Christine the Curmudgeon

…then she’d not be in such a pickle.  Christine the Curmudgeon now presents you with this: Mother, 12 children leave motel for new home.

My sympathy for the downtrodden can only go so far.  But it disturbs me that this woman feels entitled to have as many kids as she wants, and then expects us, the taxpayers, to care for them.  I can see if someone who was living responsibly falls upon hard times, I’m more than happy to try to help them.  But sheesh, this woman has never really had two nickels to rub together in the first place, her fiance/babydaddy is in prison for drug dealing…I guess that is where they got their money from.  Babydaddy in the slammer?  No more drug selling revenue.  I NEEEED help, waaaaah!

How can anyone live in a motel room, or anywhere else, with 12 kids, anyway?  No sleep aid in the world would make me get to sleep with all of the noise!

Anyhoo, here’s a follow-up article about this entitlement-minded woman.  Sheesh, how about taking some responsibility for your own behavior?

So Christine the Curmudgeon and the Mister went to a baseball game yesterday.  He had gone down to the concourse to get us some food, and when he returned, he related this tale of his meeting with a fellow curmudgeon.

He had just gotten our food and was putting ketchup, mustard, etc. on it.  An older gentleman was at the condiment counter doing the same, only he had a lot more food on his tray.  He turned to Mr. C and said, “Did you know that I hate kids?”.  Mr. C said he didn’t like them much, either, and was glad he didn’t have any.  The man went on to complain about how he brought his grandkids to the game, and this was the FOURTH time they demanded he go down to get them something to eat or drink.  And it was only the third inning!  Since the concourse at this ballpark is under the seating bowl, there is no view of the playing field from there.  So basically, this poor guy had not gotten to see much of the game at all!

Mr. C suggested that he say NO! to these kids once in a while, and then went back to our seats with the food.

I wonder if this guy got railroaded into taking the kids to the game.  Maybe he really would have preferred to go by himself, or with his buddies, so he could actually, you know, WATCH THE GAME?  I wonder how many more times those kids made him go back to the concessions, and how much the day ended up costing him.  Even in the minor leagues, the cost of ballpark concessions can add up.  It sucked to be him, shelling out all this cash, and not getting to see much of the game.  But it’s kind of hard to feel sorry for him…I mean, who’s the adult here?  Since when did it become common practice to take orders from children?  How hard is it to say something like, NO, you’ve already had enough to eat” or “NOT NOW, maybe after the end of the next inning”?  Or how about, “Get up and get it yourself, you lazy brats!”  The latter assumes that there was not a second adult present, and that these kids were old enough to be left in their seats unsupervised.  It’s his own fault he felt he had to keep getting up and missing the game!

Hell, I never make Mr. C get up and get me anything!  We only bring each other food and/or beers when we’re already getting up to get it for ourselves.

And while I’m on the topic, what IS it with these kids who have to be shoving food into their mouths during every minute of a ball game?  I went to another ball game this past Wednesday afternoon.  The ballpark was having some sort of “educational day”, where groups of school kids were brought to the game as a field trip.

I noticed that for many of these kids, if they weren’t already shoving food into their mouths, they were standing in line at the concessions to get more.  In this case, they had to get up and get it themselves, their parents were not there, just a few teachers/chaperones per group.

I could not help but notice this one bunch of kids near me…they started out with a hot dog and a soda.  Same kids got up, came back with fried dough, ate that, got up again, came back with cotton candy, then ice cream, more soda, soft pretzels…it went on and on.  No wonder so many of these kids are so fat…some of them are so big that they’ll probably be fitting into full-grown men’s clothing before they become teenagers!  Ballpark food is not the healthiest stuff out there, at least not what these kids were eating.  It’s okay to eat it in moderation, but not to gorge on it for an entire 3-4 hour game!

Why can’t parents set limits on how much their kids are allowed to eat at the game?  Even though they weren’t there in the case of the school field trip thing…why do they give them so much money to buy all of this crap?  Most of the kids I was observing spent well over $50 on junk food.  Twenty bucks for food would have been more than enough.  How much money were these kids carrying around, anyway?  I did not hear a single kid complain over not having enough money.

I just don’t get it.

It’s been a while since there have been any new pictures posted to Christine the Curmudgeon’s Hall of Shame Gallery.  Well, here’s one now.  It should be pretty much self-explanatory as to why it belongs in the Hall of Shame Gallery.

How much lazier can anyone be?  I didn’t see who left that cart there like that, but I bet it was someone who could seriously use the exercise, and maybe even the best diet supplement. And because of this jerk’s lazitude, not one, but TWO parking spaces at the very busy Stop & Shop were blocked.

Today I became the mayor of this particular Stop & Shop on foursquare.  My first official duty as mayor was to move that cart to the corral where it belonged, right after taking this picture.

It also irks me when I see people getting out of their cars, walking right past empty carts that are parked like this, and then take a cart from inside the store.  You’re walking right past it, anyway, how hard is it to take one of these carts into the store and use it?  That’s what I do, when I see them!  In this case, I saw this when I was coming out of the store, after I’d put my own cart into the corral.

Even worse is anyone who leaves a cart in a handicapped space.  You can see a serious example of this HERE.

You knew this post was coming…Christine the Curmudgeon is a plus-sized woman, and has something to say about all of this.

Okay, in case you’re living under a rock, and haven’t heard, ABC and FOX had refused to air a new Lane Bryant underwear commercial during “Dancing With The Stars” and “American Idol”, respectively.  The “official” excuse is that it was “too racy” for “the family hour”.  But many people, myself included, tend to think that this is a steaming pile of cattle dung.

And so does the model herself, Ashley Graham.  She was on the Saturday Early Show this morning, where she talked about it.  In case you didn’t see it, you can read it here.

She’s right…we DO see Victoria’s Secret ads throughout the day.  And not just ads for the underwear itself…CBS also airs the hour-long Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show specials.  Those comes on sometime after 9PM, I believe.  But they run promos for it all day, I’ve seen them when watching my soaps.  And speaking of daytime soaps, I’ve seen some pretty damned racy scenes on those!  I don’t watch any ABC soaps, but I bet they have equally racy sex scenes in them…IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DAY WHEN LITTLE KIDS ARE UP AND WATCHING!

I fully agree with Lane Bryant’s stance that this is discrimination against plus-sized women.  The idiots at ABC and FOX are offended by the sight of any woman larger than a size 2, they think that others will be grossed out by it as well.

Here is proof of ABC’s hypocrisy…an awesome blog post from NPR.  You can see the commercial in question there, and then some screenshots from DWTS, in which we see some of the rather skimpy outfits that the female contestants wear.  Interesting that Pamela Anderson, who has taken it all off many times for men’s magazines, had the most clothes on.  But her costume in that picture was showing  just as much cleavage as Ms. Graham is in the commercial.  And I bet that Ashley’s boobs are REAL!  I guess flashing big boobies is only okay when they’re artificially inflated.

But notice that the scantily-clad dancers are all skinny.  That tells me right there that ABC is simply offended by the sight of larger women.  Hypocrites.

It’s been said that some people may have been offended by the sexual overtones of the ad…Ashley was texting her boyfriend while getting ready to go and see him, with the sexy lingerie on underneath her dress.  Once again, it’s a big pile of crap.  Look at the pics on the NPR site, if those aren’t sexually provocative dance moves, I don’t know what is.  I think that these people are just offended over the idea of a woman larger than size 2 having a boyfriend, and having sex with him.  I guess Lane Bryant didn’t get the memo that all large women are alone every night, looking for nuphedragen reviews online, and dreaming of being able to look like an anorexic Victoria’s Secret model.

I bet if you put a photograph of Ashley side-by-side with that of any VS model, both clad in equally skimpy lingerie, most men would say that they find Ashley more attractive.  Hell, by today’s standards, Marilyn Monroe would be considered to be fat, and I think she wore a size 12-14.  Yet she was considered to be one of the most beautiful women in the world, many men wanted her.  Just as I’m sure Ashley has no trouble attracting men.

ABC, FOX…put that in your pipes and smoke it!

If Christine the Curmudgeon ruled the world, there would be some very strict rules as to where one can or can’t put these portable basketball thingies.

One such place is THE STREET.  There is a little side street that we have to go down to get to Route 60.  On that street, there is one of these things that, when not in use, is locked to a utility pole with one of those bike lock things.  When it is in use, which has been more frequently now that the weather is warming up, the thing is dragged out into the middle of the street.  The street is very narrow, so it blocks the way of any cars who might want to drive through.  And the kids playing with the thing, a bunch of overgrown teen thugs who look like they’ve been using too much of the best hgh supplement, act like we are causing them serious inconvenience by daring to want to actually drive a car on the PUBLIC STREET!

I say that these things should only be used on private property that YOU own or rent yourself, not on someone else’s property, and not on the street.  They are a good idea for people who can’t or don’t want to install a permanent basketball hoop in their driveway or wherever…being able to take it with you if you move is a plus.  But if you have no place to put it that is not a public street or sidewalk, don’t buy one of these things!