Still Here. Still Pregnant.

And becoming exponentially more irritable every day.  Watching the news is not helping on the irritability front, so I’m trying not to do that, and I have no patience for sports teams right now, either.

Basically, I will be sitting in the den eating salsa and watching “reality” ghost shows until The Girl decides it’s time to show up.

Like this one:  Celebrity Ghost Stories.  It’s got everything I love about cheesy t.v.:  Unintentionally humorous re-enactments, using blurred focus so that it’s REALLY obvious that the celebrity in question is not actually doing the re-enactment!  Overwrought celebrity prose!  Proof positive that perhaps these folks have had too much easy access to pharmaceuticals for far too long!  Awesome.

Or this one, which I’ve just filed under WTF:  Paranormal State.  It’s way too plot-involved to be an actual reality show, in my humble opinion.  It’s more like a low-budget version of Supernatural, which is itself a low-budget t.v. version of a whole lot of low-budget horror movies.  But I watch it anyway, so it must be doing something right…

And then there’s the classic Scariest Places on Earth, which I still love.  I mean, come on, how can you resist?  It’s hosted by Linda Blair with voiceovers from the teeny tiny psychic woman from Poltergeist!

But if you want something a bit more highbrow that still contains the super-cheesy fun elements of classic History Channel television, might I recommend this one:  Clash of the Gods.  Watching Thor battle the serpent of Midgard–with all the opportunity for bad CGI and overwrought tiny hammer-waving that it represents–is totally worth the price of admission.  Seriously.  If Thor’s actual hammer was that small…well, SOMEBODY was overcompentsating in the comic books, is all I have to say about that.  Plus, it features a medievialist blogger that I like as an expert!  Bonus!

In other news, finished reading the entire Twilight series.  Feral Girl, while I understand and empathize with your desire to not suffer through bad literature alone, you owe me big time.  Dear GOD, that was bad.  The entire second book’s plot is based on the fallout from a paper cut, for Chrissakes!  And no, I am not kidding.

Yuck.

I already have this New Year’s Eve planned.  I am going to express enough milk to get The Girl through a day or two, and then I am going to put The Boy to bed, sit down with Hublet and an entire bottle (or more) of champagne, and play a drinking game of my own devising entitled, “Thank God 2009 is OVER.”  The rules are simple:  every time you think of a stress-inducing event from the previous year, chug. 

It could take a case of champagne to get through, now that I think about it.

So the radio silence this week has been caused by The Boy’s acquiring some sort of virus.  He hasn’t been too bothered, and in fact was pleased by one aspect of being sick–it meant that when I took him in for his 8-year-old checkup he didn’t have to get the flu shot.

The doctor said it was either some random thing or a very mild case of flu, so I’m just trying not to breathe while inside the house for the next few days.  I would much rather The Boy spend a couple of days sofa-bound prior to the Blessed Event rather than afterward, but on the other hand the prospect of giving birth with the flu doesn’t really appeal to me. 

And speaking of things that don’t appeal…I’ve been following the Polanski/Letterman/yucky people threads on the intarwebs and I must say that it has all left me with an unpleasant yucky feeling, and one that apparently isn’t obvious.

Lost in all of the “the rich get treated differently,” “rape-rape,” “hollywood is moral because it has compassion,” “is it harrassment or not,” “but he isn’t a politician”  parsing of the standards to which we should hold people is this question:  if we’re spending all of our time defining standards downward in order to spare someone we may like personally, haven’t we then lost our standards?

Polanski is in a realm of his own.  In the immortal words of Dolly Parton, “turn that rooster into a hen.”  That’s all I have to say about that, notwithstanding Harvey Weinstein’s inability to understand that compassion by itself isn’t the same as morality. 

The Letterman issue is where I get puzzled about the parsing.  See, if we have standards, then that means that NO MATTER WHO YOU ARE, or HOW FUNNY YOU MAY BE, or HOW CONSENSUAL THE CHEATING WAS, or HOW MUCH OF A VICTIM OF EXTORTION YOU ARE, or HOW THIS IS A PRIVATE AFFAIR, if you cheat on your wife (or your girlfriend of approxmiately eight million years) you still are wrong.  Wrong, wrong, wrong.  And kind of a yucky person, to boot.

Yes, human beings are fallible.  Yes, forgiveness is possible and that issue is between Letterman and his wife and/or Letterman and God, though I doubt he’s the type to believe in any authority he doesn’t see in the mirror on a daily basis.

But going on t.v. and admitting you were wrong doesn’t make the behavior excusable or okay.  And it certainly doesn’t make it okay because you’re an entertainer as opposed to a cleric or a moralizer. 

Wrong is wrong.  Sorry if that harshes your mellow.

Your Wednesday Nutbar

It’s an easy target, but still an amusing read, if you find borderline personality disorders amusing:

Ralph Nader’s Time Magazine interview.

Proving that constant exposure to money, more than anything else, removes people completely from reality.  Best quote: 

By the time the thousand-page monstrosity of complexity and ambiguity gets to his desk, it’s going to be a shred of what the majority of doctors, nurses and the people in this country want — which is full Medicare for all.

I don’t mean to nitpick, but has Nader been paying any attention to anyone outside of his 14 friends who are doctors?  Sentiments among the medical community are mixed about this issue–and I’m softpedaling reality here.

Wow.  I will at least give the headline writer some props here for a headline that works on many, many levels.

And I will give Nader props for making me laugh out loud at the premise that we can all be saved from ourselves if only YOKO ONO gets involved!  Yeah, that’s what this current cluster has been missing–an aging, irrelevant performance artist.  It’s all so clear to me now.

The Limit

I have finally discovered the limit of my tolerance and patience.  No, not with politics, child-rearing or academia.  I have discovered the limit of my ability to understand and empathize with mental illness.  Not all mental illness, mind you, just one permutation.

What is the occasion of this journey of self-discovery and shame, you ask?

Hoarders, on A&E.

Just–Oh My God.  Usually when I watch these shows about addiction or depression or schizophrenia, I may be baffled by the people on the screen, but I can muster empathy for them because they are obviously suffering from a debilitating illness.  But there is something about the hoarding–even though you can obviously argue that it is a debilitating condition–that completely shuts down my empathy valve and has me yelling at the screen, “For God’s sake, stick her in a padded cell and CLEAN THE FREAKING HOUSE!!!!”

Maybe it’s due to the fact that I grew up in a house where my dad’s idea of a fun way to kick off Saturday morning was by vacuuming at 8 a.m.,  followed by raking the shag carpeting.  (Yes, I am a child of the 70’s.  Deal with it.  We had lovely, fluffy shag carpeting, too.  It never got matted or ratty looking.)  My parents, due to their Depression-era raising, were super-scrupulous about taking care of stuff and keeping it clean.  They were too poor to hoard, so they went the other way–you want poster people for “reduce, reuse, recycle,” look no further than my parents.

Or maybe it’s due to the show itself, which does an admirable job of illustrating the kind of denial hoarders live in, without being an hour-long “fix-it” show.  No one suddenly sees the light at the end of the show, no sassy british ladies show up with baking soda and feather dusters to make inappropriate sexual jokes and scour away soap scum–it’s just the same person, insisting that they aren’t hoarding, they’re going to get around to selling the stuff/repairing the stuff/giving the stuff as presents/reorganizing the stuff for an ENTIRE HOUR, while simultaneously refusing to actually get rid of/organize/fix or sell ANYTHING, even when an entire army of mental health professionals and a Haz-Mat team have shown up to help out.

News flash:  Here’s how these stories are probably going to end.  The hoarders are going to lose all their friends and family, die covered in cockroach crap when a pile of ancient newspapers falls over and crushes them, and then the four dozen cats they “rescued” are going to EAT THEM.  But they don’t get it, or they don’t care. 

And instead of empathy, it produces blind, frustrated rage in me when I watch.  Gah.

Is it compelling television?  Definitely.  I just don’t think I’ll be able to watch it anymore, because of its effect on my mental health.

Facing Adversity is Challenging

When you don’t actually know what the adversity is, numbers-wise.

The good news is that I am no longer alone in my freaking out, having dragged a loan agent, her entire management staff, 2 realtors, my extended family, and the sellers of the home we’d like to buy into the morass of freaking out along with me.  So I’ve got that going on, which actually kind of cheers me up.  I’ve always been a “share the pain” type, and not in that altruistic, Obama-care kind of way.  For me, sharing the pain involves more of the “oh, Hell no–if I’m suffering you’re coming with me” Ghenghis Khan-type sentiment.  But if you’ve been reading this blog you probably already know that…

Speaking of Khan and all things sort-of Barbarian, I finally saw the movie Conan the Barbarian last night on G4.  Wow, that movie was horrible.  And I’m not talking about the cheesy dialogue, Arnold’s complete lack of acting skills OR James Earl Jones’ wig.  I’m talking about the fight choreography!  Pretty much the only reason I was watching Conan was to see burly barbarians whacking the crap out of each other, but the whacking, it was sorely lacking. Frankly, the fight scenes on Deadliest Warrior are way more compelling.  It was like they couldn’t afford slow motion cinematography, so they just made the actors slow down instead.  Likewise, they couldn’t afford decent props (the giant, obviously painted styrofoam war hammer winning the BAW cheapest prop of the night award), or stuntmen, or script writers, or…

How did this movie not show up on MST3K?

News Flash from Hublet

Hublet: (yelling at the television set after dinner) “NO! Michael Jackson was NOT MURDERED!”

Me: “Huh? I thought you were in a self-imposed ‘Jackson free zone’ and didn’t care?”

Hublet: “I don’t! But if they try to say he was murdered this crap will drag on for MONTHS and I can’t take it anymore!”

Me: “Oh, dear God.”

Summer Reading List

I’ve actually got some spare time to read, so I’ve picked up a couple of  books from the local library that I’m enjoying…

1. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies – yeah I know, I’m a pop culture lemming.  So sue me.  I’m only about 60 pages in, but it’s quite amusing.  Just picture Mr. Bennett exhorting his daughters to form the “pentagram of death” in the middle of the Meryton assembly in order to fight off an encroaching horde of undead, and you’ve got the general tenor of the book.  It’s possible that this could turn into a one-note joke and become tedious, but thus far, to paraphrase Caroline Bingley, I am all excitement.
2. Redcoat - this one’s by Bernard Cornwell, who did the Sharpe’s raiders series.  I read his novel Agincourt earlier this year and liked it.  This one is set during the American Revolution, so we shall see what occurs.  I’m betting on excessively descriptive scenes of battle carnage and a lot of testosterone-laden hoo-ha, offset by mustache-twirling bad guys, all in an historical setting.  I don’t mind formulaic writing, as long as the formula is appealing.

Also, my friend Feral Girl is threatening me with the Twilight trilogy.  Perhaps you guys could suggest some books to help me regain my sanity after I suffer through Stephanie Meyer?

You’ll Put Your Eye Out!

I’ve been spending the majority of my time lately learning first-hand the dangers of combining the realms of the political and the academic with the media.  It’s sort of like crossing the streams from the proton packs in Ghostbusters; i.e., ”“Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.”

So there’s that.

In an attempt to escape from the endless cycle of doom, I decided to run an errand to pick up some sundries that I need.  I came across this little gem, which merely confirms my suspicions that all cosmetics are designed by sadists.

Note instruction #3:  “While pressing the button, place brush at base of lashes and move slowly towards lash tip. Continue applying coats to achieve preferred lash look.”

It’s not enough that I have to take a spiky brush and stick it near my delicate iris on a daily basis, now I have to hold down a button on the tip of the brush and maneuver a vibrating stick around without doing corneal damage.  And the stick–oh, excuse me, “wand,” stick is so declasse’ when you’re discussing fine cosmetics–vibrates 7,000 times per stroke!  It’s like strapping a hummingbird to a popsicle stick and using it to apply mascara–the hell, people!

I’m not a klutz, but I am usually in a hurry in the mornings, trying to get The Boy decently attired, making sure the house is ready for any surprise realtor showings, tossing the cat outside, occasionally losing my mind and engaging in war with the tomcat across the street, and attempting to look at least one step above homeless for my work colleagues.  I really do not need to add the excitement of possible blindness via mascara application to my morning routine.

Apparently, the vibrating mascara brush is the latest cosmetic “trend.”  Yeah, well it used to be trendy for women to use lead-based facial powder, too.  I’ll give this one a pass, thanks.

You Learn Something New Every Day

And do you know what I’ve learned today?

I don’t want to see the President of the United States without a shirt on.

Eww.

I don’t care if he’s old and fat, or young and fit, or bald or hairy or anything – I DO NOT WANT TO SEE HIS CHEST, OKAY?!?  I want to go to my grave with the mental image I associate with “President” equalling “Dude (or Dudette) in a suit, standing behind a podium,” NOT,  “Oh my God someone call Jenny Craig!!,” or “Are those MAN BOOBS?!?,” or, “It’s called situps and sunlight – look into it!”

Why such squeamishness on my part? Because my instinctive reaction to seeing a photo of someone in a bathing suit is to find and dissect every single physical flaw they have.  Don’t blame me – blame years of looking at airbrushed super models in bikinis on magazine covers and attempting to find any physical feature that might prove they are mere mortals so that I could muster up the courage to don a bathing suit and go to the beach.  And, perhaps somewhat  naively, I would like to believe that the office of president carries a bit more gravitas than the cover of Sports Illustrated.

Plus, most people who become president are old and saggy, and I believe I speak for future generations when I say that we don’t need to set a precedent for the presidential election containing a swimsuit portion.

Also, our current president, while pretty fit, is straddling the man-boob line in a way that makes me feel kind of icked out.  Dude-in-chief would totally NOT pass the pencil test.  Sorry, but there it is.  Or there they are – whichever.  I told you I was a flaw-finding maniac.

And now I can’t unsee it.  Damn you, media!!!  Like you haven’t done enough to make my life difficult – now you’ve imprinted POTUS cleavage on my consciousness!!

I may never recover.

Go Ahead – Make me a Pariah

Because I’m going to come right out and say something that’s been weighing on me for quite some time:

I really don’t like Winnie the Pooh.  I read the books and saw the Disney stuff when I was little, but it never made any real impression on me, other than to instill in my 6-year-old self the urge to kill Tigger.  Seriously, could there be a more annoying character?

Actually, yes – just pick any denizen of the Hundred Acre Wood.  The competition for most annoying is stiff indeed.  And I am including Pooh amongst the candidates.  If Milne’s idea was to place human weaknesses into stuffed animals, couple it with the total inability to learn from mistakes, stir, and toss the whole lot into an imaginary wood with a small boy – congratulations!  Mission accomplished, and kudos to you, sir, for translating your child’s imaginary life into a living for yourself.  I don’t begrudge you your success, but as I prefer not to grind my teeth down to nubs while reading, I shall avoid your tales.  

I mercifully forgot about Pooh until college, when I was confronted with the whole Tao of Pooh thing, and the people who read it.  The book’s value primarily seemed to be in its ability to confer “thoughtful hipster” cred to bookstore patrons who dropped its name.  I mean, yes, cute premise – look!  You can see the principles of taoism in the Pooh books!  Okay, so?  You can also find the principles of capitalism in Grimm’s fairy tales.  And some people find evidence of the evil patriarchy’s sexual repression in Poe’s Murders in the Rue Morgue. Alert the media!

Again, I moved on, mercifully freeing myself from Pooh, his tao, and the rest of those chuckleheads.

Until I had a child, and was assaulted with Pooh books.  Fortunately, The Boy had very little interest in Pooh, so we left him behind and I breathed a sigh of relief.  Free of Pooh forever!  Huzzah! 

Then I read this.  Seriously?  More Pooh books?  Leaving aside for the moment the fact that I am not at all the intended audience, let’s think about how well sequels to beloved books that are not written by the original authors do.  Anyone remember Scarlett?  I do, and I really, really wish that I didn’t, because oh my God that book was bad.  Like, Bulwer-Lytton bad.

The fact that the article refers to Scarlett as a sucess “in spite of the bad reviews” is telling.  Yes, it’s true that I was excited to see the series extended.  Until I read the book, and then I wanted to see people’s heads on pikes.  However, this occurred after I had given the publisher my money, so I can see how a good bottom line coupled with a bit of PR can turn “The author butchered the characters, the plot was completely ridiculous, and I would like a full refund plus restitution for pain and suffering” into “What we found was that the customers didn’t care at all about the reviews.”

So perhaps my being a Pooh non-fan will be a good thing.  If in the sequel Pooh suddenly becomes a competent bear, Tigger discovers ritalyn, Eeyore finds a decent therapist, Piglet grows a pair and Rabbit moves away I will not feel betrayed–I’ll actually be happy!  

Silver linings, people.  I’ll take ‘em where I can get ‘em.