Obligatory Facebook Post

It’s not even halfway through NaBloBlowsBigAss, and I’m not going to lie to you, gentle reader, I am struggling to fill in my little wordpress writery box with a daily post.

So this is why this post is about Facebook.

Facebook is awesome. It allows you to reconnect with people you barely tolerated in high school. It is a perfect platform to share your ability to quote Bon Jovi songs or share insights into the days of the week and how they affect you. Monday is Glumday, amirite?

And you can become friends with Doritoes®.

But sometimes Facebook is not awesome. It is not awesome when people engage in facebookery that is less to be desired.

This is why we need Facebook Etiquette or Facetiquette™ or Fetiquette™ or…look just don’t engage in the following:

Facebook fights

Yes occasionally someone is going to post something that you disagree with vehemently. Maybe Monday isn’t Glumday for you. But is it really so important to get into an argument with someone you went to art camp with 25 years ago?

Do you really think you will change this person’s mind by starting off your reply “Look, you fucking idiot. . .” No, you won’t. It’s best just to move on. Like someone’s post about  puppies instead. No one comes off looking good in a Facebook Fight or Ffight™.

Facebook Guilt Trips

I know you want people to pay attention to you. That’s why you posted that Instagram of your half-eaten breakfast burrito and wrote “Breakfast burrito! Yum!” But do you have to next post this?

This is a huge guilt trip. Not only do I have to prove my worth by clicking the like button, but then I actually have to copy and paste this tripe into my status update so you will know we’re actual friends? Here’s a clue: we’re not. That’s why I ignore this, and will continue to ignore you until you stop posting this shit.

Facebook banalities

Yes you do breathe. Your heart does beat. And you eliminate waste on a regular basis. But do I need to know about this?

No. No one does. This also goes for updates like “I have nothing to say.” That’s almost as bad as admitting you don’t know what to write for a blog post so you write about Facebook.

Facebook Mysteries

Oh you engimatic poster, you! You just love the cryptic status update that keeps us on our toes. Shit like this:

The best part is you will never say what exactly was fucked up, leaving us hanging on the minutae that envelopes your daily existence. And it works…for a second, until I hear Kim Kardashian has tweeted her ass has fallen off. That is some important stuff. That’s why it’s now my status update. And don’t say you don’t know why.

Facebook hate-a-thons

Okay, okay…I get it. The guy you wanted to win the presidency didn’t and now you are filled with rage. I feel you. I lived through the 2000 election. Remember that shit? The guy who actually won didn’t become president? Remember? That was a bitter pill to swallow. Still, I don’t want to read your rage-filled rants of nonsense:

I am pissed too. I am pissed that I actually exerted energy in my eyeballs to read this.

Facebook Non-Controversies

No one is taking your Christmas away. No one is pissing on the American Flag. Yet you post this:

None of this shit is real. You know what’s real? My apathy.

You know what is acceptable? This:

I am joking. This is also awful.

Dearest Reader: Speaker7 is attempting to write a post every day in November so she doesn’t have to participate in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). This is the twelfth post. Don’t believe the haters. She will beat Satan. 

A Turdendum

I held Darrell Issa’s hand the first time he got his period. He was worried.

“Am I going to die?” he asked through his tears. “I feel like I’m dying. The blood. The pain.”

“You’re not dying, you’re becoming a woman,” I answered.

“What does that mean?” he asked earnestly.

“Well, it means that you are able to have children of your own,” I said, wrapping an afghan around his shoulders and handing him a mug of chamomile tea to help ease the cramps. “Someday, you’ll fall in love, get married and then chair a government oversight committee that will try to deny basic health care to women under the guise that it is infringing on the religious beliefs of others.”

I was just kidding when I told him that so many years ago, but then this week, I realized Darrell took what I said to heart.

The fretful preteen who danced to Like a Virgin in my living room, banged a gavel and said the health care provision of mandating contraceptive coverage for women was akin to kicking God in the nuts (I’m paraphrasing).

“Women should be forced to have as many children until their uteruses or is it uteri? resemble beaten-up change purses made out of cheesecloth. And then they are put to sleep. It’s nature and religion. It’s naturally religious,” Darrell solemnly said.

Although I was appalled, I was happy that Darrell at least brought in male religious leaders who are the leading experts in women’s health to testify before his committee. Those with uteri were told to stay out of it. The experts said things like:

“Women–boo!!”

And:

“Obama–boo!!”

And:

“Jesus–yay!”

When asked about their comments, Jesus stated “I don’t know these guys, man.”

There is so much I don’t understand.

First, why did God kill Onan when Onan spilled his seed on the ground rather than in his brother’s wife (Genesis 38:9)?

Second, why is a woman unclean for seven days after giving birth to a male and unclean for two weeks after giving birth to a female (Leviticus)?

And lastly, why did I jump the gun on handing out my Turd of the Week™?  Please accept this turdendum.

And God said to the turds: "Be fruitful and increase in number."

Miraculously Miraculous

Christmas is a time of miraculous miracles that miraculously mystify through their miraculousness.

The Virgin Mary gave birth to Jesus who grew up and now lives forever at the North Pole under the moniker “Santa Claus.”

A hefty bag gave birth to many tiny hefty bags that were assembled together into a life size replica of Bo, the White House First Dog.

credit: Washington Post

And the Today show had a feature on how retailers are thrilled by the joy people spread through the firing of bullets, the stabbing of knives and the trampling of feet to obtain products that people can wear on their feet while they fire guns, stab and trample on others.

I guess some new sneakers came out, and they supposedly turn you into Michael Jordan when you wear them or maybe Lil Bow Wow, who starred in the movie Like Mike about a boy who finds a pair of old sneakers that make him play basketball like Michael Jordan. That–or they look cool so that’s why someone stabbed that guy seven times to get ahead of him in the line outside the mall.

Nike was none too happy (but kind of secretly happy) that people were literally trampling over toddlers to jam their feet into $180 shoes. They released this statement:

But there is a silver lining in all the attempted murdering–consumer confidence is up, people are spending and they are buying smart, says some smiling Today show guy in Florida. He smiles through his spiel about the tension people can feel when a gun suddenly goes off in a crowded sporting goods store before segueing into how people are using their trigger fingers to diddle their smart phones looking for the best deals and best ways to murder.

Christmas.

Around 25 percent of the population started buying their tangible displays of love this week, the Today show guy statisticizes, and 54 percent surveyed said that 80 percent of news stories that contain 63 percent of statistics make them sound 103 percent more scientific than stories that use less than 12 percent of surveys and 3 percent of reporting.

Shopping so close to the climax of the consumerism orgy fills Sheila Lopez with the Christmas spirit.

“I have to buy clothes,” she says in a spirited monotone befitting of one of the zombies in Dawn of the Dead.

Sheila then goes and bites the face of the nearest person carrying a Nike bag containing Air Jordans.

Miraculous.

It’s A-Okay!

I learn so much as a human being who has eyes and ears and occasional numbness in my pinky toe. But I had no idea how much I repressed what I said until I saw this on Facebook:

I wept silently into my Old Glory hotpants for about an hour. But after my crying jag, I felt liberated. Clearly Christmas is under attack. Why else would Christmas decorations go up Oct. 25 when they should be up after July 4th? The intention is to rip this holy commercial holiday right out of baby Jesus’ tiny baby hands and beat the crap out of it with baseball bats emblazoned with the slogan: “Happy Holidays from Al Qaeda!”

But guys.. did you know it’s okay to say “Merry Christmas” and “God Bless America” without being struck down by the iron fist of straw men?  I feel like a giant weight made out of air has been lifted off my shoulders.

However this got me thinking: what else is it “okay to say” that for some reason or other I wasn’t saying because it was not beautifully set against a backdrop of a waving flag?

Get ready for some freedomy freedom being freedomed your way:

And lastly my favorite:

Vultures are AMAZING.

While I roast some chestnuts on the fire and move the pieces of the Nativity scene around so that Mary is lying down because she just had a baby for cripes sake, I ponder what Christmas means to me.

I quickly become bored and open up my laptop and check Facebook where I discover what one of my “friends” thinks about Christmas.

There are many things that confuse me about this status update. First, why did I read the whole thing and then take a screen shot of it? And B, was Santa Claus, Rudolph and those Coke-swilling polar bears at Jesus’s birth? And second, does it really bother you when some underpaid, abused retail clerk mumbles “Happy Holidays” rather than making the sign of the cross and saying “HO HO HO Merry Christmas. . . is that what’s really ruining the holiday, not the people who pepper spray other people for a $2.95 Forever Lazy®? And lastly, why are you yelling? The yelling hurts my eyeballs.

Believe me, I would totally be on the same page with you if sh*t was going down like it did when Nero was Roman emperor, and Christians were torn apart by dogs and set on fire. That is some hardcore persecution right there. But this? Some person ringing up your FisherPrice Imaginext 2 Foot Dragon World Fortress™ at the local dollar store, mumbling “Happy Holidays” as s/he tries to avoid getting cancer from exposure to the products made out of asbestos and arsenic?  I don’t think your “persecution” is going to land you on the Christian martyr list.

Here’s the thing, “friend.” You can scream or write in caps lock “Merry Christmas” until your lungs burst or you have carpal tunnel and no one will really give a mistletoe sprig (well unless it’s at 4:30 a.m., but that’s why noise ordinances are enacted). That is because in America–for now–you are free to practice or not practice any religion you want. I don’t know if things will change now that the U.S. Senate has voted to allow the military to arrest Americans and detain them indefinitely.

Merry Christmas.

But as it stands if I want to practice the religion of Speaker7ism where I believe Speaker7 is omniscient and omnipresent then praise be to Speaker7.

Now I am by no means a history scholar, but I’ve been able to cobble together some knowledge from Snapple bottle caps, Chinese restaurant menus and the labels on Molson Canadian Light. I have learned that vultures can fly for six hours without flapping their wings and that the founding fathers did not want to repeat the problems in England by creating a state-sponsored religion. It never seems to go well for the people in the religious minority.

Really no one can take your belief away from you unless you let them. And your belief should be that Speaker7 is the light and the way.

Or else.

Amazing Bargains and Values!

I think I might have mentioned in a previous post how much I love politics. There’s just something about millionaires and billionaires spending their millions and billions on an election, talking about how they came from sharecroppers and walked 400 miles each day to attend a hobo school in the wilderness where they had to gnaw on sticks to make pencils, that just really causes my heart to soar.

I think I might have mentioned in a previous post how much I love organized religion. There’s just something about sky deity smackdowns that cause my soul to soar and crash into my heart.

But when the two mix? Oh, sweet jesus, that is some wonderful stuff. Just wonderstuff. And it’s happening right now, at a little lovefest called Values Voter Summit. This is where millionaires and billionaires talk about how much they are like Jesus Christ in order to win your vote.

Photograph taken from a U.S. History book approved by the Texas Board of Education

According to the Gospel of Grover, Jesus was a conservative Republican who traveled across the land preaching smaller government and free market with no regulations. “Then he cometh to the city of Galilee, and seeing the multitudes he went up into a mountain. And he opened his mouth and sayeth: Blessed are the job creators, for they shall inherit the wealth.” (Grover 2:2)

The Values Voter Summit is all about values. I learned this from the title. (gold star for Speaker7) There is no voter in America that is not a values voter, according to presidential hairpiece Rick Perry, it’s just some voters have kick ass values and others have suck values.

What are the kick ass values?

• saying “under God” in the pledge of allegiance. Newton Gingrich said he was running for dogcatcher because some court ruled that phrase unconstitutional. Thank god someone has his eye on the most important issue facing this nation. Whenever I hear it mumbled by a group of students in complete monotone, it brings a tear to my eye.

Suck value?

• not giving a sh*t about a nonissue that exists to misdirect Americans from noticing that wages for average workers has not increased in three decades.

There were many amazing things said by true followers of Jesus Christ that it’s almost impossible to contain my fingers while I type…they constantly seem to want to form number 1 signs especially the middle fingers.

Like when Rick Perry said: “You know, some hold this worldview that government must be central in our – in our lives and serve as our caretaker. They seek more than equal opportunity, they seek equal outcomes” which is conservative code for share the wealth. And this means these haters don’t believe in American exceptionalism in the sense that it is so exceptional to get a $20 million bonus after letting multitudes of people’s pensions go in the toilet.

This reminded me of that famous Jesus parable, you know, the fishes and loaves? I will end my post with it:

“In those days the multitudes being very great, and having nothing to eat, Jesus called his disciples unto him, and saith unto them: ‘what is wrongeth with these multitudes, cannot they findeth a job to payeth for some foodeth?’ And the disciples answered ‘from whence can a man find a job and food here in the wilderness?’ And Jesus asked ‘How many loaves have ye?’ And they said ‘Seven.’ And he commanded his disciples to bring him the loaves. He took the seven loaves and crammethed them into his mouth. His disciples asked ‘what about all the others?’ Jesus wiped the crumbs from his mouth and replied ‘Fuck them.’ – (Grover 1:10-14)