Halloween: Hoes, Tools, and Asstards

Ahhhh, Halloween. A pagan Celtic holiday (Samhain, look it up on Google) that was stolen, bastardized, dumbed down, and sissied up by the Christians, and fed to us as the eve of All Saints Day. Your particular patron saint not cool enough to get his own day? Well, November 1st takes care of that! It’s for all the saints!!! Oddly, though, the only two saints I can think of who have their own day, Patrick and Andrew, were Celtic…the patron saints of Ireland and Scotland respectively….Valentine doesn’t really count since no one’s entirely sure which martyred Valentinus of Rome is to be venerated… but I digress.

As a kid, you looked forward to Halloween night to go traipsing about clad in some cool outfit or other, getting bagfuls of loot. Each year it gets tamer and safer too, it seems. We wore cheap, shitty thin plastic masks held tight to our faces by a cheap elastic which often broke off the mask. The eye holes were never quite right and poked you in the eyes with bits sticking out. The suit was so flammable that it would ignite if you stood too close to a light bulb. Later, we graduated to hot, suffocating rubber masks that smelled like formaldehyde and collected water from sweat and breath condensation. If our faces were painted, it was with toxic paints like lead yellow and mercury silver.

As a teen, you were considered a douchebag if you went trick or treating after age 12, so instead you either sat at home waiting to steal your siblings’ candy, or stuck passing out the crap your parents bought to the neighborhood kids at the door, or being a vandalizing asshat and egging people’s houses or throwing rolls of toilet paper into trees of people who’d slighted you.

Nowadays they start trick or treating a couple days beforehand like beggars, they trick or treat at hospitals and shopping malls, and costumes are all biodegradeable earth-friendly green generic advertisements for toys and video games.

What the hell happened to Halloween?

I mean, sure, it’s for kids, but as an adult you sort of expect to go to some big shindig party with guests garbed in the sort of outlandishly creative costumes that they came up with on the annual “Roseanne” Halloween episode. However, I think I’ve been to perhaps one not-very-exciting home-based party in my adult years, one decent party one , and have spent about 4 or 5 Halloweens at bars or dance clubs to participate in their parties. And if I’ve learned anything at all from going to an overcrowded club full of Halloween revelers, it’s this: the bulk of humanity lacks creativity and relies on the lowest common denominator.

Sex, not scary, is the lowest common denominator of Halloween. The next lowest would be “stupid”. Having visited no fewer than three local full-scale Halloween stores this season, and searched about five or six costume retail websites, I came to the conclusion that all adult womens’ costumes are intended to be slutty and whorish versions of costumes they wore as kids, and guys’ costumes are intended to either be buffoonishly dumb or sophomorically penile. When you run out of creativity, fall back on showing off your tits, or making a dick joke.

Naughty schoolgirl, naughty cave-girl, naughty princess, naughty vampire, naughty nurse, naughty this and naughty that…and the ubiquitous matched sets of pimps and hoes. Of course, the bars & clubs jump on the bandwagon by sponsoring “Heaven & Hell” nights for “naughty angels and sexy devils”, and “Pimps & Hoes Parties” by where guys dress like a pimp and girls dress like they normally do for a night out of free drinks from dumbasses; ie: like hoes. I’ve even heard it done as “Vicars and Vixens”, by where the men dress as priests and the women are slutty nuns or just plain slutty anythings. Lovely.

We went to a Halloween party on Friday night a couple miles away from our house, and I went as a hockey player with a throat wound and Crys went as serial killer Aileen Wournos. Tacky, yes, I know. But the crowd at the party got the joke, and everyone there, with the notable exception of one exceptionally drunk fellow who stayed the night there, was in costume. Mostly it was a traditional collection of zombies and gothic scaries, and absolutely NO ONE was dressed in anything whorish or dickish. It was quite refreshing, actually.

Look, people, Halloween comes but once a year. Spend a little time & effort and donate some creativity to the event if you’re gonna participate. Don’t be a doofus in a dick suit or just another skank in a teddy. And while we’re at it, please skip the “Scream” masks and Jason Vorhees-style goalie masks. Those are played out too. Again, show some creativity. The best costume of the night Friday was the guy who made his own “Pyramid Head” helmet, from the video game/movie “Silent Hill”. The guy did an incredible job welding together the façade on top of a construction helmet, and while I had no idea what the hell a Pyramid Head was at the time, it looked really cool.

Creativity is a good thing, people…utilize it. Or Pyramid Head will come after you with his giant butter knife...

Drink Up, Bitches!

Barney Frank, why do I hate thee so?

I don’t hate Barney Frank because he’s gay. Get real. I’m a bit more enlightened than that.

I don’t hate Barney Frank because he’s from Massachusetts. C’mon, people, Boston is one of my favorite cities ever.

I don’t even hate Barney Frank because he sounds like a drunken version of Buddy Hackett…well, maybe just a little bit.

I hate Barney Frank because he’s a liberal Socialist who wants to re-distribute my money to asstard social-program sponges who think they’re entitled to a free handout from the Feral Gummint™. I hate Barney Frank because in a world full of people drinking Barack Hussein Obama’s bullshit-flavored Kool-Aid, he’s pouring glass after glass for the ignorant Sheeple. And I hate Barney Frank for wanting to cut defense spending by 25%...he may think that’ll help things out, but soldiers suffer when you cut a full quarter of their budgets. Soldiers die when you cut 25% of their budgets, the same soldiers who keep you and your cronies fat, safe, and happily redistributing wealth up on Crapitol Hill.

Piss off, Congressman Frank, and take your Kool Aid with you.

Tool-o-Ween: Crap Sequels

Being that this week ends with Halloween, I have decided that my Tool of the Week should be none other than Jigsaw, or at least the little fruity muppet that gets associated with the “Saw” franchise of gorefest movies.

Seriously, is there really any meat left on these fucking bones to flay? Saw FIVE just came out, eclipsed only by “High School Musical 3: Kill Me Now Because It Sucks”. Meanwhile, the empty heads at eMpTyVee™ (That’s MTV to you intellectually-challenged folks out there) are having some lame-assed “reality” show to pick some Realitard™ to win a role in Saw SIX. This franchise refuses to die. I mean, Jesu Cristae Dominae, didn’t they actually kill Jigsaw off and autopsy his corpse in Saw III? Or was that IV? This is getting ridiculous.

Of course, as if there wasn’t already enough crap sequels in the Friday the 13th series, (like, what 10 films now?) they have a no-shit remake in the works of the original. I guess they can use updated technology to make even bloodier special effects that were unavailable in 1980. The franchise jumped the shark when they tried to go 3-D, and by the time Jason went into space for Jason X, it was just rediculoid. I really hope that they won’t go and remake the entire pantheon…they’ll probably just end up remaking the original Nightmare on Elm Street too, just to milk the tits off of that cow, too. And then combine the two yet again for a remake of Freddy vs. Jason vs. Alien vs. Predator vs. Rocky vs. Rambo vs. High School Musical.

Stop making sequels just for the sake of sucking money from people too stupid to know any better.

Because two eyes are sexier than one...

A Muslim cleric has called for Saudi women to wear a full veil, or nigab, that reveals only one eye, "in order to control seduction", the BBC reported recently.

Sheikh Muhammad al-Habadan said that women in Saudi Arabia are encouraged to use eye makeup and look seductive when allowed to wear a veil that exposes both eyes.(gasp!)

How much of their face Muslim women expose differs from country to country, and is an area of contention. The nigab is more common in Saudi Arabia, but in many Muslim societies women wear a headscarf that covers only their hair, such as a hajib or chador. But I guess that’s not oppressive enough for SaudiSuperMuslims…

So, as usual, someone takes it into their heads to fuck up a perfectly good thing that otherwise was working just fine. Radical Islamic Fundamentalists (RIF’s) have perverted Islam to their own visions and suit their own purposes. Of course, fundamentalist Christians have fucked up Christianity as well. Wait till Jesus comes back (like they all say He is, and supposedly any day now) and boy, will He be pissed. “I said what?” When did I say half the crap you attributed to me in that book of fables?” Anyways, I digress...

Now, I’m not exactly a mullah by any means, (and mullah, literally, means scholar) but from what I gather there’s nothing in the Koran that says women must dress in a burka or nigab. This is some new-school shit developed by asshole RIF’s who thought a modest head covering was just too much available skin, so that graduated to facial veils, and spiralled downwards to virtual mummification.

Pretty soon they’ll just look like castoffs from a Star Wars convention. The Tusken Raider sand-people on Luke Skywalker’s home planet had a rugged sort of burka helmet going on. Princess Leia’s Boushh bounty hunter disguise was rugged yet refined. The Mandalorian battle armor of Boba Fett has a view slit reminiscent of a nigab arranmgement without having to actually see those offensively seductive eyes. Soon enough, though, Islam will be awash in a sea of Darth Vader look-alikes sealed away in layers of black capes and big black helmets, breathing like a respirator on the fritz, and the voice of James Earl Jones will issue forth with “Allah Akbar”.




Y’know, most every Muslim I ever encountered in my myriad travels here and abroad in Europe were decent, mellow, respectful people. Of course, I never went to the scary countries full of angry Muslims with guns trying to kill me. I don’t really have a problem with the bulk of Islam. It’s the RIF’s with their burkas, canings, stonings, honor rapes, honor killings, jihads, and truck bombs that piss me off. And radical fundamentalist cultist pseudo-Christians with messiah complexes with harems in their bunkers, dancing with rattlesnakes and babbling in tongues, well they piss me off too. Never let it be said that I’m not equal opportunity…

CSI Walterboro: Election 2008

In the midst of this super busy and crazed electoral season, a certain local election here in South Carolina has caught my attention. It seemed that out of nowhere election signs started cropping up to try to sway my vote for the position of County Coroner for Colleton County. It sort of got me thinking…why in the hell are we voting for the guy who declares people dead?

The current coroner for Colleton is Richard Harvey. I’ve known Richard for nearly five years. I see him all the time at Stingrays hockey games. I joked with him during the last election cycle, asking him what he’d done for the dead people of Colleton County that should earn my vote. His opponent is Michael Crosby, whom I know nothing about but is probably a decent fellow.

Most of us likely think that a coroner and a medical examiner are the same thing, and most of us get our idea of what a medical examiner is from watching Jan Garavaglia on “Dr. G, Medical Examiner”, or Doc Robbins on CSI, who is listed as both a coroner and the Chief Medical Examiner in the show credits. Either way, it would seem that the individual in question declares people dead and does autopsies & such on the aforementioned deceased folk.

Medical examiner:
An appointed medically qualified officer whose duty is to investigate deaths and bodily injuries that occur under unusual or suspicious circumstances, to perform post-mortems, and sometimes to initiate inquests.

Coroner:
[related to Anglo-French corouner, from coroune, meaning crown]: An officer of a county, district, state, or municipality; originally, in medieval England, an official who upheld the monarch's rights of private property. From the 16th and 17th centuries on, the chief duty of the coroner was to hold inquests on the bodies of those believed to have died by violence or accident, or who suffered grievous bodily harm. In modern times, in the United States, the coroner is an elected official.

A coroner is not necessarily a medical examiner. Medical examiners are medical doctors who have specialised in anatomical- or forensic pathology. In countries such as the United States, where the coroner is an elected, political position, a coroner need not be a medical examiner, though many are. Many jurisdictions in America have replaced the coroner with M.E.’s, which leads me to the argument of how/why do we go about electing a coroner in this day & age?

I mean, I have yet to see a debate between coroner candidates. Maybe we should get the candidates together on TV and have some slick moderator bait them like they do with Presidential candidates? Well, it turns out that there was a debate of sorts, on October 13, when candidates for all elected offices were invited to come and meet their constituents by the Colleton County Taxpayers Association (CCTA). The event was open to the public. The format for the forum consisted of candidates being asked three to four questions from the planning committee of the event, then they were asked questions from the audience, and finally they were given the opportunity to address the gathering in a two-minute closing statement.

The questions from the Taxpayers Association for the Office of Coroner included; (1) Will you be a full time coroner? (2) Will you or have you ever used a county vehicle without reimbursing for gas? (3) How many deputy coroners do you/would you have? And (4) How diverse is your workforce? From the audience the candidates were asked about their medical training and background and their knowledge of autopsy policy and procedures here in the South Carolina. In addition, Mr. Harvey was asked about how much of his time is spent away from the county teaching at MUSC.

Kinda lightweight, if you ask me. Where’s the hardball questions? Stuff like “What will you do for the dead people of Colleton County?” I’m assuming that the question about the gas reimbursements would relate to personal use of a county vehicle, since asking someone to pay for the gas they use in the performance of their official duties would be ludicrous. And something tells me that if someone dies while Richard is in Charleston at the Medical University, chances are that they’ll still be dead when he gets back. Let the man teach.

I’ve yet to see any flyers in my mailbox highlighting their positions, either. So far, all I’ve seen are the ubiquitous roadside signs asking for my vote. Of course, what positions would a coroner really need to have? It seems to me to be a position that really should be a hired slot, filled by a well-qualified individual, instead of having to shell out money for signs and stickers and buttons, and taking time away from doing actual governmental work to get elected, not to mention the governmental expense of the balloting/voting process. I mean, hell, you hire a town manager based on a resume and work experience, and that person operates your entire town. But we have to have an electoral process for the person who shows up in the plain white van to say “Yup, he’s dead”.

I know that’s really oversimplifying the duties of a coroner, but it’s not exactly a CEO deal, and in dinky old Colleton County, South-by-God-Carolina, we’re not exactly in the same sort of criminal forensics territory of, say, Los Angeles….or even Omaha or Des Moines. We don’t get too many exotic methods of death here. Most non-natural causes of death here involve someone wrapped around a tree.

What exactly does one have to do wrong in order to get voted out of office as coroner? Declare someone dead who wasn’t? Refuse to declare an obvious corpse dead?

So, don’t forget to vote in November, and don’t forget your county coroner. Make sure the right person zips closed your body bag and sends you off for toe-tagging. You’re really only pronounced two things in your life, and that’s either married or dead, and one of those you can only do once despite what they say about till death do us part. Make sure the right person declares you dead.

Another week in Maximum Musical Suckage

Another week, another mixed experience in pop radio…not as much crap this time around. Maybe I’m mellowing with the coming of fall…or maybe pop music is entering a less-sucky phase of the moon…nah……I doubt it. But some of the latest round of gobbledygook crappage crawls forth from the muck, mire, of ooze of Maximum Suckage to be somewhat catchy…and you know what I say about catchy. Herpes is catchy too, but you don’t want it.

Jason Mraz—I’m Yours
What is this crap? Usually Mraz is decently listenable, but this syrupy drivel reminds me of that cover of “Over The Rainbow” by Israel Kamakawiwo'ole that everyone raves about. I keep expecting a 700-pound Hawaiian dude with a ukulele to show up.

Britney Spears—Womanizer
One of the catchier offerings this week. Processed vocals that are so many octaves lower than her usual range that it almost doesn’t even sound human, let alone like her. Not exactly the cleverest lyrics and the chorus is borderline silly with it’s semi-stutter delivery. The video serves no real purpose other than to show Spears as naked as possible to show everyone that her hair grew back and her pudginess is gone, putting to bed the train wreck of her MTV VMA’s performance last year.

Christina Agiuilera—Keeps Getting Better
What better way to promote your “greatest hits” album than by combining overly simple lyrics about being a “super bitch” delivered in a pretty convincing attempt at being Gwen Stefani over top of what sounds like a lost demo track to Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus”?

The Jonas Brothers—Love Bug
So sweet it makes my teeth hurt. Absolute crap. This has even less balls than Jason Mraz’s song.

Fallout Boy—I Don’t Care
Emo’s answer to Barenaked Ladies seems to have spent 30 seconds listening to Marylin Manson’s cover of “Personal Jesus” and conceived yet another overwrought rock opera.

T-Pain featuring Lil’ Wayne—I Can’t Believe It
I established months ago that T-Pain writes some of the lamest shit this side of a Kanye West guest rap, only he squirts it all out of a vocoder because he can’t sing either.

Akon—Right Now (Na Na)
I’m pretty well sick of Akon. This song is simple to the point of annoyance, and it’s pretty to the point…I wanna make love right now na na….how now brown cow na na na na

TI—Whatever You Like
This song is infectious. I actually like it. Never has a song about being some chick’s sugar daddy been so smooth.

Pitbull featuring Lil’ Jon—Krazy
Let me preface this by saying that Lil’ Jon could sing Happy Birthday and I’d think it was a masterpiece. The guy is a fucking riot. Throw him together with a Cuban-American rapper and hilarity ensues. This song is just plain silliness, a great party track that could make Stephen Hawking get up and dance.

September—Cry For You
Kick-ass synthpop by Swedish singer Petra Marklund, who records under the name September. The track is built around the synth line from Bronski Beat’s 1984 single “Smalltown Boy”. If you like to dance, this track is for you.

And my Pick of the Week:

Mirror, featuring Dave Gahan—Nostalgia
The audio-visual project Mirror enlisted Depeche Mode’s front man Dave Gahan to sing this sweeping, gorgeous soundscape. It’s an incredible vocal by Dave, who seems to just get younger every year now that he’s clean & sober. It’s not quite as brooding as a Depeche Mode track, and almost reminds me of Morrissey’s better ballads, like “I Know It’s Gonna Happen Someday”.

Two Tools For One Low Price

It is my firm belief that one of the biggest tools in the Tool Box “Tooliverse” is Sean John Combs, known by various & sundry alias pseudonyms like Puff, Puff Daddy, Puffy, P-Diddy, and, as of late, just plain Diddy.

Supposedly he was some minor talent producer back in the day, before the deaths of Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G./Biggie Smalls (Christopher Wallace). After the death of Smalls in the Great East-West Rap Wars of 1997, Combs did what any record label owner and producer would do…he became a rapper himself. Laughing all the way to the bank, The Police allowed Combs to build a tribute song to Wallace around “Every Breath You Take”. Not content to just make a one-off tribute to a dead friend, he kept on recording. Based upon this, he turned hip-hop from a creative art form into trite lyrics wrapped around samples of real songs. I mean, why make your own beats when all the songs of others can just be sampled?

He had the balls to claim “we invented the remix” for a compilation of remixes of artists on his label… dude, trust me… Depeche Mode was releasing remixes before you hit puberty. People like Kraftwerk invented the remix, not you.

I’ve thought you were a tool for years, Combs. People who wear sunglasses indoors and at night are tools. And you, sir, seem to have those glasses welded to your face 24/7 like you were Geordi LaForge in Star Trek or something. At least you’ve seemingly graduated away from your signature uniform of monochrome white suit ensembles. It was silly when David Bowie did it in 1983, and it’s silly today. Only the Good Humor man dresses like that and gets away with it.

But from one blogger to another, you really jumped the shark to Uber Tool status with your YouTube Diddy Blogs. Your anti-McCain and anti-Palin rants are ridiculous. Saying that Palin is unqualified because her state has low crime and “there’s no black people” is a load of shit. Just come out and say that you’ll vote for Obama for no other reason than he’s black. God knows he’s got few enough qualifications of his own. Hiding under a sheet with a flashlight and saying Palin scares you is just childish.

You should be locked in a closet with Kanye West and see who can out-tool the other.

And speaking of your sunglass-bedecked Doppleganger….


Kanye, Kanye, Kanye. Yeah, you’re a tool too. I thought you had some talent when you recorded “Through The Wire”, but you jumped the shark and crossed into Tool City after “Gold Digger”…because after that you started to believe your own hype and went from an emerging talent to another “I Love Me Some Me” type.

I really get sick of hearing you bitch and moan when you don’t win an award. You bitched when MTV went with Britney Spears at the 2007 Video Music Awards to start the show, saying that your album was about to drop and that you were more important. Well, so was she, and really, her performance was a fucking train wreck of Biblical proportions and you later got to perform this huge spectacle medley of songs later on. And trust me, the big song you had at the time? “Stronger”? The only reason that song was even remotely listenable was because of Daft Punk. You had the audacity to rhyme “Klondike” with “blonde dyke” and act like it was Shakespeare or something. That weak-ass babble you’re spouting on that “American Boy” song by Estelle is some of the lamest shit I have ever heard. Rhyming “now now” with “ow, ow” is just fucking SAD. You could have gone on and on , with “toy cap guns go pow pow, how now brown cow cow, little tiny dogs say bow wow…” But the stupid dipshit motherfuckers who listen to Top 40 crap like yours eat that shit up like a fat stack of flapjacks at the IHOP.

Both of you can take your petulant smirks and 24/7 sunglasses and feast upon my taint. I wouldn’t see either of you perform if you gave free concerts from the rim of my toilet.

Geordi LaForge knows that these guys are tools...

Janice Dickenson: Supreme Tool

Why hasn’t someone taken a bucket of water & tossed it on Janice Dickinson yet? That vile, nasty bitch would melt like the Wicked Witch of the West.

I don’t watch her show. Just from the commercials I can tell she’s a total bitch. She may have been a model 3,000 years ago, when Vogue was chiseled on cave walls and the pictures were stick figures done in charcoal, but now she’s this skeletal wraith covered in a polyviscose plastic shell, oozing hate and loathing.

I saw a recent trailer for her asinine show where she refuses to work with plus-size models, and calls a girl who is a size 14 “a whale”.

How cuntish. You’re a tool, Dickinson. Assholes like you are why women are struggling with anorexia & bulimia. Assholes like you are why there’s a size ZERO. I mean, what the fuck is a size ZERO? Like a 2 wasn’t tiny enough, you had to make a waif-size for underfed children? You people have the balls to say anything over a size 4 is fat?


Kiss my ass. You should be shot.

Riddle Me This, would ya'?

What in the Blue Fuck is this?

A spray-on tan, gelled up hair, a headband, a giant CZ ear stud, miniscule jawline stubble-track, and lips that look like a pastel asshole.


You, sir, are the quintessential douchebag Uber-Tool.

Popped Collar Tools

Popped Collars.

Why?

Dude, that shit went out in the late 80’s. It was lame when New Kids On The Block did it, the first time they were famous. It’s a relic, like the Members Only jacket and neon shoelaces.

So, for all you tools out there sporting popped collars on your Pimpercrombie & Bitch pastel pink polo shirts, or worse, layering your popped collars in pastel pinks and lime greens to set of your spray-on tans and hats cocked at angles (or worse, a visor worn UPSIDE DOWN), please just fucking stop it. You look like an idiot. Remember, “tool” only rhymes with “cool”.

So, please…just stop.

Welcome to The Tool Box

Welcome to The Tool Box.

Sometimes you have to let certain people know that they are, in fact, absolute and utter TOOLS.

Most of you tools are Hollywood types with over-inflated senses of self-importance that’s compounded by having an over-active mouth to tell us how great you are, how much you make, how dope you roll.

Assholes like you wear sunglasses all day and all night, indoors or out, in restaurants, in cars, on planes, in interviews on TV sets, in the audience at awards shows, and probably on the toilet too.

You’re the type who gets hospitalized for “exhaustion” when you work maybe 10 hours a week. People who WORK get exhausted, not people who get up at the crack of noon and eat 400-dollar salads washed down with Crys-tallllll and tabs of E. Being exhausted does not require a hospital stay; it requires SLEEP. The same for you asstards who get hospitalized for dehydration. Try drinking something non-alcoholic once in awhile….

Anyways, tools of the world, consider yourself on notice. I’m coming for you.

Happy National Coming Out Day!

Today is October 11. That means it’s National Coming Out Day.

The day was founded by Dr. Robert Eichberg and Jean O'Leary in 1988, in celebration of the Second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights one year earlier, in which 500,000 people marched on Washington, DC, for gay and lesbian equality. National Coming Out Day events are aimed at raising awareness of the LGBT community among the general populace in an effort to give a familiar face to the LGBT rights movement. National Coming Out Day is a time to publicly display gay pride. Many choose this day to come out to their parents, friends, co-workers and, most importantly, to themselves.

Despite its name, National Coming Out Day isn’t just an American event; it’s in fact observed in many countries, including Switzerland, The Netherlands, Germany, Canada and the United Kingdom. National Coming Out Day is celebrated on October 12th in the United Kingdom.

Coming out is the process of personally accepting your homosexuality and disclosing it to family, co-workers and friends. Coming out is different for every gay person. Some experience a lot of pain and anguish, while for others acceptance is a joyous time, though it’s seldom an easy thing.

For those of you who just don’t get it: tough shit. Some people are gay. Get over it, and get over yourselves.

And for all of my friends in the LGBT community, today I salute you all. I’m proud to have you all as my friends.

Feel Your Boobies.....please.

Every time I turn around, there's some new pink-painted product staring me in the face, festooned with a pink ribbon for breast cancer awareness. Breast cancer toothbrushes, breast cancer X-mas ornaments, gloves, jewelry, tea kettles, baby strollers, dolls, food processors, standup mixers, sunglasses, rubber bracelets, Spongebob plushies (seriously), cameras, cell phone holders, rolling support walkers, desktop candy dispensers, lotions, license plate brackets, mouse pads, Tic-Tacs, even breast cancer awareness tomato soup from Campbell's. It's almost sickening, actually, how a good and worthy cause is being turned into an excuse to hawk a product. But I digress...

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Please, my dear readers, do your monthly self exams. When it's time, get your mammograms. Early detection increases your chance of survival.

I'm the son of a breast cancer survivor. My mother's cancer was caught at the very eariest stages by an annual mammogram and she's just about two years cancer-free now.
Her own mother wasn't so lucky. Even after a double mastectomy, it matasticized into her pancreas, and that's what eventually killed her a year later. She wasn't all that assiduous in getting exams and what not, and it eventually was her undoing.

So, do what needs doing. It could save your life.