File This Under....Duh

Apparently the NY Times ran out of real news to cover-- so they reported on this.

Just that kind of day

It's only 4:00 in the afternoon and I just got done making myself a lovely mix of vodka, Starbuck's Liqueur and Cream.

It's just been that kind of day.

Proud to be an American

Apparently, at the Miss Universe competition, there's some sort of national costume event.
Could someone tell me how a looking like one of those shiny doo-dads you hang up for Christmas parties represents the good ole' U S of A?

Mean and Stupid Comments

I've never really gotten a mean comment before. (Not that many people really read this thing.) So when I got one today, I did what any sane person would do-- I deleted it.

And then I immediately regretted deleting it, because now it's gone and no one else will ever see it. No one else can respond to its stupidity and anger.* All because, in my last post, I suggested that the pope not act quite so happy to meet one of the "worst" leaders in the world.

Apparently it's the "worst" claim that got someone's proverbial panties up in a bunch. Because he only waterboarded three people. Because there are so many worse leaders, like Ahmadinejad. Apparently, the commenter thinks I'm a kool-aid drinking idiot for believing all the hype about Bush.

But honey, I've read the Parade magazine top ten most horriblest dictators article (congrats Mugabe, you're up 4 points!) I realize that compared to say, melagomanic psychopathic dictators Bushy is a walk in the park. Duh. But that doesn't make anything this administration has done in the way of crushing human rights, well, right. Only three waterboardings is three too many.* We're supposed to be better than that.

And damn straight I'm irritated at the pope. The priest abuse scandal was unequivocally unconscionable. Period. And the Church sat on its hands and protected those who abused rather than protecting those who were abused. I am a Catholic, albeit not the best Catholic around, so I have a stake in this whole mess. Every time I don't say, "I used to be Catholic," I reaffirm my stake in this mess. The Bush administration started a war that the last pope condemned. It is for capital punishment, something that the Church supposedly condemns. The social injustice that the Church just recently condemned as a new breed of sin is what this administration feeds on. Tax cuts for the wealthiest, anyone? Can you say Katrina? All I'm asking is that the pope at least address these things. He's the friggin' pope for goodness sake! You know, God's right hand man. He doesn't need to be polite. Lord knows he's not when it comes to certain other issues.

Give me a break. If I want to say that Bush is one of the worst leaders in the world it doesn't make me a brainless lemming. I'm not just following some bleeding-heart crowd without thinking through these things myself. I don't care if killing ten kittens is worse than killing one. The one is enough for me.

uf.


*but darn it, if I wanted to have people say nasty things about my politics I'd go talk to my family, the good conservative republicans that they mostly are.

Ummmm

So the pope landed and expressed "shame" over the priest abuse scandal. Um...that was, like, oh years and years and years ago. I was still living at home, and I haven't called mom and dad's house home for at least 7 years.

So it's really no wonder that he seemed happy to meet the Shrub
As the guide of millions of Catholics around the world, I think maybe he could have tempered his enthusiasm to meet one of worst of the world leaders. I mean, waterboarding, torture, killing thousands of people, slaughtering the English language. Maybe he should be doing a little more "tsk, tsk" wagging of the finger instead of trying to get the wave going.

So Not Cool

It's bad enough that they're bringing back Knight Rider.

But for goodness sake's people. K.I.T.T. wasn't a Mustang.



See??

One More Day

One more day of enjoying my mostly destroyed house and my sweet-as-pie toddler without worrying about work.

One more day of not counting calories, not worrying about why my stomach seems "bloated," not trying to get my 5-a-day.

One more day of scouting out vacation condos and planning a Vegas blowout for our 30th birthdays (in 2009).

One more day of oogling the Mandalay Bay's website and thinking it wouldn't be so bad if we were turning 30 this year.

One more day of not worrying that I have two conference proposals accepted and not a single paper for either one.

One more day of vacation.

Because on Monday
I start getting up at 6AM
I get my butt back on the elliptical machine and start the weights again.
I stop eating crap and start losing the last of this baby weight so I can look far too good for the mother of a two year old in Florida this year.
I get back to work and 1) plan the first few weeks of class--lesson plans, lectures, and power points; get myself to the library and start looking at Faulkner's *%@#! manuscripts, and 3) start revising the Fitzgerald piece so that my CV kicks the ass of at least 70% of the other 20th century applicants on this year's (that's right folks--the time is finally here!) job market.

Because if J can shave off his beloved beard in an attempt to get professional, I think I can do the small thing of writing one measly little thesis.

Losing Faith

I often wonder about humanity-- especially how it is that we've managed to make it this long. I like to believe that people are mostly good, but often, I have my doubts. In the last week I've encountered multiple reasons to lose faith-

• I finally got to see Sicko-- It's absolutely heartbreaking and infuriating that people in the "greatest" nation in the world have to choose which finger to reattach or have to watch their husband die, not because there isn't a cure, but because the insurance company won't pay for it. Sickening. Absolutely sickening that our $*@& politicians are so deep in the pockets of the medical insurance lobby that they can't revolutionize our system the way that EVERY OTHER INDUSTRIALIZED NATION ON THE GLOBE has revolutionalized theirs. But it wasn't only the whole insurance racket that made me sick--it was the supposedly "good" people. In one of the first stories, you meet a middle-class couple who have lost everything because of medical bills, and so they are forced to move in with their daughter and her family. Get this-- the daughter makes them sleep in their extra rec room--refuses even to move the desk and computer out. Says something about getting them bunk beds. WTF?!?! The mother's still suffering from her illness and her daughter (who she put through college) doesn't even have the decency to give her a proper guest room??
  
• We were discussing different types of discrimination in my writing class and, because we were talking about homophobia, the issue of the bible came up, which brought up the issue of how the bible wasn't literally written by God (like he has time for that) which made one of my students exclaim, "Why would he sit up there and let people write things that weren't exactly what he wanted?" To which I (stupidly) replied, "I dunno, why would he let genocide continue to happen in Rwanda?" to which another student quipped, "He has a plan." Whaa??!! really? Because if he does have a plan that includes the rape and murder of innocent women, children, and men, then I am certainly not at all interested.
• I was flipping through the channels on Sunday night. We don't have many of them, so I settled on CSpan. Maybe it was CSpan 2, who knows. But Ann Coulter was on. (who, in addition to being a spawn of satan also has an enormous Adam's apple) I usually can't watch her-- she makes me twitch and feel like I need a good shower. But there wasn't anything else as interesting. Now I know that Coulter, herself, is absolutely off her rocker. Anyone who can, with a straight face and absolutely no irony, casually promote the killing of countless people in middle eastern nations is not really sane-- or so I thought. Because when she advocated bombing Iran (it would be fun, she said, to bomb them into admitting that the Holocaust happened), people laughed and clapped. And when she further advocating bombing them to the point that they couldn't even build a transistor radio, people applauded even more. And these people looked normal-- they were young, they didn't seem to have cloven hoofs or horns-- but they thought it was a jaunty little joke, and more than just a little bit of a good idea, to wipe a country off the face of the earth just because they don't agree with us.

I swear, if anyone out there can tell me how to find a nice academic job in Britain, or some other country that will unconditionally treat my husband's Crohn's, I'm ready to pack up and go. Not that I think things are magically better other places, but it sure seems like the level of humanity in this particular country is growing fainter each and every day.

The One about God (Part II)

Or-- the problems I have with Catholicism....

Ever since we moved out here into the land of corn, I've been wrestling with the issue of religion. To start with, we haven't really found a church community that doesn't either bore me out of any spirituality I might have had or make me boil with anger. Churches out here are super- conservative. They admonished people to vote for the Shrub because voting for pro-choice Kerry was a sin. I sat through one memorably homily where the priest told us this lovely story about how he saved a marriage by convincing the wife to go off of birth control--the husband wasn't happy, but apparently that doesn't matter. We finally found this tiny little parish composed mostly of Koreans that we actually liked, but then we had Little Man, and church with a 1 year old just doesn't seem worth it.

But as I've wrestled with trying to figure out where we belong, I've been forced to confront issues about the Catholic church that I find intolerable. For instance, we were flipping through the channels one day and came across the Catholic TV station. On it, two nuns were explaining how women's health care in Africa was nothing more than a euphemism for abortion services. They went on to explain that without all this (apparently unnecessary) prenatal care, the infant mortality rate would necessitate that women have more children. Wha?? Or the mass we attended in Ohio where the priest was rallying the congregation against electing congressman Sherod Brown by quoting Bush as a great protector of life. Huh?? In what flipping other universe??? And, I completely and utterly blame the stupid Ohio one-issue-catholics back in 2004 who elected Bush because he is against abortion. This is on top of the fact that the church does stupid things like cover-up for pedophile priests, refuse women a full measure in spiritual life, and tell people in Africa that condoms are useless because the sperm are small enough to swim through them. These, to me, are dangerous, ridiculous ideas and actions that do more harm and spread more hate in this world than good.

These things all make me question my ability to remain in the faith. If I have a daughter, can I really raise her in a religion that teaches women that they aren't worth as much as men, that even if they feel called to serve, they will never be able to?? Can I really give weekly offerings to a church that will fight against my reproductive rights even as its members abuse children? These things worry me. They bother me.

The problem, I think, is the difference between the religion and the faith. The religion has an awful, torrid history of conquest, domination, and intolerance. When you walk into St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, you can immediately understand why Martin Luther railed against the church--the sheer wealth that spills out before you is astounding. The Church is a government, a business, an economy-- after all, there's nothing in my faith that makes me understand why there's a souvenir shop on the roof.
What? You didn't believe me?? You can shop above the heads of tourists and crypts of saints for all of your religious goods. Don't forget the rosaries emblazoned with Padre Pio or Pope John Paul.

But splitting the religion from the spirituality is the hard part when you're trying to raise a child to have some sort of faith in something beyond himself. You can't explain to a child that "we're Catholic because we're supposed to be, because it's what our family does and because there are certain salvageable things about the religion. Even though we believe there's other ways to get to God, to believe, or to have faith. Even though we believe that everyone's faith is equally valid, because we believe that only God knows and can judge. Even though we believe that you can praise the higher powers without sitting through stuffy masses that leave you uninspired and with a noisy and angry soul. Even though we know that there are other gospels, that the Bible might have been divinely inspired but certainly was written by some men back in the days of yore. And that we believe you should and must argue with this one, "true" church, because without growth, faith is static and dead and useless. Even though we can't agree on what heaven looks like--or if there even is one. Even though we have so many reasons for turning away."

The council of Nicaea would not be amused.

Hoochies Unite!

Tomorrow is Halloween. Little Man will be unveiled as Elvis, we will have our first real Halloween part, and women everywhere will put on the bare minimum amount of clothing.

I don't really get it, to be honest. Sexy is one thing. Slutty is quite another.

Apparently, if you happen to be a female, Halloween provides ample opportunity to whore it up a bit. For instance-

You can be a witch-




Apparently, the only thing that you need to be a witch is a pointy hat.









Or, if the macabre isn't for you... sail the high seas as a pirate!

The sword is really what gives the costume that certain something, don'tyou think?




And how can you not want to take a walk down a yellow brick road when you're stepping out as Dorothy? She's not from Kansas any more boys and girls...


I'm not even sure I understand this one-- and
gangster bunny. Since when do bunnies even
run liquor?







And just in case Dorothy was too tame-- why not dress up as
the kind of nun all little catholic school boys fantasize about?







Maybe I'm just jealous that this raunchy little trend wasn't around when my body might have possibly made one of those costumes work. But, really, how many people out there can make those silly costumes work? From the looks of the fairly average college girls trying them on at the local Halloween shop, not very many. You just kind of want to pull them aside and say, "Sweetie, no matter how you work it, that little bitty thing you think is a nurse outfit doesn't make you look sexy, it makes your completely normal and fairly average body look just exactly that."

But what I really want to know is when did Halloween become just a holiday for the guys? Sure, there's something exhilarating about dressing like the slut you (secretly) wish you could be. Inhibitions, be damned! But for what?

A student of mine said today that Halloween is the day girls can dress up and not be judged. Then what's the point of hoochin' it up? Don't they want to be judged? Isn't that the point?

Anyway- we'll be having a nice, tame little Halloween party. No body shots with toddlers running around. But I think it's better that way. After all, what hoochie out there is taking home both the King and the Wolfman home with them when it's all over? And I'm not even breaking out the garter belt.

The One about Spanking

I know that some people have reacted and commented on the last post I made-- especially my own guilt about wanting to spank Little Man. I really appreciate those comments, because they always make me reexamine my own beliefs and my own decisions.

I think I need to clarify some of my comments though.

I think that we all have to make our own decisions about parenting and discipline-- only we live with our children. I know, in my own situation, that the moments I've wanted to smack my child doing so would have only made me feel better--and then very soon after, worse.
I know that developmentally, a child Little Man's age isn't really able to control his impulses-- it's why they do things over, and over, and over, and over, and over--until they can control their impulses, I don't think that a little (or big) smack can be effective. That urge to keep trying things is natural, and fear doesn't stop it. I don't think toddlers know what they're feeling half the time. Most of the time tantrums are just an overwhelming rush of desire and angst and fear all rolled into one. They seem so out of control because they, literally, are.

J and I have thought long and hard about the way we want to discipline our children. All I ever knew was discipline that involved a swat on the behind occasionally. I didn't really even buy into the whole time-out thing until somewhat recently. But as I think back over what I remember of the discipline of my childhood--and, really, I wasn't disciplined all that often-- I realize that spanking loses its effectiveness. I can remember the moment when it stopped being effective for me: my dad threatened to hit me for something and I thought to myself, "go ahead...I don't care." Maybe I said it out loud, I don't remember. But he didn't carry through. I don't think I was ever threatened with a spanking again...

The thing about spanking, I think, is that it is founded on fear rather than respect. I don't want my children to fear me. I want their respect, but like anyone else, like anything else, respect is something that has to be earned. I believe that parents earn that respect through consistency, stability, and the unconditional love they give their children. J and I decided that we want to think of discipline as a way to educate and guide. Yes, there will be punishments. Yes, it will drive me batty not to smack him sometimes. But in the end, I know that hitting him will make me feel awful--absolutely awful. I don't want to hurt the thing I love most. So, for me, I want to choose a disciplinary style that I don't feel bad about. I have no qualms whatsoever about sitting him in a corner or boring him silly. That I can do without guilt.

I like to think, in my infinite wisdom, that my instinct not to hit is the right one. But the American Association of Pediatrics backs me up on this. They state in their "Guidance for Effective Discipline":

Despite its common acceptance, and even advocacy

for its use, spanking is a less effective strategy
than time-out or removal of privileges for reducing
undesired behavior in children. Although spanking
may immediately reduce or stop an undesired behavior,
its effectiveness decreases with subsequent
use. The only way to maintain the initial effect of
spanking is to systematically increase the intensity with which it is delivered, which can quickly escalate
into abuse. Thus, at best, spanking is only effective
when used in selective infrequent situations.

They also say
• Spanking children ,18 months of age increases the chance of physical injury, and the child is
unlikely to understand the connection between the behavior and the punishment.
• Although spanking may result in a reaction of shock by the child and cessation of the undesired
behavior, repeated spanking may cause agitated, aggressive behavior in the child that may lead to physical altercation between parent and child.
• Spanking models aggressive behavior as a solution to conflict and has been associated with increased aggression in preschool and school children.
• Spanking and threats of spanking lead to alteredparent–child relationships, making discipline substantially more difficult when physical punishment is no longer an option, such as with adolescents.
• Spanking is no more effective as a long-term strategy than other approaches, and reliance on spanking as a discipline approach makes other discipline strategies less effective to use. Timeout
and positive reinforcement of other behaviors are more difficult to implement and take longer to
become effective when spanking has previously been a primary method of discipline.
• A pattern of spanking may be sustained or increased.Because spanking may provide the parent some relief from anger, the likelihood that the parent will spank the child in the future is increased.

Now I'm a scholar by trade. I know what goes into research and I know that when a study is published by a large scientific organization, I'm going to tend to trust it. I know that a mother's intuition is worth something, but I also know that there are a lot of times that it can be wrong.

Looking back over my childhood, the patterns that the AAPA discuss seem in many ways eerily familiar. I was never abused--never even close to being abused--not even in the same ballpark, but there is a point when physical punishment ceases to be effective. It's usually that same point where your kid has access to a car, access to friends with cars, and access to a whole other realm of dangers. That's not really the time that I want to be figuring out a back up.

I don't doubt that spanking works.... for a while. But then suddenly, your little man is 6'3" and the trusty old belt just doesn't seem like it's gonna do the trick any more. And then what??

For me, for us, spanking is not a discipline I'm willing to fall back on. I want to give my child the gift of a violence-free childhood. They do exist. J had one--and because of it, he doesn't have the slightest impulse to swat little man. For him, hitting seems so foreign, so strange, so unnecessary.

I want it to be unnecessary. We both know that it's much harder not to hit. You do have to repeat and repeat and repeat and repeat, because there is not immediate shock. It takes unending patience (something that I most certainly do not and will not ever have) to commit to this form of child-rearing.

I read once somewhere that Time-outs only work if there are also time-ins. But in a world of rushing around, stressful jobs, and limited patience, putting time in is extraordinarily difficult and exhausting. But it's work I'm willing to do. It's work that I believe needs done.

Do I think that spanking is wrong? Unequivocally, yes. Am I going to judge people who do it? Probably, but I'm sure they also think my time-outs are ridiculous. Such is life. Can I change people's minds about spanking? I don't think so. It's like J says, changing someone's mind about the way they were raised is like trying to change someone's mind about religion.

I'm just thankful for my own conversion.

Random Bullets

I have a lot on my mind, and not the time or energy to develop any of these into a real post, so please excuse the randomness:

• Dear plagiarizers, I am not stupid. Really. I promise. And even though there's not a thing I can do right now, I'm watching. Sincerely, Me.
• I just got done re-reading most of my classes blogs for their mid-term evaluations. There's some really great stuff in there. As much as I'm now regretting the sheer amount I have to read, I like the opportunity to see them as complete people.
  
• Did I mention that chocolate covered caramel popcorn is better than crack?
• We just got back from a weekend in Ohio. It was so good to see everyone, and the visit (although short) was a good length. Sometimes I feel guilty for living so far away, but the truth is that I don't miss Akron at all. Sure, I'd love to be able to see my parents and grandparents more often or to have Little Man around the family more, but I like my little life out here on the prairie. I like that we don't have a lot to work our schedules around, other than our jobs. Retirement is coming soon, so hopefully Little Man will get more time with them all soon.
• Little Man thinks he's 2. I thought we were supposed to get 2 years before the tantrums start. What do you do with a child who's having a meltdown?? He's been so good thus far that I am totally unprepared to deal with this new phase. Maybe it will pass quickly.
  
• I hate people who tell me that I turned out ok after being raised in an environment where spanking was one form of discipline. Old school, ya know? I more and more realize that I can't possibly be ok when I have the urge to hit a toddler. There can't be anything productive in hitting a toddler. They don't have the ability to know right from wrong, predict consequences, or even control their own impulses yet. Hitting is totally and utterly counterproductive at this age (and really, at any I think). But the impulse I have is to smack him. And then I feel guilty about feeling like I should hit the most precious thing in my world. And then the guilt is just as exhausting as the toddler himself. I just can't win.
• Also, he's started hitting. How's that for irony?
• It's finally fall! Ok, it's almost 80 here, but at least the trees are starting to turn.
  
• I haven't done anything on the dissertation for 2 weeks. Thanks to the hubby's last minute job application, the trip to Ohio, and my general urge to do something crafty rather than academic, I'm playing catch up.
• Talked to Baby Bro the other night. I have no idea what's going on for Christmas this year. One minute I thought we had come up with a plan to get everyone together, the next minute it's not a good plan after all. Baby Bro's gonna have to figure this one out, because I'm off the case.
  
• Did I mention that chocolate covered caramel popcorn is better than crack?

Ok- enough for now, but you gotta check out Mommy/Prof's random rants of bitterness. Priceless.

If You're on a Diet...

and you see a cute little Cub Scout with his dad selling popcorn, run the other way.

Nay, scream and run the other way.

Because the fine people over a Trails End make this chocolate covered caramel popcorn that is better than crack.

Not that I've ever had crack.

But who needs to, now that I have a big old bucket of that popcorn stuff in my pantry?

Yup....