Category Archives: linkage

Random Tidbits

Iiiiiiiiiit’s HUMPDAY! I have no focus! Therefore I will mostly link to other stuff!

1. A substitute teacher in Florida was fired because he was accused of … wait for it … wizardry. Yeah. Reason #57638274 why I will never live in Florida.

2. This Harper’s article on raw milk makes me a) depressed, b) interested in trying raw milk, c) consider going back to vegetarianism, and d) pissed off about the state of the planet in general and agribusiness in particular. Worth a read.

3. Dooce rocks it hard pretty much all the time, but this is especially righteous:

Will you resent me for this website? Absolutely. And I have spent hours and days and months of my life considering this, weighing your resentment against the good that can come from being open and honest about what it’s like to be your mother, the good for you, the good for me, and the good for other women who read what I write here and walk away feeling less alone. And I have every reason to believe that one day you will look at the thousands of pages I have written about my love for you, the thousands of pages other women have written about their own children, and you’re going to be so proud that we were brave enough to do this. We are an army of educated mothers who have finally stood up and said pay attention, this is important work, this is hard, frustrating work and we’re not going to sit around on our hands waiting for permission to do so. We have declared that our voices matter.

4. Shanny gave me a Blogging Friends Forever Award! And I didn’t even order the yearbook! She also called me “brilliant, talented, beautiful, and hilarious,” so you might want to read her blog while you can because she’s clearly suffering from some kind of fatal brain disease. This award has been going around since last February, and has been given to some pretty awesome bloggers. Since I naturally only read awesome blogs, this makes the choice of who to pass it along to fairly difficult, but after some thought I’m choosing Jordan of The Wonderwheel to be next in the BFF chain of bloggy goodness. Jordan, like Shanny and me, is a mommy-blogger, who in addition to writing about her two extremely adorable boys also blogs a fair amount about her work with autistic kids and about autism generally. She *regularly* makes me tear up with her writing – but always in a good way – and her materialistic Monday posts have incited me to many an unnecessary but oh-so-lovely purchase. In short, she is teh awesome blogztre$$ and definitely one of my mommy-blogging heroes. You should check her out.

Human Frailty

My friend Carole has a piece up on NPR today. She’s been through some experiences I can’t even imagine, and she writes about it all beautifully and poignantly. Head on over and give it a read/listen.

Quote of the Day

Twisty again. Because I just can’t help it:

I’m gonna start calling myself an evangelical pro-life Republican. I’ll go on talk shows and say, “Well, Rush, the mistake made by the *old* evangelical pro-life Republicans was that they relied for their ideas on a 2000 year old novel written by misogynist barbarians. The *new* evangelical pro-life Republican says that if you want to spend your free time appeasing an invisible racist celestial ghost, go right ahead, fool, but put a sock in it in the public arena. Also, we now assert that scientific method is an excellent way to ascertain facts. Also, we now assert that women and brown people are fully human. In fact, the new evangelical pro-life vision is the overthrow of the patriarchal order.”

Quote of the Day

This is quite possibly the funniest thing I have read all year:

I dare anybody to keep a straight face who darkens the stoop of the Sparkman/Hillcrest Funeral Home, Mausoleum, and Memorial Park. You wouldn’t believe this joint. It was like the set designers from Twin Peaks and Napoleon Dynamite had fused with Elvis Presley’s interior decorator and been reborn as Liberace’s angst-ridden evil twin, who then suffered a psychotic break, and bought up the world’s supply of harvest gold flocked wallpaper, brass upholstery tacks, and fake oak paneling, and ate it all with fava beans and a nice Chianti, and then puked it up all over the living room from Sartre’s No Exit.

Linky Bits

As a reader of this fine blogular vehicle, you are no doubt firmly convinced that the best writing in the virtual universe resides right here on this very page, but in fact there are lots of other interesting things out there in the www, and here are links to some of them.

1. Katha Pollitt on the branding of the candidates. Some worthy observations on Clinton and Obama.

2. Paul Campos on the candidates’ mostly foolish responses to the (spurious) “obesity epidemic.”

3. An extremely interesting breakdown of the caucus/primary system.

4. Dig it: LibraryThing members have catalogued Thomas Jefferson’s entire library, so you can now search it and cross-reference it and do all kinds of interesting things with it. Damn, I love LibraryThing.

5. If you like lolcats, you will luuuurrrrve the lolcat bible. I’m particularly fond of the Song of Solomon. “Let him kiss me wit da kissus of hiz mouf–for yer love be moar delitefool den cheezbugers. Srsly.”

Um, What? It’s Tuesday already?

Whew, this week is going fast. Not that we’ve been doing anything particularly exciting, mind you. But Mr. Squab is home this week, burning up some of his crazy backlog of vacation days, and that does make the time fly by a little faster. I don’t seem to have anything blogworthy to share, but here’s some other random shit I’ve come across in the past few days:

Beckett for Babies – this is GENIUS. I would so buy this boardbook. As the author says, “If it is never too early to read to your baby, it is never too early to prepare her for graduate school.”

Did you know Sesame Street is now doing free video podcasts? They’re each about 5 minutes long, the perfect length for distracting your toddler from whatever havoc she’s currently wreaking over there in the corner. No, the other corner. Behind you. With the cat.

Halloween is coming! We’re not crazy into it in this household, but we’ll take any excuse to dress the kid up in a cute costume. The Hatchling will be going as a ladybug this year. Kind of like this costume, only cuter and cheaper. Don’t worry, there will be pictures. Way too many pictures.

This just in: Home Depot = condescending sexist motherfuckers. See the Bitch for the details.

Random Tidbits, new school year edition

* Maybe I just needed the weather to change. It’s been in the 60s the past couple of days, real autumn weather, and I’ve been feeling a little more of my accustomed seasonal appreciation. The Hatchling and I had a good day today, getting out the warmer clothes and putting away some of the lightest summer tank tops and shorts, running errands and then stopping by the park to play for a little bit.

* The Hatchling went down the slide ALL BY HERSELF for the first time today. I put her at the top, sitting down, and then went and crouched at the bottom and held out my hands. She grinned a little nervously, but she knew what to do and used the sides of the slide to s-l-o-w-l-y pull herself down until – whee! – she was sliding into my arms. She was both scared and excited, but the excited part won out enough for three more trips down the slide.

* Tomorrow we start our first ECFE class. We’ll go once a week through December. It will be really good for both of us to have a scheduled activity to get us out of the house, especially once it gets cold and gross outside, and I know the Hatchling will love to meet the other kids. This, of course, doesn’t mean that I’m not kind of nervous about tomorrow. Will the other moms be nice? Will I fit in? Will the other kids be nice to my kid? Will there ever come a time when I can breeze effortlessly into new social situations without anxiety? The answer to that last one, I fear, is no: but I can ACT like it’s effortless, anyway, and sometimes that helps.

* Looky, Daddy, a long-time resident of the blogroll (look under “Parental Units”) just sent his twin daughters off to preschool for the first time today. He posted a video reflecting on the experience which is really not to be missed.

* Did you know that in China, kids who aren’t potty-trained yet mostly just wear crotchless pants and do their business wherever they are? This post gives an overview, including some mighty cute pictures of baby butts.

Awesome

Love this. LOVE IT.

  • Cocodissimulatio Charm: Causes any food to taste like chocolate.
  • Mucosus Recessum Charm: Causes nasal excretions to withdraw into a person’s nose.
  • Ursinvenio Charm: When applied to a teddy bear or other stuffed animal, causes it to emit a loud growling sound when lost.
  • Expecto Progenitum Spell: An elaboration of the Accio Summoning Charm, this spell causes one’s child to appear. Unclear at what distance this works or if it can operate using the Floo network or Portkeys.
  • Fabulam Repetopeto Charm: Causes a book to read itself out loud over and over. Skillful wizards can make it inaudible to themselves.
  • Vestitus Prudens Spell: Makes the victim appear to be wearing long pants and a sweater, although the person is unaware of the change.
  • Immotus Spell: A lesser version of Petrificus Totalus, this stops victims from fidgeting, though they can still move slowly.
  • Altitudo Monitio Charm: Causes flashing lights and a loud hooting sound to occur whenever the victim is near a dropoff like a staircase or cliff.
  • Odoratum Desisto Charm: Removes the smell from an object.
  • Dormitus Spell: Makes the victim fall asleep. An advanced spell, mastered by only a few.

Now if I could just find my wand …

See, honey, THIS is why we should get a dog!

You know what’s a good thing to do when you’re feeling cranky? Go onto YouTube and do a search for “laughing babies,” that’s what. Watch a couple of those videos and your spirits will lift right up. (This one was sent to me by Michelle, though. Thanks, babe!)

Linky Bits

Interwebby snacks I have recently come across:

1. Damn, I love Carolyn Hax.

2. God DAMN, I love Mercer Mayer.

3. I think I’m type 7 with a little type 1 thrown in there.

4. This is the kind of story that makes me scared to have a daughter. Also angry as hell.

5. The “blog” of “unneccesary” quotation marks.

6. Along the same lines, passive-aggressive notes from roommates, neighbors, coworkers and strangers.

Mr. Squab, the Hatchling and I will be out of town for a few days visiting my grandma in south Georgia, who has not yet met the Hatchling. If there’s a decent connection, I’ll try to post some southern-fried goodness, but I’m guessing the bloggage will be light until later next week. Have a good memorial day weekend!!