home is where the shore is

I live in Maryland and I have since I was eight years old, but people always tell me that it seems like I'm not from around here.  I proudly say, "I'm from New Jersey," and I get a laugh and a nod, like, "Duh, of course she is."  I can't tell if my DNA is coded for "Jersey" or if I just pick it up like a parasite when I'm around my family, all of them from the Garden State, but no matter -- I am a Jersey Girl disguised as a Marylander and my true nature drips out like a leaky faucet, I can't help it.  More specifically, I'm a Jersey girl from the shore, and that little girl who spent her summers at Point Pleasant Beach, NJ and riding the rides on the boardwalk at Seaside Heights is weeping at the destruction that Mother Nature brought to her favorite childhood places.  It's difficult to explain to the people around me -- my fiance was born and raised in Frederick, MD and none of my friends are from that region of the country -- but the shore takes up such a huge and vital part of my heart and is the background to most of my memories from some of the happiest moments of my life that seeing it in shambles the way that it is makes me feel weak.  It's not like I don't understand the concept of rebuilding after a disaster; I get that the Jersey Shore will still be the Jersey Shore.  But, it won't be my Jersey Shore.  The buildings will be different, the beach won't look the same, and as things get replaced and reinforced so that the next hurricane won't be as devastating to the infrastructure, it will be less and less the place I remember.  When I shared Point Pleasant Beach with Tyler and our one year old son, Eliot, this summer, I had never been more proud.  My son was able to ride the same rides that I did, he was able to play on the same beach and see the ocean for the first time in the exact same place as I'm sure I first did.  I shared so many stories, some so trivial and irrelevant that they probably weren't even worth telling, but I wanted them to get the point that this place was MY place.  I wanted to get across that although my house was miles away in the state of Maryland, where it had been for, honestly, most of my life, the shore was my bona fide home.  Even after many years of not going back there, years of turmoil in my family and within myself, being in that place still felt natural.  It felt like I had always been there because, frankly, my mind never stopped thinking about it and my heart never left.  The Jersey Shore is where my parents still loved each other; where my cousins and my sisters were my best friends; where I rode my first rollercoaster; where I was the most excited about growing up, being one of the cool college girls with boyfriends and bikinis and coolers of adult beverages; where I wrote a nauseating amount of Hanson fan fiction; where my cousins and I pretended to to be the Power Rangers and fought off the ocean as one of Rita Repulsa's evil monsters; where I created the jingle "No pail gets you as pale as a pail, unless you try petroleum jelly," because we were bored and silly; where I walked up and down the boardwalk like I owned the place; where renting a house down the shore was tradition; where Hoffman's donuts and Hoffman's ice cream was the beginning and end to the most perfect day; where Bruce Springsteen was like a distant uncle, telling us stories about the working-class and a young man's hopes and dreams about a better life, but we just giggled at his butt on the CD cover.  Tattooed on my right arm is an image of a boardwalk with a Ferris wheel and a sunset;  it could be any place with some sand and some ocean and some wood planks and some lights.  But, around it it reads, "Maybe everything that dies someday comes back," and that can only be one place.

I love NJ.

media bias

Because I enjoy being judgmental and righteous, I would like to establish some basic Facebook rules that I think all your FB friends will appreciate. I'm not saying I haven't done these things before, but I am saying that, currently, I am not doing them, which justifies everything. (Duh.)  If you believe I am talking about you, I probably am.

1. Avoid all shameless cries for attention.  If you have to say, "No, this isn't about you," more than once, then you have created a status update that is intentionally vague with the purpose of having people ask you what is wrong.  If you are in middle school, you are exempt from this because you obviously can't help yourself.
2. Check your spelling and grammar.  It doesn't need to be perfect, and by all means, a conversational tone is to be expected.  But, when you can't spell more than half of your sentence, you need to look that shit up.  The Internet has tools for you.
3. There is no need to tell everybody you are tired in the morning and going to sleep at night, unless you are going to elaborate.  Example: Do not say, "I'm tired."  Instead, try, "I'm tired because there are ghosts trying to have sex with me in my dreams."  That is something worth reading, thank you.
4.  Do not have a fight on Facebook.  You will always, always, always look like a total douche.  
5. I feel like this one goes without saying, but I think I need to say it -- stay away from taking bathroom mirror pictures.  We'll make exceptions sometimes, say if you just got a new haircut or recently had gastric bypass surgery, but for the most part your flagrant love for yourself is disturbing and gross.  Special note:  If you're half naked in your bathroom shot, you should probably not use social media at all.  We all know what happened to Tila Tequila, don't we?
6. Speaking of pictures, seventeen consecutive photos of a close-up of your face that basically look exactly the same in an album called "Me:)" is a waste of time for my eyes. 
7. If you're 30 or under and female (or a very progressive male,) keep your maiden name with your married name so that people know who the hell you are.  Unless you invited all your Facebook friends to the wedding, then, of course, do whatever you want, you bought those jerks dinner.
8. Oh, and while we're on relationships, if you're somebody who breaks up and makes up with the same person a lot, you don't have to keep changing your relationship status.  Just say "It's Complicated" and leave it alone. That's why Mark Zuckerberg made that an option -- for you.
9.   Yeah, that's not even true.
10. Every now and then take a look at your profile and reevaluate if this is the persona that you would like to share with the world.  If it is, then maybe I should just back away slowly and pretend I never knew you.  Oops. 

lady bits exposed

Women love to be exploited. Actually, more than that, women love to denounce exploitation while they are vigorously, undeniably, being abused. When a politician talks about "womens' rights" or the "female issues" they are mainly referring to a woman's sex organs -- pregnancy, rape, abortion. These are not female issues. All these problems have something to do with -- even caused -- by men. These are simply human affairs, and yet the burden is almost always stacked on the shoulders of the female, while men concern themselves with greater matters like economic policy and international nuclear programs. The idea is to keep the lady folk spinning with talk of birth control and prenatal healthcare while the boys talk real business. Every now and then, there will be a political ad of a woman in her living room talking about how scared she is that her rights are being denied and the female population will nod in agreement and believe that their politician is on their side and defending their freedom. But, no. They are not defending their freedom. They are being used. Women are a campaign topic, but they are not worthy of presidential policy. As long as men believe that pregnancy, rape, and abortion are simply "womens' issues," and as long as men are the ones in positions of power, women will be exploited for their votes and for their vaginas. When educated, competent men continue to imply that rape is a consequence of being a woman or that abortion is only for sluts with no morals, and the country gasps and shakes its head for a day and then allows these people to stay in positions as decision-makers and representatives of our wants and needs -- that is the moment that the female agenda is completely exposed. We make for good controversy and a great headline on the morning talk shows, but ultimately, we are ignored and worse -- we believe we deserve it.