What the #&* happened to our @#$*&^$#@ Standards???

I watch a lot of TV. Probably too much TV, but I have my favorite shows that I watch, and I like to have background noise pretty much all the time because I don't like to be in too quiet of an environment. I wish that TV today was like it was when I was a kid.

I remember when people didn't swear on TV. The worst word you would hear would be the occasional "damn." People wore more clothes too. Humor was expressed without nudity and profanity. Drama was portrayed by actors actually acting, not graphically detailed violence, and bad language.

I remember being shocked the first time I heard the word "B*tch" on TV, and I knew, even back then, that it was just the beginning.

It makes me wonder why TV, and movies too for that matter, need to be so much more vulgar. Granted, I watch a lot of shows that maybe I shouldn't because of their subject matter, but I admit, I think they are funny. I think that "Two and a Half Men" is one of the funniest shows on television, but it's really a horrible show. It places no value on family values and glorifies a drunk who frequently hires prostitutes.

"Scrubs" was one of my favorite shows, but it always bothered me a bit how often they had Sarah Chalke stripped down to just a bra and underwear. I really don't think that was necessary to get the humor across to the audience.

I DESPISE the show "Family Guy," even though I have never watched a full episode of it. I steadfastly refuse to watch it after happening upon 5 minutes of one episode. The episode I stumbled upon was one where the writers of the show thought that it was funny to make a joke about September 11, 2001. It makes me ill to think that someone would think that is funny. And people just willingly accept that this is ok, its normal, its acceptable? I just can't do it.

Lately though the one that has bothered me the most is the new show on CBS with William Shatner. In the very title of the show a profanity is indicated. Why is that ok? Where did the standards go? How soon will network television completely morph into cable television and they won't even bother bleeping out the title?

Why is it that intelligently written shows that don't rely heavily on nudity, profanity, and sex fail, but you can find uneducated people fighting over who really fathered their babies on every single channel? There is always a new reality show cropping up that pushes the boundaries even further. People are constantly lowering their own standards to take part in these shows, or to watch them.

Why is it that my being bothered by these things makes ME a prude? It makes me close-minded, judgmental. I just don't understand that.

There's an old Sunday School song that says, "Be careful little eyes what you see/ears what you hear/tongue what you say..." and I think that we sing that as kids, and we sing that to kids, but we don't take it to heart. We don't protect ourselves from the things that are out there, we just accept that it is the new norm so it must be ok.

I guess that I'll just continue to be an old-fashioned prude. I'll watch the shows that I still deem watchable and if worst comes to worst, I'll pick up those old-fashioned inventions they have called books. I'll use my own imagination and create my own worlds inspired by the words of talented authors.

The Zucchini Incident of 1982

Warning: This blog post contains graphic descriptions of vomiting. If you are made queasy, or induced to vomit yourself by these kind of descriptions, proceed with caution.

While I was on vacation, I ate a piece of zucchini, willingly, for the first time since "The Incident." I was eating dinner in a restaurant called Teppan Edo in the Japan section of Epcot. I completely doused the piece of zucchini in ginger sauce to completely disguise any lingering taste of zucchini. I set forth to taste this quite hesitantly, and was relieved to not gag at all when I ate it. I realized that I still don't like zucchini at all. I don't like the texture of it, and I don't like the taste of it.

As far back as I can remember, I've never liked zucchini. In fact, I've hated it. My mother had a rule when we were kids, we had to eat our whole dinner. If we ordered something in a restaurant, we had to eat it whether we liked it or not. At home, we had to eat what she put on our plates, there was no alternative.

Another important thing to know to fully get this story is that I have an extremely low gag threshold. I can smell something cooking that I don't like and start to gag, and sometimes even just thinking about something that I don't like can make me gag.

Ok, now we go back in time to a night when I was about 6 or 7 years old. I'm guessing that this happened around 1982. We were at the table having dinner, it was porkchops and rice and zucchini. I also had a full glass of milk, in my Mr. Peabody glass. I ate my porkchop, I ate all my rice. I drank my full glass of milk. I did not, however, eat my zucchini. I was a very slow eater, and so by the time I finished a meal, it was cold. So, since I hadn't touched the zucchini yet, by this point it was STONE COLD. My mother told me to eat my zucchini. I told her that I didn't like zucchini and didn't want to eat it. She told me that I had to eat it anyway.

This went back and forth for a little while, and finally I was forced to take a bite. I remember this very clearly, and even the recollection is making me a little queasy. I put a bite of cold, slimy, squishy zucchini in my mouth, and chewed and even as I tried to swallow it, I could feel myself gagging. I remember making that awful, "Hul-huh, hul-huh" noise that people make when they gag. (It's a lot easier to verbally recreate that noise than to type it!) My mother, very used to this trick of mine, snapped at me, "Don't you do it. DON'T you DO it!!!!" I honestly did try to swallow the zucchini and stop the gagging, but I had no control over it.

I clapped both my hands over my mouth, and stood up from the table and started running around the island-like counter in our kitchen to get to the sink. Sadly, I was not fast enough and I started throwing up. Violently. My two little hands were not enough to hold it back, and it sprayed out between my fingers all the way from the table to the sink. The cabinets were splashed, the carpet was doused, and I made it to the sink where I heaved and retched for another 20 minutes.

My mother was never able to be around anyone else throwing up without getting sick herself. So this grandiose display of projectile vomit by me made my mother sick. My sister let out a nervous giggle, and my mother snapped at her, "SHUT UP! SHUT UP AND CLEAN IT UP!!!!" Then Mom sprinted out of the roomed towards her bathroom, and she did not emerge for quite some time.

My poor sister was forced to clean up the mess that I had made all over the kitchen, and I can't remember where my father went. I don't think that he offered to help Kimberly, I think he went to check on Mom, and never came back.

But an important lesson was learned by all involved that night... When Stephanie says, "I don't like that, I don't want to eat it," we probably shouldn't force the issue.

I've never eaten zucchini again since that night, except in its only acceptable form which is zucchini bread. So the very fact that I was willing to try it again at Teppan Edo was nothing short of incredible. I also reaffirmed my belief that zucchini is still awful, and should only be used to make zucchini bread.

Life lessons learned on vacation…

I learned several new life lessons while on vacation, and I thought I would share a few with you.

Lesson number one...It is simply amazing how much you can learn by just watching other people. For example, at dinner on the train one night, we were seated with another couple who were approximately our age, and at first it seemed like they would be decent dinner companions. However, it was astonishing to see the Jeckyll and Hyde personality that this guy possessed. He was very nice to us, asking about our vacation plans, and sharing stories of their trips to DisneyWorld; but he treated his wife with something that definitely fell short of respect. Then our waitress came, and suddenly the way he treated his wife looked like the epitome of love and respect, and yet he was still perfectly pleasant and polite to us.

It made me realize that he must think himself above the woman working as a waitress for Amtrak. He didn't feel that she was to be valued as a person equal to him, and yet we felt that our waitress was the superior human being in that particular race.

Lesson number two... Just because some manufacturer is crazy enough to make articles of clothing in all sizes DOES NOT mean that you should wear it!!! I could not believe the number of tube tops, and tube top dresses I saw in Florida on women of ALL ages and sizes. First of all, who wears a sundress to a theme park where they will be getting on and off rides and in and out of all different types of vehicles??? And I'm sorry, but I think that if you are so morbidly obese that you must rent a scooter to drive yourself around DisneyWorld because you are not capable of walking, you DEFINITELY should NOT be wearing a tube top. Maybe this makes me a horribly mean person, but that's how I feel about it.

Lesson number three... If you want to raise your children to be decent human beings who do the right thing and treat others with respect, you have to do it too! Don't berate a college student who is working at a theme park on weekends over something that they cannot control. Universal Studios offers free locker rentals while you ride certain rides because no loose articles are allowed. The free rental period is determined by the current wait time for that attraction. After the free period has elapsed, there is a $3 fee for the next 30 minutes. The lockers are run on a computer controlled timeclock that tracks the renters biometrically. You rent, and release the locker by pressing your finger on a biometric scanner.

We rented our locker and went on the Harry Potter Dragon Challenge ride. The line moved very quickly and so we decided to go again. I wondered if we should change lockers so we didn't exceed our free rental period, but we decided that we'd just pay the $3 if we went over. We got back to the locker, and as I had suspected, we owed $3. The only problem was that our money was in the locker, so I had to find the locker attendant to release the locker so we could get the money to pay. I went and got in line behind the ONE person that she was helping and waited. Suddenly 3 women came over and butted in front of me angrily demanding that she open their lockers and waive the fees because they hadn't been gone more than 30 minutes.

I opened my mouth to explain that I was actually next in line, but was pretty much pushed out of the way by the angry crowd moving back to their lockers. We stood, patiently waiting our turn (AGAIN), while the poor girl opened one locker, and after verifying the lady's ID was able to release the locker without extra payment. I'm not sure how that worked, but apparently the computer decided that she didn't owe after all. I started to move forward again to get the attendant to help me when another lady in that party, who I've decided to name Nasty B Yotch, started demanding (and I am not exaggerating her behavior at all, in fact she comes off better in my description than she actually was) that her locker be opened. The girl told Nasty B. Yotch that she owed $3. This set Mrs. Yotch off on a tirade about how she was in line at the same time as the other woman, they opened their lockers at the EXACTLY the same time, rode the ride togethers, and SHE didn't have to pay. The poor girl was trying to explain that she doesn't actually have any control over how the time clock works. Mrs. Yotch became even angrier and her husband chimed in, repeating everything his wife had just said, sounding like an ignorant broken record.

The Locker Attendant calmly and patiently repeated that they owed $3. Then Mrs. Yotch's daughter, Snotty B Yotch piped up, and I was so overwhelmed by her tone that I had to step back and bit my tongue so I didn't get involved. Snotty very sarcastically informed the attendant that she needed to open up the locker so her mother could get her money out to pay. So the attendant opened their locker, and Nasty B Yotch grabbed her stuff, and went to swipe her card. However, the fingerprint scanner didn't recognize her finger on the first try, and the whole family stormed out, refusing to pay $3, and loudly congratulating themselves on their triumph over the stupid girl who was trying to rip them off.

I then stopped three other people from cutting me off in line again by loudly saying, "ACTUALLY, I was next!" I finally got the girl's attention and told her, "We'll GLADLY pay the $3, but our money is locked in our locker." She opened it up for us, I retrieved my items, paid the locker fee, and left apologizing on behalf of Nasty B Yotch and her whole family and we offered to vouch for her if that family complained about her to the management.

I couldn't believe that $3 became such an issue. Really?? $3 is worth lowering yourself to the lowest class of human and treating others like garbage? I guess now we know that the price of decency is not to exceed $2.99.

Long time, no post...

So I realized last night that I didn't post anything in September... well I've been making notes in a big notebook that I packed with me on vacation, and now I'm ready to start blogging again... I'm sure that I will soon be inundating you with vacation stories and whatnot, but here's one that made me giggle on my last day of vacation...

So all over Epcot, the trash cans were labelled just like that. "Waste Please." The thought popped into my head, as thoughts so often do, "Aren't we supposed to reduce, reuse, and recycle? Why is this trash can asking me to Waste?" I thought that it was very wrong of this trash can to ask me to waste, however politely it asked. However, never one to resist peer pressure, I stopped eating my breakfast and obediently threw half of it away.

Ok, so the breakfast panini wasn't as good as it looked, and I was kind of glad to be rid of it, but still... I felt that the amount of control this trash can was exerting over me was scary!