Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Monthly Archives: September 2005
I wish I could say this was an American idea
But it’s not. The company is Australian.
Pleasure Puss reusable sanitary Pads
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Caring for your pads
I’ll let you folks peruse those links at your leisure. When you’re bored of that, the Wikipedia entry on toilet paper was a hoot.
D.
“Are you spiritual?”
Um. Helloooo, Blogger? Is there a good reason why this post was up for several hours, and then disappeared, only to reappear as an older (AND INCOMPLETE!) draft version on my dashboard?
Or is this post being yanked by an even Higher Authority?
Cue Twilight Zone music.
Damn. I hate telling jokes twice.
At a Christmas party a few years ago, one of the local wives asked Karen, apropos of nothing, “Are you spiritual?”
Here was my wife, a firm atheist, being questioned on faith by someone who could only be described as a true believer. I watched, dumbstruck. I expected blood. But I had underestimated Karen yet again. As an attentive student of Miss Manners, she handled the question with ease.
“What an interesting question,” she said. “And such a good question, too. Isn’t it odd how infrequently folks talk about spirituality with people they hardly know? I wonder why that is?” And so forth. She kept at it until the topic had strayed a safe distance from the hot button of spirituality. The other woman never knew what hit her.
I was relieved — not so much because Karen had handled the question so deftly, but because no one had bothered to ask me.
That might explain how I came up with the Hannukah Lobster.
After that bit of humiliation, I brow-beat my parents into signing me up for Hebrew School. There, Israeli women who pronounced my name Dog taught me to read Hebrew, and later, a tyrannical cantor taught me my cantillation marks so I could belt out Torah lines with the best of ’em. Religious instruction consisted of disjointed Bible stories taught as historical fact with nary a word of moral or ethical analysis. As for Talmud — Talwhat?
Our rabbi fancied himself a comedian, a Jackie Mason in tefillin. What a dick. His whole pre-ceremony interaction with me consisted of a twenty minute interview, during which he badgered me about how baseball was a sport for intellectuals. He got me to cough up some dirt on my family, which he used during my bar mitvah as ‘humorous’ snark. Yeah, that’s right — in front of my friends, family, and the whole congregation.
That ended my schtick with Judaism, at least for a while.
See, it’s this last bit that Blogger keeps eating. Not the whole post, just this last bit. Grrr.
A few days ago, I mentioned Borges’ story, “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote”, wherein a little known, marginally successful author sets out to rewrite Don Quixote word for word. I’m beginning to feel like Menard, only it’s not Cervantes I’m struggling to channel. It’s me.
Well, here goes. One more time. This time I’m saving the HTML in a separate text file.
Over the years, my spiritual pendulum has swung from Judaism through Agnosticism to Zen Buddhism. I’m what you call a Jew-Boo (if you’re trying to be nasty, that is) or a Juddhist (my preferred designation). Those of you familiar with Buddhism know that its precepts are compatible with other religions. Zen, especially, is more a philosophy than a network of faith-based beliefs. So it’s not all that weird, despite what some of my tribe might think — the ones who sling the Jew-Boo label, that is.
Now that I’m an adult, I can take charge of my education. I have a halfway decent library on both Zen and Judaism, and I’ve read a fair fraction of it. I’m not an ignoramus. For that matter, I suspect I’ve read more of the New Testament than the average American Christian.
Nevertheless, when it comes to practice, I’m as piss-poor a Buddhist as I am a Jew.
The pendulum tends to take a sharp turn back towards Judaism whenever I’m faced with a pediatric airway emergency. Times like those, the last thing I want to believe is that I’m the one whose solely responsible for the life of this child. Those situations are frightening enough without that kind of load on my shoulders. Yup, that’s when the big time bargaining comes in.
Me: Hey, God? You remember me, the guy who recites his Shema every few years or so and hopes like crazy he’s catching You in a good mood. Well, hey, look. It’s like this. I have this kid here, she’s eighteen months old, and I would really appreciate it if you would help me look after her.
Him: (silence)
Me: Okay. Be that way. How about this: if things work out okay, I’ll start working on my son again. I mean, he’s nine years old. How entrenched could his atheism be? I’ll do my best, Lord, I really really will.
And so forth.
When you get down to it, I want to believe, particularly at times like those. Security, that’s what it’s all about. I don’t believe in an afterlife and I’m not particularly afraid of my own death. I am concerned about the safety and health of my family and my patients, and so I want to think Someone is up there watching over us.
At the same time, I realize no one makes it out of here alive.
That’s why questions like “Are you spiritual?”, “Do you believe in God?”, or even “Have you been saved?” distress me. The answer to all three is the same: It’s complicated.
You know something? For the folks who ask those kinds of questions, “It’s complicated” is the last answer they want to hear.
It’s complicated because I’m not the perfect Vulcan my wife is. It’s complicated because, while I hate blind faith, I’m too attached to my memes to let them go. It’s complicated because, like any true Agnostic, I really don’t know the answers.
I’d like to think my confusion is the hallmark of an intelligent mind, but I know it is nothing more than what it is: confusion.
And it doesn’t help that every time I come within a hair’s breadth of something approaching an epiphany of self-understanding, Blogger eats my column.
Okay. Here goes. Save HTML file. Hit publish button.
D.
Cool link and quick snark
If you haven’t done so already, hop on over to Stephanie Feagan’s blog, where she has a fun link to a Kinky Friedman political cartoon. Go Kinkster!
No more Muffinry, folks. I’ve had it up to here. It occurred to me, however, that some of you might still need your morning Muffin. If so, check out the Lydia of Purple website (get a load of that URL!), and while you’re there, don’t miss reading about Joshua’s overpriced birdhouses. Josh needs to make a living, too.
“Bless this Ozark Lad with a new pair of pants without holes in the knees.”
D.
Lame Reasons to Have Sex #3
Karen: Uh-uh.
Me: You realize, you’re contributing to my risk factors for prostate cancer.
Karen: Oh, that is weak. Besides, I thought you had your bases covered with all that fiddling.
Me: Damn.
D.
How many is too many?
Meet the Duggar family.
Note that (Head Count) – Mom – Dad = 14. This is the Duggar family circa 2004, before #15 arrived. The Duggars were the subject of a Discovery Health channel documentary, “14 Children and Pregnant Again!”, which airs again on October 27 and October 29. Here’s the blurb:
“The Duggars are letting God dictate how many children they have and, with nine boys, five girls, and one on the way, Jim Bob and Michelle feel blessed many times over! Find out how the Duggars coordinate a household that would challenge any manager.”
Before discussing precisely how the Duggars coordinate that household, let’s get some Guinness Book of World Records perspective. According to sexualrecords.com, the 2001 Guinness Book gives the record to “the first wife of Feodor Vassilyev (1707-1782) of Shuya, Russia”: 69 children, many of them multiple births, 67 of whom survived infancy. In recent times, the record belongs to “Leontina Albina from San Antonio, Chile. Now in her mid-sixties, Leontina claims to be the mother of 64 children, of which only 55 of them are documented”.
Can we at least agree that 55 children is too many?
Back to the Duggars. Never mind that Jim Bob and Michelle dress their children like clones and give them names, ALL of them, that start with J (including Jinger — pronounced Ginger, in case you’re wondering). Never mind that the white suprem acist website st0rrmf runt dot org* luuurves the Duggars cuz they’re bringin’ all them white Christian babies into the world. After all, the Duggars can’t help it if they’ve become the neo-Knotsies’ poster family.
No. What I wonder is whether Jim Bob and Michelle are doing the job. Not that job — obviously, they’re doing very little else. I mean the job of parenting.
Take a look at the Quiverfull FAQ. Here’s their response to the question (not really a question, but what the hey), “You won’t be able to give as much time or attention to a dozen kids as you could to just two or three”:
“We trust that God will give us the ability to meet the needs of all the children He gives us — and that includes their need for love and attention as well as material needs.”
Read the rest, if you like. They go on to talk about all the great parenting opportunities you get eating and praying together as a family. And don’t forget the joys of having ten or more siblings:
“[H]ow could we consider robbing our children of the opportunity for a life-time of shared experiences with another brother or sister, in exchange for a theoretical increase in attention from their parents?”
I have a brother and a sister. One each. Did I really need to have another ten of ’em to get that wonderful experience? Damn it, I’m going to call my parents and tell them I’ve been ROBBED.
Karen and I got tweaked over the Duggars, the Prairie Muffins, and the Quiverfull folks thanks to the comments thread for this post at The News Blog. That thread led Karen to discover the Television Without Pity website, which, when it comes to television programming, has to be the snarkiest of the snarky snark. They truly live up to their name. Anyway, for the last four days, Karen has been a slave to TWP’s two hundred page thread of comments in response to “14 Children and Pregnant Again!” Since we haven’t watched the show, our understanding of its content comes from that comment thread. (Check it out, but prepare to be addicted. Some of the posters are hilarious — e.g., “I think my tubes just spontaneously tied themselves.”)
Remember, “Find out how the Duggars coordinate a household that would challenge any manager”? Here are a few highlights of the Duggars’ managerial, I mean child-rearing, methods.
- The kids are home-schooled. Their only outside contact is with other Fundamentalist Christian families; they don’t even go to church (they hold services at home).
- There’s a “buddy system” in place to care for newly weaned infants. Eight- to ten-year-old children are charged with care responsibilities for children under two. Where’s mom? Giving suck to the next in line.
- With fourteen (now fifteen) kids on board, economies must be observed. The photo above is the rule, not the exception: the kids all dress in the same clothes. The program also focused on meals in the Duggar household — they sure like Tater Tot casserole!
- In a household of this size, the chores are enormous. Each child is given his/her “jurisdiction”. A six-year-old is responsible for all of the laundry, and so forth.
Some of you will no doubt point out that in past generations, this, or something close to it, was the norm. But consider:
Back then, such folks lived on farms, and the numbers were necessary to provide labor.
Back then, infant mortality claimed a sizable share of the family.
Back then, birth control was illegal, unavailable, or (if available) next to useless.
Back then, a child wasn’t expected to do much more than finish grade school and learn a trade (or work on the family farm). With scaled-down expectations, and with the fruits of a family farm (such as a ready supply of chicken eggs and cow’s milk), a husband and wife could provide for a large family in what was, at the time, a respectably ample fashion.
Back then, what opportunities did a woman have? It was the rare woman who could rise above this fate.
Yes, you can argue that this is a free country. The Duggars are self-sufficient thanks to Jim Bob’s real estate investments, so they’re not living on the public dole. Why shouldn’t they procreate like bunnies, if that’s what they want?
I worry about the kids. Except for the youngest (the one lucky enough to be born just before Michelle Duggar’s uterus commits seppuku), they’ll grow up without a childhood, and they’ll grow up knowing nothing else but the Duggar Way. I can’t help but think the Duggars are carrying their freedom a little too far.
Further reading (in case you found this post last): So you want to be a Prairie Muffin?
D.
*I don’t particularly want these guys sniffing around my website, you know what I mean? Hence the misspellings. Google the Duggars and you’ll find plenty of Knotsie links.
Lame Reasons to Have Sex #2
Karen: NO.
Me: But it’s my second day after my birthday day!
Karen: Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
D.
Technical difficulties
This time, it wasn’t my fault. Honest.
I deleted a draft. A bloody draft. And then I added fiveandfour to my New Pals list, and then my blog crashed.
I managed to figure out that my template had become horribly corrupted, so I’ve resurrected the blog, SORT OF, by refreshing the template.
I lost all my sidebar stuff, but I knew that would happen. More worrisome: I can’t get into the archives. I think I can fix that by republishing the whole blog.
Anyway, what’s the worst that can happen? You guys will need to drop me a quick note (in response to this message, for example) so that I can reconstruct my links.*
I’m hopeful that Blogger will fix the problem. They fixed it before (and that time, I deleted the whole blog!)This should be a piece of cake, right?
This experience has made me realize two things:
1. I’ve invested way too much of myself in this blog. It ain’t healthy, I tell ya.
2. I need to SAVE THE TEMPLATE BEFORE MAKING CHANGES. Dumb shit.
D.
*As you can see, I have posted a new links list in exciting alphabetical order. If I’ve forgotten you, please SPEAK UP. If you would like a reciprocal link and you are not a Muffin, YOU SPEAK UP, TOO.
Banned Books Week: the Muffin POV
Thanks to Kate for pointing out that, here in the (still free, but for a limited time only) US of A, it’s the American Library Association’s Banned Books Week.
Funny thing: one way or another, I would have found this out. I was trying to research Muffin attitudes towards child-rearing when I discovered the Buried Treasure Weblog, which is the online home of the Muffin Manifesto. (I blogged on this yesterday.) Carmon, the Buried Treasure Muffin Maven, has this to say about Banned Books Week:
“You probably already guessed that I don’t think all ideas are created equal. In fact, I think some ideas are so blasphemous that they ought to be challenged and yes, sometimes banned. The French Revolution was the ultimate object lesson on the aphorism “ideas have consequencesâ€: the evil, humanist ideas of the Enlightenment led to deadly consequences.”
How’s that for historical revisionism?
Carmon urges her readers to celebrate Official Discernment Week instead. Here’s another snippet:
“Even as we rejoice in the increasing quantity and availability of Christian reading matter, we must be vigilant to ensure that we teach our children to obey and honor God, and protect their impressionable minds from pervasive and perverse influences. Threats to their spiritual well-being exist in many quarters, even public libraries, on public television and yes, even on Fox News.”
Fox News: corrupter of our youth. I like this woman.
Not.
Next up: How many is too many?
D.
Lame Reasons to Have Sex #1
Karen: Not tonight.
Me: I hope your conscience doesn’t bother you too much, what with the shrinking rainforests and all.
Karen: Huh?
Me: Well, you’re wasting perfectly good wood. Heh heh. I just thought that one up.
Karen: I figured.
D.
So you want to be a Prairie Muffin . . .
Modern world got you down? Tired of having to shelter your daughters from media images of harlots like Hillary Clinton, or unfeminine hippy rebels like Cindy Sheehan? Thinking how nice it would be go back in time to the early 1800s, a time before abortion, birth control, and pornography were the scourge of a good, decent, Godfearing woman like yourself?
Not to fear, milady. Submit to the will of a manly Godfearing man NOW. Become a Prairie Muffin.
What’s a Prairie Muffin? You’ll be hard pressed to find a definition on their website, so let me help you out. Here’s a crash course in becoming a Praying Muff. Um, Prairie Muffin.
Step 1. Do not lose your sense of humor.
On the Muffin site, you’ll find nuggets like this:
Note: It was decided in a hotly-contested election, that the husbands of Prairie Muffins would henceforth be known as “Prairie Dawgs.” An official Prairie Dawg greeting was also proposed. Single women aspiring to be Prairie Muffins will be known as “Muffin Mixes” and young children of Prairie Muffins are “Mini Muffins.”
Thus, lesson one is, you are not a woman. You’re not even a Prairie Muffin yet. You, my dear, are a muffin mix, eagerly awaiting a man to leaven your fertile, ah, flour and sugar mixture.
Step 2. Study and commit to heart the Prairie Muffin Manifesto.
Since the Manifesto has 39 steps, I’ll simplify it for you. Here are some of the bitter pills, erm, blessings of the Lord you’ll have to swallow.
In case you were wondering about your proper place in your all new Muffin-friendly home,
11) Prairie Muffins own aprons and they know how to use them.
Just so you know it’s not all about tater tot casseroles and Scrambled Egg Surprise,
9) Prairie Muffins do not reflect badly on their husbands by neglecting their appearance; they work with the clay God has given, molding it into an attractive package for the pleasure of their husbands.
You need never trouble your head again with unpleasant thoughts:
18) Prairie Muffins are fiercely submissive to God and to their husbands.
“You will be my master, hubs, or I’ll beat you to a bloody pulp!”
Now that you have your priorities straight,
Step 3. Get ready to spread your legs and keep ’em spread.
From the Manifesto,
3) Prairie Muffins are aware that God is in control of their ability to conceive and bear children, and they are content to allow Him to bless them as He chooses in this area.
Translation: get used to this . . .
cuz families of 10 to 15 children or more are not unusual. This, by the way, is a core Muffin belief: God meant you to have as many children as your womb can possibly bear.
Hope you like morning sickness. Here’s some Muffin reassurance for you from QuiverFull contributor Elizabeth, “mother of ten”:
“Yes, my children all know that I highly prize each one of them, and they know that I would welcome as many more as God would choose to give me. I am also honest enough to tell them that I have never been too crazy about being pregnant. However, I sure am crazy about those sweet little babies when they finally arrive.”
Yup, she sure is.
I’ll save the shining star of the Prairie Muffin movement, the Duggar Family — fourteen children, one more on the way — for some other day. For now, you had better . . .
Step 4: Get used to the world’s fugliest dresses.
Nuff said. Finally,
Step 5: Never take your eyes off the prize.
Back to El Manifesto:
2) Prairie Muffins are helpmeets to their husbands, seeking creative and practical ways to further their husbands’ callings and aid them in their dominion responsibilities.
‘Dominion’ is a code word for Dominionism. Read what Wikipedia has to say about Dominionism, or be content with my nutshell definition:
Reactionary evangelical Christian philosophy that encourages adherents to impose their moral code on the rest of us.
You know, like Alberto Gonzalez going after pornographers. That sort of thing.
Yes, I know I’ve been ignoring the guys out there. I don’t know about you, but this Muffin movement creeps me out. Maybe some guys like their women all covered in flour from 9 to 5 and screaming for fertilization from 6 to 8, practicing their sperm-retaining yoga a la Julianne Moore in The Big Lebowski, quilting and crafting and diapering and shit, but as for me, I like a woman with teeth.
Tomorrow:
D.