Monthly Archives: October 2007

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Why grown men shouldn’t be afraid of babies

October 22, 2007 11:03 pm , 5 Comments ,

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.

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So busy today!

October 22, 2007 2:31 pm , 2 Comments ,

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! 🙂

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Tanya Tucker might lose her spandex jumpsuits

October 22, 2007 2:03 pm , Leave a Comment ,

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.

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I told you your kids were contaminated

October 22, 2007 1:40 pm , 1 Comment ,

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!

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Tad, you wanna tumble?

October 21, 2007 9:54 am , 1 Comment ,

Thanks for everything Susannah, mi comadre!

You would not look nearly so lumpy in that green sequined leotard.

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Family histories of childhood friends

October 20, 2007 11:27 pm , Leave a Comment ,

This morning I caught this moving story on NPR about an archaeological dig taking place on a former slave plantation in Talbot County, Maryland, not far from the town where I used to live. Thousands of slaves inhabited Wye House Farm across the Chesapeake Bay from the 1650s onward. Many of the Maryland slaves joined the Union Army during the Civil War and then came back to the old plantation to farm their own parcels of land and to build their own churches and schools. Today, ancestors of the slaveholders and ancestors of the slaves live down the road from each other. They are all watching the archaeological dig with great interest.

Harriet Lowery, a local resident and descendant of Wye House slaves, wholeheartedly supports the dig. She says (and the written quote doesn’t do her words  justice – you have to listen to the broadcast):

It’s very hard for us to find out our roots a lot of times and so to see something so real – to hear about something so real – gave me a sense of pride…it gave me a feeling of being in touch with my ancestors.

NPR journalist John Ydstie writes that:

Lowery has been tracing her family history in the area, hoping to find some small consolation that the lives of her ancestors contained some joy.

In his memoirs, Douglass recounts the killing of a slave named Demby — likely one of Lowery’s ancestors — by an overseer at Wye House Farm named Gore. Douglass wrote that Gore whipped Demby, who ran to the river to soothe his wounds. He refused to come out, and Gore shot him.

Lowery says she was deeply touched by a few small beads and pieces of pottery excavated on the Long Green and brought to St. Stephens for display.

“It was amazing to me that they had a necklace or earring. And there was one particular bowl … it reminded me of a bowl my mother had,” Lowery said. “It’s comforting to me to know at least there were some peaceful times.”

You can read more Maryland slave narratives here.

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Sketti dinner

October 19, 2007 10:32 pm , 1 Comment ,

Tonight I attended the Montessori School Spaghetti Dinner, a gala fundraising event that the children call a “sketti dinner” or alternatively a “spasgetti dinner.” We drank powdered lemonade out of paper cups and managed to maintain adult conversation over the din of students pretending to be either monsters or vulnerable peasants being attacked my monsters. Montessori has the world’s prettiest, most tattooed teachers, but they were tired from a day of molding young minds and cooking noodles. They were probably a little disappointed that no parents thought to bring a keg of beer to hide in the playground. I had a great time because I’m crazy about 1) dessert buffets, and 2) small children that other people have raised to be adorable. I heard one little girl on the jungle gym say, “I’m so shwetty from all this running.” After dinner it got dark outside fast and the kids sprinted back and forth like echo-locating bats while Darren and I stumbled around trying not to crash into playground equipment or cute outfits emerging from the night. It was like a scene from Children of the Corn but instead of a cornfield there were swingsets, sandboxes, and parents trying not to drop their cupcakes on the ground. Lastly, there were two canaries living in the dining hall and one little boy tucked himself under the blanket spread over their cage in order to stress them out to within an inch of their lives. I saw the back of his short legs and a convulsing blanket where his head should have been and I knew I had to do something. I caught the boy right before he tipped the cage sideways in order to grab a canary tail through the bars in his marinara-stained fingers. By saving the canaries, I felt like I did my good deed for the night. However our attempt at singing the birds to sleep was foiled because the little boy kept sneezing into the cage.

Excellent dinner, Montessori! May your children go easy on you Monday morning.

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Gay wizards

October 19, 2007 9:59 pm , 1 Comment ,

Dumbledore is gay. Leno is going to have a field day with that one.

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A list of requests for my gentlemen callers

October 19, 2007 10:40 am , 4 Comments ,

Dear gentlemen callers,

I have already established that I don’t want chocolate bouquets, but I think you deserve a more extensive list of acceptable tokens with which to express your feelings.

1. Mix CDs. Here is your chance to make me think of you every time I sing in my car. Selvi gave me a mix CD for my birthday, and I would marry her right now if I were a handsome Indian doctor.

2. Paper towels, organic milk, broccoli, hand soap, frozen pizzas, crackers. You know I hate going to the grocery store.

3. Gift certificates to fancy restaurants. This way I don’t actually have to eat with you to get a free meal.

4. Here is something I don’t want – diamonds. Yes, I’ve seen the commercials, and I found them really touching until I got on the meds that kicked most of my crying jags, but I don’t buy into diamond culture. Don’t get me wrong – I buy into gentlemen spending two months’ salary on me, just not on diamonds. The diamond cartel and its ad campaigns have been plugging away since the 1930s, telling us that their immortal product is a girl’s best friend. It’s not true. Diamonds are pretty, but they’re sold by scam artists. Edward Jay Epstein is one of the most eloquent voices of the anti-diamond movement (after me, of course). He wrote this piece in The Atlantic that delves into the trade.

The diamond invention is far more than a monopoly for fixing diamond prices; it is a mechanism for converting tiny crystals of carbon into universally recognized tokens of wealth, power, and romance. To achieve this goal, De Beers had to control demand as well as supply. Both women and men had to be made to perceive diamonds not as marketable precious stones but as an inseparable part of courtship and married life. To stabilize the market, De Beers had to endow these stones with a sentiment that would inhibit the public from ever reselling them. The illusion had to be created that diamonds were forever — “forever” in the sense that they should never be resold.

Lots of other folks have written on the subject. From Meghan O’Rourke’s “The Trouble with Engagement Rings“:

In 1919, De Beers experienced a drop in diamond sales that lasted for two decades. So in the 1930s it turned to the firm N.W. Ayer to devise a national advertising campaign—still relatively rare at the time—to promote its diamonds. Ayer convinced Hollywood actresses to wear diamond rings in public, and…encouraged fashion designers to discuss the new “trend” toward diamond rings. Between 1938 and 1941, diamond sales went up 55 percent.

Lastly, so you know that this post is just an excuse to sermonize, an interview with Janine Roberts, author of Glitter and Greed: The Secret World of the Diamond Cartel.

Eighty years ago, your great grandparents didn’t do this when they got married. They gave each other big wooden boxes and simple things like promise rings and hope chests. The allure of diamonds is part of a huge, century-long conspiracy by the diamond industry, namely giant De Beers, which controls stockpiles and sets the price of stones, which aren’t the rarest in nature, even though they’re the most expensive.

I am hoping that the word “conspiracy” will increase traffic to my blog.

5. Gentlemen callers, just give me the cash that you would have spent on a diamond.

6. I’m also fresh out of toilet paper.

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Aww…Men from the 70s steeped in catnip are so cute

October 17, 2007 11:02 pm , Leave a Comment ,

Lion reunites with her two gay daddies.

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