Brett Eldredge - Mr. Christmas

Chemical Romance

 

The Confession of an Altar Boy

An oldie for sure-- but a classic!

Little Joey the altar boy enters the confessional.  "Bless me Father, for I have sinned. I have been with a loose girl."
The priest asks, "Is that you, little Richie Sumner?"
"Yes, Father, it is."
"And who was the girl you were with?"
"I can't tell you, Father, I don't want to ruin her reputation."

"Well, Joey, I'm sure to find out her name sooner or later so you may as well tell me now. Was it Tina Minetti?"
"I cannot say."
"Was it Teresa Mazzarelli?"
"I'll never tell."
"Was it Nina Capelli?!"
"I'm sorry, but I cannot name her."
"Was it Cathy Piriano?"
"My lips are sealed."
"Was it Rosa DiAngelo, then?"
"Please, Father, I cannot tell you."

The priest sighs in frustration. "You're very tight lipped, and I admire that. But you've sinned and you need to atone. You are banned from being an altar boy for 4 months. Now you go and behave yourself."

Joey walks back to his pew, where his friend Franco slides over and whispers furtively, "So what did you get?"

"Four months vacation and five good leads!"

 

Oh, the Creativity of Kids!

What happens when you entrust elementary school children with naming massive pieces of snow removal equipment?  A blizzard of cute, creative ideas sure to give weary plow drivers a chuckle.

The Vermont Agency of Transportation invited kids across the state to come up with unique monikers for some of the department’s fleet of snowplows that will be hitting the roads this winter.  When the chosen names were revealed for “Vermont Plow Day”,  hilarity ensued.  Among the many winners (notice the definite Star Wars theme):

• Yo Bro, No Snow
• Baby Snowda
  
• Snow Day Dream Crusher
• William Scrape-speare
• Ice Will Pay the Price
• Darth Blader
• Edgar Allen Snow
• Luke Snow Walker
• Blizzard Bessy
• Powder Pusher
  
• Plowy McPlowface
• Jennifer Snowpez
• Obi-Wan KenSNOWbi

“We had a lot of creative naming,” said Todd Law, deputy division director of the agency’s district maintenance and fleet division. “It was absolutely amazing.”

Time Magazine Sinking Slowly into Irrelevance

Elon Musk, a man reportedly worth more than $300 billion dollars—almost all of which was gained during the pandemic—has been named Time magazine’s “Person of the Year.”  Sen. Elizabeth Warren responded to the announcement by writing, “Let’s change the rigged tax code so The Person of the Year will actually pay taxes and stop freeloading off everyone else.”

For at least the last six years (as Musk became one of the two richest people in the world) he has paid somewhere around 3.27% in true taxes. That’s about .00327 cents on every one of his billions of dollars. Since 2018 (as his wealth has skyrocketed) Musk has probably not paid anything at all in income tax. In October, Musk’s Tesla was ordered to pay out nearly $137 million to a Black employee who sued the company for cartoonishly racial discrimination. Musk’s proclivity to  tweet out unremarkable and predictable thoughts from time to time has led to embarrassing public relations issues—like Tesla being found guilty of union-busting by the National Labor Relations Board. 

And while most people with sociopathic levels of wealth and power will at least donate some of their money (even organized crime bosses hand out turkeys at Thanksgiving, after all) Elon Musk's charitable donations have been paltry, if not nonexistent.

According to the Boston Globe, the TIME article defends its choice of Musk, writing: “Few individuals have had more influence than Musk on life on Earth, and potentially life off Earth, too. He sees his mission as solving the globe’s most intractable challenges, along the way disrupting multiple industries.”  The problem is that Musk has had little practical influence on most people on Earth, and hasn't really solved any of the globe's challenges or disrupted anything (outside the SEC, that is). 

Musk made some money from a software company he created, got richer from early digital money transferring, and then got a big payout when he was pushed out of PayPal. At that point he took a gamble by  investing in Tesla, Inc (which was founded by two other guys). Musk didn't come up with any original or innovative ideas-- he simply showed up with lots of money. The “disruption” was having the capital and willingness to invest in a cleaner kind of car.  He was later sued by the SEC for inappropriate tweeting and has been responsible for misleading public comments about COVID.

Musk recently told the Wall Street Journal that he wanted to get rid of the electric vehicle subsidies that created his astronomical wealth in the first place. This is a guy whose wealth was funded (in no small part) by literal billions of dollars in government subsidies.  Like any true “libertarian,” Musk is a self-absorbed hypocrite who only believes in a government that works for Elon Musk, and Elon Musk alone.

The kind of  hypocrisy is to be expected from a privileged jerk engaged in a dick-measuring space race against Jeff Bezos. Musk, like all billionaires, is proof of how much of a failure our current economic and government system is for the overwhelming majority of human beings.

Unsurprisingly, Time magazine's Twitter announcement of Musk as Person of the Year was utterly ratioed.  A small example:

 

Santa May Have Missed a Few Houses This Year

Enjoy Your Christmas However You Can

Mariah Carey - Fall in Love at Christmas

Another COVID Christmas

 

Santa vs. UFO's

Christmas Miracle

 

Missing the Old Office Xmas Parties?

Santa's Message to Anti-Vaxxers

Xmas Cookie for Family Get-Togethers

Gary Barlow - Sleigh Ride

The Word is Getting Out Over Tulum, Mexico

Back in October, I wrote a long post describing how Tulum, Mexico has gone completely down the tubes.  The Mexican government is loathe to publicize any bad news about its tourism sector-- but now the Mexican media is beginning to lift the veil on its dirty little secret.  Between January and September 2021, the town registered 65 murders, an 80.5% increase over the same period last year when just 36 murders took place, according to statistics from the National Security System.

And the violence has only continued. On October 20, two foreign tourists, a travel blogger from India and a German citizen were shot dead at a restaurant in Tulum, caught in the crossfire of a shootout between gangs. Three other tourists were injured.  This year has also seen attacks claim the lives of nationals from Spain, Uruguay and Belize.  And now local businesses are highly concerned that the violence is driving away tourism. In October, the German government issued a travel advisory warning about visiting Tulum, although this was later retracted.

Criminal groups are being attracted to the drug trafficking and extortion possibilities offered by this tourist hotspot.  According to David Ortiz Mena, president of the Tulum Hotels Association, large raves and dance parties have led to an increase in demand for drugs, which have attracted organized crime.

While the world shut down during the pandemic, Tulum became known for continuing to hold raves and music festivals-- which was accompanied by a rise in demand for drugs.  Extortion attempts on hotels, restaurants and visitors have also increased. “Hotel owners are alarmed because their clients, tourists, are being threatened by the bad guys. And when they demand attention from authorities, they don’t get a response,” Juan Noriega Granados, another member of the Tulum Hotels Association, told the press.

The situation has grown so dire that security forces have had to be sent in. 450 federal troops were sent to Tulum in late October, among other security strategies, following the murder of the two tourists.  While a number of criminal groups, including national-level threats such as the Zetas Vieja Escuela cartel and local gangs such as the Bonfil, have long operated in Tulum, the arrival of the Jalisco Cartel New Generation has been blamed for an escalation in violence.

Next Up for Londoners: Sharks With Fricking' Lasers

It seems that London's famous river is much more exciting than we thought. Seahorses, eels, seals -- In addition to the expected fish, seahorses and eels, the River Thames has been discovered to have venomous sharks. Yikes!

A survey by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) revealed "positive news" for wildlife, and ecosystem recovery, the society recently announced.   Surprising creatures, like sharks including tope, starry smooth-hound and spurdog -- a slender fish measuring some 23 inches and covered in venomous spines -- have been found.  Spurdogs can be found in deep water, and the spines in front of the shark's two dorsal fins secrete a venom that can cause pain and swelling in humans. 

 

Tope shark, which feed on fish and crustaceans and can reach 6 feet and up to 106 pounds, have never launched an unprovoked attack on humans, according to the UK's Wildlife Trusts.  Meanwhile, the starry smooth-hound, which can reach up to 4 feet and 25 pounds, mostly eats crustaceans, shellfish and mollusks.

 

The survey also showed that climate change has increased the Thames' temperature by 0.2⁰C a year on average, ZSL said, warning that this "paints a worrying picture" when combined with sea level rises.

Water levels have been increasing since monitoring began in 1911 in the tidal section of the Thames, rising at some points by 0.17 inch a year on average since 1990.  "As water temperature and sea levels continue to rise above historic baselines, the estuary's wildlife will be particularly impacted, through changes to species' lifecycles and ranges," ZSL warned in a statement.

 

 

GOP Snowflakes

Can't Beat Pete for an Unusual Christmas Gift

"Stand up" comedian Pete Davidson is soon to become an obsession with horny women nationwide.  Adult entertainment website CamSoda, will be releasing a sex toy inspired by the 27-year-old comedian, adorned with colorful tats.

The Davidson dildo “will help girls get off to the latest and greatest (and supposedly biggest, wink wink) celebrity heartthrob.” CamSoda announced.  “Pete doesn’t have to be locked down with just Kim. We can all share a piece of the SNL stud and get to know him more intimately,” CamSoda Vice President Daryn Parker eloquently added.

In case you thought it couldn’t get any more bizarre, the phallic prosthetic offers synchronized sessions with Saturday Night Live. When Pete makes an appearance on the NBC comedy show, the sex toy will start “gyrating accordingly.”

“As Pete graces people’s television screens on Saturday Night Live - and is permanently plastered across their timelines on Instagram with girls fawning over him - they can sync their smart dildos (aka teledildonics) to his appearances on SNL,” they added.

From Kate Beckinsale, Maid star Margaret Qualley, Bridgerton’s Phoebe Dynevor, model Kaia Gerber and most recently Kim Kardashian, Pete has been linked to many A-listers over the years.  He was famously engaged to Ariana Grande for a few months back in 2018 – who could have been responsible for fueling a few rumors about his manhood.

On Twitter, Ariana responded to a fan who asked her how “long” Pete Davidson was, in reference to a song interlude.  “Like 10 inches? … oh fuck … I mean … like a lil over a minute,” she replied in a now-deleted reply.

Pete later addressed the comments during a stand-up set. “I don’t like that she talked all that shit for my penis,” he said. “Why would she tell everyone that I have a huge penis?  So that every girl who sees my dick for the rest of my life is disappointed,” he joked.

 

The Feline Mind

Before We Can Learn From History, We Must Acknowlege It

Armed white rioters burn down the Daily Record

The Wilmington Massacre (to date) is the only successful coup d’etat to unfold on American soil--  an estimated 300 Black Americans were murdered by white supremacists.  The mass murder is a poignant reminder that white nationalism remains a deadly scourge that directly undermines democracy, decency, and liberty in the U.S.

In North Carolina in 1898, the political strategy for white supremacists of the era was to “redeem North Carolina from Negro domination,” a racist belief widely upheld by party officials and spread by the men they chose to deliver their propaganda.

One of those men was Alfred Moore Waddell, a Confederate colonel and avowed white supremacist who once served as the U.S. representative for North Carolina.

To disrupt a local government committed to biracialism, Waddell and others mobilized whites, held rallies, and led militias of “Red Shirts,” who, as the Zinn Education Project points out, were “basically ruffians on horseback” echoing the Ku Klux Klan.  As the election neared in Wilmington that November, Waddell made open threats in his speeches.

“We will never surrender to a ragged raffle of Negroes, even if we have to choke the nearby Cape Fear river with carcasses,” he said in his intimidation campaign aimed at keeping Black Americans from the polls.  During his speech, Red Shirts had taken off on horseback through the region, disrupting Black church services and instilling terror.

“The White Supremacists used an editorial by Alex Manly, the editor of Wilmington’s Black newspaper the Daily Record to stir a firestorm at the time of the elections,” the Zinn Education Project critically points out in its recounting of the day.  The editorial by Manly was a scathing criticism of a public speech from a local white woman who advocated for lynching as a means to protect white women from black men.

Waddell and his armed mob kicked off his coup by assembling with 2,000 men at the Black-run Daily Record.  In retaliation for Manly’s editorial, they busted up the establishment, vandalized Manly’s presses, and burned the whole building to the ground.  

It was, as Adrienne LaFrance and Vann Newkirk II wrote for The Atlantic in 2017, “just the beginning of an assault” which by evening, led to the murder of dozens upon dozens of Black people. The attack destroyed lives and livelihoods, upended a thriving community, forced Black Americans to flee or be banished, and only ended with a gun held to Mayor Wright’s head by Waddell.  The aging Confederate colonel installed himself as mayor and by brute force, had ejected White from his post.

Last month, two Black men killed by the white mob in 1898, Joshua Halsey and Samuel McFarland, finally received proper funerals. As noted by the NYT, the insurrection of 1898 “laid the foundation for the Jim Crow laws and voter disenfranchisement that followed in North Carolina.” For years, Black residents of Wilmington were wrongly portrayed as “gun toting instigators” and much work has been done to see the record corrected.  

The great grandson of one of the Wilmington Massacre’s victims, Joshua Halsey, perhaps summed it up best as he reflected on the need for reconciliation of an ugly past that, incidentally, still has ties to the present.  “The town needs closure,” Hesketh Brown Jr. said.  “And the truth helps bring closure if we accept the truth.”

 

Norah Jones - Christmas Calling

Gang Violence Surging in Ecuadorian Prisons

At least 68 prisoners were killed at an Ecuadorean prison where more than a hundred inmates died in ongoing clashes between rival gangs that had begun back in September.  The riot occurred at the Litoral Penitentiary in the city of Guayaquil, where police tactical units found guns and explosives.  Nearly 300 inmates have died so far this year in the country's prisons-- the latest surge in gang-related violence was the worst in Ecuador's history.  Ecuador's prisons are currently accommodating about 9,000 more prisoners than they were designed to hold, officials say.  The Litoral Penitentiary was designed for 5,300 inmates but currently holds 8,500.

At the time, inmates from one wing of the prison crawled through a hole to gain access to a different wing, where they attacked rival gang members. Hundreds of officers and army soldiers were deployed to regain control of the complex.  The deadly fight, which saw some inmates decapitated, drew attention to the growing influence in Ecuador of transnational crime gangs such as the Mexico-based Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels.

Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso insisted that his government was regaining control not only of the prisons but also of areas of Ecuador where drug traffickers had gained a foothold.  He accused previous governments of being "passive" about drug trafficking but warned that rising drug use in the country would take "more than a decade" to tackle.  He also said Ecuador would need international support from neighboring Colombia, the U.S. and the EU to strengthen its armed forces and police to combat the growing influence of crime gangs.

 

Chatty Katty

GOP's Secret Culture War

A Kansas school district is pulling 29 books out of its school libraries based on a single parent complaint, and to the surprise of no one, the books are overwhelmingly by authors of color and women authors and LGBTQ authors. At least it’s not as many books as appeared on one Texas state legislator's 16-page list.

In the Goddard, Kansas school district, after a parent complained about language in Angie Thomas’ critically acclaimed young adult novel, The Hate U Give, he went on to submit a list of other books he was concerned about, and the district pulled them all from circulation while it debates whether to get rid of them permanently.  “At this time, the district is not in a position to know if the books contained on this list meet our educational goals or not,” Julie Cannizzo, Goddard’s assistant superintendent for academic affairs, wrote in an email to principals and librarians. “Additionally, we need to gain a better understanding of the processes utilized to select books for our school libraries.”

The Hate U Give is a novel about the aftermath of the police killing of a Black teenager. It was a well-reviewed, massive young adult bestseller and it made the National Book Awards long list for young adult literature. Other entries being singled out for exclusion are the following:

• Fences, the August Wilson play that won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. 
• Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which won the 2007 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature and was included among the 2008 American Library Association’s Best Books for Young Adults, among other honors.
• All Boys Aren't Blue, an essay collection by journalist and LGBTQIA activist George Johnson that was included on best books of 2020 list by the New York Public Library
• The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood, a classic that makes frequent appearances on Advanced Placement exams.
• The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison, which the College Board actually uses as an example for AP exam preparation.

Many of the books are also on the American Library Association’s list of most-challenged books. Because this kind of objection is all too common from parents who want their kids to live in a white, straight, male-dominated world in which none of those things are questioned and no one has to confront, even through reading fiction, the horrors that this country has visited on people who do not fit that mold.  

This story is very similar to the theme of Virginia Republican Glenn Youngkin’s gubernatorial campaign ad featuring a parent upset that her high school-age son had been assigned a book containing “the most explicit material you can imagine,” a book that the commercial failed to reveal was Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Beloved.  This assault on open-mindedness is the core of the entire Republican campaign against “critical race theory” in schools, by which they mean not critical race theory but the teaching of things like children’s books about Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ruby Bridges. 

The media is failing to call out what this really is-- a viciously racist, homophobic, transphobic, and sexist campaign.  Republicans are waging an ideological war against public education and against any nuanced non-white view of history.   This is a defensive, reactionary fight against having their kids see people who are not like them as fully human, against having their kids learn that the history of the U.S. includes some very bad stuff (and not just in the distant past, either) and maybe possibly coming out with higher expectations or aspirations. 

 

Snake vs. Snake

In nightmarish news, a man’s penis began to rot after he was attacked by a cobra while sitting on the loo.

The 47-year-old Dutch man was on safari in South Africa when he ended up having to undergo reconstructive surgery on his penis because the snake which was chilling in the toilet, bit him on the pecker, causing him to suffer from scrotal necrosis (infection of the scrotum).

According to the medical journal Urology Case Reports, the man had to wait three hours before he was flown by helicopter to the nearest trauma center some 220 miles away.  “His penis and scrotum were noted to be swollen, deep purple in color, and painful on hospital admission. Scrotal necrosis was diagnosed, and he received multiple doses of a non-specific snake venom antiserum and broad-spectrum antibiotics,” it said.

The man reported vomiting and a burning sensation as well as pain that shot up from his groin into the abdomen and upper chest.  He also needed hemodialysis because of acute kidney injury before he had reconstructive surgery to fix his penis. The man spent nine days in hospital before returning to Holland.

A plastic surgeon used dead tissue and a graft from his groin to restore his penis to normal. The man made a full recovery.  And we thought encountering a lion or getting sunburn was the most dangerous thing that could happen on safari.

 

Gynecologist Refuses to Perform Hysterectomy For Ridiculous Reason

A woman took to Twitter to share a shocking experience with her gynecologist that delegitimized her sexuality.

Twitter user @RachChamp_ expressed her frustration on the platform after claiming a medical professional refused giving her a hysterectomy in case she separates from her wife in the future and decides she wants kids with a man.  “Can’t believe that today a gynecologist told me that a hysterectomy wouldn’t be considered as an option for my debilitating period pain on the off chance that I divorce my wife, my sexual orientation changes, I meet a man and decide I want children,” Rachel wrote. 

Rachel gave further context in a follow up tweet, “It’s worth adding that I’m 27 and I’ve had severe pain since I first got my period when I was 10.  I’ve had two surgeries, tried three different contraceptive pills, the mirena coil, and have tried every combination of painkillers. Nothing has helped.”

Not only is this experience extremely frustrating to read, but it also reinforces the idea that a woman’s body serves—above all else—as a means to have kids. There’s plenty of women who never want children. Not to mention, there’s tons of options for those that do want kids that doesn’t involve them being pregnant.

In the replies, many Twitter users shared their own infuriating past experience with their doctor.  “It’s ridiculous. My friend wanted tubes tied after her SEVENTH kid. Not allowed because at age 31 she is too young and might want more. SEVEN,” wrote one user.

Others used Rachel’s story to advocate for women receiving better, less intrusive, medical treatment.  “We shouldn't have to fight for medical care, if a hysterectomy is an effective treatment for a medical condition then all doctors should need is your consent. It's almost like they think women don't understand what it is! Why do we need anyone else's consent for needed treatment.”

In response to one of many Twitter replies, the original poster’s wife chimed to share her own thoughts.  “The annoying thing is I’m her wife and I have perfectly working everything, so surely if we wanted kids we could just… use mine?!”

 

Office of Special Counsel Concludes that Over a Dozen Senior Trump Officials Violated the Hatch Act

In the midst of the various investigation of Trump in New York state, as well as Manhattan and Westchester County, there is now news of  the federal investigation op into how the Trump White House committed numerous violations of the Hatch Act.

WaPo now reports that “at least” 13 senior Trump officials have been found to violate the Hatch Act, illegally mixing campaign and government events. This wasn’t just a matter of Trump telling people to disregard the Act-- it was, according to the report: “what appeared to be a taxpayer-funded campaign apparatus within the upper echelons of the executive branch.”  The list of Hatch Act violators includes Mike Pompeo, Chad Wolfe, Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette, Kellyanne Conway, White House director of strategic communications Alyssa Farah, U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, Jared Kushner, Press secretary Kayleigh McEnany,White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Stephen Miller, Deputy White House press secretary Brian Morgenstern, Vice Presidential chief of staff Marc Short, and National security adviser Robert C. O’Brien.

Trump didn’t just mix campaign events with government events. He turned the government into a virtual campaign outpost. 

Kelly Clarkson -Merry Christmas (To the One I Used to Know)

Anti-mask Duo Show Police Video of Their Assault on a Shop Owner and are Arrested on the Spot

In August, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown reinstated the state’s indoor mask mandate amid the surge of the COVID-19 delta variant. So far, Oregon has done a pretty good job of mitigating COVID-19, ranking 46th in the nation in COVID-19 deaths per capita. That's in part due to the mask requirements and the buy-in of the state’s residents, at least in heavily Democratic municipalities like Eugene, Portland, and Salem. 

But never underestimate the power of small-minded dolts like Ricki Collin and Amy Hall-- two Portland, Oregon anti-maskers, who were arrested after Hall engaged in an old-fashioned donnybrook with the owner of a local cookie store.  The doofy duo are known for going around harassing business owners for following the law and requiring customers to wear masks.  As you can see from the video, these two walked into the Crumb Together bakery in Eugene, Oregon, with their camera rolling, clearly ready to rumble over mask requirements.  But the dumbfuckery doesn't end there.

W.A.P. (Weirdly Accurate Provocateur)

Rapper Cardi became an iconic member back in the Vine days of 2014 for her famous saying “A hoe never gets cold” – and this actually turns out to be true, according to science.

TikTok user Roxanne N. Felig has shed some light on the scientific study that back’s up the hitmaker’s quote – that hoes (or women who self-objectify) never get cold.

The scientific study titled; “When looking ‘hot’ means not feeling cold: Evidence that self-objectification inhibits feelings of being cold,” was published by the British Journal of Social Psychology.

“This study tested self-objectification as a mechanism responsible for the muted awareness of bodily sensation demonstrated by Geordie girls and canonized by a quote from the iconic rapper Cardi B — ‘a ho never gets cold,’” read the report.

This means that a person viewing themselves as an object instead of a human (self-objectification) was researched to see if this had any relation to feeling cold.

Felig, one of the study’s writers, summarized what the key findings in the “Cardi B study” were and the methodology of the research.  “It seems what Cardi was saying that she was too focused on how she looked and what she was wearing to feel cold,” the TikToker said.

The social psychology graduate student added that the rapper’s quote “aligns perfectly” with the main theoretical perspective she uses to conduct her research - objectification theory.  “Objectification theory posits that when women take an outsider’s perspective of their body - so when women are highly focused on how they appear externally - it reduces the amount of cognitive resources they have available to appraise their internal states.”

So basically, when women are self-objectifying they’re less aware of things such as how hungry they are and how their heart beats, Felig noted.

Instead of interviewing study participants in a lab setting, the researchers carried out the interviews in “a busy part of town known for its nightlife” and “surveyed women who are waiting in line outside of clubs on very cold nights.”  Felig noted the research took place in Florida, where the average low temperature is in the 60s - but the nights they interviewed participants, the weather was particularly cold, and was recorded to be in the 40s and 50s.

Questions put to the participants included how much they think about their physical appearance compared to how they feel on a day-to-day basis.  They were also asked how intoxicated they felt, how many drinks they had and had a photo taken of their outfits, with their faces hidden to remain anonymous. This was so researchers could code for how much skin was exposed.

In conclusion, the researcher’s prediction –and Cardi B’s saying – was “fully supported” by their evidence.  Women with high self-objectification wouldn’t feel the cold, no matter how much skin was exposed.  “There is literally no relationship, the relationship was non-significant, between their amount of skin exposure and how cold they felt,” Felig concluded.

“So it can be inferred that they’re too preoccupied with thinking about their external appearance to think about their internal sensations.”  Whoever said that Cardi B wasn't ahead of her time?