What’s in your closet?
You know how sometimes you go rooting through your closet and come across an item of clothing you forgot you had? Well, one Japanese man had something much more interesting than an ill-fitting suit hiding in the unused corners of his closet. After being called to check on a suspected burglar, police found a 58 year old homeless woman hiding in a shelf compartment in … Continue reading What’s in your closet?
My quick take on the news
After putting up 4 fairly long posts in less than 24 hours yesterday, I need to take some time to attend to the kiddies and my gardens. But I’d hate the leave my minions without their Upside Down World fix (that’s a joke, btw 🙂 ). So I thought I’d pass on my take on a couple of recent news events which have been bugging me.
1. Oil. Obviously oil costs too much. Obviously we need to find ways to cut back. Obviously what we are doing isn’t sustainable in the long term. However, the reality is that our best case scenario right now is to cut back and go through a transition period away from heavy dependence on oil. Which means that for the foreseeable future we will still need the stuff. So, it drives me nuts that we refuse to allow drilling and oil exploration either on or off shore in the USA. Now, I’m not saying we can become self-sufficient by drilling in the USA. However, the main protest against drilling seems to be environmental. Normally, I’m very sympathetic to environmental causes. However, do other oil producing countries not have environments? Are we to believe that Russia and Nigeria and Argentina are taking their oil from lifeless wastelands? Is the USA the only place on the planet where there is an environment worth preserving? Come on people! At least in the USA we can be assured that best practices will be used to protect the environment. Can we really have have any confidence that Gabon will do the same? It seems to me that from a global level, those who really want us to do the least amount of environmental damage possible would be trying to get oil production moved into the places like the USA. IMO, our current approach is silly and selfish.
2. Scott McClellan, as you have surely heard, has written a tell-all book which repeats the same things every other book about the Bush administration has said (ie he’s an incurious baboon). What I have found amusing about this is the press reaction to the book. Now, I know that the press, having dealt with McClellan as press secretary don’t care for the man. However, they keep saying, “why didn’t he say anything when he was in office?” Yeah, I can see how that would have worked: “Thank you for coming today, ladies and gentlemen of the press. The president has asked me to tell you that things are going well in Iraq and we’re making adjustments on the ground as needed. However, I would personally like to add that the president is delusional and he was picking lint from between his toes during the morning briefing, so I doubt he has any real idea what’s going on. I’ll open the floor for questions now.”
3. Kathleen Parker, the (I hate to say it) conservative columnist has apparently taken up the use of psychotropic drugs and is now acting as a propagandist for various white-power groups. If you were fortunate enough to miss it, Ms. Parker wrote a column about voters looking for a “full blooded American” to vote for. Continue reading “My quick take on the news”
What Women Write
Funny thing; today Deborah Howell at the Washington Post, Nicholas Kristof at the NYT and Rod Dreher over at Crunchy Cons all have stuff up about the lack of diversity among pundits. For good measure, Rod Dreher adds bloggers to the mix and links to an older Heather MacDonald column about blogging saying that women aren’t good bloggers and blacks and hispanics are missing because they are currently illiterate. There are all sorts of reasons thrown around for this lack of diversity, almost all of them pretty much completely off base. So I roll my eyes and move on until this afternoon when I came across an article by Laura McKenna called “Let’s Give the Mommy Bloggers Some Respect“. Ding! Ding! Ding! Let’s give the little lady a prize.
For those few of you not in the know, here’s Ms. McKenna’s explanation of the term “mommyblogger”:
the term have come to describe mothers (with the stray stay-at-home dad in the mix) who maintain blogs that chronicle and deal with raising their kids and their life after kids. These bloggers vary greatly in terms of tone and focus, but in general, they take a very intense and irreverent look at parenting. They discuss potty training in graphic terms. They talk about tossing back a beer with other parents. They show off projects that they are working on. They complain about the amount of homework their kids get and agonize over how many hours they are in front of the television or (ironically) the computer. They cheer on and encourage their fellow online parents. Some mommybloggers have particular niches, like parenting kids with special needs or moms with PhDs and form sub-communities revolving around those interests.
All well and fine you say, but what do women writing about dirty diapers have to do with the lack of women writers in newspapers? Well, as anyone who has bothered reading mommybloggers already knows, many of these moms are talking about their kids and families along with politics: Continue reading “What Women Write”
You are a beautiful woman . . .
Ok Gentlemen, if you could leave us alone for a moment, I have something I’d like to share with the ladies real quick. Well, I guess if you want to pass this along to your wife or daughter, you can stay and eavesdrop. Now, ladies I don’t know about you, but it seems to me that as a culture we have not only fetishized flawless … Continue reading You are a beautiful woman . . .
Book of Revelation
I came across a post just now on the first chapter of the Book of Revelation that was so wonderful, I wanted to share it with y’all. It’s on a blog called Into The Subversion. The whole thing is worth reading, but here’s the part that hooked me: It was the year A.D. 96 in the province of Asia Minor (modern day Turkey), the region … Continue reading Book of Revelation
Wherefore art thou, authority?
Sorry for the long break in blogging. I’ve been busy getting my gardens in order and just got back from a trip to Chicago. Of course, not blogging isn’t the same as not obsessing over things, so I suppose I’ll just jump right back in with the latest fun item to be taking up brain space . . . the potential purpose and role of authority in our lives. Sounds like a good time, eh? 🙂
I am a child of my age, and as such, I have always looked at authority as something to be handled cynically and derisively. I recognize that certain authority, such as law enforcement needs to be obeyed if only to keep us all from crashing our cars into one another. Much beyond that, any authority, be it parental, church, political or otherwise was held to a “prove it” standard. And not just prove it to someone who would approve those in positions of authority, but prove it to me, the person you would have authority over. Honestly, it’s hard for me to think of anyone whose instructions or thinking I would follow simply because they were “the authority”. Question everything and everyone has been my MO.
Fear of or respect for authority were punch lines in my book, certainly not anything by which I would make decisions. I would guess that a lot of people are like me in this regard. However, I recently realized something which has made me re-examine my attitude towards authority. You see, over the last 10-15 years, I have invested a lot of time and mental energy into constructing what you could call a philosophy of life. It’s my understanding of the nature of life, the rules by which we ought to govern ourselves in order to live happy, productive lives which are a benefit to our families and communities. I can provide detailed, well reasoned and thought-out explanations for what I believe. You may disagree with my conclusions, but it would be hard to argue that I am simply making things up willy-nilly out of religious delusions or to justify my personal desires.
I have been compelled to do this, I think, precisely because I did not feel that there was a source of authority for how to live my life and think about the important questions of life which I could trust. And now, at the age of 35, I have managed to construct a framework for living which I am pretty satisfied with. The problem is that in the absence of authority, we’re all going to have to go through this process. If we each need to figure out right and wrong and rules for relationships and all the important things in life for ourselves, we are leaving ourselves obscenely open to majorly screwing up our lives long before we have a chance to figure out what’s what. Continue reading “Wherefore art thou, authority?”
The American Race and Race
Gather ’round, folks. Auntie Becky is going to tell you a story. A metaphor really, about race in America. And about the American Dream.
Imagine for a moment, a long relay race where for generations it has been considered acceptable and in some cases even required to break the limbs of a one group of people trying to run the race. The people thought this was OK. After all, it wasn’t long ago that this group of people had been used as horses to pull everyone else’s carts around the track. At least they were free of that back-breaking work. Now, they just had to contend with some needed cobbling. Anyone who resists the “in group’s” right to break bones is killed, so that keeps everything on an even keel. Not a bad system, really.
Of course, people with broken bones do not do very well in the race. Pretty quickly there are people lying all over the place with broken bones and deformities from past breaks which were never set properly. Many people in that group will simply stop trying to participate in the race. Maybe even set up little shanty towns around the track to do the best that they can outside of the race. A few will be fast enough to elude those who would break their bones, but these would be few and far between. The track is littered with those who tried to be one of the fastest few but got caught. Their broken bones and mutilated corpses remind the out group not to try to hard or rebel against the natural order of things.
Now, let’s say that after a very long time, once most of the people who are able to run the race are pretty well ahead, that people start to come to their senses and decide that it is wrong to break the limbs of the out group. So they ban limb breaking. From that point forward, a person’s success or failure in the race will depend on their efforts and abilities. Except, many of the people from the out group still have broken arms or deformities from past injuries. Some of them were born after their forbearers gave up the race as a lost cause and have never run a day in their life. Many of them have never left their shanty towns to deal with the people in the race before.
Instead of offering training and rehab and counseling and medical care, the people in the race resentfully offer a selected few a slight head start to make up for the fact that they haven’t been able to get a fair shake at competing. Some do-gooders head into the shanty town to paint the walls of the homes of those who are least prepared to compete in the race in order to make them a little more comfortable where they are. A few people who are willing to train people stuck in the shanties make timid efforts at offering their assistance, but the do gooders painting the walls come out and say nasty things to them. So the potential trainers go back to the race and content themselves with yelling out helpful advice about moral bravery and perseverance as they run past. Continue reading “The American Race and Race”
Cool Personality Test
Yesterday I came across a personality test which I haven’t seen before. It’s called the Enneagram Personality Test and it’s been around in one form or another for over a hundred years. I’ve taken a number of personality tests in the past, but this one actually freaked me out. It gets into how you actually think and why you behave the way you do. I’m … Continue reading Cool Personality Test
Prayers for my mom
My mother is in the hospital. It could be something serious or maybe not. I don’t know if the doctors know right now and neither of my parents are the best sources of information. So if y’all could just pray for her, ‘twould be much appreciated. Continue reading Prayers for my mom
It’s Procrastination Day!
Over at Slate.com they have a bunch of articles devoted to procrastination up. I particularly liked Emily Brazelton’s attempts at Procrastinator’s Anonomous (they can’t get the meetings started on time). She also looks into the research on procrastinators: Ferrari co-wrote Procrastination and Task Avoidance: Theory, Research, and Treatment and co-edited Counseling the Procrastinator in Academic Settings. The portrait that emerges from these books is pathological. … Continue reading It’s Procrastination Day!
The Upside Down World 