May 2012
15 posts
Airport
Mom: Are you going to chug that bottle of water?
Me: The best way to carry water is in your body.
Mom: Is that a survival thing?
Me: Now I’m thinking it’s from ‘Dune,’ and only works if you’re wearing a stillsuit.
Departures
Oh, lovelies. Lovely, lovely ones. I am going in-house at The Hairpin as Books Editor.
This is a time of great celebration, but it also means that I will be extremely infrequently active on Tumblr (I’ve been ramping down in preparation for the move anyway), and my books coverage will be moving on.
You’re so wonderful, and I hope you all come read me and Edith and Jane at my new,...
My New Mad Men Recap →
DO NOT MISS THIS EPISODE, IT IS SO CATTY YOU CAN’T EVEN PICTURE IT.
This Wiki Entry for Ben Bradlee is a Hot Mess →
In addition to the “Residence” section, please enjoy nineteen mentions of the historic Crowninshield family.
“Mr. Himmelman did four 90-minute Bikram yoga sessions last week to calm down.”
– The New York Times piece on Jeff Himmelman’s mad-sneaky new biography of Ben Bradlee.
Oh, Grey's Anatomy.
(SPOILERS, sort of)
Have you watched last night’s episode yet? Did you watch the END? Why do I still allow this show to manipulate me?
I mean, it’s got nothing on the SNUFF FILM which “Private Practice” is rolling out this season. I’m sorry, first you tell me the little boy’s mom is dying, and he’s sad, then we find out she’s going to live, and...
On the Attachment Parenting Brouhaha
I would say, obnoxiously, that I’m too busy parenting to get involved in labels and dick-measuring, but the truth is that I’m actually too busy watching ‘Sherlock,’ and you should just feed your kid some kind of nutritious liquid in early infancy and follow your instincts from there.
Edit: For the record, I had definitely planned on attachment parenting, but it...
The Romney Prep School Gay Bashing Article
…in the Washington Post. Personally, I think 1965 is probably going back too far to find dirt, and teenage hijinks blah blah blah.
That being said, I have always agreed with my countryman Robertson Davies on the primacy of our own truest identity in childhood. ‘As we neared our sixties,’ his most famous narrator said, ‘the cloaks we had wrapped about our essential selves...
Note to Self
Change out of “MILF Island” t-shirt before prospective buyers show up to look at my pony for their kid this afternoon.
My New Mad Men Recap: Pete is Loathsome →
Sibling Rivalry
My dad came down for a week to help out with the baby (it was a lifesaver), and told me that when I was about five, and my little brother was one, the three of us were out for a walk in a big provincial park (my dad carrying my brother), and came to a rather steep cliff-face.
I turned to Dad, and I said: “You could throw him off. We could tell people he fell. I wouldn’t breathe a...
April 2012
45 posts
So Many Links!
Duckies, you may or may not have noticed that I’ve been guesting at the Hairpin this last week. Things you should go read:
The Horse, Explained
Really Good Books For People Who Are Reading a Lot of Articles About Girls
One Line DVR Summaries of Individual Breaking Bad Episodes That Work For the Entire Series
Ways to [Not] Lose Your 43 Pounds of Baby Weight
Edith Wharton’s Lost...
Sometimes, You Forget That Your Horse is...
…even by horse standards.
Houseguest - Hey, Lazy, I thought you were riding this afternoon?
Lazy (absentmindedly) - Oh, yeah. No, Bella tried to make out with a snake, or a scorpion, or something, got bit on the nose. Her eye is swollen shut and she looks like Mickey Rourke.
Houseguest - What? Seriously? Is she okay?
Lazy - Yeah, yeah. Steroid shot.
(pause)
Lazy - Might have been a...
Welcome to the Jungle
Yesterday afternoon I found myself driving a car and listening to Billy Joel on a classic rock station while pulling into a suburban Wal-Mart Supercenter to buy formula, and I thought: it’s been…a while since I walked thirty blocks home to Lower Manhattan semi-drunk at three in the morning (with my iPod earbuds in, like a fool) while carrying my shoes.
How the mighty have fallen.
This May Seem Like an Odd Question
When you were a kid, did you ever close a car door on your hand, or have someone else do it to you accidentally? And how old are you now?
The thing is, I never shut my hand in a car door (born in 1982), because my father had an extreme paranoia about closing doors on hands (which is a sensible enough paranoia to possess), but it seems that most people who were kids before car seats were a...
There's a Big Thing On Legalizing Sex Work
….in the Times today.
And, of course, I’m open to the question of whether legalization results in more trafficking (it seems to vary by country), and so on, but I’ve never heard a decent rejoinder to the idea that men and women can decide to have sex with each other for any, any random/shitty/nice reason they want (boredom, vengeance, lust, love, can’t afford movie...
Jeeeesus
You know how, sometimes, you can only make it through a movie or a book or a TV show because you know it’s not real?
(SPOILERS)
Well, we’re plowing through ‘Breaking Bad’ after taking a longish baby hiatus, and that poor idiot junkie girlfriend of Jesse’s just died, and her dad, ‘Q,’ is distraught, and Industrious and I are SNIVELING over it.
Not...
thebluegrasstrifecta asked: Comments on the scandal of no Pulitzer Prize for fiction this year? I enjoyed hearing Susan Larson on NPR say how pissed she was that she read 300+ books and then they didn't even pick one of her suggestions. I'd be mad too.
WatchBabies have to learn about classic rock in a timely fashion, y’know?
Victory, Says the Baby
Two days of fussing = two shiny little white front teeth.
I’d take a picture, but she’s a biting menace while they finish coming through.
Oh, Crap
So, the Canadian government is trying to cut about $300 million from their Corrections budget over the next three years. And, to my complete shock, they’re closing my hometown’s biggest claim to fame (sorry, Queen’s University), Kingston Penitentiary. Open for over 175 years, maximum security, a huge local employer.
They’re also closing the major psychiatric facility on...
Industrious Is All Busted Up
…as I mentioned previously. Five more weeks with the arm in a sling, let the good times roll.
And I was thinking about thinness, this morning, or rather ‘fitness,’ and what it looks like in our household. Industrious is a goooooood-looking man, by popular standards. He eats right, he exercises constantly (for fitness, but it’s also definitely a mood-stabilizing tool for...
I Mean, I'm a Hairpin Girl, All the Way
But I still read Jezebel, as one does, and I often really enjoy it, but this shit is out. of. control.
Ha ha ha ha, the guy was “sexhausted” from being raped repeatedly. Ha. Ha.
(Insert .gif of GOB Bluth saying ‘come on!’)
New Mad Men Recap! →
Chewing gum on the pubis, man. That’s rough.
Fun!
Go read the comments on the NY Times op-ed about cohabitation. There’s this slightly shrill individual “Concerned Citizen” who is weighing in on pretty much every thread to inform us that cohabitation kills, early and swift marriage is sexxxxy, and what gay people do isn’t marriage, so their decades of cohabitation do not count. Thanks, Stealth Maggie Gallagher!
My New Classic Trash →
A personal favourite!
Game of Thrones Meets Arrested Development
(BRAIN EXPLODES FOREVER IN SLOW MOTION)
Thanks, Tina!
OH MAH GOD, IT’S HUMMELINE’S TUMBLR.
My New Hairpin Reading List →
I'm Watching the Scorsese George Harrison...
And, right, I actually think Scorsese is a little hamfisted with it, but I’m still all teary, because I love and have always loved the Beatles with such an enduring, guileless passion that I cannot control myself.
Fucking geniuses.
My New Mad Men Recap →
OH, and by the way, Commenter Peter from last week, who told me to “get a life” because my Mad Men recap was too detailed, you appear to be a grown-ass man on Tumblr, so, FIRST REMOVE THE LOG FROM THINE OWN EYE.
Jk, <3 u, Commenter Peter. I am not actually mad. I just love television.
Guys, go sign up at Off-Color TV and comment.
Horses: Not The Brightest
I get to the barn this afternoon with a quick mission: work Bella on the longe line (she worked hard yesterday, but her genetic condition means she really needs six days a week of vigorous exercise or she turns into a pumpkin - a pumpkin with muscle damage and seized-up hind legs). I was trying to squeeze it in during the baby’s nap, so my eyes were definitely on the prize.
I walk in with...
“A few of the mounts were a little gory — a deer with a mailbox impaled on...”
– From an old Susan Orlean article on a taxidermy competition.
Never Go to the Grocery Store From the Barn
First of all, you may not think that reeking of Sweaty Appendix Quarter Mare is an aphrodisiac, but teen boys are basically Paul Rudd in ‘Anchorman.’ It doesn’t matter what you look like or if you have gravel embedded in your face.
Punk kid - What are those?
Lazy (glances down) - They’re called half-chaps. You wear them over low boots and they zip up your calves.
Punk...
Some Advice You Don't Need
You know those big saucery baby seats that you really shouldn’t put up on your kitchen island, even a foot away from the edge, even if you’re standing right there and the baby is watching you cook dinner?
DO NOT PUT THOSE BIG SAUCERY BABY SEATS ON YOUR KITCHEN ISLAND, EVEN A FOOT AWAY FROM THE EDGE, EVEN IF YOU’RE STANDING RIGHT THERE AND THE BABY IS WATCHING YOU COOK DINNER.
...
Oh, That's a Useful Form of Protest
Lazy - I have found us a babysitter for during your recovery.
Industrious - Oh, which one? There were like twenty applicants.
Lazy (looks awkward)
Industrious - ?
Lazy - I was really angry about the John Derbyshire thing, and this is Utah, so there was only one person of color who applied. I am hiring her.
Industrious - Surely, such a significant statement about fighting racism can only...
I Am Not Linking to the John Derbyshire Thing
For obvious reasons. No, what I want to point out, instead, is that it is completely inaccurate to describe his brief appearance in Bruce Lee’s ‘Enter The Dragon’ as a ‘cameo,’ which I have now seen in a handful of different articles about Derbyshire being an ass.
Edward James Olmos does cameos.
Joan Cusack does cameos.
Wil Wheaton does cameos.
Untalented,...
WAIT, THAT'S VERY CLEVER.
Until five minutes ago, I had not realized that the chain store “Staples” is a double reference: both to the small metal attaching devices AND to the concept of items one must have.
I want my money back for that degree in close reading.
PSYCH, the financial aid people should get their money back. I was a parasite, eating flakes of dead skin from the ninth generation monied WASPs and...
Seriously? That's...a Lot.
How many abortion clinic bombings do you think have occurred in this country from 1977 to 2010?
Oh, well, almost four hundred.
Now, I’m sure most of these are (thankfully) more like half-assed glorified fireworks than serious hardware, because these people are not merely evil, they are also total dimwits, but that’s an absolutely appalling number.
Domestic terrorism, everyone! ...
On Expensive Medical Treatments for Your Pet
In the New York Times today.
I take this one personally. A few years ago, we found out our dog had a brain tumor, and we agonized over what to do about it, since he was looking at a couple of months if we did nothing. Radiation was an option, but the location of the tumor made it likely he would go blind. That was a FUCK NO for us. The surgery, at the University of Colorado at Boulder, was...
Cease, Technology!
In the olden days, I let my Netflix stagnate on the kitchen counter.
In the less-olden days, I allowed my DVR to become 98% full.
Today, I realized I had twelve Longform articles “to read later.”
Once, I would have failed to use every part of the buffalo.
Ours is truly The Greatest Generation.
I'm Sure You're Wondering
…what I think about Jessica Grose’s huge piece in Slate about the grizzly bears. Answer: I have been saving it for the right moment, and if I see it winking at me from my Firefox tabs one more minute, I’m going to die with anticipation.
BEARS AND NATIONAL PARK DEATHS, Y’ALL.
Morning at the Barn
I brought the dog, so Industrious wouldn’t have to try to wrassle him AND the baby (he’s okay with minor baby work prior to Tuesday, when he goes in for surgery), which went pretty well.
Denali was content to hang out and watch, after first running over to smooch my trainer, who has dogsat for him on numerous occasions. He’s very particular about people; this is not a “pet...
Everything is the Worst
Sometimes, when I realize that the actual level of discourse in this nation is people bitching about Rue being black in The Hunger Games, and Marines getting shot by cops in their own home, and homophobia and forced-birth legislation, and I think about my snuggly little corner of the blogosphere, in which we remember to call ourselves (if we are!) cisgendered, and we try not to be ableist (I am...
Cornbread and Cast Iron
Things have been a little stressed around here, this last week. Industrious needs surgery on his shoulder, so he’s not able to boost the old dog into the car twice daily for walks, and he can’t really look after the baby on his own, so I’ve been exploring some mother’s helper options so I can get out to the barn. Which is obviously something I could let slide, but I missed...