Teen Mom

I'm pretty sure everyone has seen Teen Mom, Mtv's crude and gaudy reality show that follows around teen mothers.

From what I understand, they start with "16 and Pregnant," where they document the lives of a few 15/16/17 year olds as they deal with the trials and tribulations of being a pregnant teenager.

  More often than not, the girls come from broken homes, which is obviously not something to laugh at.  Take, for example, Teen Mom Catelynn (the one with the braces.)  Her life was all kinds of cracked out. Catelynn and her boyfriend Tyler got pregnant while Catelynn's mother, April, married Tyler's father, Butch.  I'm just as puzzled as you are.  April is probably the most terrifying woman in the galaxy.  Imagine a planet of the apes monkey crossed with Joan Rivers.... and a Tusken Raider...

My main beef with Mtv in this scenario is that they didn't try to intervene during the several instances where April threatened violence against her daughter.  I understand that drama like this is what draws viewers in and keeps them hooked, but honestly, this is pitiful.

Arguing on Catelynn's behalf seems pretty counter productive and arbitrary, but giving her baby up for adoption was certainly the best option for her.  She could barely tolerate living with April and Butch.  That crack house of a home is no place to raise a baby.  More people should take Catelynn's initiative instead of being selfish and keeping the child in your messed up life.  But that is neither here nor there

I feel extremely silly having invested any thought into that argument.

Another "family" (I use this term ever so loosely) from Teen Mom that deserves an honorable mention is Amber and Gary.  Sweet Lord have mercy, Amber and Gary.

Gary

Jabba

Amber is the stereotypical fat, angry white girl.  She, like all the other girls on the program, hardly has the means and experience to raise a child.  But who cares, right?  It's just a baby, it'll be fine.  

She and her babydaddy, Gary, are constantly arguing and weaving a colorful tapestry of horrifying words as their daughter climbs on top of an entertainment center.  

Amber has made headlines several times, mainly for domestic violence against big ol' Gary.  She slaps him, calls him all sorts of names and phrases, and threatens him and even herself at one point.  I believe she told Gary to push her down a flight of stairs during the episode in which she had her largest tantrum. In my opinion, Gary missed a golden opportunity there.  

Once again, Mtv failed to prevent said domestic violence and let it all pan out.  I suppose they've decided to take a National Geographic approach, meaning that documentarists wouldn't stop a lion from taking down a gazelle... or in this case an elephant seal taking on... another elephant seal of only slightly larger girth and aptitude.  However, displaying this kind of violence, where there's a child involved, is trash.  I don't know if Mtv was trying to shed some light on the sensitive subject of domestic abuse, but they failed.  Nobody looked at that and said, "Look at how Gary rose up and defended his integrity!  Look at how he carried himself with poise and aplomb!"  This is how he really defended himself:

Because Mtv is a cruel god, Gary and Amber (mostly Amber) have become "celebrities."  What?... I mean, really?  These two stupid idiots are now news worthy?  All because they accidentally got pregnant and slap each other?  

In my dystopian Orwellian universe, individuals would have to pass an exam in order to have children.  What would happen if they fail can be left up to your own imagination.  It's interesting that we must obtain a drivers license if we want to (legally) drive a car, but we can procreate without inhibition!

With all the debate of pro-choice vs. pro-life, it's amazing what we are willing to do to our children.  Let them be filmed by Mtv camera crews, let them witness a shouting match between Mommy and Daddy and let it be filmed so that she can see it on Youtube when she's older.  I wonder how these kids will feel when they are older, seeing their mothers and fathers screaming and hitting each other for the entire world to see.  

  

Formaldehyde Fridays

I have been up since 7 am yesterday, with a 2 hour nap serving as a break.  I've been studying for a lab practical I have in about an hour.  What's more appropriate at this point than to write a blog?

So this lab is for ZOO 172, Human Anatomy & Physiology.  It's basically just memorize all the things.  This class is the second half of a sequence, the first being ZOO 171.  ZOO 171 lab wasn't as difficult as this is.  171 was considered a "Miami Plan" course, or the equivalent to a gen. ed.  Because of this, we had to do a "discussion group" project... which was just standing up in front of the class and talking about some kind of deadly infection of your choosing.  We did MRSA.
So that was an easy 20 points.
In 172, we don't have those groups.  We have quizzes.  And actual practicals.  Exams in 171 were like this:
The prof would come in, tell us to get out a blank sheet of paper, and fire up old projector.  Then he'd show us slides of different tissue types, or different phases of mitosis.  Easy enough.
In 172, which is now strictly nursing student, we have real practicals.  In a microbiology class I took last year, we had "real" practicals.  In a practical, there are stations set up around the lab, and you get about a minute and a half to answer 2 questions at the station, then you move to the next.
Our practical today is 40 questions, 2 questions per station.
The subject matter?
EVERY SINGLE MUSCLE, EVERY SINGLE BONE, MUSCLE ORIGINS, MUSCLE INSERTIONS, CAT DISSECTIONS, AND THE RESPIRATORY SYSTEM.
Seriously?

I think what I'm looking forward to the most is panicking over the cats we've been dissecting.  The prof will put pins in different muscles, and we have to name the muscle, origin, and insertion.
This wouldn't be so bad if I didn't have such an XTREME reaction to formaldehyde.

The first day we started cat dissections, the prof exclaimed,"FIND A LAB PARTNER!"  I had picked out mine, but she wasn't aware that I chose her.  I looked to her to see if she'd like to pair up, but some other hoe already got to her.  So I look around the room, and by God, everyone had already gotten a partner.
I was the only person without a partner.
I asked the girl who I WANTED to be partners with if I could be in her group.  She said sure.
Super duper.
The first two weeks of dissections were supposed to strictly muscles.  Strictly muscles, as in, do no cut the cat open.
The first thing the girls in my group did was split it down the middle, and then all of the cat's guts flopped out.
Great.
So I grab a scapula and try to inch my way towards the cat.  All of a sudden, it's like someone has dumped an entire bottle of Frank's chili sauce directly onto my eyeballs.  If you didn't know any better, you'd think that my entire family had been blown up and eaten by grizzly bears and I was just finding out.
I asked the other girls in my group, "Does this stuff bother your eyes really bad?  Mine are kind of... on fire."
They both just shrug and say,"No... just makes my nose run a little."

So I'm really excited to take this practical.