Daily Archives: October 22, 2007

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Why grown men shouldn’t be afraid of babies

Gentlemen, I know that sometimes babies can be scary. They like women better than they like you and  they can make you feel like a total zero by crying in your arms in front of other people. You don’t have boobs to feed them with and it’s hard to remember age-appropriate songs to sing to them. It’s all very unnerving. However next time you are in a nursery, here are some thoughts to fortify and encourage you:

1. You are much bigger than a baby. You could probably smash one under the heel of your shoe.

2. Babies are more scared of you than you are of them.

3. Bird babies eat throw-up. Human babies know that’s disgusting. Wouldn’t you prefer to wipe baby vomit off a onesie than to watch some little person swallow its own mother’s chunks?

4. You get laid more than a baby and you can hold your alcohol better. If you were in a fraternity together, these facts would make you a superior frat brother to the baby.

5. Babies that don’t talk yet are especially intimidating, because they could be thinking hateful thoughts about you. But you can use this to your advantage. You can imagine things a loser would say and then say them aloud in a baby voice. Everyone will get that you’re imitating the baby and they will laugh because everything a baby might say is stupid funny. “Sometimes I think I only have to fart and then I accidentally poop myself in public.” Secretly, you will know that the baby was just shamed. One day you can remind the baby that you won this early power struggle.

6. You really won’t drop the baby. Everyone thinks this is going to happen but it rarely does. And men tend to have bigger hands and more practical shoes than women so they are even less likely to spill the goods. If you are still worried, just sit with the baby in your lap in a comfortable chair, or if you are throwing the baby up and down, avoid doorways and concrete floors.

7. It doesn’t emasculate you to be majorly into babies. Most women find it really cool when a guy’s best friends are babies, especially if they all wear matching outfits and drink from the same bottle.

8. Here is a tip that I saw once on a television show. It’s for real and it works every time. If you have a crying baby in your arms, just keep saying “Shhhhhh” in a loud and sustained way right in the baby’s ear. This seriously works. The baby shuts up immediately and listens to you like you are God. I guess the sound reminds the baby of being in the womb. Anybody who witnesses this trick will think you’re a genius or a real life Baby Whisperer.

In conclusion, it’s always good to be fearless about babies because your girlfriend may or may not be lying to you about her birth control.

So busy today!

Should I focus on…

a) finishing my novel and then trying to get it published, or

b) figuring out how I will coax my face to look this good on the book jacket? Book jacket pics are the new MySpace photos.

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We’re all looking at you, Marisha Pessl, with your glamorous black and white publicity shot and your flashy website and your Bookslut interview. This is my favorite review of your overrated debut novel:

Over media hyped writer who has sandwiched a 200 page clever yet not very well concluded mystery in 500 pages of pretentious literary references. So great, Marisha — you’ve read a plethora of literature. Big deal – most good writers have but to thrown it into your writing to make yourself sound impressive — how sophomoric and shame on your editor for not cutting most of it out — a marketing ploy for sure. It is not so much a means of developing Blue’s bookish persona as a clever book selling idea to pack it with references to great works in literature — so that when these names get dropped in book reviews the work sounds more intellectual than it really is. Same with having the main character be a student at Harvard — ah, the mere mention of this great institution gives the character more merit than she deserves. (Why not have her go to your alma mater instead? — Barnard not good enough, huh?!!) Using great names and works of literature to beef up a so-so juvenile mystery.

People can be so mean! 🙂

Tanya Tucker might lose her spandex jumpsuits

Poor Tanya Tucker. She has to sing to the Republican Party for her supper, and now she has to battle the fire that is menacing her stage costumes:

About 1,400 firefighters battled the Malibu fire that started Sunday morning and had spread more than 2,200 acres, destroying 25 structures — including five homes, a glass company and Malibu Presbyterian Church. Officials ordered the evacuation of several hundred homes — including those of James Cameron, director of the movie “Titanic,” and singers Olivia Newton-John and Tanya Tucker.

“All my stage clothing, boots, belts and wardrobe is in that house,” Tucker said. “I have so much memorabilia since I just moved from Nashville to Malibu.”

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Why do I get the feeling that famous peoples’ homes are like museums to themselves? The only thing that relates in my life is my fridge, which is like a Wistar’s Half-Eaten Sandwich Hall of Fame.

I told you your kids were contaminated

You already know that the biological legacy of our chemical supply is my pet cause. Here’s more from a CNN article today:

Michelle Hammond and Jeremiah Holland were intrigued when a friend at the Oakland Tribune asked them and their two young children to take part in a cutting-edge study to measure the industrial chemicals in their bodies.

[The] tests revealed that their children — Rowan, then 18 months, and Mikaela, then 5 — had chemical exposure levels up to seven times those of their parents.

“[Rowan’s] been on this planet for 18 months, and he’s loaded with a chemical I’ve never heard of,” Holland, 37, said. “He had two to three times the level of flame retardants in his body that’s been known to cause thyroid dysfunction in lab rats.”

The technology to test for these flame retardants — known as polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) — and other industrial chemicals is less than 10 years old. Environmentalists call it “body burden” testing, an allusion to the chemical “burden,” or legacy of toxins, running through our bloodstream. Scientists refer to this testing as “biomonitoring.”

As usual, some defenders of the chemical legacy say that presence does not equal proof. But wouldn’t we rather err on the side of caution, especially considering how sensitive our bodies are (especially our hormones) and how these same chemicals have been proven to cause cancers and reproductive problems in lab animals?

I hate it when the news makes me preachy. I wish there were more excuses to write about funny stuff, like gay wizards. Quit screwing things up, world!