The Best of ABCM: Day 2

Today's Best of ABCM is a post from December 2010. The holidays always make me sappy...

Bottoms Up!

In the spirit of celebration, I have decided to piss off as many people as possible today. Those of you who usually find me lovable or at least entertaining might want to tighten your big girl/boy drawers. It's about to get bumpy in this bitch.

I was on my way inside my favorite grocery store, Aldi, yesterday when I noticed a protest going on just a few yards away. About 15 people with signs that read, "Church and liquor don't mix" and "God doesn't approve" were shouting at anyone within earshot about the travesty that was unfolding before our eyes. A liquor store was opening right next door to their church and they were not happy about it. And worse, God wasn't happy about it.

Let me briefly interject that I find it hilariously ironic that someone decided to build a liquor store right beside a church, but that's just me.

Anyway, a young man approached me as I struggled to shut the trunk of my van while maintaining a death grip on my reusable bags so they wouldn't fly away in the 40 mph winds. He politely asked if I would sign their petition to prevent the liquor store from opening next to their awesome, wonderful, sent-straight-from- heaven church. I told him I didn't really care whether there was a liquor store next to his church because hey, it ain't my fricking church, but that I would sign the petition if that would make him happy enough to skip his little ass out of my face.

"I don't understand, Ma'am." He was so well-mannered. His mama would have been proud.

I explained to him that it's all a matter of perspective. What if, instead of seeing this situation as a curse, they looked at it as a blessing. If there is a liquor store next door to your church, doesn't that give you countless opportunities to "save" the "sinners" who might have a "drinking problem"?

He said, "Ma'am, I can see how you would think that, but there are many members of our church, including myself, who are recovering from alcoholism and it's not a good idea to have a liquor store there while we're trying to worship."

At this point, I'm about two seconds away from cursing him out because he's called me "ma'am" twice already. Asshole. He starts to rattle off a list of the long line of alcoholics in his ancestry and I told him to save the drama for his mama. My father was both an alcoholic and a drug addict, my mother still is a drug addict, I have at least six other family members with addictions of some kind and my husband is just a shot away from being an alcoholic himself. I, myself have at least three shots to go before I get there, so I'm good. The point is I'm familiar with addiction, so you don't need to sell me on it, Little Preacher Boy.

Here's my question: at what point do we make addicts responsible for their own sobriety? For that matter, when do we make people, in general, responsible for their own lives? I understand that it is a daily struggle for addicts to maintain their sobriety. I applaud anyone who battles with this disease and manages to come out on top most of the time. Temptation is everywhere. How will a recovering addict learn to deal with temptation in a healthy, productive way if we shield them from it? How can they know the victory of overcoming an obstacle, if we hide the obstacles from them?

If you're an alcoholic and you work at a dentist's office in a shopping center that just so happens to be three doors down from a bar, are you going to quit your job? Petition that they uproot their entire business so that you won't have to walk past it everyday? Or will you walk right past it and, when you feel tempted, keep on going until you find an AA meeting? Isn't that what's supposed to happen? When you find yourself in a situation that you feel you can't handle without the assistance of alcohol, you need to seek the assistance of those who are there to support you because they all have been where you are and will not judge you. Right? If that's not how it works, you definitely won't find my ass parked at an AA meeting when I finally fall off the edge of this cliff. Fuck that. 

If you walk down the street in any poor neighborhood in America, you will find a church on the corner. If you keep walking in the same direction, you will find a liquor store one block down. Keep walking and you'll find that the pattern repeats itself: church, liquor store, church, liquor store. This is where poor people find solace. If it can't be found in church, we'll just walk down a block and find it at the bottom of a bottle.

I wonder if the protesters would have been as up-in-arms if the store were opening a block away. Is proximity the issue? Is God okay with liquor stores being erected a whole city block away from the church, just not right next door? And wouldn't the recovering alcoholics still have to walk past the liquor to get to the Lord? Or vice versa?

What's your take?

To those who will un-follow me now, I say, "Hey, it's been real." I'll see you at the next meeting. To those of you who will stick around, I say, "Thanks for having my back whether you agree with me or not." And feel free to cuss my ass out if you think I'm being offensive. You know I'd extend the same courtesy to you. That's how love works: I piss you off, you put your foot up my ass, we have a good laugh or cry, and then start that shit all over again.


Oh, well...bottoms up!


****Update: I just remembered that I'm supposed to include a comment or two from the original post. Sorry about that. Here you go!

Sullie said...

I wonder if that church has a problem with Jesus turning water into wine...

Anyway, you know good in well that the liquor store is supposed to be a block away--so that everyone can pretend NOT to see fellow church goers patronizing the establishment...

holly said...

Isn't the whole point of church to come repent after getting too drunk and _____? I'm confused as to what these people were all up in arms about. Apparently alcohol is the root of all sin: not the pedophile deacons or judgmental snobs or anything...God forbid we blame our sin on ourselves - there's always something else you can blame.

But hey, that's a whole soap box of mine I don't need to get into on your comments. Glad you took away the warning before entering your site - it made me feel naughty.

Thanks, ladies!

It Won't Kill You to be Normal

My ass hurts.

Ouch.

I'm sure all you perverts are coming up with countless scenarios as to why that is. Could I have given hubby an extra special valentine's day present?  Hell no. Exit only, please.

Could I have been taking horseback riding lessons? Yes, but not recently.

My ass hurts because people, in general, are a pain in my ass. Not just my kids and people I know, either. People from all over the world, all walks of life, people of all races and genders and religions and body mass indices get on my fucking nerves.

I know you're asking yourself, because you'd better not dare ask me, is it all those people or is it Mrs. Hyde? It stands to reason that if you have a problem between an entire group of people and one lone person, that the problem would lie with the [delusional] individual. It seems highly unlikely that the issue would be hundreds upon hundreds of other people instead of just the one little old me.

Trust me, it's them.

I even have a special name for them. I call them...dumbasses. Speaking of dumbasses, The Dumbass of the Week for the week ending 2/12 was Gangster Church. Google New Rising Missionary Baptist Church and tell them of the high honor they have achieved for themselves over at ABCM.

The dumbass about whom I'd like to bitch today is Maureen.

Maureen is a woman I saw on the TV show My Strange Addiction. Maureen is a fifty-something (don't quote me) woman who is addicted to makeup. More specifically, she is addicted to green eyeliner. Maureen, my friends, is a dumbass.

As I attempted to catch up on  my Tivo'd episodes of this show on TLC, I watched her talk about how severe her addiction to makeup really is. She spends four hours putting on makeup everyday. The only time her face goes unpainted is when she showers in the morning, which means that she sleeps in full fucking makeup. She visited a tattoo artist to see about having green eyeliner permanently tattooed to her eyelids. Green. Eyeliner. I shit you not. Even I can't make this stuff up. The tattoo artist was confused as to why a sane person would want permanent green eyeliner. She said to Maureen, "Bitch, if you wear a blue top one day, you're going to look real fucking stupid with permanent green eyeliner around your tired ass eyes." I'm paraphrasing, of course. Maureen replied, "I wear green eyeliner everyday no matter what color I have on." The tattoo artist was speechless. I wasn't. But then, she couldn't hear me screaming at her through the TV.

Apparently, somebody forgot to tell this bitch that she is FIFTY. Oh, and that she looks like the Poltergeist clown.


I realize that I am eating this voyeuristic crap up like a lard ass at a buffet...or...me...at a buffet, but since when does every dumbass thing that dumbass people like to hitch their dumbass brains to qualify as an addiction?

That bitch is not addicted to makeup.

That bitch is fucking crazy.

She got it in her head that if she never takes that ugly makeup off, she can, somehow, hold on to the way she looked in 1969 when that shit was in style. Question: was it ever in style? And if so, why? Her skin looks so leathery that if she opens her mouth in public, someone might mistake her head for an overnight bag. I'd shut the hell up if I were her.

If she wants to know about addiction, I'll tell her about the time my mother left an eight-year-old me and my four younger siblings at home alone for three days while she satisfied her heroine jones. That's addiction. Or the time the doctor told my father that if he didn't stop drinking, the corrosion of his liver and pancreas was going to kill him, yet my dad kept drinking. That's addiction. Makeup is not a fucking addiction. An obsession, maybe. Making your face look like a handbag, for sure. But an addiction? Fuck no.

Wash your face, get over the idea that the Six Million Dollar Man is going to leave the Bionic Woman for you,  and give your poor skin a rest, lady.

The sad part is, aside from all the damage she's done to her skin, she's actually pretty without all that goop. She looks about ten years younger than she does with it on. She looks normal.

Why the fuck does the whole world hate normal?

Bottoms Up!

Today is my six month bloggerversary! That's right, six months ago today I thought to myself, "What trick can I employ to get myself to write on a semi-regular basis? I could put it at the top of my to-do list. Nah, that hasn't worked so far. I could beg the writing gods to have mercy on my undisciplined soul. Maybe if I had a clue as to who the writing gods might be. I could start a blog. Everyone else and his great nana is doing it. Why the hell not?" So I created The Well-Fed Spirit because I wanted to reach out to women and give a voice to those who might feel they don't have one. Two weeks later, I started my regular, tortuous bout of PMDD and A Bitch Called Mom was born.

In the spirit of celebration, I have decided to piss off as many people as possible today. Those of you who usually find me lovable or at least entertaining might want to tighten your big girl/boy drawers. It's about to get bumpy in this bitch.

I was on my way inside my favorite grocery store, Aldi, yesterday when I noticed a protest going on just a few yards away. About 15 people with signs that read, "Church and liquor don't mix" and "God doesn't approve" were shouting at anyone within earshot about the travesty that was unfolding before our eyes. A liquor store was opening right next door to their church and they were not happy about it. And worse, God wasn't happy about it.

Let me briefly interject that I find it hilariously ironic that someone decided to build a liquor store right beside a church, but that's just me.

Anyway, a young man approached me as I struggled to shut the trunk of my van while maintaining a death grip on my reusable bags so they wouldn't fly away in the 40 mph winds. He politely asked if I would sign their petition to prevent the liquor store from opening next to their awesome, wonderful, sent-straight-from- heaven church. I told him I didn't really care whether there was a liquor store next to his church because hey, it ain't my fricking church, but that I would sign the petition if that would make him happy enough to skip his little ass out of my face.

"I don't understand, Ma'am." He was so well-mannered. His mama would have been proud.

I explained to him that it's all a matter of perspective. What if, instead of seeing this situation as a curse, they looked at it as a blessing. If there is a liquor store next door to your church, doesn't that give you countless opportunities to "save" the "sinners" who might have a "drinking problem"?

He said, "Ma'am, I can see how you would think that, but there are many members of our church, including myself, who are recovering from alcoholism and it's not a good idea to have a liquor store there while we're trying to worship."

At this point, I'm about two seconds away from cursing him out because he's called me "ma'am" twice already. Asshole. He starts to rattle off a list of the long line of alcoholics in his ancestry and I told him to save the drama for his mama. My father was both an alcoholic and a drug addict, my mother still is a drug addict, I have at least six other family members with addictions of some kind and my husband is just a shot away from being an alcoholic himself. I, myself have at least three shots to go before I get there, so I'm good. The point is I'm familiar with addiction, so you don't need to sell me on it, Little Preacher Boy.

Here's my question: at what point do we make addicts responsible for their own sobriety? For that matter, when do we make people, in general, responsible for their own lives? I understand that it is a daily struggle for addicts to maintain their sobriety. I applaud anyone who battles with this disease and manages to come out on top most of the time. Temptation is everywhere. How will a recovering addict learn to deal with temptation in a healthy, productive way if we shield them from it? How can they know the victory of overcoming an obstacle, if we hide the obstacles from them?

If you're an alcoholic and you work at a dentist's office in a shopping center that just so happens to be three doors down from a bar, are you going to quit your job? Petition that they uproot their entire business so that you won't have to walk past it everyday? Or will you walk right past it and, when you feel tempted, keep on going until you find an AA meeting? Isn't that what's supposed to happen? When you find yourself in a situation that you feel you can't handle without the assistance of alcohol, you need to seek the assistance of those who are there to support you because they all have been where you are and will not judge you. Right? If that's not how it works, you definitely won't find my ass parked at an AA meeting when I finally fall off the edge of this cliff. Fuck that.

If you walk down the street in any poor neighborhood in America, you will find a church on the corner. If you keep walking in the same direction, you will find a liquor store one block down. Keep walking and you'll find that the pattern repeats itself: church, liquor store, church, liquor store. This is where poor people find solace. If it can't be found in church, we'll just walk down a block and find it at the bottom of a bottle.

I wonder if the protesters would have been as up-in-arms if the store were opening a block away. Is proximity the issue? Is God okay with liquor stores being erected a whole city block away from the church, just not right next door? And wouldn't the recovering alcoholics still have to walk past the liquor to get to the Lord? Or vice versa?

What's your take?

To those who will un-follow me now, I say, "Hey, it's been real." I'll see you at the next meeting. To those of you who will stick around, I say, "Thanks for having my back whether you agree with me or not." And feel free to cuss my ass out if you think I'm being offensive. You know I'd extend the same courtesy to you. That's how love works: I piss you off, you put your foot up my ass, we have a good laugh or cry, and then start that shit all over again.

Happy bloggerversary to me and to The Empress of The Ranter's Box fame, who celebrated hers just a few days ago (November 31st!). You know what they say about great minds. She's my sister from another mister, so if you haven't had the pleasure of reading her blog, get your ass over there now!

I just thought of something...she started her blog roughly a week before I started mine. She has almost 200 followers and I have 25. Hmmm. Guess that means I don't know what the fuck I'm doing out here in this crazy blog world.

Oh, well...bottoms up!