Psst…
There’s a giveaway over at Kids Know Stuff. Just in case you’re interested.
Archive for the ‘I read things on the internet’
The Ghost of Marion Jones
Is anyone else being haunted by the ghost of Marion Jones while watching the Olympics this year? All these broken records and whatnot? I was so happy for her and so proud of her 8 years ago in Syndey, and then she got busted for steroids. *sigh* And now, while I’m very happy to see Michael Phelps excelling, I just have a little bit of a trust issue because of Marion. Anybody else?
Related posts
Curmudgeonly Ramblings
I want to blog about this so badly even though, on the face of it, it seems irrelevant to my life. When I read it, though, I found myself really identifying with the issue of dealing with curmudgeons because I feel that it is so similar to something a lot of moms experience. There is a definite hierarchy of parenting styles ranging from anti-technology to very pro-technology. Not that I care, I’m just saying. I don’t care, because I’m very pro-technology. The only parents who really care and get all desperate about it are in the anti- camp because they think we’re going to be impressed or something. Nobody cares. We just feel sorry for their kids because they’re irrelevant in their culture.
It is 2008. It is the information age and, frankly, there’s no going back. There’s not going to be an anti-information movement that will take away our internet tubes. Children who grow up now are tech-savvy. And there is nothing wrong with that. I don’t get overtly criticized (to my face, anyway) for the fact that my kids blog and they make youtube videos, but I know that some people think they’re better mothers than me and my friends because they withhold technology while we dole it out freely like so many little Ritalin pills. These are the people who would hear my kids say something about some tv show or video game or website and they would make a judgement right then and there that our family is less, well, wholesome? or whatever and then they would avoid us. Except, not really. They wouldn’t avoid us because then how would they get off on saying, “Spongebob? Never heard of it; we only watch PBS.” And then I would have to bitch about how annoying that little Canadian fucker Caillou is. I mean, my god, that kid’s voice makes me want to shoot up the joint and then declare war on Canada. It’s almost embarrassing how much I hate that kid.
Anyway, I don’t really have time to flesh this out into a real, thought-provoking post with, like, stuff to back up my opinions and whatnot, but I’m just trying to say that our children’s culture is important and should be respected. Can you imagine being the only kid in class who didn’t know how to rat your bangs so they would stick way the hell up? That was our culture and I’m glad I didn’t miss it.
Related posts
Mmm…Nuggets.
Here’s a really good reason to start eating at McDonald’s again: They’re being boycotted by the American Family Association because they are committed to the gay and lesbian community. I wonder if they made it official with a commitment ceremony, or if they’re just going around wearing wedding bands? Here’s a link to Wonkette’s commentary on the boycott, complete with the best ever comments. Don’t worry, there’s a link to the actual boycott site on the Wonkette page, but I’m not linking to the boycott because you never know who’s reading my blog and I would hate for someone to click over to the boycott page and actually sign the petition without first reading about how retarded they are for signing the petition.
Disclaimer: I don’t skip McDonald’s because of any philosophical beliefs about the way they treat their meat animals, or because of any health risks that eating there might cause. No, if I still lived in Chesaning, I would still be eating McNuggets. The only reason I don’t eat there anymore is because, why would choose their fast food if I could get fast food at Panera or Chipotle? That would be crazy!
Related posts
NOOOOO!
I can’t describe the strong reaction that I had upon reading this headline: Belgian Brewer InBev to Buy Anheuser-Busch for$52B
No! I just heard on NPR that AB was all, “You’re mean! We don’t need your money! And, hello? Cuba? Please,” and that was very comforting to somebody who grew up on Busch Light (after graduating from wine coolers and Boone’s Farm, of course). When I moved on from the watery taste of Busch Light, it was the watery taste of Bud Light that I loved. I felt more sophisticated. Bud Light was a grown-up beer. On special occasions, such as 8th grade graduation, I bought it in bottles instead of cans. In college I experimented a little bit with Bud Ice Light and Zima, but everybody experiments in college and nobody should be judged for that. When I moved to Arizona at 19 and my brother sneered over my shoulder every time I ordered my tried-and-true favorite, I branched out a little bit and started enjoying Bass Ale, which is an import, but it’s distributed by Anheuser-Busch, so it was ok.
Even though nowadays I don’t really stick with the AB brand all that much, it’s still a piece of my childhood. I don’t buy Fun Dip anymore, either, but it still holds a special place in my heart and I would prefer that it was still called Lik-m-ade like it was when I was young. And you know how at the end of the Bud commercials, the deep-voiced announcer says, “Anheuser-Busch, St. Louis, Missouri”? That just feels like home to me. If he starts saying, “Anheuser-Busch InBev, St. Louis, Missouri, Belgium, Cuba,” that just won’t feel right.
Related posts
I’m Not Reading 347 New Blog Posts
I missed you the most, Google Reader.
I don’t like my inbox to be full and I don’t like my Google Reader to tell me I have more than, like, five new blog posts to read so when I opened up the reader this morning and it told me there were 347 new items to read, I had a mild panic attack and then I hit “mark all as read” with enough force to shatter my mouse. So if somebody blogged about something super important, let me know because I so hate to be out of the loop. What if Dawn fell in a well or something? It would suck if I called over there and was all, “Hey, Brett, Lemme talk to Dawn; I missed that bitch!” and Brett burst into tears. Awkward.
We got back home last night and I’ve been grocery shopping, laundering, yoga-ing and just generally freshening since then. I suppose I eventually have to pick the hamster up from Kristen’s house. Maybe. We’ll see.
Chesaning was lovely. I make fun of it a lot, but there’s really nothing like feeling like you have two homes. My nephew’s party was tons of fun and look at these awesome centerpieces:
And look what my nephew made:
Yeah, he made that. Cool.
My sister’s youngest daughter is staying with us for a little bit so I have to go pretend like it’s fun around here so she doesn’t get homesick. More catching up later.
Related posts
For the Sake of the Children
I wrote about this before, but it still annoys me. The AP is again talking about the fact the people like to complain about the book And Tango Makes Three. Ignorance annoys me. And ignorance for the sake of the children annoys me with the power of a thousand suns. The parents who complain about this kind of book are the same type of parents who can’t bring themselves to talk about s3x* with their children, or even call their body parts by the appropriate names, instead giving them nicknames like woo woo or whatzit. Ridiculous. If you can’t say the word p3nis* to your son, good luck. Good effing luck with your head in the sand. That’s the kind of thing that puts the subject of reproduction (or *gasp* intercourse for purposes other than reproducing!) on a very high shelf, which makes it more intriguing and more attractive and then the kids find out about an awesome book like It’s So Amazing and find themselves feeling ashamed, but titillated. That is not a healthy combination. Pretty soon, because they got a taste of this forbidden subject, they’re desperate for more and since they can’t get their curiosity satisfied in a healthy way, by asking their parents about it and being provided with good age-appropriate books on the subject, that’s where p0rn from the neighbor or the dad’s stash comes in really handy (because, mark my words, the households who protest so much are the households where the dad definitely has a stash that his wife probably doesn’t even know about). And it’s not a good idea to learn about the birds and the bees from materials that are not age-appropriate and do not treat s3x as the important thing that it is. Can you say, deviant behavior?
S3x is a normal part of life and should be discussed as such with people. Children are people, just in case you didn’t know. And they have reproductive organs, even if you don’t want to believe it. Homosexuality is a normal part of life for some people and if kids were allowed to learn about it, they might feel they could come out with dignity and love, or if they’re not gay, they would be able to give their gay friends dignity and love when they come out, then we’d have less Ted Haggard situations in the world. Yeah, heaven forbid your child should be allowed to feel that his homosexual feelings are ok. It’s better if he tries to deny them and gets married and has 5 kids only to be living on the down low and blowing apart his life and his wife and kids’ lives in the process. Messy. But at least you didn’t have to explain homosexuality to a child. Horrors.
*Because there is so much deviant behavior in the world, caused by stoopid parents who won’t provide their children with non-judgemental information about one of the most normal things in life, I have to type those kinds of words like that so the deviants who google certain things don’t stumble upon my site. Stop being stoopid. And buy some books for your kids. Then let them read them whenever they want so it takes the mystery away and it becomes no big deal instead of this thing to simultaneously covet and feel ashamed about. You can start by calling their parts by the right names because if you can say those words, it’s much easier to say all of the other things you need to say over the course of a lifetime of parenting.
Related posts
I Can See Your Google.
This blog is fun for me for a lot of reasons, but the main reason for its awesomeness is because it tells me when somebody googles something and then finds a link to my blog and clicks it. That’s right, I can see that somebody googled “pants too tight right ball hurts” and then clicked on a link to my blog. WTF? You need google to tell you that you need to change your pants? Seriously, go change your pants. And then google, “why am I so stoopid?” and see what you come up with.
That’s weird, but the weirder thing is that most of my search terms have to do with anorexia (I’m not counting the person who searched for “softball butt” because, let’s face it, that’s totally not the same thing. It is, in fact, quite the opposite thing.) My number 1 and number 2 most popular search terms that lead somebody to my blog have to do with that disease. The rest of the terms are so random that they can’t even be categorized. However, I’m keeping my eye on “methamphetamine Chesaning” and hoping that it becomes a contender for the top spot. That would be cool.
Anyway, I have one post that mentions anorexia and you would have to search through thousands of google pages to even find my link. Maybe I’m in the minority, but if I google something and it doesn’t come up on the first 2 pages, I figure my question must be unanswerable. After page 2, it’s like eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. It’s just not for me to know. And by then I’m usually distracted by something shiny anyway.
I see search terms like that, that make no sense at all for this blog and then I get all wrapped up in wondering what it was the people were truly looking for and where did they finally find it? And how did they have that much stamina to go through that many pages of info? And what were they supposed to be doing all day? But I guess they don’t have to cook much, so that frees up some time. And no cooking means they wouldn’t have to clean up, so there’s that too. And you have to factor in the amount of time they save on just the eating part. Well, and the meal planning and the grocery shopping. Ok, nevermind. It makes a lot more sense now. I don’t know what I would do all day if my day didn’t revolve around the choosing and preparing and consuming and cleaning up of food for myself and certain others in this place, but I suppose I might spend a teensy bit more time on the internet clicking random links. It makes perfect sense now.
Related posts
Sally Kern, that’s Not OK
Oh, Sally Kern. Don’t you know that the Bible says lots of silly things that shouldn’t be taken so darn seriously? It is offensive when you say that homosexuals are a bigger threat to this country than terrorists. People don’t like that. You also said, “According to God’s word, that is not the right kind of lifestyle.” Maybe next time you give a hateful speech, you should focus on what is the right kind of lifestyle according to God’s word. This might save you some time, too, because sometimes listing the things that are apparently abhorrent to God takes such a long time. I mean, the list could get pretty long what with Leviticus outlining all of the different types of handicapped people that are not allowed near God. Who has that kind of time? To get you started, here is a partial list of activities that, according to God’s word, encompass the “right kind of lifestyle.”
- Murder (mostly illegal, but in the right context, it’s totally ok. Moses, Samson, I’m talking to you)
- Genocide (it’s important to remember to kill not only the men, but the women, children and animals too. Joshua, Moses, Saul, you little scamps)
- Incest (Abraham and Sarah? I can see you blushing from here. Don’t worry, you’re hardly alone.)
- Polygamy and concubines (adultery is a no-no, but if you have a concubine or some bonus wives, that’s quite different)
- Slavery (especially ok if you’re selling your daughter to pay off a debt)
I’m just saying. Maybe people will respond to you more favorably (i.e. less death threats) if you tell them what God likes instead of what He doesn’t like. Try that next time and let me know how it all turns out. Take care!
Related posts
I Can See Your Dirty Pillows
Hurry and check out this post over at One-of-Those-Women (thanks Dawn). If my telling you to go look at it isn’t enough to make you do it (don’t you trust me?), here’s a quote from it:
As I signalled in an earlier post, the Male Gaze is problematic for mothers of breastfeeding babies: they use their body in a way that’s culturally challenging: they feed their hungry babies in daylight, not hidden in the shadows! One element I’ve always felt caused more reaction than not, was that mothers in photos of with their breastfeeding babies, always tend to look to the baby, excluding the onlooker. None of these sparky mothers are looking at the baby! Some are looking directly at you, is a powerful and obvious challenge. This is totally not the scenario of weakness and ‘being looked at’ in most glamour and fashion photography (and soft core pornography).
There are lots of interesting things in the post, what with the whole feminists with make-up on?!? (*gasp*) thing, but what I love the most is that she pointed out that these mothers are not looking at the nurslings. There they are, looking fashionable and gorgeous, nursing their babies, and they’re all staring right at you pervy onlookers like, “Yeah, I’m nursing a baby. With my breasts. Grow up you idiot.”
Indeed, I have lots of pictures of me breastfeeding and I could only find one where I’m looking at the camera. It was taken when Lena and Liberty were 5 months old and I’m nursing them both. They’re sleeping with their legs all intertwined under a blanket and I remember looking at them and just getting all giddy and wanting a picture of that moment. It was not too long before that that we were still struggling with all kinds of premie issues and birth defect issues that scared the hell out of us for many months. It had been a whirlwind and everything had finally been a-ok for more than a couple of weeks at a time, and that happiness just washed all over me (thank you oxycontin oxytocin) and I wanted a picture of the preciousness. I remember taking great care to make sure the blanket covered every. bit. of. skin. before Bryan snapped it because I didn’t want the film developer at Frank’s Supermarket (Chesaning’s number one grocer!) to turn me in for indecent photographs.
Yeah, um, well done.
And out in public? For as much as I knew that if anyone ever came up to me and asked me to leave because of breastfeeding my baby/toddler/pre-schooler I would say, “No, thank you,” I was certainly very quick to turn away from any spectator, thus avoiding giving off any bring-it-bitch vibes. My vibe was more of a “Yes, I’m using my dirty pillows out in public, but I don’t want any trouble. Look at how I’m looking lovingly at my baby. Aren’t we precious? Please just keep walking, just keep walking, just keep walking.” *sigh* That post makes me want to borrow somebody’s nursling (or two) so I can run about breastfeeding in public and staring down the gapers with my new and improved grow-up-you-idiot vibe. I love the internet. I wish it would’ve been alive when I was little.
