The good news is that Maker did not actually snipe my domain as he threatened to do back in a 2006 comment. The bad news is that I’m taking him up on his request for any kind of update, quality or no, and this is the less than inspiring result.

On the plus side, I remembered my login this time.

So I’m not in the habit of blogging (obviously) and if there are any of you reading this who are as ridiculously squeamish as the 700 people who wrote letters to Babytalk magazine editors, you may be scared off of reading any of my subsequent blogs forever.

But am I the only one who is really amused that people are up in arms about a magazine cover that shows a baby breastfeeding?

One mother who didn’t like the cover explains she was concerned about her 13-year-old son seeing it.

“I shredded it,” said Gayle Ash, of Belton, Texas, in a telephone interview. “A breast is a breast — it’s a sexual thing. He didn’t need to see that.”

I find this terribly amusing… amusing in an impatient and frustrated way, of course. Chances are that this woman who feels the need to shred a magazine cover that shows part of a breast (and not even the good parts) on the side of the picture with a small human being attached to it… parades her poor, impressionable 13-year-old son past the hyper-sexualized covers of Glamour and Sports Illustrated lining the grocery store checkout line. Good thing she’s protecting him from all that scary sexual stuff out there by shredding the breastfeeding picture.

I was particularly amused by the following:

“I’m totally supportive of it — I just don’t like the flashing,” she said. “I don’t want my son or husband to accidentally see a breast they didn’t want to see.”

Haha.

Which of the following absolutely, positively doesn’t exist?
A. Nessie.
B. Bigfoot.
C. Unicorns.
D. A plump breast that straight men don’t want to see.

Good thing she’s protecting her poor, impressionable husband and son from something that is obviously more threatening to her than to them.

So seriously. Apparently it’s so bizarre to nurse a baby in public that someone who supports the practice has their own trendy little name: a lactivist. I just don’t get it. This is not a bunch of women taking their shirts off, swinging the tassles around wildly, and then plunking a baby on. I realize I’m not the breast’s target demographic but I’ve been known to find quite a few of them enchanting… I just don’t really find anything particularly sexual about a breast hanging out of a nursing bra with a human being dangling off of it. Even if it were remotely sexual… I find it very funny indeed that these sad little women find it so threatening. OH NO. A BREAST IN A NONSEXUAL CONTEXT. WE AS A SOCIETY ARE DOOMED.

I realize that people get bored with their little lives. I realize that women are easily threatened by other women. But… if you’re going to campaign against something immoral and wrong and DEVASTATING TO THE MORAL FABRIC OF SOCIETY… couldn’t you maybe find something a little, well… more relevant? If you’re so afraid that your 13-year-old son is getting those dirty, sexual ideas in his head… maybe you should target something that actually does have sexual connotations? Chances are that the magazines under his mattress are not breastfeeding mags.

HAPPY?!

You demanding bastards.

I’ll have you know I had to hack my own blog to figure out my login.

You know… I’ve decided that I really don’t like working for the independent school system.

On first thought, I can’t understand what I couldn’t like about it, can’t believe I’d be anything but happy here. The children are exceptional. I can’t even remember a time when 100% of the children who accidentally bumped into me in a crowded hallway at an overburdened public school… stopped in his or her tracks, met my eyes, and offered a genuine apology. Can I remember a time when the children, confident and articulate, stopped to chat at my desk for no other reason than they were passing by and realized they hadn’t said hello in a while? Have I ever been in an environment outside of my own household where a third of the words exchanged are simple pleasantries such as “please” and “thank you”?

And yet, I’ve decided that I don’t like it here. The children are beautiful and intelligent creatures, well-behaved but still vivacious, creative and innovative. They are, in short, what I think all children in an ideal world would be if they were all offered environments such as this.

But they’re not. The children here are selected from a huge pool of applicants. Beautiful and intelligent children are turned away at the door… and I wonder what becomes of them. I really do. Just like I wonder how many children in the public school system have fallen through the cracks while an overburdened teacher with thirty young charges struggles just to keep a few of them afloat… in the time it takes one teacher at an independent school to recognize one of her ten students is struggling and places a call to the parents. In the time it takes that teacher to place the call and to avert a problem before it can even be called one… how many equally deserving children have been utterly failed by a system that refuses to support them simply because their parents can’t afford lunches, let alone $20,000/year tuition?

These children pay more for a couple years of preschool than I did for a degree from Berkeley. I certainly don’t begrudge them an excellent education; no one could begrudge that! Education in all forms is beautiful, precious commodity, one of the few things one can have in this world that will never depreciate over time, something that will always offer solutions and something that can be passed on to the next generation regardless of fame, fortune, or luck of the draw.

But the disparity between the quality of education a rich child gets and the quality of education a poor child gets is appalling. And that’s all it comes down to, really, isn’t it? A child from a rich family can go to a good school and learn in an intimate, engaging environment with ten other children where his individual needs are addressed foremost, go to the best upper schools, go to the best universities, and get the highest paying jobs. And a child from a poor family -a child of equal intellectual mettle as the first - does the best he can in an environment where his teacher, a professional who is as personally invested in his future as the independent school teacher but without the same means to support him, has thirty other students to care for, thirty other sets of needs to consider.

It breaks my heart for the teachers too. I imagine my mother, a dedicated public school teacher, seeing the opulence, the luxury, that is the school where I work. I imagine she would go home and still bury herself under a mound of papers to be graded and projects to be reviewed… but instead of expressions of sadness, hope, determination, and resignation battling for dominance on her face, I would see only the hope and determination.

But… it occurs to me that my mother would never work at an independent school for precisely those reasons. I don’t think she could ever live with herself if she took the “easy” route, choosing to help children who can already afford the best versus the equally bright children who have nothing but their own burgeoning dreams.

And to the same ends, I think that’s why I don’t like it here. These are beautiful, wonderful children… and I hate that all our children aren’t given the opportunities to grow like this. I hate that rich kids can afford what equally deserving children cannot, further widening a chasm between them that neither deserve. I hate it. It hate it for the children. I hate it for the teachers. And I hate the world it creates.

Busy.

Yes, I’m still alive. Seelos had voiced some concern otherwise… specifically that badgers of some sort had violently accosted and incapacitated me. For the record, I respect the badger lifestyle and have nothing but a mutually respectful relationship with them.

As a side note, today is the second day the dudes at the taco truck called me “Gordita” and snickered amongst themselves. Funny. You don’t see me going up there and muttering “Filthy little drains on society” and snickering to myself, do you? It’s like high school all over again… except this time around, we’ll use “barely literate welfare vacuum” instead of “pretty and popular”.

I can come up with all sorts of counterinsults that would make me feel better but I really should spend the time figuring out exactly why a bunch of dirty, flannel-clad manual laborers can call me “Gordita”… and it actually illicits a response from me. People should be able to add a litany of racial epithets, question my parentage, and cast my morals into doubt… and still not get a rise out of me for the sheer fact that… well… I should be better than that. Secure enough.

As a side note, my normal Diet Pepsi/banana fare doesn’t really calorically compare to the carne “heart attack” asada with beans and cheese. Even if it did, it’s not my beer gut spilling over dirty jeans, straining a stained T-shirt to its limit. Take the fucking log out of your diet before you start commenting on the splinter in mine. Didn’t hear that one in catechism, did you, amigo?

So much for being better than that.

So apparently the power is out from like downtown LA to the Valley. That would explain why I can’t VNC into my god damned home computers. But I’m not bitter. Not at all.

The Boys of Bleat are back! Kinda. Check out the Llamadudes: my fellow misanthropist , Street Prophet, and his partner-in-bleat, Vikarou. Nice to see you boys back in action.

Street Prophet’s latest brings up a point I’d like to elaborate on. Not being in class myself at the moment, I can’t speak to the prevalence of classtime text messaging. I’d like to think the environment would be a little more professional in my MBA program. Who knows. Anyway, what I have noticed is a frightening number of kids on cell phones. Specifically, kids on cell phones while walking around in gaggles at the Back To School Picnic. Seriously. It’s mind boggling. In every disparate gaggle of giggling girls throughout the campus grounds - which, by the way, is completely decked out in carnie food booths, bounce houses, and carnie games; I imagine that the reason why public schools don’t have such posh offerings is because they’re too busy holding bake sales to pay for books… but I digress - at least two are on cell phones. Ugh.

You like how I blast Seelos for sucking at the blog and then fall off the face of blogland for a week? Hah. That’ll show you.

As it turns out of course, the lack of blogging on my part is not due to slacking as krystalogik implies here but rather a complete lack of anything to say. Or rather, a lack of the wit and writing ability to carry a blog, the content of which does not carry itself; (see: the discovery of and subsequent near-reverence for a set of gummi twins).

As a side note, I was somewhat reassured by a dinner my boy and I went to last night. Normally, my meals involve either eating a piece of venison while doing an instance run in WoW so actually having to prepare side dishes, get dressed, and go to another couple’s home for dinner and drinks really is a step up for me. And surprisingly, I wasn’t a complete buffoon. (This is important because 50% of the couple in question is a law school classmate of my boy’s. Professional ties. Social ties. Etc.) Granted, after two and a half glasses of wine and an intimate first experience with one Mr. Remy Martin, the engines weren’t exactly functioning on full impulse but it actually went well. This pleases me because - and I know this might be a weird worry to have, but I’ll thank you not to make fun of me too much - one of my greatest worries is that of all the things I can do and of all the things I can teach myself to do… being socially graceful on someone’s arm is not one of them.

I can hold my own in social settings - duh - but that’s not what is being asked of me, what will be expected of me once my boy has to start the hobnobbing and handshaking that will constitute much of his job. My role at any of those social functions won’t be to be me; the roll will be that of an extension of my boy, a socially graceful and adept woman who is invisible until needed and who might have to converse intelligently and charmingly about Botox and hairdressers when called to. That’s my task and you can laugh all you want (bastards), but there you have it. Along with my own career and my own grad school, I need to find time to learn how to be “the wife” rather than just “blah” when called upon.

(Side note: I’m sure there are feminists who are up in arms about me saying that. More than one of my girls have told me that they’re shocked I’d say something like that. Hah. If I attend functions with my boy’s professional contacts, it’s my job to be his girl and make him look good. Likewise, it’s his job to do the same for me when it’s a function with my professional contacts. Summary: Fuck off. This is a no Birkenstock event.)

So anyway. Long story short, last night did go well. I did converse intelligently about Botox and $300 salon visits. I spent 45 minutes looking at wedding pictures and talking about wedding planners, florists, and bustles. And I did so with charm and grace. Take that.

Seelos sucks at the blog.

Thank you.

I do not have words yet - and may never truly have any - to express how I feel.

1. From CNN.Com

2. From Macon.Com
“… And for the entire time Bush was in the state, the congressman said, a ban on helicopter flights further stalled the delivery of food and supplies.”

3. From CNN.Com
“The U.S. government has received offers of support from dozens of nations across the globe. … As of Friday, the White House had not accepted any offers…”

While I am fully willing to accept that I do not understand the complexities of accepting international aid and while I can accept that there may be unacceptable complexities in any situation involving aid from, say, Cuba… please someone tell me why the WHO isn’t already here. Please. Shall we add cholera to the rapes, the murders, the complete devastation these desperate, ravaged people - our people - have already experienced?

4. From Reuters on Yahoo! News

“This is wrong. This is the United States of America.”

Yes. This is the United States. And I am disgusted. Disgusted and so terribly ashamed that in their greatest hour of need, our government cannot give our people food, water, sanitation, and perhaps the greatest wrong of all… the tiniest modicum of hope.

I do not have words at this time. Not ones that are good enough. Not ones that are strong enough. There is a saying that to speak in anger is to produce the greatest speech you’ll ever regret. My only regret is that I simply am incapable of finding words within the vastness of molten rage.

To the U.S. Government: I will never be able to forgive you for destroying the faith this little girl has had in you. I cannot describe to you what you have taken from me as I realize with brutal clarity that beyond the slow downs, the political showdowns, and the sideshow posturing… that you are truly and utterly incapable of providing for us. That you are more interested in political machinations and your international pride than you are in taking care of those who are trusting you to do so.

The great and magnanimous United States?

I’m sure Mr. Bush’s speech writers are working overtime on pieces emphasizing that very point. I am sure that he and other governmental figures will deliver them with the appropriate amounts of charisma, sympathy, and patriotism.

And Americans will still be huddled together with no food, no water, no hope… with the gentle perfume of decaying corpses and human filth to remind them of the glory, the magnanimity, of the United States of America.