Link to original image here.

In real life, I’m probably going to dump the streaming option.  There’s never anything on there when I want it – easier just to get the darn thing through the mail.

OR

I can go DVD only, no streaming, for $7.99, which would be fine except that it is only one DVD out at a time and is damn inconvenient,

OR

I can do both – like I’m doing now for $9.99 – for the new and improved price of $15.99 per month?

Really?

Postage has gone up that much in one year, has it?  Or maybe you need some new servers to store all that media?

And I have the sneaking suspicion that if I go streaming only, Netflix isn’t going to be in any hurry to fill in the gaps in their streaming catalog, because they figure I’ll get frustrated and bump back up to the $15.99 level.

Alternative plan – I can cancel the whole shebang and tell Netflix to take its little red envelopes and stick them where the sun don’t shine. After all, like they say in their email, there are a lot of places to get your home entertainment these days.

For the most part, though, it’s great to have a child who has no problem talking about ANYTHING with you.

Except maybe when the topic of conversation is testicles.  The Boy is embarking on that pre-puberty voyage of discovery, you see, and he has decided that I am a one-woman Encyclopeida Testicula, just chock-full of answers to all the great mysteries of the testicle.

In case you need reminding, my handle is Big Arm WOMAN.  So there’s a flaw in his reasoning.

Still, I gamely attempt to explain why the left may hang low, and the concept of shrinkage to the best of my ability, until I finally am compelled to point out that perhaps Hublet is better equipped to handle this line of questioning, seeing as how he is appropriately, erm, equipped.

Hublet’s advice?

“Keep them clean and dry and don’t hit them, because it will hurt.”

Elegant and simple.  Perhaps I will have it printed on The Boy’s underpants.

The Girl spent  her time at the ballpark going through my purse for snacks and trying to eat mud.  In other words, it was a typical day in the life of The Girl.

The highlight of the day came, however, when I happened to glance over to see a friend’s 8-year-old son sitting on the pavement playing with what looked like a plastic wrapped cylinder.  Since I didn’t have to worry about him eating said cylinder (unlike the way I would if The Girl had found it), I didn’t pay too much attention until I happened to glance back over and see that the object he had freed from said cylinder was an unused tampon.

Hilarity ensued among the moms and dads on the bleachers.  Hilarity doubled when the boy in question brought the remains of the tampon up to his mom and said, “Look!  I found a tiny pillow!” and proceeded to lay his head upon it.

Ah, baseball season.

Plus, turkey burgers, while they can be tasty, just lack that certain beefy je nais se quois.

Take that, food police!

Point the First – Feminism is not to blame for your perpetual adolescence.  YOU are to blame for that. Feminism did not make you self-centered, and yet here you are, bragging about how pleasant it is to exist only for yourself.  I’m thinking your mother tried to raise you better than that.

Point the Second – Maybe no one has ever told you this, but let me explain how reality works:  you can have it all, you just can’t have it all at once.  Choices.  You must make them, and then you must LIVE WITH THEM.  Whining doesn’t help.

Point the Third – Biology is real, and has a real effect on your life.  So for all of the commenters getting all “We’re more than our uteri, dammit,” I would merely like to point out that your yelling doesn’t change the fact that you possess said uteri, and that possession of said uteri means that your experience of life will differ from a man’s, particularly if you think you may want children.  Not even the POWER OF STEINEM can change biological reality, sisterhood.  So you need to take that into account.  As someone who experienced firsthand the hypothesized increased fertility at 40, let me tell you that while it’s fun being a mom later in life, it’s also harder.  Biology is a total beeyotch.

Point the Fourth, Somewhat Related to Point the Third – The aforementioned uterus is not a magical bag that directs your emotions mommy-ward.  Your BRAIN is the organ you need to use there.  Do you picture yourself having a family in the future?  Okay, your brain will help you calculate the ways and odds of that happening, not your uterus.  Women don’t have a mystical holy conversion experience wherein a glowy uterus appears to them in a dream and says, “Go forth and multiply!” and then they are filled with a longing for wombfruit.  Although if you’re waiting around for that sort of thing to happen, maybe you’re better off without kids.

Point the Fifth, and Really the Most Important Takeaway Here, Regardless of Your Gender – Grow up.  No, really.  You are 32 years old, for crying out loud. Take a big gulp from the coffee mug marked “real world” and then grow up.  It’s actually kind of pleasant here in adulthood land.

Oh save us from ourselves, noble Media Matters!  The nation cries out for your thin-skinned yet overbearing thought policing!  Because there’s nothing more dangerous than people who might actually choose to hear different viewpoints, you know?  Of course, I’m using “choose” in the ironic hipster sense of the word, because everyone knows that the mushy-headed sheeple who watch Fox have all been hypnotized into doing so by Brett Baier’s even, white teeth.

The puritanical impulse is still alive and well in America, it seems.  And its new bff is the fascistic impulse – and they are both living it up on George Soros’ dime.

Yesterday I added a bit of water to the water side of the table, since it was 83 degrees outside.  I subsequently drained said water when The Girl started shovelling it into her mouth with the shovel from the sand side of the table.  This left behind some wet sand, which The Girl was fascinated with.

She is the complete opposite of her brother, in that everything that can go in her mouth, does.  This is the child who ate a dead fly, after all.  We have been trying to teach her restraint, but impulse control is really not a toddler’s strong suit.  At any rate, I could see by the calculating gleam in her eye what she was thinking, and it was something like, “This ball of wet sand looks like a yummy, sugary, ball of cookie.  Maybe I should eat it.”

Me:  “No, no.  That is dirt.  Dirt is yucky and we don’t eat it.  Blech.  Blech.”  (Yes, I was making the appropriate faces to illustrate the concept)

The Girl:  (Looks at ball of wet sand)  “Dut.”

Me:  “Yes, dut.  Dirty yucky blech.”

The Girl:  “Bleh.  Dut.”

Me:  “Right.  So don’t eat it.”

The Girl:  (Eats it, then sticks out tongue and shakes head while I attempt to scrape sand out of her mouth and off of her tongue)

Me:  “See?  I told you it was yucky and we don’t eat dut.”

The Girl:  “Dut.”

There is a brief pause, then she eats more dirt.

I don’t know if it’s so much a learning curve at this point, because it seems more like a line.

He also acknowledged that nothing in the research he and others have done denies that some conservatives may feel that academe is “unwelcoming” to them as a profession.

But “unwelcoming,” he noted, “is still a self-selection story, as opposed to an exclusion story.”

Many of the commenters on the story have already pointed out how offended people would be if you replaced political categories with race or gender, to wit:  “Our schools aren’t segregated!  Black students may feel ‘unwelcome’ in white schools, but they are still merely self-selecting inner city educations!”  So I’ll leave you to take a look at those comments to see a laundry list of the flaws inherent in the studies.

My point is slightly different  – if you have spent ANY time in academia, how can you possibly say with a straight face that just because a professor doesn’t respond to a preliminary query from (someone who may be) a conservative student with “DIE IN A FIRE, OPPRESSOR!!” that there is no proof of bias in academe?

Have you been on any search committees?  I have.  There are a million tiny ways to get rid of the folks you don’t like, the chief among them being the almighty “collegiality” excuse.

In other words, there seems to be a lot more selectivity going on here than meets the eye; particularly in the study authors’ inability to recognize departmental political reality.

So on behalf of actual “wage slaves” (and possibly REAL slaves) everywhere, I would like to ask you to please shut the hell up.

Sincerely,
Big Arm Woman