March 2, 2010
household, rant
1 Comment
“The guys just don’t feel the same way we do about the house. They don’t have the guilt that eats away at them.” Flylady in an answer to a letter about the Husband’s clutter.
Oh boy…
Here’s the problem. Do you know why men don’t feel guilty if the house looks like shit? It’s because quite often they feel it’s the woman’s job to clean the house. You can’t feel guilty about something you feel isn’t your responsibility!
Now, as it happens, I am the one who takes charge of how the house looks. There are several reasons, and yes, one of the reasons is that I’m the one who cares the most about it and I’ve made some life choices that give me the time. But you know what? If I had something else I was doing that I considered important[1], I would consider that the important thing to do. I will, have and do react incredibly badly to the automatic assumption that having a uterus means that I’m the one who should automagically be in charge of how the house looks. Lack of help cleaning up after dinner would have me quite disinclined to cook another single meal. I haven’t the slightest problem with asking people to pick up after themselves, and consistent refusal to do so is definitely a relationship-killer with me.
But the guilt thing? Friends, that’s some sexist socialization there. Partnerships and equitability are one thing, but you wouldn’t establish a business partnership with the relationship and responsibilities unexamined. Why shoot yourself in the foot with your life partners?
[1] A book deadline, for instance, would mean that instead of me doing the lion’s share of the household chores, we’d be splitting housework up in thirds Or There Would Be Serious Trouble.
February 17, 2010
rant
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There’s a Facebook group about the appropriate way to spell the contraction of “you all” so prevalent in the South.
The expression is y’all. Not ya’ll.
But there’s more to it than that. It’s also plural.
Yes, yes, I bet some of you Yankees have seen a Southerner appear to address a single person with the expression “y’all”. But, you really didn’t.
Example:
You’re waiting in line to pay your light bill, when someone in front of you is waving a receipt angrily and is saying, “Why did you turn of my lights? I paid y’all last week!”
The individual in question is not addressing the singular person behind the counter, but the entire company as represented by the customer service representative. In this case, the organization is a collective group of people appropriately addressed as “you all” or “y’all.”
If you are alone and are given the farewell, “Y’all come back now, y’hear?” you’re still not being addressed as “y’all” singularly. You’re being addressed as a representative of a group of people (most likely your family) all if whom the speaker is expressing the wish to socialize with again.
February 17, 2010
kids, rant
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I don’t like the expressions “raising children” or even “rearing children”. It implies the end product is children.
If you’re a parent, you’re not aiming for an end product of childhood, but an end product of adulthood. You’re not raising kids, you’re raising grownups!
I’m not trying to imply that children shouldn’t have a childhood, play, be silly, and enjoy life. On the other hand, I think it would do most grownups I know a lot of good to play, be silly and enjoy life, too. I think that particular aspect of life is less a developmental stage and more of a part of the human condition. Hell, I’m in my 40s and I like snowball fights, baking cookies, making up games when playing in the pool, and being absurd as much as I ever did. Doesn’t stop me from mopping the floor when it gets dirty or doing taxes.
What I do think is that we prolong childhood way too far.
I was thinking about it this weekend when I revisited one of my favorite movies, The Lost Boys. The focal characters were mostly between the ages of 16 and 19. Even casting aside the whole idea that they were vampires, so probably even older than that, these characters were what happens when you have people whose bodies are adults, but they’re at loose ends because they’re told that they’re children, powerless and don’t have a useful or productive place in society. All that youthful energy had nowhere to go. Energy that has nowhere to go more often than not goes into destructive channels.
The mother character gave completely mixed messages to her oldest son that got even stronger when you get to see some of the scenes that were cut from the final release. Now, on the whole, I think the character was quite a good mother, but merely acting as a product of our society. On the one hand, she wanted him to look after his younger brother when she couldn’t be there – to be a parent surrogate. That’s an adult role. But then she discouraged him, in some cut scenes, from contributing financially to the family in a time of need. Sure, her reasoning was understandable. She wanted him to continue his education! But what she was really discouraging him from doing was stepping up to the plate as an adult and contributing to the welfare of his loved ones.
Given our social and economic structure, I’m not sure how this problem is going to be solved, but we need to and soon. It’s been going on since the 1950s and we’re going to run ourselves into the ground if we don’t stop it.
November 2, 2009
food, kids, rant
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I’ve ranted about this before, though I forget where.
There’s a new marketing campaign to sell more crap manufactured food called Smart Choices.
There’s been some discussion on various forums involving health, fitness and eating where one idea came up that boggled me. A parent was expressing the idea that it’s hard to combat the marketing techniques with the children.
You have got to be kidding me.
You control what goes in the grocery cart. You control what you pay for. Yes, little Knucklehead might roll around on the floor screaming and crying for his treasured Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs. No, the glares awarding you the Crappy Parent of the Year award from other grocery store patrons isn’t much fun when you don’t placate the child to make him shut up so they can go back to shopping in peace. I get that. I’m a parent. Been there, done that. Dragging a kid along the floor who has gone Gandhi in protest isn’t fun.
Thing is, little Knucklehead probably isn’t that dumb. Screaming hurts one’s throat and cold grocery store floors aren’t really all that much fun to lie on. If you keep saying no consistently, they’ll get the point.
If you can’t handle enforcing a no when it comes to cereal and you’re the one with the checkbook, I don’t even want to think of what it’s going to look like when your kids are teenagers.
October 22, 2009
rant
4 Comments
There’s a beauty product company that’s doing a promotion to encourage the idea that all body types are beautiful. It’s always bothered me, and not because I think that if you fall outside the classic norm you should hate yourself or feel bad about yourself.
What bothers me is that the most important way a woman is to be valued is whether or not she is considered beautiful.
Pretty is not the rent I pay on this earth for occupying the space marked “female”. I don’t owe the world pretty. My value in this world isn’t higher because I am pretty or not. So I don’t need a commerical reassuring me that even though I’m fat, I’m beautiful anyway, as if it’s a pat on the head to reassure me I’m still valuable. Damn right I’m valuable. I’m smart. I have good insights. I’ve learned things I can teach people. Hell, when I was a teenager, and frankly considerably better looking than Susan Boyle, if offered the chance to take her looks if it meant her voice went with it, I’d've taken it in a red-hot minute. The fact I don’t sing well has always bothered me more than the fact I’m not movie-star material.
Whether or not I am beautiful is immaterial in the face of what kind of parent I am, how I treat my fellow human beings, whether or not anyone’s lives are going to be enriched from knowing me or not — not how goddamned decorative I am. I am a living, breathing human being. The idea that because I’m female I should somehow be ornamental if I want to be valued drives me up a wall.
The message that it’s okay to be fat because you’re still pretty is totally getting it wrong (and yes, there are plenty of fat people who are very attractve, indeed!). The message should be: Pretty is a value (and c’mon, pretty is nice to look at), but it’s hardly the only value and certainly not the most important one!
October 17, 2009
rant
5 Comments
“If there is any kind of Supreme Being, it is up to us to become his moral superior.” - Lord Havelock Vetinari Unseen Academicals, by Sir Terry Pratchett.
Yeah, I’ve been a little slow off the mark reading the new Pratchett book. It came out a couple of weeks ago and I’ve only just acquired it. It was a little startling, therefore that this particular comment appeared that was so in harmony with some things I’ve been thinking during my own Bible study[1].
There’s a passage in Matthew[2] where Jesus is discussing the goodness of the Nature of God. Ya know, maybe God was good by the standards of the time, but any parent who treated his child like God treated His children would have found himself hauled in front of a court to answer for abusing his kids.
Of course, you always get the Elisha and the Bears[3] comment from we people who are just too horrible and corrupt to understand the goodness of God. But read the Bible with care and attention. The book is loaded with similar stories. My flawed and human parents loved me more than to murder me for making fun of someone’s bald head, just sayin’.
I can’t see that what’s described in the Bible is in any way loving, especially the Christian story. God set up the game in the first place, so he set it up that someone had to be tortured to death in a nasty way to redeem people for things that God defined as sins in the first place? I wouldn’t even consider pulling a shell game like that on someone I hated, much less someone I loved.
If there is a God and he’s anything like the Biblical description, he’s vicious, childish and cruel. This, I’m supposed to worship? The description of God from the Bible is someone I’d try my best to stay far, far away from and do my best to shield my kids from.
[1] Yes, we Godless Heathens dammed to the fires of everlasting torment do study religious texts, too. Strange, innit?
[2] Matthew 7:9-10 Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake?
[3] 2 Kings 2:23-25
October 11, 2009
rant
No Comments
I set up my netbook at my desk for the first time since I bought it. I don’t often work from a desk, what can I say? But when I’m studying from a manual to review to teach a class, I like a desk and a good surface to write on. The increased real estate on my working surface is nice, lemme tellya.
I’ve been avoiding turning on the heat, but did briefly this morning before I realized I was being silly. Yeah, it was 59F and all, but I have a wonderful warm slanket and portable warmers I can heat in the microwave and all that smack. So, really, I was reacting to a number rather than a comfort level.
I do have the thermostat on 55F, though. If the temperature drops unexpectedly one night, I’d just as soon not wake up to frozen pipes. Hypothermia isn’t an issue, as lots of blankets keep one toasty warm in bed.
September 7, 2009
kids, rant
2 Comments
This Tuesday the US President is going to be giving a speech addressing public school children. Mostly it’s a “study hard and stay in school” sort of speech.
Since the Johnson administration, the President of the United States has done this, barring the Nixon administration.
Now, I’m a Libertarian, so I’m certainly at the opposite end of the current President’s general political philosophy on many, many issues.
But I have a question for you, the parents who are up in arms about our current President giving this speech, and about it being shown in schools:
What is the MATTER with your parenting that you’re terrified of a fifteen minute speech? My word, people, if you’re that scared, check out what’s going on in the school every day. I’ve read my child’s textbooks and review his homework assignments. Don’t you? Don’t you talk to you children about them?*
You don’t like President Obama? You don’t like schools being used as propaganda machines? Fair enough. Neither do I. However, that’s been what public schools have been used for since most of your great-grandparents have been going to school. I find it curious that you’re only finding this dangerous and freaking out now. Haven’t you been talking to your children all along?
You want your kids to understand your values? Spend time with them. Homeschool if you’re really that worried. Turn off the damn television (a worse propaganda machine than a public school where your child is permitted to live at home with you could ever dream of), have dinner together at night and quit over-scheduling them with all sorts of activities that relieve you of the onerous chore of getting to know the human beings your children actually are.
Will they always agree with you if you raise them “right”? Probably not. My parents taught me to think for myself. It worked and no, we do not share the same opinion on every subject. In fact, I’d be astonished if my parents claimed to share the same opinion on every subject between themselves, even on the big stuff. Neither do my son and I, for that matter. But I feel quite confident, because we’ve talked about it, that my son’s opinions are the result of thinking things out rather than automatic reaction to propaganda.
And ya know, I’m okay with that.
*Though,
A Children’s Story by James Clavell is assigned reading in my household.
August 22, 2009
rant
No Comments
As a caveat before I start this rant: Lazy in all its forms exists. I’m not discounting that.
It is a common thing to find on bodybuilding discussion boards a certain amount of sneering at lazy among those with some truly astonishing physiques. (I read the “naturals” as steroid-enhanced isn’t my kink). “You could have a body like this if you were just willing to get up at four every morning to do your cardio and then go to the gym every evening to work on your weights… blah blah blah. You don’t have it because you’re LAZY.”
Thing is, we all know genetics plays a part in physical activity. Michael Phelps couldn’t be a great football player. He’s too skinny. It would take steroids to put enough mass on him to be able to take being tackled by those enormous linebackers. A professional quarterback, a position that isn’t noted for being particularly massy out on the football field, averages an inch or two shorter than Phelps, but generally outweighs him by about 30 lbs. That surfboard-flat body, long limbs and paddle-like extremities (which he was born with) are what enabled him to develop after YEARS of dedication his incredible swimming speed and skill.
Yes, you can manipulate your body stats to a degree with some serious time and dedication. It’s certainly possible. But after awhile, your final genetic blueprint takes over and you reach the end of what you is physically possible to manipulate –never mind what’s reasonable if you want a life outside of the physical manipulation. It’s why attaining a certain body look as a moral imperative is idiotic when you look at it logically.
This applies to intellectual attainment, too. Now, most of the people I interact with on a regular basis are pretty damn smart. I like discussion — unscrewing the inscrutable, analyzing material, figuring out why. It would be fair to say that my general social/discussion circle, were their brains bodies, would be at least amateur competitive bodybuilders with a couple zooming past me as (natural, there are no brain steroids yet) Mr. or Ms. Olympia.
Among my social circle, there is a common belief that if you do not think well and fluidly, if you’re poor at thinking outside the box and coming up with a creative solution, if you’ve not amassed by the age of thirty a pretty good knowledge base, and more importantly, learned how to learn, that you’re lazy. Now, remember, lazy does exist. I had the requisite mental ability to get straight As in any high school. I think I graduated with something like a 2.81 average and never got straight As until I decided to as an intellectual exercise in a community college. (It was tedious, but hardly difficult). So as far as lazy, I’d fit the bill. I recognize it exists.
I suspect that many people who slap the lazy label on sloppy thinking are like me. They’re flippin’ smart. If they aren’t getting something mentally, it’s because they’ve decided not to try. Can’t? Don’t be silly!
But as a mental exercise: Imagine that the ability to spot faulty logic or to think outside of the box is the equivalent of being able to bench press 500 pounds, and you’re in the 99th percentile for bench pressing ability. YOU could do it with ease. Someone in the 75th percentile (well above average) COULDN’T.
Disparity in the ability to REASON, it seems to me, genuinely exists. Like weight training, you can work very hard and fulfill the potential of *your* genetics, but that will still take an overwhelming amount of work that’s difficult for the naturally gifted to grok.
July 19, 2009
rant
1 Comment
First off, I think PETA’s leadership is crazy. But, apparently they have enough money to keep a state park open. I have to wonder what rich nutjobs give these people money.
I’m all for animals under human care being humanely treated. I also know what it would do to the price of meat. I’m okay with that, but I’m not struggling as much as some, am a good cook even with vegetarian dishes, and really couldn’t give a damn if domestic species of animals die out or not. Die out, you ask? If we all went vegan, where would be the incentive to keep these expensive and expensive to care for animals? Holsteins didn’t evolve in nature, friends, and need specific care. Many domestic species either can’t survive in the wild or would be damn dangerous to let loose if they can. Go up against a wild pig unarmed sometime. If you survive, you’ll only do it once. And I don’t think you’ll feel quite as warm and fuzzy about Wilbur any more.
Have these people ever seen an animal hunt? For that matter, have they ever really watched cats that they want to rename fish “sea kittens” to produce some kind of emotive response in people? Cats are sadistic little monsters. I’ve taken mice away from my cats and put them out of their misery because the squeaking got to be too much for me. 
greendalek did the same with a dove, once, because the cat had spent about fifteen minutes crippling it and then toying with it. It was awful.
I won’t go into the ethics of eating meat, because I’ve not examined the logical arguments for and against. Logical, not emotive. The poor fuzzy animals approach doesn’t work on me when there are human beings under conditions just as bad if not worse. I know I feel physically better and healthier when I eat a diet of primarily meat and produce (not grains). That doesn’t leave much room for the vegan diet. I realize that doesn’t touch the arguments about a living thing having to die for me to feel energetic and healthy, but I’ll be blunt. People die for those cheap clothes you’re wearing, too. I find that a bigger concern.
And that’s where it comes down to for me. While the ecosystem needs to be cared for so we don’t foul our own nest, I do think sentient, thinking beings are more important than non-sentient, thinking beings. (Hey, hadda throw that in there. Science fiction fan and all).
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