The whole Anna Benson thing annoys me.

Anna Benson's a chick who's married to a current New York Met. The New York media ate her up because she's outgoing, camera-friendly, and for lack of better terms, a media whore.

She also apparently likes sex. The quote that the papers loved to run stated that if Anna were to catch her husband having an affair, she would take her revenge by sleeping with the rest of his team.

Hyperbole can be fun. Anna Benson doesn't want to set up "Mets Gangbang 10" - she wants to make a point, that if my husband were to betray our trust, I'd make it come back to haunt him tenfold (or twenty-fourfold, depending on how you look at it).

Yet Benson, who also likes to show off her body (annabenson.net for modeling/swimsuit-type pics) and talk about how and where her and her husband have sex, gets called a "slut" and a "whore". Even on message boards I hold in pretty high regard, she's trashed because, I guess, because of the comments she made and her openness about her sexuality.

Mind you, there's nothing that implies that she sleeps around - in fact, she seems to talk about her marriage more than anything. But in society, a woman who talks about sex, and especially one who implies that she might like sex is obviously a whore who has had hundreds of partners.

Society's funny. Back in the 50's, no one could admit that they liked sex. Religion did a pretty good job of controlling that. Then came Playboy. Suddenly, men realized that they could admit that girls are pretty, and that they wanted to see them naked. They could talk about their fantasies with these women who they would meet and have their way with.

Who these women were, we're not sure. Women, unlike men, couldn't like sex. There was no Playboy for women. A woman in the 50s and early 60s who talked about how attractive a man was in a sexual tone was cause for concern or shock. Women just didn't do such things - it wasn't proper.

Why is that? Men fell in love with a "virgin" quality to the female form. They wanted "fresh" women, whom they could be the first sexual partner and be the only man in their life. Women ould have nothing to compare their only sexual partner with - this must be as good as it gets.

The late 60s began to change this view, at least from the female perspective. Women didn't always buy into the whole "I should be virginal because my future husband would want me to be" act - at least some didn't. Others did.

I've got no issues with women (or men, for that matter) who want to remain virgins, but to do it for the reason that they feel that's want their future husband might want is a little silly. I would think that there's more stress on a relationship where one or both members haven't had any sexual experience outside of their current partner - the temptation would always be there.

Anna Benson speaks her mind, and suddenly she's a whore. Very nice. Gotta love society.

When you find out someone has passed away, it's sad news. When it's a friend of yours, it hits you - regardless of how close you were with that person.

People get dealt shit hands all the time. You have no money, your body doesn't work properly, you don't look or talk or dance or run the way that you would have preferred, or is considered the "norm". There are thousands of things that could happen to you that are out of your control that could make you say "why me?"

Of course, there are ways to get around these things. You can accept it and take the hand that's dealt to you, you can refuse it and go out and make yourself better, or you can kind of fall in between the two. None of those necessarily mean a bad life - the whole sappy "if you're happy, then that's all you can ask for" philosophy has a good deal of truth to it, while is why I believe the whole "money doesn't buy happiness" thing to the underlying meaning of it. Money can realisticly buy happiness - I think if I were to win the lottery, I would be happy and remain so for a long time - but that's not to say that rich people automaticly become happy, for one reason or another.

This girl (I'll just refer to her as "J" for reference) wasn't initially dealt a bad hand. It was a hand that was good for a game J didn't want to play. A perfect example of the money/happiness thing, J's family had money, but it couldn't get J happiness, and if you ever met J and knew her situation, you'd understand why.

J didn't sit back and say "woe is me" - she tried to make her life better. She tried several things, to the point of desperation at times, only to have them come back and bite her in the ass. You use the phrase "they mean well" for fuckups who don't strive to fuck up. J wasn't a fuckup, but she always meant well - and got little in return.

When someone dies, the first thought is how you'll never see that person again. Then you realize that's selfish - mourning for the loss of someone shouldn't be because of your loss, but the loss of that person to everyone. Then, when the sadness hits of everything, you put it into perspective. If I could rewind time and completely erase that person from my knowledge - never having come in contact with that person - would I have been worse off or better off? Almost every single time, you realize that you're better off having known that person, and regardless of the time and circumstances, you appreciate the time you were able to spend with that person instead of mourning the fact that that time is over.

I hope you're in a better place, J. Save a spot at the sushi bar up there for us - and I'll eat another ball of wusabi just for the hell of it.

You scored as Loner. Loner 56% Prep/Jock/Cheerleader 56% Geek 50% Drama nerd 44% Punk/Rebel 25% Ghetto gangsta 19% Goth 13% Stoner 6% What's Your High School Stereotype? created with QuizFarm.com

There's an odd correctness to that, but I'll discuss that later. Thanks to Dainja for that one.

Ah, sickness. I thought I had gotten over my cold (surprisingly quickly) but it's managed to kick my ass yet again. I'm in bed now, which is pretty sad for 10 PM for me. Tara's talking to me about plans for Cole's birthday - only 4 months away.

One of the things that was pointed out was a pinata. Now, I'll all for violence and candy, but they always seem to craft these things out of the popular character of the show - in Sesame Street's case, it's Elmo - I also remember this coming up with my nephew during his Teletubbie phase.

My point is this - You're going to beat the living shit out of this thing. Beat it until it breaks into pieces. My son loves Elmo - how do you think he'd feel watching other kids take a stick or bat to him until he exploded? I don't get it - make it into a negative character, like Oscar or something like that. Hell, beat up a Maria pinata for not fixing whatever you droppedff at the Fix-It Shop on time.

Christ, I hate speakerphone.

Nothing says "I'm much too important and busy to speak to you" than using speakerphone. It's one thing if you're someone who's running around trying to get stuff done, like a mother with a toddler or a chef in a kitchen. It's another if you're sitting behind a desk. Either you want to give the impression you're a very busy and important person, or you want to show off in front of coworkers that you can boss people around and how quickly they jump to your actions.

I don't think I've used speakerphone once since I started working here some 18 months ago. However, I've gotten more than three speakerphone calls already today.

Thank you, Buy-Ron, for inspiring me to write again.

The "diet" (and it will be referred to as that, even though it's just really a "change in eating habits" right now) begins tomorrow (or today, technically, as I post this in the AM). I don't mind. I'm not the kind of person anymore who needs several double cheeseburgers to feel full - and if Tara's making the food (which she says she will), then we're aces. The easiest people to diet are those who can cook. Those who rely on prepared foods and others to cook for them often make bad decisions because they're less in control with what actually goes into their bodies.

I'm lucky in that the last time we tried to pull this off, we had the weekly Chinese buffet thing on Fridays. This isn't so much of an issue now because I generally don't eat anything at the buffet except the sushi, because the sushi there is actually fresh (or fresh-like) and the sushi chef loves me and Tara (mainly because we drop the guy a Lincoln first trip up there - which upon notice Friday he uses kind of stuck up against his fishbowl for tips, as a "hint" to other customers).

Seriously, the sushi at that place makes the trip worthwhile. They used to have a small sushi area there before, which didn't have a chef, but just generalized Wal-Mart style "sushi", which consisted mainly of three rolls: a veggie roll, which tasted like nothing; a "California roll", which had no avocado and little crabmeat, but mostly consisted of a large piece of yellow gourd/radish; and something that oculd be best described as an attempt at what lots of places call a "Boston roll", which consisted of a chunk of cream cheese and a minimal amount of salmon-type thing. It was a nice try, but not worth the effort most of the time, but I generally grabbed a few (usually the fake California) so that I didn't look too odd just eating wusabi.

Now, it's sushi. Eel, tuna, salmon, whitefish, shrimp, roe - all the good stuff. Me and Tara eat it all, and it's all very good. We easily mearn our money's worth there - including the tip. The guy, as mentioned before, digs us - last Friday he was making dragon rolls special for Tara and the Friday previous, he made us a special roll with tuna and scallions and all kinds of various crap. I want to eventually learn the guy's name, just because it's cool to be friendly to people and he actually seems like a nice guy.

Great - now I crave sushi. Maybe we'll go there for lunch tomorrow, since we have to go to Riverhead to go to the bank.

Anyway, my connection here in the closet sucks ass. I need to figure out something for the wireless in this thing. I'll post this now while I still can.

Yeah, the holiday season tends to put a wrench into the blogging schedule. I haven't seen my actual computer in several days, between the overnight trip we ended up taking to my in-laws to the closet that I call an office being turned back into a closet on Christmas day when company came over to Christmas Eve being spent with the in-laws once again. If you were looking for me over this holiday weekend, good luck.

Yeah, believe it or not, I started this post back on the 28th of December, and I'm still writing it. That gives you an idea. I got a laptop for Christmas, which is good, especially since my beforementioned closet is still working as a closet.

Yesterday was my wife's birthday. I took her out to dinner, and she gave me a cold. Seems fair. Part of me is saying that if I stay in this condition by 1PM, I'm leaving for the day. Part of me says suck it up, though.

More later. Just wanted to get this out of the queue.