All posts by Savvy Spoonie

I am an artist, writer, jeweler, and a Spoonie. Before becoming a Spoonie I was a very busy high achieving attorney and advocate bent on saving the world. Now I'm struggle to redefine my life to fit within my reduced energy level. Some days are better than others. I have fibromyalgia, trigeminal neuralgia, and chronic daily migraine.
Uncategorized

Sex sells social consciousness

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WARNING: Political commentary follows…

Am I the only person bothered by the concept of hearalding the “Obama Girl” and “Hott4Hill” video’s as a fresh new way to encourage 20-somethings to get involved in politics?

These comedic videos are indeed funny, and some of the lyrics in the songs are clever political commentary, but mostly they depict scantily clad women singing about how hot they are for presidential candidates and gyrating against various people and/or things. On the “Daily Buzz” comments abounded about how the Obama Girl got hot points over the Hillary Girl for originality. Paul Levinson stated these video’s increase our chances of getting the disaffected 20 -somethings involved in politics. However, after reading a great number of the comments posted after both of these videos, along with the video war between Obama and Guiliani, I discovered the comments rarely failed to evaluate the “hotness” of the girls in the videos. Granted, there were interesting comments on the objectification of women, and several comments on the meaning of democracy and various candidate platforms. However, a parley on the political issues that face our time is not occuring in the comment sections following these videos.

So…. supporting the continued sexual objectification of women so we can get 20-somethings to rate how hot they are, and then say “Candidate X in 08 baby!” is a “fresh new way to get [them] involved in politics”? Hmm….

Why can’t we have cutting political humor with our clothes on? Are members of our society unable to hear the clever lyrics through the layers of the singer’s clothing? Are the melodious pop sounds muffled by the wearing of pants?

Further, there is a fan video of a cute little girl apeing the Obama video. Cute? Sure. Disturbing as hell? Yes! A baby is singing about wanting Barack Obama and trying to dance like the scantily clad singer does in the video. Should a toddler really be saying “I love it when you are hard… on Hillary during debates”?

Come on! This isn’t political activism!! It is supposed to be political humor, but really, this is a thinly disguised reason to dress sexy women in a bikini and send them gyrating to music across the internet. If you haven’t noticed, our society has no problem sending scantily clad women everywhere on the internet, without the thin veneer of political respectability.

Should we really be teaching our little girls that the most effective way they have to influence politics is to cut the american flag into a brazillian bikini and sing about how hot the candidates are?

Law, Uncategorized

Bad Faith

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Bad faith (Latin: mala fides) is a legal concept in which a malicious motive on the part of a party in a lawsuit undermines their case. It has an effect on the ability to maintain causes of action and obtain legal remedies.1

Bad faith is acting with the intent to defraud, the intent to cheat. There is a legal belief that one who has unclean hands cannot press a lawsuit against someone with clean hands. (I say a theory because like all human endeavors, the legal system is flawed and therefore I am sure all of you could cite many a personal story about some bad actor who sued your innocent and saintly uncle and took him for all he was worth. However, this post isn’t about your saintly uncle, it’s about me, so leave him out of it already!)

Therefore, the theory behind preventing bad faith actors from recovering in some court situations is a good one. If you are the breaching party to a contract, you can’t usually sue to recover against the non-breaching party.

Why am I giving this little legal lesson in Bad Faith? Why because it pertains to my life today, that’s why.

Our previous landlords are acting in Bad Faith. Bad Landlords, no rent check. They have the remainder of our security deposit, and have been holding it for ransom while they whittle away at it, bit by diminishing bit. These are the people who allowed us to move our little family, asthmatic child and pregnant wife and all, into a cigarette smoke covered and pet urine smeared house. A house that smelled so incredibly bad when I first walked into it that I almost threw up. These are the landlords that delayed removing the carpets that were so filthy we had to lay cardboard boxes over them to walk to and from our rooms, so our feet wouldn’t touch them, for months.

Now, here we are, happily out of their fracking house, and they claim there is a “strong doggy odor” in the back family room where we kept our dogs kennels. They are angling for new carpets.

No. I had them cleaned, professionally, per our lease agreement. The pets never, NEVER, urinated or defecated on the carpets. There is no reason to replace them, well, no reason other than greed and bad faith.

Wanna know where the unpleasant smell is? Why it’s buried deep within the cement under the carpets. The cement they were too cheap to seal with any sort of odor blocking sealant. The cement their previous tenant’s pets soaked in urine and feces. It could also be buried deep within the a/c ducts, where the hundreds of thousands of cigarettes he smoked, in the shower even, wafted their tar-laden contents into the air, to be whisked down the ducts and throughout the house.

Did they deal with any of these unpleasant odors when we lived there? Of course not, they wouldn’t even make the simple repairs we requested over and over again. No, they want us to buy them new carpets, because they are trying to sell their stinky little hell hole for way too much money and are too cheap to actually put forward enough dough to convince anyone to look at it.

Happily, I get to sue them if they try it. New Jersey, while muggy and full of people who like to make rude hand gestures on the highway, is a good place to be a tenant with crappy landlords. The New Jersey Rent Security Deposit Act allows me to recover double that erroneously charged me by my landlord, plus fees and costs.2

What does that have me busily doing? Why getting out my old photographs and filing a complaint.

It is the benefit to being a shark. When someone asks you to swim, you get to bite. Normally, I prefer to leave my teeth out of it, but these people have spent an entire year making my life hell. I have let violation after violation of our lease agreement slide, in the hopes that it would all be over soon. So now I am licking my chops.

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1. Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_faith
2. N.J. Stat. §§ 46:8-1 to – 49

frustration, grief, Motherhood, Motherhood/body image, Stress

The third person

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I believe I have hit upon the reason mom’s refer to themselves in the third person. For example:
“Mommy is busy right now honey, please wait until I am done.”
“No honey, Mommy can’t turn the t.v. up right now, Mommy is in the shower.”
“Mommy is still in the shower honey, I can’t get to the remote right now! Please wait until I am out of the shower!!”

It is in part do to the interaction with the infant, but I think it is really because mommies have three personalities, therefore Mommy is personality number three, the third person.

My first person is a young woman who loves to go dancing, stay up until dawn, smoke cigarettes and toss back one too many tequila shots. Sadly, she was put into a coma about 6 years and 9 months ago, so the chances of anyone seeing her again are slim. However, she occasionally invades my consciousness with a sweet memory and the smell of freedom, often when I am driving in the rain and turn the music up a little louder than I should.

My second person is a serious lawyer ready and able to save the world. She is dedicated, tireless, and armed with the tools needed to wreak havoc on opposing council. She wears sexy yet serious business suits and sensible heels. She is witty at cocktail parties and political functions, and still amazes her husband with her intellectual prowess and social capabilities.

My third person is a mom. She is always there for tears, problem solving, lunch making, real and imagined insults, boo boo kisses, and upset tummies. She cleans the house, buys the groceries, prepares the food. She showers at night because she is usually showered in baby spit up several times during the day. She is a napkin, a washcloth, and more. She doesn’t sleep, hasn’t worn make-up in months, and lost her ability to put together a decent outfit ages ago. She is an expert in getting smiles and giggles, diffusing kiddo stress and consternation, and removing stains from laundry. She can change a really messy diaper in under three minutes with only three or four wipes.

However, she is the hardest personality to acknowledge and accept. She is much more disheveled than the other two parts of me, much more emotional, and seemingly less capable, though really, she is just dealing with more. After all, how often does a lawyer have to handle complex billing negotiations with a screaming baby vomiting on their suit? How many young and carefree women have to schlep children through the grocery store?

Anyway, the reason I think I refer to this third personality in third person is simple, it places distance between the sleepless, pale, disheveled mad woman in the mirror and myself. After all, carefree woman and slick lawyer are rarely interrupted in the shower by anyone for any reason, much less a six year old needing help with the television.

I really am still the young carefree woman and the slick lawyer. They are just currently hidden behind a river of baby spit up and burp cloths. Until I can see them again, or at least small parts of them, I will likely still continue to refer to the rest of me, that tired, spit up covered woman, in the third person.