny Bitch takes the hose.

She sprays Prissy with it, a lot.  Tiny Bitch is laughing because she knows Prissy knows how much fun this is.  It’s warm outside and they have bonded in the sunshine.  With the tricycles.  And the hose.

Prissy’s laughter stops.  Her face gets red and twisted.  She looks funny.  She runs away.

Tiny Bitch finishes washing her tricycle, alone.  She wonders where Prissy went.

Mom comes out, her lips pressed in a white line.  She grabs Tiny Bitch by the arm, just above the elbow.  It almost hurts.  She makes Tiny Bitch walk up to the door of Prissy’s house, the house next door.  Tiny Bitch has never been to that door and she is feeling scared, a little.  The door opens.  An angry lady stands there, waiting for something.  Mom tells Tiny Bitch to say some words and she says them.  Robot.  A scared robot.

Then Tiny Bitch has to put her tricycle away, and the hose.  She knows she will never be washing her tricycle again.  But what happened?  They were having fun.

And yeah, The Bitch has gotten over it, thanks for asking.

“Sorry?”  Nine times out of ten, maybe more, it means shit.

Someone dies?  We say “sorry.”  As if that could possibly convey the enormous amount of grief and pain people feel at such times.  And hell, maybe we’re not actually sorry, maybe the guy was an asshole and there’s this sense of relief (mixed with shock, dismay, and a distorted reminder of one’s own mortality) that he’s not going to be telling his stupid blonde jokes in the office anymore, but we can’t say that.  It isn’t “done.”

We also say sorry for running out of potato chips.  Or for stepping on someone’s foot accidentally.  Or for running over their cat.  See any problem with this meaningless one-size-fits-all word?

I do.  And I’m over it.

Say what you mean and mean what you say.  Simple.  And don’t fucking apologize to me unless you mean it.

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They’re all, “I don’t eat anything with eyelashes!” and then they force-feed us pictures of sad Bambi-eyed creatures destined for the slaughterhouse.  These people claim they believe in non-violence, yet have you seen how violently they thrust those dangerous pamphlets at you?  Dude!  Those things are dangerous!  A corner could put somebody’s eye out.  Or cause a paper cut.  Non-violence MY ASS.

Another thing.  Vegetarians, veg-what are they called?  Oh.  Vegans (whatEVERR).  Those people.  The ones who patronizingly refuse to eat the food “God”* clearly put here for us to dominate and exploit?  They seem to be missing the larger point.

Everything is alive.

That means that salad you’re so condescendingly consuming, thinking you’re doing a Good Deed for Mother Gaia by only eating non-animal things, is alive.  Alive and has a consciousness.  Are you okay with that?  Can you live with yourself?  You’re okay with killing the potential grandchildren of heads of lettuce?  Ew!  You eat HEADS??!  EWWWW!

There are two options:

1.  Become a breatharian.

Come on, it’s fucking real.  You could live on air and light if you were enlightened enough.  Not yet ready to give up Krispy Kremes?  Read on.

2.  Do what the Bitch does.

Don’t give a fuck.

Everything is alive and everything has a consciousness.  So what?  For centuries people killed stuff and ate it.  They were grateful.  They acknowledged that they were taking a life, taking the energy of what they ate.  They knew they were taking the energy of whatever they consumed into their bodies.  Or they killed stuff and ate it and weren’t grateful.  It didn’t make a difference. Everything is alive and everything is energy.  Energy is energy is energy.

Sue, you’ll probably FEEL a whole lot better if you eat real food, acknowledge its aliveness, and hold that in gratitude.  Animals do.  We don’t see them on their knees praying, but who decided what gratitude looks like?  Being present is one of the highest forms of gratitude there is.

And if you want to stalk your neighborhood with a crossbow so you can bag your neighbor’s cat (or better yet that yapping little ankle-biter dog-in-a-handbag-thing next door), so be it.  I’ll look the other way.  As long as you’re grateful.

The important thing is to be at peace with your hypocrisy.  The Bitch is.

Oh, I know what you’re thinking.  You’re thinking about extrapolating this and talking about war and shit.  For the record, war sucks.  It ruins lives, kills people needlessly, and just, well, sucks.  In the larger scheme though it’s no big deal.  We live, we die, sometimes peacefully, sometimes horribly, but we always die.  And then we get to do it again.  That’s a sort-of comforting thought for those who believe it, but if you’re into thinking this is an existentialist one-shot deal, One Life to Live and then BANG you’re dead and cold and decomposing, well, then life sort of sucks for you.  It also sucks if you think it’s all angels and fucking harps and virgins all day, because dude.  BORING.  One virgin, you’ve fucked them all, basically.  Who wants that all day long, every day, into eternity?  It’s WAY more fun thinking life is a fucking GAME and we’re here to PLAY and shit.

So taking that further, animals and bugs don’t really much care when you kill them either.  Sure, what bug LIKES getting squished, but if you’re tapped into Bug Central you pretty much know you’re part of the oneness of everything and eventually it all sorts out again.  No big deal.  Again, that’s in the Big Picture, and though meanwhile Bambi’s there looking at you and your shotgun with liquid, imploring eyes, thinking about how much it’s going to fucking HURT when you shoot him and Thumper, you can ignore that.  Bambi does that to fuck with you.  Can you live with the memory of his accusing eyes burned into your retinas?

Then go ahead and shoot.

P.S. The Bitch is a vegetarian.

*we are all “God”, so this is moot, but whatever.

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Although I’m far from routine and I love change and creation, there’s a certain beauty in efficiency.  I read a LOT of blogs.  And I’ve established a useful routine to quickly get a glimpse at what I’m looking at whenever I check out a blog I haven’t seen before (by the way, leave me a link to yours and I’ll be sure to stop by; the more interesting your comment is, the faster I’ll beat a path to you and whatever it is you offer):

1.  Theme.

Is it navigable?  Is it predictable? (please give me something that sets you apart!)  Do I like the colors or are they, frankly, boring?  What can I tell about you from the header?  (for instance, are you a dime-a-dozen stab-me-in-the-eye-because-you’re-boring-as-hell-when-you-talk-about-that-cute-thing-your-kid-said mommyblogger? I can spot you and your custom header a mile away.  If that’s not you, carry on.)  Is your site cluttered up with every badge and ad known to the universe?

I know you’re proud of your blog, but look at it from the eye of someone who doesn’t care about you.  Like me.

Oh, and if you are still using Blogger, you’re an amateur.  I won’t even mention MySpace (without suppressing my gag reflex).

2.  Writing Quality

Fuck, people, this goes without saying, but…spell-check your fucking posts! And learn something about grammar!  Not sure where to put your commas, if at all?  Not sure what a run-on sentence is and if you commit them?  Don’t know what a sentence looks like that you end a preposition with?  Then LOOK IT UP, PEOPLE!  Before you put yourself out there be sure you are delivering a quality product.

[eye roll]

Which leads me to the writing itself.  You can have lovely spelling and dainty little-finger-lifted grammar, but boring is boring is boring.  Is boring.  Seriously.  You would not BELIEVE the huge number of fucking abhorrent eye-bleeds of blogs that clutter up the wasteland that is teh innernets*.  Don’t be that.  Learn to write a sentence, a paragraph, that’s compelling.  One that makes people want to read the next one, and the next.

You can practice here.  And you can read this.  Don’t like those?  There are only a zillion other examples of really good writing out there.  Find some and study them.  Take bits and make them your own.  And practice.  Pretend you don’t know your story and are stumbling onto it for the first time.  Write for the person who doesn’t know you.  Or care.  Like me.

Make me care.

Oh, and for those who snivel, “I’m only writing for myself so it doesn’t matter!”, YOU LIE!!  If you were only writing for yourself then you’d be writing in some spiral-bound blank doodle book with pictures of uber-cute puppies cavorting all over the cover, making little circles over your lower-case i’s and stashing the whole thing under your bed so Mom won’t find out you that went to 3rd base already.  If you were only writing for yourself you wouldn’t be writing a fucking PUBLIC BLOG.  So stop lying to yourself.

3.  About Me

I love breaking rules, especially my own, but you need something somewhere that tells people Who.You.Are.  You need people to care.  But don’t do the whole TMI thing, please.  (Unless that’s your “thing.”  But only make it your “thing” if you’re really really sure you can pull it off.  Otherwise, steer clear of TMI.)

Think about who you are.  You’d think this’d be obvious, but there are tens of thousands of bloggers out there inflicting themselves on the world who have no fucking clue who they are.  And that’s okay in a cute bumbling self-explorative way, but … it gets old.  So allow for change, check in with yourself once in awhile, and show who you are becoming.

Write it down.  I totally go right for the About Me page every single time.  I want to know who I’m dealing with.  I read about the top three posts (unless they’re fucking novels, in which case I scroll down for the punch line and get out before the Tentacle of Blog Boredom slithers through the screen of my Macbook and pulls me in.  No way do I want to get sucked into somebody’s annals of banality), have a look at the blogroll to see who else they read, and then go right for About Me.  So make yours entertaining.  Make me want to comment.

4.  Comments

Everybody knows its a sad sad blog post when the only comment is from Aunt Martha or BFF Jen/Jess/Heather.  Don’t be that.  A hallmark of a good blog is the quality of the comments.  Good bloggers foster a sense of community, or at least enough snark in their responses to make you want to check back and see what they said to yours. Good bloggers also write about stuff that’s interesting enough to generate interesting comments.  So make it easy.  I’l be judging you.

But what about you, Bitch?

Yeah.  What about me.

1.  Where do you live?

In a city of glass, where the homeless root through that day’s recycling.  And there’s wifi.  And sushi.

2.  What’s your real name?

Fuckmenow.  My porn name is Fifi LaBouche.

3.  Were you kidding about your shoe size?

Not at all.

4.  What makes you so special?

I’m little.  Yellow.  Different.

5.  Really?

Of course not.  I’m an anorexic Amazon.  But like I said before, I am like no one you know, and I am like everyone you know.  I just say it out loud.

*irony is in this year.

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