Busta’s Blog

After reading this story in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, I feel like a sell-out.

Mother’s Day, like the rest of the commercialized holidays we celebrate, wasn’t meant to be a day for Corporate America to shove fliers and sales and cards and stupid trinkets into the faces of children. It was meant to honor your mother.

Those were simpler times.

The PG story tells the tale of Mother’s Day, which turns 100 today. It began not too far from here in a simple town in a simple state — Grafton, West Virginia.

Anna Jarvis never had children, but she became the mother of Mother’s Day, giving birth to the holiday during a serene church ceremony in her hometown 100 years ago.

At first, her creation was perfect and pure. People honored their mothers the way she envisioned it — with a white carnation, a symbol of maternal purity, a handwritten note or a day off.

But then her holiday started acting like a rebellious teenager, selling out to the flower and card industry, leaving Miss Jarvis bitter and disillusioned. She ended her life in a mental asylum

Mother’s Day, just like Christmas and Father’s Day and Easter, have been come commercialized sell-outs.

My mom has never expected anything more than, “Happy Mother’s Day, mom,” from my brother and I. She hates flowers. She doesn’t want jewelery. She doesn’t even like getting a card.

She knows it’s a waste of money.

All week long, I was around people who made a huge issue of what to get their moms (or moms-in-law) for today. Would it be tickets to a Neal Diamond concert? Or a sweater? Or a weekend getaway?

I got my mom a Kitchen Aid mixer. My original idea was to buy her a plant and some seeds. Money’s tight in the house right now and she doesn’t think she’ll be buying as many flowers as past years. I figured seeds are cheap and they grow.

When I saw the mixer on sale at Amazon (like by almost 50 percent off), I knew I had to get it. She’s been wanting this exact mixer since at least the fall! And she couldn’t afford almost $400 on this thing. And neither could I. So when it was under $200 last Sunday, I knew it had to live in this house.

I can try to rationalize and say that I got it only because it was on sale (which is true), and she did really enjoy it — she cried and kissed me and was so excited. But the fact remains that I gave in to Corporate America’s Mother’s Day.

(Although… I would have purchased that mixer on sale had it not been Mother’s Day since I knew she wanted it and she doesn’t shop online. And it’s a gift that will benefit me, too. )

The PG story says:

Miss Jarvis likely would cringe if she could see Mother’s Day today.

Yes, she would. She’d see people at malls today running around like idiots looking for some dumb thing to take to their mom’s house before dinner.

My mom has always said not to buy anything, but to buy from the heart. Don’t just get something to get it.

And I agree.

So today, if you haven’t gotten your mother anything, don’t. Just call her up or look her in the face and say, “Thank you.”

That sure as hell beats any sweater from Macy’s.

(If you’re keeping score… retail people expect each person to spend $138 on average on their mom. I spent $180. So someone else can knock $40 off their mom’s gift since I’m helping that cause.)

OK, so don’t pity me. (Most of you won’t anyway.)

I have a lot of shit to do today. Really. I have a huge event next weekend that raises something like $30,000+ and I have a lot of stuff to do.

So what am I doing instead? Reading blogs.

But here’s the thing… the blogs I read are from friends or are political in nature (Bitch PhD, Lean Left, Wonkette, etc).

And then there’s the general blogs (A Gay Athlete’s Life; Starbucks Gossip; Brian’s weather blog; eriepressible; Godless Liberal Homo; Insanity’s Oasis [she always has the BEST banners on her blog]; Michael Mahler’s Ditherings); sk0t; Surreal-Georgia; and Books, Toys, and Games.)

And the blog I probably spend more time on than my own is So Anyway… .

OK, so I do read a lot of blogs. But I need to read more. I enjoy reading what others have to say but I feel that a blog is a lot like a soap opera… if you miss a day, you missed a lot!

Share your favorite blog links below!

I have a shit ton of stuff that I need to do today. I woke as “Meet the Press” was starting and laid there watching that. It’s now 11:40 a.m. (MtP ends at 11:30 here) and instead of doing everything I need to do, I’m writing a blog. Ugh.

Anyhow… instead of several posts this morning, I’ll just do them all here with bolded headlines.

Print news much more dignified

I was chatting online with a friend. He showed me a Web site of what he thinks he is the future of television news. It was basically a bunch of boxes with television station logos in them. I guess that when those channels are live with news, the boxes show that. So he said how instant news is the wave of the future.

What really jarred my ass was when he said he doesn’t understand why people still subscribe to a newspaper. You know, because apparently the television station newscasts are so totally awesome that a newspaper is just yesterday’s news. Ha!

People buy a newspaper for news they can’t find on local television station broadcasts. With television being a medium that allows people to get news updates faster than print, it’s still amazing at how many times the television station broadcasts are scooped by newspapers. And it really comes down to the fact that people at television stations don’t generally have a knack for news. They see cameras and lots of technology and get lost in the basic aspects of the job: getting the news right.

Sure, television stations can get a story to people quicker, but does it mean it’s accurate? No. When a story is first reported, people tend to hear whatever news came from that and believe it. I always love when a local station does “breaking news.” They ONLY care about the footage with the story. If they’ve got a horse stuck on a hill or a fire blazing, you better believe we’ll see that story for 15 minutes straight. But if someone went missing or was kidnapped, we’ll only hear a 10-second read of the story. Television station people dictate what is news based on the footage that goes with it. And that, my friends, is wrong.

And the number of stories a television station has lacks that of a newspaper. Try reading a newspaper in 90 minutes with three-minute commercial breaks every eight to 10 minutes. It’s not possible. The stories are better developed in a newspaper and there’s more additional information in sidebars or breakout stories than from a television news story.

I don’t think my friend is anti-newspapers as much as I’m anti-television news. I don’t see any good from television news except when there’s real news (tornado, flood, storm, traffic). Other than that, they overkill and under report.

Happy Mother’s Day

Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms, grandmas, moms-to-be and anyone else who has been in a motherly position. Mother’s Day in my family is nothing super special. We don’t go to any brunch place (my mom doesn’t even get up until like 11 anyway). I don’t think she’s ever wanted anything done for Mother’s Day. She sees the Hallmark in the day.

But, she did love the Kitchen Aid mixer thing that, thanks to Eden, I was able to get at a super cheap price on Amazon.com.

And I got her a card with Hillary Clinton on it that talks about dealing with wars and all sorts of issues on the front and inside it says, “But enough about being a MOM.” She’ll love it. She loves Hillary.

Democratic race and the media

I love watching “Meet the Press.” I have for many years. And I love politics and reading about it and seeing stories about it. And everyone knew that the Democrats race for the White House would be long.

And I’m enjoying the hell out of it! This is like the Olympics for me! I watched the Indiana and North Carolina results into the night. I stayed up late on so-called “super Tuesday” waiting for results. I love it!

What I don’t love are the people on television saying the race is over, etc. Maybe it’s because growing up in Western Pennsylvania, you are the underdog and learn to root for them. I’ve always rooted for the underdog (Hillary wasn’t the underdog when I first started supporting her).

The race isn’t over. The media picks one thing to yap about and they continue on it.

When the race is over, it’ll be over. If the media wants to do a good job then they shouldn’t speculate. They’re not the weatherman.

How do you get rid of the “Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)” section on the damn posts????

This new WordPress shit pisses me off.

A friend of mine (we’ll call him Manny) was hurt by a once-mutual friend (We’ll call him Ben).

I woke up this morning to an e-mail from Manny who says Ben used a derogatory comment.

And finally, we went to MacDonald’s early in the night, and someone in the Drive Thru threw a cup out of the door of their car and said, “look what one of your brothers is doing?”

Manny is black. Ben is (apparently) a moron.

The comment was totally uncalled for and is just another example as to why I no longer am friends with Ben.

I told two friends of mine about this story. One thought it was terrible and the other didn’t seem to think it was inappropriate.

What do you all think? Is it racism?