Category: Guest Posts

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Entertainment Guest Posts

The Anonymous Bitch Fest

Welcome to the Anonymous Bitch Fest!  I’ve got a guest post that talks about the horrors involved with family finding your blog, thus putting an end to the anonymous bitch fest your blog was supposed to be on a daily basis.  That being said – I’d love to hear some bitching from the rest of you.  You can sign your name if you wish, but either way – rip your clothes off and run naked through the crowd!  Figuratively speaking, of course. 

Even if YOU don’t feel better afterward, the rest of us will.  So quit being selfish and comment!


——-

Naively, one of the reasons I started a blog was to bitch, anonymously. Sometimes it just helps to get it out, right? 

The end, for me, came quickly. I had written a piece about a family event that I was pretty proud of and copied it to send to a couple of family members. Unknown to me, I left the link in the title and a computer-savvy family member (“CSFM” if you will,) clicked on it and “found” me. 

Luckily everyone loved that piece, but I have come to hate that CSFM found me. This person and I don’t see eye to eye on just about anything. The election was horrible – many over-the-net arguments about this candidate or that issue. I am the recipient of emails linked to articles and videos that (primarily) I’ve seen and disagreed with. 

CSFM is someone that is generally quite smart, but has turned into the internet and writing snob. I routinely get comments from CSFM about how I should be writing, or how often, or “look for ideas here!” Honestly, if someone else gave me the same advice it might be welcomed but since it comes from this particular someone it comes off as pompous, elitist, and assholish (totally a word, right?).  CSFM thinks that theirs is the only opinion that matters. 

Several years ago CSFM was diagnosed with a medical condition that is annoying, but not life threatening. It affects what we (as a larger family) can eat and serve when CSFM is around. This is not a life-threatening allergy, this person is not a child. Yet, when we all get together it is ALL OF OUR problem. Unfortunately, there are some other members of the family that completely bow to CSFM’s whims and play into the mentality of ‘me, me, me, me’. We are ‘forced’ to comply because woe is he/she that doesn’t bow to these needs. The wrath is truly horrible. 

A few times over the last few years we have vacationed with this person, but last summer was the last time. My spouse and I have agreed to not vacation with CSFM/family anymore. The last time was wrought with food issues, mood swings, blatant disregard of our beliefs, and more. I refuse to put myself or my children in that situation any more.

Plus, when anyone tries to speak up about the elephant in the room we end up being the ones that are wrong, not CSFM. Figures.  I have recently decided to ignore anything coming from this person-whether an email, blog comment, or otherwise, because I just really can’t handle it.

I really don’t want to feel this way. Life’s too short in many ways to allow someone so close to drop out of your life.  But at what cost do you allow someone like CSFM to rule over all of your interactions? At what point do you say enough?   For now, I have to say enough.

But I’m obviously not over it or I wouldn’t be writing anonymously, now, would I?

Categories
Guest Posts Motherhood and Pregnancy

The Mother of all Mad Mother-in-law Monologues

Day three of jury duty and I haven’t fallen asleep in court yet.  That counts for something, doesn’t it?  For your reading pleasure, I have a dusty old post written by Mo “Mad Dog” Stoneskin, back when his both his baby and his blog were new, and he was ‘young and foolish’.  I don’t know about you, but anything with that kind of preface just begs to be read!  I’m new to Mo’s blog, but had a lot of fun practicing my British accent while reading through it today.  Go ahead, try it!  But be warned, you’ll be thinking with an accent all the live-long day, mate.

‘The Mother of all Mad Mother-in-law Monologues’

The lady in the bed next door was being visited by her mother-in-law. As our baby slept, and my wife attempted to sleep, this woman talked and talked. She nearly drove me mad. Sanity was preserved by cheekily taking some notes, and dreaming of the pint of Guinness that I would drink later.

(I’m not really a Guinness drinker, but I’ve been craving the stuff. With wife and baby recuperating in hospital I’ve been fending for myself. Being a health-conscious type, I’ve been gorging on burgers and muffins. The lack of greens has taken its toll, with the deficiencies driving a craving for stout.)

The last two evenings she has been there, roughly from six till nine. On both occasions the three hours consisted of a single monologue. And when I say monologue, I don’t simply mean “extended, uninterrupted speech”, as Wikipedia puts it. I mean extended, uninterrupted speech, contained within a single sentence. I say that because she didn’t pause or, as far as I could tell, take a single breath.

I doubt any of the great orators would have come close to speaking that long without pause. Cicero? Nope. Churchill? Nope. I would be surprised if these relentless floods of unfinished sentences are ever matched.

What follows is a snippet of one of these monologues. It is more or less unadulterated, but then again, she spoke so fast it was hard to keep up.

“…so Helen is visiting from Cincinnati in November, but then again she’s got this thing about flying, which is ridiculous, so I don’t know what she’s going to do…of course, Erik spent his life looking as though butter wouldn’t melt…Alexander’s mother was much tinier, and mind you, castor oil didn’t work…blah blah blah…if you think about it, the baby pops out and suddenly there is all this brightness and it is, like, “where am I?”, and I didn’t bring it did I?, the photo of Andrew, he went for a ride in a helicopter…and babies go to sleep in one place, and wake up in another, how do they cope?… you see, when Andrew would fall he never put his hands out, of course he broke his wrist at school, and the other kids all loved him, always joking and fooling around and, of course, the after-school clubs wouldn’t take him…but shall I unwrap the present?…British Homestores, so you can always exchange if you don’t like them, they do such great little boys’ clothes don’t they?, when his father was a baby you couldn’t get nice boys’ shoes…and I had such problems, dry skin…and I’ve put my new CD holder up, that new Andrew Lloyd Webber collection is marvellous you know…Ralph’s mother is all skin and bone, I’m sure she is anorexic…I don’t understand what is going on in Winchester, what with the shop in the High Street but the warehouse down in Devon, it’s ludicrous…Tamzin breast-fed of course…and he kept peeling back the dressing, right to the bone, I tried to cut back his nails when we came to England, and during all this Mike was creosoting the fence…”

The poor daughter-in-law didn’t get a word in edgeways. Just before the mother-in-law left I heard her speaking to the baby. “We’ll come and see you again tomorrow, and then we’ll visit you at your house on Friday.” My heart went out to the young mother and her baby.

I hope their sanity survives.

Don’t forget to come back tomorrow for the anonymous bitch fest.  It won’t be the same without your bitchin’!

Categories
Entertainment Guest Posts

What Did I Do Today? I Choose Not to Remember

While I’m sitting in my squeaky jury chair, you all get to read a recycled post from Jessica Bern of Bern This.  She claims it’s from a time when she didn’t have any readers, but somehow I have a hard time believing such a time existed.  When Jessica’s not busy spreading joy at her local ER, she’s filming hilarious webisodes of Bern This.  If you haven’t already, head on over to check her out – but not before leaving a comment!  Maybe reading them will stop me from stealing all the donuts during court recess.  Maybe.

WHAT DID I DO TODAY?  I CHOOSE NOT TO REMEMBER

Today, I was a contestant on a game show called “21” which I can only hope and pray will never, EVER air. It involved “knowledge” of Blackjack as in “I “know” I’m going to draw a crappy card” and pop culture.


There were three contestants per show. The other two in my group consisted of a former Iranian who regaled us all with a story of his growing up with a pet COW who he found out seemed to produce the most milk when listening to the sounds of a flute which is how this guy ended up becoming, yes, that’s right, a professional flute player, amongst other things.


Now, before I tell you about the other guy, I need to draw you a picture. He had the face of a marshmallow, mushy and of similar color only WHITER and he was built like a bird to the point where I kept waiting for him to burp and cough up a worm. To match his extraordinary good looks, he was one of the most arrogant people I have ever met and on top of it all that has been on Jeopardy (and WON) Millionaire (and WON) and several other shows that I can’t remember because after I heard about the first two I couldn’t stop thinking, “THIS GUY IS GOING TO KICK MY ASS!”


By the time we hit the stage my only goal in life was to make sure that “birdman” lost. How I was going to go about doing that, I had no idea, but I was determined. That was until the host asked us…


HOST: Who are Jaimie Oliver, Gordon Ramsay….


and before he could finish “birdman”‘s already yelling out the correct answer,


BIRDMAN: “CHEFS!”


while in my mind the closest I could get was to think, “God those names sound familiar.”


The only good news was that although “birdman” possessed an uncanny ability to remember completely useless information, he had no control over the cards he was dealt both in life and on this show.


Now, I cannot tell you who won or lost but I can tell you that the host was Alfonso Ribiero. Yes, that would be the Alfonso Ribiero who used to star with Will Smith on the “Prince of Bel-Air” but is now the host of a cable based game show while Will is, at this very moment, one of the most famous and highest paid actors on the face of the earth.


Needless to say, every time I got down on myself and started to feel hopeless, I just had to take one look at Alfonso, standing there, yelling


ALFONSO: “So, who wants to win $25,000?!!!”


to know that if a person’s CAREER could crash and burn like that then so could “birdman”‘s winning streak.


Next question please.

Come back on Friday for an anonymous bitch fest, and bring your dirty laundry!