The Urban Grind

Or to put it another way, “How to be the most helpful slave you can be for me and my baby.”

All throughout history, women from different cultures and religions have been marrying (or not) and having children. Yet in this day and age, many women who do that feel they are entitled to make demands, and treat people around them like servants. An example is the disgusting reality show “Bridezillas,” which I had the misfortune of catching at my sister’s house, as the TV was on in the background.

First off, these women were hideous shrews, and just plain misserable human beings. How they managed to bamboozle some poor schmucks into proposing marriage, I have no idea.

But I have the feeling that once they manage to marry, they would issue a whole laundry list of assignments for anyone foolish enough to befriend them, just like this woman did.

We are beginning to settle into a routine with our sweet baby girl and have visitors. [Parent] and I put together a list of “helpfuls” if you would like to come over and help us out during this transitional period into parenthood. Please visit this google doc:

Dear friends and family,

The following helpful list are the kind things that we will remember and appreciate forever. This is what [Parent]‘s body and soul needs, and will be most helpful for our bonding with the baby. By devoting just a few hours doing one of these things, we will get the support and rest we need with our newborn in the house.

Love,
[Two Chill Parents]

1. Ask us what groceries we need around the house and bring them to us. We likely need toilet paper and milk.

2. Drop off a big super greek salad with grilled chicken. We will dress it ourselves at home. Or, drop off frozen homemade food like lasagna we can reheat later.

*Allergies/intolerances include: Soy anything (including tempeh and tofu), carrageenan, guar gum, gum acacia, xanthan gum, carob bean gum (anything with the word GUM in it), lentils — Please read labels. Many of these ingredients are in store bought food.

3. Come over at about 2 in the afternoon, hold the baby while I have a hot shower, put me to bed with the baby and then complete one or more household chores, such as:
-fold laundry
-scoop the litter box
-take [our dog] for a well deserved walk or run around the neighborhood or park
-clean the kitchen or the bathroom
-vacuum

4. Come over at 10am, make me eggs, toast, and ½ a grapefruit. Clean my fridge and throw anything out that you doubt — don’t ask me, just use your best judgment. Clean the kitchen stove and the kitchen floor.

5. Come over in your work clothes and vacuum, dust, clean the litter box, and then leave quietly. It might be too tiring for me to chat and entertain, but it will renew my soul to get some rest knowing I will wake up to a clean, organized space.

6. Take [our dog] for a well-deserved long walk or run around our neighborhood or Prospect Park.

7. Come over to fold laundry or clean and give [Parent] a break so she can go enjoy some r & r, go to a coffee shop, a bar, or something else fun. Vacuum and fold more laundry. Clean the litter box.

8. Make a giant pot of vegetable soup in our kitchen and clean the kitchen completely afterwards. Then take a big garbage bag and empty every trash basket in the house. Reline the kitchen garbage can with a fresh bag.

Not surprisingly, the trendiest Manhattan neighborhoods are where most of the STD’s are found, along with the South Bronx and Harlem.

Now I could go on and on with stories about my dating experiences with men who just wanted to get right down to business while I was living in Manhattan. One man I met on a Jewish dating site said right to my face that I needed a few nights of sex with a nerdy guy to “loosen me up.”

Anyway, with statistics like this, I’d rather be “uptight.”

Nightlife areas such as SoHo, Murray Hill and the Upper West Side are home to 10 times more syphilis-infected residents than the city’s average, according to the city Department of Health.

Roughly 125 people — taken from a sample of 100,000 — tested positive for the disease in those three neighborhoods.

But it’s not just the posh ZIP codes that make playing the field sound like playing with fire.

The Tremont section of The Bronx — where 43 percent of residents are below the federal poverty line — is home to the city’s highest STD rate, the study found.

In the report, which uses data from 2010, researchers also pinpoint areas with the highest rates of hepatitis B and C, chlamydia, gonorrhea and HIV.

The findings reveal:

* The Bronx is the borough where you’d least like to have a one-night stand. Roughly 68 percent of neighborhoods in the borough were found to have “high” rates of more than one STD.

* Staten Island is the healthiest place to hook up. Not a single neighborhood in the borough made the agency’s top-20 list for STDs.

* Thirteen out of 20 of the neighborhoods with the highest HIV and syphilis rates are in Manhattan.

* HIV and hepatitis C ran most rampant in gentrifying Bedford-Stuyvesant, Crown Heights, Williamsburg and Harlem.

* Neighborhoods with the highest rates of chlamydia and gonorrhea include the South Bronx, central Brooklyn and northern Manhattan.

* Health officials note TB and hepatitis B are most prevalent in the city’s immigrant communities. More than half of Queens’ worst-ranked neighborhoods are home to predominantly foreign-born residents.

Areas with the highest hepatitis rates — including Chelsea and Morningside Heights — rank 10 times the city’s average.

Via Breitbart

Never mind that California is in debt, and that business are leaving in droves because of the punitive tax rates, their government is going to give out (almost) free cell phones to the homeless.

The cell phones would be handed out through a federally funded Lifeline program – already operated by service provider Assurance Wireless in 36 other states – that is likely to win final approval in the next couple of weeks from the California Public Utilities Commission.

{snip}

Under Assurance Wireless’ new program, a customer will initially pay $20 for a Virgin Mobile cell phone and pay 10 cents a minute. This initial plan will fulfill state regulations that only people with existing phone service qualify for a Lifeline program.

Immediately, however, the customer will be rolled into Assurance Wireless’ Lifeline plan, which will provide 250 free minutes of talk time and 250 free text messages per month. The customer will then get the initial $20 back as a credit to be used whenever he or she exceeds the talk and text limits.

This is the same person who called Obama “our Lord and Savior.” And now he’s doubled down on his racism and stupidity by joking about how great it was to kill all the white people in his new movie. (Sorry, I don’t see an embed link.)

Now can you imagine the uproar if a white actor were to say how much fun it was for his movie character to kill all the black people? Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, the NAACP and the Southern Poverty Law Center would be out in full force. But this racist gets a pass. And the dumb audience cheers!

Via CNN

Good for Zimmerman! It’s about time someone fought the biased mainstream media rather than just pointing out their distortions.

(CNN) — George Zimmerman, charged in the shooting death of a 17-year-old Florida boy, is suing NBC Universal for using “the oldest form of yellow journalism” by editing an audio tape of his 911 call to make him sound racist, the lawsuit says.

Zimmerman is seeking “damages in excess of the jurisdictional limit” in Seminole County Circuit Court in Florida, where the lawsuit was filed Thursday.

“NBC saw the death of Trayvon Martin not as a tragedy but as an opportunity to increase ratings, and so set about to create the myth that George Zimmerman was a racist and predatory villain,” the lawsuit says.

“Because of NBC’s deceptive and exploitative manipulations, the public wrongly believes that Zimmerman ‘use(d) a racial epithet’ while describing Martin during the call to the dispatcher on that fateful night,” the suit says.

NBC Universal disputed the accusations Friday.

“There was no intent to portray Mr. Zimmerman unfairly,” the company said in a prepared statement. “We intend to vigorously defend our position in court.”

The defamation lawsuit accuses the network of sensationalizing and manipulating a potential “racial powder keg that would result in months, if not years, of topics for their failing news program, particularly the plummeting ratings for their ailing Today Show.”

The edited recordings included multiple deletions, removed intervening dialogue between Zimmerman and the dispatcher, and juxtaposed unrelated content “to make it appear that Zimmerman was a racist, and that he was racially profiling Trayvon Martin,” the lawsuit says.

NBC aired various edited versions of the 911 call on March 19, 20, 22 and 27, the suit says.

The suit accuses the network of malice, highlighting correspondent Ron Allen’s segment on “The Today Show” on March 27.

“Allen’s broadcast removed a critical aspect of the dialogue between Zimmerman and the dispatcher, bringing the ‘up to no good’ and ‘he looks black’ statements even closer together, to further the false and defamatory implication that Zimmerman had said he believed Martin was ‘up to no good’ because ‘he looks black,’” the suit says.

The lawsuit accuses NBC of falsely claiming that Zimmerman said “f—— coons” on the February 26 call.

“The truth, as known to the defendants, was that Zimmerman said ‘f—— punks’ and there was no evidence, or reason to believe, that Zimmerman uttered a racial epithet during the call,” the suit says.

Zimmerman mentioned Martin’s race only when prompted by the dispatcher, the suit says.

NBC never aired an “earnest” retraction and never apologized to Zimmerman, who has since experienced death threats, a bounty on his head and a genuine fear for his life, the suit says. He now lives in hiding, court documents say.

NBC News President Steve Capus “made a bogus non-apology that claimed the doctoring was merely a ‘mistake,’” the suit says.

Because of the death threats, Zimmerman wears a bulletproof vest and was even dismissed from his college because it felt fellow students could be endangered, the lawsuit says. At the time of the incident with Martin, Zimmerman was living in a community known as The Retreat at Twin Lakes in Sanford, Florida, court papers say.

“Due to the defendants’ journalistic crimes, Zimmerman has been transformed into one of the most hated men in America,” the suit says.

Zimmerman’s attorney, Mark O’Mara, told “In Session’s” Jean Casarez that NBC tried “to get ahead of the curve coverage thinking that they had themselves a person who was a racist, and they were wrong.”

The suit also names as defendants Lilia Rodriguez Luciano of Dade County, Florida, who was reporting directly from Sanford. Her employment was terminated by NBC as a result of her reporting, the suit says.

Also named as a defendant is Jeffrey Burnside of Dade County, another journalist who was reporting from Sanford to his station, NBC-owned WTVJ in Miami, the suit says. Burnside was also fired by NBC, the suit said.

Now just as a reminder, NBC has yet to identify the producer who purposely edited Zimmerman’s 911 call to make him look like a white supremacist, even though he/she was fired. And to top it off one Brian Stelter of the New York Times has tweeted that the fired individual’s fellow producers and reporters are outraged that their friend got fired for his/her lying. Go figure!