Because I don't Tweet:

I prefer calling it "Wolframite," thanks very much. So I'll just keep on doing that. Thank you.

eewwww.

My mom told me a story a few months ago; she'd heard or read about it in a Rabbi's sermon somewhere. It was basically a parable regarding personal behavior, and how you're never really alone in what you do and/or say, because the Divine Eye is always on you...

I just had a terrible, frightening realization, as I sit in bed, eating chinese takeout rice sans utensils: if, for whatever reason, I happen to be under surveillance (supernatural or just regular natural) at the moment, I am SO totally screwed!

Cakebeard: The Miniseries *Disclaimer*

*By way of introduction to today's installment, I feel that it is only fair to post my husband's thoughts on "Cakebeard: The Miniseries." He remarked that, whilst he did find the piece to be well-written, he was somewhat put off by what he felt was my uncharacteristically "mean" tone. He raised the issue that the woman involved was/is a real person, and that as someone who endeavors to practice compassion as much as possible I would be extremely unlikely, in his opinion, to adopt such a mocking tone regarding someone I knew and/or to someone's own face. (I must admit that I was more than a touch flattered by this characterization, not to mention he was/is entirely correct re: my dislike of speaking unkindly to or about people.)

However...after doing even more Google digging on the subject of the Cake-Bride, (as opposed to her doppelganger, the Bride-Cake) I have assuaged both my growing feelings of unease over any possible unintended cruelty, as well as reinforced my understanding that I was not, in effect, ridiculing an unfamiliar cultural convention without proper context.

I was initially intrigued by several references (by commentators on various news reports of this story) to "effigies" and "human effigies" playing a major part in several West African traditions. Nonetheless, I was unable to discern any traditions specific to Nigeria or even West Africa as a whole, which might be interpretable as life-size wedding cake auto-effigies. Indeed, the "effigies" referred to would seem to be specifically related to funerary and/or Animist rituals, and as such are generally attributed great spiritual significance. Keeping in mind that West African religion is the basis for much of modern Vodou, one can scarcely imagine that objects of reverence as Vodun/Vodou fetishes would be subjected to being publicly sliced up and eaten. Additionally, the practice of Vodun itself appears to only extend as far east as Benin, and not to be a mainline practice in Nigeria itself. There also appears to be no historical tradition in Nigeria of even consuming Western-style wedding cake; several sites mention cola, beef, yams and palm wine as traditional wedding delicacies. Western-style weddings do appear to be becoming the norm in Nigeria, due to increasing incursion by Christian Missionaries, but this appears to be fairly recent, and in many rural areas traditional/polygamous marriages remain the norm.

I was particularly struck by what seemed to me a distinctly patronizing and paternalistic tone present in many comments and blog posts pertaining to the Cake-Bride. A surprising number of people mentioned ostensibly (and dubiously) similar Ghanaian practices; essentially the equivalent of attempting to explain Canada's fondness for Curling by citing the Central American obsession with soccer. (Ghana and Nigeria are separated by several other independent postcolonial nations, each with its own unique language/s, tribal cultures and traditions.) There also appeared to be a trend to write off the C/B display as merely a quaint foreign custom, and as such one which should be above reproach and/or criticism by Westerners. Several went so far as to accuse others of "racism" for finding humor in the story. To my mind, the above commenters, whilst undoubtedly sincere- even laudable- in their desire to convey respect for cultural diversity, fall into common trap; they attribute personal quirks (both good and bad) to cultural misunderstanding...in the process stripping the human in question of their individuality. (The above thinking is also used, though with perhaps less sincere motives, by individuals attempting to excuse their own less appealing qualities. I once worked with a woman who constantly attempted to excuse/explain her constant rudeness to customers with the refrain, "I'm Boricua!" as though that somehow negated the need to not sneer and roll her eyes at paying customers...)

Last of all, I discovered during my perusal of several online articles (published by major news syndicates) that the coverage of the wedding was no matter of happenstance occasioned by a slow news day or a coincidentally related mass-media event. The woman in question appears to have assembled and distributed press packs to at least 2 media outlets, and perhaps more. As in the case of the Duggar adults, (of whom I have previously written) I hold myself here to a general standard when discussing/satirizing media figures: does or should the individual/s involved have a reasonable expectation of privacy and inferred respect? My best means of determining this is largely based on the behavior of the individual when dealing with the media, specifically whether they deliberately sought to make themselves into media figures, and whether their media seeking is/was driven by events in their own control, e.g. Sarah Palin vs. Mark Klaas: Mrs. Palin has actively sought public recognition and aggrandizement, and has made a large number of specific comments regarding her views on government spending, family and morality. Therefore, it is in my opinion unreasonable for her to claim that her privacy and reputation are infringed upon by the publication of unpleasant and unflattering truths involving the aforementioned subjects. Mark Klass, conversely, has been accused by "rival" anti-crime activists of using his daughter's horrific abduction and murder as a means to gain media prominence and donations for his KlaasKids nonprofit foundation. While I do not disagree that Mr. Klaas does often interject himself in media coverage of missing/murdered children, all evidence points to his simply taking such opportunities not for personal gain, but to increase awareness of his foundation's work to protect children on a national scale. Therefore, I would not consider it appropriate for me to investigate and expose Mr. Klaas' personal, possibly unflattering quirks for the purpose of satire; I have NO doubt that, had he the choice, he would gladly forgo any wisp of fame if he could have his daughter back unharmed.

My synthesis, then, is this: until/unless I discover and/or am presented with further clarifying information, I will consider the subject of the Cake-Bride open to light satire, and wish to also make clear that "Cakebeard" is a fictional satire, and I in no way am presuming to accurately re/present the genuine individual who inspired the narrative. My intention was, and remains, only to light-heartedly caricature a particularly fetching facet of this wonderful, crazy, silly, confusing and delightfully prismatic mosaic of this American media we so dearly love to love...

In Summation:

America's Media Sweetheart

Anything Beats "Sherri," Right? So Get Ready For Anything!

So, whilst doing my usual daily trolling (err...better make that "trawling") of the intertubes today, (as The Child took yet another 8+ hour nap beside me, exhaling a steady, snorey cloud of narsty-smelling sick breath...) I came across this. Now, as the fiercely patriotic granddaughter of proud immigrants, I enjoy reveling in this seething smelting-crucible of weirdness we call America as much as anyone. In fact, make that way more than anyone; I have either a very high or very low tolerance for weirdness, depending on how one looks at it. In any case, I'm a devoted peon of the weird, the bizarre and the macabre, and an unashamed one at that. But seriously- seriously- folks, the video above gave even me pause. Also, indigestion-by-proxy, which I didn't even know was possible. Seriously!!

Okay. So, in her interview, the bride (who, btw, quite disturbingly does not look nearly insane enough for my taste...I want to be able to spot someone like this coming from at least 3 blocks away.) becomes quite visibly and audibly choked up with emotion as she describes her "childhood dream" to be, um, rendered life-sized in cake and carved up in effigy by...herself!? She then manages to slip in the mysterious comment that, while the aforementioned auto-effigy consumption fantasy was indeed the fulfillment of a lifelong ambition, she "didn't get it all." Okay. so: "didn't get it all." Wait. What!? "DIDN'T GET IT ALL!?!?" WTF could possibly have been another component of her wedding fantasy so important that is bears mentioning in a TV interview about your INSANE EFFING GIANT CAKE MONUMENT!?! Now, I had noticed that the story mentions that this rather, erm, shall we say "unique" fantasy had its genesis in her Nigerian childhood. Thus, in the interest of fairness, I did some brief google-assisted research into Nigerian wedding traditions. As it turns out, Nigeria does in fact have some unique wedding traditions. (Many of which, incidentally, are being lost due to the incursion of Christianity and the desire of "modern" couples to adopt a Western aesthetic. Sad, but unrelated.) Some of these traditions include "Hen (bachelorette) Parties," a ceremonial palm wine toast and an elaborate (and gorgeous!) bridal headpiece constructed of folded and tied cloth imported from India. But nowhere did I find even a single mention of either an enormous bride-of-cakenstein or the elusive, yet surely even more mind-blowing, "all" mentioned by the bride in the video. (Okay, I admit I'm flying blind here; I just can't see something like a palm wine toast being eighty-sixed as "too much" or "over the top" from a wedding including a cake body-double.) Therefore, out of the kindness of my heart (and the twistedness of my mind) I would like to propose several means by which this bride- constrained by budget to an uncharacteristic demureness- might be properly dignified via that medium which bestowed upon her her initial renown.

I give you, lucky readers, the first look at my stunning new series and film treatments. No need to thank me. Really. No, really! Keep reading; you'll see...even having a close family member in The Industry has not prevented me from accumulating an almost unbelievable, total lack of scripting skillz! Remarkable!

First up, "Cakebeard: the Miniseries."

Synopsis:

An innocent Nigerian immigrant of meagre means labors long hours as a night doorman in a luxury New York co-op as he attempts to save enough money to bring his aging parents to America. He meets a mysterious, sternly beautiful young Nigerian woman in the course of his duties; she is a frequent visitor to the otherwise (apparently) empty penthouse condo. He is drawn in- against his will- by the aura of (mysterious!!) tragedy which surrounds her...or is that merely her scent? A scent...mysteriously(!!) reminiscent of...bakeries?! He is hopelessly intrigued.

After several months of mysteriously(!!) beguiling small-talk, the immigrant (let us call him "Michel.") is working one night in the basement of the building, in an area where residents are provided with stall-like storage spaces. He hears the sound of something heavy being dragged, and when he goes to investigate, the beam of his flashlight picks out the struggling figure of...his mystery(!!) woman! She appears to be trying- and failing- to pull a large burlap sack of something(?) across the uneven cellar floor. Michel finds that, once again, his nostrils are assailed by a powerful, sweet scent. He steps forward to offer his assistance, and, after demurring several times, the woman (let us call her "Carmela") relents and allows him to finish hoisting the heavy sack into the locker and securing it.

Fast-forward to several hours later, and the two are locked in passionate-yet-ultimately-chaste embrace in the luxuriously furnished, though dusty and abandoned-feeling- penthouse condo. Michel divulges his long-held, distant fascination with Carmela and in a gush of emotion she invites him to come visit her that weekend at her "true" home...a resplendent-sounding estate in Westchester.

Michel counts the seconds until the weekend, when, shaking with anticipation, he doffs his doorman jacket and hat and hops the express train to Westchester. He finds Carmela waiting for him at the station in an elegantly-appointed refrigerator truck. Together, they drive in nervous silence to the gates of her estate: an imposing, yet elegant and elaborate wrought-iron confection crowned with stylized sugar-tongs. She produces a massive iron key, fits it to the cherub-faced lock, and together they begin a slow ascent up the impossibly lengthy-seeming, darkly-shadowed drive...

More installments to come...if you can "stomach" them...muahahaahaahaaa

I'm Still Here...In Case Anyone Noticed

Just wanted to pop in and let my 0-3 loyal readers know that I'm still around these internetz! I ran into an unexpected spot of surgery just over 3 weeks ago, which followed a crazy few days of diagnostic testing.

However- I am once again back in full effect, as it were, and nearing the end of my road to recovery! If all goes as expected and hoped for, I should be increasingly loud, rowdy and busy in the coming weeks and months.

Expect it!

I am both too old and too young for this!

So The Child is still working Its way through the bout with Fifth Disease. And the DH is working his way through a bout with...I don't even know. Something vile, and vicious and involving his poor respiratory system. And what of yours truly? Well, I seem to have magically (at least thus far) been spared all of the aforementioned yuckys and ickys, but have instead been graced with a manifestation of Parvovirus b19 which happens to be peculiar to adult women: fake rheumatoid arthritis. As in, it isn't technically that ailment that many of my fellow Hoosiers still refer to as "the rheumatiz." It just feels like it. And looks like it. In other words: creepy, creepy creepy. And it's still barely even close to Halloween!!

My poor, barely-recovered torn ankle ligament feels (and looks!) like it's right back at week 3, post-tear, which is just plain spooky. I find myself suddenly thinking things like, "have I been wrong to have not been listening to scientologists all these years I've lived in SoCal?" But, luckily, those thoughts generally pass fairly quickly, especially when I remember that I'm way to broke at this point to be a scientologist even if I wanted to be. Also, not a celebrity enough. And these days, in California, I don't even know if the Scientologists would take me even if I was a celeb, broke as I am...nobody in this state can afford charity cases these days, even famous ones. *sigh*

So anyway, here I am , just barely 30-something, with joints that- from the knees down, at least- feel about 70 years old. And, along with my sense of youthfulness, I also seem to have lost a great deal of my newfangled, new-momist ideals regarding dealing with a sick The Child. I have now resorted to attempting to dribble cough medicine and prednisone into The Child's mouth whilst It sleeps, which makes me feel like some sinister poisoner-wife in a Lifetime Movie. (Or, as my friend brought up, "very Grosse Point Blank of (me)." LOL!) Amazing how all my hifalutin concepts go straight down the crapper after 2-3 nights of sparse sleep punctuated with frequent, heartrending cries of "MOM!! MOM!! MOM HELP IT HUUUUURRRRRTTTTS MEEEE MOM OH MOM!!!!!" Of course, by the time I am sufficiently panicked/awake enough to respond, The Child has descended once more into peaceful snores.

I've been drinking massive, and I mean massive, quantities of homemade nettle, raspberry leaf, rose hip, alfalfa and spearmint tea, all of which are reputed to have immune-strengthening and/or anti-inflammatory properties. If I don't get smoothly oiled joints, at least I'll get insanely hydrated. So there's my little silver lining. Also, the teas are surprisingly scrummy, which ain't half bad, either.

Okay, I'm off to try to stuff something other than popcorn into my face before the next outbreak of shrieking from The Child. Toodles!

Whatever Happened to Diseases 1-4??

Hooray!!

I'm back home, safe and...well, more or less sound.

So The Child has been a right little monster for the past almost-week, and I myself have been feeling more than a little under-the-weather, as well. I mean, not to brag, (okay, to brag just a little...) but The Child is, for the most part, as close to an angel as can possibly be expected from any toddler. However, in the past almost-week, The Child has manifested an almost preternatural, diametric change in temperament into a shrieking, hitting, literally crockery-flinging beast-on-wheels. And that just ain't right, right? I know!

I myself have had that charmant "did someone beat the crap outta me when I wasn't paying attention?" feeling for the past almost-week, as well. And, since I really have been paying real strict attention to whether I've been beaten or not, I did finally come to the conclusion that my problem is most likely pathogenic (as opposed to surreptitious-beatingic) in origin.

The Child, even when quite demonstrably damaged, inevitably answers "good" or "fine" to any/all questions regarding personal well-being, so a trip to the doctor was in the cards. And, hooray(!) they could take us this afternoon! After a screaming and kicking fight with The Child regarding the necessity of wearing pants when venturing out, we were off to the doc's office...thankfully less than a 10 minute drive from my garage.

As The Child and I were walking into the medical building, I noticed that Its cheeks were almost cartoonishly pink. The doc noticed it straightaway, as well, and he also noticed something else.

"Does (The Child) usually have this marking on (Its) arms? I know (The Child) is extremely fair-skinned, but this mottled-looking redness on (Its) arms...is this normal for (The Child)?"

Okay, so...whoa. No, doctor, that weird, zombie-esque mottled redness is most certainly NOT normal for The Child!! In fact, I can't imagine that it would be normal for anyone who hadn't been in recent physical contact with Rogue during the climactic final scene of an X-Men movie. Which, btw, The Child has not been filming. (I know this, because if It had, I would've been endorsing those juicy Equity checks, and I haven't.)

Our pediatrician has got his "Talking-to-the-Parent/s-Look" down to a flat-out science, and so, after pointing out the zombification that (yet another) genius-mom had overlooked, he turned and twinkled The Look out at me with particular intensity.

"(Its) ears look fine. And (Its) throat looks fine. Now, have you heard of Fifth Disease? Because what we have here appears to be Fifth Disease."

I was all, "OMG! I totally have heard of Fifth Disease! What the heck is Fifth Disease!?" Because if one thing can be reliably said about your truly, it is that I almost inevitably say something unbelievably inane and/or redundant when I am surprised. The pediatrician twinkled soothingly at me, and explained that it is "one of the childhood diseases" and that I can expect the child "to behave this way for about another 3 weeks. So just give (It) tylenol and aveeno baths as needed. And (in answer to my dawning-horror driven query) yes, it is contagious." And yes, I most likely did have "some sort of related viral infection," which would explain my enormously swollen mouth and tonsils, as well as the post-beatingesque malaise.

In my haste to get the heck out of the office and buy myself, er....uh, I mean, buy The Child some quick relief in the form of "big kid" chewable tylenol, I completely neglected to ask what TF exactly are Diseases One through Four.

Dr. Google, here I come!

Headin' On Home...

So, it would appear that my summer is finally, irrevocably- its hour come round at last- slouching off towards California to die. I've certainly milked it (not to mentioned ground, twisted and vigorously choked it) about as hard as humanly possible, but even I must admit that October is just too darned late to be stretching "summer."

I've had a truly glorious, eye-opening time back in my native state, and much of that has been related to the simple knowledge that The Child is (finally!) spending some quality time in "The Old Country," as it were. It's been wonderful to (finally!) be able to introduce The Child, in the actual flesh, to all the folks who know It only via emailed pictures, holiday cards and telephone. Also wonderful, albeit in a very different sense, has been the opportunity to partake of the first- yes, literally, THE FIRST- "girls' night out" since my marriage...which was nearly four years ago at this point. The fact that, purely by chance, the first night out led to a second one...well, that just durn near put me over the moon, as the Hoosier natives say! There was something infinitely precious to me, as a native-Hoosier-turned-lifelong-nomad, in spending an entire evening immersed in such richly-nostalgic activities as Bob & Tom humor (expounding on such topics as James Dean, NASCAR and IndyCar, natch) and beer-und-spaetzle at the Rathskellar; the evening was topped off by an equally-Hoosieresque, though somewhat more surreal, encounter with a bewilderingly polite, well-spoken and honey-voiced homeless chap on a bike. *sigh* It really don't get much better than that, folks!

Wellp, (to use another favorite nugget of Hoosier dialect) I need to run; business calls. And sadly, I'm not alluding to anything fun, filthy and/or risque...I really need to do actual, boring, lame, inane paperwork to keep my adopted home state from fining my business, which has already spent an entire freaking YEAR in the red. Admittedly, I think the state might actually need funds more than I do, at this point, but still...blugh. Nothing makes one feel less successful than paying money to notify various bureaucracies that one has, yet again, lost money...although I'm sure I'm more the rule than the exception these days.

Well, I suppose it could always be worse, right? I could have a big mortgage that...oh, crap.

Still, it could always be worse: I could be here:

(In Summation)

this is not me, yet...

mil desculpas

Dear beloved blog followers (all 3 of you...)

Apologies for not posting anything new lately. It's been a hectic few weeks, in a variety of senses and for a variety of reasons. However, I just wanted to say that I am feeling much better with regards to my last post.

Thanks

Okay

Fin

Moving Day

So this is really it. Summer has officially flown by faster than I ever could've imagined, and our lease at the rental house is up tomorrow.

I'm also finding myself significantly more depressed and anxious than I'd imagined I would be; feeling positively pulled down by waves of melancholia and stuck with a gnawing sense of regret sunk deep in my belly.

I accomplished, at most, about 15-20% of the activities I'd planned for the summer. 9/11 is rapidly and inexorably approaching, and with it the equally inexorable sense of another year of my life wasted. Yes, of course, I know, intellectually, that that is not the case; I've had another year to nurture and spend time with my family, I've managed to make a dent (albeit tiny) in the clutter and general entropy of my home, I've dealt with loss and illness as well as can be expected... it all looks, at the very least, passable. But reason has nothing to do with what I'm feeling. I'm feeling the curled-back edges, as it were, of my own mortality, and, frankly, it terrifies me.

My life, my consciousness, my everything was irrevocably transmuted and reconfigured eight years minus two days ago, and I am still discovering the true depth and scale of this ongoing transfiguration of self.

I do not use the word "transfigure" lightly. Because, while I may be (as they say in pictures) a somewhat- or at least sometimes- sadder and wiser person today, I am also someone who desires (if not succeeds) to put that sadness and wisdom to good use. And henceforth stems my melancholy. Wisdom does not assure power, nor does sadness assure action. In essence, I feel powerless because I am powerless. And this, in turn, leads to greater feelings of disempowerment, and on and on ad nauseum. (Literally! I literally feel nauseated at times by my anxiety.) All too often, I let the perfect be the enemy of the good, which of course leads to neither perfection, nor even goodness, but merely to lugubrious procrastination and self-loathing. I feel paralyzed during times of flux because I'm not doing more, which I then deal with by, well...not doing anything.

In any case, it's a beautiful day outside, and I think I shall take The Child down to the water for a last splash and a last attempt at catching my fish. I'm sure I could do more, but at least I'm doing something?

Right?

Empire of Light

I had a magical, preternatural, psychedelic, transcendent, marvelous experience tonight. I will expand on this post soon; I just wanted to get something/s down concretely whilst the aftereffects are still lingering.

The moon rising can look like an overripe cantaloupe, cut in half and illuminated from within.

Aldous Huxley was, and remains, entirely right in his assertion that the Clear Light can, and does, suddenly and unexpectedly make itself known. And, when it does, Huxley was remarkably apt in describing the experience as one of "loving terror."

I finally fell inside of one of my favorite paintings, and I was fully awake and sober: I just knew it was possible: WIN!

Being inside the painting was even more exciting than I could've expected.

I finally got to the place beyond "goal-oriented" and time flows differently there, as well: good to know.

This entire summer I've been waiting for my "Great Gatsby" moment, and I finally got it! Standing under that pale streetlight, staring up through the interlaced branches into the heavens, I knew what it was to feel as though I could climb up and up and up, "suck on the pap of life" and break free of time absolutely and finally...

The Sporting Life, aka Porgy and Bass

Summer in the country is finally drawing to a close, dragging me kicking and screaming along towards autumn and the return to Real Life. One of the major highlights of the summer was last weekend's visit by my Sister and her The Child.

My sister and her The Child pretty much stand alone amongst my immediate family members when it comes to enjoyment of what might euphemistically be called "The Sporting Life." This is not to say that my other sister and her Children are not "sporty" types...much the opposite, in fact! When it comes to golf, tennis, soccer, baseball, etc. my other sister and her Children have me beat hands down, no question! But when it comes to "Sporting" pursuits, as opposed to "Sports," I know I can always count on my (recent visitor) sister to be as gung-ho adventurous as my DH and myself. Dogsledding overnights, ice-fishing, flight school and SCUBA tours are all future vacay prospects for my sister and her The Child. They ecotour Costa Rica and ski double black diamonds with joy and gusto, while back at home, some "family" activities include sword and axe combat classes and Medieval grappling school. Hence, it was no surprise that my sister and her The Child were more than happy for a weekend filled with such Sporting pursuits as Sporting Clays and fishing off my Father-in-law's boat...despite never having previously experienced either.

My sister, who claimed to have never "been on the good end of a firearm" in her life, performed MORE than adequately when breaking clay pigeons and long rabbits, and is already researching skeet and trap ranges closer to her home turf. Unfortunately, I was on The Child duty that day, and don't have much more to add as far as that subject goes; everything above is secondhand hearsay via my DH and/or sister. (Certainly two of my most trusted sources, however...lol)

My Father-in-law was gracious enough to take all of us out on his boat...we'd originally intended to go out for bluefish, but the word was that the recent tropical storm had driven them to cooler, deeper waters offshore. Fluke season had closed early (for a change) and the stripers are still too small this time of year, so we decided to go for porgy...a new experience for everybody.

We anchored near a small sandy island, and started chumming. We had clams and (terrifying!) sandworms for bait, and soon had our lines in the water. And out of the water! And back in the water! And repeat as needed: whether it was the chum, the location or a combination of the two, none of us had our lines in the water for a minute before things started jumping! Unfortunately, the legions of black bass that we were pulling out were a juuust little shy of the 14 in. limit...about 10 in. shy of the limit, that is. I personally managed to hook about 2 dozen of the tiniest, most adorable blowfish imaginable; some were- fully inflated- about the size of golf balls, and the biggest were about plum-size. I have a new and vast appreciation of blowfish defenses, if nothing else; it was truly amazing to see them suddenly puff up as they cleared the surface, which more often than not would simply (and audibly) POP the hook out of their surprisingly tough, plastic-feeling skin...and they'd be off! I only had to actually take 2 or so off the hook myself, and that was because they'd managed to get the hook wedged into their (very silly looking) little buckteeth. So, basically, if I'd been out there under contract to provide extremely tiny lamps for Trader Vic's, I'd have been sitting pretty. Unfortunately, I was out for porgy.

After several hours, we did manage to land a (surprise: tiny!) porgy...but at least then we knew what we were looking for. (Thanks, iphone google images!) Unsurprisingly, it was far to small to keep. We did, however, keep pulling in such a mass of tiny black bass that I'm still convinced that the 14 in. limit was set by some fish & game paper pusher who'd never seen a black bass in their life: I mean, srsly! We didn't catch one over 6 in! And I'm supposed to believe they get bigger? C'mon! This was clearly a species subset, of "toy" or "dwarf" black bass...or something.

The argument for "toy" fish would also appear to be borne out by the unimaginably teensy sea robin I caught...and yes, before you ask, those monkey fingers might even be creepier in miniature. Not that there really is any quantitative scale that I know of to measure levels of creepiness when it comes to fish with monkey hands; it is a rather subjective thing, in my experience.

Finally, my sister pulled in a keeper porgy! Rookie luck! We all cheered, (except for the unfortunate porgy, of course) and fished harder than ever...now we knew they were out there! Too bad for us, I guess the fish also knew we were up there...after about a brazillion more tiny bass and an ill-tempered spider crab or two, we headed in.

Not that I am, again, known to be the "goal-oriented" type or nuthin', but I was told later that the reason my father-in-law blew the horn, party boat style, to signal that we were heading in was because he didn't want to have to tell me personally that I had to stop fishing. (This might be a good time to insert the fact that, on a recent four-leaf clover hunting expedition in the yard, I refused to come back inside until I'd found eleven four-leafers. Ummm, nope. Not goal-oriented, I!)

The highlight of the day, aside from the obvious fishy prize, was the sighting of a sea turtle! Right off the boat! A juvenile sea turtle, just doin' its own thing, cruisin' on by us...score many, MANY points for conservationists! Neither my DH nor his father had EVER seen a sea turtle, in both their fishing lifetimes...a real treat for us all!

And yes, the porgy was delicious! All 3 bites of it...

In Summation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGIzDrlJsGg

The New Porn

Please forgive my recent absence; I've been feeling a bit under the weather. As such, I've been watching rather more varied TV than usual, and have been struck by what appears to be a burgeoning new television genre: I call it "Job Porn."

Several years ago, Job Porn emerged in the form of auto-related programming, with fare such as "Monster Garage." Basically, this was a show which enthralled men and puzzled women; a bunch of guys take a scrapyard reject and turn it into...a different car that does stuff. There was a great deal of men yelling whilst dangerously close to terrifying shop tools, and a happy closing scene in which the happy owner of the old-new car appears sufficiently overjoyed and impressed.

Fast forward to the present, and Job Porn has become a pan-network phenomena. Each weeknight, ratings seem to indicate that red-blooded American males cluster pantingly around their tellies to watch...fellow red-blooded American males do their jobs. Fishing and crabbing shows seem to be perennially popular, as do shows about just how crappy and dangerous jobs can be. What is it about watching freezing, miserable guys lose fingers and Frenchmen who rake centuries-old sewers that fires the imaginations of America's white collar hordes? I have my own ideas.

Porn is now the Old Porn. Any cable subscriber is now privy to essentially endless reams of substandard cable soft-porn. Access to birth control and post-feminist thinking means that a new generation of Western women are more ready than ever before to explore- and enjoy- the carnal pleasures of life, often after only a few dates. I want to make it clear that I'm not judging women (or men) in my previous statement; I'm only stating the facts of mainstream, modern life. The mystique of "does she or doesn't she" is no longer central to womens' desirability...because she most likely does. In fact, as statistics have borne out in the past 10-15 years, the girls who protest most loudly that they "don't" are the likeliest to "do." Just, you know, without using condoms. So what's a guy to do?

Enter Job Porn. Nobody sane and/or credible is going to deny that the post-9/11 world and current economic meltdown aren't on everyone's mind and lips. As was the norm during this country's Depression-era, most men that still have jobs these days count themselves lucky, and most entrepreneurial dreams are on hold, if not utterly cast by the wayside. And the fantasies laid out, so to speak, in common porn media are nowhere near as fantastical as they once were...more like the stuff of inter-office IM traffic. So where do daydreams trend? Job Porn.

Whether it's watching stoic men's men fell trees, wrassle flounder or stalk the posh, snappy suites of early 1960's Madison Ave., American guys have fallen head over heels for Job Porn. Millions of men pine away, in cubicles across the nation, for a job that offers something more than the next month's rent and decent health insurance. Any guy can go home to "HOTT RUSSIAN MODELS 4 U," but can they wake up filled with the moxy that it takes to make it on a snow crab trawler? A safe, biweekly payday can't kill the secret yearning to spend five days a week knocking back old-fashioneds, smoking Luckys and castrating business rivals by the bushel.

And why should it?

In Summation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vlxi6Ec92kw

OMFAT camp!!

So I'm at the in-laws' house today, and everyone else is out at the diner. I'm home with The Child, who is beyond exhausted, and not exactly in a out-in-public kinda mood. I'm watching "Fat Camp" on MTV, and man! Is this show ever prime snark material!! It has 100% of the pathos of "Intervention," with roughly 110% less edginess, and a stunningly total lack of empathetic response generated towards the show's subjects.

Case in point: the constantly-crying, diabetic, hypothyroid homeschooled girl. She is genuinely pitiable, but is also a shining example of the case against homeschooling. When her cabinmates begin to mention, after a hot-looking day of physical exertion, that she should think about taking a shower, she just. doesn't. GET. it. She seems both totally unconscious of both the need to shower after all that exercise AND unaware of and/or unable to process the feedback from her peers. I found myself thinking at her in pity/exasperation, "Girl! I understand, completely- your cabinmates may be MAJOR bitches! But, SRSLY! If those bitches- all of whom are big gals themselves- are telling you you need to jump in the shower, just jump in the freakin' shower!! Those bitches are telling you that YOU STINK, and they're probably not just making that shit up!! If your mom thinks you're too 'sensitive' to go to real high school, then she probably never mentions when you have stinky pit-itis..."

Now, I will freely admit that I was quite often fodder for full on bully feeding-frenzies back in my HS salad days, and that is why I know that snarky "suggestions" to (in my case) run a comb through your hair and do something about your groucho-brows are most often grounded in some measure of fact. Bullies and bitchy girls are not particularly known for their creativity; if you have personal pong issues, they will latch onto that. For example, the only person who's mentioned my eyebrow issues and cracked-out hair in years is my own mom...who did not exactly consider yours truly to "sensitive" for HS, or for anything else, not to put too fine a point on it. (Ski school? Alone? At age 11? In St. Moritz? And I don't speak German? These were the sort of "challenges" that my mom was certain I could rise to with gusto. So- trust me here- I know all about rough social situations...and I still can't ski, btw.) Suffice it to say, as a former brace-faced, cokebottle-lensed, groucho-browed, hairy-legged, frizzy-haired dyed-in-the-wool DORK...well, let's just say I know what greases those bully crankshafts. Oh, yeah; and I've been fat, too. Probably forgot a few others in there, but cut me some slack- I've been trying to forget most of the above awkwardnesses for the past 10 years or so. Thanks, MTV.

This segways neatly into my next case study: the wannabe bully kid. This is a kid who seems to think that dual popped collars and a nasty, bitchy attitude are slimming accessories. He reminds me of the proverbial kid in the remedial class who gets off on calling his classmates retarded, then talks to himself all day about how he doesn't belong there, but doesn't even sound believable to himself. So Mr. DualPop is one of those prince charming types who refers to all the girls as bitches, hos, sluts and assorted other affectionate epithets, as well as telling everything that stands still long enough how some girl who rebuffed him has an ass out to THERE. I mean, srsly- I think I saw him telling a tree about that poor girl's junk-trunk. He seems to wander around in a sort of daze, like a transitory-amnesia-that-he's-at-fat-camp-too. He is endlessly shoving his not-inconsiderable bulk into everyone else's beeswax, to the extent that I was worrying about him getting it stuck there via inertia. He's like some weird, chimerical combo of my overweight, yenta-ish grandma, the ubiquitous HS fat kid who aspires to be a "real" bully and the equally-ubiquitous, weird, socially-inept guy who smells funny and has terrible acne, but who still makes occasional, painfully-gauche attempts to be one of the guys. He finally gets his own big 'ol booty hauled into the camp director's office when his fellow campers finally get their fill of hearing another fat kid make endless fat jokes about girls who could probably fit their entire bodies into one leg of his fat kid pants. When the camp director- who seems to have roughly modeled his affect after Tom Arnold's portrayal of Quinton McHale- calls Col. CollarPop on his toolish behavior, the kid variously cries, protests, lies, lies about protesting and crying, and whatever other combinations of that might be possible.

By the end of the 2 hour show, one thing is certain: I will never, NEVER send The Child to Camp Pocano Trails, or whatever it's called. Smoking counselors behind the cabins? Check! Creepy unsocialized kids tossed in to sink or swim? Check! The kind of bullies you have to assume parents sent their kids to Fat Camp to get AWAY from combined with rampant, seemingly unmonitored first-time sexual experimentation? Check and check!

There was a bit of a heartwarming moment at the end, when MC Collapopz submits- via a chain of acquaintances, natch- a long, handwritten letter to the young lady he's just spent the summer attempting to skewer, (and yes, double entendre very much intended...) in which he alternately apologizes for telling everyone and their body-mike about how humongous and ugly she is, moralizes about how he's spent all summer defending her from people talking about how humongous and ugly she is, says "she'll always have a place in his heart" and maintains that she should do the mature thing and get over being P.O.'d at him so they can be friends again. Okay, that was not the heartwarming part, I just got a little worked up again. The heartwarming part was watching the girl and her friend tear his cheese-spouting arse to shreds and crumple up his sweat-stained little attempt at face-saving.

I just noticed that it's about 100F in the room I'm in, which might be a factor in ratcheting up my snarkiness. But there is still a big chunk of raw, bullied kid inside of yours truly, which has led to me being an adult- and a mom- with a big, no-guff-taking-from-any-swine chip on my shoulder when it comes to bullying, which has been, with time, mellowed by a healthy dose of late-blooming, constructive conformity. So I hold myself to my own standard: would I snark any of the above to the faces of those confused, bitter, deeply hurting adolescents? Yes, yes I think I most likely would. If any of the bullies in my past had been subjected to a no-holds barred dressing-down by an adult and/or authority figure, it might have put a good, constructive scare into their desperately needy, self esteem-challenged little butts. And, if a well meaning adult had treated the ME of my past to a well-intentioned, desperately needed brow wax, I might have been saved several years of trauma. Not to mention a lifetime of obsessive eyebrow-tweaking.

It got late. I'm actually in need of a bit of a shower myself, at this point, as my inner alpha-teen has helpfully pointed out. And not that I have any food issues, but I haven't eaten anything all day besides a donut hole and a splash of milk in my tea. At some point, maybe I'll blog about some issues from my youth that I don't have, well, issues attached to...you know, whenever I figure out WTF they are.

And yes, the ski school story is 100% true. With a happy ending, no less: I snuck away when the instructor was yelling (in German, of course) at a fellow novice, and found a place that served amazing house-made bratwurst with a beer and grainy mustard sauce, spaetzle and bircher meusli. Even then, I had my priorities straight.

In Summation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaZOXF83zBg&feature=related

OMFA!

So I finally managed to get to the Titian, Tintoretto & Veronese retrospective at the Boston MFA today; I'd really let it get down to the wire, as the show closes tomorrow. It was just as spectacular as one would imagine it would be, and this is coming from someone who went in with pretty durned high expectations. Of course I got busted within 5 minutes for snapping a (flashless, natch) picture...or rather, attempting to, since the exhibit was srsly packed, and all I ended up getting before the VSO got to me was a smeary orange blob.

IMO, the highlight of the show was not the religious and mythological works, although they were truly stunning, but rather the entire gallery devoted to commissioned portraits. I have a deep fascination with portraiture; there is something which strikes me as almost mystical about these snapshots, as it were, of individual humans, captured and held like preserved specimens of themselves...while the living, flesh-and-blood humans aged and withered until finally- to paraphrase Charlotte Bronte- both subject and artist had "for generations...been coffin dust." When I look into the liquid, sympathetic eyes of a Romanized Egyptian lady, rendered in almost impossibly fresh-looking encaustic on the outer wrappings of her ancient and lovingly preserved mummy...I feel something very akin to touching the hem of some Divine garment. When I looked today into the faces of two Venetian children, so vividly, vigorously alive, I really did (and still do) feel some aching, massive sense of eternity that is hard to contain; I have tears in my eyes now, just recalling the yawning sense of time that seemed to arch between myself and all those vital, dark-eyed ladies, gentlemen and promise-filled youths of The Veneto. Some had such fiery, intelligent stares- it was very easy to imagine them willing themselves- with some supreme pygmalion-esque effort- into the future, that they could forever continue to challenge their fellow humans with bold, even haughty gazes:

"I dare you to relegate me to obscurity"

I was struck with a profound, vanitas-like pang as I stared (for I don't even know how long...) into the mischievous face of the young heir to a Venetian silk-trading fortune. The museum card stated that his father, having casually "removed his glove" was holding the child in a "tender" fatherly embrace. I perceived- or seemed to- a different scene altogether. The child's attitude reminded me of nothing so much as my own family snapshots, in which my young nephew irrepressibly squirms under the grasp of whichever adult is attempting to keep him in the mis en scene. The Venetian child looks- to me- to be eternally caught in an intensely human (and humanizing!) moment of rebellion against his father's, and perhaps the artist's, attempts to constrain him within such an overformal canvas. The father's hand plays almost absently with the boy's delicate gold necklace; exactly the sort of possessive familiarity that The Child chafes under. In the adjacent frame, the boy's sister crumples handfuls of her mother's sumptuous silk skirts, holding the fabric up in a timeless gesture of infantine defense whilst peering around her mother's hip in timid curiosity. The woman gazes over at her husband with barely-concealed archness, "Is this over yet? The children are restless..." She clutches in one hand a martin pelt, said to be a talisman for safe pregnancy and childbirth. I am still, hours later, overwhelmed with curiosity; was she pregnant when she sat for this portrait? If so, what happened to her, and the child? How many children had she borne- and lost- before finally these two beat the odds and survived long enough for their parents to begin investing in them cautious aspirations for adulthood? I feel burnt by the unfairness of it all, that 400 years gape between me and this fellow young mother, that I need not ever feel the stark terror she must have known, that her children will not live to see another spring, that she will never rise from childbed, that her husband's ship will be lost...I want to resurrect her and her children, but there is nothing, nothing I can do.

Past and present seem, in my consciousness, superimposed seamlessly upon and around each other with a psychedelic clarity. In my mind's eye I see the hubble deep field images; it seems foolish and petty that I could be powerless to reach through a short span of centuries and lay hold of any of the vital, incandescent fellow beings that stare out with such ageless calm from their respective frames.

The last comparable exhibition I saw was the El Greco show at the Met, years ago now. I went with a friend who died several years later. Perhaps this is the root of my somewhat melancholy postulating on the subject/s above. I think with surprising frequency of my friend, and how impossible it seems that anyone so vital could be absolutely, irrevocably physically gone. Like those Venetian children, he will never age in the eyes of the world. I honestly don't know if it would feel better, or worse to see portraits of those same children in their old age. Because what I really want is for them to be alive now!

The show was truly fabulous; if you get a chance to see it tomorrow, you should definitely go. Sorry to be so pensive. Just happens, sometimes.

In Summation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEzxchU4RUY

Ummm...where TF did your house go?

So I'm feeling basically pretty crappy today/tonight; I think maybe it has to do something with the chocolate mousse that I ate after it sat out all night. Ooops. D'oh.

In any case, I'm stuck in the room getting my weekly Duggar fix, and I'm just...confused by this week's ep.

The story seems to be that the Duggars make a trip to build a new laundry room for the Bates, their even more pronouncedly "we're religious! look at our clothes!" friends from somewhere else that isn't California of New York or Indiana. The Duggars- ever the aw-shucks publicity hounds- wrassle up what appears to be every contractor, builder and supplier in the area and get them to "donate" their time and materials, proudly proclaiming that they only paid $400 for labor. Once again, they seem to attribute this directly to divine intervention, and not to struggling mom n' pop businesses desperately hoping for any publicity they can get. One supplier even says through a grimace/grin that Jim Bob's "an old pro...who's probably stuck it to the diaper companies a couple of times."

Jim Bob, this is not quite the glowing compliment of that you seem to take it as. That is the type of "compliment" that would perhaps better be appreciated by folks such as Kenneth Lay, Bernie Madoff and their compatriots. But, last I heard, the ability to effectively "stick it to diaper companies" and all the inherent implications is more Mr. Burns than WWJD.

But, back to the show. Okay, so Jim Bob is going to "surprise" the Bates with a new laundry room. However, "visionary" that he is, he just gets totally caught up in the excitement, cut to footage of parts of the Bates home being demolished, cut to time-lapse of the Bates home being gutted, cut to somebody talking about the "frustration" of 50(!) people having to share 1 bathroom...aaand, the Bates have a massive, brand-new, steel-roofed home that they never asked for. And the kicker? No laundry room. Jim Bob says, offhandedly, that they never did get around to adding that laundry room...he says he figures the Bates can use their "old" space to do laundry. Which, um, is what I thought they were doing, before you came and dropped a huge Monopoly game-piece on their house and called it their new house.

Remind me never to indulge the Duggars if they somehow happen to enter my life and offer to babysit. I can just see it- us coming home from Date Night to find The Child has vanished...only to be replaced by a dozen larger, less attractive, donated Children and a "you're welcome" note.

If anyone's in the area, please feel free to drop off some delicious noodley soup and crispity crackers, because feeling ill regresses me. Obviously.

In Summation:

http://galleryoftheabsurd.typepad.com

Surprise: Agoraphobia!

So I'm back from my moderately ill-fated NYC adventure. Long story short, I lived in The Village and Lower Manhattan longer than anywhere else in my adult life. I was never a big fan of Midtown, with its ginormous Molochs glassing and steeling all over my shiz. My parents very generously booked me a room next to theirs in Midtown; when I stepped off the elevator, the first thing I saw was a shiny plaque proclaiming that the 12th floor was the transitional home of "23 Freed Americans, Former Hostages of Iran...Were...Guests Here on th 12th Floor, January 28-31, 1981..."

Okaay. So 4 days on the 12th floor is preferable to being held hostage in an occupied embassy for 444 days. And the 12th floor is so proud of this fact that it felt a need to transmit its ebullience via plaque. I can only imagine what the other floor's plaques must commemorate: a "better than Entebbe" floor? A "cake walk for USS Indianapolis survivors" floor? The 24 hour "beats naked subzero punishment laps in the Gulag" exercise room?

This is where my mind goes when I'm anxious. And then when I suddenly burst out in anxious-hysterical giggles after a long anxious silence and someone asks me what TF I'm giggling about, I say something like "heheheeeAchilleLaurohehaaha!" Because, the thing is, nobody can ever accuse me of not having a sense of humor about, like, pretty much everything. But I HAVE been accused of having a sense of humor about, like, pretty much everything, aka "you awful, insensitive harpy!"

Problem is, I'm VERY sensitive. I'm so freaking sensitive that if I didn't try to find ways to laugh about awful bloodcurdling things, I wouldn't be able to function. I'd be like a goth in an SNL sketch, but even less funny. So being back in NYC for the first time in many years, sans the DH and au The Child was even harder on my already fragile-feeling psyche than expected. As usual when it comes to such things (which I will doubtless blog on about at a later date) my timing was way, waaaay bad. Here is the rundown:

I have to explain to my dad why the soldiers are searching cars at the Midtown tunnel. Some diplomatic security guy pounds on the car when we start to enter the hotel garage; he, along with the rest of the world, didn't see the plate in the rear window. Elevator lets us off at 12th floor, where I'm greeted by the aforementioned cheery plaque. I need to pick up and send business faxes, so I go down to the hotel business center. I overhear two hotel employees talking about something involving "exploded...people on their roofs...all but 2 are missing...not even an hour ago, etc." Everywhere I look, people are gathered into worried-looking little knots. There seems to be an epidemic of palmtop checkage. In my years away from The City, I have yet to lose my NY Manners, so I approach a hotel staff-knot and inquire, "What the heck am I missing here? Did something just happen? I'm really thinking I missed something big, right?" I am told that a violent midair collision has just occurred over the Hudson, that nobody knows why it happened, that we all hope it isn't terrorists, that there was an explosion and thousands of people saw it and couldn't do anything maybe it was because they opened the Statue of Liberty back up...I feel the bottom drop out of my stomach. It actually feels like I got physically kneed in the gut. I see huge goosebumps heave themselves up on my forearms. I numbly go through the motions of sending my faxes, thank the still-kibbitzing staff, and somehow make it back to my room. There is no interwebz in the room. My mom comes in and begins reading to me about the crash from a news feed on her phone, and I suddenly realize I can't listen to another word. My head is full of fire and smoke and sirens and fighter planes and empty streets and I am literally shaking from head to toe with useless adrenaline.

I never set foot outside that hotel. I stayed in my room, playing solitaire, reading, watching tv, fighting with The Child over bed space and trying not to think about 8 years ago. Or 20 years ago. Or any of the other times. My mom kept "encouraging" me to just "deal with it, face it"and other maternal gems that I'm sure I'll be tossing out in a decade or so. Problem is, when it comes to the particular set of neuroses in question, I feel quite justified in throwing out the ol' Mr. Rochester special, "I do my best, have done it, will do it."

My mother has only the vaguest concept of what, exactly, I have faced and dealt with. In truth, I don't even know that I do.

There was a time, 5 years ago or so, when I was traveling with my then-fiancee (now the DH) on a flight that was scheduled for a brief stopover; no changing planes, just refueling. Not long into the +/-3 hour flight, I became aware of a growing sense of...off-ness. There was...something...about the vibration of the engines against the soles of my feet. I tried hard, and I CANNOT stress just how hard, to convince myself that it was all in my head. I tried meditating, and when that didn't work, I tried medicating, which served only to make me feel vaguely-sedated terror as opposed to shrieking in the aisles panic. I looked down the length of the plane, and saw a fellow with a regulation wiffle-cut sitting on the aisle several rows ahead. he was sitting rigid as a statue, his single visible hand gripping his armrest. His knuckles were white and trembling. I suddenly got a whole helluva lot more scared.

I decided that, if the plane touched down safely for our stopover, I would walk off, dragging my then-fiancee if need be, and wait for a connecting flight. I was even willing to sacrifice my checked bags; I didn't want to make a huge fuss, or at least I didn't think I wanted to. I just wanted off that plane. BAD.

The plane landed safely, thankfully, and with a bit of an unexpected twist...at least for my fellow passengers. As we taxied to the gate, the pilot came on the PA and said that the planned stopover would not be occurring. We would need to change planes. Another plane was meeting us at the gate. There was no explanation. I didn't lose my checked bags, perhaps the true miracle of the day.

I am not someone overridden and/or overwhelmed by irrational phobias. I face my fears constantly, and successfully. But when I make the decision not to try facing them, there's most often a durn good reason. I'm far from insulted by racist allusions to rats and cockroaches...I'm happy being the first to know a ship's sinking, and the last to perish in a radioactive nightmare scenario. I stayed in that shoebox-sized hotel room on the happy hostage floor, and when we left The City, I got right back to my life.

Take that, life.

p.s. I wrote this in a massive hurry...apologies for any grammatical/syntactical/spelling/whatever related errors. k thx bai!

Fast & Loose & Literalism= Me, Annoyed

Yet again I find myself fascinated/irritated with self-proclaimed "Bible Believing" Christians who seem to play fast and loose at sanitizing, ignoring and even inventing scripture whenever the slightest shadow of hermeneutic dissonance crosses their consciousness.

The ever-dulcet Michelle Duggar just proudly proclaimed on my DVR of "18 Kids and Counting" that Jesus said to "do unto others as you would have them do for you." I can only assume that she was attempting to refer to the commandment to "love your neighbor as yourself," which, although scriptural, is initially found in Hebrew, not Greek scripture. The supposed commandment to "do unto others, etc." was actually a statement made in the Babylonian Talmud attributed to Rabbi Akiva, (often called "Akiva's One Foot Torah") but the trouble doesn't end there, because even Rabbi Akiva didn't say it. The actual statement quoted with such pride and confidence by Mrs. Duggar appears- in that form- nowhere in either Hebrew OR Greek scripture. The original statement of Akiva would most likely be considered offensive and possibly blasphemous by Christians of the Duggar's ilk, as it could be interpreted as calling into question the necessity for complete and utter belief in and/or knowledge of scripture as the means to salvation. Indeed, it pokes fun at those who do become rigid and over-convinced of their own correct path.

It calls to mind the now infamous statement of Joshua Duggar's new father-in-law, describing the reasoning behind the rather spartan wedding celebration: his statement was to the effect of "When the bible talks about 'wine' it actually means 'grape juice.'"

I'm sorry, but that wasn't what it meant. Nope. It just...wasn't. Noah did not get himself into trouble from hitting the grape juice. No group of Romanized Judeans would have stuck around at a wedding to drink grape juice. Holophernes probably wouldn't have slept through having his head sawed off if he'd been tossing back Yehudit's primo...grape juice. I could go on, but I suspect I've made my point.

I will say this- if you feel that it is a violation of your faith to drink wine, okay. 1.8 billion Muslims agree with you 100%. But please, do not make a big production of your belief in scriptural infallibility...just so long as scripture agrees with YOU.

I mean, gee, I personally would feel a lot better if what was actually MEANT when Greek scripture referred to the soldier piercing Jesus' side with a spear was "the roman soldier tickled Jesus' side with a big feather." And, hey, why not? If "saying" and "meaning" are mutually exclusive...why the heck not?

Boy howdy! I can't wait to get started on MY version of what scripture actually "means" as opposed to all those pesky, not-agreeable-to-me things that it "says!"

First up on my list: when it said in Genesis "tree of knowledge," it actually meant "tree of life."

'Scuse me while I go be immortal, k thx bai. Right?

In Summation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaqo2IhH4kw

Edit/Addendum to the August 5 Post

Update: I am, as expected, unimaginably sore this morning. Between the too-heavy Beretta, the recoil from the too-heavy Beretta and the lack of Pilates for the past few months, I feel roughly as though I spent yesterday playing catch with a 40 lb. medicine ball. That, or possibly some novel circuit training protocol involving chin-ups, push-ups and being repeatedly kicked by a mule. But that is clearly a far more awkward simile, so I'm going to just stick with the medicine ball comparison. Still totally worth it, though! I'm already looking forward- with a vengeance- to heading back for another go-round with a nice, adolescent boy-size boomstick.

Also with slightly less DEET; I seem to possess a near supernatural ability to become very literally covered with mosquito bites over every square inch of exposed (and often not-so-exposed) skin while those around me get off with nary a nibble. While I've been told by an extremely credible source that my mosquito-magnet mutant ability is most likely related to an unusually efficient O2/CO2 metabolism, good pulmonary function and thus technically a healthy sign...even so, all I can say is all the puffing power in the world is cold comfort when I'm eating Benadryl like candy and soaking in calamine whilst my allergic asthma-troubled DH remains in skeeter stealth mode. I'm sure, of course, that it's a clear grass-is-greener issue, but there are plenty of times I'd rather need an occasional huff of albuterol than lose sleep as I scratch myself bloody and spend mornings wandering around in a post-Benadryl haze. In any case, I soaked myself in hi-grade DEET to the extent that my lips, gums and tongue were numb, my skin took on a saran-wrap like sheen and the fumes rising from my sweaty self burnt my eyes worse than the powder blowback. I did not, however, sustain a single bite, so in hindsight it still may well have been an acceptable unpleasantness.

In a Gift of the Magi-ish twist, my gift to the DH (a shooting vest and shooting glasses) were replicated by my in-laws. At least the vest. Thankfully, their gift is a lightweight mesh and mine was a heavier, leather padded model, but still, I feel a tad crappy for not double checking with them first. Live and learn, I suppose. Naturally, the DH was his usual gracious self, and being the practical sort of guy that he is, I have no doubt that he'll make good use of both vests; considering it's still in the 120 degree fahrenheit range back on our home turf, the mesh one may turn out to get a heckuva lot more use for the next few months.

My purchase for me, on the other hand...sadly, I can't see much use for a crab trap in the low desert. Maybe I can rig it out for crayfish with some extra mesh...word on the interwebs is that you can catch bushels of the invasive little bugs less than an hour from my house. SoCal etouffee, here I come!!

After I catch my bluefish, that is. So, um, crap. On reflection, I may never get to go home...

Many 'Appy Returns!

Today is my wonderful DH's birthday. I'm doing something akin to praying that his gifts will arrive on time; I had them shipped- ostensibly- to his parents' house instead of our summer house because that's where we are- ostensibly- soon to be heading. The summer house is a bona fide hot mess, and when I say "hot," I mean only that the A/C is not on and the mugginess inside is such that fat drops of condensation have formed on the granite countertop near the sink and every bit of cloth feels damp and has that moldy-towel smell. The Spiders, upon whom I perpetrated a terrible genocide less than a week ago, have returned in full force and are again to be found in every corner and right angle in the house. I'm tempted to make a short film entitled "The Eternal Spider" but that would probably be in very poor taste...which is my way of saying "I have no idea how to make and produce a short film." (I'm not a particularly "sensitive" type when it comes to "those" type of parodies...I still maintain that humor is the most effective weapon against tragedy and oppression; and now for my second Mel Brooks reference in 2 days: please refer to, like, most Mel Brooks films. That is all.) In any case, The Spiders have returned en masse, and now cheerfully occupy much of the house, again. I am tempted to make a Duggar reference, but will not, because that would be both nonsensically hyperbolic and just plain obnoxious, and I try to refrain from the aforementioned. They are not funny literary tools, and even Mel Brooks would never resort to anything but comedically-driving hyperbole. And the most venerable Mr. Brooks, while going for the societal jugular in the name of comedy, is not one to stoop to pure obnoxious mean-spiritedness. (Important newsflash for "Conservative Comedian" types, a la Fox's immediately-defunct Daily Show so-called "alternative:" straight-up mean humor, racist humor, sexist humor, and all other humor-against-the-disenfranchised-by-the-disenfranchiser is NOT FUNNY to ANYONE except the person perpetrating it, and their fellow discriminators/sycophants. When Mel Brooks was "mocking" African-Americans, he was actually mocking stoopit white people, and if you didn't/don't get that, please desist from attempts at humor-making, posthaste! k thx bai!)

And now for a brief intermission: please insert a nostalgic birthday montage (HERE)

Okay! Magic happened, and it is now many hours since I began writing this post...while you were enjoying the birthday montage, the DH and I were loading up The Child for a trip to Grandma and Grandpa's house; they had very generously offered to watch The Child so that the DH and myself could enjoy a rare, Child-less date. (And when I say "rare," I mean it! We've seen maybe 4 movies, tops, since we married.) It was due to storm, so after dropping off The Child we hurried off to the sporting clays range for some good, clean, all-American, lead-fortified fun. Damn straight!

I know that I recently posted that I am not the sporting type. That's not entirely true; I was feeling quite sporting today. But then, just speaking words such as "skeet," "trap" and "long rabbits" puts one in a sporting sort of humor, a la Jay Gatsby in his Oxford days. I also felt a great deal more sporting after I broke a few clays...there I go being all goal oriented again.

The Beretta favored by the DH was too heavy for me, to put it mildly. It actually became such a task to hold it up the last few stations that aiming was a joke; just managing to lift it shoulder-high felt like a victory. I will be sore tomorrow. I can't even imagine how sore.

The DH liked my gift! *phew!* And his birthday dinner was yummy, albeit the service was interminable and The Child needed shlepping to and from the bathroom at least six times.

When we returned to my in-laws' home, The Child was so amped on a combination of exhaustion, cake and doting attention that It didn't get to sleep until around 11pm. (The cake in question was, btw, fabulous, and a credit to the Italian heritage of this island's bakers.)

And now, here I am, writing the rest of my blog, tired beyond belief and barely if at all making sense. I think I'm just about done for the day. nighty night and a last happy birthday!

In Summation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yaw7qX_ZDNE&feature=related

Gooooooooooooooooooooaaaaal!!!!!! (oriented)

Today was the first day of the rest of my clamming.

After a brief hiccup at the Southold town hall ("You can't turn the doorhandle. It doesn't open then," said the helpful chap who found us wandering around, bewildered that the building was locked at midday.) we became the proud recipients of official Town of Southold/Non-Resident/Non-Commercial Shellfish Permit(s)! We also became the confused recipients of a very thick, very grainy stack of photocopies telling us a great many things that I, at least, had no freaking idea how to interpret. Oh noes: we can't fish in our own creek? Oh, wait, we can if we are South of the Southern Southward something-or-other, and leewards of the osprey pole on the North-facing quadrangle, and only on alternate November 27ths. Or something. I am, admittedly, a very poor reader of maps, and after paying $50 for my permit, became panic-fully convinced that our entire area was "closed to shellfishing," After more careful map-reading, the DH discovered that we WERE in fact on the right side of the osprey pole, and so we were happily off clamming! Right after I got lost for like an hour looking for the bait shop so I could buy a clam bucket and a little net for The Child.

Okay. So NOW, we were happily off clamming! We just clammed up a storm! We were clamming here and clamming there, and having a great old time. Or rather, the DH was clamming up a storm, The Child was proudly putting empty shells in the clam bucket and catching enough laver in his net to feed Wales. I was determinedly fishing! I was fishing the "sporting" way, sans bait, with naught but a flashy lure and determination! Boy-howdy, did I ever fish! I fished, and I fished, by myself and not by myself, as my family clammed and kayakers came and went and every osprey on the island ate its fill of bluefish and then flew back to assorted Southy quadrangulous poles to laugh at me. I fished until the waters around me were alive with bluefish snapping mosquitoes out of the deepening dusk and I kept fishing when massive, ornery crabs suddenly burst forth from the eelgrass as though by prearranged signal, causing the DH to scoop up The Child from the crabbily roiling shallows. The DH and The Child returned to the house. I backed gingerly out of the water as foot-long crabs surrounded me, menacingly waving their claws like interpretive dancers trying to be trees. I stood on the shore, changed lures for the umpteenth time, and kept casting away, flashily and with determination. I caught laver. I caught more of that freaky Old Gregg hair stuff. I almost caught an osprey and went to federal prison, but didn't. I changed lures again, and kept casting into the by now crazily-jumping bluefish 20 feet from shore. I vowed to stay all night if need be.

After an indeterminate period of time, my dehydration-enhanced concentration was broken by a repetitive, urgent sound; it was the DH, hollering my name in a fashion both repetitive and urgent. Duh. As I turned to holler back, I noticed a somewhat confused-looking fellow on a bike doing his best to evince disgust at all the hollering. And then, I noticed something else! A tug on the line!! A BIG tug!! I hollered something unintelligible at nobody in particular, but I did notice that bike-man quickly rode away. I tugged, the (giant fish!) tugged back, and I ever so gently, carefully- brimming with pride- reeled in my line. Something very large and pale was at the end, fighting hard! As I delicately reeled in the last few feet, I finally got a glimpse of my (giant fish!)

A very large, pale, hard-fighting crab. I lost the crab. I wandered off towards home, feeling neither flashy nor determined. I told the DH that fishing without bait was dumb, and I was never doing it again. He said that it was more challenging, or something like that; that it was about the experience. I said screw the experience, I wanted my bluefish.

He said he forgot how "goal oriented" I was. He was right. I am not the sporting type. I am the type who wants to catch a fish, and preferably, many fish. I mean, sure I enjoy communing with nature and all that...as long as I catch my fish.

But at least we had all those clams, right?

Um...not quite. so after we had them all in the bucket, and swished them clean and all that happy stuff, I was stricken by an attack of law-abiding citizen's paranoia. I once again tried to make sense of the grainy photocopied maps provided by the town hall, and my paranoia increased. There were grey areas delineating off-limits areas, and grey areas delineating open areas. And the pages of regulations accompanying the maps appeared to delineate regulations either contradictory or completely unrelated to the maps. It felt sort of like trying to get legal advice from a Mel Brooks script, except less funny.

The DH put the clams back in the creek.

We ordered pizza and a chicken parm hero.

They were out of sandwich rolls, but luckily I am feeling less goal oriented on the hero front than the bluefish front. Mostly I just feel itchy. Very, very itchy. I just took 2 Benadryl but they don't seem to be working.

It was a really exciting day! I am proud of my family. Bluefish can wait; The Child wants to cuddle and that's just about the best thing ever. My goals just got reoriented! And I couldn't be happier.

In Summation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2Z6tDSb6c8

Crabs, Sad, Sharks, Fish, Guns, Happy

I've been feeling oppressed by the news from Tel Aviv; a (still unknown? WTF?) gunman entered a GLBT center and opened fire with an automatic weapon, leaving at least 2 dead and many wounded. Quite a few blogs, as well as comments to news stories covering the incident, seem to be trying to turn it into a "this is what you get" type of situation, as opposed to the pure tragedy that it is. There has been a barrage of finger pointing regarding alleged Israeli war crimes, (I say "alleged" because if only one thing about the ridiculously, obscenely ongoing Israeli-Arab conflict is true, it is that not every Israeli action is a war crime, just as not every Arab action is a bid for freedom. Both sides have perpetrated acts both shameful and inhumane- that's all I'll say about that!) alleged Israeli discrimination, alleged Israeli nation-stealing and the standard chorus of straight up anti-semitic BS. This is, to me, is essentially taking a big, fat poop on a tragic event and calling it icing. Because if there is one thing that can be said, indisputably, in Israel's favor, it is that it is the only- the only- nation in the Middle East in which GLBT people may legally exist as such. It remains a criminal, and often capital, offense in every other country in the region, as well as being grounds for quasi-legal "honor killing" by one's family.

It is in this climate that the unique GLBT community of Tel Aviv has evolved as perhaps the sole "open" community in the Middle East. Israel (indisputably in her favor, as I said) grants asylum to the possible victims of GLBT-related honor killings, which has made it the Mecca, as it were, of openly GLBT Arabs, North Africans, Turks and many other ethnicities and cultures. The Israeli GLBT community may well be the ONLY community in Israel- perhaps the Middle East as a whole- where Jews, Christians, Muslims and others coexist as merely fellow human beings.

This is why the attempts by bloggers and various internet gadflies to turn this event into a politicized "payback" are more than just wrong...they are almost obscenely dehumanizing and minimizing. This was not a crime perpetrated in revenge upon Israelis as a whole, although the vast majority of Israelis have openly and vigorously deplored it. This was a blow struck against a minority, composed of minorities, in a nation of minorities. This was not a blow struck against oppression or disenfranchisement of a people...this was a blow struck against diversity, against tolerance in an attempt (which I dearly hope to be futile) to preserve old, familiar hatreds.

I could, of course, be wrong; very little information has been released regarding this incident. But what I do know is that the community attacked is targeted, easily and often, by the fundamentalist demagogues of every faith in the region. Tel Aviv's pride parade has been a thorn in the sides and a mote in the eyes of a multitude of fear-mongering, hate-spewing religionists for many a year. It is, ironically, one issue upon which the fundamentalist, anti-progress "leaders" of the region's 3 major faiths are reliably in agreement. If this attack serves to destroy the brave emergence of Tel Aviv's GLBT community, then it will be a sad testament to the victory of hate over love, all in the name of faith. And thus a truly terrible loss, in the end, for faith.

In other news, I went fishing today for bluefish in the salt creek outside the summer house. I waded out into thigh-deep waters, looked down into the murky, opaque, seaweed-clouded swirls surrounding me and tried very, very hard not to think about Shark Week. Specifically, the 1916 fatal, unprovoked attacks in Raritan Creek, N.J. Nope, I was not thinking about Shark Week AT ALL as I felt...something...delicately scrabbling at the fresh scratch on my ankle and scuttling over my foot. I was definitely not thinking about Shark Week when...something else...suddenly snapped loudly at the surface a scant yard to my right, nor did I think of leeches when I thought I saw one swimming by and yelled to my DH, "HEY!! MARINE LEECHES ONLY GO FOR FISH RIGHT?!?" to which he very sensibly replied, "THE CHILD IS SCREAMING IN MY EAR AND IT LOST A SHOE, I'M SORRY BUT I CAN'T HEAR YOU!!" at which point I decided I would just really stop thinking about leeches and yelled back to the DH, "UM, OH NOTHING...DID YOU FIND THE SHOE!?" which he had not.

After the DH had very amazingly agreed to take The Child back home, still single-shoed, I stuck around, determined to catch dinner. I honestly don't even know what I was thinking when a long, thick, brownish segment of cattail rose to the surface several feet in front of me, but it was something like "Hunh! how odd that a segment of cattail would float to the surface in such a, well, intentional appearing manner!" I was still bemusedly looking at the segment of cattail when it suddenly bent in freaking half and LOOKED at me with its pointy, very definitely non-vegetable-kingdom FACE!! So, it was not a segment of cattail, as you may have guessed by my clumsy dramatic lead-up. It was some kind of pipefish, which- excuse me- I was like totally unaware lived around here. Weird little pointy face and all! Who knew!?

I caught nothing but some green hairy stuff and big, squeaky clumps of laver. Which, when just emerging from the water, tangled in my rig, looks quite distressingly exactly like Old Gregg's head.

I was still out there, not thinking about whether I'd rather catch a shark or have to drink bailey's out of a shoe, when my family called me in for dinner.

In Summation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ye3ecDYxOkg

p.s. Some ladies in a little inflatable raft found the shoe! Woot!!

And we did stay all day...

It didn't rain today! In fact, it didn't even threaten to rain today! Although I feel as though I've nearly forgotten what to do on sunny days, DH had the truly inspired suggestion that we visit a "game farm" a few towns away: WIN!! Not only did the weather hold beautifully, The Child still qualifies for free admission! Recession WIN!!

Having grown up (for the most part) in the mid-Midwest, I honestly can't remember a time when I didn't feel comfortable on horseback; I'm always surprised to hear people profess a fear of horses and equestrianism. Admittedly, while I also can't quite fathom plenty of common phobias, I do nurse an embarrassing arachnophobia brought on by a childhood encounter with a nasty brown recluse bite. Happily, my fear doesn't extend to tarantulas or scorpions, or I might never sleep at home again. (The black widows are another matter; I've been known to go after them with a lighter and a can of hairspray, so by this point, any animosity is probably mutual.) But horses are just fine by me, and I've recently wondered how The Child might feel about them. The Child is remarkably fearless, aside from an unaccountable early fear of the duckie-shaped bathtub faucet cover, and even that passed fairly quickly. Ditto for dogs, cats, people in hats, fire, storms, scissors and plenty of other common toddler hangups. So, when the chance for a $5 pony ride came today, we figured "why the heck not?" After all, The Child had just cheerfully put up with a stampede of crazed fawns in the petting zoo, so clearly there isn't any squeamishness regarding large, hoofed animals. Sure enough, when DH hoisted The Child into a pint-sized western saddle, It grabbed the saddle horn as though born to it, and was led off without a backward glance. Like, literally- I couldn't even snap a pic until The Child was headed back towards the fence. Kid might well have continued on out of sight if the teenage pony-wrangler hadn't had the lead rope. (*sigh*) I caught The Child a few months ago attempting to break and run for the elevator in a very large, unfamiliar public building...I caught up just as a rather puzzled security guard came out to investigate. The Child had darted around the corner and pushed the "down" button with such confidence that the guard was actually unsure as to whether he was seeing a rogue toddler or a little person in a big hurry. I never thought I'd be wishing for a slightly more anxious-minded offspring, but then, parenthood is full of surprises, right?

The Child was equally unfazed by the enormous pair of lions, (were they always so huge?! I haven't been that close to lions for years...I thought things were supposed to look smaller once you grew up!) one of whom walked right up to the fence and appeared to beg for attention like a needy kitten. It followed us all the way to the end of the fence, grunting and huffing, and even gave a weak roar when we walked away. I'm still unsure if it wanted to eat The Child, or have its ears scratched. I'm leaning towards the latter, but it wasn't worth my fingers to know for sure. I also apparently forgot just how ridiculous/disconcerting/disturbing ostriches are up close; those eyes look so fake! Like the eyes of a Vargas pinup girl, or one of those kiddie beauty queens. And all those crazy, sumptuous feathers...like the Mae Wests of the avian kingdom!

One thing I personally find difficult whenever I'm with The Child in a "family" venue is turning off my "docent" self. The farm had a little enclosed duckling area, and every foot or so was a sign reading "touch gently. Do not pick us up!" Of course, two girls were snatching up every poor duckling they could catch; the little things were "peep-peep"-ing desperately as the girls' parents looked on. Of course, I'm glaring and biting my tongue to avoid telling off both girls AND so-called parents, "Hey kid- can you read? Oh, excuse me, I didn't realize your entire freaking family is illiterate!! Why don't you go home and kill your own pets, you horrid little sadists!" And so on. Later we saw a giant wild turkey nest with 15 eggs...I'm sure those little she-monsters would've happily crushed them underfoot if they hadn't been so absorbed with their duckling-murder. I console myself by thinking that, being illiterate, stupid and covered with baby fat, they bungled into the alligator enclosure and learned an important lesson in compliance. I'm just kidding, of course. Totally.

In Summation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Punzp4ektVM

I never finished college, either! *SNAP!!*

Watching "I didn't know I was Pregnant" a few nights ago, I could really sympathize with the featured woman: when she suddenly and unexpectedly delivered a baby into the toilet, her husband brought her towels to wrap the new infant. "Not those!" she said! Not her goodtowels!

As a woman who held off heading to the maternity ward in order to shave her legs, paint her toenails and tweeze her brows, I can fully sympathize. As far as I'm concerned, the cultural narrative which has the "Modern Woman" metamorphosing butterfly-like (via the hyperfeminized chrysalis of pregnancy) from Superwoman and Superwife into Supermom is a myth. We, as women, are expected to selflessly take on the affect (at least publicly) of Michelle Duggar, although in truth we spend plenty of time feeling- not to mention acting- a heck of a lot more like Kate Gosselin.

I recently read a tabloid article which breathlessly accused Ms. Gosselin of (gasp) banging pot lids together to get the kids' attention at the dinner table!! Additionally, she was (doublegasp) actually photographed grabbing and dragging a child by the arm!! I noticed that the latter photograph appeared to be taken at the edge of a driveway or parking lot. I'm willing to say that I have (gaspgaspgasp) ALSO actually grabbed The Child's arm when It attempted to sprint off the sidewalk!! I think I can safely say that I've done this multiple times, and (hystericalgasping) I have also, in the above situation, found myself dragging The Child as It throws a tantrum and/or goes limp in the midst of a thwarted escape!!!! What, exactly, would tabloid editors prefer to happen; the child having a BIG learning experience...in the guise of getting creamed by a passing van? Simply allowing the child to drop to the ground when it goes limp, figuring that eventually it'll get tired of being trampled underfoot and behave? Right.

What particularly offends and troubles me about this unquestioning, summary judgement is not merely a complete disregard of context (how would ANY of us perform, managing 8 young children?) but also a profoundly disturbing disregard of anything but the most public "examples" of parenting. Kate Gosselin has been repeatedly, vociferously castigated for both her personal behavior and her treatment of the children. She has even (oh, noes!) been accused of striking her children (what I've seen described as "smacks on the bottom" and "pushing") in moments of extreme frustration. Conversely, Michelle Duggar is the recipient of frequent, radiant praise on the subject of her (massive!) brood's tractability and unfailingly flawless chipperness. Michelle- and her husband- do not particularly hide the fact that their family's discipline is largely a result of their always off-camera reliance upon "physical correction." It's important to note that I have yet to see either "Momma" or "Daddy" refer to said technique as "corporal punishment," "spanking" or "hitting." Nope, it's always the ever so sweetly worded "correction." And what, exactly, is the real definition of this innocuous-sounding tool of parental rule?

It's hitting. No bones about it, it is hitting. The Duggars are devotees of Bill Gothard's "Institute of Basic Life Principles" as well as his "Advanced Training" homeschooling program. Mr. Gothard is, to say the least, a highly controversial figure in the Evangelical world. Many Christian Apologists UNapologetically refer to his followers as "cultlike." Christianity Today magazine treads lightly around the subject; while the Apologists cited in the magazine condemn his theology, they only ambiguously refer to "excessive discipline" and "concern(s) about how Gothard's ministry was treating young people." Indianapolis' Channel 8 News, rather more directly, cites reports of "beatings" with a "wooden board" and food-restricted "isolation" in a "prayer closet." Children are "trained" (not "raised" or "taught") that they should smilingly obey any and all orders from their parental "authorities," regardless how nonsensical or unpleasant they may seem. The Duggar children may well be as cheerful and biddable as they appear to be; the question is whether they have ever had a choice to be otherwise.

Additionally, one often hears in the media of the "shameful" way that the Gosselin progeny are "used" by their mother for financial and promotional gain. I personally don't feel in a position to either confirm or debate these assertions. I do know that attempting to support 8 young children must be an unimaginable financial albatross. The Duggars repeatedly showcase their commitment to "buy used and save the difference." This is certainly a shrewd and admirable objective, and one which I subscribe to myself whenever possible. However, what is NOT mentioned is their dependence upon network, corporate and media "freebies" as well as private donations and a lack of even the most basic childcare and household expenses: on both their TLC program and their website, they frequently remark upon the extent of household duties (cooking, cleaning, laundry, babysitting, etc.) overseen almost entirely by "the older girls." The children's schooling also appears to consist of a great many "practical lessons" which are also quite admirable...however, it is doubtful if the hours spent in hands-on construction and "subjects" such as sewing, food preparation, auto repair and "scripture memorization" would be acceptable even by most Christian or alternative school curricula. The family is also rumored to have claimed tax-exempt status on their 7000 square foot home and extensive property, a growing trend among homeschooling "megafamilies," and one which clearly calls into question the teaching of "rendering unto Caesar." I am fascinated by the vigor of Octomom critics who decry her dependence on Medi-Cal, food stamps and disability. Mr.Duggar had a brief tenure as a state congressperson, which would have meant at least several years of state-subsidized health and retirement benefits, and the family has allegedly confirmed that they do NOT pay for maternity-related coverage. In Arkansas, benefits for infants are automatically eligible for state-sponsored insurance; the fact that the family does not appear to have offered any definitive answers on the full status of their health coverage feels, at least superficially, rather suspicious. Their newlywed son and daughter-in-law look to bear most of the responsibility for the "family" used car dealership, and the other purported sources of income- a commercial space and land leased to a cellular provider- would likely not provide any corporate health plan. Mr. Duggar claims that, in the past, he sold insurance; but even if that occupation provided access to family health coverage, it clearly is not a readily-available option for most families. The family also disavows all but cash payment and investment, under the guise of "financial freedom," which very likely rules out the existence of any college savings for the children. In any case, Mr. and Mrs. Duggar have stated that they do not feel college to be a particularly noteworthy ambition. Why, indeed, should they, with all that solid, "practical" schooling in construction and domestic labor?

As Mothers, I believe that the post-feminist emphasis on hyper-traditional, "hands-on" mothering has left women with an unreachable standard of achievement and behavior. The Duggars, as well as other megafamilies featured in programs such as "Kids by the Dozen," are held up as paragons of domestic accomplishment, with only passing (if that) exploration of the methodology needed to actually fulfill such ideals. Scratch the surface, and one almost inevitably reveals a profound reliance upon intensely isolationist fundamentalist faith, physical discipline, rigorous chore schedules and, quite often, a blatant disregard of the skills necessary to function outside of the family, religious or fiscally-mandated framework.

The Gosselin children are, by all appearances, well-fed, clothed, and provided for by a parents who still attempt to function within a socially and culturally diverse framework. Ms. Gosselin (again with the gasps!) is guilty of feeling preoccupied with her post-sextuplet physical appearance, and (faints dead away) Mr. Gosselin has been discovered to have sought validation from a woman other than his perpetually-harried and often sharp-tongued wife. In short, they have continued to function in a manner consistent with the majority of responsible, Western adults, despite the unexpected- and unfathomable- rigors associated with the daily maintenance of eight children, all of whom are elementary-school age...or younger!

I am a mother of (for now) one extremely active, inquisitive and (very!) strong-willed toddler. I did not breast-feed for anywhere near the culturally-proscribed 2+ years. I made my own baby food, and always encouraged as varied and healthy diet as possible. I did not choose to abstain from scheduled vaccinations, despite a frightening vaccine reaction experienced in my own childhood. I have cloth-diapered faithfully, forgoing environmentally-sketchy diaper services in favor of home washing. I have never bought a single "Baby Einstein" video, nor did I pipe Mozart into my womb. There may have been a time when I gleefully bounded out of bed at 3 a.m., or 6 a.m. in response to a wail issuing via the baby monitor...but I honestly can't remember it. I neglected to enroll The Child in costly and exclusive "pre-preschool" programs. I have been known to use SpongeBob as a tool to facilitate paying bills, checking email and a multitude of other tasks. There are days when The Child has been ushered to bed without a bath or a tooth brushing. I have rarely forgotten to administer the daily vitamin, and I dutifully installed outlet-covers, doorhandle-locks, baby-gates. Illnesses, "owies" and myriad health concerns have always been promptly attended to. And to what end?

The Child is, at not-quite 3 years of age, well on Its way to full potty-trainedness. It can flawlessly recite the alphabet, count to 10, and I am daily amazed by the fast-growing litany of words that The Child is able to read. I can say definitively that I have never struck The Child...I can also say with equal assurance that there have been times (after incidents involving biting, face-smacking and screaming kicks aimed at my head) when it's crossed my mind. I am frequently approached by total strangers- surprisingly frequently, in fact- wanting to compliment The Child's behavior, manners, beauty...and often all of the above, simultaneously. The Child has no terror of dogs, the dark, monsters, blood and has yet to be paralyzed by shyness. It has chipped teeth, bruised shins, scabby knees and the occasional fat lip...but then, so do I.

The Child has brought to my life an intensity of sweetness, joy, laughter, aggravation, pain and fear that I would never have thought possible. I have a best friend and vicious adversary the likes of which I am endlessly surprised by. I'm not a Supermom, and I feel guilty about that.

Just as it should be, no?

In Summation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tovznQvqVok