Long Time, No Hate

A few of this week's grains of sand in my perpetually itchy zone:

1. People who bring their dogs into businesses. I feel like this came to prominence during the heyday of Paris Hilton and the purse-dog. Somehow, the already ridiculous practice of confining small dogs in expensive handbags in order to carry them around as permanent companions to people too odious to maintain friendships has caught on with the general public. I constantly see dogs in malls, grocery stores, and posing in front of the "No Dogs Allowed" signs at Farmers Market. WTF? At least children are only loud and snot-filled. Dogs also drool, knock things over, bite, carry fleas and ticks, trigger allergies, and hump legs. If your child did that, I wouldn't let you bring him either.

2. Botox, et al., and the quacks who shill it. Plastic surgery occasionally serves a very real and even humanitarian purpose: restoring faces and bodies severely damaged by traumatic incident, correcting cleft palates, covering the scars of skin-cancer removals and other necessary procedures. Mostly, though, medical training in plastic surgery seems to be treated as a ten-year long beauty school. Why do we have dozens of treatments for the unavoidable process of aging, but have nothing better toward the prevention of skin cancer than sunscreen? It's just completely off-balance. Living in Southern California and being against plastic surgery procedures is akin to living in a brothel and trying to make it as a monk. I'm emphatically against putting plastic in my body or risking my life for my vanity. And yet. After more than a decade in this region, it's wearing me down and the cognitive dissonance is deafening. When someone as strong in their beliefs as me has moments of "well, maybe I could do this; think how much better I could look", I cannot imagine the pressure faced by young people who don't yet know what to believe and want.

3. Dr. Drew Pinsky. When doctors become fame-whores, treatment goes right out the window. The shady commences with Celebrity Rehab. In essence, they were trading their former fame in for free treatment and a shot at getting their careers back on track by doing it in front of people. It's far from the best environment for real healing to happen, but okay--at least it's a trade-off I can recognize as having some benefit for either side. But, even there, I'm asking: what doctor wants to put such damaged people in front of the camera for their therapy? What of patient confidentiality, and all that it does to foster trust and commitment to the process? Then Pinsky was in my Runner's World as their featured celebrity runner. Ew. You treat celebrities, man, you aren't one. But now, he seems to comment whenever someone is in the public eye and suspected of drugs--like Lindsay Lohan or Charlie Sheen. He makes comments that border on diagnostic without ever meeting the people, which is clearly unethical and serves only to keep him in the public eye himself. Not to mention, he's an addiction specialist as a medical doctor (meaning he's trained and experienced in detoxing people, mostly), but he's not a shrink, though he quite literally plays one on T.V. Add to this that he's an AA zombie who holds that it's the only model that works for long-term sobriety (a lie on both counts: there are plenty of other workable models, like cognitive behavioral therapy, and AA's success rates are terrible), and I'm all done with the guy.

4. Pro-violence rhetoricians unwilling to stand by their words. Hey, you're the one who said we needed 2nd Amendment solutions, so you don't get to flee responsibility when someone agrees that shooting the politicians they don't like is a good, patriotic solution. They took you literally at your word. Also, there is no convincing me that crosshairs are surveyor's marks, nor do I buy for one second that you were trying to reach the American public through our deep love of and history with surveyor's equipment. Come on, now. Just a second ago you were all eager to get people riled up--telling them not to retreat, just to reload--and suddenly, you're skittish? It cuts both ways; if you suggest revolution, you don't get to cry foul when one starts breaking out in the streets. This is your moment, after all. This is what you wanted: a nation of angry, armed, virulently bigoted, violently motivated people. These are your people; this is your moment. Own it, and get out there and lead them. Just don't forget your flak jacket, jagoff.

5. The Dallas Cowboys. It's not even football season anymore. I just never stop hating them, and it bears mentioning. Partly, it's Texas, which we should have let become its own country. Then we wouldn't have to claim them. Partly, it's the idea of cowboys as a mascot. So many shades of ick. Some of it is the stupid star on the uniform. Really? That's the best you could come up with? And we're back to what a stupid mascot the cowboy is, especially if the team isn't even willing to let it really be the representation of the team. And, still, it's the cheerleaders. It's not them, per se. They're just typical professional cheerleaders: pretty people, mediocre dancers (relative to other pros, not regular folks), spangly costumes. But, somehow they've been typified as the epitome of desirability, like Miss America only without even needing to be able to answer dumbed-down questions. I hate that this is at all indicative of what's wanted from women: empty ornamentation, attached utterly to masculine grandstanding and violence. Now, if the DCC were to become an MMA fighting team on the side, that I would want to see.