Well, what do you know…there really was a baby in there! On July 26th at 11:10pm, my daughter decided it was time to be born. Introducing Sydney James Rest!

I gave birth to this little cutie pie in a Puerto Rican hospital with NO pain medication. All I can say is WOW. There were no complications but that whole child birth thing is certainly an experience!! I will write more about that later ;)…

Did you know that men are physically able to breast feed their children (or anyones child, really)? Men and women both have all the right equipment for breast feeding, which are: nipples, milk ducts, mammary tissue and hormones (specifically oxytocin and prolactin). So if a man wants to breast feed his kid, he simply needs to have the child suck on his nipple. The nipple stimulation will trigger the hormones to be releases, and like magic, Daddy is lactating…

Even weirder then the thought of men breast feeding their babies, is the total lack of studies on male lactation. It’s like there is a total cover up of the subject. Most of the information I have been able to find is “Yes, men can produce breast milk, but nothing else is known…” or “…no one knows if mens breast milk has the same nutritional value of womens…”, etc. So you’re telling me that we can grow human ears on the backs of lab rats, successfully transplant animal organs into humans, but we can’t find out the nutritional value of mens breast milk versus women? Come on…

Don’t get me wrong, I would be a little skeeved out if I saw a man breast feeding a child, but that’s just because we’ve all been taught that that is weird and unnatural. Nonetheless, I might have to try and milk Stefan with my breast pump…for the sake of science, of course!

These new energy efficient lightbulbs have really been on my mind lately. And I’m really, really, really annoyed about them!

These bulbs are being marketed as being “green” and “earth friendly” because they save energy, BUT did you know that they contain MERCURY and need to be properly disposed of or else they pollute the plant with toxic mercury? How many times have you properly disposed of one of these curly light bulbs and NOT just tossed it into the trashcan? I ask because, I for one, have just thrown them away, because who the hell reads the fine print on the back of a lightbulb package?!

Stefan and I had no idea that we were supposed to be “properly disposing” of these light bulbs until a friend of ours who is an electrician told us what a crock of sh*t this bulbs really are. We discussed it briefly and I was even skeptical about what our friend was saying, because I couldn’t fathom that that these light bulbs, that have been so highly touted (genius marketing), could be polluting the earth. Well, read the back of your little curly lightbulb box. It’s all there.

So, what is worse? Using slightly more energy or dumping mercury into the earth? Do you really think we are going to run out of energy with the solar, wind and hydro power that is now available? Or is it really just that important to people to save $2 on their electricity bill?

I, for one, am going back to the cheaper, non-toxic light bulbs.

On 3/24 I got a “level 2″ sonogram, which is able to see the baby and its developing organs much clearer. And no, Robin, I didn’t require a level 2 sonogram because of my advanced age…haha…that is just what they do nowadays to check that the fetus is developing normally.

Here are the results:

“There is an intrauterine pregnancy containing a single living fetus in cephalic presentation at the time of examination. The placenta is grade one located anteriorly. The amount of amniotic fluid is normal. AFI = 17cm

Estimate Due Date: 7/22/2009”

I just got an email from the people that do my payroll and it was addressing changes in regards to President Obama’s $787 billion Economic Stimulus plan. At first, I thought, “Woohoo! It’ about time small business owners get a break for creating jobs”. Then I read what the “Making Work Pay” tax credit was really all about:

For 2009 and 2010, the Making Work Pay tax credit is a credit of 6.2% of a taxpayer’s earned income. With a max credit of $400, or $0 if you earn over a certain amount.

WOW! $400 whole dollars off of my taxes? That’s really life changing. Now I’ll have to borrow $400 less to pay my taxes this year! Yay! Happy days are here again! I’m soooo glad I struggled through 2008 to keep all of my employees on payroll by borrowing money to keep them employed. The possibility of this $400 tax credit really makes it all worth while! Oh wait, no it doesn’t it’s actually a huge fucking insult.

So here I am struggling to keep people employed, and the government is using this $787 billion dollars to “bail out” all of these poor, poor little banks. Like AIG for instance. AIG has received $170 billion dollars in taxpayers money to help “bail them out” and they decided to use over $150 million of that bail out money to give their executives bonuses. Nice fucking “bail out”.

And, AIG isn’t the only bank that is living the highlife off of this “relief” funding from the government. Northern Trust (a Chicago-based bank) has received $1.6 billion in bailout money, so they went on to host a series of lavish parties as well as spend millions of that bailout money to sponsor a PGA event:

“Northern Trust flew hundreds of clients and employees to L.A. and put many of them up at some of the fanciest and priciest hotels in the city. We’re told more than a hundred people were put up at the Beverly Wilshire in Bev Hills, and another hundred stayed at the Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel. Still more stayed at the Ritz Carlton in Marina Del Rey and others at Casa Del Mar in Santa Monica.”

And fancy hotels for clients and employees were just the beginning:

“Wednesday, Northern Trust hosted a fancy dinner at the Ritz followed by a performance by the group Chicago. Thursday, Northern Trust rented a private hangar at the Santa Monica Airport for dinner, followed by a performance by Earth, Wind & Fire. Saturday, Northern Trust had the entire House of Blues in West Hollywood shut down for its private party. Guests dined on seared salmon and petite Angus filet. Dinner was followed by a performance by none other than Sheryl Crow. There was also a fabulous cocktail party at the Loews. And how’s this for a nice touch: Female guests at the Chicago concert all got trinkets from … TIFFANY AND CO.”

Source: TMZ.com

Northern Trust laid off 4% of their workforce (450 employees) in December. I wonder if they were at least invited to the party us taxpayers threw?

And the truly sad part? These are just two examples of banks that got caught using bailout money for total bullshit purposes. You know all of the other banks aren’t eating PB&J and trading in their 7-series BMW’s and Bentley’s for Civics and scooters…

The government can take their $400 “Making Work Pay” tax credit and wire it on over to AIG so someone can get their Jag detailed. I sure as hell don’t want their pathetic attempt at “economic stimulus”. I can’t wait to take my business out the USA entirely.

I just got an email from Google in regards to their new “interest-based advertising” program, and it appears that Google is spying on it’s users…

“Interest-based advertising will allow advertisers to show ads based on a user’s previous interactions with them, such as visits to advertiser website and also to reach users based on their interests (e.g. “sports enthusiast”). To develop interest categories, we will recognize the types of web pages users visit throughout the Google content network. As an example, if they visit a number of sports pages, we will add them to the “sports enthusiast” interest category.”

From what I’m reading, Google is tracking which websites you visit and using that information to classify you (and your computer) with specials interest categories.

I checked out the Google Privacy Policy and it looks like Google recently made some changes to the policy (it was last updated on 3/11/2009) in order to start collection this information about your web activity:

“…To serve ads that are relevant and tailored to your interests, we may use information about your activity on AdSense partner sites or Google services that use the DoubleClick cookie…We use cookies, web beacons or other technologies to record information about what ads your browser is shown, as well as what ads you click and other actions you take on our sites and services…”

Big Brother is watching!

From the demented creative minds behind such classic songs as “Dick in a Box” and “Jizz in my Pants”, I present to you: “Im on a Boat!”

Andy Samberg from Saturday Night Live, actually has a band called “The Lonely Island” that writes and produces these hilarious songs for SnL and they even released an album titled “Incredibad”. Pretty funny stuff!

On a side note…Who knew that T-Pain was actually a human!? I thought he was just a Vocoder…

Okay, so I’ve never changed a diaper in my entire life (neither has Stefan). But, since I’m almost 6 months pregnant, I guess diapers are going to be part of my life for the next couple of years or so! I recently stumbled upon gDiapers and they sound like a fabulous alternative to the gross, plastic Pampers that are cluttering up the landfills of the world (on average, a baby goes through over 2,000 diapers per year and normal diapers are not bio-degradeable…ewww). gDiapers are a happy medium between Crazy Hippy (cloth diapers) and Average Ignorant American (Winnie the Pooh Pampers).

When I first started thinking about diapers, I knew that I didn’t want to use the standard plastic diapers, but I also didn’t think I could deal with the hassle (and grossness) of cloth diapers. Especially since we live in the tropics, I couldn’t imagine keeping my baby wrapped in plastic in this humidity. And, gDiapers seem to be the perfect solution!

gDiapers have a washable/reusable cotton outer cover, a snap in liner and a plastic-free diaper that fits into the liner. Once the diaper is used, you remove it from the liner and you can flush it, compost it (wet diapers, not the poopy ones) or throw them away! Since gDiapers are plastic-free, you don’t have to feel guilty about tossing them, if you choose not to flush or compost. The bottom line is that gDiapers are around the same price as regular plastic diapers, but they are better for the environment (they are bio-degradable) and better for your baby (they are breathable, which make babies far less susceptible to diaper rash).

I ordered our first round of gDiapers from gDiapers.com, since I highly doubt there are any retailers in Puerto Rico that carry them :). I’ll be sure to write a review after we try them out!

Nadya Suleman (if you havn’t heard about her already…) is a California women that recently gave birth to octuplets. She has been deemed “The Octumom” by the media and she conceived her 8 most recent children via invitro fertilization despite the fact that she is single, on welfare and ALREADY HAD 6 YOUNG CHILDREN.

There is no way that this women is sane, yet a doctor decided it was in her best interest (ie: he got paid) to have more children?

Nadya then had her PR people (people on welfare have PR people. I love California!) announce the birth of octuplets to the media, then kept her identity hidden while she phished for $2million from the media for her exclusive 1st interview. She didn’t get $2million, but she did have her exclusive interview with Ann Curry on “The Today Show”

Making matters worse, everything that comes out of this womens mouth is a lie! She claimed she was not on public assistance (she collects food stamps and disability for three of her older children that have ADD and autism), she claims that she receives aid from her church (when contacted by the media, the church had no knowledge of Nadya attending their fellowship, let alone receiving “aid”), she denied ever having plastic surgery (yeah, right, here are the before and after pictures), she denied having an interest in Angelina Jolie (it’s since been discovered that Nadya sent Angelina Jolie letters for over a year), etc. Nadya’s real name isn’t even Nadya! It’s Natalie!

Essentially, it appears that Nadya Suleman had this master plan to make millions off of her babies (she was demanding $2 million for her first interview AND wanted a TV show) and it is slowly crumbing before her as she is revealed to be a sociopathic liar. So now, she has 14 kids that she can’t possibly care for, no job, no money and guess who gets to pay her millions of dollars in hospital bills and pay for care for her children? ME! And the rest of the California tax payers!

Oh, and if you are wondering how a women on welfare affords plastic surgery and manicures, she’s on workers compensation and has collected over $160,000 for a “work-related back injury”. How a women with a debilitating back injury goes through several pregnancies, including carrying 8 babies in one pregnancy, totally escapes logic. Don’t ya think?

Every where I turn I hear another news story about big businesses laying off thousands of workers because of “the recession”. My mom works for Sony and she is wondering if she is going to have a job after wave after wave of layoffs. Because, you know, poor Sony must be on the brink of bankruptcy because of this crazy “recession”! There only choice is to fire (or force into retirement) thousands of their loyal employees. Right? Well, according to Sony, profits will now come in at a mere $1.54 billion for the fiscal year ending in March 2009. Yes, Sony profited $1.54 BILLION dollars. As in, after they paid all of their employees and expenses, they walked away with $1.54 billion dollars last year. Good thing they laid all those people off! Otherwise, they would have only made like $1,539,000,000.00.

Now I’m sure you’ve seen Caterpillar splashed across the news because they have been “forced” by “the recession” to lay off tens of thousands of their employees. Caterpillar reported revenue of $2.9 billion for 2008 (after expenses and taxes, they profited $385,000,000). Poor, poor Caterpillar :(!

Now why would businesses like Sony and Caterpillar use a supposed recession as an excuse to lay off employees? Because that way people feel sorry for Caterpillar, rather then become outraged that they would lay off “lifers” (employees that have worked their entire lives there), so that the company can look better on paper. Look shareholders! Profits are up $2million from last year (because we fired a bunch of loyal employees)! Yippy!

I understand that companies (mine included) need to constantly restructure and “cut the fat” so to speak, but I just don’t appreciate them blaming their greed on the recession.