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.