The WTF Of The Day

Susan G. Komen Partners With Fracking Firm, Despite Possible Cancer Links

You're kidding me, right?

Just keep on shooting yourself in the foot, Komen.

The Moronic Comment Of The Day

The comment by Gabrielle Reiffel Wise:

EDY'S® Ice Cream - Slow Churned

You buy ice cream that has peanut butter cups and peanut butter swirls and you need a peanut allergy warning? Really? JFC. And I won't even touch the comment in response.

And because it is Who Cares About Women's Lives Just Care About Their Boobs Awareness Month, I noticed a lot of the time when someone makes a negative comment about it, one of the big arguments is always something along the lines of "well, have you ever watched someone die of breast cancer, it's horrible". Like dying of other cancers isn't awful?

All This Pink Can Suck It

Ugh, it is only October 3rd and I am already so sick of the sea of fucking pink everywhere, I could puke. I was in Wal-Fart last night and I actually saw pink bubble paper. Bubble paper! Our newspaper is pink! Where was the teal last month for Ovarian Cancer Awareness? Or the gold for Childhood Cancer Awareness? That is the one that always surprises me. We live in such a childcratic society- everything is the almighty child- and yet I never hear much come September about it being CCA month. In fact, I didn't even know September was CCA month until last weekend when I passed an Alex's Lemonade Stand and someone informed me that it was.

Quote Of The Day

In honor of the dreaded Breast Cancer "Awareness" month coming up, I found this gem of a quote from this article:

My biggest beef with this is that it's immature. I'm with everyone else who is wondering why we can't treat this as seriously as the disease demands we do. Why do we have to attach some stupid, catchy slogan to breast cancer just to make people give a damn? Doesn't that say something REALLY bad about our society when we have to be able to giggle at something in order to care about it? I totally understand the basis, that it's important that we can laugh and keep a sense of humor even when something is really awful, but this is just pathetic.

By god, someone gets it! Thank you, Sage!

Look, my beef with BCA may come off as I just don't give a crap about breast cancer, but that really isn't true. My whole beef is just how fucking juvenile it has become. It is like frat boys have taken over the show and are running every single breast cancer awareness dojigger in existance.

I also noticed someone posted a comment that suggests using "Save the women" as a BC slogan. *smacks forehead* For God's sake. Again, women are not the only ones who get breast cancer! Why is this so hard to comprehend? Only women get ovarian, cervical, uterine, endometrial, etc!

It is September 23rd and I have still yet to hear one mention of it being Ovarian Cancer Awareness month. Oh, but Breast Cancer "Awareness" is splattered all over the place already.

Quote Of The Day

Philly.com user duke santos on the Race For The Cure walk:

I'm all for curing cancer and all, but these broads are going a little bit overboard with all of this militant pink nonsense. Don'tcha think?

Yes.

Once again, here we go again with the breast cancer crap again. It has to be on Mother's Day because apparently breast cancer only affects women and is the only cancer that affects women. Any mothers who have died of ovarian, cervical, uterine, lung, etc, etc- the hell with you.

And May is Skin Cancer Awareness month anyway. I actually had to Google it because I had no idea what cancer gets its awareness this month. I also have to Google what color the ribbon is for it due to the fact that skin cancer does not affect something sexy so there is no reason to plaster its awareness ribbon all over the place.

EDIT: I just checked the article to see if there have been any new comments and....oh, boy, does stupidity reign in this country:

There is nothing that a woman or man can do to prevent breast cancer (like prostrate)

First off....for the love of all that is holy, it is PROSTATE. There is no fucking R after the S! I am so sick of people calling it prostrate. Every time my father mentions he had cancer, he had "prostrate cancer". But he can never get the names of anything right. He watches "Ghost Whisperers" on Friday nights, Temple Grandin is artistic, and I like "Futureworld" and "Family Man". It drives me up the freaking wall. But anyway....proSTRATE is a position. Look it the hell up.

Second....oh, here we go again. Breast cancer is apparently the only cancer that is also nonpreventable. Yes, we get it that certain life styles can lead to certain cancers, but you know what? You can still get those cancers regardless of your life style!

And since when is prostate cancer preventable? Because they possibly have a vaccine? The vaccine is used to treat advanced prostate cancer. It is a therapeautic vaccine; it doesn't prevent it. I am sure Billy West could argue a good one with this dope about prostate cancer being preventable. That man is probably healthier than 3 dozen horses, but that didn't stop him from getting it. Preventable cancer. What a moron.

And what about focusing on other diseases as well? What about ALS? Sure, its not a big epidemic, but it is terminal. ALS scares the hell out of me.

I am going to go bang my head against the wall for the next 40 minutes. And goddamit, I want a big stack of those New York cheesecake pancakes I had at Ihop last weekend.

Random Thoughts

I finally paid a visit to the eye doctor (my last appointment was 2006). And did I pay. I knew I had to pay out of pocket, of course, but I was figuring $100 or so. Much to my surprise, after my check-up, the receptionist calls me up and says "$185". If I were a cartoon character, I would have looked something like this. I almost burst in to tears. It's not putting me in to debt, but I am still far from happy about having to put that much out (are you kidding? even if I were a freaking millionaire, I would still be bitching about having to pay all that). Especially since another $136 has to go out for contacts.

Thank god I don't need glasses, too, because last time that hit me hard. I went to this place that charged $10 for all frames. Thanks to being close to Mr. Magoo territory when it comes to myopia, I had to have specific lens features put into my lenses. Featherweight lenses are not an option for me. If I didn't get them, my glasses would probably fall right off my nose from the weight. Ended up costing me about $170 after all was said and done.

If my eye doctor was still with the original company, she would have taken care of me. Back when I had insurance, our plan covered every other year and since I have contacts, I have to go yearly. Those years I had to pay out of pocket, she would usually not charge for one exam. She did that a lot with her loyal patients. She is a great doctor and it would take a lot for me to go to someone else. The only upside to paying the $185.

I had to go to a work meeting this work and man was it boring. The people are nice enough that now run the company, but the fact that they are only out for a profit and nothing else doesn't sit right with me. And I am still sore over the fact that I distinctly remember them telling us that every employee gets stock before they took over. Then suddenly, it was only if you are eligible. And the fact that I am kept at just a little under the eligibility for benefits and other crap really rubs salt in the wound. I hate business people sometimes.

But who gives a crap about the meeting. No, rather I am bothered by the fact of how my manager treated me today. She was very rude and abrupt with me when I asked a question. And last time I talked with her, she was the same way. Despite being one of the biggest offenders on earth of taking a bad mood out on everyone else, I get very annoyed when people take their bad moods out of me. I felt like screaming what the fuck is your problem, bitch? You crucify me in my employee review (while telling me that you forget to do good employee reviews and never forget to do reviews for employees that aren't doing well while doing my review a few months after my start date; is that supposed to make me feel good or something?) and tell me to ask questions when I need to, but then cock a tude when I ask questions?

My employee review, while I was rated basically a B, could spawn it's own posting. Half the shit I didn't even understand how I could be graded on. Attendence? I work from home and have no set schedule! I work the hours I want to and I have never not went in on the days I am required to. Creativity? How exactly does one get creative with this job? It is a set task. You do it one way and that is it. There is nothing to get creative about.

My job, for the most part, is fairly easy. I do get tasks that make me want to pull my hair out. What makes it even more nerve-wracking for me is some of the people that get my work after me are, uh, extremely anal retentive? They have been doing it for 900 years so they expect everyone else to do it perfect. I am expected to increase my time speed (I am constantly being compared to the other people who do my job as well, people who have been doing it for a hell of a lot longer than me and who have had more medical experience than me; at the same time, I am also told speed comes with time) while also making absolutely no mistakes! And sometimes you have to do a lot of reading, which takes up more time. I try to work as fast as I can, but there are so many things that can take up time quickly. Like 45 copies of the same sheet (determing whether it is or isn't the same), trying to comprehend a written date (no wonder doctors get sued so much), etc.

I made a simple mistake one time with a file where I had it basically in order, but for some reason, the pile of 2000-2005 somehow ended up not between 1999 and 2006. A minor inconvenience, sure, but was it really that big of a deal? All the person had to do was separate 1999 and 2006 and place the 2000-2005 in between. If I had that file, I would have either bitched to myself about it for 25 minutes, then placed it where it needed to be and STFU or I would have just made a mention of it when I took the work back in. I wouldn't have immediately went whining to the manager with an email that basically stated how much I was inconveniencing her:

I am going through chart on [patient name] sorted by [my initials]. As I am going through checking to see if it is in order and tagging the radiology/operative reports the dates jump from 1999 to 2006. I get through to 2009 and then the dates go to 2000 to 2005. This is a large chart with dates starting in 1967. I am now back tracking to put the 2000 to 2005 in place.

I won't deny that it is a minor inconvenience. But seriously- backtracking? Because simply having to seperate 1999 and 2006 is really that much of an effort? It would take all of 5 fucking seconds to place the 2000 to 2005 papers in between. Cry me a river, you self-entitled miserable bitch. Sorry I haven't been doing my job for 100 years like you have and have everything exactly the way you want it! Last time, I checked, I am still semi-human and I make mistakes!

Bitch, please! Do you know how much I would love to have a file that doesn't have repeated copies of the same paper? That the medical or legal office it came from would actually do some type of house-cleaning before shipping the damn thing over? Or that when someone makes a copy of something, they make sure it actually copies where I can read it? Or that every doctor or PT would write legibly? Oh, I'd love it! But it's not going to happen!

I am not just saying miserable bitch over that. Whenever I have been in the actual workplace, if I said hi to her she would just completely ignore me. This was just like when I worked at my last employer. Whenever I would say hi to anyone, they would just stare at me. Maybe I was raised wrong, but I was taught that if someone says hi to me, I say hi back!

You want to know something bizarre? Back in high school, I took chorus my sophomore year because I really, really, REALLY wanted to make Girl's Ensemble or Concert Choir (just for the record, I didn't make either; I was this close *holding thumb and forefinger a quarter of an inch apart* to making it). Well, there was this freshman in it as well who, while she had a good voice, was a little bit too big for her britches. I sang soprano, she sang alto. And on the night of the winter concert, we all filed on stage. She was next to me and all she kept saying to me was I was in the alto section. I was absolutely not. I has sopranos next to me, in front of me and behind me and there was some on the other side of her, so she was very clearly in the wrong section. And she would just not let up. So from that night on, I had a vendetta for her. Mostly for trying to make me look like an ass and for just being a pretentious little spoiled cunt. I caught her friends doing that whole whispering in the ear and then looking at me one day and I had to do everything in my power to not go over and kick the shit out of the 3 of them. I guess I was even evil back in high school because I will never forget the day I go in to school and a friend of mine tells me the dork broke her hip trying to roller skate down a snowy hill. I laughed so hard, my teeth almost fell out.

So isn't it nice to know that I come to find out Mommy works for the same company I work for? All I can say is I hope I never have to be introduced to her because my luck, it will turn into 20 questions and she will find out I graduated a year before her daughter and then it will turn in to "oh do you know my daughter" and I will have to bite my tongue and simply say "yes" instead of wanting to inform Mommy of what a pretentious little cunt her daughter is.

The absolute highlight of my job is when I get a file where a lawyer, doctor, or something similar thinks the patient is lying and will write a letter totally handing the patient's ass to them. Now I am someone who makes assumptions way too often, but I am starting to get to the point when I am starting to figure out when the case is legit or just someone out to make a quick buck. Some of the patients are assholes and will go ape-shit if the doctor tells them they are fine.

Those letters make my day.

A few weeks ago, I decided to take the advice of the "how dare you insult breast cancer awareness" nazis about trying to get more recognition for other cancers. I decided to start with the Avon Foundation. I sent them an email asking why they, as a women's foundation, only focus on breast cancer when there are other cancers out there that- OMG- affect women. I was surprised to actually receive a response back and not much surprised to have my idea shot down. They claim they can only focus on domestic violence and breast cancer. So it would absolutely kill them to maybe have some items with peach or teal ribbons? They can't use some of their donations to help un- and underinsured women get Pap smears and gynocological exams? To educate young women on what symptoms to look for? Nooo. They have to use it all on breast cancer. Geeze, sorry that cervixes, ovaries, and uteri just don't have that sexual appeal like a set of big ol' tits!

I am going to get borderline homicidal if I see that damn Susan G. Komen 3 Day Walk commercial one more time. I especially can't stand that girl at the end with the pink feather boa that is all like "I didn't have a say in my mom dying". Yeah, that's almost everybody's problem!

I don't know what it is, but since I was younger, I have always had this haunting feeling that I will have cancer someday. Don't know what type. I am at risk for quite a few. I have an awful digestive system(from esophagus- GERD- to intestines- undiagnosed, but more than likely IBS with constipation) and 2 of my maternal great-grandfathers had stomach cancer, so I wouldn't be surprised if I ever got that or esophageal cancer. Since November, I was absolutely sick to my stomach that my mother had esophageal cancer because she was having pain swallowing, but her EGD came up benign, but she does have Barrett's. I don't know if there is any genetic link for that (although I strongly believe most things in life have a genetic link), but if there is, combined with my long history of acid reflux, per diem bulimia, and poor diet, I won't be surprised if I develop it eventually. Cancer is scary, but three cancers out there terrify me more than anything- brain, spinal, and esophageal.

I'd say bone cancer as well, due to the risk of losing a limb, but I pretty much have a say in whether or not to chop it off, do I not? My answer would be "HELL FUCKING NO!".

I have known so many people who have had cancer. And many are right here in my neighborhood (I believe my neighborhood to be toxic; probably a contribution to my feeling I will get cancer). I have known someone with bone and esophageal cancer (a neighbor- died), 2 people who ovarian (a neighbor- died, a former friend's mother- still alive), prostate cancer (local news anchor- died, a cousin- alive, my father), throat and tongue cancer (a cousin- died), brain cancer (a friend of my sister's- alive; her husband also has prostate cancer), 2 with breast cancer (both alive), and so many with lung cancer. It's astonishing how many people I know that have/had lung cancer. Even more astonishing is how many have never smoked a day in their life.

My Beef With Breast Cancer "Awareness"

This ended up being so long, I had to put it into it's own entry.

I am sick of breast cancer getting such a huge amount of attention compared to other cancers and seeing goddamn pink on everything!

Hell, once upon a time I did contribute to it. I did the walks and I do have a few not ridiculous stuff. But now it's nothing but a giant sexual marketing campaign. I won't even buy any of the stuff because I don't even know where my money is going to or if it is even going anywhere.

I mean, it's getting so bad that it is not even the end of September and every where I go, I am being bombarded by goddamn pink. How many people out there even know that September is ovarian cancer awareness month? Certainly not nearly as many that know October is breast cancer "awareness" month. Ovarian cancer can't even get an entire month of awareness without breast cancer "awareness" pushing its pink onto everything. But that's right- ovaries, as well as cervixes and uteri, aren't sexy enough to get as much attention. Seriously- if the overbombardment of pink hasn't sunk in yet, it never will.

And I am sick of the argument that lung cancer can be prevented- do you know how many people I know that have died of lung cancer and have never smoked a day in their life? Oh lots.

And the best argument I have seen for the huge amount of awareness is this genius bit- breast cancer can spread to other areas. Hm, I guess others don't really spread so they don't deserve the same amount of awareness. I guess my aunt's friend's sister who died of lung cancer (not a smoker) that metastized to her brain wasn't really cancer. I guess our local sports anchor who just recently passed after his multi-battle with prostate cancer that metastized to his bones wasn't really cancer. I guess my neighbor's daughter who had lung cancer (also never a smoker) that spread all over her body and killed her wasn't really cancer. What a load of crap.

By the way BIG newsflash- breast cancer is not the top killer of women. It's not even in the top 5. And it's not even the top cancer killer of women. Supposedly I have heard that the whole "awareness" thing was pushed by feminists. Look, I know it's miniscule in men, but breast cancer is not just a woman's cancer! And the sad thing is, there are probably so many people out there who don't even know that men can get it! I'll tell you what is strictly a woman's cancer- ovarian, uterine, and cervix cancer!

And the first line of defense among these people is if you want awareness of other cancers, then you need to get out and push for more awareness. People do make awareness of other cancers and breast cancer is right there, pushing it's awareness in front of it. Breast cancer awareness is no longer just October. Its spanning it's horrible pink "awareness" into every other month. Back in November, a brain cancer walk was organized and that same day, in the same city, a breast cancer walk was organized. Never mind that it was not even Breast Cancer Awareness month anymore.

In addition to the whole where and is my donation even going anywhere, breast cancer "awareness" wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't turning so tacky, eg "Save the ta-tas" (that one makes me exceptionally stabby), Jingle Jugs, and nice little fundraisers with titles like "Mugs for Jugs". When people have fundraisers like Mugs for Jugs or don't let cancer steal second base or wear shirts that say save the ta-tas or boobs- where exactly do their priorities lie? What exactly are they aiming to prevent- the death of the person or the loss of a woman's tits? Do they even care about saving a person's life or are people more worried over the fact that a woman could lose her breasts? Would anyone stand for bumper stickers or t-shirts that say "Save balls" in regards to testicular cancer awareness? Oh no. People would be all over that like ugly on an ape.

Why don't companies, instead of wasting money making all the stupid pink products, use that money to help women who can't get insurance or have horrible insurance get mammograms?

Donating money towards a cure. What a friggin joke.

I feel bad for anyone with breast cancer or who has had it in the past that gets sick and feels they are being exploited when they have to look at this puke-inducing pink junk and be reminded of the horrible disease they have/had. You are not any less of a woman because you have had to have a masectomy, so don't let anyone tell you otherwise. What is the big fucking deal about losing your tits anyway? They really are not that important. Imagine having to lose a leg or something to bone cancer or losing your entire ability to walk due to spinal cancer or losing your faculties to brain cancer. Stop being so fucking vain and worry about staying alive instead of losing fat sacks. If my mother had breast cancer, do you think I give a shit if she loses her breasts? No. And neither would she. In fact, she'd probably jump on the operating table right after the diagnosis and scream "let's go with the breast removal already!".

This woman knows what she is talking about.

And I know it's kind of mean, but I don't know why people get so angry if someone says that there are cancers out there that are scarier than others. Yeah, they are all scary as hell, but tell me- will you be singing the same tune if you are diagnosed with a cancer that has a high surival rate as opposed to a cancer with a low survival rate? Say you are diagnosed with thyroid cancer, which has a pretty high survival rate- you honestly can tell me you would feel the same as if you were to be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, which is almost always fatal?