How Does This Even Happen?

Sometimes, I hear of a story that is just so odd that I don't know how to feel about it. On the one hand, it's probably terrible what a certain person did. On the other hand, if that person couldn't have committed their terrible act without complicit involvement from the "victims", am I still supposed to feel bad? I'm not sure. And in this case, it's so freaking weird that I'm just all confused.

Our story takes place in the quiet West Wales village of Cwmduad, near Carmarthen. Let's just call it the UK. A guy named Reginald Gill came up with a plan. Now, just because it's a "plan" doesn't mean that it should have had any chance at all of succeeding. That it did succeed is completely astounding and believe me, I will delve into that later. But according to The Daily Mail, Mr. Gill had a business that involved the peddling of homeopathic products and treatments. It was in this practice that he was also passing himself off as a doctor. And as in his capacity as a fake doctor in a store full of hokum, he came up with what I can only describe as the stupidest idea ever. Then again, it did work, so what do I know?

Here's what he did: This guy told women that they had breast cancer. Horrible, right? But then, he told them that he had a cure! Oh, yay! (Yeah, you know it's not gonna be real, right? Ok, good.) And the cure that he proposed was for him, the "doctor", to suck on their breasts for thirty minutes a day! Now, I don't know if that's thirty minutes each or thirty minutes total. I guess that it's probably just 30 minutes on the allegedly afflicted bosom. But that's not the craziest part. No, the craziest part is that at least three women agreed to this!

Listen, in the age of the Internet, why you would just automatically agree to have a seventy-seven year old dude start suckling on you like a new born calf? Actually, in the realm of consciousness, why wouldn't you, at the very least, get a second opinion? You don't think to yourself, "Hmmm. Well, that's a little unconventional. I've never heard of such a treatment. And it sounds perverse. I wonder if I should get another opinion?" That never crosses your mind? Not ONCE?! What is wrong with you?

Somehow, this gets out. I guess there was at least one woman who received a fake diagnosis and an even faker treatment plan and decided that perhaps it be best for her to alert some sort of authority to the matter. He goes to trial and is found guilty and sentenced to eight years. I don't know what the typical jail sentence is for something like this, but I'm not going to argue with eight years. And really, I'm not so sure that he should be going to jail at all. Maybe if he had played his cards better...

Wait! Just hear me out! He could have told the judge, "Look...I came up with an absolutely stupid idea. Perhaps, the stupidest idea that's ever been thought up. It shouldn't have worked on anyone ever! How is the fact that it worked my problem? This was a bad plan! It is laughable that anyone would have fallen for it! That they did, I don't see how that's my fault! Your Honor." And if he had said that, he would have been right! It takes two! How do those women, those clueless, gullible, softheaded women, how do they not share any of the blame! If you think about it, none of this could have ever happened without their help. I'm just sayin'.

And accompanying this guy to jail will be his 35-year old wife! What is her deal? She's married to a weirdo who is 42 years older than her (and not in a good way) and she goes along with this little plot?! How does that work? Does he present her with his patently stupid idea (that never should have succeeded on anyone ever) and she just says, "Let me get this straight. You want to pretend that you're a doctor and tell women that they have breast cancer when they really don't so that you can suck on their boobs when you tell them that's the cure...I'M IN!"

I'm telling ya, I'd like to talk to everyone involved in this fiasco. Just for like ten minutes each. I have several concise questions that I'm dying to ask the willing participants in this lunacy! Granted, most of them start with "WTF", but there are some variances.

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I Am Unaware Of Your Status Meaning

Once again, the Facebook has angered me. And it has done so in the exact same way that it has angered me in the past. I don't understand how there can be a Facebook "trend" (or whatever you want to call it) that is supposed to "raise awareness", but at the same time with the goal of keeping certain people in the dark. That's right. It's time for the "breast-cancer-awareness-status-update-that-only-women-know-about." Idiots.

I knew something was up when one of my FB friends (someone who I knew in high school) posted her status as "3 weeks and craving bubble gum". OK, now while it wouldn't be totally impossible for this chick to be preggers, it would be a bit unusual. I was also unaware that someone could know that they were three weeks pregnant. Then again, I've never been pregnant (thank God), so maybe there have been developments. But I realized that something was up when I saw another one of my FB friends (again, someone from high school) post her status as "18 weeks and craving lollipops!" Again, would not be totally impossible for this chick to be knocked up (but in a "good" way), but two people of the same non-traditional child bearing age posting a similar status within days of each other? Yeah, this wasn't pregnancy. This was stupidity.

I got on the Google and did a little looking around. Turns out, this is just another one of those status updates that only women are supposed to be posting and the men are supposed to just be completely boggled about. Can I just start by saying that I am so completely over this division between men and women where the women end up being the superior being and the men are just these clueless, blundering idiots? This trend seems to have started on American TV sitcoms and worked its way into the general thinking of the American public. (Maybe you people in other countries treat your men like dumbasses also. I don't know. But what I do know is that it goes on here far more than I'm comfortable with.)

Here's how it works: The part of your status with the number of weeks is supposed to represent the month that you were born. Now wait! Before you go getting all know-it-all on me and thinking that you know which numbers represent the month that you were born in, think again! The chart goes like this:

Jan - 1 week
Feb - 2 weeks
March- 3 weeks
April- 4 weeks
May - 6 weeks
June- 8 weeks
July- 10 weeks
August- 12 weeks
September-13 weeks
October -14 weeks
November-16 weeks
December -18 weeks

That's right. It starts off just fine and then becomes ridiculous. What happened to all of the odd numbers after the 3? I don't know either. And if you're wondering what this has to do with breast cancer or breast cancer awareness, keep wondering. It clearly has nothing to do with it. (Oh, and if you're wondering why the men are supposed to be clueless about what all of this means, keep wondering about that as well. No idea. And there's no rationale given anywhere.)

Then comes the next part; the part about what you're "craving". That item is represented by the date that you were born. Here's the asinine chart for that (and if you think that you're going to know what all of these things are, you would be wrong):

Skittles -1
Starburst -2
Kit Kat -3
M&M's - 4
Galaxy -5
Crunchie -6
Dairy Milk - 7
Lollipop - 8
Randoms -9
Malteasers-10
Twirl -11
Kinda Bueno-12
Boost-13
Dime- 14
Lion -15
Wispa - 16
Fudge-17
Freddo - 18
Milkyway -19
Milky bar -20
Creme egg - 21
Skittles - 22
Fruitellas - 23
Haribo -24
Fruit pastels - 25
Starburst -26
Mini eggs -27
Kit kat chunkie -28
Wines gums -29
Smarties - 30
Snickers -31

Congratulations if you know what some of these things are. Bonus points if you realize that "Chunky" (for 28) is spelled wrong. Also, if you wondered why they put "Wines gums" instead of "winegum" or the more realistic (and something that people have actually heard of) "Swedish Fish", then you and I are on the same page (provided that you realized this after looking up what in the hell "Wines gums" were in the first place). Also, it's KINDER Bueno, you dumbasses. (And while I've never heard of it, it does look fairly delicious. Good thing I wasn't going around looking for a Kinda Bueno or I never would have found one.)

HOW does this raise awareness about breast cancer? It doesn't! It's just one more thing that people do so that they can feel good about doing "something" when in reality, they aren't doing anything. You want to raise awareness about breast cancer? How about you post a status that says "It's breast cancer awareness month. Please be aware of breasts." or something like that? And if you REALLY want to raise awareness, what say you raise awareness of women AND men? Aside from the fact that men can get breast cancer as well, it's not like breast cancer has nothing to do with men. Do these dip s***s think that if a guy's wife/mother/sister/aunt/cousin/daughter/grandmother gets breast cancer that it has nothing to do with the guy? That the guy is totally unaffected? What the hell is THAT all about?

Man, this chaps my ass. Maybe I'm missing something here, but I don't think so. And just to be clear, I'm not "offended" by this. I'm annoyed by it. Again, it does nothing, but the people who are doing nothing have convinced themselves that they are doing something. And regardless as to what they think they are doing, nothing would ever get done if everything were tackled in this fashion. If you want to raise awareness about breast cancer, what say you just talk about it to women and men. Nothing raises my awareness about something faster than having someone talk to me about it. Shocking, I know.

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I Like It To Make Sense

With 500,000,000 "members" on Facebook, can't they do something useful with that sort of base? I mean something really useful. Not something that's fake-useful. (By the way, I use the quotes around members because the number of accounts is different than the number of people who actually use the service on a consistent basis. See, I can do that when I'm not one of those who benefits from trumped up numbers. But either way, it's still an enormous buttload of people.) How about if I amend that request? How about if instead of asking if Facebook users could do something useful I instead ask if Facebook users could just stop doing things that do absolutely nothing, all the while pretending as if they're saving the world from certain destruction. (Trust me. Certain destruction doesn't sound that bad when the alternative is surviving with a bunch of morons that just blindly follow something without giving any thought to what they're doing.)

Here's the scoop: A certain status update has been going viral on Facebook. It's women who are blindly doing the updating without stopping to think a) Why am I doing this, and/or b) Why am I doing this? It goes something like this: The status starts off with "I like it on the" and then women are supposed to fill in the blank with where they like it. Like what, you ask? Why, where they like their purse, of course. Wait. Wait. Their...purse? Yes. Their purse. Melissa Bell over at the Washington Post explains it "Women are posting where they like to keep their purses when they come home, but they conveniently leave out the word "purse." Oh. Ha-ha. Is there a reason for this? Of course there is, silly! It's for breast cancer. Wait. What?

Correct. Breast cancer. According to The Huffington Post (which sites other references) "October is Breast Cancer Awareness month, and the "I like it on" trend is an attempt for women to unite around that cause in a top secret way. The idea is figuratively to leave men in the dark." Um, this might be one of the stupidest "feel good" things that I have heard about in quite some time.

First of all, how does posting where you like to keep your purse (assuming that you carry a purse) help raise awareness for breast cancer? And second, how is leaving men in the dark about it helping anything at all? (I realize that it's a small percentage, but it isn't like men don't get breast cancer also.) Is it just women who should be concerned about breast cancer? Assuming that this was even a legitimate tool for raising awareness, why is it that men should be excluded from all of the being aware? Explain to me how it is that men should be excluded from caring about breast cancer? Explain to me how it is that men are not affected by breast cancer? Better yet, explain to some guy whose wife has breast cancer how breast cancer awareness should exclude him.

I'd love to hear from anyone who actually posted this on their status so that they could tell me not where they like their damn purse, but what did they think was going to be accomplished by their going along with it? I'd like to know if they in some way felt smarter by posting it or if the goal was just to feel smarter than the men who had no idea what it could possibly mean (and who, stereotypically, just jumped to the assumption that it was about sex). Thank God that the folks who have been actually been doing actual things to raise awareness about breast cancer didn't run their campaigns with inane Facebook statuses.

Listen, if you want to raise awareness about something, what say you tell folks what it is that you want them to know, OK? Wouldn't you raise more awareness about breast cancer by simply posting on your status "October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Now you know."? Or something like that? I'm sure that you probably would, but that wouldn't be nearly as cutesy as where you like your damned purse. We're so doomed. So, so doomed.

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It's Not About Insurance

I cannot begin to tell you how freaking sick I am of hearing about health care. I am over it. The politicians in Washington have no idea what they're doing and have their own self-centered and power hungry reasons for wanting whatever bill they've constructed to go through. All they're going to end up doing if the thing passes is causing more taxpayers to foot the bill at a higher price. And it's highly unlikely that the higher price will accomplish anything. Unfortunately, it's almost impossible to know because the bill has swelled, at last count, to over 1,900 pages. There is absolutely no way that any given Senator or member of Congress can know precisely what is on every single one of those 1,900+ pages. None. (Granted, I wouldn't trust half of them to know what was in the thing if it were only 19 pages, but with 1,900 I know they don't know what's in there.)

And before you start shooting me emails or leaving me comments saying that things like it must be easy for me to say those things because I obviously have insurance, pipe down. I don't have insurance because I'm uninsurable. I got extremely sick about 10 years ago and damn near died. (I had awesome insurance at the time, but gave that up when I left that particular job.) Since then, whenever I've attempted to get insurance again, time after time I am denied because they dub me to be high risk. Now, my sickness was something that anyone could get, regardless of any particular lifestyle trait or quality, and that over 200,000 people every year come down with. But the fact that over half of those folks die within 48 hours is what makes me "high risk".

The insurance companies can suck it. Would I like those aspects of health care in this country to change so that those with pre-existing conditions or those with past conditions can easily get insurance to access health care? Sure I would. Do I want it done in via this particular health care bill passing? Hell no. In the meantime, I'll just do what I've always done and take care of myself rather than sit around and wait for the government to offer me something to take care of me. I suggest that everyone else do the same.

But my point (surprisingly) wasn't to come here and rant about being uninsurable. My point was to rail on media publications that try to exploit any sort of death out there that they think could possibly be related to someone not having health care. Today's media abomination of exploiting the dead for political gain comes to us courtesy of People.

Apparently, on Tuesday, a one 37-year old Jennifer Lyon died of breast cancer. Until reading about her passing, I had no clue as to who she was. I'm pretty sure I'd never heard the name before in my life. She was a contestant on the 2005 season of Survivor: Palau. (I wasn't real sure that I had ever heard of Palau in my life either, but then realized that it is a tiny little island that is about 500 miles east of the Philippines. Actually, I didn't realize that, but tomato, tom-ah-to. Whatever.)

And while it's unfortunate that Ms. Lyon passed away at such a young age, here's the angle that People magazine felt the need to include in their article. "It all began in the summer of 2004, when she "felt something in my right breast that didn't feel normal," Lyon told PEOPLE in October 2005. "I thought it was probably scar tissue related to my breast implants. It was right along the ridge of the implant, so I let it go, and I let it go for a long time."

See, now I'm thinking after reading that passage that they're going to go with the angle of how important it is to always get these things checked out. Yeah, not so much. Instead they went with: "Asked why she delayed seeing a doctor, Lyon said, "I didn't have insurance, which is a big part of it. And it really wasn't changing much. But a year later, I felt another lump, and then I felt something under my armpit."

Soooo....if the not having insurance was a big part of it, what was the other part? Um, People? Hello? Oh, that didn't get asked. I see. OK, how about this question: When you had your implants, did you have insurance? Oh, what? Oh, riiiight! Right. Implants would be cosmetic and insurance wouldn't necessarily cover them. Huh. Sooooo....you went to a doctor then, right? So, why didn't you go this time? Oh, that's right. People didn't ask that question either. And when you finally went to the doctor because, after a year you felt another lump and something under your armpit, did you have insurance then? Hard to say because People did go there either. Thanks for the craptastic article there, People. Gee, I wonder what you wanted the angle on this story to be?

Let me take a guess as to what happened her. Again, it has nothing to do with the no insurance thing. According to Wikipedia (take it for what's it's worth, I realize that), for the particular season of Survivor that Ms. Lyon was a contestant on, "Applications were due on June 22, 2004. Around 800 applicants were selected for an interview between the latter part of July and August 2004...48 were chosen as semi-finalists...during September 2004. From these...20 were chosen to participate (on) the show between October to December 2004." I think that her desire to be on Survivor was a huge factor in her putting off seeing a doctor. I have absolutely nothing but speculation to base that assumption on, but it seems fairly reasonable, given as how she had proven in the past that she had no problem seeing a doctor when she wanted something to be taken care of, ie breast implants.

Look, I'm not trying to malign the deceased, all right? My condolences go out to her friends and family. But the other thing that goes out to her friends and family is the utmost hope that this doesn't get turned into something that is about having or not having insurance because it doesn't sound like it is. If this is going to get turned into anything at all (and I pray to God that is isn't) it needs to be on the importance of getting checked regularly and to not put off seeing a doctor when you find some abnormality on your body. No one knows your body better than you do. If you find something that isn't right, go find out why it isn't right.

Lately, so many people are obsessed with being on TV for no other reason than just being on TV. There are a gazillion reality shows out there for people to choose from so that they can claim their fame by being seen as whatever it is that they're portraying themselves as by (unfortunately) millions of viewers. I watch these morons that cannot sing a lick try out for American Idol. They act as if their life will be over if they do not make it on that show. There are things that are more important than reality TV. Priorities people. Priorities.

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