Attack of the Ukranian Man-Boobs

All right, I’ve had it. If you are a world leader, please, for the love of all things holy, KEEP YOUR SHIRT ON! Please. I am begging you. Because no matter how successful you are, or how well (or poorly) your country is faring, no one wants to see your boobs.

I PROMISE.

Let’s face it, fellas.  Most of you are upwards of middle aged, the time in life when things start to sag and drag, no matter how many chest presses you do.  Why you would think that showing some saggy pecs to the world would impress anyone with your virility is frankly beyond me.

I mean, think about it.  Would Golda Meir or Benazir Bhutto have done photo ops on a topless beach to prove to the masses that they possessed enough feminine mystique to rule a country? No. Just, no. 

So if they wouldn’t have done it, and you’re a man who may actually wear a larger bra size than either of those women, do us all a favor and Keep. It. Covered. Take a page from the book of decorum, is all I’m asking.

The eyes of web surfers everywhere will thank you, starting with mine.

A Bug, a Big Ol’ Bug. NOT a Feature.

Climate legislation as a means toward “global governance” of climate law? You mean, the same sort of efficient, caring bureaucracies that run the U.N. and its peacekeeping efforts? Or to use a local metaphor, the DMV? That sort of global governance? Why doesn’t that thought fill me with warm fuzzies? Perhaps because my limited experience with state government via academe has pretty much proved that it’s full of venal gasbags who adopt the pose of moral superiority to mask the fact that they’re just as hard in pursuit of the almighty dollar as the “evil rich” they like to blame everything on?

I swear to God, I’m going to end up in a survivalist bunker before this decade is over. I’m beginning to think that everyone has lost their minds, and that they’ve all decided, “Screw it! Let’s just go whole hog and see what happens!” Let’s pass bills we haven’t read! Let’s give quotes to the media asserting that making bills huge and impossible to read is a good thing! Let’s spend money that not only don’t we have right now, but that NO ONE HAS OR WILL HAVE FOR THE FORSEEABLE FUTURE, and as a bonus, ensure that taxes will go up by passing these aforementioned un-read bills! Whee!

And these people are supposed to be the smartest in the room? Academia has failed, folks, and I can’t even drown my sorrows in beer.

Monday Brain Dump

Several things in no particular order as I recover from the long weekend:

• Dear Babycenter.com – get off my back!  Is there no holiday or festive occasion you can’t ruin with your stupid emails?  I enjoy the weekly updates that compare the womb nugget to a particular fruit and tell you what body parts are developing (week 25 – HAIR!  woot!), but I’m sick of all the other crap.  For the 4th of July you actually sent out an email entitled, “What to Avoid During the 4th of July Holiday.”  Wow.  What a bunch of laxative-needing, parade-raining losers.  I suppose now would not be the best time to point out that these same vaunted medical expert types actually prescribed speed to my mother during her pregnancy…grain of salt, is all I’m sayin’.  Well, that and the fact that I will not be told what to do by the freaking internet.  Jeez.  Just tell me if the child has achieved rutabega status, and we’ll call it even.  I promise I’m not drinking out of mud puddles or chain smoking crack.
• If I see one more Prius-driving, recycled bag-using, hip-happy bumper-sticker-having idiot who refuses to walk the extra 10 yards to return their Harris Teeter shopping cart to the store cart kiosk, and who instead shoves the cart onto the median in the vain hope that it will not roll away/dent a car/block a parking space, I will kill that person and convert his or her body to fuel for my Subaru.  Yes, you are all that and a bag of chips, environmental warrior – unless, of course, it involves actually getting off your ass and doing something you can’t proudly display to the world as evidence of your superiority, like taking a few extra steps and cleaning up after yourself.  Give me a couple more weeks gestation, and I will no doubt have an entertaining Harris Teeter encounter to regale you with involving me, one of these lazy cretins, the local P.D., and the media.
• Speaking of media and all the Palin hoo-ha, I’m finding that some of the most interesting conversation about the entire Palin phenomenon and attendant PDS–from women, specifically–is here.  My favorite bit (but read the whole thing, and the comments, if you’ve got time–like, a LOT of time):
  

  “Besides, I know for a fact that the feminists spreading the lies about Palin knew they were spreading lies. Not to tell tales out of school, but: they knew. They were supplied with the correct information, and they chose to lie anyway. Why?

  Was it just about electing Obama? Were feminists simply willing to commit any slander necessary to elect the Chosen One? That’s a likely explanation, but here again: we’re talking about feminists. Feminists doing this — slandering a woman, and doing so in unmistakably sexist terms. After all, caricaturing Palin as a purity queen (Bible Spice, Sexy Puritan) is just the flip side of caricaturing her as a porn queen. As I’ve said before, it’s like the NAACP sponsoring a lynching. The mind boggles.

  Even more mind-boggling are the attacks that don’t even bother with false claims about policy or beliefs, but just go straight for free-floating misogynistic rage. Ridiculing her hair, clothes, makeup, voice, body, womb. “Sarah Palin is a cunt” — good one! Calling her a bimbo — good one! Calling her a fucking whore — good one! Fantasizing about her being gang-raped — good one! And all this from feminists. Forget the NAACP sponsoring a lynching; this is like the NAACP ripping off their masks to reveal that they’ve been replaced by white supremacist pod people.”

Prepare for Vomit, in 3…2…1

Saturday marks the 5th annual Krispy Kreme challenge, a non-university event that still takes place here, because it was started by our students.

What, you may ask, is the KKC?

You have to start at the belltower, run 2 miles to the local Krispy Kreme, eat a dozen donuts, and run the 2 miles back in 1 hour.  Hopefully you will do all this without puking your guts out, but history has taught us otherwise.  In case you’re wondering, 5,000 people have signed up to do it this year.

This year, ESPN is sending a crew to cover it.  Which means I get to work the event. 

I am totally wearing washable shoes.  And I’d better get some free donuts, dammit.

For fun, here’s the student-made trailer for last year’s challenge.

Remember:  1 hour, 4 miles, 12 donuts, 2400 calories!

Brief Update

The Boy is now officially a sleepover-addicted fool.  Didn’t get home from his first one until 8 p.m. Saturday night, and has been invited to another one this Friday, post Trick-or-Treating. 

Our last fall baseball game was last night, and I will miss those goofy boys.  That was an awesome team.

If you aren’t watching season 4 of Supernatural, a pox upon you.  That is all.

Just when I think that I can no longer be appalled by how self-deluded and avaricious people can be, something like this comes along, smacks me in the head, and makes me despair for all of humanity.  I mean, shouldn’t someone be getting this woman Paxil instead of a book contract?  Really?

Class wars, elitism, and the never-ending charges thereof are sucking the very marrow from my bones.  Part of the reason Hublet and I stay firmly ensconced in the countryside is because I still live in fear of being stuck at another dinner party where a friend could pipe up, straight-faced, and declare that “We are the intellectual elites!”  God help us all if that’s the case. Yes, that really did happen, and yes, I was completely mortified. Said friend capped off the evening by calling her (then)-husband an ass in front of the assembled company.  Yeah.  Give me farmers, cows and guns any day.

Purse Blogging

Yeah.  Because every time I turn on the news lately my eyes start to bleed and I can feel my brain running out of my ears–I’ve decided that frivolity is the way to go!

We went to Myrtle Beach this weekend to see the fam and get a little R&R.  It was overcast and rainy, but we were still able to get in the ocean (actually, we were able to stand there, mouth agape, and watch The Boy frolic in the freezing surf with a bunch of equally cold-desensitized Canadians), ride some rides at Broadway at the Beach, swim in the HEATED indoor pool, and eat good seafood.

And I was finally able to use my birthday cash to procure the object of my capitalist lust:

 

Photo from here.

And let me tell you something – if an economist were to stick a toe inside the Coach outlet at Myrtle Beach, he or she would have NO IDEA that the economy was tanking.  Seriously, it was a handbag-crazed free-for-alll in there.  Women were snatching up $400 handbags willy-nilly and the salespeople were constantly running back and forth to restock.

Some of it certainly had to do with the sale that day – the bag I bought normally retails for upwards of $350.  But it was marked down, then there was an additional 30% off of that, and then, if you gave a lady in a red apron $1, she would give you a coupon for an additional 25% off on top of the 30% on top of the already marked down price.  So I didn’t even spend all my birthday money, and had enough left over to go blow it at the Oshkosh outlet on clothes for The Boy. (I know.  All my cash seems to end up on The Boy’s back somehow, but since he refuses to stop growing, I’m not seeing that changing in the forseeable future.)

One of the perplexed Coach salesladies was heard to remark:  “What meltdown?  Either people are doing better than we thought, or they’ve all freaked out and decided ‘to hell with it, I’m spending my money!”

My money’s on the second half of that statement, but then, I’m a pessimist.

In slightly less frivolous news, I’ve been debating starting my own political party.  I’m thinking of calling it the “What the Hell is WRONG with You People” party of populist rage, and am beginning to formulate the list of attributes I’d like my fellow party members to have.  So far, I’ve only settled hard and fast on one thing:

If your political philosophy can be summed up in rhyme, YOU AREN’T WELCOME HERE.

There will be more to come.

 

Oxford American – Katrina Edition

So the latest OA arrived at the house – they seem to be holding their own after a long line of debacles involving going out of publication, then coming back, then vanishing again, then coming back, THEN having all their cash embezzled–it’s kind of a southern gothic, when you think about it.  I’m sure the publisher will be thrilled to hear that I believe their travails give them southern street cred, if no actual cash flow…

Anyway, the issue is all about Katrina, with pieces written by folks from there, or who were there, etc – fiction, non-fiction, yadda yadda yadda.  Good stuff.

But the article that is bothering me is the one about the doctor who told Dick Cheney to F*** himself – not because he did that, because, hey, it’s America, and if you want to take time from your busy day to yell angry epithets at a Vice President, be my guest.  No, it’s because after reading the article, the only thing I could think was, “Why the hell was this guy even THERE to yell at Dick Cheney?”

The figure in question is a medical doctor from Gulfport, who, at the time Katrina struck, had a 39-week pregnant wife and a sick toddler.  The story outlines his decision to leave when he saw the storm hit a Cat 5 (good call!), his family’s brief stay in a hotel room, and then, his inexplicable decision to drive his pregnant wife NOT further north to an actual city with electricity and a hotel, but BACK TO HIS HOUSE (bad call, dude.  Just – Bad. Call).  Which had just sustained a major hurricane.  Naturally, birthin’ wackiness ensued, and this guy’s subsequent “heroic” moment of fighting the man–or cussin’ a V.P.–was completely lost on me, as all I could think was, “Dude.  Wtf?”

Now, I’ve never experienced a cat 5 hurricane while living in a city located on the coast or–in the case of N.O.–below sea level, but I was in Raleigh for Hurricane Fran back in 1996.  That was a 3, I believe, by the time it hit us, we’re a few hundred miles inland, and it still took 9 days for them to get the power back on in my apartment, and a full YEAR to finish clearing up the debris.  ‘96 was pretty much the year of the dump truck around here.

So my point is that I have a difficult time understanding how someone–and someone with a medical degree, no less, so obviously not a stupid person–could think that things would be anywhere near okay a scant week after a hurricane the size of Katrina came through.  Even if FEMA had been staffed by the Justice League and the X-Men, this wouldn’t have been the case.

Thankfully, his wife was made of sterner stuff, and was able to deliver a baby the old fashioned way in a hospital with no meds and spotty electricity.  Had it been me, I would have followed up that bit of forced performance art by chucking the placenta at the good doctor’s head.

I have half a mind to email the author of the piece and inquire whether or not the doctor remains married…

 

 

Oh, for Crying out Loud

You know, I wanted to post about how I am The Official Dugout Mom for The Boy’s baseball team, and talk about the ways in which dealing with fourteen seven-year-old boys in a dugout is FAR SUPERIOR to grappling with eight five-year-olds in the same setting, but then I came across this article, and I simply could not believe that somewhere out there is a human being–who makes a living teaching other human beings in a discipline that is supposed to feature research, logic and reasoning–whose grasp of logic is so flawed that she is able to straight-facedly put forth the argument that if you’ve lived anywhere that racism, crime or radicalism has ever occurred, your past should be investigated with respect to racism, crime, or radicalism. Even when, as she states IN THE PIECE ITSELF, there is no evidence linking the person in question to these beliefs.  What the hell, lady?

As a resident of the south, then, who has travelled in Italy and visited the DC Holocaust Museum, I hereby submit myself for investigation regarding my obvious ties to Mussolini, nazism and the Klan. 

Read it if you want a laugh, but the real fun is in the comments section.  My personal fave?

Lizzy Borden was from New England. I will assume Catherine McNicol Stock is also an ax murderer until she proves otherwise. She certainly knows her way around a hatchet. 

But back to my main point – as far as I am aware, the discipline of history values logical analysis.  So I went to the author’s departmental homepage (she’s the chair of the history department and the director of the American Studies program, btw, another feather in the cap of academe) to see what courses were required in order to matriculate with a BA in American Studies.

First we are told that American Studies is one of the most popular majors at Connecticut College.  Let’s see what’s on offer, shall we?

Here is a sample of courses from various disciplines that you might take as an American Studies major or minor:

• Introduction To American Studies (required)
• Theorizing Race And Ethnicity (required)
• Politics And Culture In The United States Since 1917
• The History of Hip Hop Music and Culture in Post-Industrial America, 1973-Present
• History of Witchcraft And Magic
• Latin American Immigration And Migration
• The Globalization of American Culture Since 1945 (senior capstone course, required)

Consult the Related Links at right to find the Major and Minor requirements for American Studies, and to view the Course Catalog to learn about these, and more courses,  in depth.

Okay, if I were 18 years old and I could take courses about Hip Hop and Witchcraft and end up with a bachelor’s degree I would be all over that crap!

And crap it is, apparently, if the department head’s editorial is any indication of the sort of academic rigor practiced in that department.

As an aside, kudos to the Philadelphia Inquirer – I’m pretty sure your online circulation figures have skyrocketed in the wake of the two most recent Palin editorials you’ve published.  If I were running a paper during these trying times, I’d be doing my damndest to get Drudge to link me, too!

Uterus Uber Alles

Dear Sisterhood –

W.T.F.

Seriously.  Here’s a helpful list of Things I Have Learned About Feminism, 2008 Revised Edition.

1. The media is sexist.  Well actually this one wasn’t a news flash.  I mean, I’m not a big HRC fan, but come on–if you’re gonna criticize a woman for having birthing hips on the campaign trail, then I demand equal time for some analysis of the Biden Comb Over.  Because really, that thing is scary.
2. It’s bad when the media is sexist, unless the media is being sexist toward women who aren’t big fans of willy-nilly uterine scraping.  Then those bitches deserve what they get!
3. Women are oppressed because they can’t have it all! 
4. Women who actually DO have it all really need to Think of the Children! And stop having it all, dammit!  And stop raping Gaia by having children!  Also, see #2 above.  Again.
5. Women are more than their uterus.  And to prove it, we will divide into camps based upon uterine policy.  It makes perfect sense when you think about it.
6. Every stupid decision a child ever makes is ALWAYS THE MOTHER’S FAULT.  Always.  That unattractive dress I paid way too much for last week?  Yeah, totally mom’s fault.  Somebody slap her!
7. Fathers?  What are those things, anyway?

I’m speechless.  Really.  Is that what everything about a woman’s experience boils down to nowadays?  The uterus?  I’m having a hard time believing that we’ve come a long way when we can’t seem to get past our own birth canals.

Wake me in November.

Don’t Screw with Pooh

Winnie the Pooh, that is.  Because apparently the silly old bear has a temper when he feels that he’s being stared at:

“Japanese police have arrested a 20-year-old man who attacked and robbed two people after they stared at his Winnie-the-Pooh costume, officials said on Tuesday.”

Okay!

And why was he wearing the Pooh costume?  Because it was laundry day, sillies!