What's Tasteful?

Have you ever been out and about or just sitting home on the couch watching TV and you see someone in a jacked up outfit? "What was he/she thinking when they put that on?"

What makes our taste in fashion so different in this country? Are they that different in other countries? I'll need some of my readers in the U.K., Germany, India and other places to speak up in the comments section to let me know how it is over there.

The beauty of being in the U.S. is that you're free to make an idiot out of yourself. That may mean transforming your face into a lizard via cosmetic surgery or growing fingernails longer than the blades on a ceiling fan. But, when is enough, enough? When is something so distasteful that it should be banned?

Have you ever worn or got something done to yourself that you later regretted?

"I never wait in line. Who would want me standing behind them?"

Careless Drivers

"Ba-ba-ba-ba-baby! Don't forget my number!"

I wonder if I could contact George Michael and have him put the band back together again. Instead of "Careless Whispers," they could do "Careless Drivers."

I hate bad drivers. You've seen previous posts I've done like "Car Wars" or "Why Isn't This Lady Allowing Me to Merge?" If I could rewrite laws, I'd have bad drivers doing jail time. The latest trend that bugs me when I'm on the road are people who drive with earphones in their ears.

I asked some of my Twitter followers about why so many people are driving with earphones in their ears. Only one of them said for hands-free calling. Just one! Everyone else said they do so to listen to Pandora and iHeartRadio. So, I figured that it's up to me to make a QSA (Q Service Announcement) to explain to everyone why that could be a bad idea:

The reason it's illegal in most (if not all) states to drive with earbuds plugged into your dome is because it's a safety hazard. You can ask the lady who almost ran me over because she couldn't hear me blow my horn when she pulled into my lane. Or you can even ask this guy "doing the dougie" at the stop light and not realizing until the very last second that a fire truck was trying to get by him. If you can't hear, then it makes it that much more difficult to drive. A lot of people can't drive when they can hear, so they definitely don't need anything else negating their abilities.

There are so many ways to hook up a cell phone or MP3 player to your car stereo, so there's no excuse for earbuds in both ears. If you only use one, then that's cool, but to have both ears plugged is just unsafe.

And how people jog or ride bikes on busy streets with both earbuds in amazes me. The level of trust that they have is unbelievable! There's no way I'm going to have both earbuds in and allow some teen who's texting to run me down like a victim in "Christine." I don't trust my general public that much. I need to be able to hear brakes screeching so I'll at least have a chance to jump into a ditch.

Do you think driving with earbuds in both ears is a smart move?

Sitcom Kids

Sitcoms are a very big part of my TV viewing. I watch quite a few of them: "Modern Family," "Suburgatory" and "The Middle." I enjoy these shows quite a bit, but I crack up on the kids on these shows. Sitcom kids have it made. They can talk back to their parents with no consequences whatsoever. Watching these since I was a kid made me wonder if other people truly lived like this. I knew it wasn't necessarily a white thing (like most black people assume) because I went to a predominantly white school and met some tough-nosed parents. If their kids talked back to them, they got "dealt with."

So, I started to wonder if it was a regional thing? Maybe out west or up north they allow the kids to have some privileges including calling their parents by their first names or being able to say "no" when asked to do something. Those were things that my friends and I refused to even try with our parents. Well, I take that back. I tried it once.

After watching an episode of "The Brady Bunch," I thought that I could get away with calling my parents by their first names. Besides, if that Brady kid could get away with it, then why could't I? Although the Brady kid was chastised for doing it, because his parents, Mike and Carol, were so easy on him, I figured it was no big deal. Boy, was I wrong.

I sat down at the breakfast table (I think I was around 8 years old) and said "good morning" to my parents using their first names. I had the biggest smile on my face, not even looking at them as I said it, because I was so proud to be "grown enough" to pull that off.

My father snapped. To him, it was a severe sign of disrespect and after he and my mom gave me one of the most intimidating lectures I've ever received, I remember wanting to fight Greg Brady because I felt like he was responsible for me going the rest of that day with no TV. It didn't take me long to learn that TV was fiction and real life actions resulted in real life consequences.

I couldn't just walk into someone's home without ringing the door bell like sitcom kids do. I couldn't talk back to my parents without paying the price like sitcom kids do. And declaring that I deserved some privacy would have only resulted in my father taking a hammer and screwdriver and removing my bedroom door from the hinges all together.

Not sitcom kids though. Bud Bundy, Axl Heck, Tessa Altman, Stewie Griffin, etc. They have it made on television.