Stop The Insanity!

With today being All Hallow's Eve, people tend to get a little crazy.  Which is fine, everyone needs to blow off some steam and deserves to have a little fun in costume once in a while.  As I've said before I'm all for girls putting on as little as legally possible and running around in public.

However, without even leaving my apartment last night, the insanity found it's way in.  My next door neighbors went out to a party and came back to continue the festivities at their place around 1am.  Which was fine they were obviously highly inebriated at that point and made a serious amount of noise coming in.  That was fine too, I wasn't in bed yet and had just finished a movie.  By the time I did head to bed and get ready the festivities next door had quickly erupted into the stairwell.  One of the patrons felt it necessary to take his girlfriend into stairwell to yell at her and berate her. As if that somehow meant that the people inside the apartment could no longer hear him yelling.  At that point I'm fairly certain half the county could hear him. He continued escalating until I couldn't stand it anymore.  I got dressed and decided to intervene.  This girl had obviously done nothing wrong, but was being made to feel that way with every word that came out of his mouth.  She was also being made to do so while in costume. Let's just say parts of it resembled a firefighter, kinda. "You're a stupid b****." "I hate you and never really loved you anyway." "Why don't you listen to me?" "Do you see what YOU are causing?"   Since obviously none of it was his fault.  I don't know what started the argument. But I went out to put a stop to it.  After I came out, in typical victim fashion she defended him, and how it wasn't his fault.  I told her how she didn't deserve to be treated like that, and how he wasn't worth it, but she stood there and defended him. Then got chastised for it in the process by him.

The behavior on the guys part was obviously irreprehensible. There was no excuse for it, not justifying it, but there she was walking off and defending him anyway.  Finally she left him and he started to leave.  Not a few minutes later she was back down in what was an attempt to regain some dignity and tell him off.  However, this quickly backfired on her, as her girlfriends in the party offered no physical or moral support, and she decided to confront the guy in front of his 3 buddies, thus he had to macho it up further to save face.  He regained the upper hand the way those arguments always seem to go, and eventually verbally bullied her into the car.  Where it was apparent she didn't want to be, but felt she had no other recourse.

This is a situation that happens far to often and as a guy I apologize on behalf of my gender to those who have to be the victims of it.  No one should have to be treated like that. Now or ever.  It's horrible that this kind of things happens, and like this incident far to often goes completely unreported.  Even if that girl does get the courage to end things with him at some point.  The scars of last night will echo long after he's gone.  Those are the things we all carry around, and some other guy is going to have to deal with that pain he inflicted.  Hopefully her choice in guys improves, but I have a feeling that unfortunately there's more of that same guy in the future.

To wrap this portion of the program up all I can do is hope for a few things.  1) That girl realizes sooner rather than later, that he's not worth it.  2) That her friends see that she needs help, support, and get it for her. 3) That somehow someway this plea finds a way to reach her or them. 4) That women who do read this don't allow a guy to do that to you.  5) If it does happen, say something, to someone. The help is there, you're not wrong and you have nothing to be ashamed of.  He does.  So help yourselves and help stop that insanity from happening.

Onto other things that seem to fit the headline.  Last night I read this article.  http://www.popeater.com/2010/10/28/how-much-do-teen-mom-stars-make/?ncid=webmail
It hits on a topic I had discussed with a few people last week.  Dr. Drew Pinsky, of LoveLine fame, started this show to illustrate a problem that this country has.  One that far to often gets ignored or glossed over.  Teenage pregnancy.  Obviously it's a "Reality" show, aired through his long term partnership with the people at no longer Music TeleVision.  For those of you who haven't seen it, it's called "16 and Pregnant."  From the pieces of it I've seen it for the most part does the job it was set out to do.  Shows the perils and life changes these girls go through because they got pregnant before they graduated high school.  Usually by guys with no education, no way to support them or the child.  The over all message is definitely "Don't let this happen to you."

However, that message is getting blurred by the "celebritization" and exploitation of these girls.  Not only are they paid $60,000 a year to do the show, but on top of that there's the money they get by allowing their faces to be plastered all over the supermarket tabloids in the process.  $60,000.  That's more than most teachers, as much as Police Officers, and  Firefighters get for jobs that actually contribute to society.  Are our priorities that far off? Have they done ANYTHING to deserve that other than get pregnant and fail to graduate High School? Should we REALLY be rewarding this behavior?  Maybe it's just me and my cynicism.  But some girl somewhere is going to see this and think that these girls getting pregnant is a good thing. She's going to think that she can be next, that it's her ticket to fortune and fame.

Granted it may be a girl who was already a fairly high risk for this situation to happen already.  But it certainly adds encouragement where it's not needed.  I don't know how many minds this show it changing.  I would hope that good parenting can convince kids that it's not something they should be doing.  I'm sure in most cases it does.  However, I'm also more and more convinced that good parents are an endangered species.  They're becoming as rare as long term successful marriages.

My concern is for the girls who get the added kick they needed to want to get pregnant before getting a High School diploma.  My concern is for the girls who are in the middle, who maybe wouldn't have had sex or gotten pregnant before, but now see this and the money they get for doing so, and think "Maybe this isn't so bad after all." Television and shows like this carry a profound impact.  If you don't believe me take a walk out tonight and count the number of "Snooki", "The Situation." and "Lady Gaga" costumes.  Sure most of them are going to be in jest, but the actions they have work their way into society when we're not paying attention.  So I ask that parents talk to their kids about these things.  Turn the tube off, take away their cell phones, shut down their laptops, and have a conversation.  It just may be the thing that changes their life, because as large an impact as TV has, it's can be overcome by the parent.  If they're not to busy to do so.

This show and every other "Reality" show like it have become a plague.  They've taken over the airwaves until we're hard pressed to find anything else on.  Personally I refer to them as "Television for the illiterate." Often depicting the worst in people and society has to offer. They make people feel better about themselves who watch it.  My question is, if we feel so bad about ourselves that we NEED these shows around to make us feel better about our lives, isn't there a bigger issue? Television networks air these things because they're dirt cheap to make and the ratings for them are through the roof.  Meaning they can jack up what they charge the advertisers to show commercials during the show, and increase their profit margin in the process.  Should we really be helping TV execs who already make 10's to 100's of MILLIONS pad their bottom line? We should demand better.  If we're going to watch it, we should have standards and demand it actually has some kind of content.  Not just gluttonous voyeurism to boost our own egos.  So stop the insanity, and read a book.

Time To Fish Or Cut Bait.........

Greetings again blogosphere. I had originally planned to have this post continue with the introduction of myself to you my devoted non-existent readership.  Instead, after talking with a couple of my friends I decided to delve into my first relationship related posting. As far as blogs go it may be weird for a guy to cover this kind of material.  Relationships and feelings aren't something we willingly talk about most of the time. I'm not most guys.  Though being able to talk about things like this, whether in my own relationships or others is also part of my reasoning behind the anonymity.

In talking with them, a couple of issues came to light.  Though the root of them both was the same.  It boiled down to the difficulty we all have when it comes to the point in a relationship where you have to decide whether this is the person you want, or whether it's time to move on with someone else.  As my father liked to put it "Fish or Cut Bait."  We all hate these moments in our lives.  Especially in relationships.  After all this is someone we cared enough about to invest time in, and we don't like hurting them to end it.  However, it's also not worth having to sacrifice our own happiness in the process in order to stay with them.  Now the reason we get to this point in a relationship are infinite.  It could be anything from a major fight, to just not wanting the same things from the future.  When these moments occur the first thing we have to do is usually the toughest. Which is talk about it and be honest with how we feel.  Once the lines of communication are open it doesn't necessarily get easier, but it does at least allow for progress to be made.  If you are unable to talk about it, well then there's your answer anyway.

Even when we know what the answer should be, we often times get stuck in our own hang ups.  Fear is usually at the root of that problem  It's a powerful motivator, sometimes for the better, sometimes not.  We all carry around different sets of baggage from relationship to relationship.  When it comes to our hang ups, as "G.I Joe" once said, knowing is half the battle.  To often we try to ignore them and pretend they don't exist as long as we possibly can.  But a lot of the time fear is what it boils down to.  Fear of being alone, fear of the unknown, fear of not living up to others expectations of us, or even to our own.

Like with any problem in life, it's how we approach it and deal with it that define who we are and what will happen as we move forward.  There's a Marine Corps solution "adapt and overcome".  Though that's usually easier said than done.  It seems to me that the first step is the same in most cases.  Forgive yourself for what happens.  We're our own toughest critics and harder on ourselves than others ever could be. We don't need to hold on as tightly to the past as we tend to do. The future may be scary, but it's a lot easier to deal with when you're not carrying the weight of the past with you. Granted like everything else it will probably be easier said than done.

That's when the wisdom of The Beatles comes in handy.  "I get by with a little help from my friends."  We'll just forget the next part of that and focus on this specific section.  Since for legal reasons I wouldn't advise taking the other part of advice that song has.  We all have our support systems.  Friends are the family you choose so like with your nose, pick good ones.

With that I'll leave you with this platitude.  A man walks down the street and falls into a hole.  The walls are so steep he can't get out.  A Doctor passes by and he shouts "Hey Doc, can you help me out?" The Doctor writes out a prescription and tosses it down the hole, then moves on.  A priest walks by and he shouts to him "Father I'm stuck down here, can you help me out?" The priest writes out a prayer and throws it down the hole, then moves on.  Finally a friend walks by he says "Hey Joe, it's me, can you help me out?" The friend quickly jumps in the hole along with him.  The man says to him "What are you doing? Are you stupid? Now we're both stuck down here."  The friend says "Yeah, but I've been down here before and I know the way out."  Here's to the friends that have jumped in the hole with us.