SuspendedAnimation

If it isn't true, it ought to be Hard fact

Pangwins
Wen pangwins div to gathr fish thay nevr just jump in frst thay ol push and pul intil 1 is in the wotr and then thay lk to see if that pangwin is ded or not thn if it is int ded thay ol jump in

ples emal us or col us at 1052-32

this idvis is gud if you think it is gud

Ed. note: In case it isn't crystal clear, this is my daughter's first major foray into nonfiction authorship; and very succinct and elegant, if you ask me. Minor spelling inaccuracies have been silently ignored.

more from mouth of babe

Apparently, the world of blog is the world of the mom. Just ask those who propelled Mindy and her cohort to the fame that is her (their) birthright ... well, okay, so at this point it looks like no more than Andy Warhol's foretold fifteen minutes--and shared out among a few dozen, at that--but mark my words, this is just the weak, wan beginning of our reign. Yes. Like that, take it. Mm huh, that's right, I said that.

I appear to have lost the fine filament of my thought. I woke up late this morning and had to leave my home without benefit of coffee, and when I am world despot that will be considered a war crime. I think I was stumbling in the direction of talking about how this mom culture is littered with what I categorize on this blog as 'offspring data.' I've noticed in my archives that these posts consist primarily of transcribed Jellybean commentary (usually delivered extremely faithfully--I never elevate her language or tweak it to make it cuter or funnier or smarter, may I get another whopping dose of conjunctivitis if I lie).

You know--that's the sort of thing that, if you are a diarist (I actually think I am going to start using this snotty term from now on instead of 'blogger', because 'blogger' sounds vaguely like something that should have an association with Roto Rooter™), you hear uttered by your darling child and immediately say to yourself, That is soooo blogged! Er, or diaried? Oh dear. Anyway.

On to another current instance:
Jellybean: Why do they call it a Boygame™?
Me: What? Call what? Huh?
J [patiently]: You know. A Boygame™.
Me [idiotic look]: ...
J [not patient]: Those things you play computer games on!
Me [paroxysm of epiphany]: Oh!!! a Gameboy™!
J [not to be distracted by a minor inaccuracy]: They shouldn't call it a Gameboy™ because it's for girls too!
Me [I have succeeded as a parent]: You're right--they shouldn't!
J [a good idea]: When I grow up I'm going to make one and it's going to be a Gamekid™!!

Thank you

To Howie ...

For surprising me after all these years

For being my best friend

For finding new ways to let me know that you love me

For missing me when I have to stay away

For learning how to chase me when I hide

To my daughter ...

For making me laugh

For telling me when you need more

For believing, really believing, that I'm the best mother in the world

For being a motherfucking obstinate little twit strong and determined force to be reckoned with

For being fun to go to the mall with

For providing the tangible proof that I have actually accomplished something worthwhile in these forty years

For always providing me with the best reason to wake up and become myself

To my friends ...

For being brilliant and dazzling and endlessly entertaining

For loving me when I'm a mass of runny mascara and noisy neuroses

For making me feel like Dorothy Parker--but sexier

For indulging my shameless, insatiable greed for lavish compliments

For matching my capacity for obscenity, silliness and inappropriate behavior

For being willing volunteers, comforters, allies ... in effect, family

For all this, and for uncountable graces and blessings, I am deeply grateful.

A heavy

Sad, brooding theme that's been arising for me these days: all kinds of people I love going through painful changes, sometimes seeming to be pounded mercilessly by hurricane-strength tides ... So I thought, Hey! I'll do a problem of evil post. Because that's what everyone wants as part of their TGIF pre-weekend festivities.

I don't much buy 'the problem of evil', though. Why do the innocent suffer? Um, why does anyone suffer? Who's innocent? I have long been offended by the notion of 'innocence,' which seems to imply that anyone who has erred is beyond the reach of compassion--or at least has to stand in line behind the more worthy. In nineteenth century England the discourse of philanthropy was fixated on the deserving poor--and the concurrent implication was that the undeserving could safely be excluded from consideration. And this notion remained intact in the demonization of the Welfare Queen effigy who was immolated in the anti-welfare policies initiated in the US in the nineties ... wait--is this that kind of blog? Not usually. You get the idea, I think. I used to write that way all the time. That was in graduate school. It's like riding a bicycle: a pain in the ass, until you get used to it. Or possibly, even after ...

Back to the problem of evil. It's hard to watch people you love suffer--it should be hard to watch anyone suffer, and I suppose it is; but those close to you--those are the people that you really think you can help. And I was feeling very powerless. Sometimes, I can't help because someone is so deep in darkness that my love or my words can't compete with the vividness of whatever nightmare of unhappiness is captivating them; a variation on the theme is when a friend is least capable of accepting help when it's needed most.

By the time I got round to writing this, I was seeing some movement in a less painful direction, and that's always cause for gratitude. As for myself: I've been doing well, thank you. Bouncing up and down a little, but steadily, incrementally on in some direction ... I don't know, my beloved readers, I really don't. Can you imagine me as a tightrope walker? What does it feel like to fall into the net?

My daring exploits and misadventures; and the grace of a benificent cosmic force

This post was hard to title! And it's all about how absolutely giddy I feel at having met pretty, pretty, smart, funny, and also pretty Alice.

Perhaps it was my elusive reference to the potential presence of corpses on my desk that persuaded the delightfully undead Alice that a meeting could reveal additional macabre common ground. Here's what she got to learn about me in the brief time span that commuter transit allowed me in the city:

• you might as well factor in at least twenty minutes for Jill's propensity to fuck up on the MTA
• It's worth five minutes' amusement watching me attempt to open the child-safe gate at the playground
• You know how crass I can be on the blog? There's nothing that I would say here that I wouldn't say aloud in the middle of a playground, with eleventy dozen children listening.
• My ability to distract and redirect another person's child (being rusty on the whole toddler thing) ranks on approximately the 67th percentile
• Also being rusty on the toddler thing, I apparently have forgotten that a cookie handed to a child has an 85% likelihood of hitting the ground within twelve seconds, thus instigating The Drama Of The Found And Lost Cookie that might have been averted if I hadn't had the brilliant notion to set the dharmic wheel in motion by offering the cookie in the first place
• Happily, Alice and I share a similar jurisprudential framework for the Five Second Rule of bacterial contamination.

And here's what I learned about Alice:

• Pretty pretty pretty lady!
• Fun fun fun!
• She hugs on first meeting. The whore!
• You and I come from completely different worlds. Ahahhahhahahahah. So not.
• However much you think you will like someone just from her blog and email correspondence, it's possible to like her even more when you do finally meet her.
• She's coping with being a toddler's mom better than I did, and although Henry charmed the thong off me (no, not literally--jebus, what are you thinking??), I conclude that I'm on the whole okay with only doing that particular phase of my life just once.
• Those sex parties? Totally all they are cracked up to be.

And here's what I learned about Henry:

• Bedroom eyes to die for.
• Born to flirt.
• Suspicious of foods with things embedded in them--i.e. precociously wise. Eventually he'll catch on about chocolate chip cookies, though. Every rule needs its exception, dude.
• No lie, he really can do it himself--so do not mess with him. You have been warned.
• An excellent cook; also, can fashion an impromptu tabletop zen garden out of a saucer, a packet of sugar, and a sprinkling of salt and sugar--i.e., precociously resourceful.

So there you have it: two bloggers meet; fall in love; run away together; then come to their senses; return; agree never to tell their husbands about what transpired; and part, with tears and hugs, at the subway station. And it all occurred within approximately 100 minutes. There's a story for you! My name is Jill and I have approved this ad. Alice, of course, may disavow it entirely.

Cancel the APB ...

Y'know, I'm really all right. Really! In fact, I'm feeling better than I had in months--many months. It's just that, well ... due to how craptastically I started out this semester, I've already had to cut my losses in two of the four courses that I'd registered for ; and I kind of thought it might be a nice gesture toward my program and my family if I didn't flunk the other two. That's why I'm neglecting my blog ...

But I love y'all still! and I'm not just saying that so you'll keep coming round and nudging my sitemeter up! (ooohhhh, sounds dirty ...) To prove it, here's a teensie anecdote, hot off the press--honest--I'd only told two people so far, and one of them was Howie.

Jellybean: What's for school lunch today?

Me [reading from menu on fridge]:Hot dog ... beans ... blueberries.

J [incredulous]: Blueberries??

Me: Yep.

J [indignant]: But they're not even in season!!

Stop by whenever--I'll probably be back in a week or two ...

You don't miss your water ...

Ain't that the truth ....

Tapped ... sapped ... zapped.

I've got the virus that's infecting, by all accounts, 80-90% of my acquaintance and others I come in contact with peripherally: post-election deflation. Exacerbation of pre-existing conditions.

Anyway, though my inexhaustibly courteous commenters would never be so gauche as to suggest it, I know I haven't offered much here for some time. I lack inspiration, perhaps. I am preoccupied with that big slice of my life that I don't blog about. I'm not depressed, no; I'm coping fine mentally, though I am fucking up some things pretty well.

I think I'm going to take a cue from some of my wiser friends and have a short break. I'll be back, pinker and prouder than previous, before you know it ...

bedda areddy

That didn't take long. Just consider it a slight market correction.

Maybe one thing that cheered me up was Howie's continual feed of optimistic predictions from Zogby, indicating an election outcome that we *coughcough* favor in this household. Though I wouldn't be surprised if eleventy thousand little actions end up in various courts all over the place. In fact I am now going to predict that the election of Bill Clinton in 1996 was the last U.S. presidential election outcome to remain uncontested in various courts, and that from now on all presidential elections will end up being decided by the Supreme Court. So someone tell me: who's going to get to appoint Rehnquist's successor? Hmmmmm.

What are you doing here?

Is this really the best use of your time?

Right now, I'm depressed again. No, I mean really. Like, 'it hurts' type depressed.

However rather than just whine at you, I'm here to exhort you to make good use of your internet. Hey, you know, I'm (sort of) a librarian! Maybe! Someday! If I don't flunk out of library school because I'm too depressed to do my fucking work!

Anyway, really, not only should you look at The Scout Report, you should bookmark it and put it up on your bookmarks bar, maybe in your menu of news or magazines or something, and look at it often. It's published every Friday. Because don't you think it would be cool if a bunch of information professionals and subject matter specialists published reports and reviews of valuable internet resources as part of a noncommercial, educational venture? Sure you do! And guess what? That's The Scout Report! Yeah baby. This is what librarians do.

Oh--and also? vote tomorrow, or get spanked.