Birth Control vs. Viagra

I was a bit shocked yesterday when The View (I'm a few days behind) informed me that Viagra is covered by health insurance because it's a medicine, while birth control isn't because it's not. I do not understand that one, but then, I haven't heard the insurance companies come out on one side or the other on the subject. I actually have always been under the impression that if you have health insurance it includes birth control, but maybe I've been wrong.

As for what I just heard from Bill O'Reilly (dated 3-12), I'm upset that his only comment against Sandra Fluke is that she can afford to dress well and travel (and hang out with Democrats) but can't afford $9 a month for birth control. What a load of crock. Does that mean I should find fault with George Clooney for speaking out against the atrocities in Sudan because he can afford to not have to live there?!?! Republicans are the first to say that you can't throw money at a problem, but haven't I heard that claim before? Why should we the government pay for foreign aid when those high paid Hollywood types could easily fund it? Is it really so foreign to people like O'Reilly that a person not in dire straits (I won't comment on whether or not she can in fact afford her own birth control since I haven't seen her budget and I'd be a little disturbed if O'Reilly has) stands up to speak for those who are.

I don't use any birth control, though my periods have gotten so painful that I may do so once I'm ready to accept that part of my body (yep, 23 years old and periods are ICKY), though I guess I should be grateful that as an unemployed woman, thankful for still being on my parents health insurance, I guess I should take advantage of co-pay free birth control pills, since as I write this, that's the main reason, besides the fact that I don't really like being dependent on pills, that I wouldn't give up my monthly pains. I can't justify budgeting in the pills when my savings are going to pay back my student loans--even if it's just $9 a month.

More Shameless Plugs

Gotta love Sherrilyn Kenyon who plugged what was probably her latest book (under a different name--Kinley MacGreggor) in one of her Dark-Hunter books. I wonder if that's one of the reasons she uses a second name. I approve.

Edit: AND she has great taste. The Dresden Files reside on Tabitha's (one of her characters) book shelf. :-)

G.C.B.

I'm digging this show. I like that it so blatently shows some of the hypocracies that exist within the Christian faith. I've heard that some Christians are upset by the show, but they really shouldn't. I mean, if they don't believe that these types of people exist, then they're deluded, and it promotes true Christian values, which shouldn't be judged by how well one knows the Bible, whether or not they work at Hooters, and what crimes are in their past/their husband's past. I think it's a good ice breaker in the discussion of just what a "Good Christian Woman" is....and who the real bitches are.

P.S. Annie Potts looks amazing! She was on The View last week about the show and said that she's 60 and hinted at maybe using plastic surgery, but honestly, it doesn't show at all. She looks 40 if she's a day and wow. I'm blaming the curves--I honestly think that the reason most of hollywood don't look as good as she does is because they're too skinny--it makes their wrinkles stand out more. I'd even say that Jennifer Aniston looks older than Potts...please don't hit me.

Oil Prices

I'm really annoyed because the politicians keep saying that we need to allow for more drilling in order to lower gas prices. While A: this is a long term fix only, I also have to point out that there is a LOT of oil sources on land and easily accessed already owned by the oil and gas companies that they are choosing to keep in reserve. They spend a lot of money finding those new sources of oil and then they just want the first rights to get it which is what the government fights are about.

They've closed how many refineries in the past 2 years? Yes, they were closed because it was cheaper than fixing their environmental problems (like leaking noxious toxins into our water sources), so yes, I guess it is all the government's fault that we aren't able to refine as much oil as we used to thus raising gas prices (though as we're unable to un-tie gas prices from the rest of the world, there's no telling how much of our own actions had any effect).

By the way, on the fact that there is only the world market on gas, thus causing our prices to be high even when our domestic production is high, shouldn't we be pushing for a higher export tax on oil? This would keep our oil in the country, making us more independent. I'm not sure if Exxon would like that...how much of our oil is exported? Keystone would imply a lot, even if it does come from Canada.

By the way, again, apparently Putin made a lot of campaign promises this year that include raising government pensions to a level that exceeds their tax revenue, but that's okay. Everything he promised can be paid for if a barrel of oil raises to $150, since 50% of their tax revenue comes from oil and natural gas. Huh...it looks like there's more than just Exxon who will benefit if gas prices continue to increase.

I really liked Jon Stewart's analysis of the world's stage of problems from 2 weeks ago. Republicans are running for office, so you know that they're saying anything inflammatory in hopes of winning votes. It then makes sense that we can project this campaign strategy on Iran and Isreal since both of their top offices are up for election in the next year or two.

Dresden Files by Jim Butcher and Religion

I love Jim Butcher's religious arguments. They're well thought out and pretty seemless in where they fit in the rest of the story without feeling oppressive and pushy for one way or another. It's like the religious debates that happen online--it's the Atheists and Agnostics who know, and reference, the most Bible verses and history.

Were-Hunters

I'm a huge fan of the were-hunter segment of the whole "Dark Hunter" society created by Sherrilyn Kenyon (my latest obsession, obviously). First, the question of "what came first" has been answered (they're the bi-product of an ancient king's attempt to legnthen the life of the Apollites without taking human souls) (and this is another reason why I like this series--the same question is ansered for the vampires). Second, it's kinda hilarious that they "imprint" on their Fates chosen mate, but since the Fates are the Fates, there's no creepiness where someone "imprints" on a child (stupid Twilight)--it's always at the most fortuitious time (or so I suppose given my limited examples so far). So you can know someone your whole life and not know that you're their mate (though I think sex has a lot to do with this; I think I read that they have to have sex then wait for the mark to form) and feel free to curse the Fates if it's someone you couldn't help yourself about (poor Panthers in heat :-( ).

But that's just another great thing about this idea--there are 2 branches of each animal (human to animal and animal to human) who don't get each other at all. They've been taught to hate and kill each other for offenses that both sides perpetrate: who kills indescriminately, the "humans" or the "animals", for example. I've recently become fascinated by the notion that to kill ruthlessly is "animalistic", but in reality, animals do not kill out of spite or revenge--they kill to eat or to protect themselves. There may be one or two alternative examples (not including rabies infections), but generally, you aren't going to have a grizzlie bear stalk a human for destroying it's homeland. Because it invaded the homeland and took away all natural food sources, maybe, but not for the specific reason that it wants it's land back. Anyway, the were-hunters are just a great example about how prejudices spread through poor communication and lack of education--if you meet either side you learn that they aren't the abominations that the other proclaims.

Edit: And I now demand a new status quo when it comes to werewolves. Look, wolf/dog sex is weird in that their penis actually expands to lock itself inside the female for as long as 30 seconds. I was watching a nature documentary the other day about wolves and some of the other wolves wanted to stop the female and male from mating--after the swelling had started. So there were 8 or so wolves fighting while 2 of them are literally locked together butt to butt (I have NO idea how they were able to twist around like that but it had to have been painful)--I cringed when they almost ran around both sides of a tree--that would not have ended well. So. Given this information, I love the fact that Kenyon added in this detail (she really does celebrate the differences between the were-animals that live within her world). And I'm now disappointed whenever I read about were-wolves and the guy pulls out immediately after sex. I like the conversation Vane has with Bride about it--he's forced to cuddle after sex which, as a woman, I find totally hot.

Biggest Loser Week 10

Dolvet took the ladies to Ballet class--I LOVE the fact that he came out wearing the proper clothes to participate too--it takes a man very comfortable with his masculinity to do that, especially since the ladies are uncomfortable in the clothes as well. Very nice, dude. Very nice.

"Tolerant"

Only in Religion does the word tolerant have a good connotation. In everyday conversation it's almost always paired with toothaches, annoying siblings, and all other things painful that we would rather not exist.

Breast Feeding

I'm 100% for breast feeding for those who decide to do it (and 100% for those who choose not to). But I do have a problem with ladies who don't use a blanket to cover it. I mean, I've seen a lot of pictures, especially since Beyonce did it in public, of women doing thin on the news, and though you can't see a thing, it's just a bit too obvious. It's just awkward, so please ladies, do what you like, where you'd like, but please, please, please, use a blanket to cover it. Or your coat. Seriously--you can't even tell that Beyonce is breast feeding in that picture. 

No Touch Bathrooms and Kitchens

I have my own theory about what should and should not be "no touch" when it comes to spreading germs. I really think that the only thing that should be automatic is the sink and maybe the door. Why? Think about it. Your hands are dirty when you enter the room. You do your business with your hands dirty and then comes the time to wash. The sink is the only thing you touch with both dirty and clean hands. No one grabs the soap without touching the water, so really it can be filthy and it's not like you aren't 30 seconds away from washing away the germs. And the paper towels are only touched by someone who has washed their hands, so it's clean. If your hands aren't clean when you reach for the towel or air drier, then you aren't doing it right.

And yes, I just watched a commerical for Lysol's new auto soap dispenser. Waste. Of. Money.

Parenting books

I think that no body should be allowed to publish a parenting book before their children are at least 18 years old. I just hear about "Blossom's" new book and I'm just wondering how much personal experience she actually has and to what extent her results can be extrapolated over the course of a lifetime. At least the "Dragon Mother" did that. As did the Duggars.

Male Birth Control

Look, I just heard the Today Show's "experts" give their opinion and I don't like that it's so easy to put birth control on one person or the other. Girls who don't want to be mothers need to take their pill. Boys who don't want to be fathers need a pill for themselves. And use a condom for extra protection because nothing is 100% effective except abstinance. I DON'T think that women should be the ones to buy condoms because the leading cause of mis-usage with a condom is because it's the wrong size--that increases the chances of it breaking, falling off, etc. If she doesn't know what size her partner is, how can we expect her to do that task? Now she'd also better tell him off and refuse him because he forgot to buy them.

One of my dad's stories is about the shipmate who was so glad he got a Vasectomy for free during Vietnam--he was accused as many as 20 times by various women who said he was their baby's daddy. Contraception doesn't cause unplanned pregnancy--a lack there of does.

Real Housewives

I admit it, I enjoy watching the Real Housewives (all the various localities) make a fool of themselves in public. Right now I'm watching Atlanta and they're discussing the Africa Incedent (where supposedly one woman said that the white one wouldn't hold a black baby). What I'm laughing most about is how they're attacking one another in a most back-stabbing way and yet, all they really need to do is watch the footage that was shot and it's clear that everything was at the very least thrown completely out of proportion and at the very most, it's apparent that someone is purposely trying to start fights (I'm someone that hopes desperately that it's not on purpose). These ladies have the luxury of a camera available to settle all disputes since they can hear all that stuff that is normally just second hand information.

I think that episodes of the Real Housewives should be used in conflict mediation especially between women where talking behind another's back is the primary cause of conflict. An entire lesson can be taught where individuals learn to recognize what second hand information can start. In my perfect world the gossip spreader gets beat up, not the one who said something with, or without, malicious intent. 'Course, also in my perfect world, there isn't malicious intent because the primary speaker has balls enough to talk to the person in question if they have a problem, and the recipient of the comment has intelligence enough to listen and reply in a civilized manner.

And on that note, my dad came home from work last Friday and told me that he now knew what I meant about teachers at school refusing to break up a girl fight. When Norfolk Public Schools got in trouble last fall for what a lot of people thought was excessive use of pepper spray, I told him about how violent girl fights are and not just to the girls involved--they will rip out the hair of anyone who tries to intervene--pepper spray is sometimes the only way to break up the fights (and when it's a "food fight" involving chairs, the spray is even more necessary). But anyway, my dad had never seen a chick fight before he was stopped at a red light in front of one of the projects--he now knows exactly what I was talking about. Some girls just don't have class, and yet, using their propensity to jump down another's throat and fight like animals as evidence doesn't work for some reason....

Once Upon a Time

I LOVE this show, but what's up with the "sisters"? I mean, when I first started researching the show before it aired, I swear that "Snow White" was incarnated as a nun. And tonight, one of the "sisters" is seriously flirting with "Grumpy" (sorry--I call them all by their fairy characters).

P.S. I love Grumpy--he's my favorite dwarf--I think I spend too much time reading about the "tall, dark, and brooding" type...though I guess the tall (and even dark) part is debatable, haha. But I'm not digging the writer's choice of girl for him--she's a little too accident prone...but then, Grumpy is only 1 year old, technically....and what the heck! His name is Dreamy?!?! That explains EVERYTHING!!!!! (Good call, I'm now in favor of this relationship).

Nummy ;-P

I like this take on the old "Be kind to dragons, for thou art crunchy when roasted and taste good with ketchup"--- "Be kind to dragonswans for thou art sexy and taste good with cool whip". ("Dragonswan" by Sherrilyn Kenyon)

New favorite "quote"

"There were some things that no man wanted to hear under any circumstance. One, that he’d lost his testicles in battle. Two, that he’d lost his testicles to a fluke injury. Three, that he’d caught some disease that interfered with his ability to perform as a man. And most of all four, that the father of the woman, who was one of the most powerful men in all of Christendom, was at the gate of the home where he’d just violated the man’s daughter without the sanctity of marriage. Four was guaranteed to cost him not just his testicles, but the rest of his internal organs as the king ordered them scraped from inside him while he was still alive enough to feel it. " --The Warrior by Kinley MacGregor (men sure seem to be attached to their testicles, hahaha)

P.S. As I finish this book and the series, I'm thinking about how sch-mooth Sherrilyn Kenyon is when it comes to bridging her novels into one world. I know that the revelation in the epilogue pointedly states that he belongs in the Dark Hunters world. I'm not sure if I agree with the fans on her website (another very smart move--she states in the books that the Dark Hunters use the dark-hunter.com domain to correspond with each other, a convienient way to steer fans of the books to her website) that he deserves his own book--I think that 90% of The Warrior was made up to make Lochlan a tragic character. No where in the previous books are there any hints of the abuse his father is accused of--all that we know is that he cheated on his wife once and paid penance for that by neglecting his bastard son--which makes him one kind of bastard, but how could there have been no hints of the many bastards he must have fathered, plus the physical abuse of women? Kieran's disappearance, while it did hint at being more than it seemed, seemed too much like an after-thought for my liking.

Jarhead Movie

Wait, they're letting this movie onto basic television? I swear that my 11th grade history teacher saw this movie and she told us that every 4th word was the f-bomb. But maybe I have the wrong movie? I didn't have any desire to see it.

Taming the Scotsman by Kinley MacGregor

This series is pretty good (Brotherhood/MacAlister), though it's pretty clear what kind of man Kinley MacGregor, also known as Sherilyn Kenyon, likes--tall, generally dark, and brooding. She's just as good as Jim Butcher when it comes to beating down the cutie. My only problem is that I'm worried that her brooding guys will lose some of their personality when they're tamed by the lady--will they be just as fierce 5 years later? But anyway.

I'm sitting here laughing my butt off because the big, bad, and sexy hero just handed his sword off to the chatterbox heroine who it turns out is quite the swordswoman so that she can fight the girl who helped kidnap them--while he's just standing there watching the fight with the 4 men who round out the kidnappers instead of beating them up easily while the only 2 swords available are occupied by the women.

For the most part I've been enjoying the books by this author and her real name (series is "Dark-Hunter"). They're fun romances where there's actually an enemy besides poor communication skills (which just annoys me and is why I've avoided romances like the plague before) which is right up my alley. The problem is that you can tell when an author writes romances and when they write epics that just happen to have romance in them--Kenyon's fight scenes are greatly lacking. It was very smart of her to invent a conviently blind character for one of the books. 'Course, I'm the first to say that a fight scene goes into too much detail--we really don't need to have 3 pages of battle for a great book. Butcher's background in martial arts means that he knows exactly what he's talking about when he describes, for instance how one man can take on 12 men singlehandedly. I did a year of Aikido with a friend teaching and I picked up enough to know how beautiful this fighting style is--using the weight of your opponent to throw them across the room. Kenyon glances over these fights, letting other characters talk while the fighting "just happens." I mean, if these women are as good with a sword as she claims, then why don't her hero and heroine ever practice against each other? I'm reading The Warrior now and I think that Cat and Lochlan should have an epic sword fight that ends up with them rolling on the ground kissing for the first time. They have such an antagonistic relationship the fireworks should be quite entertaining.

She also has the problem of the seriously anti-climatic resolution. I mean sure, sometimes the long, overly complicated conclusion is unncessary--sometimes you just need to push the big baddie into the convient fiery pit or shoot the missle into the 2 meter wide hole in the otherwise indestructible Death Star. But sometimes you want more than "I'm a goddess, see me just will you to death, even though I decided not to, and or for some other reason couldn't, for the past 300 pages" though granted, I'm now thinking that she has some overarching plan in mind...or at least I hope. I mean, Butcher is very good at leaving lose ends that come to bite Dresden on the ass three books later.

But all in all Kenyon is a very smart writer. I read the first two books and decided that even though the climaxes were dull, I had to find out more about the bad-ass leader "Acheron", so I decided that I'd read the series until his story got told. Well, one trip to goodreads.com told me that that would not be the 4th or 5th book, as I thought, but rather the 15th--I probably will read all the series because I found some really intreguing spoilers (I've found that sometimes spoilers make for better reading because I know what to look for and forward to).