It's my party, and I'll cry if I want to.

As an early birthday present to myself, and in honor of how depressed I am to be turning 26 on Sunday, I'm just going to vent about a couple of things that have made me really mad in the last couple of days.

I saw an absolutely horrible case of "parenting fail" live last night.  I was coming back from grocery shopping, driving into my neighborhood around 10:30.  (I shop late because it's too difficult to take my son with me, but I don't want to leave him and miss time with him when he's awake.)

Now, my subdivision has this beautiful, ginormous gazebo with an elaborate fountain in the traffic circle near our clubhouse/pool/gym/main entrance.  It is tall, too; if you fell off the top edge of the fountain, it's a good three-foot drop to the next tier, and even farther than that to the ground.

Which is why I was surprised to see four kids in bathing suits playing in it, jumping around on the wall.

When I say "kids", I don't mean, "dang teenagers".  I mean kids, probably 8 or 9-years-old, tops.  They shouldn't even have been up that late, much less risking broken necks playing along on wet concrete.  There were two utterly-trashy (and inebriated) looking women there with them, who looked maybe to be the mom and grandma.  Not to sound like a total snob, but I recognize most of the people who live in my neighborhood, and these ladies did NOT look like they lived in my neighborhood.  If I had to guess the narrative of what happened, I suppose they may have come late to try to sneak in at the pool, been unable, and decided to make the most of it with the fountain.  But that's just me hypothesizing.

Anyway, if you trashy women are reading this, and if you're wondering who called the cops on you, that was me.  Maybe cut into your meth budget a little and get the kids some passes to the Y.

In totally other news, I am very annoyed by all this alleged "controversy" over the new Rihanna video, "Man Down".  It's an intense song and video and, not to give away too much, it's about her being raped and shooting the guy to death.

People are all ranting about how this condones vigilante justice and blah blah blah.  Throughout the song and accompanying video, she expresses remorse for her actions.  And it's not like it's something she plans out in cold-blood.  The timeline in the video from after the rape shows her get up, run home, grab a gun, and run back out to kill the guy.  Not exactly first-degree murder.

Also, it's totally hypocritical how many people who are up in arms about this seem to be forgetting that "Goodbye Earl" by the Dixie Chicks was near the top of the Billboard charts over 10 years ago.  And that song was about three friends of a battered woman conspiring to poison the man to death, doing so, and then disposing of his remains.  To me, that's a lot creepier than a traumatized rape survivor immediately retaliating against her attacker.

Of course, it seems to me that a lot of people hate on Rihanna without good reason.  "Oh, Rihanna wrote a song called 'S&M', so it's hurt fault Chris Brown beat her senseless and dumped her on a sidewalk."  Morons.  Chris Brown is an enormous turd, shaped into a singing, dancing, temper-tantruming man-child.  I'd pay money for a Ke$ha cd before I bought anything by Chris Brown, and her "music" sounds like a terrorist attack.

So, to recap, I can't stand:
1.)  Kids in fountains
2.)  Chris Brown

I like:
1.)  Rihanna

Huh, that list is a little uneven.  It makes me look cynical.  I need to think of something else I like, that has made me happy in the last couple of days.

Oh, I know.

2.)  Talking smack about go-kart racing with my co-workers

Eh, I'll explain later.