Radiology Girl vs the Stable Waistline

I moved back to California last week.  Not just Anywhere, California, but this time i migrated south to Long Beach.  I expected a totally, diametrically opposed way of thinking to what i was used to in the San Francisco Bay Area.  I failed to consider this: no matter where you are, and what people are going through, women will always have womeny similarities in the way their minds work. 

Take for example, my friend, Susan.  She had the nerve to freak us all out a while back by getting cervical cancer.  We kept in touch by email, but this is the first chance i've had to sit down and really talk to her.  (And yes, she's in total remission for those of you who were about to fret for her.)  Here's what vexes her most about the whole ordeal.  Despite all the ghastly treatments, she never lost weight.

Now, Susan is a far cry from morbidly obese, but she does have some cushioning.  (All the better to hug you, my dear!)  Any horrific event that puts you through an ordeal ought to grant you one of the few benefits offered others going through the same ordeal.  This was a clear case of the Gods of Disease thumbing their noses at her.  Susan is, under normal circumstances, one of the calmest individuals i know.  A bit of an earth mother type, actually.  Boy howdy, though... get her going about the bald faced audacity of cancer letting her down rather than slimming her down, and the eyebrows go straight through the roof!  The hands are planted palms down on the table as if to shove it through the floor in a fit of pique.  The voice goes from alto to soprano and needs no megaphonic assistance to get the point across.  To Susan, this is an unbearable outrage!  A cheat!  An atrocity not to be borne!  Can i get an Hallelujah, Sister!  Yep, i'm four square behind her here.  That sucked.

There are other things about the C ordeal that vexed her to lesser degrees.  One of them was the hair thing.  Fortunately, what with it being cervical cancer, she didn't lose the hair atop her head.  Unfortunately, to her mind, while she kept the draperies, the carpet abandoned her and she was left with a hardwood floor, so to speak.  I would have considered this a bonus and a good chance to save razors and contortions.  She's more of a native look afficianado, so it seems.  Nonetheless... her disease... she gets to call the annoyances.  Had it been me, i would have been in a bikini EVERY day!  Sympathy factor drops on this one.  Sorry, Susan, that's just the way i roll.

The last and most perplexing of her side effect irritants is the whole publicity aspect.  Why does breast cancer get so much publicity while cervical cancer gets left in the dark?  Is this fair?  Hardly.  I figure, however, as a real estate agent, she ought to get this one without a second thought.  Location, location, location, baby!  Nobody without arthroscopic vision can see your cervix.  On the other hand, everyone can see your boobs, or at least the place they ought to be.  You don't find herds of flat cervixed women flocking to plastic surgeons demanding puffier interiors.  You don't find sugar daddies doling out cash for enhanced uteri.  They don't have a restaurant called "Cooters".  

It's all about the brightness of the headlights.

Besides, there's something just a little off putting about diseased goal posts hidden under darkness of layers of underwear, jeans, etc.  Especially the sort that eats you alive.  It doesn't matter that everyone on the planet knows for a fact that cancer isn't contagious.  There's still a creep factor involved in something that never sees the light of  day.  Also, it's located in the place a lot of guys spend a lot of drink money aiming for, then it turns out there's a big sign on the door that proclaims "No Admittance!"   Nobody's running around wearing Cervical Cancer Awareness Black Panties of Doom bands on their arms to give the poor guys a heads up (or down, as the case may be.) 

So there you have it.  Guys can run around all day grabbing their nuts and whining about testicular cancer, but if something happens below the belt on a girl, it's still considered a revolting development.  Now, the last thing i want is for there to be yet another month out of the year dedicated to a disease.  Myself, i'd rather have Dandelion Appreciation Week, or Buy Your Unemployed Neighbor Another Dirty Martini Month.  All i'm saying is this...Guys, sometimes a girl won't let you in her pants because you have the manners of a goat.  But there are other times you can't get to third base because despite the pleased look on her face at your arrival, and the turn down at the end of the night, it might be something a little more serious.  Stop getting icked out and know you made her day.  Who knows?  If guys could stop getting icked out, girls might be able to tell them, without cringing, that they think they're fine fellows but it's just bad timing.  Should that day ever arrive, you might even be able to leave the bar with your egos in tact.  I'm just saying.

Lily Robertson, who thinks radiation treatments ought to come with complimentary massages and boxes of chocolate, can be reached at canopicjargon@gmail.com or on Facebook.com. 

Party on, Gremlins!

I'm having one of those days when i begin to suspect that the world as i know it got up and went on holiday without me.  In its place, it left behind an alien planet that looked suspiciously like the place i went to sleep in yesterday, but all the real folks were replaced with gummy people. 


If i weren't the first one up in the morning in this madhouse, i'd wonder if someone had slipped something highly illegal into my first cuppa joe.

I hear you cry...Lily is easily riled, but what in the name of Neptune's left nut could actually freak Lily out?  As much as i'd love to give you names and specifics, i've gotten fond of my lily white hide and you'll just have to wonder.  I will say it was an endless stream of odd that began early and continued long enough to set me in a right nasty state of paranoia.  At least this time the sane part of my mind, or what's left of it, realizes that on this particular day, everyone isn't actually out to get me.  On the other hand, i have serious suspicions that something's not quite on the up and up in the great cosmic scheme of things.  When one person freaks you out, you're probably being a teeny bit skittish for no good reason.  When about thirty people give you reason to shake your head, it may well be time to check the calendar for an impending full moon.

Imagine, if you will, opening a can of Coke and finding it full of frozen peas, which you aren't fond of in the first place.  While you stand there a bit stunned, the person next to you turns and exclaims, "Frozen peas!  Bonus!  Can i have that?!"  Well, my day wasn't quite that odd, but it felt close enough to hit the same dart board.  I've gone through 13.5 hours of it so far and i've reached the point where perfectly normal things are making me go, "WTF, Minnie Pearl!?!" before i remember it's just my usual standard of peculiar.  Nothing to see here, folks, move along.

It's got to be some stellar practical joke.  I'm fully prepared to search the house for a reset button.  It's a cluttered house, so there's no telling what i may turn up, which means in spite of the fact that the solution may be right under the next pile of sneakers, i'm hesitant to look in case one of the laces decides to grab hold of my wrist and haul me off into another dimension.  That would definitely make me late for work tomorrow and that just wouldn't do.

I should have paid more attention to the news this morning.  They probably had rampant reports of worm holes cropping up across the eastern seaboard and i missed it.  I'm usually a little more prepared for the kooky effrontery i may or may not have to face when i step outside the house.  The last time i didn't pay attention, i accidentally got married.  I've tried to make a habit of taking notice since then.  It generally works out well for me.  I'm a known nut magnet, so it pays to be on the alert.

One of my friends is fond of saying, "Tomorrow's fresh, with no mistakes in it."  I'm willing to simply hope that tomorrow's stale, with only the usual suspects.

Lily Robertson, who not only can believe it's not butter, but would be willing to bet it snuck into the butter package with malice aforethought trying to pass itself off as butter, can be reached at canopicjargon.com or in the nearest sanitarium.

Drudging for Dollars

I am currently a shop clerk.  I'm a shop clerk because it sounds better than saying i'm a cashier.  I work for a major retail chain whose name i won't mention but they sell things that keep pieces of paper stapled together.  Yes, retail stinks, but with newspapers being one step short of spaghettification in the black hole of the internet, a poor little columnist takes what she can get.  I work along side lots of teenagers and a manager who fits right in with them.  I'm not the only older adult in the building wearing a dorky little name tag, either.  There are a lot of folks out there now who are doing what they can to put food on the table, regardless of how lame they feel as they drive to work.

The customers are amazing.  Something happens to someone when they walk through a shop door.  They suddenly become the wisest individual on the planet and deserve the right to treat people like an unwelcome dog pile on a garden party lawn.  It's our fault that the Dell service representative didn't call them back.  We are somehow behind a plot to ensure they always come out three pieces of paper short in a Hammersmith ream.  It's out of sheer, unbridled malice that we can't get the register to accept a coupon that expired three months ago.  Most likely we rushed to programme the software to thwart them when we saw them headed for the checkout counter.  We aren't smiling at them because we want them to feel welcome in the shop.  We're smiling at them because we're plotting their demise through ineffective office supply tactics.  They're on to us and they're going to be a shrew or a bully to prove their point and make sure the other customers don't get duped as well.

Here's how i spend my fifteen minute break:  I rush into the back, pick the lock on the expensive supply room door, then i race in and suck the ink out of the toner cartridges so people will have to spend more ink money that will never go into my paycheck.  I then proceed to seal up the packages so well it looks like they just came out of the manufacturer's warehouse and nobody's the wiser.  To break up my routine, i will, on occasion, open up the shredder boxes and coat the grinders with rubber cement so they jam when the third piece of paper gets crammed into them.  If i'm feeling particularly villainous, i'll break into our cheapest pen selection and slip decoagulant into them so they bleed all over women's purses.  I live to vex.

I also set store policy.  Most people don't know that store policy isn't really set on high by the corporate fathers.  We disgruntled pencil schleppers are personally responsible for the fact that our "rewards" cards will get you money back that can only be used in our shop.  It took a committee of three chair assemblers to decide that one.  I thought they did a bang up job.  I would have baked them a batch of cookies, but i work retail, so i couldn't afford the ingredients.  Our shop doesn't sell butter, so i couldn't use my reward check to buy it.  It's a shame, too, because this two dollar check is burning a hole in my pocket.

The absolute most astonishing bit about the customers is that all of them, from the ones who think us capable of evil genius to the ones who are just a joy to help, have the same look on their faces when they talk to us.  It's that, "Oh, well, you're wearing a name tag and therefore you aren't smart enough to get a real job." look.  It's admittedly a little deflating after an entire week of seeing it.  At a time when CEO's are delivering pizza, you'd think someone would think twice before leveling that gaze on a person who's just trying to feed their family.

So,  before you take your bad day out on someone who's dealing with you and your bad day for a whopping eight bucks an hour, stop and ask yourself this one question:  Can my karma balance withstand my attitude?

Lily Robertson, who has no explanation for the decline of manners in America, can be reached at canopicjargon@gmail.com.

The Unbearable, Unimaginative, Governor Lynch

Governor Lynch continues to support Poor Tax

Once again, due to gross mismanagement of state funds, Governor Lynch needs money.  Where does he turn?  State jobs and yet another tobacco tax.  Every time he needs money, he raises the tax on tobacco.  Most folks who smoke don't have a ton of money to begin with, and their luxuries are few.  Lighting up a smoke is their way to handle the pressures of every day life.  To my knowledge, it isn't yet illegal in New Hampshire.  However, Lynch has set his sights on making it unaffordable because he's not a fan, and frankly, he has a wicked lazy brain.

It's an easy tax.  Almost everyone will think about it and say, "Well, it's not healthy, so that's a good thing to tax."  They're missing the real question.  The real question is why does Lynch repeatedly get away with punishing those with a habit he doesn't like?  I don't like the fact that he can't seem to manage the budget and continues to fund campus beautification projects when our state is drowning in a red tide of ink he facilitated.  Do i get to tax everyone who can't manage a state budget because i don't like what they're doing?  I do not. 

He must have some clever folks nattering around him, though.  This time instead of letting him announce yet another tax on tobacco to an increasingly cranky population, he threw in the threat of dumping a few state jobs related to human services.  Well!  That's guaranteed to overshadow the tobacco tax.  How can we worry about a tobacco tax when there are jobs that help people at stake?  Anyone who speaks up about a tobacco tax and not against job reduction must be one hard hearted Hannah. 

Maybe i am, and maybe i'm not.  The point is, he's over taxed a specific group of people to a point where his behavior is bordering on a bill of attainder.  He's creating tax laws that punish a specific group of individuals, and that, my friends, is unconstitutional.  I don't see him raising taxes against litterbugs twice a year.  Nobody can accuse him of raising tolls twice a year.  I've never much cared for peas.  He can tax those for awhile.  Let the pea eating population line up on his lawn this time.

I have no intention of justifying my smoking habit.  It's not right, it's not wrong, but it is my choice.  A bi-annual tobacco tax is Not my choice, yet it's blithely inflicted on me.  How is this right?

If Lynch had the sense of a mango, he'd either stop wasting the limited funds we do have and tax something else for awhile rather than continuing to persecute the same people over and over.  Generally when you pick on the same people over and over, you end up with a mutiny on your hands.  You also frequently find that they were blessed with a greater dose of imagination than yours, and when you run for re-election, you find yourself holding an eviction notice.

I believe in only spending the money you have, and less if possible.  I have the money to pay for my smokes now, but living in New Hampshire under the reign of Lynch, tomorrow is always a crap shoot.  I saw a bumper sticker the other day that said, "Your fair share is NOT in my wallet."  Someone ought to send one of those to Lynch.

Lily Robertson, who is so angry with Lynch she has smoke coming out her ears, can be reached at canopicjargon@gmail.com or on Facebook.
 

Gatorade Unfaithful

Gatorade promotes its own infidelity

Gatorade has dropped its sponsorship of Tiger Woods. Why? Well, he's a bad, bad man because he cheated on his wife. This hits my "hmmmmm" radar.  Due to the fact that they're more than happy to sponsor the NFL, NBA, and just about any other sporting event they can get their grubby little mitts on, i find this curious, and i'll tell you why.

Think about the actual criminal record of major league sports players.  The NFL alone offers an impressive hit list of unsavory behavior.  I found a list of infractions on the web.  The list doesn't even cover things like the Randy Moss perpetual yellow sheet of charges mysteriously dropped while he was playing for West Virginia, and it's still decidedly nasty.  According to reporter, Jeff Benedict, 40% of NBA players have criminal records.

And yet, every time the players head for the sidelines during a game, some little guy comes rushing over to hand them a refreshing cup of Gatorade. 

So why do we see Gatorade rolling up the proverbial newspaper and whapping Woods in the nose while they proudly cheer on the genuinely criminal behavior of pro athletes in other sports?  It's all about women.  Put on your hiking gear and follow this trail of logic.

Men and boys may be the prime consumers of Gatorade, mostly because it tastes vile and only a man trying to prove his manliness would drink the stuff.  However, who in the house does most of the grocery shopping?  That's right.  Women.  We're the ones who put it on the list when we head out to the market.  We have a sneaking suspicion it has some magical vitamin property that we can actually get our sons and hubbies to suck up without complaint.  We want them to be healthier and better people, and we'll buy anything that will help us accomplish this goal.  This is exactly why the Woods infraction set off alarm bells in Gatorade's marketing department.

Tiger didn't just cheat on his wife, he claimed he had a sex addiction that required therapy and rehab.  Walk up to any woman you know and ask her what she thinks of "sex addiction" as an actual disease.  Most of us will look you square in the eye and call it bullshit.  Calling it a disease is just an excuse so when a guy cheats again he can apologize again, say he can't help it because it's a disease, and ask for forgiveness and continued support so he can get past it.  It's a wannabe get out of jail free card.  We aren't buying it.

Now, couple that with all the media hype Woods got over the whole escapade.  We women, the ones holding the shopping lists, are going to equate a sponsor of a lying, cheating, so and so with something we don't want to encourage in our guys.  We aren't just refusing to buy the sex addiction disease; we're also refusing to buy the product that endorses the guy giving the lame excuse.

However, what percentage of these same women are watching a football game?  The numbers are low.  Having checked several surveys, the average comes to about 23%, give or take.  Imagining a chunk of those women are young and just hanging out with their significant others, the numbers drop further.  Gatorade loses nothing by continuing to promote their product on a field littered with cheaters and criminals. 

Interesting double standard, wouldn't you say?  Those Gatorade folks are wicked smart. 

While i don't condone Tiger's behavior, and i certainly don't condone the media frenzy that covered it, i have even less respect for a product that displays a mentality that thinks we girls aren't smart enough to figure that one out.

Gatorade used to be on my market list due to the fact that there's a teenage boy in the house.  It's now off the list, not because they took so long to drop Woods, or because they continue to support the NFL (which i adore, i confess.)  I dropped them from my market list because they're showing the players the same level of loyalty a sex addict shows his wife.  Despite their seemingly clever efforts, they aren't pulling the wool over my helmet.

Lily Robertson, who is saving up for a Wes Welker Pats jersey, can be reached at canopicjargon@gmail.com or on Facebook.