Jon and Kate Plus...Hate? As a child I remember someone telling me about Chinese water torture (being immobilized and having water drip on your forehead or some other predetermined point incessantly) and thought, "how stupid is that?" But as I've come to learn, there are three things that the Chinese can do better than anyone else: 1) Breed (A father who wanted me to marry his daughter once told me, "Who are the best lovers? Chinese men! How else can you explain 1 billion children?!") 2) Xiao long bao 3) Torture Seriously. Think about it. Getting thrown in the iron maiden? Being quartered? Chips, dips, chains, whips? (I miss that Weird Science movie!) Weak sauce. European torture is to Rachel Ray as Chinese water torture is to Anthony Bourdain. No comparison. (And besides, Rachel Ray is just plain irritating like an incomplete BM.) The reason being that though the former causes extreme physical pain, they are all temporary, while the latter is primarily psychological and is as unremitting as post-taco diarrhea in Tijuana. Psychological always trumps the physical. Which do you think is more torture for a young woman, having a butt face with a festering abscess and not caring, or thinking that she has a butt face with a festering abscess and caring about it? (Note: This does not apply if said young woman is Amy Winehouse.) Now what does this have to do with Jon and Kate plus eight? Everything! In the spirit of being honest, I have never really watched the show. I watched one episode and never came back. Why would I spend 30 minutes watching another couple sans Cosby moniker raising their kids? That's 30 minutes I can never get back! So all I know is what I read on the internet, which, of course, makes it 110% completely true.  Anyway, Jon and Kate, for the uninformed, are a couple with 8 children (twins and sextuplets, I believe) who are the focus of a reality show, following their daily lives as they raise their brood. The other day I saw a link about how Jon was caught out with another woman while visiting his mom in another state. The blogosphere, surprisingly, was more pro-Jon than anti-Jon. Hard core viewers were quick to point out that Kate is abusive towards her husband with her unremitting henpecking and condescending remarks. She loves the fame and fortune while he wants his family to just be left alone. She apparently does all the talking and always cuts Jon off in the interviews and the one time Jon cut her off she went jihad on him on national TV. US Magazine even mentions her berating him once for *breathing* on the show. (The rumor is that they are already separated, but are "staying together" for the show.) While I do not condone cheating in any way, shape or form, I can certainly understand where Jon is coming from, because when you think about it... All men get Chinese water tortured by their women. Whether it's our hair, belly fat, ambition, flatulence, salary, choice of friends, diet, alcohol consumption, World of Warcraft, parenting, or Battlestar Galactica marathons (so say we all!), each and every neanderthal has something that his more evolved significant other prods him incessantly about, like water dripping on your forehead in a Beijing prison (before they take out your kidney and sell it to some rich American noncompliant with his diabetes medication). The reason this causes so much distress is that, in general, women find the need to change or henpeck their men, while men are comfortable being who they are and abhor change. You know, the whole irresistible force vs. immovable object thangamabob. And Jon, it seems, has had enough. But are men the only victims here? While women like to express their henpecking verbally, men do it with their expectations, rather than their mouths. We expect our women to do most of the housework, even though they also have careers. We expect them through the years to maintain the same body they had that first night we saw them and had to pick our jaws off the floor. We expect them to act beautiful in public after giving birth, despite the constipation, hemorrhoids, bloating and weight gain. We expect a roll in the hay at any given moment, whether or not our breath smells like Shaquille O'Neal's armpits and our body like spoiled feta cheese. So while we don't necessarily henpeck our women, our expectations are always there, burdensome like buckets of water incessantly pouring on their shoulders. I don't profess to know everything about Jon and Kate. I'm sure that Jon shares some culpability in their deteriorating relationship, but the sad thing is that in the midst of this struggle between Jon supporters and Kate supporters, everyone has forgotten about the children. So caught up in the hate, they forgot about the eight. Are we not the same way? In our squabbles both big and small with our significant others, we forget about what brought us together in the first place. Love gets displaced by hate and open hands turn into pointed fingers. Just like how everytime I watch J&K+8 I lose 30 minutes of my life that I can't get back, every moment you spend allowing hate to displace love is a moment of love that you can never get back. And in a world where every clock counts down and not forward, I can think of nothing sadder than that. Have a great rest of the week! Go Houston! Beat LA! Beat LA! Beat LA! ----- | 
If Rose is a 300 pound wahine, she better not be a tita or else I'm dead.
Do you speak pidgin? I can't. I tried to when I called my neighbors to complain about their dog, but it came out sounding more like I had a European accent. :(