Envy

I really have no business being jealous of anyone. I mean, I have an amazingly loving and supportive family, my good health, and (despite being out of work) I am financially stable. Yet I still find myself extremely envious of some people, especially Tara Reid. (Tara Reid is pictured left, in her normal, drunken state.)

I watch Ms. Reid's show, Taradise, regularly. Each week, Tara gets flown to some gorgeous location where she does the following: Has a photo shoot; goes to some "hot" club and dances (poorly) with the (scantily clad) locals (who also dance poorly); and gets drunk. For this, she is paid tons of money and is famous. Meanwhile, I am struggling to find a job just to pay the bills.

Of course, things could be a lot worse. I mean, just look at all of hurricane Katrina's victims...And all the hungry, poor people in the world...Compared to most, I have it good. But I want better.

Celebrity Corner

Congratulations to Kirstie Alley for her weight loss! You look great!


Unfortunately, the same can't be said for Carmen Electra. I've always thought she was one of the most beautiful women in the world...but I hate the blond hair.Go back to brunette, Carmen!

Anniversary #4

So here we are again, September 11th, four years after the attacks. The tragedy is still fresh in my mind, but not necessarily for the reasons you may think. You see, I live in a neighborhood with a large population of Muslims, many of whom are immigrants. After the September 11th attacks, the Muslim residents of my neighborhood faced a lot of "problems" by non-Muslims.

One issue was the government. After 9/11/01, the government took a keen interest in all of the Muslim residents, both immigrants and American-born. I guess the government was justified, to a certain extent, because it believed that Muslim terrorists were responsible for the attacks that killed so many people. But the government never interrogated all the Irish-American residents after Timothy McVeigh was found to be responsible for the Oklahoma City bombing. Now I know what you may be thinking, "But the terrorists responsible for the 9/11 attacks were Muslims who lived and operated right here, out of America!" Well, Timothy McVeigh lived and operated out of America as well. As did "The Unabomber," Ted Kaczynski, but the government never targeted and interrogated an entire religion or ethnicity because of him. Only when a terrorist suspect is non-white, it seems, is an entire racial, religious, and/or ethnic group held responsible from the crimes of a select few.

Then there were the vigilantes, who made it their business to create problems for Muslims in "retaliation" of the terrorist attacks. One day, soon after the attacks had taken place, I was walking to the grocery store when I saw a group of four boys attack an old man. The boys looked to be young teenagers, maybe 14 to 16 years-old each, with fair hair and skin. They came up from behind the old man, dressed in "Middle Eastern garb," as he sat on a bench waiting for the bus. Just as the bus was approaching, the boys grabbed the old man and threw him into the bus's path. Luckily, the bus was able to stop in time, and the old man wasn't run over. The police came and arrested the four boys, but that was only one "incident" of many.

Now I am not trying to make light of the significance and horror of the attacks themselves, or their victims, so please don't misinterpret my writing in this post. I just think that there is even more tragedy than most people are aware of due to what took place on September 11th, 2001. In addition to those lives lost from the actual events, there were those affected in other ways. The families and friends who lost loved ones, for example; the victims of vigilante crimes, like that which I described above; and of course, the invasion and subsequent wars with both Afghanistan and Iraq, which produced (and in the case of Iraq, continues to produce) a large number casualties as well. Some people have already forgotten that the initial reasons we invaded Afghanistan and Iraq were because of the government's perceived notion that the people (or at least the countries' leaders) were somehow tied, either directly or indirectly, to the terrorists responsible of the destruction that occurred on 9/11/01.

When you take all of that into consideration -- the victims of the attacks themselves, the families and friends of those victims, the victims of the retaliation attacks and those victims' families and friends, the casualties of both the American soldiers and Afghani citizens and their friends and families (from the invasion of Afghanistan), and all the casualties (and, for the zillionth time, their friends and families) from both sides of the war with Iraq (which, by the way, continues to grow) -- it almost seems like September 11, 2001 never ended.

Creepy, Freaky Boys

Why is it that so many sick perverts are into me? I mean, seriously! I don't dress sexy, I don't sleep around...I am just a nice, normal girl. Yet for some reason, I attract all these creepy guys.

Take yesterday, for example. This kid comes up from behind me and asks me if I had the time; "no problem," I thought, so I politely told him that I didn't have a watch. Then he asked me if I was married. Again, I simply said "no." At the time, I didn't think much of it. Until he started following me.

He kept trailing after me; following me into Rite Aid, asking me questions all along the way. "What are you going to buy here? What are you going to do after this? Can I come with you?" Though annoying, I thought he was harmless. He is, afterall, just a kid.

Then the questions turned dirty. He started asking me thing like, "What cup size are your breasts? Do you like 69?" Then he "accidentally" touched my breasts. I was appalled, and tempted to threaten the kid...but how? I didn't know who he was, so it's not like I could call his mother or anything. Plus, he was a juvenile...or so I thought. When I tried to "turn the tables" and started asking him questions, he said he was "19, almost 20." I found that hard to believe; he looked about 14 or 15 years old, tops. Still, he would not leave me alone. In the end, I agreed to give him my number if he agreed to leave me alone.

I should have given him a wrong number, because by the time I got home, the kid had already left a message on my machine. I just ignored it. Later on, he called several more times, but I just let the machine pick them up. That was, until I picked up the phone, expecting a call from a friend. Once again, the kid -- in his baby-sounding, pre-pubescent seeming voice -- started asking me dirty questions. "What color are your nipples? Do you shave your pussy?" It was gross. I just hung up and, though he kept calling afterwards, I just ignored it. At least he is a kid! (I think.)

Earlier that same day (still yesterday), a "dirty old man" stopped me on the street and started to bother me. The only way I can describe this guy was "gross." He was one of those guys that you can tell, right away, something just "isn't right" about him. He had a creepy "aura" about him, and something in his eyes...it really made me uneasy. He kept harassing me until I ran away, scared.

And that was just in one day!

In the past, I have been stalked by one guy and almost beaten up by another, who wouldn't take "no" for an answer! All of these "psychos" were just guys who came up to me on the street or while riding in the train. I mean, they had no idea who I was -- I could have had a disease -- but they didn't care; they just wanted to have sex and decided that I was the one they wanted it with.

It's really scary sometimes.

You Go, (Cover)Girl!

Christie Brinkley has returned to modeling CoverGirl cosmetics -- at the age of 51! She really is beautiful. I hope I look as good as she does when I'm 51 years-old! Heck, I wish I looked as good as she does now!

Confection Affection

In the September 5th issue of Celebrity Living magazine, there is an article on Colette Peters, cake maker for the stars. It's amazing what she does; her cakes are truly works of art! Check out the pictures, below!



Pillow Cake, top: "For this 'pillow cake,' Colette made the tassels out of gumpaste and fondant, a rollable sugar icing."

The Enchanted Flora, bottom: "Colette calls this cake (which serves 100 people) the Enchanted Flora. The flowers are made out of gumpaste, a pliable sugar dough."

Wow! They look so pretty, it must be heartbreaking to cut into (and eat) them!