Jenn Martinelli Blogging in Boston

Seriously folks. First of all, thank God there is at least one journalist who hasn't hopped on the "China is so amazing!" train.

Yes, remember human rights violations?

Remember the Tiananmen Square massacre? I do.

Remember the little old ladies sentenced to hard labor? The lack of freedom of speech or the press? Google conspiring with the Chinese government to change facts?

I mean Jesus Christ, wake up everyone. What the fuck do you think is going on here? I'm sure there are very nice people in China and that the NBC reporters enjoyed going on their little human interest trips to visit various people in small villages with amazing stories, etc. But if we actually care about these wonderful people we're introduced to in these little side stories, then we should care that they live in a country with an incredibly repressive government which wields total control over their lives.

Do we all need a lesson in the whole "We have lots of freedoms we take for granted in this country" vein? (Don't worry, the Bush administration will continue to chip away at those for as long as possible.)

Honestly, I find the blind eye most of the press turned to pretty much everything China does very disturbing. It's their job to tell the truth. Even if nobody wants to hear it. (But I guarantee, there are always some people who do, by the way.)

OK, here are just a few from our Maine trip, since I'm on a roll...

Road sign on our way

A glimpse of the coast

Our cottage at Hutchins' Mountain View Cottages

View of Cadillac Mountain from our cottage

Me and Billy!

Billy worn out in the car

I could have sworn this was called Misty Harbor but I can't find anything called that on the map. If that wasn't the name of the Harbor it was the name of a road or something right there because the point of this photo was it was supposed to be of a nice view of the coast and ocean but there was too much fog to see anything, and I had just seen the sign saying Misty Harbor or Misty Harbor Road or something.

We were frustrated because we were supposedly on a scenic drive, but saw no scenery!

Here are just a few. I also have to put up all my photos from my family's visit, and pics from last weekend when robreed and I took Billy to Maine!

Hester is super excited about the ocean!

Hester playing in the sand

Hester at dinner Thursday, bein' a turkey!

Hester gets wild with her crayons!

Hester in the ocean at Pleasant Bay

Thanks for having me, Clementine and Hashbrown! It was great to hang out and relax, very fun to spend so much time with you, and of course so great to spend so much time with Hester!

Came back from the cape last night, where I spent a very fun couple of days with Clementine, Hashbrown, and Hester. It was very fun, very relaxing, and I only got a little bit sunburnt. Tons of pictures to go through. I will post a bunch soon as well as make a disc of all my photos for Clementine and Hashbrown. Stay tuned!

Quote just now on the score a Chinese gymnast received for her balance beam routine:

That's a high score, higher than her qualification score. Too high.

Apparently that's it though. Everyone just moves on, the Chinese gymnasts keep magically always getting "too high" scores and that's fine.

I think our next Olympics should be in Russia and the non-Russian competitors can show up all bruised and beat up and insist "nothing happened" to them.

Why do I care? Because I really hate cheating.

Seriously, have you listened to his commentary on the Olympics so far?

Lucky for me, fair readers, I have also suffered through years and years of his commentary on the televised coverage of the Tour de France.

He was making me murderously angry last night during the gymnastics coverage we were watching. It could have even been Tivo'd, I'm not actually sure when it was on, but it was during the tie-breaker controversy with Liukin and He Kexin.

First of all, we'll ignore the fact that all the Chinese women's gymnasts except for one are about 11 years old. Very fair China. Thanks for hosting this great event in your wonderful country and being so hospitable and also CHEATING.

Anyway, Al was going on and on about how complicated the tie-breaking procedure is. He wouldn't stop. Turns out the "complicated" process is that the next lowest score is dropped from each contestant's scores. Sounds pretty simple, Al.

One of the commentators who knows what the fuck he was talking about was trying to make a more useful point and Al jumped in, interrupting him to blather about tie-breaking some more. I wanted to stab my eardrums with a pen.

Dear Albert,

You should first learn how to use a computer. This will help you when your "screen goes black". It will also help you realize how to do things like monitor your credit card accounts online and also use Expedia's site correctly.

Then, after you're sure you can handle these tasks, you can try booking tickets again online. But if your "screen goes black" again, I would just recommend putting the computer in the garbage and driving to the airport and walking up to the counter to buy your tickets. This seems like the best solution for you.

Sincerely,
Jenn

Failblog.

Also, please make sure you see today's video of a girl in another country's American Idol take (I know the U.S. version wasn't the original) singing a really special version of "Without You".

That is all.

Hey, check out the really cool stained glass lamp my baby brother Brian made!

And here you can see it in a gallery of sample works online.

Cool, right? That Brian. What can't he do? (Hint: if you guessed play piano and guitar, draw, or do better in school than me and Dan, you'd be wrong. He can do all those things. And lots of others too.)

Officially he's employed as an architect, by the way.

robreed just told me that Michael Phelps gets to eat (has a goal to eat) 10,000 calories a day and that he eats whatever the hell he wants.

Oops, should have been a professional swimmer. I guess the odds were already stacked against me when I couldn't even swim well enough to save my life until I was like 9 years old.

SIGH.

So my parents were in town this weekend and we had some fun times with Dan and also Clementine, Hashbrown and Hester.

Here are some photos to whet your appetite. I am still going through them and will post the whole collection once they are organized.

Keyrock giggling over his ridiculousness in Salem.

Mom smiling when we were picking up Dan for dinner.

Dan playing guitar at the sculpture garden on Saturday.

And of course, Hester!

Seriously?

You are FUCKING CRAZY.

I am speechless to even address the complete insanity of this C-R-A-Z-Y ad.

I will just say what I've said before - you will NEVER get everyone in the world to be vegetarians. IT WON'T HAPPEN. So stop being FUCKING CRAZY and do something that will actually help animals if you care about them so much. Why don't you encourage people to make choices about buying meat and other animal products in such a way as to support family farms instead of factory farms? Why don't you tell people how important it is to buy eggs from cage-free hens and etc., etc., etc.?

Why do you have to be so totally fucking inappropriate and out of your goddamn minds?

I HATE YOU SO MUCH.

HATE.

HATE.

HATE.

Watch this awesome video Rob made comparing the commercial Apple put out to tout the speed of the 3G network for the new iPhones... he compares it to the actual operation of the same tasks on a real iPhone in the real world on the real 3G network.

I hate you and I hate your stupid sons and the fact that now I have to look at them on your dumb commercials. I hate your dumb jingle and your stupid logo and your stupid name.

I wouldn't buy furniture from you if it cost $5 and was made out of diamonds.

Because I saw no fewer than 3 quite prominent ASS CRACKS on various ladies in our fine city in the course of one 24-hour period, and I wasn't even looking for them. I'm sure if I had been I would have seen many more.

Along with all my cautions about skinny jeans and properly colored underwear under white things, I must now add the following obvious cautions for women regarding their private areas:

1. First of all, your ass crack is a private area. Random strangers in public should not be accosted with it.
2. If you honestly do not have a single friend/significant other or any sort of companion who can tell you when your ass crack is hanging out, play it safe and wear high-waisted everything. With a belt. And possibly suspenders.
3. Please, ladies, if you are going to wear low-waisted pants (hey, I get it, I find them very comfy and flattering in general) I beg you to just be CONSCIOUS of what's going on in the lower back area. I am quite certain that I have never once shown the general public my ass crack. Try wearing a shirt that goes below your rib cage. Or, you know, noticing the breeze ON YOUR BARE ASS.

For God's sake, seriously.

Two lovely scenarios that I just witnessed taking Billy the dog outside:

Scene 1

There was a girl standing outside talking to a friend when her rather excitable dog (maybe a puppy) pulled its leash out of her hand and took off. She was chasing it around in the road amidst kind of a lot of traffic in a panic while the dog of course merrily ignored her, loping around the general area.

Some fucking douchebags on the stoop next to mine called out "Get hit!"

When a guy who I think was the person the girl was talking to before the dog escaped said, "Shut the fuck up!" on his way past to go help her grab the dog, the original douchebag continued, "I'm just saying, that dog is all 'that bitch keeps me locked up! I want to run around!'"

What the fucking fuck? Seriously. That guy needs to get whacked in the face with a fucking baseball bat.

Fortunately, she quickly caught the dog and all was well. But she then sat on the curb looking panicked and distraught petting the dog. Obviously upset. Because, you know, she's probably a human being unlike the piece of fucking garbage yelling from the front step where it's apparently AWESOME to hang out at 12:30 in the morning.

Scene 2

On my way back across the street with Billy, I walked past a guy sitting on the curb at the gas station screaming into a cell phone, "Oh there's gonna be trouble if you don't leave right now. If you don't leave I'm calling the cops. Are you leaving? You're not leaving? You better come pick me up right now. You're not picking me up? Oh, you're not picking me up? You're seriously not picking me up? YOU'RE SERIOUSLY NOT PICKING ME UP? YOU BETTER PICK ME UP RIGHT NOW!"

Um.

Awesome.

One of the indictments of civilizations is that happiness and intelligence are so rarely found in the same person.

William Feather