Latest Posts

Friday 24 September 2010

MOM, DAD, I'M HOME!


A friend of mine just moved back in with her parents because she is having work done on her house. Of course this has brought up all sorts of issues and headaches for all involved…well for her, her husband and their kids. Something tells me that her parents are thrilled to have someone to look after again. It got me thinking -  and laughing - because when they say you can’t go home again, boy do they mean it. I often wonder if it goes against the genetic grain to allow this to happen. In short, we spend our lives growing, changing and becoming more independent, all so that we can leave the nest and go find our own. To reenter the parental nest just seems to fundamentally against nature.

Then there is the space issue. As a grown adult, you are used to having your own space and suddenly you find yourself back in their house and your space has been sucked into a parental wormhole. Due to their excitement to have you back in their fold, they end up stuck on your head like a boil, smothering you like a child again. Cause in their eyes you still are one and they’re going to remind you of that fact. Suddenly, overnight there is a mass regression to when you were a teenager. They start telling you to clean your plate, pick up your stuff (even if it’s not on the ground), get a haircut, or they start playing the martyr card (not you Mom, you’re utterly perfect) about how much they do for you – usually with a big dramatic sigh - when you don’t even recall asking.  And no matter how much you try to tell them you are not the same 16 year old trying to sneak out of the house, or smoke cigarettes in the bathroom or steal their car…I’m just kidding, I never did such a thing…well, it falls on deaf ears. You are, and ever shall be, their baby to smother with parental advice and attention.

There is also that moment when you realize you have a front row seat to what your parents have been doing all this time since you left the house, and it's not always pretty. You can see their routines so deeply embedded there are grooves in the carpet, coupled with the fact that after thirty some odd years together they are potentially sick to death of one another. Of course then you become the dreaded buffer and find yourself corned in the pantry refereeing their latest disagreement. 

Then again, things are not always like this. Some parents see their kids coming and lock the doors and set the burglar alarm. They figure, I’ve done my time and I’m not sharing my beautifully clean cell with my progeny inmate. Your old bedroom is now a state of the art gym and they have no intention of going back; take the sofa or there’s a lovely motel on the corner of “what the hell are you doing here” and “how long are you staying exactly?”

Don’t get me wrong, sometimes it’s great to go home. The laundry gets done, the fridge is always full with your favorite things, and the house always smells like something good and you didn’t have to cook it. Hallelujah! And for that brief moment you do feel like a kid, and that’s okay. In fact, it’s a nice flash of nostalgia of a time when things weren’t so complicated. You find yourself saying Mommy instead of Mother, sitting in your old bedroom remembering all the things you plotted whilst you were grounded, and you ruminate on the memories of how you tortured your mother with all your teenage antics (perhaps this is just me?)....suddenly you almost feel badly…until of course she bangs on the door while you are showering and tells you to stop wasting so much water, she’s not made of money you know!

They do say absence does make the heart grow fonder and distance is good for any relationship. I'm thinking that's damn good advice...Mommy, I’ll be home at Xmas. Get the washing machine ready. 

Thursday 23 September 2010

DISTURBED WITH A CAPITAL D


I can’t stand when I’m so disturbed by something and I can’t find humor in a situation. I pride myself in being able to find at least a grain of humor in pretty much anything, but sadly, this one takes the cake for being up there on the disturbing list. Aren’t you glad I point these things out for your attention?

A video game out of Japan – thanks for that guys – called ‘RapeLay’ is causing all sorts of outrage for very obvious reasons. In this game, a player can follow a girl onto a subway car, ask if she needs help with anything (how polite, right?) and then choose their method of assault. Yes, you heard me. From lifting her skirt, to beating her up, to rape, the players of this game carry out a rape as if it’s just everyday fare in the world of activities. You can then have your friends join in and participate in the rape. The game even allows you to impregnate the girl and urge her to have an abortion. The reason for the game, which almost sickens me even more, is apparently this girl accused you of molesting her, and hence you are enacting your revenge.

I don’t need to tell you that women’s groups all over the world went into outrage overdrive and had it yanked off the shelves. Thank god for proactive women. The only problem being is that it made it’s way onto the internet and has now gone viral. Fabulous. Equality Now, a woman’s activist group is calling for the Japanese government to ban “all games that promote and simulate sexual violence, sexual torture, stalking and rape against women and girls.” Gosh, that isn’t asking so much now is it? Apparently games of this nature have been in existence in Japan for a long time, and what the world would deem pornographic, they apparently do not. 

I am all for freedom of expression and am highly adverse to censorship in any form, but does this one not fall under the umbrella of inciting an act of violence? And who is the base vile individual who came up with the premise for this game? Cause I'd like to have a few words with him and give him a number for a very good therapist. It’s hard to believe that something that is deemed a game, has ventured into this territory of repugnant violence against women. I thought stealing cars was bad, boy am I scarily falling behind in the world of video gaming. Perhaps I will start one where a pack of angry oppressed and objectified women hit the streets and beat the sh*t out of men who buy and support things like this. I shall call it, ‘Retribution, Suckers!’

What scares me most is that there is an audience for this stuff – scared, yet not surprised when it comes to the human race. And of course once it hits the web it cannot be controlled, it’s just out there for boys and girls (please tell me girls do not play this??!) to participate in. When I read things like this, it takes everything in my power not to pack a bag for me and the King and move us to some monastery in the middle of nowhere, where all we have to think about is when our next chanting session is and bowl of goat’s whey being served.

Tuesday 21 September 2010

TAKE ME TO YOUR LEADER



I don’t understand people who join cults. To dispel any confusion, I suppose there are many ways to define a cult (and many cult like groups out there!). For this purpose let’s say a cult is a group of people governed by a leader who thinks he or she is god and this person convinces its followers to do everything they say. Oh, and wear what they are told to wear.

Gosh, when it’s written like that, it sounds like most governments.

A 13 member female cult in Southern California – guess the cult leader was not great in the marketing department – went missing. This is according to the husbands of some of the wives in the group who called the police when their wives didn't come home. One man panicked when he found his wife's purse, which was filled with cell phones, money and a note about soon meeting Jesus and deceased relatives. Okay, definitely a cause to worry - either that, or time to up the wife’s Prozac and fast. Funny thing was, when they found these 13 women and their leader, they were in the park, having prayed there all night and were angry such a fuss was made about them. They claimed they always do this and their husbands have full knowledge of it. I’m thinking some couples counseling is definitely in order.

Cults have always fascinated me – and simultaneously scared the bejeezus out of me – in that it’s hard for me to understand the notion of brainwashing on this scale. [Advertising I get and fall victim to every time]. I’m thinking it’s the same genetic chip that allows one to be hypnotized, something I’m not able to have done to me. Us cynical authority fearing heathens are not very good at being led down the path by some Kool-Aid drinking weirdo that promises us eternal life. I think the thing that scares me the most is the reverential profound devotion these cult members bestow on an average Joe, simply because he or she deems themselves ‘the chosen one’. I certainly hope they ask for references or make him perform a few miracles. “Yo buddy, if you can turn that clunker into a Porsche, I’ll drink your nasty concoction.” That is the least this leader could do if I’m going to give up my possessions and move into some work camp where I most likely have to shave my head, or something severe like that. Then there is the whole sexual element that is found in many cults that is utterly baffling, and well, vile. In short, the leader gets tons of tail, and the followers all have to be fine with the fact that he is sleeping with their friends, relatives, and often children. I’m sorry, but there is not enough faith in the world to get me to understand that one. 

I suppose for some there is such a profound void, or need to be controlled by something other than themselves, that it is easy to hand themselves over to someone else. This should certainly tell us a lot about the human psyche. If not handled or cultivated in the right way in one's youth, it becomes a Petri dish for disaster. The ironic thing is, a lot of these cults are brainwashed by a ‘freaky leader’ who tells them to buck against the system, reclaim control and live their lives on their own terms, ala David Koresh in Waco. I think they miss the glaring discrepancy that as he’s telling them to break free of the tyranny of the government that suppresses them, they’re being controlled by something altogether more frightening. Some freak with a gun that calls himself god and insists they die for him.

I’d take George Bush any day.

Monday 20 September 2010

KING YODA


I am now convinced that procreation (or merely having or being around children, however you come by them – but please, don’t steal them) is not solely so that we can carry on the human race – we’re crowded enough. It is so that we are forced to learn a plethora of life lessons some of us can’t grasp without going through this sobering step – there are many that do not need children to learn this stuff. I say well done to you, go get drunk and sleep in for me please.

Take the King, for instance. In eight (loooooong) weeks, I have learned more about myself, what I can handle, what I can’t handle, and that all the things I knew about life are all the more emphatic now. For instance: I have learned that without prolonged periods of sleep I’m an irrational lunatic that bursts into tears on a daily basis. I have learned that a child’s butt can fill a landfill in a week; I have learned that I can bathe, get dressed and eat breakfast in under eight minutes (yes, I get indigestion). I have learned that I can easily forget about what I look like, how I feel, or how much I want to lie down in the middle of the street and pass out, if I simply get a really good burp from my son - or a smile, that pretty much trumps all. And I have learned that half the crap you go out and buy for this little person is just crap, no matter how much the 'experts' tell you it is needed.

It is like the King’s sheer existence is a crash course for what one needs to learn in life. In short, if they’re small, consider them Yoda as there are some heavy lessons coming your way. Lesson one, patience. If you don’t have any, you better figure out how to get some cause you’re going to need it. Oh sweet mother of donkeys, you’re going to need it. My patience is in short supply on the best of days, then take away sleep, rationality, reason and calmness and that’s where you find yourself post birth. And in this state you are confronted with a small creature that screams its head off and doesn’t want to sleep, eat, or poop until it is ready to do so. Talk about a challenging situation.

Another lesson the King serves up like a bowl of indigestible pond sludge – life is utterly unpredictable. Just when you think you have it figured out, it’s going to change on you, often in the blink of an eye, and that change is potentially going to hurt badly. Case in point, we recently put the King on a schedule. We kept a diary, wrote everything down, had things working like a well-oiled military operation, thinking we had cracked the code and this baby was putty in our hands. The minions were on the brink of mutiny! And then of course the King – who I’m sure was internally laughing his baby head off - reminded us that he was in charge, and if he wanted things to change – similar to life – they were going to change. Take your schedule and shove it, serfs.

Lesson number three thousand and twenty: the King may define narcissism (always Me Me Me. Geesh), but as far as a parent holding onto that characteristic, good f**king luck. Your days of all about you are over, see ya,sayonara! Ayn Rand be damned. You’ll be lucky if you can feed yourself, bathe and comb your hair let alone think the universe revolves around you. Unless of course you have a fleet of nannies that enables you to retain your freedom, and then please god send me one. In a way this lesson is refreshing and I think more people could benefit from not always putting themselves first. 

Another thing the King has taught me: babies are Buddhists, and hence, a good reminder of how one should live in the now. The King is so about the now he’s like a freaking monk. I’m hungry NOW. I’m tired NOW. I need my diaper changed, NOW. He doesn’t care about what just happened or what is coming in the future– case in point when he got his first immunization, he cried for 3 seconds, then fell asleep having totally forgotten it even happened. See, he’s in the now. Got to love that.

And my other favorite gem that these little life suckers teach you, if it (they) doesn’t kill you, it’ll make you stronger. Just when I think I can’t handle the grind, or in my case, The King, I somehow find my way through and feel all the more victorious for it [or beaten down within an inch of my life]. See, I’m learning.


Copyright © 2014 Anthea Anka - Delighted And Disturbed