Badass Bunny

I’m really not one to beg, but this holiday season I implore you to consider spending your hard-earned dollars at small businesses. If you choose instead to shop at Wal-Mart or Sam’s Club or some giant eyesore of a mall, you’re a member of Satan’s army of consumer whores, and I hope you spend your eternity shoveling coal in the shit-filled pits of hell. If you check out a local small business, I’ll forgive you.

The Waltons, owners of Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club, have proved time and again that they’re willing to make money at any cost to their employees, suppliers and customers. They could not give a rat’s ass about ethical business practices, fair trade, or the local communities in which they do business. They care only about their own personal gain. That’s because they’re morally repugnant cretins. When Wal-Mart moves into town, small businesses in the community die. So too have some customers. Never mind that people have been maced with pepper spray or trampled to death inside the store, a number of folks have also been assaulted, a handful even murdered, outside stores—in Wal-Mart’s giant parking lots—because the company is too fucking cheap to hire security guards to rove its own property, particularly at stores open 24 hours.

If, like me, you want to see unemployment rates drop, if you want your family, friends and neighborhoods to thrive and look forward to a financially secure future, then you should support small businesses. They, not the Wal-Marts of the world, drive the American economy and spur economic growth. Wal-Mart is the equivalent of your high school bully—everyone hates him, everyone wishes he would get his comeuppance, but you still hand over your lunch money because you’re convinced that bending over and taking it in the ass is easier than fighting for what’s right. Shame on you.

Since when is stealing from other people okay? Oh, right, it’s not. But that sure doesn’t stop some folks on Twitter from posting tweets word for word without giving credit to the original author. Hey, asswipe, that’s a form of theft too, and it’s called plagiarism. Oh, and it’s illegal, you verbal bloodsucking whore.

In academics, being accused of plagiarism ruins people. I’ve seen it happen. Unfortunately, that’s not so much the case in the professional arena. Joe Biden, James Cameron, even Coldplay have all been accused of plagiarism, but those folks’ careers are still thriving. That doesn’t mean they aren’t liars. Or pricks. Or a bunch of whiny blokes masquerading as musicians.

Maybe tweets will never be completely protected by copyright laws, but that doesn’t mean you have permission to steal another person’s words. Yes, we all occasionally tweet about the same idea as another twerp, but that’s to be expected in such a large Twitterverse. And that’s not what I’m talking about, anyway. Twitter has established etiquette for sharing another person’s tweets and even makes it stupendously easy to retweet a tweet automatically—no typing any “RT” business—so there’s no excuse for stealing. Well, except that you’re a lazy, worthless wanker.

I thought I would enjoy coming up with a list of my favorite Badass_Bunny tweets. So I did. And I enjoyed it. They’re listed in no particular order. Yes, this is filler while I finish writing some other posts.

In the comments, you should share your top ten tweets (from your own timeline, I mean). Or whatever.

10. People just don’t appreciate Hall & Oates enough. But I can’t go for that. No. Can. Do.

9. Look, tweeples, the whole point of Twitter is to keep your clever little musings to 140 characters or less. Okay? If you can’t, learn to edi

8. A coworker nicknamed me “Dances with words.” I nicknamed her “Outsmarted by cheese.”

7. Having big boobs isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Like when you’re skateboarding with a gang of midgets. So pretty much all the time.

6. It’s crazy how fast a relationship can change after a coworker finds you passed out in the bathroom with your panties around your ankles.

5. My husband says he’s scared of zombies, yet he always wants to have sex with me in the morning. He’s really tempting fate.

4. Pro tip: if your husband yells from the bathroom “you’ve got to come see this,” tell him you already have something stuck in your eye.

3. “Oh yes, I want a shot of the protein…but not in my smoothie.” No one at Jamba Juice ever appreciates that joke.

2. In line at Chipotle behind a fat man who can’t make up his mind. It’s food, Jabba, not life insurance.

1. I wrote a poem for you! Roses are red. Violets are blue. Poetry is stupid. Go fuck yourself.

As I pull myself over to the operating table, Dr. Higgins, my anesthesiologist, asks if I’ve ever stayed at a Motel 6.

“Uh, I’m not that kind of girl, Dr. Higgins,” I say. The three other people in the operating room–the chief resident, a nurse and my OB/GYN–giggle as they prep for surgery. Dr. Higgins ignores me and begins telling a story about his long-dead dog Duke and their adventures traveling across the country and staying in Motel 6, which he claims was once the only motel to allow pets. He sticks lipids to my back and chest and continues talking, but I’ve faded into a sleepy high and can no longer make out his words. The anesthetic has taken effect. I close my eyes and picture Duke, a large black-and-white Great Dane.

An hour later I wake up in recovery. I feel a rolling pain in my abdomen, the most intense cramps I’ve ever experienced, but I’m more overwhelmed by a sense of relief. The surgery—a tubal ligation—marks the beginning of an entirely new chapter in my life: post-fertility.

Oh, did I forget to mention that I don’t have kids? Actually, I didn’t. Plot device. I know, you are beside yourself with shock or something. Don’t fall out of your chair. I don’t have children because I don’t want children. Never have. That’s not to say I don’t like kids because I do. I just like myself more. Don’t judge me.

Men and women both have lectured me, insisting that I’ll regret not having any children…because, ya know, who will visit me in the dirty state nursing home where I’m going to spend my old age rotting away? Some people have applauded me for staying true to my feelings. A physician I recently met was so stunned that she briefly lost her powers of speech. “You…you…you mean, you have no children but you had your tubes tied?” Other people, however, have suggested I’m brave for shunning society’s expectations and living according to my own rules. But, sorry, that last thing I am is courageous. A lazy, self-centered princess is more like it. That’s not to say I don’t believe motherhood is an incredible, rewarding, and fulfilling experience. I’m certain it is. But I have no regrets. I’m just not that kind of girl.

I’m a huge fan of Gears of War. Like a lot people, I drooled every time a commercial for Gears of War 3 aired, and I bought my copy just a few days after it was released. (Pre-order? Please. Costco rules.) And, of course, I spent the next few days playing the campaign for hours on end.

Though GoW is arguably the best third-person shooter ever conceived, I lost interest in the story after GoW2. But the story isn’t what keeps me playing. The game is just a lot of damn fun, the kind that doesn’t require much brain power. Hey, I also dig games like Ghost Recon, but they require patience. And thought. And sometimes I just want to blow shit up. I don’t want to study a map, carefully examine the environment, scout for enemies and then plan my next move. Fuck strategy. I just want to blow shit up.

But I do have one major beef with the final chapter of Gears. As a woman, I am of course happy to see GoW3 introduce female soldiers, but I hate them. Okay, maybe hate is too strong a word, but I definitely don’t like them. The boys, I like. They do something for me, for the game. Marcus Fenix is the loyal son who disobeys orders to save his father. Dominic Santiago is the long-suffering soldier whose family is destroyed by war. Damon Baird is the comic relief, great with explosives but always lobbing some smart-ass remark instead. And Augustus Cole, the former thrashball star, is the loud, self-assured, flamboyant soldier. And what is Anya Stroud? Fucking annoying. That’s what she is.

Don’t get me wrong or try to peg this as some feminist rant. I’ve spent way too much time playing GoW as a big, angry, ugly Hispanic guy not to appreciate the addition of Anya and her fellow Gear Samantha Byrne, women with big tits who can kick ass. That’s badass, and I like badass. But every time either of them speaks, I want to scream. Because that’s the best way to drown out the stupid shit they say.

Yeah, okay, it’s not as if any of the characters in Gears is an Einstein, but the dialogue shouldn’t be a distraction either. Unfortunately, Baird hits the nail on the head when he calls Sam a nag. I get that she’s supposed to be his match, returning his witty insults with equally humorous banter, but she’s just a bore. She says nothing clever, nothing funny, nothing that colors or illuminates the game’s plot or themes. When she talks, I don’t listen. Instead, I find myself brooding about her stupid commentary rather than watching out I don’t get killed. And though Anya is a character I like in the first two games, in this installment I find her tone of voice and knack for constantly pointing out the obvious really irritating. All she does is complain, and I’m tired of whiny, nagging, dumb-as-a-sack-of-rocks fictional females—in video games, in television shows, in films. Don’t we already see enough of these women on reality tv?