Or we can just tweet about punching people in the ...

I wrote the other day about how my son Nate has taken to booing things that cause him displeasure. While I do not relish being the target of said booing on a routine basis (which means I must be doing something right as a parent, yes?), I appreciate the concept. I think we should bring back the idea. Perhaps it's time to begin a campaign of civil booing. Let's express our displeasure with the time-tested sound of unhappiness, disapproval and disdain.

We're going to need a list, People of the Internets. Will you help?

For example, I believe that Rupert Murdoch deserves a huge, long, rowdy booing. Rather like the boos you hear coming from the House of Commons during one of their more raucous sessions.

Murdoch deserves the booing for what he's done to our political system, our media and our national discourse. He's the guy sporting the engineer's cap on the Crazy Train. If you don't think a big part of the reason this nation, nay this world, is in the mess it's in, comes courtesy of the Right Wing media monopoly in so many places without a strong opposition message, then you need to come visit me.

In a place like this, perfectly normal people would argue that the grass is blue and the sky is green if Fox News and the red-faced rich guys who spray spit all over their radio studio microphones, decided to pump out that falsehood for half a week. 24/7 messaging is powerful stuff, Girlfrand.

So yes, Murdoch, you get booed. I don't care if you're old. I don't even care if you're down. Imma gonna boo you.

Booing cuts both ways. I'd like to boo my son Nate. He said he'd bring me the Netflix Forrest Gump movie so we could mail it back and where is that damn DVD? Not in the red envelope. I'm a busy woman. I need people to hold up their end of the deal.

My list of boo targets is enormous, but I don't want to appear greedy. It's Friday according to fourteen million unimaginative people on Facebook so let's loose. Time for cleansing vent so we can get on with the weekend fun.

Mind you, this exercise is pure venting. It's not going to change a thing. When it comes to change, I'm offering up radical ideas on my other blog. Here, at That's Why, I'm all about the vent today. So have at it.

Who would you boo? The target can be micro and/or macro. Think big. Think that guy at the office who chews with his mouth open. Don't limit yourself. Who would you boo?

Giddyup!

It's tradition that I blog about my annual visit to the doctor to get checked under the hood, as MathMan likes to say.  I do this to show solidarity with my fellow females who also should be going for this slightly messy, slightly embarrassing and very important annual check up.  I also like to remind the males here that the whole turn your head and cough thing?  Cakewalk.

And we all have rectums so there's nothing to argue about there.

I'm a bit chagrined to tell you that I'm two months late with this annual visit and I still have it to look forward to on Monday.  Until then, I will just have to revel in the sweet anticipation of getting felt up, mashed, starved, finger-banged and sucked of my blood. That sounds like a fetish menu, doesn't it?

Here's some good news along the lines of credit where credit is due - I am now IUD free.  Once the insurance was sorted, the doc's office made an appointment right away et voila!  Today's visit wasn't with cute-boy doctor J with whom I normally visit.  This procedure was handled by the more seasoned Dr. Dubya.  Yeah.  I am convinced that there is not a single liberal doctor in this town so I'm stuck.  This is the practice where I once got into it with the front desk staff because she refused my request to turn down the volume or turn off the TV blaring Fox News.  I was the only patient in the waiting room at the time.

I'm certain that the choice of channels isn't so much to entertain or inform that patients.  It's a political statement.  But what's a chick to do?  Drive an hour plus to Atlanta to show her vagina to strangers?  Not unless I'm getting free drinks and big tips, my friends.

Even so, I try to be pleasant.  Our conversations go something like this:

Him staring into the abyss:  "So I see your uterus has dropped a little more."
Me:  "Really?  Wonderful.  I still can't afford the copay for surgery to have things removed and rejuvenated."
Him:  "Well, just try not to sneeze or cough too much.  Or laugh.  I guess I won't tell you anymore Obama jokes."
Me:  "Well there's the silver lining.  Tell me, though, if something does happen, will it look like a bowling ball falling out of me or what?"
Him:  "More like a tennis ball.  Smaller than that even."
Me:  "Fine.  I assume you'd like me to just tuck it back in and call for an appointment."
Him:   "Only after you've washed your hands."
Me:  "Well, of course, I'm not going to go stuffing my uterus back into my vagina with a pair of dirty paws."
Him:  "I meant you can wait until after you've washed your hands to call for an appointment."
Me:  "Why don't you go back to the Obama jokes."
Him:   "By the way, I like what you've done with the landscaping."
Me:  "Oh, I thought you'd like that."
Him:  "Yes, the landing strip is so 1998."
Me:  "Agreed.  And a nuisance to maintain."
Him:  "So how did you get it to look like that?"
Me:  "The Fox News logo?  There's a template for it on their website."
Him:  "You're kidding!"
Me:  "Yes, I'm kidding."

Filterless

Well crap. As if this week couldn't be more, um, interesting (and by interesting I mean fucked up and interesting), now I have to break up with cute Dr. Jason.

Oh, my friends of the internets, it seems I have lost my filter. You know that thing that goes between my squirrel-powered-with-Mountain Dew-and-crack brain and my mouth? It's missing. I have been a raging, not so adorable, filterless knucklehead. A verbal bull in a china shop. My loose cannon has gone off. My mouse has ROARED.

And I blame Fox News. What? Yes. Well, that and my birthday.

See, the trouble started on Saturday when we took Sophia to have her face looked at. It's a pretty face, to be sure, but she appeared to have developed cat's whiskers. Now Halloween is coming up and it's a cute look and all, but since she's decided that she wants to be a colonial peasant zombie princess or something for Halloween, whiskers are a bit over the top.

Thank goodness for Nate, the King of Poison Ivy. He took one look at her face and made the diagnosis for us so we dragged Sophia to the family practice on Saturday for a walk-in appointment to confirm Nate's diagnosis.

Because MathMan can't stand the embarrassment of watching me hump cute Dr. Jason's leg on a Saturday morning (he knew I was getting ready for it when he saw me shaving my legs in the shower, but the ankle bracelet I put on right before we left the house was the dead giveaway), he volunteered to take Sophia back to see the Good Doctor who just happened to be on call.

That meant Nate and I were left to our own devices in the Dreaded Waiting Room. I slumped down in my chair next to Nate. Foiled again. Damn that MathMan and his puritanical notions!

Nate and I sat alone in the cavernous, darkened waiting room. A receptionist with a quick smile, and nervous eyes, sat behind the glass and glanced at us occasionally. Thinking about it now, she must have been able to see into the next few minutes and didn't like what she saw.

From two televisions bolted to the wall, grown ups screamed at each other on Fox News.

I tried to distract myself with my book. Nate talked to me. We fidgeted and squirmed with our backs to the television, but we couldn't tune out the inane harping and hating coming from the Boob Tube.

I stood and sauntered casually over to the receptionist and smiled at her through the glass. "Any chance you can turn that down or off or change the channel?"

She simply smiled and shook her head. "Nope. The doctors won't let us."

I blinked at her. Once, twice, three times. My smile started to fade. "You're kidding, right?"

She shook her head again and pushed back a little from her desk to give herself some space from the Crazy Lady. The racket from the yahoos on the telly increased. "Seriously? You can't turn it down? You can't turn it off? It's just me and my son. It's deafening, not to mention annoying for a Saturday morning. I'd hate to have to listen to that crap if I were sick!"

The smile froze on her face. My filter - that thing between the brain and the mouth - disintegrated. I demanded to know to whom I should issue a complaint. This was nonsense. It was clear that the television was not there to educate the patients about their health. Obviously, it was not there to entertain us.

To be perfectly honest with you, of course it was particularly irritating to have to sit and listen to the howling and shrieking from Fox, but any news channel is a turn off in that setting. We are bombarded with news enough, thank you very much. How about some music? Discovery Health? I wouldn't even mind Lifetime, HGTV or The NASA Channel. Staring at the stars while some scientist drones on would be more relaxing, at least.. Jon and Kate and the Screaming Children wouldn't be as bad as having to listen to faux intelligentsia trying to shout each other down. I'd be cool with silence punctuated by the raspy breaths and coughs that are part and parcel to a visit to the doctor's office.

The point is (don't you love when I sledgehammer you with that?) is that the television in that waiting room, tuned to that channel full time and providing no lee-way to adjust it in any way is something I find quite insidious. And you know what - it has no place in a doctors' office. It's nothing more than a political statement.

And to that I say - bullshit. I come for your medical opinion, not your political one. Turn the damn news/opinion channel off or I'll find another doctor to whom to give my money.

It breaks my heart to say it, but I don't care how cute you are. I don't want to stare up at the ceiling while you make me feel oh so good and have my fantasies interrupted with newflashes that we are politically incompatible.

See - it's like I turned forty-four years old and decided that I no longer care what anyone thinks. I've been working so hard for so long to hold it in - you're laughing at me, aren't you? - you're thinking 'lord, woman, that's what you call holding it in?' but it's true. I haven't told someone off but good since the day I called MathMan's grandmother "old woman" right before I unleashed a stream of obscenities and bottled up anger at her. That was what? 1993? I guess I was due.

MathMan suggests I blame PMS. More like DNA, but oh well. As soon as I've written this post, I'll go in and have my filter re-installed. Or not.