YOU SUCK!!!!

Jell-O. And they’re little Temptations pudding advertising. See, the idea is that it’s not like their other desserts (somehow). I mean, it probably still contains the exact same ingredients. But somehow this one isn’t for kids. They’re not only saying so. They’re forbidding kids from getting free samples of it through fancy machines!

The current offer is for Temptations by Jell-O, the brand’s first product designed specifically for adults. The machine is equipped with technology to determine the age of the person requesting a sample. If the machine senses a child, a panel lights up with the words, “Sorry, kid. You’re too young to experience indulgence like this. Please step away so the adults can get their free treat.”

You’re too young to experience indulgence like this? Even if I weren’t outraged on youth rights grounds, I’d want to smack the person who came up with this. Are they actually implying eating this particular pudding constitutes sex?

We’ve been discussing this a bit on the NYRA board e-mail list, and Eric Goldstein suggested the restriction could be for liability purposes. And he’s probably right. Except if that were all it is, you’d think they could at least try to be respectful about it. Having a machine say the equivalent of “ha ha, you can’t have this!” pretty much shows there’s more to it than that.

Unless it’s 50% vodka, there’s nothing “adult” about Temptations, no matter how much Kraft tries to implicitly sexualize it. No, they are very obviously taking the alcohol and cigarette tactic of using age restrictions to boost youth desire for the product. To make them want to be “adult”. As well as making adults want to use the product because it’s not for kids, so they can quench their adult insecurity by indulging in what might be usually pegged a kids’ dessert but not feel young doing it because kids can’t have it.

We see this with so many products, that kids can’t have or can’t have fully usually under the guise of safety. But that’s an excuse. I’ll bet more adults support the drinking age not so much becase of desire to keep youth healthy, but because they see youth as “other”, as inferior, and that they have some right to be superior to them and to have things those inferior others can’t have. And this makes them feel good and triumphant, that they’ve won over those evil youth, who’ve committed the horrible sin of existing when they haven’t existed long enough. Hell, I’ve seen ads for parental controls on things that promote it not to keep kids safe but to be able to block them and say/think “haha, you’re blocked, you stupid kid!” It’s a dangerous combination to set something where one group can feel super privileged and superior over the other, all with the excuse of “safety”. Safety, my ass!

And youth aren’t the only ones victim to this method, though they fall victim to it perhaps most severely. Dr Pepper Ten ads are promoting themselves explicitly that “It’s Not For Women!” Why? Because the idea is men don’t want to drink Diet Dr Pepper because “oh noes, diet soda is for women!” So they have this product that’s pretty much identical, just with added sweetener and caffeine, that’s not only marketed to men but supposedly only men. Because nothing kills manliness like using the same product women use. Men can’t be women!

And so we have Temptations, despite containing nothing uniquely harmful to youth (any more than any other sweet dessert anyway), promoting itself as “just for adults” so adults don’t have to feel degraded by eating the same product kids eat. Men don’t want to be women. Adults don’t want to be children. That’s the idea that is being promoted here to sell products.

Maybe we all need to get over our insecurities, and loudly, and make clear this kind of advertising doesn’t appeal to us. Because you don’t need to tell me a product will make me feel more adult. I don’t need something to do that for me, and I’m not stupid enough to think your product will do that.

YOU SUCK!!!!

I realize the Republican Party seems to exist for no other reason than to stop the Democrats from doing whatever it is they’re doing, no matter what it is. To be fair, Democrats do the reverse as well, but not quite as much, considering almost no Republicans in Congress or Senate seem to ever vote the “Democrat” side of an issue, while Democratic Congressmen and Senators do so quite a bit. And it’s pisses ordinary Democrats the hell off! But I digress.

So, as part of the Republicans’ agenda of don’t-fucking-let-anything-pass, now they’ve effectively stalled legislation to get teen behavior modification facilities some much needed regulations. HR 911 passed the House and then it’s been in a Senate committee to see if it’ll get put to a full vote before the Senate. We NYRAnians met with the chair of that committee, Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA), to help move it through the committee. The senator agrees with our position on it. The trouble was some pesky Republican Senators on that committee who seemed to have some qualms about some of what this anti-torture school legislation is asking. Seriously, go to the above link to read Alex’s piece about it in Huffington Post. These Republican Senators have a problem with things like forcing school to do things like, oh, NOT withholding food or vital medical treatment from students as therapy.

NYRA is on this! Alex has been posting good stuff to Huffington Post now and then, and now Dave Moss is a regular writer on education on Change.org! Check out Dave’s write-up on Change about this issue! And sign the petition!

Because, really, this is more than just an issue of justice and common sense. It’s a matter of life and death. It’s a matter of thousands of people, real people, having suffered through these places, often for such ridiculous reasons as coming out of the closet, for slipping grades, for questioning the family’s religion, or for whatever other reason the parents deem enough to send their children to places with fewer safety regulations than PRISONS. And while it may not seem like survivors of these programs make up a huge proportion of all teenagers, EVERY teenager is at risk as long as these places exist and are legal. Absolutely any teen you know can wind up sent away to one of these places at any time. I don’t know about you, but I find that really fucking terrifying. And I’m too old to be a victim now. Imagine the terror for those who still are teens.

I know people who’ve suffered through programs like these. They’re my friends. They’re good people. Programs like these did not make them good people. They were good people already, yet someone in their life couldn’t fucking appreciate them for already being good people and felt the need to ship them off to a torture school.

But I suppose the idea of so many endangered young lives means nothing to Republicans. Nothing other than they must oppose any legislation to help them, that is. Because otherwise they’d sound like no-good Democrats and we can’t have that!

YOU SUCK!!!!

These people who do not have pets and seem to think that makes them better than everyone else.

“Ooh, look at me! I’m not some idiot who wastes money by having some smelly stupid dog around. I don’t have cat hair all over my clothes. Why would anyone want one of these stupid things? They’re such a pointless hassle. I’m smart and don’t waste my time and energy on some dumb animal.”

I’m not sure whether I want to smack these people upside the head or just fervently pity them. Maybe both.

Pity because having a dog and/or a cat is just so wonderful, a special kind of joy, and the little expenses and occasional dander and hair around the house is more than worth it.

In fact, these proudly petless jerks even overlook the single hardest thing about having pets: the sheer heartbreak when they die. Whether they just don’t wake up from a nap one day due to old age, or they ran out into the street, or they had some illness and you had to make the heart-wrenching decision to have them put down. If one were to make a case against having pets, that would be it, as any of us who’ve been through losing one knows that all too well and still feels the pain no matter how long it has been. Because when you have a pet, that’s the reality always lingering in the background, that someday you will lose your beloved furry companion.

But, goodness, don’t let one of these petless pricks know that you’re grieving for your beloved cat who was just euthanized because she had advanced cancer. They’ll be right there to inform you of how stupid and immature you are, that it’s just some dumb animal, and how they always worry about real, more important matters. Be sure to inform this person of the same after you’ve buried a screwdriver in their eye.

YOU SUCK!!!!

I’ve griped about certain Christmas songs many times before, and will surely continue to do so even long after I’m dead. So here’s another whose creator I’d like to throw screaming into the middle of the ocean.

This song is “Grown Up Christmas List”. Just the title threw up some red flags to die-hard pro-youth me. Then at some point I actually heard the song and listened to the lyrics. Yup, I’d say those red flags are quite warranted.

Basically, the song is about someone asking Santa for wars to never start, for everyone to have a friend, for love to never end. Hmmm… that sounds very nice actually. I can get on board with that. It’s a very nice song.

However! One little problem which completely ruins it and makes it not the lovely song it could be but downright objectionable. Remember that title? Yeah, the idea is that this person is asking Santa for all these nice things, as opposed asking for toys or other material things. In other words, material items are things kids ask for, but adults want nicer things like peace and love and whatnot. Because, naturally, kids are inherently selfish and just want lots of toys.

Oh, boy, yet another example of yuletide hatred of children.

Go fuck yourself with a crucifix, Amy Grant.

YOU SUCK!!!!

What is this obsession over diamond jewelry? What is with this cult-like indoctrination that all women ever want as a gift is diamonds?

It’s bad enough having to see the asstarded jewelry store commercials all the time. Oh, he went to Jared? Translation, he gave a blowjob to a guy named Jared to afford the $20,000 bracelet he just bought you.

Seriously. That’s how much this stuff costs. It is mind boggling that so much money, more than the price of many cars, buys you what is essentially a shiny carbon glob.

Can you eat diamonds? No. Can diamonds transport you anywhere? No. Can diamonds keep you warm in a blizzard? No. Are diamonds the least bit entertaining? No.

So… how the hell can they be worth twenty fucking thousand dollars?!

You know what you can get with $20,000?

Well, as mentioned already, you can buy a car. That amount would cover the entire cost of my car anyway, no payments or anything.

It could be a down payment on a home, and depending on where you live could either be a very mediocre one or a decent one.

It could pay for one year of college, give or take. My college, would have covered my whole time there.

It could buy enough food to feed you for about eight years.

It could buy you about 10,000 gallons of gasoline.

It could go to any number of worthy charities and causes, such as:
-Muscular dystrophy, to get wheelchairs for those poor kids and buy all the very expensive lab stuff needed so they can keep researching for a cure.
-ASPCA, to help some poor cute animals find loving homes and be treated right
-Save the Children, to feed all those starving kids in this country and elsewhere
-Wikipedia, because it’s a good project, damn it!
-Some inner city school system to give poor ghetto kids a decent chance at education and getting ahead
-And, of course, NYRA, so our nation’s youth can be better respected and represented and able to control their own lives (and to watch Alex squeal and pass out upon receiving the check!).

But, goodness, no, you can’t be expected to blow that wad on anything that’s, oh… practical. Instead, just spend it on a chain of rocks to wear on your wrist.

I mean, that’s what all the propaganda says! Women only want diamonds. They don’t want electronics or cars (unless it’s a Lexus) or anything that’s the least bit useful or entertaining or even interesting. She just wants to be treated like a brainless, illogical Princess, because that’s all she is apparently. She doesn’t want anything even remotely intellectually stimulating. Just give her something shiny. Because if you don’t spend your life savings to buy her a goddamn rock, then you don’t love her! Oh noes! And you’ll never get laid again because everyone knows that women do not enjoy sex and only do it to please their men. Oh, say it ain’t so!

Because relationships aren’t excruciatingly annoying and complicated already.

YOU SUCK!!!!

These morons all over the place who are whiny crying idiots over so-called swear words. Oh noes, don’t use such language on TV or in public, because people might be offended.

Does it offend you? If not, then you are at least marginally respectable. If so, GOOD! You deserve to be offended, retard. If you’re going to give mere words and sounds so much power over you, you deserve to be miserable over it. The rest of us will carry on happily.

Then, of course, comes the issue of bad words when it comes to children. How many children have grown up having ingested so much soap or healed from so many bruises on various body parts because they uttered a word the adults around them said quite frequently? Seriously, think about that one. Everyone is all like “those words are only for adults, aahhh!”

Umm, why? No one has ever been able to give me a real answer to that question. They either just stare blankly and repeat their ageist objection without real answer or make up some crap like “well, he needs to learn he can’t do it in school” and I’m like “uh, he’s not in school right now” and might even add “if he does it in school, he’ll find out the consequences on his own, but here, there are no consequences other than you being insecure adults being offended”. I never get any answer to that other than maybe being told I’m crazy and irresponsible. Again, without any real reason.

Seems the kids really are the more mature ones when this issue comes up.

YOU SUCK!!!!

So I was glancing through some menus of local restaurants earlier today while I was at work, making myself hungry. Italian. Tex-Mex. Asian fusion. Good stuff. But there was one common little problem each of these menus had, a common little problem very common to menus.

It was, of course, the kids’ menu.

Yes, yes, I know, of course the crazy youth rights supporter who thinks kids and adults should be treated equally is going to bitch about kids’ menus. Well, why not? It’s a portion of the menu specifically designed to single out a portion of the clientele based on how long they lived, and say “this is what you’re supposed to be eating”. For the same reason, the senior’s menu some restaurants have is also wrong.

If the senior citizens are supposed to be eating heart healthier foods or whatever other requirements their diets may have, just have a portion of the menu that meets those requirements and leave the age labels out of it. Kids need smaller portions? Fine, make a section of the menu for smaller portions.

Well, I wish it were that simple. Some restaurants get it right, in that the kids’ menu is just smaller cheaper meal of the same basic stuff that is on the regular menu. Despite the ageist separation, that at least redeems itself a little.

But on the menus I looked at earlier I saw something worse. The regular menu consisted of nice yummy Italian dishes or the usual fancy Mexican delights. The kids’ menu? Chicken fingers. Hot dog. Peanut butter and jelly. Fish sticks. Hamburger. Spaghetti. Grilled cheese.

What?!

Ah, yes, because those are all kids are ever willing to eat, right? Give me a break. I mean, if you want to have that stuff available at least, fine, but it shouldn’t be ALL that’s on the kid’s menu. Some problem with the Mexican restaurant maybe having small tacos or burritos for the kids? Some problem with the Italian restaurant having at least something more than basic spaghetti and sauce?

Because there’s the issue with this. That means that the kids are pretty much stuck with the stupid boring “American” crap on their menu, seeing as the regular menu items tend to be too large portions for them. If a 5-year-old wants fajitas, his portion would last him a month! True, he could always share with a parent or sibling or whoever, but that’s beside the point and not an option if no one else wants fajitas. Maybe if there were a kids’ menu version of fajitas that’d be cheaper and more his portion size? No, no, you’re too busy assuming no kid wants anything other than burgers, dogs, and fried chicken, so that’s all you’re willing to feed him.

Adults might complain that kids have a very limited culinary palette, but, you know, whose fault do you think that is?! A limited palette is all that is expected of them and all they are provided. But even then, many kids do not fit this stereotype and will eat a wider variety of foods. And when they are dining out, they ought to be provided with this wider variety instead of your safe little kids’ menu with the fish sticks and the grilled cheese making a mockery of their culinary tastes because they do not fit the age-dictated mold of picky eating. In all kinds of ways, shown constantly around the world and all through life, kids are vastly underestimated.

This has been Day 12 of the 100 Days of Summer, Round 8.

YOU SUCK!!!!

Something I can say for sure that has irked me for pretty much my entire life are Trix cereal commercials. You know, you’ve got a bunch of kids enjoying Trix and the rabbit wants some, but he is denied time after time because of the classic retch-inducing line: “Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids!”

So ever since I was a tiny little kid and on through to today, on the rare occasion I still watch anything early enough in the day for a Trix ad to come on, I’ve watched that poor animated rabbit suffer the jeers and taunts of the animated people refusing him a cereal he has desperately wanted. He’s had to resort to outright stealing to entering contests on the quick to disguises to whatever else, all of which could be avoided if the kids would learn to fucking share. I mean, it’s kids these ads are aimed for. But what does it teach them? Entitlement based on superficial factors. Bigotry. Selfishness. Arrogance.

Interestingly enough, they treat that rabbit exactly the same way adults treat them. Adults treat kids like inferiors based only on age, expressing the very bigotry and selfishness the animated kids show towards the Trix rabbit. So, like all abused children, they act out what’s done to them on a being different from them.

Or do they?

In all these commercials packed with more anti-rabbit than the Sigma-Aldrich catalog, I can recall one time the rabbit did get the Trix. I was in third grade, I think. The ad they were running had the rabbit disguise himself as a kid and enter a bike race or something, where the prize was a bowl of Trix. So the rabbit entered the race and won, and just as he was about to be given the Trix, as always happens, his disguise fell off and everyone saw he was the rabbit. The two judges then got into an argument. One refused to give him the Trix based entirely on, you guessed it, “Trix are for kids”. The other wanted to give him the Trix because he’d won the race. The ad ended in a sort of introduction to a contest where the verdict would be up to the kids. So Trix boxes then carried info about this contest where you could submit a piece of the box saying YES or NO to whether the rabbit should get the Trix.

After a little while, they finally played the ad revealing the answer, whether the kids wanted the rabbit to win the Trix or not.

The kids said YES.

So the ecstatic rabbit was finally able to have some Trix after so long, and he brightened up his life.

Sure enough, this passed, and things went back to their usual “silly rabbit” routine, with the animated kids treating the rabbit like shit because he’s not “one of them”.

But didn’t the kids like just say they wanted the rabbit to have the Trix? Well, yeah, they did. Real kids did anyway! Not the mean animated ones. The animated kids with their continual cruelty and mockery of that poor rabbit sure do make kids out to be nasty.

Except it was real kids who wanted the rabbit to have the Trix, who were sick of seeing him treated so unfairly all the time, who believed in sharing regardless of whether or not he’s the right type of person. Real kids, and not the animated kids who are created by adults who work in advertising and think they know a damn thing about what kids want.

And we see yet another finger reaching from the high heavens of adulthood to point at the lowly bad little kids, and painting them to be oppressive, unfair, and cliquey. When, as we saw from the contest (true, assuming the contest was in any way legit), kids are no such way. The kids are the fair ones, and the kids are the ones responsible for the one time the rabbit was given what he wanted, amid the endless sea of adult-animated children treating the rabbit like shit.

So adults are creating kid characters in the Trix ads to treat the animated rabbit exactly how they treat them, teaching unsuspecting young kids that this is the proper way to be, bigoted and arrogant, or at least telling them that’s what they are. Even when they prove they aren’t. Even though almost every single other kid I talked to back when I was in elementary school shared my view that the Trix ads were infuriating, that the Trix rabbit is treated so callously all the time. I mean, damn, at least in Lucky Charms ads there was still some degree of sharing.

When so many kids hate the ads, shouldn’t that be some indication that it’s a poor marketing strategy that you seem stuck on for like forty friggin’ years?! Oh, right, almost forgot, they’re kids so you don’t give a crap. Silly kids, respect is for adults! Bastards.

On a related note, Trix sucks. Froot Loops ftw.

YOU SUCK!!!!

These people who walk into the street and just seem to be completely unaware that they are, you know, in a street. They know, but they seem to think it’s just an extension of the sidewalk or something.

I especially saw this crap a lot when I was riding the bus. People would just walk out into traffic and act like the cars screeching to a halt to keep from cutting short their stupid lives aren’t really there. They wouldn’t walk a little faster to get across before the light changes or more cars come. They’d stroll along as if they were walking the mall or something.

Move your asses, you stupid jerkoffs! There’s lots of these 1-ton machines on wheels zooming around, and it’s not exactly a good idea just to amble along in front of them as if you were picking flowers like the gay ass retard you are.

Whenever I have to walk around streets or parking lots, I keep one little pedestrian philosophy: Pretend the drivers can’t see you. Because, you know, sometimes they can’t. Might be dark. They might not be paying attention. Lots of reasons. In any case, when crossing the street, I always run. Even if there’s a walk light on and it will be on for a while, still not wise to dally in the middle of the street. When walking through a parking lot, I stay to the side. Sadly, I seem to be the only one with enough brains to remember this simple rule.

Happened a few times earlier today. I was at a mall driving through the parking lot on my way out, and there’s this family just walking down the little street between the parking spaces, right in the middle, as if it’s just a very wide path. I’m behind them, inching at like half a mile an hour, while they take their sweet time. When the little street corridor ends and there’s the cross street, they just make a right turn and keep strolling carelessly down the MIDDLE of that little street. Now don’t come crying to me when your children get run over someday because their idiot parents always walked in the middle of the street without looking or anything, and they thought doing so was safe. Retards.

Later I was at a shopping center with a grocery store, and sure enough there’s people leaving the store and pushing their carts or walking their bags in the MIDDLE of the parking lot street. They weren’t in the middle of crossing or anything. Just walking down the middle like they owned the place. And if a car is coming up behind them, they don’t move out of the way or anything; they ignore it.

And it’s not just parking lots. You get morons trying to cross a busy street in the middle of the night. On Rockville Pike one time, after dark, there were a bunch of people running across it. I only even saw them when they silhouetted against the light of the stores behind them. And they were about, oh, twenty feet from a damn crosswalk! I mean, not that I haven’t done that myself, but there’s one important difference… DON’T DO IT WHEN THERE ARE CARS COMING, JACKHOLE!

Do you like idea of a ton of steel slamming into you at 30mph? No? Then get off the goddamn street! I don’t want to have to deal with my car getting messed up because of having to peel your incapacitated self off the hood just because it would be too much of an inconvenience for you to look both ways before crossing. I don’t want to have to live the rest of my life with having caused the injury or death of someone with my car, regardless of whose “fault” it is according to insurance companies, just because you were too fucking mindless to get across the street a little faster and recognize that a busy street isn’t the best place to go sightseeing.

You don’t seem to be frail old lady in a walker who can’t move very fast anyway. In their case, I’d understand. You seem fairly young and mobile, so, you know, move your dumb ass, fuckwad!

YOU SUCK!!!!

We’ve all seen it. In The Breakfast Club, it was the Ally Sheedy character being remedied by Molly Ringwald. Countless Disney movies have done essentially the same. It’s the desperate need in more movies than I care to count, for fear of vomiting, to make the plain girl a pretty girl, for that is the only way she can be happy or desirable.

Goodness, no, a girl can’t ever be intellectual or a tomboy. She absolutely must be empty-headed and interested only in her looks, because only then boys will like her, which is of course the raison d’être for any and every female.

Media stereotypes, fine. A bit of unfinished feminism there. But then it seeps into real life. And I, in the eyes of so many girls I’ve known, am the plain girl who must be saved.

I don’t wear makeup. Hate the stuff. Don’t see any point it in. I’m not a clown. Lipstick would be inadvertently licked off after five minutes anyway. Eyeliner would drive me nuts, just the thought of shit like that on my eyelashes! And same deal with that other crap. Itchy and uncomfortable and serves no purpose.

But a few times, I’ve fallen victim to “pretty” girls who are under the sad delusion that I, “like all girls”, secretly want to be beautiful like them and it’s the only way to make me truly happy. They try to make me try on their style of clothes, which I hate because, not being my style, it’s uncomfortable. Slap some gross makeup on me and take away my glasses, turning my world into a blur, and trot me out to the living room so their friends can see.

Okay, yeah, I’m talking about a specific incident now. This was my senior year of college. Roommates were my assailants. I stayed in the above state for maybe five minutes before running back into my room and changing back to how I was. Ick.

Doing me no favors! I’m fine how I am. Yes, really. I’m fine how I am. I realize all your dumb girly movies you’ve grown up on have taught you that I must be lying, that I must really yearn to be like you, but I really don’t. Get away from me. I’m not your nerdy little doll you need to cure.

And that crap about guys liking me? I don’t need makeup and slutty clothes for guys to like me. Any guy who would like me over that is not one I’m interested in. Yes, perfectly fine guys who aren’t like that do exist. I’m also sick of people trying to shame me out of my introverted ways by saying “oh, but all guys want you to look more sexual, the guy you’re talking about doesn’t exist, this is your only option!”

Nope. Not my only option. My two options are aforementioned non-shallow nice guy won over by deeper means other than “look at me, I’m revealing so much skin and have ugly colored crap all over my face” or, you know, no one! I don’t NEED a guy. Would be nice, but I’m not desperate or looking. Certainly in no need to settle.

Just because you dumb bitches have absolutely nothing else than your slutty clothes and ugly makeup to attract low-life guys who only want that thing between your legs and nothing else (because you have nothing else), doesn’t mean everyone is like that. I’m in no need to be improved. I’m just different.

And to think you idiots want to pity me over this. More like I’m the one pitying you.