Answerthis' Insights

I was flipping through the channels on my television this evening when a certain program title caught my attention. The title was "Raising 16 Children". Upon reading it I started laughing, picturing in my mind what a living nightmare it must be inside that household. Intrigued, I decided to watch a few minutes of the show. About fifty minutes later, near the end of the show, I said out loud: "Those people are out of their minds!" To give you a quick summary of the show, it's about a family (The Duggars) composed of 16 children, and two nutty parents who obviously haven't heard of birth control. The show follows the super-sized family throughout their daily routines, vacations, etc. After doing a little bit of research on the web, I've learned that there are a total of four episodes about the Duggar family, all of which air on the Discovery Health channel.

My first impression about these people, besides the fact that they were absolutely nuts, was that there was something which wasn't quite right in the household. Now, in a home where there's 16 children running around there isn't much that's right to begin with. However, watching this episode about the Duggars was like watching a Twilight Zone eipsode. Finally, it hit me: all of the children were like little clones of their mom and dad. None of the kids were running around, like normal children. In fact, none of them were doing much of anything that normal children would do.

Instead of playing a game, or having fun with a friend, all 16 of those children were constantly doing chores. Now, I am in no way opposed to having children do chores. However, I am opposed to having a child who is only one year old helping to do the laundary. I mean, wake up Duggar parents! You aren't letting your children have any childhood! To make things better, the genius parents had decided to homeschool their children. This made it so that their amount of social interaction with the outside world was basically nonexistent. What I found even more amusing was the fact that the mother was the one running the whole homeschooling routine. Now, let's think this over for a minute: The person who is teaching 16 children their math, english, science, history, etc, is also the same person who decided to have 16 children. Something about that seems extremely wrong.

In my not-so-humble opinion, that husband and wife (and anyone like them) need to be slapped across the face, because maybe that will cause them to wake up and look at how much they have screwed up not only their lives, but also the lives of their children. The more and more of thought about this entire situation, the more and more I felt sorry for the children. None of them will be able to go to college, none of them will ever be able to get financial assistance from their parents when they start to build their own family, and none of them will ever have gotten the attention or emotional support that they needed during their young lives. So, as I said earlier, not only had the Duggar parents ruined their own lives, but they had flushed the lives of their children right down the toilet.

Upon doing a Google search for the word 'Duggar', I discovered that there's a forum dedicated to the show. As I read through some of the posts, I couldn't help but notice how the people who said anything that went against the Duggar's way of life/thinking was quickly told that they should shut up and that they had no right to judge the family. However, I disagree with that. Just as one of the people said on the forum, if the Duggars didn't want to be judged and criticized, then they shouldn't have allowed their family to be put all over the television and internet.
Oh yes, the Duggars had even invaded the net. This super-sized family couldn't be happy with just one website ... no, they had to have three.
Anyways, getting back on topic, once you put your face on global television and the world wide web, you'd better be ready to accept all of the stuff (both good and bad) that comes your way. I just couldn't get over how when one person said that the Duggars should stop having kids, a bunch of other people came screaming with ALL CAPS that the Duggars, and any other family, is allowed to have as many kids as they want. It's funny to see those same people talk about how no one should be judgemental of the Duggars, and how only positive comments should be posted.

Well, here's a message for all of those people: 16 kids is too damn many. I mean, honestly, there's no excuse to have that many kids. My favorite post on the forum was made by a person whose username is 'katr1979'. This is just a portion of what she had to say: "I must plead with the Discovery Channel not to feed into this anymore. Don't buy them furnishings for their home, buy them a lifetime supply of birth control, they need that a lot more." And I almost forgot to mention: not only is the Duggar family getting global attention, but they are also being funded by the Discovery Channel and TLC.

In conclusion, the Duggar mother must be happy at the end of each day knowing that she'll never have to do another chore in her life (since her kids do all of the housework, and yes, I mean ALL of it) or have to worry about paying another bill. In addition, the Duggar daddy must be terrified knowning that he's stuck with his lunatic wife for the rest of his life, since if he ever decided to get a divorce, the child support would take every last penny he had. So, to the Duggar children, I have this to say: Learn from your parent's mistakes. Don't have so many kids that you need a bus to take them anywhere. In fact, you'd better get as far away from your parents as you can, as fast as you can. And last, to the Duggar parents, I have this to say: It's people like you who are ruining this world. If you're going to keep popping out kids, move far away and don't involve other people in it. Your situation is so pathetic that you put rabbits to shame.

It's been a while since I wrote my last blog entry, so I decided I would be nice and write a new one. A few weeks ago I went to a concert (at which some different bands were playing) and had the surprise of meeting one of the bands. The band's name was Sugarland, and when I had listened to them perform their music (a few minutes before I knew that I was going to meet them), I must say that I wasn't very impressed. So, I got up in the middle of one of their songs to go get a hot dog. On the way back to my seat, one of the band's stage crew walked up to me and asked if I wanted to go backstage to meet them. I hesitated for a second and was about to say no (since I didn't like their music very much) but then I thought that I'd accept the offer since I could always sell something they'd autograph on Ebay. Instead of getting to go back to my comfy plastic seat in row 3, direct center, I had to stand in a line with a bunch of people who were waiting to go backstage. To make a long story short, I got to go backstage and meet them after standing in that line for about half an hour. It was nothing special, the two singers of the band just signed my shirt (which I am thinking about selling on Ebay) and then I left. Even though I was half tempted to tell them that I thought their music sucked, I restrained myself and just smiled.

The next day I left for another vacation. I traveled to Philadelphia, PA and Washington DC. Looking back on the two places I'd have to say that I liked Washington DC a lot better than Philadelphia. There was just so much more to do in DC than there was in Philly. I could probably spend a good month in DC and still not see everything there is to see. All in all, I had a blast on the vacation. There was only one point during it that I got aggravated (which is not something you should get while on vacation). "When did I get aggravated", you ask? It was while I was taking a tour of the capital building and I went into the House of Representatives. Since the House was in session, I was able to sit on the balcony and watch them work. And work they did! (I'm being very, very sarcastic when I say "work".)

As I looked over the balcony railing, I couldn't believe what I was seeing. There weren't more than two dozen people on the whole floor! I don't know exactly how many members there are of the House of Representatives, but I do know that it's a lot more than I saw. And while I sat there, looking at the people below me, I began to get angrier and angrier. There was one Representative who was giving a speech about a bill he was in favor of, and I swear that there was not one person on the entire floor who was listening to him. The people that were down there were either messing around with their Palm Pilots or attempting to sleep. As I witnessed this, I thought: Wow, this is our government in action. It's no wonder why nothing gets done in the US government! When I asked my tour guide why there was barely anyone on the floor, she told me that most members of Congress very rarely actually sit and listen to the speeches. She said that the vast majority of Congress members just watch CSPAN from the comfort of their offices. So in other words, a Representative or Senator's most valuable tool is a television.

Something about that just doesn't seem right. The entire purpose of the House of Representatives and the Senate (Congress) is to allow the sharing of information and the exchange of ideas. If everyone is sitting in their separate offices watching a TV, that's not happening. As I sat there, I realized that I was watching the entire foundation of our government being chipped away, one television set at a time. Even though it was frustrating to watch, and I walked away from the balcony angry, I concluded that it had been an educating experience. And looking back on it, it's one experience I think every US citizen should have. I now strongly believe that every single American citizen should, once in their life, pack their suitcases and head to DC so that they can sit on that balcony and watch their own government at "work" before their very eyes. Because frankly, it's a real eye opener.

I think I've ranted and raved on the subject of the US government enough for one blog entry. So, I'll step off the soapbox and just say this: it's good to be back home after this most recent vacation, and I'm glad to be back to my old computer work. No matter where you travel in the world, it's always nice to come back home and lay your head down on your own pillow.

I just logged into the Proboards support forum (located at support.proboards.com) to check on one of my recent posts, and upon viewing my profile, I noticed that something was different ... my rank! Now, this wouldn't have been a bad thing if my rank had gone up. However, it had gone down. And not down just one rank level, but two. So whereas I was a ProMember, I am now only a Full Member. In addition, the two extra stars that came with my old rank are now also gone. So now I only have three stars.

My initial reaction to seeing my new rank was that a mistake must have been made, and that after sending a message to one of the forum administrators, the mistake would be corrected. But then I got a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach which said that this probably was not a mistake, and that I was stuck with the rank. So, I made my way over to the General Talk board to see if this rank-change had occurred to anyone else. Sure enough, the first post on the board was about it. As I read through the nine pages in the post, I learned that one of the administrators of the forum had come up with the brilliant idea of raising the number of posts needed to reach the different rank levels. So now pretty much everyone who was a ProMember is now at least a rank lower (in my case two ranks).

By now I was furious. I've been a member of the Proboards support forum since April 4th, 2005. I have a post count of 681. I've done everything from helping people with general support questions to filling out graphics requests. I have worked extremely hard to get my rank of ProMember. And just because some admin decides he's getting tired with the old ranks, he has no right to take away what so many of us dedicated Proboard members have worked for. I decided a long time ago, back when I was a New Member, that my goal was going to be to achieve the rank of ProMember. So I posted, and I posted, and I posted some more, knowing full well that with each new post, I was one step closer to achieving my goal.

And now, everything that I had worked for, has been stripped away. If one of the Proboards admins happens to come across this blog (in the event they search Google for terms relating to new ranks and Proboards), I hope they take a good look at it, and that they reflect on what they've done. I wonder how they'd feel if they logged onto their account one day and saw that they had been demoted to just a regular member. I bet they'd be pretty upset. And in a way, I'd like to see that happen, just so that they'd get a chance to feel the same way so many of us Proboards members do right now.

In conclusion, I now have to make one thousand, eight hundred and nineteen more posts in order to reach the rank I previously had. After what has happened, I am seriously questioning whether or not I should keep my account on their forum. I may just delete it altogether. In fact, I may even delete the numerous forums I have through their hosting service. Finally, as I said near the beginning of this blog entry, I know I'm not the only Proboards member who is felling appalled. So if you're reading this and you do happen to be a Proboards member, leave a comment, I'd like to hear your thoughts on this matter.

I've had this Blog Spot account created for almost a year now, but I never did anything with it. In fact, I had completely forgotten about it until today. I was searching Google for a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse song (I swear I was doing the search for someone else) when I came upon the Playhouse Disney Shuffle blog. Since I had some free time, I grabbed a seat and started reading some of the blog entries which that person had written. In less than a minute, I was laughing as I read about the Doodlebops being "straight outta hell" and the Wiggles being a cross between Willy Wonka and the Brady Bunch.

After reading those entries I was reminded that I too had a blog account set up somewhere within the depths of the internet. So, after a period of searching my mind for old usernames and passwords, I finally remembered my Blog Spot login information. Then came the fun part: actually creating the blog. For some reason, I don't remember there being so many choices when it came to customizing the layout of one's blog. One thing that I did notice though was that someone had taken my desired blog URL (answerthis.blogspot.com), and then done nothing with it. As a result, I was forced to settle for the next best thing, answerthis1.blogspot.com. But anyways, after getting all of that fun stuff set up, I decided that I should at least take the time to write one blog entry.

In the past, I've read through bits and pieces of blogs if they've jumped out and gotten my attention. Every so often there's MSN blogs/spaces (whatever they're called) that make it to the MSN website (my IE homepage) which I find interesting to read. And, while reading through these things, one thing that I've come to notice is how well-written most of the blogs are. For example, take the Playhouse Disney Shuffle blog. There's a simple yet clever description, the layout of the blog is clean and professional, and the structure of the blog entries show in-depth thought and revision/editing. Combined, these three things make for a interesting and clever blog.

I guess the point is, bloggers like those set the standards for bloggers like me. I may be able to write a new javascript code in under ten minutes, but bloggers like the one mentioned above can create an effective, well thought-out piece of writing in the same amount of time (or probably even less). So, my hat goes off to you, the dedicated bloggers who know how to create miniature masterpieces, one word at a time.