As Seen On The Bathroom Wall

I have an eight year-old daughter who is a beautiful, funny, smart, quick-witted child. She's friendly - almost to a fault - and she loves to read. She is, quite simply, a fantastic child. So, you can imagine how difficult it was for me to hear her say to me one day in a distressed voice, "Mommy, can I start shaving my legs?"

"Why?" I asked, knowing that her legs are quite hairy but never seeing that as being a problem since she is, after all, only eight.

"Because two of my friends at school tease me about it," came her reply.

Initially I thought to tell her to ignore the teasing since it is par for the course when you're a child: you get teased, you tease others, you laugh, share milk, and run around on the playground.

But then I thought to ask another question. "What do they say?"

"They said that I need to shave my legs, and if I don't shave my legs then I'm 'butchy'."

Well, this changes things. Eight year-olds using the term "butchy" is quite unnerving, especially since they're the ones who explained to my eight year-old what that term meant (to them). That, of course, wasn't the worst of it. No. See, I then led my questioning down its natural path and wound up with this final one: "Do they shave their legs?"

"Yes."

Call me floored. Call me shell-shocked, dumbfounded, flustered, and quite simply dismayed. Eight year-old little girls...shaving their legs?

WHY?

I quickly went into damage control mode then, because let's face it, being a girl is one of the toughest things one can be. There are so many outside influences that alter and mutate our own self-perception. My daughter, who's cared little to nothing about how she looked on the outside, has suddenly become self-conscious of parts of her body that are inconsequential to who she is as a person. Immediately, I told her that eight is far too young to be shaving one's legs, regardless of how much hair is on there, or what their so-called friends might have to say about it.

I also told her, in no uncertain terms, that not shaving one's legs doesn't make one "butchy", and that term isn't to be used again by her because it's insulting. I then lifted the leg of my pants and showed her my own hairy gams and asked her if she thought that what her friends had described fit me in any way. She shook her head and laughed, then asked why I didn't shave.

"Because I don't care what other people think about what I look like. Mommy doesn't need someone else to tell me that my legs are hairy to know that they are, just like Mommy doesn't need someone else to tell me that my legs are nice to know that they are. What other people say isn't as important as how you feel about yourself. Shaving your legs won't make you a better person. Those girls shave their legs but it hasn't made them any nicer, now has it?"

She shook her head and gave me a somber "No." It broke my heart then because I was witnessing the realization within her that these girls she thought were her friends were exactly the type of people she did not want to be around. It was a heartbreaking thing to witness, especially after seeing the hurt in her eyes just moments earlier, but it was one that she needed to experience. At eight, you're so optimistic about everything, and you want to believe that everyone is nice, or that everyone can be, and so when it turns out that that's not the case, it can be a tragedy of sorts and all I wanted to do was take my little girl into my arms and hug her and tell her that if shaving her legs would make her happy then she could do it until the cows came home.

Instead, I took her into the bathroom, handed her my Venus razor and shaving cream and stuck out my hairy leg. She looked at it like it was some kind of scary science experiment, one that would be messy, dangerous, and fraught with complications. Which, if you're an eight year-old girl, is exactly the kind of science experiment you want to do. So she went to work, and after three cuts to my ankle, a muffled g-rated curse from me, a sasquatchy-looking blob of foam attacking her hand, and a rather long four minutes of tongue - and nail - biting concentration and suspense filled silence, she's come to the conclusion that shaving is simply too complicated to get into right now.

"I think I'll wait until I'm Hannah Montana's age to start shaving," she announced emphatically, her foamy, hairy hands waving in defeat at the remaining acreage of hair left remaining on my legs.

"That's my girl," I said, smiling. "Now go get Mommy the first-aid kit."

Wow, two blogs in one day!

I was planning on ignoring that whole Tila Tequila/Shawne Merriman debacle because quite frankly, she's an attention whore and he was stupid enough to date her, and when you mix whores and stupidity together, you get a pretty noxious combination of karma. Well, unfortunately for Shawne Merriman, karma came by way of an assault allegation. Not just assault - attempted murder.

Why?

Because Tila Tequila, born Thien Thanh Thi Nguyen, is a damned bad liar, that's why.

See, when you put the two stories together, something just doesn't sound right. At first, it seems quite obvious who's telling the truth: He says he was restraining her from driving drunk, she says he assaulted her and choked her; he's a giant compared to her; she went to the hospital.

Lots of foreign terms were used, like "citizen's arrest" - which wouldn't mean much to anyone unless you're a fan of Police Academy 3 - but when people see the word "arrest", they automatically think police>cuffs>jail>guilty. It all goes hand in hand. In an instant, Shawne went from average NFL player to attempted murderer. Like being called a rapist, or a child molester, that's a label that gets tattooed onto your body with lasers. It doesn't come off, and it'll never fade, especially not with the internet so readily available to every bored googleologist in the world.

Women rallied to Tila's side, crying "abuse" and shouting for "justice!"

Trouble was, the only thing Tila seemed to care about was attention. She stopped tweeting for one day, and then quick as a flash - or as some people have deduced, a hangover recovery period - she was back, tweeting about woe is her, justice, pictures, witnesses, and DA meetings.

Trouble is, there has been no corroborative testimony, either public or otherwise, to confirm her side of the story. When Shawne explained his side, she lashed out on twitter to say that he's lying because she's "allergic to alcohol" which, if you're Asian like me, simply means your face gets red as a freaking beet and everyone knows you were completely tossed. Let's be honest here, the girl's been drunk on television more time than Paris Hilton's panties have been on TMZ. This isn't a secret, so for her to say something that ridiculously and patently false is one obvious sign that there are cracks in her story that are wider than...well, I won't go there. Add on to that the fact that paramedics stated that they saw no visible injuries to Tila when they arrived and took her to the hospital.

Now, I understand that some individuals will claim that bruises don't normally show up until twenty-four hours after an assault, but this simply isn't true. Bruising can be almost instantaneous, depending upon the person. Also, the skin around the neck is very delicate, and bruising there will become visible within minutes. Redness from the contact will be visible immediately. Add to that the damage that strangulation will do to the capillaries in the eyes, even if only slightly, and you've got very visible evidence that someone has been choked, whether by a hand, an arm, or an object. Paramedics are trained to spot signs of oxygen deprivation that can be caused by an attempted strangulation. Also, vocal chords can be damaged that would impair an individual's ability to speak. All of these things would have been noticed by EMTs/Paramedics/Police Officers/hospital staff. Any of these things would have been evidence enough to file charges against Shawne Merriman for assault and possibly attempted murder/manslaughter.

The recent photographs that Tila "released" to TMZ show bruising "one day" after the alleged incident. Anyone who has ever been choked or restrained violently knows that those bruises are far too faint to have been caused within a twenty-four hour time period. There's yellowing to the bruises on her arms, which implies healing. There appears to be no bruising to her throat, and as someone who knows what being choked feels like and looks like, I simply cannot take her at her word that she was, in fact, choked. Could she have been restrained? That's not in question. Shawne admitted to restraining her. The bruises on her arms make quite clear in that regard that someone was holding her tightly there, forcefully if you will, and his explanation seems more plausible given the nature of the supposed altercation. If what he says is true, then that makes even more egregious the claims that she's made.

Why?

Because thousands of women out there are afraid to come forward with their own tales of abuse because they fear they won't be believed, and women like Tila Tequila are, in part, greatly to blame for it. Whenever a woman falsely cries rape or abuse, it pushes back the advances that women have made to tell their stories, to get help, to seek justice. There was a stigma attached to rape and abuse, that the women either deserved it or were simply saying it because they were jealous, or angry at their husbands/lover, and often times a woman was punished for even trying to get help. The system would return her to her abuser, and she would suffer for the audacity to seek sanctuary from any source. From woman's suffrage to equal pay for equal work, it's been a struggle to gain any ground in this world if you happen to have been born with ovaries and a vagina, and women died fighting for rights that far too many of us take for granted today.

And so when someone like Tila Tequila comes along and starts calling for justice for her because no one believed her blatantly false tales, what she does is not point the light of scrutiny at herself, but at the female population in general. The next time a female is genuinely assaulted by a celebrity, the number of people who doubt her claim will be far, far larger than those that exist today, and I'd bet that a great deal will bring up this particular incident as justification for their skepticism.

Without a doubt, the most vulgar and tasteless thing that she's done has been to bring up abuse and homicide victim, Jasmine Fiore, into the equation which, while it doesn't surprise me given the levels of depravity to which she has already stooped, still disgusts me. She's attempting to compare herself to this poor girl because she's looking for sympathy that she's probably not going to receive now that the DA has opted to dismiss the case entirely due to insufficient evidence. She's taken to the internet airwaves, tweeting over and over again how she deserves justice for what happened to her, how she was almost killed, et al. She has hordes of loyal "followers" RT (repeat tweeting/relay tweeting) her every post, which means, of course, that a trending topic has been created. I don't really care about that - way to use the internet and people efficiently! - but I do have a problem with the fact that a woman who claims she was abused would repeatedly lie to the very people who tell her - in no uncertain terms - that they love her, respect her, support her. She should go into politics if that's her game!

Seriously, this is one of those moments in life where you have to wonder just how shallow our country is, when we've placed this tiny, insignificant person so high up on a pedestal for drinking, being promiscuous, and wearing minimal clothing that we'd look the other way while she ruins the reputation and potentially the career and life of an innocent man all because she couldn't hold her liquor and didn't want to admit it.

And yes, I'm saying that's what I think happened. I don't have the facts - no one has to tell me the obvious here, Captain - but when the "facts" as they have been given to both the public and the government officials who oversee the prosecuting of alleged criminals show no corroboration for her, and everything for him, and her lies keep piling up one on top of the other, there's little else anyone can deduce from this travesty.

I hope she gets some help, I do. And I hope she apologizes for what she's done. Her actions will bear repercussions for many generations to come that will affect far more than the two parties involved. She might not realize that now - nor care - but many men and women do, and they're the ones who have to live with the consequences of her actions, while she tweets...

I haven't written a blog in months and for that I apologize. It's been a hectic time and I'm just tired...

But enough of the pity party. This is a list of things that have come to my attention that makes me question what exactly is depleting our common sense supply. Where has it gone? Has it developed cancer, like compassion has? Did it commit suicide like reason did? Or has it been kidnapped, like logic was? Whatever the case, please bear with me in this slightly organized, somewhat chaotic rant that may or may not piss you off, but it's doing wonders for me right now.

• Why do people who are against Health Care Reform(HCR) say "Well, my health plan is just fine." as though they expect it to be exactly the same with everyone? Don't they see that that's the problem, that it's not the same?



• why do people who are against HCR say "maybe you should have taken better care of yourself" or "maybe you shouldn't have gotten sick" when they hear stories of individuals whose insurance companies dropped them from their rolls because they were diagnosed with an illness? I'm sure Dana Reeves was doing everything in her power to NOT develop lung cancer, and yet she was diagnosed with it and died a year later from it. Her, a non-smoker, a healthy eater, a woman who was very conscientious about bacteria and the overall health of herself considering that her husband was a quadriplegic and she was the mother of a young son died cancer. Saying that she "should have taken better care of herself" is not only insensitive lacking in compassion, it's also ignorant.



• Why do people who are against HRC think that everything will be solved if people "just got better jobs"? Let's face it, society is built on a tier system, and some people will do far more menial jobs than others, and as a society, we expected that someone will do these things, like pick up our trash, serve us our food, fix our hotel bed and change our sheets, pick our fruits and vegetables, and slaughter our meat. There's nothing demeaning about those positions, and every single one of the people who do those jobs works very hard for little pay and obviously far less gratitude and respect than those who work white collar, professional and skilled careers, so why is it that they don't deserve good, affordable health care too, without having to somehow climb to the standards that someone else looking from above them socially has set?



• Why is it that those whom oppose HRC are screaming and shouting at town hall meetings, posting up pictures of Obama dressed as Hitler, calling him a Nazi, saying that he's going to kill Down Syndrome babies and grandmothers, and then claim that he's being uncivilized and rude and taking away their freedoms? Hasn't he been calm and rational throughout this entire debacle, despite the insults, the threats, the rude and childish acts perpetrated upon him by those who are the first to shout "socialism" and the last to explain it? Whether you agree with his policies or not, doesn't an accusation of lack of civility first require that one was civil to them first?



• Why is the media writing about the anti-choice activist who was killed in Michigan as though he was the only one who mattered in those killings? Why does the media do that? Two men were killed today, both shot by the same man, and the only one who's getting any focus is the one whose views happened to be "pro-life". Is the other victim's life simply not as important because he wasn't as vocal about his beliefs? I don't care what your opinion on abortion is - no one deserves to be killed for it - so why is it that the media seems to think that one is more notable simply because he happened to be anti-choice? I'm sure the opposite would ring just as true, and it would still be unacceptable. Two lives were snuffed out and both were important to those who loved them.



• Why are the politicians most rabid about protecting the "Sanctity of Marriage" the ones who can't seem to keep their penises in their pants? They espouse biblical teachings as their reasoning, and yet, were the government to mete out the biblical punishments for violating said teachings, they'd cry foul! Why are they so intent on foisting these laws upon others that they themselves are unable to respect via their own actions?



• Why is Sarah Palin still relevant?



• Why are people complaining about companies pulling sponsorship from Glenn Beck's television show? He's the very one who screamed about free markets; shouldn't he be the prime example of how free markets work? Wouldn't he be glad to be an example of the very policy he supports? I'm not bashing a free market system here, merely wondering why what's good for the goose is not good for the gander.



• Why did so many parents not want their children to listen to the President speak about the importance of staying in school and focusing on their education? The cries of "indoctrination" were just ridiculously parroted by parents who knew nothing other than what talking heads on the radio and televisions were telling them they should be afraid of. Yes, because the worst thing we can do for our children is to encourage them to succeed in life. Of course, that begs the question if it's not a good thing to encourage our children to succeed, then why complain when others endorse mediocrity? Perhaps it's because of whom the message was coming from, and not the message itself, but even that seems a bit trite, don't you think? The argument that probably takes the cake when used to explain away the "opting out" of many schools was that the speech was using "tax payer money" to promote Obama's "socialistic ideology". If telling children to do well in school is socialistic, sign me up for my first meeting of the Obama Socialist Party because I've been doing that from day one, as have my kids' teachers, police officers, fire fighters, representatives, etc..., the latter five of which are all paid with tax dollars.



• Why do people say that Obama hasn't fixed the country's problems yet so he's a failure yet, in the very same breath say that there's no way Bush could have prevented 9/11 from happening because he had only been in office less than a year? Can they not see just how absurd that is? A man is expected to pull this country out of a recession, faltering economy, two wars, crashing real estate market, jobless tailspin, and foreign policy nightmare in less than an eight month span, but Bush couldn't possibly have been able to appropriate additional funding for the FBI and CIA as had been requisitioned months prior? Someone please explain to me the logic in that. You know what, never mind - I know where that'll lead me, which brings me to my next confounding question:



• Why do people use circular reasoning to try and get out of having to actually explain things using facts? Shouting "it's a lie, it's a lie" over and over again doesn't make it any more or less true. This is the apparent tactic that some people have taken when arguing that Obama is a "muslin commie terrorist" who's also a Nazi. "WHY is he all of those things?" gets asked, and the explanation received is "because he is" which would be received with either the question as to why being asked again, or this:
  
  I'm pretty sure you see where this is going.



• What is so wrong with admitting that America as a country could be better? Why do those who not only claim, but also insist that America is a "Christian Nation" cannot find a little bit of humility like Jesus told us we should have? We're not perfect - no one in this world is perfect - so there can be no perfect country. We exist on a body of laws based on a document that many in the legal and political community believe to be a "living" one, so why, if it can evolve and improve, can we not admit that its improvement also means that we improve? Is it that difficult to say that we were wrong? We encourage our children to take responsibility for their actions, but when it comes to our government, we refuse to acknowledge even the most minutiae of flaws - unless, of course, it's in regard to the opposing party, then it's aaaaaaaaall G - and that only sabotages our future because this is the message we're sending to our children. Either we teach them the values through our own actions or we continue on with this "Do as I say, not as I do" attitude that's obviously done wonders for politics in general, right?



• Why can't they make Throwback Pepsi cost the same amount as regular Pepsi?



• Why are not utilizing solar and wind technology like Europe is to help lower our fossil fuel dependency? Hawai'i is surrounded by the Pacific, have the world's most active volcano, and yet we'll never be self-sufficient when it comes to energy because NIMBYs keep complaining. We said goodbye to the SuperFerry, costing 300 people their jobs because of NIMBYs. We're even more dependent upon the mainland for fuel because wind turbines and solar farms are "eyesores", yet walking around in orange leathery skin while wearing a pareo (or less) and shouting at people and calling them environmental terrorists is somehow "attractive"? Really? Protect the environment, huh? With that "Move over, bitch, my Hummer's taking both stalls at the nail salon so I can get my nails did, and don't look at me like that just because I threw my cigarette butt on the ground" attitude while having the audacity to have a "Malama da 'Aina" sticker on your bumper? REALLY?



• Why do parents dress their children up like miniature versions of themselves? I'm not talking about cute little matching family outfits - I live in the land of family portraits where all three hundred children wear the same freaking Palaka fabric - but the moms whose daughters wear the short skirts, the midriff bearing tops, and the makeup, or the fathers whose sons sport diamond earrings, atrocious dye jobs, and clothing with not only suggestive words and images on them, but downright inappropriate for them to view in the theater alone, much less on their bodies. Prostitots and mini-pimps aren't cute. There is nothing redeeming about them and instilling in them a sense of vain materialism and shallow sense of self does nothing to boost their self-esteem. Instead, it makes them dependent upon it, and there will come a time when they won't have it, and what will they have to fall back on? You?

I know this was long. I know this droned on, but after all this time did you expect something short and sweet? I'm neither short, and I haven't been called sweet in a long time, so putting those two words in conjunction with a description of me is SO not happening! But, I do thank you if you've stuck around this long. If you just skipped to the bottom, I've got only one thing to say to you.