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The Popovers I’m Not Baking

May 1, 2026

Robyn Parnell foodie, friends, general ruminations, health & wellness, Holidays, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), movies, music, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, school, science, The Write Stuff (literary life), TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Popovers I’m Not Baking

Department Of Not One Damn Popover Was Ever Baked In Our Home

Moiself  has nothing against popovers.  I didn’t really know what they were before I got married, then had little interest afterward when someone described them to me as dinner rolls on steroids.  Perhaps I had a lingering case of PPA (Premarital Popover Aversion)…?

 

 

MH’s and my wedding anniversary was this past week.  Somehow, this memory popped (sorry)    [1]   to mind:

Dateline:  However many years ago; some place in Palo Alto, CA; wedding reception of MH and moiself.  I have been roped into small talk with a large man, one of the many  Perfectly Nice People Whom I’ve Never Met Before And Whom MH Knows Only Vaguely Because They Are Relatives/Friends Of His Parents ® .

This PNPWINMBAWMKOVBTAR/FOHP is an older man who decides to engage me in conversation (translation: I listen to him talk about) the wedding present he and his wife got us: a popover pan.

 

Popover pan, sans popovers

 

A popover pan.  This is the first time I’ve heard of such a specific piece of baking equipment (the Parnells were not a popover-consuming family).   “I said, ‘Let’s get them a popover pan,’ “ this man tells me, recreating the pivotal gift-giving conversation he had with his wife.  He also tells me, with evident pride in overturning the stereotypical, who-buys-the-wedding gift assumptions, that *he himself* volunteered to purchase and wrap the pan!  And that he was happy to do so!  Because,  “I always loved it when my wife made me popovers, and I hope that MH will have the same experience.”   [2]

I thank him, drain my glass of champagne in two gulps, and say, (while beaming the most oblivious-to-sexist-expectations smile that I can muster)   [3]  “I’m looking forward to MH learning to bake us popovers!”

 

Another happy couple looks forward to consecrating their marriage with the popover experience.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Not What We Were Looking For, But A Fun Surprise

Dateline:  last week; MH and I searching closets, file cabinets, the attic, the We-never-would-have-moved-them-here drawers….   When we had the house interior painted many months back, MH cleared out the room where our treasured LPs and cassettes were kept.  [4].  And now we can’t find them.

Moiself  is seeking one tape in particular, which has to do with our “date night.”  When we’re in town, we go to Mcmenamin’s Rock Creek Tavern, which has Irish Music night every Sunday.

 

 

We’ve become friendly with several of the Rock Creek staff.  There are two newer servers – a brother and sister,   [5]  both of whom are into (what they call) “retro” music.  I asked the young woman, “Nellie,” for examples of what she considered retro she mentioned several singers/bands (which I recognized as the soundtrack from my retro youth).  When Nellie said that she really liked Joan Jett, I said, “I’m going to impress you, then.”

I told Nellie about having seen JJ twice in concert – once when Jett was with The Runaways,    [6]    and once with her band Joan Jett and The Blackhearts.  And as if that wasn’t impressive enough…

 

 

…many years ago my grooviest friend in the world, former WWDC 101 disc jockey EDK, met Ms. Jett when she was in DC for a concert.  Jett visited the radio station, as bands often do when they’re on tour.  While she was there EDK asked her to record some station promos, AND wish me a happy birthday, which he recorded and sent to me on tape.

Nellie’s eyes widened with delight; she begged me to bring in the tape and play it for her.

We.  Cannot.  Find.  That.  Tape.   [7]

But here’s something MH did find, in a file of old tax returns.  He took pictures of the letter I’d written to the IRS (after our first filing as a married couple), and sent the pictures to our offspring:   “While searching for other archived items, I came across this.  Thought you might enjoy reading some nonfiction writing by your mother.”  Transcript (with address/personal details redacted) below.

I have only the barest memory of writing the letter, and of the bureaucratic injustice which spurred me to do so.  But after reading it I told MH, “Yep; sounds like me.”  What’s nice is that I got the unexpected: a personal response, from a government bureaucrat!  And it was a good one (I’ll spare you that transcript) …although, as MH noted, you can consider it ironic or fitting, given the subject, that the IRS’ response letter is signed with a woman’s name, signing for the (male) IRS Director of Returns.

 

You may want to sit down; lest you be overcome with excitement.

 

Internal Revenue Service; Attn:  IRS Reports Clearance Officer

To Whom It May Concern:

I am writing to you regarding an inaccuracy on my Federal Income Tax refund check.

My husband and I filed joint returns for ____ (year). I have attached a copy of our Federal Income Tax refund check, which, as you can see, is made payable to “____  (  MH’s first name and middle initial and surname)  and “Roby _____ (MH’s surname).  While my husband’s name is indeed ____ (MH’s first name and middle initial and surname), my last name is Parnell.  I am not Robyn _____ (MH’s surname) (and I am most certainly not “Roby MH’s surname”); there is no Robyn ____ ( MH’s surname) that I am aware of who is married to my husband and who has my Social Security number.

Two areas of interest regarding this matter:

  1. a space for Spouse’s Signature (“if joint return BOTH must sign”) is provided on the 1040 form, yet there is no space, at the beginning of the form, for spouse’s name to be printed, although there is a space for spouse’s SSN.
  2. despite not having a space to record my name, my Social Security number was provided, as was my signature, which, while admittedly not renowned for its legibility, is obviously not of someone whose last name begins with the letter “W.” I kept my birthname at marriage, as did my husband.  I have never been “Robyn ____ (MH’s surname”) – the name is not mine, nor does it appear on any of my legal or personal records, nor is it associated with ____ (my SSN).

Taking all of this in to account – and not for one moment daring to assume that a governmental agency would change my name without my knowledge, consent or request to perhaps follow a sexist, outdated assumption of what happens to the surname of a woman when she marries – I am at a loss to figure out how that name got on our check.  Perhaps someone at the IRS can enlighten me?

(Don’t be too hard on yourselves – the state of California didn’t do any better. We also filed a joint state income tax return, with my name listed as filer and my husband’s SS# listed as “Spouse.”  Our state refund check was made payable to two different versions of my name, neither of which even remotely resembled my husband’s name).

A friend of mine encountered a similar situation last year:  her federal refund check was made payable to her and her husband, each listed as having her husband’s surname, which is not her surname, professionally, personally or otherwise.  Both endorsed the check as it was written, per their banker’s instructions.  A few weeks after depositing the check they received letters from the IRS inquiring as to who the second payee was who endorsed the check, as they have no records of any such person – the name they erroneously put on the check – having my friend’s Social Security number!

If this seems like small potatoes to you – “What’s a few letters changed here and there” – consider what would happen if I or any taxpayer had such a cavalier attitude toward listing and recording our expenses and deductions (“What’s a few numbers or decimal points changed or eliminated”)…we’d be in holy hot water (bureaucratically speaking, of course) quicker than you could say, “Subtract line 30 from line 23.”

IRS Commissioner Gibbs writes “…working together with you, I believe we jointly (my emphasis) can find ways to make taxes less taxing for all of us.” *   By bringing this matter to your attention, I am trying to do my part.

Thank you for your consideration.  I look forward to your reply.

Sincerely, your “valued customer,” *

Robyn Parnell

cc: – Office of Management and Budget, Paperwork Reduction Project
-Lawrence B. Gibbs, IRS Commissioner

* quotes taken from the From the Commissioner letter in the 1040 forms and instructions booklet.

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [8]

“New rule: If churches don’t have to pay taxes, they also can’t call the fire department when they catch fire. Sorry reverend, that’s one of those services that goes along with paying in.  I’ll use the fire department I pay for. You can pray for rain.”
(  Bill Maher, “Real Time,” 2-17-2006 )

 

 

*   *   *

May you have your own version of a popover experience;
May you have a memorable communiqué with a bureaucrat;
May you get the services you pay (not pray) for;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Not sorry.

[2] I still remember his odd (to me) choice of words…but then, a popover ignoramus such as moiself  might not know that having popovers is an experience.

[3] And that was my second of what would be many glasses of bubbly that night, so there was mustering to be done.

[4] After doing a major culling of them

[5] They are so adorable, I can’t stand it…and I almost wrote that in all caps

[6] The opening band was Cheap Trick!

[7] Nor can we find a lot of others, and some really cool LPs…but, as my father used to say, “It’ll turn up.”

[8] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists.   No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.”  Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org

The Cocktail I’m Not Drinking

April 24, 2026

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, current events, family life, foodie, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), movies, music, politics, reproductive rights, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Cocktail I’m Not Drinking

                                                                                                

Department Of Seriously, Chef?
Sub-Department of Something Light (The Calm Before The Storm)

Dateline: late last week; perusing my latest copy of  VegNews: The Best of Vegan issue.   Moiself  is happy to note the good travel news about Iceland, which the magazine selected for their category of Best Countries To Travel To for being the country with the highest percentage of restaurants that include vegan options on their menus.   [1]  Then I come upon the Best Restaurant awards, which has many, many categories.  I’m looking for the local winners – Portland is renowned for its many plant-eater-friendly restaurants and cafes – and in the Best Mexican restaurant category I find…this listing.

Would you like a side of identity politics with your salsa?

This is too special, even for Portland.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of And Now, The Storm
Department Of This Is How Easily It Can Happen
Department Of What Do You Call Something That Almost Happened,
That Makes You Realize How Easily It Could Have Happened?
Department Of Not All Men But Yeah…A Lot Of Men
Department Of Not All Men, But Even Men Who Are “Nice Guys®”
Department Of How Many Departments Will One Blog Department Get?

I’m not 100% sure what sparked my recollection of the story moiself  will share here, but it’s likely related to certain news story that has been much in the headlines.  I had been trying to do the seemingly impossible: avoid the news about CNN’s investigation of a  “Rape Academy“ – a global network of online forums and chat groups where men advise, encourage and even teach other men how to drug, sexually assault and then film women and girls, including their own wives and girlfriends.

How I wish I were making this up.  How I wish that the news of the existence of this global network of How To Become A Sexual Predator shocked moiself.

 

 

I snorted the third time I scrolled past a reference to the “Rape Academy”  I saw on several friends’ FB posts, then heard a voice – which turned out to be my own – thinking loudly and derisively,

 “Like this is anything new – no need for an ‘academy’
or any type of school, what with
the tried-and-true methods guys have been using for years….”

Then came another thought:  the tried-and-true methods…does that include what was tried on me which, fortunately, was not ultimately true?  I will never know for sure.  But I will also never forget.   [2]

Dateline:  last Saturday night.  MH and I are getting dinner at a small café/bar in Manzanita.  We’re enjoying a comfortable, slightly breezy night on the café’s outside porch, playing card games with the mini card deck I always carry in my purse, and talking about various subjects (to distract from the fact that the cards seemingly favor MH, and he is winning EVERY HAND). 

The subject of dates comes up, and I share a story about four amusing dates I had, way back before I met MH, with a Stanford MBA student.  Our fourth date was my first (and so far, only) time at a professional ice hockey game.  It turned out to be our last date because of something that struck a sour note for me. Nothing “bad” happened, but I was irritated that Mr. MBA seemed at first mystified, then annoyed, at my asking him about the rules of the game.  Ice hockey was a sport with which I was unfamiliar, and I wanted to watch it more perceptively: those different colored lines on the ice must mean something, and the ref keeps blowing his whistle for reasons I can’t discern; I played field hockey in high school, and perhaps there are some analogous rules….?  His reply to all of my questions was some variant of, Nobody knows the rules of ice hockey, and nobody cares.

 

 

After he’d said that for the fourth time, I got the translation:  Mr. MBA, you mean, *you* don’t know and/or don’t care about the rules.  And that’s not a good look, blaming it on nobody.  By date #4 I’d already figured out that we were a mismatch, what with him majoring in “MONEY” (his word and emphasis, not mine).  Looking back, I felt fortunate, I told MH, in not having had many bad dates.  “But there *was* one….”

It came to mind; I took a couple of yoga breaths and told MH about it.

 

 

In the mid-1980s I had a job at Vendtech,   [3]   a company whose core workforce was people around my age (early through late twenties), most of whom also socialized after work. One early night I was visiting friend and Vendtech coworker Ann, [4]   whose apartment was directly across the street from a condo I rented with my friend Marie.   [5]  Ann and I were shooting the shit about whatever, when her phone rang.  It was Ray,  [6]  a fellow Vendtecher.  Ray had tickets to a concert at a local club and was calling to invite Ann to go with him.  She amiably declined, briefly chatting with him before hanging up.  When she told me why Ray had called we both laughed and I said, “Well then, I better hurry back home to answer the phone.”

Ray had a (well-known, among Vendtechers) crush on Ann.  Ann, like most of our female Vendtech coworkers, considered Ray a Nice Guy®, and a friend.  She had socialized with him in the small work group gatherings, and also one-on-one (e.g. a couple of movie dates), but had no romantic interest in him.  I also got along with Ray,   [7]  and had been to the movies with him and to a couple of other outings which, when Ann and I had shared  What-did-you-do-this-weekend? stories, always coincided with him having first asked Ann to see that particular movie, or whatever. 

It never bothered me to be his second (or third, or…who knows?) choice.  Ray was not a romantic choice of mine, nor I of him, I’d assumed, due to his frequently confiding in me re his interest in Ann (and also in another woman at Vendtech).  Ray and I got along well, had overlapping taste in movies and music.  Other than his always insisting on paying no matter what the outing (which I appreciated, as his salary was *way* higher than I mine), Ray was easy to be around.

Sure enough, it wasn’t five seconds after I entered my condo when the phone rang.  It was Ray, asking if I’d like to go to the concert, which was this coming Friday night.  The show started early (8 pm, early for a rock concert) and probably wouldn’t run that late, what with only one band on the bill.  Sure, I said.

 

 

The concert venue was in a large hall set up to resemble nightclub, where the attendees were seated at small tables.  The club had waiter/table service, and there was a snack bar at the back of the club.

Contextual info: I wasn’t much of a drinker.  More than one Vendtecher had “accused” me (really; it was said in an accusatory tone of voice) of being a “teetotaler,” which I found bemusing and baffling.  Apparently, this was because at work-related parties or events where alcohol beverages were offered,  [8]  over the course of the events (which often lasted four or more hours) I would have one or at most two drinks, while my hard-partying comrades downed five or six (or more).

Meanwhile, back at the club: as soon as we were seated a waiter came to our table.  Ray ordered some chips for us and a pint of beer for himself, and asked me what’d I’d like to drink.  I’d been to the club and knew that their vino selection was limited to three corky-tasting house wines, in shades of white, red, or pink.  I didn’t drink beer and had limited experience with the so-called hard spirits. Gin and tonic was my go-to order, but I thought I’d try something different.  I really liked the taste of tonic water with lime…hmm, what else to try?  I ordered a vodka tonic.

 

 

The concert began; the band was good (and loud); the server returned to our table.  Ray asked for a glass of water and another beer, but a half instead of a full pint.  I declined Ray’s offer of another vodka tonic, and told our server that I’d like a glass of tonic water with lime only – no vodka – and a glass of water…I remember seeing Ray out of the corner of my eye making some kind of gesture to our server after I had ordered.  This sequence repeated itself several times (however, I never got my glass of plain water, even though Ray got his), with Ray drinking smaller and smaller amounts of beer and me specifying plain tonic water and lime.

As the concert got to the obligatory,  band-pretends-to-play-their-last-number-but-is-really-just-waiting-offstage-for-the-audience-to-call-them-back-for-an-encore, it hit me.  Borrowing poetic license from Miley Cyrus, it came in like a wrecking ball.  All-of-the-proverbial-sudden, I was blurry.  The room was swirling; I told Ray I didn’t feel well and wanted to go home.  He stood up, said he needed to use the bathroom, and that I should stay put and he’d be right back and take me right home.

I didn’t understand.  How could I be…intoxicated, was it?…via one cocktail that I’d had almost two and a half hours ago?  I looked at what was left of my fourth (or fifth…or sixth?) glass of tonic water, which was mostly ice cubes at that point.  I sniffed it just as our server arrived, and I asked her ( I remember trying to *not* sound like an idiot, and forming my words carefully, as I felt my tongue was too big for my mouth ) What was this drink?  Was there something else in my tonic water and lime?  It was so loud in the hall — had she misunderstood me, or had she gotten my order mixed up with someone else’s?

She gave me an odd look, and told me that at our first drink refill, my “friend” had told her that I’d changed my mind, and wanted the full vodka tonic(s).   Which is what she’d been bringing out to me.

 

 

I was too fuzzy to be angry…I was mostly confused.  Huh?  Why would he do that – why would he “override” my order?

I don’t remember walking to Ray’s car, or the drive to my place.  I remember him helping me up the stairs of the condo I shared with Marie, who was not home yet (Marie managed a retail store, and worked a late closing shift on Fridays).  He helped me to my bed, where I collapsed, face up…and then, he was kissing me.

I remember laughing at him – what was he doing?  It’s not like we were…   “What are you doing?”  I giggled aloud.  He pulled back and looked down at me; I remember my upper lip and chin feeling ragged, almost burned, as though instead of kissing me he had dragged a rasp over my skin (the Miami Vice stubble was a popular look for guys at that time, and Ray had a two-three days’ worth of beard growth.)   “No,” he said softly, and stood up.  He said he’d let himself out, and left my bedroom.  I fell asleep (blacked out?), and didn’t hear the sound of the front door closing.

The next morning I awoke, fully clothed, shoes still on.  Marie said she’d noticed that I’d forgotten to lock the front door when I’d come home.  I said I didn’t remember that, and apologized.  Ann came over later in the day, and asked me about the concert.  I told her what I remembered of it; I was still confused about the mysterious (to me) drink situation.  She wrinkled her nose and exclaimed, “That’s like…attempted rape!”

Ray and I never spoke with one another about what had happened.  I ended up working for Vendtech for a few more months,  [9]   and continued to attend group activities with other Vendtech employees, which sometimes included Ray, but never went to another movie or one-on-one activity with him. 

 

 

*   *   *

As I finished telling MH the story, it dawned upon me that I’d never really reckoned with what almost/could have happened:  That someone I considered a friend – someone whom everyone knew as a good guy – had, essentially, poisoned me.  This man didn’t (as far as I know) slip a mickey into my drink, but he might as well have.  And this is how many women are raped.

MH listened quietly and thoughtfully to my story, and said, “I’m glad it didn’t happen,” when I was finished telling it.  “Me, too,” I replied, and wondered why I hadn’t told him the story before.  It had just faded into background history

 

 

I’d almost told K and Belle about it years ago, when they started going out with friends.  MH and I had talked with both of our offspring about the existence of Rohypnol® and other so-called  “date rape” drugs, and cautioned them to never accept a beverage at a party or any venue, from someone else, unless it was an unopened can of, say, soda, or unless you could be sure of what was in (or not in) the drink.  I thought perhaps I should personalize that advice for Belle, about how this is not theoretical and it is not something that just happens “to *other* people…”  But I didn’t.

I don’t know what stopped me.  I don’t like thinking of moiself  as a victim, of anything, in any situation – was that it?  Was I protecting my daughter and my son, or me, or MH, from having the opportunity to have even a fleeting thought that I’d been naïve, or stupid, or….?  I didn’t blame moiself, then or now, and it isn’t something that haunts my existence.   [10]   And again, it happened a long time ago in a galaxy far far away…which, unfortunately, when it comes to male predatory sexual behavior, resembles a lower tech version of the galaxy we’re still living in today.

 

I don’t know about y’all, but I’d like some sloth peekaboo therapy right now.

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [11]

 

( Katha Pollitt is an American author, activist, poetic, social critic )

*   *   *

May you never get a free meal due to your ethnicity or gender expression;
May you never have someone override your food or drink order;
May you use your bare hands to rip the spleen out of anyone you see who
poisons the food or beverage of his “friend,” or anyone else;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Which bodes well for our upcoming trip there, this summer, to watch the eclipse…and eat good food (including non-vegan Icelandic cod).

[2] And by,  I will never forget, I do not mean that I constantly remember what happened.  I have lived my life for years, decades even, without thinking about it.  I am not scarred; just aware.

[3] Not the company’s real name.

[4] Not her real name.

[5] Noticing a pattern?  Not her real name.

[6] You guessed it: Not his real name.

[7] No big accomplishment, as everyone at Vendtech, male and female, executive and rank-and-file employee, got along with Ray.

[8] And booze was always plentiful at company events.  The company’s co-founder and president was a raging if functioning alcoholic.

[9] My total time there was just under a year.

[10] Or didn’t, until I had reason to think of it and told MH… then I realized I was going to have to write about it, because that is how I process things.

[11] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists.   No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.”  Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org

The Streets I’m Not Renaming

March 27, 2026

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, current events, extended family, freethought/humanism, friends, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), movies, music, nature, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, travel , , , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Streets I’m Not Renaming

Department Of Yet Another Reason Why I Love Norway

I have immensely enjoyed the times moiself  has had the opportunity to travel to/around several European countries.  Each of those times involved at least one  embarrassment-by-association experience, wherein Some Otherwise Enlightened World Citizens ® that one finds in, say, a Rick Steves travel group feel compelled to bray about the high taxes of, for example, the Scandinavian social democracies.   [1]  This typically happens after visiting a country’s house of parliament or other such facilities:  we visitors are chatting amongst ourselves, comparing and contrasting, say, Norway’s standard of living with that of the USA, and SOEWC will feel compelled to remind everyone how the people who live in those countries must pay “far too much taxes to  *the government.*“

 

 

This triggers moiself  and others to remind the braying ignoramous Ugly Americans SOEWC that, it’s the people of those countries, not some random/arbitrary “government,”  who understand that the government is not some far away entity.  It is them; it is *their* government.  This is how they vote to collect and spend *their* money, on a system which runs on the premise (read: reality) that a higher standard of living for everyone benefits everyone.  [2]

Why is it that so many folks in the USA seem to forget what they pay for later ( is it simply that, the timing? ) rather than up front?  By not having a portion of their taxes fund a system of national health care they think they get to keep more money in their pockets; they have financial amnesia when it comes to what later flies out of those same pockets, sometimes seemingly at light speed, for medical insurance premiums and copays and care and medications and visits and “conditions not covered” and…and…and….

Fortunately, we have level-headed (if bemused by USA obliviousness on the subject) Norwegians to explain it to us.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of History To Keep In Mind

Several years ago I found this old employee status board in an antique shop.  It’s currently in my office, keeping track of the comings and goings of my imaginary coworkers.  These coworkers are people, real or fictional, whom I admire in some way.  When the Cesar Chavez sexual abuse scandal broke, I reminded Mark about that board – I asked him to go into my office and take a look at it, and notice whose name was #7 from the top.  [3]

 

 

I always thought Dolores Huerta was the un- (as in, lesser) sung hero of the farmworker’s movement.  Little did I suspect what Huerta endured – what she felt she had to endure and keep silent about – for a cause she put above her own mental and physical health.

Amid the rush to cancel the memorials to Chavez’s name (and in some cases, rename them for Huerta), moiself  offers this suggestion:  how’s about we stop naming public facilities – from roads to recreation centers to parks and preserves – after people?  Our idols *always* turn out to have feet of clay (or in Chavez’s case, feet of…festering ICK).

As for the legion of progressives who feel let down/betrayed by and disgusted with Chavez, I am almost one of them.  But, not really, as in, not fully.  And if you are, I ask you to consider…why?

 

 

Progressive male leaders were/are still…male leaders.  Male leaders’ sexism in the 1960s-70s anti-war and civil rights movements helped motivate what has become known as Second Wave feminism, and was an open secret among activists of the times.

When Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee activist Ruby Doris Smith presented a paper on at a SNCC staff meeting on “The Position of Women in SNCC,” SNCC leader Stokely Carmichael infamously declared,

“The only position for women in the movement is prone.”

Decades later    [4]  a few SNCC members pointed out that Carmichael was known to be supportive of women activists; thus, perhaps what he said was a “bad joke” taken “out of context.”  No matter what Carmichael’s intentions might have been,   [5]  that statement is merely one example of  “the entrenched misogyny of 1960s activist movements, which prompted the feminist critiques of the New Left that would later develop into the Women’s Liberation movement of the 1970s.”   [6]

 

 

This embedded misogyny was arguably/most blatantly on view during the Counter-Inaugural Protest,  [7]    a series of speeches and marches organized by the National Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam.  When antiwar activists and feminists Marilyn Webb and Shulamith Firestone tried to address the crowd about the realities of sexism outside of and within the anti-war movement, they were booed and sexually harassed by men in the crowd (including fellow/male activist leaders), some of whom hurled a memorable taunt revealing the true feelings of many male leaders re what place women activists should occupy in the movement:

“Take her off the stage and fuck her.”

How’s that for progressive leadership?

 

 

In the late 1970s I read an article   [8]  about (or by?) the feminist, “Lavendar Menace” and LGBTQ rights activist and author Rita Mae Brown, in which Brown discussed her involvement in the (then) nascent Gay Rights movement.  When Brown spoke/wrote  [9]   about the threats and hassles she and other lesbian activists received from men, and what it was like was working alongside men in civil rights organizations, she used a phrase that has haunted me ever since.  Moiself  cannot now recall verbatim the first part of the phrase, but I’ll never forget the second.  When asked to describe men’s reaction to lesbians’ participation in human rights activism, she said something about how the strait men tried to break our spirits (which was not unexpected), but that

“…the gay men broke our hearts.”

 

 

Gay women made the heartbreaking discovery that although gay men were their supposed allies in the struggle for civil rights, gay men were still, first and foremost, men.  As in, they interrupted, talked down to, belittled or just plain ignored the women in the movement, took credit for their female peer’s ideas and activism, and expected the women to get their coffee, answer the organizations’ phones, and type the groups’ memos.  One lesbian activist wrote that, when it came to dealing with men, women in the gay rights movement had even less power than women in the civil rights/anti-war movements, because in the former, “…since they (gay men) don’t have to pretend to be nice to us and respect us in order to fuck us, they don’t even pretend to.”

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Among The Many Things I Don’t Know…

This department title might scare readers into thinking,  Holy crap – this is gonna be the longest blog post ever.  Not to worry.   [10]

Dateline: Two Tuesdays ago; 8 a.m.-ish; morning walk.  As I pass by one of the two banks in Manzanita I look through the bank building’s side wall of windows.  Moiself  sees two people, sitting at what I presume are their desks.  One has her arms wrapped around a coffee mug; the other is slowly flipping through the pages of…a report or manual of some sort?  I find moiself  thinking thoughts I do not typically entertain; that is, thoughts about banks, and the people who work in them.

 

 

* Are they called bankers, or bank employees?

*And what exactly  is a banker versus a bank employee?

* Is a bank teller a banker – what constitutes being a banker?

* What is there even for bankers to do, now that people can do so much of what they used to do in their bank at the ATM, and/or online?

*Are those two bank worker/people I saw sitting there, looking forward to a great day of Exciting Bank Work® …or are they just sitting there, resigned with casual dread to their lot: “Great, another eight hours where I have to justify my existence, look busy look busy look busy…”

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [11]

“[On religious dogma] …It’s funny, I’ve always been told that peace comes through Christ. That leaving or letting go of my faith would lead only to guilt and sadness. But here I am, finding the truest joy I’ve ever known in all the places I was told not to look.”
( Author and audio book narrator Natalie Naudus,
quoting her own experience, in “Gay the Pray Away” )

*   *   *

May you never idolize leaders of any social movement;
May you never have to look busy to justify your existence;
May you find joy in all the places you were told not to look;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, and Iceland.  Ireland and Great Britain also came under fire for their respective nationalized health care.

[2] I appreciated, during MH’s and my RS tour of Ireland, the Canadian nurse who was able to enlighten the Some Otherwise Enlightened World Citizen who started dissing the Canadian system of (gasp)  socialized medicine ( despite SOEWC never having any experiences with that system).  Canadian nurse graciously but firmly corrected the blatant falsehoods and distortions SOEWC attempted to attribute to Canadian health care.

[3] They are listed alphabetically by their first names.

[4] This happened in 1964.

[5] He died in 1998 and so can’t defend (or admit) anything now.

[6] Excerpt, Bryn Mawr College Flexner Book Club Blog, “The only position for women in the movement is ‘prone’”, 10-27-11

[7] Washington, D.C., January 1969 

[8] In Rolling Stone magazine?

[9] Again, I can’t recall if she wrote the article or was the subject of the article.

[10] Yet.

[11] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists.   No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.”  Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org

The Drug I’m Not Ready For

March 20, 2026

Robyn Parnell annoyances, extended family, family life, freethought/humanism, health & wellness, Holidays, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), making fun of lawyers and/or doctors, making fun of Norwegians and/or the Irish, movies, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, TV, Wow, Zoo , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Drug I’m Not Ready For

Department Of Consider Yourself Warned

Moiself  has been in a reflective mood; which should not be surprising.  According to a study I just made up, everybody knows that within three days of a holiday referencing the Irish, a writer’s brain is capable of little output which does not involve humorous anecdotes of family and friends and kneecapping British soldiers and scatological puns and Chuck Norris “facts”  (psst – this is what is known as foreshadowing ).

*   *   *

Happy Belated St. Patrick’s Day

This – a belated SPD-related memory – is from 3-18-16, when daughter Belle was in college  ( The Common Ground I’m Not Seeking ):

Department Of Parents Are Never Too Old To Go Apeshit
Over Reminders of Childhood Cuteness

It has been a week of many celebrations, both national and personal. Belle is home for Spring Break. Pi day. The Ides of March. That Irish-American Thing.     [1]  Many if not all of these festive days call for special feasts.  I asked Belle if there was any special dinner she’d like, in honor of…whatever.  While she was pondering her options, MH showed me a list Belle had made, quite a long time ago. He found it written on a (unfortunately, undated) notepad he discovered as he was going through old papers in the attic:

 

 

I told Belle all she had to do was say the word and we would endeavor to come up with a  speshl desert and froot salid…and lots of Yum.

*   *   *

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of No, Wait – That’s A Lie.
Regular Programming Continues To Be Disrupted.

Department Of Even-Ing It Up   [2]

After sharing a blog-posted memory involving my daughter, it’s time for one involving my son.  During one glorious phase in his life   [3]  son K was notorious (within our family) for getting moiself  helpless with laughter by telling me Chuck Norris puns and memes.  Moiself  shared this memory on 1-14-22 ( The S-Words I’m Not Mispronouncing ):

Punz For The Day: Scat Edition

Did you hear about the monkey who was arrested for throwing its feces at zoo patrons?
The monkey was charged with turd debris assault.

Why did Packy the elephant    [4]   bring toilet paper to the zebra’s birthday bash?
Because Packy was a party pooper.

Remember, dog owners, when you walk the dog you have to pick up its poop.
It’s your doo diligence.

Why is Chuck Norris’s dog trained to pick up its own poop?
Because Chuck Norris doesn’t take shit from anyone.
Chuck Norris doesn’t flush the toilet.
He scares the shit out of it.

Yeah, I know, scat is typically used to denote animal feces.  But I’ve heard that making at least one Chuck Norris Joke ®  – aka, reciting a Chuck Norris “fact” – at the beginning of the year is a guarantee of good fortune in the weeks to come.  [5]

 

 

Department Of The Bonus Round Of You-Know-Who Jokes

(Happy New Year to son K, who once brought me to helpless tears of stomach-cramping, snotty-nosed laughter when he loaned me his Chuck Norris Factbook to read while we were seated in a booth in a restaurant, waiting for our lunch to arrive).

* Chuck Norris doesn’t read books.
He stares them down until he gets the information he wants.

* The flu gets a Chuck Norris shot every year.

* When Chuck Norris plays dodgeball, the balls dodge him.

* Chuck Norris doesn’t worry about high gas prices. His vehicles run on fear.

* The Dead Sea was alive before Chuck Norris swam there.

* When Chuck Norris was born, he drove his mom home from the hospital.

* There is no theory of evolution, just a list of animals Chuck Norris allows to live.

 

* Death once had a near-Chuck-Norris experience.

* There is no chin behind Chuck Norris’ beard. There is only another fist.

* MC Hammer learned the hard way that Chuck Norris can touch this.

* Chuck Norris has been to Mars. That’s why there are no signs of life there.

* Chuck Norris can strangle you with a cordless phone.

* If Chuck Norris traveled to an alternate dimension in which there was another
Chuck Norris and they both fought, they would both win.

* Chuck Norris’ farts smell like freshly baked cinnamon rolls.

Okay; I gotta get control here.  Seriously; somebody stop me; this could go on forever.

* Chuck Norris counted to infinity — twice.

*   *   *

Department Of This Time It’s True

*   *   *

Department Of Don’t Ask Questions
(But Do Ask Your Doctor For Drugs…Just, Any Drugs)

Dateline: last Tuesday; 9:25 pm-ish; sitting in The TV Chair®…although not watching whatever show was on TV that MH had left on while he went to load the dishwasher. I was about to check something on my phone….

 

 

…when moiself  heard a TV advertisement.  The ad caught my attention with its opening question, which I found rivetingly nonsensical:

Are you ready for Vivaldi?    [6]

Uh…golly gee…I…don’t know.  How *would* I know?  What the heck is Vivaldi?

The advertisement continued with what’s become the standard prescription meds come-on, encouraging viewers to ask their doctors about whether or not they could benefit from using this prescription medication…. But, for what?  Why would you take this medication?  There’s gotta be a reason, right?  For no other reason than you fall into the category of,  Hmmm, I’m currently not taking any prescription medications and all my friends and family are and I feel kinda left out….?   I kept waiting, but:

 There. Was. No. Mention. Of. What. That. Drug. Would. Be. Used. For.

 

Really. 

Nevertheless, you’ve been advised.  Call your primary care provider, now.

Patient:
“Doctor, am I ready for  Vivaldi?”
Doctor:
“What makes you ask? What are your symptoms, or health concerns?”
Patient:
“None at the moment; I’m fit as a fiddle.  Still, could I benefit from taking  Vivaldi?
Maybe, like, if I bought stock in the company?”

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [7]

If life has no meaning for someone unless they pretend to know something they don’t know, then I would strongly and sincerely urge extensive therapy and counseling.  This is particularly true if feelings of meaninglessness and lack of purpose lead to depression, which is a serious illness.  Absent a mental disorder, or head trauma, there is no reason an adult should feel life is meaningless without maintaining some sort of delusion.
( Dr. Peter Boghossian, American writer, philosopher, professor )

Or, maybe that Someone should ask their doctor about Vivaldi.

 

 

*   *   *

May you remember to even it up;
May your loved ones serve you speshl desert and froot salid and yum;
May you not ask your doctor, any doctor, about TV advertised drugs;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] On March 17 real Irish people in Ireland apparently do not affix paper shamrocks on their foreheads, don Kiss Me I’m Irish underpants and drink until they vomit green beer on their faux Leprechaun shoes and call it a celebration of their heritage.

[2] A phrase of my father’s, used for when he had done something for one of his four children who had a particular need, and then found a way to “even it up” by doing something for the other three.

[3] Which is presently dormant but which I’m certain could be resurrected at a moment’s notice….

[4] Explanation for non-Oregonians:  Packy the elephant (1962-2017) was an Asian elephant born who was and lived his life at the Portland’s Oregon Zoo. Famous for, among other attributes, being the first elephant born in the Western Hemisphere for five decades , growing to be among the tallest of Asian elephants in the world, siring seven calves, and being beloved by zoo staff and visitors, having a quirk about hats…. ( I wrote about that here, in The Elephant I’m Not Freeing ).

[5] That is something I just made up.  But it makes as much sense as any of the “Doing _____ will guarantee good luck in the new year!” prescriptions I’ve ever heard.

[6] Not the product’s real name.

[7] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists.   No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.”  Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org

The Best Picture Award I’m Not Voting For

March 13, 2026

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, community, current events, extended family, family life, foodie, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holidays, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), making fun of lawyers and/or doctors, movies, music, nature, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, reproductive rights, school, science, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Best Picture Award I’m Not Voting For

The only reason I’m not casting my vote for the 2026 Best Picture Oscar is because moiself  is not a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences…either that, or the Academy misplaced my ballot.  Not that it would matter, because I’d do a write-in; that is, I’d vote for a movie that didn’t win last year, because it was egregiously mistakenly not on the ballot: 2024’s The Life of Chuck.

If you hold as truth, as I do, the idea that  we all contain multitudes,   [1]   then all of the movies which existentially and ultimately mean more than diddly-squat   [2]   can be contained in The Life of Chuck.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Helpful Reminders

Tomorrow is Pi Day.  Do you have your recipes ready?  Seeing as how it’s AEDD   [3]   month, y’all can guess what my entrée will feature.

 

“I think she means us!”

*   *   *

Department Of Tomorrow Is Pi Day And Today…

…is a significant day for my circle of loved ones.  Moiself  wasn’t going to mention the significance until I made a…perceptive  typo, if there is such a thing.   [4]

Background info:  every Friday I write and send two letters ( yep, “snail,” in the mail), one to each of my offspring.  I begin each letter with either a haiku or limerick, rotating every week.  This week is a haiku week. The two letters I sent today began by noting the birthday of someone dear to us, who was taken from us way, way, way too soon.  [5]

A Haiku For SEH
A wise life guide is
to “Love ’em while you got ’em.”
And she was so loved….

I can’t write about anything else today, which is SEH’s birthday.  She would have turned 35 today.  She’d have had finished her residency; I like to imagine her working…in one of her several specialties: family medicine; wilderness medicine; reproductive medicine?  She loved the outdoors so much, and was concerned about this country’s eroding reproductive rights and access to medical care in underserved communities….  I like to think she might have stayed in Utah to provide women’s health care there, or in other more restrictive states.  She shone bright in her brief but significant life, and her fabsence is keenly felt.

Yikes, did you see what I just did typed? I decided to let the typo stand; certainly her absence is keenly felt, but IMO she also had a keen  fab sense.

 

“Sarah Elizabeth” English tea rose

 

*   *   *

Department Of I Guess I’ll Never Know The Answer
If I Never Ask The Question

Dateline:  Sunday, ~1p.m., returning from lunch with MH.  As MH steers our car into our driveway an oldie begins playing on the car radio.  I recognize Jimmy Soul’s bouncy 1962 hit,  If You Want To Be Happy.  The song begins with its chorus:

“If you want to be happy for the rest of your life/
Never make a pretty woman your wife/
So for my personal point of view:
Get an ugly girl to marry you…“

The song goes on to extol the virtues of marrying an unattractive woman.  The singer proclaims that, among other plusses, an ugly woman won’t ever leave you ( as per the stereotype, she’ll be grateful for any attention she receives, ’cause no one else would want her ).  Oh, and she’ll be a great cook.

 Har de har har!

The first time I heard that song ( Junior high?  It was already an oldie) moiself  was appalled.  When I expressed my distaste for the lyrics, a guy friend accused me of being a Women’s Libber With No Sense Of Humor® ( “Oh c’mon, it’s an old song; a light-hearted joke of the times… “ ).

Skip to decades later, to the day when daughter Belle came home from high school in a grumpy mood.  She told me about a boy who’d been sent home to get a change of clothing because he’d shown up to school wearing a t-shirt with a slogan on it that another boy objected to as being racist.  What gave Belle the grumpies was that the previous week, when she and another girl had gone to the administration to complain about a couple of troglodytes male students who harassed female students and wore t-shirts with misogynistic slogans (e.g., with a drawing of a boy ordering a girl to “Shut up and make me a sandwich”   [6]  ), they were told by said administrative spineless lackies personnel that what those boys were doing wasn’t “illegal” and that there was nothing the school could ( read: would ) do about that.

 

 

I sadly confirmed to my daughter what experience was already teaching her.  Yep, you are not imagining things: there’s a hierarchy of political and cultural concern with discriminatory  isms and ists.  Something deemed as racist is seen as worse than something deemed as sexist.  It’s not (or shouldn’t be) a contest; still, isms/ists are often pitted against one another, as many a Black feminist has attested.

“As a black woman I’ve been told that…I’m supposed to be black first and stand in solidarity with black men. Focus on the impact of racism, specifically on racism that negatively impacts black men. Stop bringing up sexism so much.”   [7]

If the student at Belle’s school had worn a short with a drawing of a white boy ordering a black boy to Shut Up And Go Pick Me Some Cotton, he’d be sent home/ordered to change his shirt and possibly even suspended.  But wearing a shirt with a slogan meant to put a female in/remind her of “her place” – somehow, that was acceptable, or at least tolerable.

On the rare occasions when I hear that Jimmy Soul song – which still receives airplay on Oldies stations – I think of what moiself  has long wanted to ask someone who whistles along to the up-tempo ditty:  What if, instead of referencing a sexist stereotype of the early 60s, the If You Want To Be Happy song contained a 1962-ish, “light-hearted” reference to racism?  Would the song have even gotten airplay, then or now?  If it got airplay today, would its dodgy lyrics be excused as a relic of the times? Ala….

“If you want to be happy for the rest of your life,
Never make a light-skinned woman your wife,
So for my personal point of view,
Get a colored girl to marry you…”

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of A Blast From The Past

Dateline: January 2025.  A new year; a new project: taking an excerpt from a past blog, from the same time frame (the second Friday of whatever month).  My thought at the time: Perhaps moiself  will like this enough that it will turn out to be a regular blog feature.  So far it has, but time, and my capacity for reruns, will tell.

This journey down memory lane is related to the most convincing reason a YOU-of-all-people-should-write-a-blog-why-aren’t-you-writing-a-blog?!?!?!  [8]   friend gave me, all those years ago,   [9]   as to why I should be writing a blog: a blog would serve as a journal of sorts for my life.  Thus, journal/diary-resistant moiself  would have some sort of a record, or at least a random sampling, of what was on my mind – and possibly what was on the nation’s mind – during a certain period of time.

Now I can, for example, look back to the second Friday of a years-ago March to see what I was thinking. (or as MH put it,  WHAT was I thinking!?!? )

 


Here is an excerpt from my blog of 3-14-14 (  The Book I’m Not Stealing ) – two excerpts, actually, both of them book-related:

“The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it.”
― Abbie Hoffman, Steal This Book

A long long time ago in a galaxy far far away….

Okay, it was 1971.  American anti-war activist Abbie Hoffman wrote and published Steal This Book.  As intrigued as I was at the time – by the “counter culture” and social activism of the late 60-s–mid 70’s in general and by Hoffman’s cheeky chutzpah in particular – I declined to pilfer Hoffman’s prose.  Stealing anything was not something I was inclined to do.  I also did not buy his book because how in good conscience could I lawfully purchase a book that was, essentially if puckishly, advising me not to do so?

Thirty-three years later I find myself wondering: who, if anyone, bought that book?

 

*   *   *
(  second excerpt   [10]  )

Belle leaned against the doorway to my office, respectfully but insistently reminding me that I’d agreed to donate copies of two of my books (my short fiction collection This Here and Now and my juvenile novel, The Mighty Quinn) to her friend A’s senior project…and…uh… A needs those books, now.  Up in the attic, searching for a box to put the books in, I remembered I had copies of another book of mine – “mine” in the sense that my writing was in it, even if my name wasn’t on the cover – to donate.

 

 

Feminist Parenting: Struggles, Triumphs and Comic Interludes (The Crossing Press, 1994) – has it really been twenty years since its publication?  My contribution to the anthology was an essay  [11]  wherein I juxtaposed the naming of my soon-to-be firstborn, K, with how I chose names for my fictional characters.  I was honored to have my contribution included along with a variety of essays, stories, and poems – selections from literary luminaries like Robin Morgan and Anna Quindlen, [12] and literary ordinaries like…well, like me.

The publisher-arranged publicity for the book consisted of readings by the anthology’s contributing writers, held at select locations throughout the country.  There were enough contributors from the Pacific Northwest to do a reading in Oregon, which took place one stormy January evening in Eugene, at the erstwhile vanguard of independent feminist bookstores, Mother Kali’s.  [13]

 

May Mother Kali recommend some light reading-perhaps a political satire or a wacky historical romance?

 

MH, sitting in the in audience with our son K on his lap, later noted that I was the only one of the speakers F-parenting in what (used to be) the normative child producing/rearing relationship:  I was a woman married to a man with whom I was raising our child.  There were four of the anthology’s contributors present: One lesbian mom, two divorced/single moms, and moiself -mom.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

*   *   *



 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [14]

 

 

*   *   *

May you find a way to use diddly-squat in conversation today;
May you know what it feels like to be the least normative in a crowd;
May you remember to love ’em while you got ’em;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] As per the movie’s “I contain multitudes” reference, from the Walt Whitman poem, “Song of Myself“.

[2] Sorry to get with all the graduate-level philosophy concepts.

[3] Asparagus Every Damn Day, as noted in the previous week’s blog.

[4] And now, I think there is.

[5] She was murdered, seven years ago.  I wrote about it here: “The Life I’m Not Mourning”  and here: The Speculation I’m Not Endorsing; and here: The Reality I’m Not Denying.

[6] The phrase has various attributed origins ( including a 1995 SNL skit ); whether it is aimed at feminists in particular or women in general, it plays off the sexist idea that it’s a woman’s place to be in the kitchen serving her husband or boyfriend.

[7] ( [Why] Do you think Black Men aren’t trusting of Feminists or on-board with Feminism as a movement?  Reddit.com/r/AskFeminists )

[8] I was adamant about not writing a blog…thus, the title of the blog I eventually decided to write.

[9] Was it really over twelve years ago?

[10] I wasn’t (consistently) using the Department Of format then)

[11] “What’s in a Name?  Ask My Pal, Barry.”

[12]  I particularly enjoyed Quindlen’s essay, “What About the Boys?”

[13] I know, I know.  The bookstore was named in the 70’s, okay?

[14] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists.   No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.”  Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org

The Nails I’m Not Perfecting

March 6, 2026

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Department Of Can It Already Be Day Six Of AEDD?

AEDD.  No, it’s not some type of learning disability…you could think of it as a culinary learning (or experimentation) opportunity.

It stands for Asparagus Every Damn Day ® .  To honor both the impending arrival of Spring and my love for asparagus, I challenge moiself  to cook and/or eat asparagus, in some form, every damn day of March.  Last year I had some favorites creations; mostly, I defaulted to what’s-easy-but-I-still-love-it (e.g., oven roasted lemon garlic asparagus spears, creamy   [1] asparagus and green pea soup….).

Gird your proverbial loins and let the wild rumpus begin.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of My Favorite Blast From The Past

Were I asked by Someone to come up with an example of carefree bliss, I would show that Someone this picture.

 

Moiself, son K and daughter Belle (and Mt. Neahkahnie in the background), on Manzanita beach, circa…two decades ago. Picture taken by MH, existential protection provided by Mt. Neahkahnie.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Asshat Tag Line Of The Year [2]

Dateline: last Friday; driving to the Oregon coast, listening to one of my science podcasts.  At the end of the podcast there is an advertisement from one of the podcast’s sponsors.  The ad is for…some kind of service having to do with manicures.  Repeated at least three times during the ad is the service’s enticement/slogan, something about how  “…we all deserve to have perfect nails.”

 

 

And I find moiself  thinking, do these people understand the target audience of this podcast?  And how can the proverbial  we all – or just moiself –  deserve anything having to do with our fingernails?  And is it deserve as in, how we all deserve basic human rights and to be treated with dignity (and not harassed about our less-than-perfect nails)?  And what, exactly, constitutes perfect nails?  And is there a committee, a governing board, which establishes and oversees such a standard of perfection?

And the sheer inanity of this ad is provoking way too many, And and and and questions – which made me want to (should moiself  be offered a free sample of the product) take whatever was being advertised and heave it off the rim of the Grand Canyon.    [3]

Important Note To The Advertising Industry, whether large scale Commercial/Industrial And/Or Small Business Owners: Struck as I was by the astounding vacuousness of the ad’s tag line, I can’t tell you what service it was for.  Which is the ultimate failure of an advertisement, the very purpose of which is to get you to want (or at least remember the name of) the product.

 

I’m assuming these were not the top choice of the Fingernail Perfection Police.

*   *   *

Speaking Of Mormons…

…which I was, two weeks back ( 2-20-26, The Documentary I’m Not Inspired By, re the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping documentary)….

Department Of And Now Some Words About Witnessing

 

 

Relax; it’s a story about Porch Proselytizing®.  There will not be pamphlets left on your front doorstep.  [4]

The prompt for this story is…moiself  saw an article online having to do with someone complaining about having to shoo Porch Preachers away from their front door.

 

 

The above is the sign I made and had laminated 10+ years ago, a larger version of which is on our front porch below our doorbell.  The sign, in my estimate, keeps ~98% of solicitors away.  Before I did the rewording I had another sign up, a cartoon illustrating how we do not want solicitors, but – surprise ! –there was always a Someone who thought it didn’t apply to him.  When moiself  answered the doorbell, realized who the stranger was on my porch/what he was up to, and pointed toward our no soliciting sign, that Someone would say, “Oh, I’m not *selling* anything.  I have good news that’s free…”

 

 

Even before the signage, religious solicitors – Mormon “Elders”   [5]  in particular – left skid marks getting away from my porch, after I’d engaged them and they realized What Kind Of Uppity Woman They Were Dealing With ®. 

 

 

What used to surprise moiself, about the solicitors I personally encountered as well as those I’d known over the years who’d engaged in such activities, was their seeming befuddlement re overwhelmingly receiving less-than-hospitable reactions from those whom they sought to evangelize.  I had to wonder:  from Jehovah’s Witnesses to Mormons to Evangelicals, in their witnessing training, was there not even a smidgen of attention paid to the basic human psychology behind someone not in *your* group being presented with *your* group’s message, with no request from them for your thoughts and/or opinions?

Was there no mention of the reality that it is highly likely that what you are indoctrinated trained to think of as informative/friendly/useful information, will be seen by others as presumptuous?  And that’s because it *is* presumptuous.  A friendly demeanor and/or beatific smile on your face does not dilute the ultimate cluelessness and arrogance of your mission:  you are approaching a stranger, unsolicited by her, knowing nothing about her save for the (likely   [6] ) fact that she does not share your spiritual worldview, which therefore in your worldview means her worldview is deficient…and you think you can (and even should) enlighten her!

 

I bet she can’t wait to hear the good news from white boys wearing even whiter shirts!

 

I remember seeing and hearing my mother deal with the Mormon “Elders”  ( nine out of ten of the proselytizers we got were Mormon ) who would, every couple of months or so, ring the doorbell of our Santa Ana home.  First off, no one who knew our family came to our front door (when I was a young child I didn’t even know if our front door “worked,” or if it was just for show).  We all entered and left the house, along with our friends and neighbors, via our side door or backyard door.  Thus, when there was a ring/knock at the front door we knew it was from a stranger; i.e., someone who didn’t know us.  This Someone, experience taught us, most likely wanted to sell us something, and would ask to speak to “the adult of the house,” so I and my siblings would call for our mother to answer the front door.  But I liked to lurk in the background, to…watch.

 

 

My mother would never confront the Porch Preachers, despite my advice that she should tell them the truth ( that you think they’re whack-doodles ) and not waste anymore of your or their time.  But Mom came of age in the 1950s, meaning she was raised to be a Nice Woman®.  She would listen to their opening spiel, then give her standard, gentle-but-firm, “No thank you; we have our own religion,” response, and wish them a nice day while she gently shut the door.

There was one exception (that I know of) to my mother’s unperturbable niceness with solicitors.  This happened during a weekday, the summer before I entered eighth grade.  A pair of Elders knocked on our front door.  I heard the customary/brief exchange between my mother and the elders, then noticed it was going on longer than usual at the front porch.  I was surprised to hear the rising pitch of a young male voice, followed by my mother sputtering, “Blasphemy!” before slamming the door. 

After commending her display of backbone, I asked what they had said to her.  Instead of simply accepting her brushoff, that pair of snot-nosed albinos   [7]   didn’t do what they should have done at that point – thank her for her time, apologize for disturbing her, and get the fuck off her property.     [8]   Instead, one of them challenged her.   Yes, you may have your own religion, the cadaverously pale, just-past-post-adolescent pompous primnose   [9]   preached to a woman twice his age, but only *our* faith has the “true revealed truth“ (I can’t remember the verbatim exchange, but I remember that phrase, and how I’d guffawed at the redundancy). 

 

“Yes, God is beyond our understanding…but let me tell you about him….”

*   *   *

Department Of And Now For Something (Not So) Completely Different

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week        [10]

( excerpt a scene from the movie  The Big Kahuna.  Three industrial lubricant salesmen, Larry, Phil, and the evangelical Christian Bob, are at a convention in Wichita.  In this incisive scene, Phil is speaking to Bob,  emphases mine.)

“You preaching Jesus is no different than Larry, or anybody else, preaching lubricants.  It doesn’t matter whether you’re selling Jesus or Buddha, or civil rights, or how to make money in real estate with no money down.  That doesn’t make you a human being.  It makes you a marketing rep.
If you want to talk to somebody honestly, as a human being, ask him about his kids, find out what his dreams are — just to find out — for no other reason.  Because as soon as you lay your hands on a conversation, to steer it, it’s not a conversation anymore — it’s a pitch — and you’re not a human being.  You’re a marketing rep.”

 

Or perhaps you prefer the wisdom of *this*Big Kahuna (on the far right) from the world of Gidget surfer-movies.

*   *   *

May we all have our own favorite example of bliss;
May you never give a thought to the quality of anyone’s fingernails;
May you enjoy all that damn asparagus;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Yet, without cream.  Yep, it’s those dastardly plant-based cooking tricks….

[2] Or more…the century is young.

[3] Please do not take this as any form of encouragement to litter in our beautiful national parks.

[4] At least, not metaphorically, from moiself.  Who knows what happens in *your* neighborhood?

[5] I just love that title, once reserved for revered people of great age and wisdom in the community, now doled out by the LDS to pimply-faced boys who get the respected title simply by being a male age 18 and up, while a kick ass, grown-ass woman like moiself  who is twice their age could never be an Elder in their world.

[6] It’s more than a likely fact, if you are a Mormon missionary.  Mormon missionaries are given a list in the neighborhoods they canvas; they don’t waste time showing up at the houses of other Mormons.  They know whether or you are not Mormon, because they are given that info by the local Mormon church.  Unlike other brands of Christianity, if you are Mormon you do not go to whatever LDS church you like, you go to a certain church – “chapel” –  that has a specific geographical area assigned as “their area.” If you live in that geographical area, you are supposed to go to services at that chapel, and your address is noted.

[7] You’ve never seen how white the white boys can be until Mormon missionaries come to your doorstep.  I used to think they were selectively bred for their lack of melanin.

[8] I probably don’t need to explain that that was *my* 12-year-old-smartass’s interpretation of their responsibilities as uninvited solicitors, and not my mother’s thoughts.   

[9] Yeah, I made that up.  But, you know, right?

[10] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists.   No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.”  Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org

The Documentary I’m Not Inspired By

February 20, 2026

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), current events, freethought/humanism, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), movies, politics, TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Department Of The Lunar New Year

Happy Year of the Fire Horse, to my SIL and to all who celebrate the Lunar New Year (aka Chinese New Year).   [1]

 

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Things You’re Not Supposed To Say Or Even Think About When Watching A Supposedly Inspiring Documentary;
Specifically, Netflix’s Kidnapped: Elizabeth Smart
Sub-Department Of, Why Isn’t She Pissed Off?

And by “pissed off” moiself  means filled with white-hot rage, the throwing-chairs-out-of-the-windows-of-a-high-rise-building  kind of fury.

The Elizabeth Smart documentary came recommended for me on my Netflix feed last week, and I started watching it one morning as I did my elliptical workout.  It took me several days to get through it; I could only take 15 m or so at a time.  As the days went by, moiself  got more and more angry.  Angry as in, Why Did I Watch This Shit®?  Not that the subject of the documentary was shit; I refer to the integral bullshit contained within the story – the bullshit of religion and religious theology lurking behind the tragedy, the bullshit that is and was, IMO, responsible for it.

Look up the story if you have been living under a rock are one of the few American adults who does not know it.  The basics: Elizabeth Smart was fourteen years old, one of six children in a prosperous and respected Mormon family, when she was kidnapped from her family’s Salt Lake City home.  Her abductors, a self-described religious prophet and his wife,  [2]  held Smart captive for nine months.  Smart was sexually assaulted by “the prophet,” and subjected to emotional assaults and physical deprivations by her abductors.  She endured nine months of this until she was rescued by police (after receiving a citizen’s tip) when she and her captors were walking down a street in Sandy, Utah.

At one point in the documentary, after Smart was rescued and returned to her family, there is footage of Smart being referred to as  “… the most prayed-for person in America.”  And that just wrenched my stomach.  I had to turn the documentary off at that point, and returned to it another day. 

 

 

 “… the most prayed for person in America.”  Fat lotta good those hyper-abundant prayers did.  I’m sure Smart herself was the most prayer-ful person in American during her captivity, praying at least fifty bajillion times a day to be delivered from her anguish, each and every time “the prophet” was assaulting her.

People who engage in intercessory prayer seem to do so with the assumptions that (a) their god is listening to them, and (b) their god is capable of acting in our world.   And yet it took their god nine months to get off his holy ass, while a 14-year-old girl was daily – daily – raped by an adult man.  Prayers didn’t stop that.    [3]

BTW: Questions were raised, both in the documentary and in news articles at the time of Smart’s release, about the adult woman (the wife of the “prophet”) complicit in Smart’s kidnapping and abuse.  And I’m thinking, Really? You find this surprising?  The woman was the product of abuse herself – she was a captive within a paranoid, patriarchal religious mindset, where the man is in charge and his word and will ultimately prevails…. Yeah, there’s always the question of one’s own internal sense of right or wrong.  But what happened to that woman, and to Elizabeth Smart, was not a *perversion * of conservative, patriarchal religion, but a sadly logical (if appalling) part of the spectrum.

 

 

Of all the frustratingly heartbreaking situations detailed in the documentary, the “near” rescue got to me the most.  This happened when Smart’s abductors had taken her into a small town   [4]  with them when they needed to purchase supplies.  Smart and the prophet’s wife were always shrouded in Burqa-like garments the few times they were in public, and on this outing, the three of them were stopped and questioned on the street – by a police officer looking for Smart (! ).  The “prophet” abductor answered the officer’s questions about why he refused to let Smart show her face by telling the officer that the girl was his daughter, and that their religion decreed that his daughter must not show her face to any man save for her father and her future husband.

!! The officer accepted that answer, and left without questioning Smart !!

 

 

Smart’s captor’s excuse answer was accepted because he phrased it in terms of “our religion says…”  And in Utah, it’s likely that religious excuses are allowed even more privilege (read:  religion is allowed to excuse a multitude of “sins” and abuses)  than in society as a whole, given the state’s history as a Mormon stronghold and the Mormon religion’s history of polygamy and patriarchy.

Although Smart was eventually freed from almost a year of horrific fear and abuse, I would argue that the cognitive abuse still lingers.  I don’t think Smart has left either her religion in specific or religion in general; thus, IMO, she continues to participate in the system that ultimately spawned and tolerated her abuse in the first place.

I was reminded of a quote by Butterfly McQueen, the actor and civil rights and Freethought activist.  I wish Smart a similar epiphany.   

 

 

Back to the praying for Elizabeth Smart thing.  I recall reading news stories, after Smart was found, reporting that thanks were being “….given to God” by people around the country.  This god was being credited for Smart finally being found.  Now, if you attribute agency to the deity for somehow enabling Smart to be found, you should also acknowledge that that same god set aside its agency to act – that same god sat on its pedophile-observing ass for nine months – while a fourteen-year-old-girl was being tormented, and while her family endured the torment of not knowing where their child was nor what she was going through.

If Smart’s abduction happened today our social media pages would be filled with requests to “pray for Elizabeth and her family.”  Meanwhile, we Freethinkers, atheists, skeptics, and other rational, religion-free folk metaphorically bang our foreheads against the walls of ignorance and superstition as we ponder why, for nine months after Smart was abducted, so many people pled for assistance from their omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, every-caring/ever loving deity who was either absent or stood by  (translation: who did *nothing*) when he was truly needed – when a child was being dragged from her bedroom, her atttacker holding a knife to her neck, at 2 am.   [5]

 

 

Years later, as an adult, Smart became an advocate for survivors of sexual violence.  I kept waiting for the mention of her advocacy work – there was just a sliver of it at the end of the documentary.  Moiself  was not surprised by this; still, I was infuriatingly disappointed that there was not even a cursory forensic analysis, or mention, of why Smart needed to do such advocacy work in the first place.   [6]

I was disappointed that Smart’s feelings of guilt and shame, and of being  “dirty” due to being raped, were only briefly mentioned in the documentary, and that there was little mention of either the specific or general cultural influences of Smart’s – of any person’s – patriarchal conservative religion that is related to – or as moiself  would put it,  directly responsible for – Smart having those feelings.  IMO, almost as sickening as Smart’s abduction/rape is the culture of religiously ordained male dominance which allows such acts to occur in the first place.

Years after her rescue,  [7]   Smart has critiqued the purity culture she was raised in, and which surrounds girls in conservative/evangelical religious families.   This culture implies (read: overtly teaches) that a woman’s/girl’s ultimate worth is not what’s in her heart and head, but between her legs.

“In 2014, during a poignant and emotional speech at Johns Hopkins University, Elizabeth Smart revealed she had received this abstinence-only sex education lesson prior to her being kidnapped from her room as a child. While in captivity, she was then repeatedly raped by her captor. And that lesson – that teacher who told her that she would be a worthless, old piece of gum if she engaged in premarital sex – not only stayed with her, but it also made her wonder whether there was any point in trying to escape.

‘For me, I thought, ‘Oh my gosh. I’m that chewed up piece of gum,’ Smart told the audience of gathered listeners. ‘Nobody re-chews a piece of gum. You throw it away. And that’s how easy it is to feel like you no longer have worth, you no longer have value. Why would it even be worth screaming out? Why would it even make a difference if you are rescued, if your life still has no value?’ ”    [8]

” Even though male students are encouraged to take these (purity) pledges too, the lessons often focus on young women. For example, a way in which purity pledges are done is where gold rose pins are handed out at Christian youth group events, with a small card attached that says: ‘You are like a beautiful rose. Each time you engage in premarital sex, a precious petal is stripped away. Don’t leave your future husband holding a bare stem. Abstain.’ ”
 (excerpt, “The Negative Implications of the Purity Movement on Young Women.” The Review: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Research 15 (2014): 9-18. Paul, Amanda )

 

 

-” ‘ If you have premarital sex you become a ‘chewed up piece of gum.’  ”
Anyone else hear this rhetoric growing up? As a guy I even remember hearing this shit. My poor wife has so much emotional baggage to work through because of the whole impurity bullshit.”

-“Yeah. Just imagine being gang raped as a little girl and then hearing this. And yes, I was dumped by someone who couldn’t stand ‘thinking about the men who already used me’ when he found out about my childhood.”   [9]

– “I got the ‘chewed up piece of gum,’ ‘duct tape that loses its stickiness,’ and was told that as a woman, I start with a jar of M&Ms. Every person I have sex with gets some of my M&Ms. If I’m not careful, I’ll run out of M&Ms and have none left to give my future husband.
I think the one that disgusts me the most is when people talk about women dressing ‘provocatively’ and being assaulted, and make the statement ‘well you wouldn’t expect a dog to stay away from a raw piece of steak.’ So…Women are objects and men are animals. Thanks.”

( excerpts, social media threads on ex-Christians and their experiences
with the purity movement )

 

 

“Where does a woman’s value lie? In her brain? Her heart? Her spirit?

According to right-wing culture warriors, ‘between her legs.’  That’s what underlies the emphasis on virginity as ‘purity,’ and the push for abstinence-only education.  And it has very real consequences, most recently articulated by Elizabeth Smart.

Smart, who was kidnapped and held for months while her captor repeatedly raped her, recently discussed how her religious background made her feel worthless after the first rape – how she understands why others wouldn’t even try to escape, if, like her, they were taught that a sexually ‘impure’ woman had nothing to offer.

“I think it goes even beyond fear, for so many children, especially in sex trafficking. It’s feelings of self-worth. It’s feeling like, ‘Who would ever want me now? I’m worthless.’

That is what it was for me the first time I was raped. I was raised in a very religious household, one that taught that sex was something special that only happened between a husband and a wife who loved each other. And that’s how I’d been raised, that’s what I’d always been determined to follow: that when I got married, then and only then would I engage in sex.

After that first rape, I felt crushed. Who could want me now? I felt so dirty and so filthy. I understand so easily all too well why someone wouldn’t run because of that alone.”

(  excerpts, “‘Purity’ culture: bad for women, worse for survivors of sexual assault,”
The Guardian, May 2014, by Jill Filipovic )

*   *   *

Department Of Quote Of The Week

“I saw a guy walking down the street, wearing a football jersey.
So I tackled him, because he was asking for it.”
 ( Anonymous )

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [10]

“I’m an atheist, and Christianity appears to me to be the most absurd imposture of all the religions, and I’m puzzled that so many people can’t see through a religion that encourages irresponsibility and bigotry.”

(  Butterfly McQueen, quoted in Warren Allen Smith’s
Celebrities in Hell. Barricade Books. p. 75. )

 

 

*   *   *

May you have a favorite Celebrity in Hell;
May your life’s worth never be compared to a piece of chewing gum;
May you fight the good fight against patriarchal religion everything;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Except, of course, there are many more countries/cultures that also celebrate the Lunar New Year, primarily but not exclusively Southeast Asian, including Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia….

[2] Whose names are not worthy of taking up column space in this blog.

[3] Perhaps they weren’t specific enough.

[4] They moved frequently, but mostly stayed in an encampment not far from where Smart was abducted.

[5] Exact time unknown; generally referred to as “in the early morning.”

[6] Well, duh/of course not.  This documentary was made with her cooperation, and it needed/wanted a “feel good” ending.

[7] E.g., in speeches during her sexual assault survivors advocacy work.

[8] Exact Reference lost…there were so many, from stories of her speeches…

[9] The poster had been sexually abused.

[10] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists.   No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.”  Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org

The Movie I’m Not Casting

January 23, 2026

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, current events, freethought/humanism, friends, general ruminations, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), movies, music, nature, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, school, science, The Write Stuff (literary life), TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Movie I’m Not Casting

Department Of Movie Directors Looking For Their Next Project

“I worked for somebody that is probably borderline clinical psychopath.  Definitely a narcissist,” said Tony Nissen, a former engineering director at OceanGate.  “How do you manage a person like that who owns the company?”

( excerpt, , The New OceanGate Documentary Dives into the Depths of the Titan Submersible Tragedy.  And it points a finger at CEO Stockton Rush.
Esquire, 6-11-25, by  Eric Francisco )

 

 

Dateline:  I’ve been getting reacquainted with last year’s riveting Netflix documentary, Titan: The OceanGate Submersible Disaster, ten to fifteen minutes at a time, while working out on the elliptical the past few mornings.  [1]  Monday circa 11-11:30 am, I get an AHA flash:  This has to be done.

This being, making a theatrical movie based on the documentary.

Maybe it’s already on some producer’s proverbial drawing board; moiself  thought it ( the first time I saw it, and even more so, as I’m rewatching it.  The story – of the foreseeable and even inevitable implosion of a submersible designed and operated by the American  company OceanGate during a 2023 expedition to view the wreck of the Titanic –  is a Shakespearean fairy tale in scope, with its themes of ambition, ego, hubris, obstinance, punitive pettiness.  OceanGate founder and CEO Stockton Rush was the emperor who wouldn’t listen to his dressers despite desperately needing new clothes for his submersible ride.

Perhaps Kathleen Kennedy, Steven Spielberg’s longtime production partner ( Amblin Entertainment ), and Lucasfilm director would consider coming out of her newly-announced-retirement to oversee this project?

Kathleen, call me.  Let’s do lunch and discuss the details.

 

 

First things first, Kathleen ( do you prefer Kath, or Kathy? ):  nail down the director.  Who can handle the technical aspects of filming given the difficult set” (the deep ocean) without sacrificing the primacy of storyline and character; who has a proven record of maintaining that level of tension and interest while telling a “true” story, despite the audience already knowing the ending?  Why, it’s your sister in K, Kathryn Bigelow.

I also have a few casting suggestions:

* Sign Josh Brolin for the lead role.  With his hair dyed white, I can totally envision Brolin channeling Rush’s primal arrogance and aspirations to be a BSD ( “Big Swingin’ Dick” ) like the billionaires Rush admired ( read: Elon Musk; Jeff Bezos );

* Zoe Kazan would be heart-tuggingly excellent as Emily Hammermeister, OceanGate’s assistant to the lead engineer, whose growing concerns about the viability of the submersible were ignored and suppressed, leading to her resignation; 

* Palestinian-American actor and standup comedian Mo Amer would nail it as Joseph Assi, a videographer hired by Rush to film OceanGate’s expeditions; 

* either Simon Pegg or Chris Pine would bring different but equally compelling portrayals of Tony OceanGate engineer Tony Nissen, who was fired by Rush after questioning him about the submersible’s defects;   [2]

* English actor Stephen Graham to play the Scottish engineer David Lochridge , OceanGate’s Director of Marine Operations submersible pilot, who was fired by Rush after warning questioning him about design and safety features.

 

Given the proven track record of both Ks, I’ll let them handle the rest.

 

“…and I owe these awards to Robyn Parnell, who insisted I take on this project and who refused to take screen writing credit despite her many helpful edits to the script….”

*   *   *

Department Of About All Those Uncured Cancers – My Bad

 

 

Moiself  recently reposted this on FB.  I thought of prefacing it with,“Had I written this I would have added the modifier intercessory before prayer,” but you know how that goes (I went on to watch some dancing kitten reel).

 

 

Some FB friends thought I was being rather harsh, including one who wrote, “Prayer may not be for everyone but if a person thinks it help (sic) them, who am I to say ‘no.’ ”  Moiself  is not advocating that we all break into little old lady’s homes and take away their prayer shawls.  As I assured my friend, moiself  simply reminds folks that seemingly benign beliefs practices, such as intercessory prayer, have unintentional but harmful consequences.

“…had I written that, I would’ve modified prayers by adding  intercessory. Prayers for one’s own personal… Enjoyment? Enhancement? Meditative purposes? Fine; whatever floats your boat. But for intercessory purposes, and public announcements of concern ( “I’m praying for the victims of the school, shooting” ), offering prayers is ineffective (and therefore insulting, IMO) and dangerous in that “praying for…” whatever fools people into believing constructive action has been taken when nothing of substance has been done.”

Confession:  back in the day, I was asked to be on my church’s prayer chain.  The workings of such vary from church to church, but in general, a prayer chain or group or committee is a group of people in a church who take prayers requests (via telephone or text, e.g. ) and share them with others in the group, starting with the primary contact who  then shares the request with, creating an unbroken link (“chain”) chain” where each person in the supposedly prays for the request and then passes on the information in a prearranged ( Leader of the group passes on the info to person A, who contacts person B, who contacts….)

 

 

Moiself  accepted the invitation, even as I told the person who invited me (the pastor of my very liberal UCC church, who knew I was a troublemaker freethinker/skeptic)  that I viewed prayer chains as being, essentially, a neighborhood news site for religious folk, who can’t seem to justify action unless there’s some god connection (I left out that second part).

The prayer chain served as a bulletin board/clearing house for news & needs of members and friends of the congregation, from “Alex and Jenny have become first time grandparents!”  to “Bill has just received a cancer diagnosis,” to “Mary’s had knee replacement surgery,” and all the  “joys and sorrows.” in between.

I never – nope, not once  – stopped to pray for the particular need shared when it was passed along to me.    [3]  [4]   Before passing on the information to the next person on the chain I used the tidbit of information I‘d received to brainstorm whether or not there was something I, or someone I knew, could do to help:

* I’ll send a card to Alex & Jenny, or bring them a batch of their favorite cookies to celebrate their good news…

* MH and I can check and see if Bill is going to need a ride to and from his radiation therapy treatments, or if he’d like a friend to play cards with him in the waiting room, or have some meals brought in…

* Mary might need someone to take the cans out to the curb for her on recycling day, or do her grocery shopping while she recovers, or mow her lawn…

It is the knowledge of a situation, of a need, that spurs the reaction which is needed, which is action – not sitting on one’s arse (or groveling on one’s knees), beseeching a nonexistent at best ( or if existent, indifferent, as per all available evidence ), supernatural/sky wizard.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Random Thoughts On Yet Another Reason Why
Not Only Prayer But Religious Belief Itself Is Not Benign

Some critics of religion (or even mildly religious folk themselves) say, What’s the harm in religion, as long as people keep it to themselves and don’t try to have their religious beliefs influence science education, or public policy or whatever?

 

“Hey, good point!”

 

The thing is, any belief in an omniscient/all-powerful deity carries an inherent, ineffective counter to despotism.  After all, if you believe your god is all-powerful and ultimately in charge, the rising fascist in your government…well , he can reasonably claim to be part of your god’s plan…or at least, he is able to be “used” by your god for reasons that might not seem clear at the time.  Throughout history, kings and tyrants have appealed to that reasoning:  “I am here because your god wants (or at least allows) it.  Therefore, to oppose me is to oppose your god.”

 

 

No; seriously.  I’ve heard and read Christians using that “reasoning” to justify the Orange Turdfurher.  They bolster their claim with biblical stories of supremely flawed kings; e.g.,

* King David, who arranged for the husband of a married woman he desired to be killed in battle after he summoned, bedded, and impregnated her  [5]

* King Solomon, who along with his three hundred (300) concubines married seven hundred ( yep, 700 ) wives from the nations his god warned the Israelites never to enter into marriages with, lest they turn away their hearts after their gods (guess what?  they did) , and who used forced labor to build the temple and his own palace, ad nauseum….    [6]

The justification goes,  …”if god was able to use them, he is able to use #47.”

 

 

I so wish I was making this up.

*   *   *

Department Of My Reactions Which Reveal To Moiself  My Low Opinion Of Many Of My Fellow Earthlings

Dateline:  last week watching an episode of Love On The Spectrum.  LOTS, as per its Netflix description is about, “Young adults on the autism spectrum look for true love in this documentary series that ‘revels in the plain, beautiful truths of courtship.’  ” I’d seen LOTS a year or so ago, but didn’t remember all the details. Considering what was in the news I wanted a pick-me-up and I’ve found a series to be…sweet, and good hearted, in many ways.

There was a moment when a couple, both on the autism spectrum, were having a dinner date which was going well, and they decided to extend their time together by going for a walk along the waterfront.  They were both being exuberant and happy and quirky, and overly loud, at least according to most neurodivergent folks’ standards…  I began to get a fearful (but sadly realistic) feeling in the pit of my stomach, centered around the nasty reality of The World We Live In ®:

If those two cheerfully boisterous young people were out on their own, on this date, in public, without a camera crew to protect them, they could be a target for some cretinous person or persons who, for their own cretinous reasons, would the couples’ differences upsetting or offensive.
In plain speak:  the autistic lovebirds would be at risk for assault.

And by persons, I mean, a man, or most likely, two or more men.

 

 

Think about the reports when something like this happens. It’s not a woman, or a group of women friends, who, while out for a stroll along the waterfront or downtown, see another single person or a couple and decide that they are somehow different or offensive or whatever and hassles and/or even beats them up.

And yeah, sorry guys:   it’s not all men ®…but it’s always a man.

 

Some of the LOTS participants.

 

*   *   *

Department Of How Do You Say The Orange Turdführer Venezuelan Spanish?

Haven’t written about this because there are no words.

Oh, wait, of course there are words.  And Congress needs to enforce them unless they lose whatever remaining power they have.

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [7]

 

 

*   *   *

May you get out ASAP when you realize your boss is a psychopath;
May you examine whether or not your beliefs are benign;
May you encourage your congressfolk to use their words;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

 

*   *   *

[1] Trying to get my foot back in shape post-foot surgery.

[2] “I told him I’m not getting in it,” former OceanGate engineering director Tony Nissen said to a panel of Coast Guard investigators, referring to a 2018 conversation in which CEO Stockton Rush allegedly asked Nissen to act as a pilot in an upcoming expedition to the Titanic.  ( ‘I Told Him I’m Not Getting in It’: Former Titan Submersible Engineer Testifies, Sep 16, 2024, Wired, Science section )

[3] I think I was third or fourth in the chain.

[4] So when bill succumbed to his tumor…yep, that was my fault.

[5] Found in 2 Samuel 11-12

[6] Stories found in 1 Kings 9:15-23, 11:1-10)

[7] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists.   No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.”  Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org

The British Church I’m Not Attending

December 26, 2025

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, exercise & fitness, extended family, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holidays, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), movies, music, nature, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, school, science, The Write Stuff (literary life), TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The British Church I’m Not Attending

It’s that time of the year again. As has become a tradition much maligned anticipated in our neighborhood, moiself  is hosting a different Partridge, every week, in my front yard’s pear tree.   [1]

Can you identify this week’s guest Partridge?

 

 

 

*   *   *

Happy Boxing Day, y’all.

 

 

Chill, dude. Not that kind of boxing.

Commonly celebrated in England, and countries with substantial ties to/former territories of the Brits (referred to as commonwealth nations   [2] ), Boxing Day has many competing attributed origin stories.  Some say it is a day set aside for giving alms to the poor…

 

 

…but more likely it has to do with the British economic class system – giving the servants one measly day off during the holiday season (they had to work on Christmas Day, preparing their masters’ employers feasts, etc., and could take home the leftovers and receive Christmas Boxes with giftts from their employers on the 26th).

 

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Speaking Of The Brits
Sub-Department Of Visual Double Takes

Dateline: Saturday; 3 pm-ish, headed home after grocery shopping with MH.  We took a scenic detour, and on a street a half mile or so from our ‘hood we passed a blue road sign on the right.  In this state, blue street signs typically indicate a business or service or other facility, from a hospital or gas station to a winery or store or church or B & B….

The sign read ARISE CHURCH, with an arrow pointing to the right.  But the words were in skinny capital letters, and at the speed we drove by moiself  missed the I, and for a brief moment my mind registered the sign as indicating

ARSE
CHURCH
→

 

Moiself  likes the idea of my city hosting a local chapter of The British Church of the Bum.

 

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of One More Thing To Be Happy About

That would be, the week between Christmas and New Year’s day.

Happy Twixmas, y’all.

 

 

The guidelines for Twixmas sound a lot like recovery from foot surgery.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Real Estate Obfuscate-Speak

They’re not calling them trailer parks anymore, or even manufactured home parks. It’s land lease communities.

The reason I have become familiar with this slight-of-tongue terminology is that I’m keeping up with the real estate market in the vicinity of where daughter Belle lives.    [3]    And while a well-built manufactured home can be attractive in that it’s another option in the overpriced real estate market, it comes with a financial gotcha in that, in the vast majority of the situations, you are buying the manufactured home only, yet paying the lease price for the site it sits on – a price that can be as high or even higher than the mortgage itself (double or triple, in many cases I’ve seen).  You can be fooled into thinking that you are a solely a homeowner, when you are still, in a crucial way, a renter, accruing no equity in the property upon which your home sits.  If the landlord raises that rent, you gotta pay it.

Here is how they try to sell you a scam a pro-land lease community site describes it ( my emphases ):

Land lease communities allow residents to own their homes while leasing the land, offering the best of both worlds: affordability and a community atmosphere. You can find land lease communities across the U.S., and they are especially appealing in areas where high land costs might make property ownership particularly expensive.|
By choosing a land lease community, residents can enjoy the benefits of homeownership without the hefty price tag.
( excerpt, Inspire Community, “What is a Land Lease” )

 

 

 

…the benefits of homeownership without the hefty price tag.  That’s a new way to shovel it.  If you believe that, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.  Lovely view of Brooklyn, for only $1300/month, for just the dirt under your feet.

 

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of News From The Recovery Front

Moiself’s  exercise routine needs (temporary) modifications post-foot surgery.  I found a variety of chair exercise videos online:  [4]  cardio, strength, even yoga.   After trying them out I mostly don’t use them, and just modify my regular routines.  But I tune into one chair cardio/weights online video to use as a warmup, because I have developed a certain fondness for the Shiny Happy, over enthusiastic exercise leader.  It’s been six weeks, and so far, hearing her perky malapropisms never gets old: they include her pronouncing muscles as musk skulls, and enthusing about how chair workouts can still be vigorous, especially for those who have some “fiscal limitations.”   [5]

What was (is?) that Reader’s Digest  trope?

 

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Working Your Brain During The Holiday Season

One of my favorite podcasts, People I Mostly Admire (aka  PIMA) is being retired by its host.  PIMA is/was hosted by economist and author  [6]   Steve Levitt.  His PIMA interview with astrophysicist, author and science communicator Neil deGrasse Tyson was one of my favorites, despite    [7]   the fact that, to moiself, Levitt seemed somewhat intimidated by interviewing a “real” scientist.

 

 

 

The most intriguing part of the interview for moiself  was when Levitt and Tyson discussed hypothesis theory, something that both fascinates and frustrates me. The frustration comes from the fact that, IMO, the ignorance re and/or misinterpretations of the definitions of hypotheses and theories account for a great deal of the misunderstandings laypersons have about science.  Non-scientists tend to think of theories and hypotheses in terms of how the words are used socially and culturally – they see those terms as more akin to opinions and hunches.  Thus, to  Biff The Non-Scientist Who Nevertheless Loves Ranting About Science, the theory of evolution carries about as much weight as does Biff’s Uncle Anus’s pontifications about why his neighbors decorate their lawn with statues of Nordic trolls and Japanese anime characters:   “I have a theory about that….”

 

 

During the interview Levitt was self-critical re the fact that, as he sees it, his discipline –  economics – is not “truly scientific” (despite there being a Nobel prize category for it 😉 ).  By that he meant, economists use different data gathering methods than those working in the so-called hard sciences, and that there is a certain “stickiness” about working with/trying to explain that try to explain things that are often unquantifiable, such as human behavior.

Steve Levitt:
“…it’s not the scientific method, it’s a sensible method, in a data-driven world, you try to figure out what’s going on.  To me what is so disturbing in economics is that everybody knows it’s completely fake, what we do.  And no one talks about it, and everybody pretends to follow the scientific method, when in fact we’re doing nothing like it.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson:
“I think you’re being too hard on yourself.  Let me first tighten up some of your vocabulary.   If you have an idea about how something works, it’s not a theory, it’s a hypothesis.    [8]

A theory, in science, is an understanding of how things work that not only explains all that it has confronted but that makes *predictions* that have been shown to be accurate going forward. That’s a theory.  Until you have experimental verification you have a hypothesis.

So, you put forth a hypothesis, some of the data don’t quite fit it, and you go back and readjust the hypothesis, that’s just fine.  You readjust the hypothesis, and now it fits the data.  I don’t have a problem with that.  But don’t elevate it to a theory of human behavior until *that* hypothesis makes a prediction you then test.

 I don’t care what you do with your hypothesis; I don’t care how much stitchery and remending you have to do to it – once you present it, and it accounts for the data you have available, that is the *beginning,* that’s not the end. Now, let’s test it.  Can you make a prediction?  Now we’re onto something.  If, after you’ve retooled it, it makes more predictions than you’‘ve ever imagined, bada-bing, let’s call it a new economic theory.”

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [9]

 

 

*   *   *

May you exercise your brain musk skulls during the holidays;
May that same brain entertain you with visual double-takes;
|May you be able to form hypotheses about your theories;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Specifically, in the pear tree daughter Belle purchased and (with the help of MH) planted many years ago.

[2] e.g. Canada, Australia.

[3] She hopes to become a homeowner, within the next couple of years.  A pipe dream, is how so many of her peers view the housing market.

[4] As in…wait for it…exercises that can be done while sitting on a chair and thus keeping weight of the affected foot.

[5] Which might impact you even more than your, ahem, physical limitations, as you cold only afford to watch her free tape, rather than join a gym?

[6] Levitt, with his fellow Steve (Steven Dubner) , is the author of the ground breaking ITAL Freakonomics books, and Dubner hosts the Freakonomics podcast.

[7] or maybe, partially due to?

[8] NdGT deserves a footnote, don’t you think?

[9] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists.   No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.”  Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org

The Sun Salutations I’m Not Performing

December 19, 2025

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, community, current events, freethought/humanism, friends, general ruminations, health & wellness, Holidays, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), making fun of Norwegians and/or the Irish, movies, TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Sun Salutations I’m Not Performing

It’s that time of the year again. As has become a tradition much maligned anticipated in our neighborhood,  moiself  is hosting a different Partridge, every week, in my front yard’s pear tree.   [1]

Can you identify this week’s guest Partridge?

 

*   *   *

Department Of ( the upcoming )  Happy Winter Solstice To All

And to my fellow yogis, if this tradition is in your practice, moiself  hopes you have a memorable 108 sun salutations.  Since I am recovering from a surgery which requires that I put *no* weight on my left foot, throw in a few sun salutations for me, if you will.

 

 

Or maybe moiself  will just engage in some adaptive yoga to mark the occasion.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Our Window Is In Solidarity With Jewish Neighbors
And Friends And Coworkers…

and in this sad year, the Australians on Bondi Beach, and a certain, gone-way-before-his-time  filmmaker….

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of There Goes Another Piece Of My Heart

Rob Reiner was one of those artists whose name would not immediately spring to mind if I were asked to name either my personal favorite or the most influential contemporary  movie directors….  Then, I heard the heart-twisting news re his death, began to consider his body of work, and realized that Reiner had directed many of the gems on my 100 Favorite Films List ® ,   [2]   including

  * When Harry Met Sally
* Spinal Tap
* The Princess Bride
* The American President

 

Reiner on the set of “The Princess Bride”

 

As is the case when a Famous Artist® dies, every news story about the demise includes a rundown of the artist’s résumé.  But something is missing/is in error in all of the encapsulations I’ve seen (so far) of Reiner’s professional life:  he did *not* get his “start” (however one calculates that) by co-starring in TV show, All In The Family.  Before that, Reiner was a writer on the subversive, cutting-edge-at-the-time, comedy-variety show, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.     [3]

“Steve (Martin) and I wrote the first fart joke ever done on national TV.”
( Rob Reiner, ” ‘The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour’ at 50: The Rise and Fall of a Groundbreaking Variety Show: Steve Martin, Rob Reiner, brothers Tommy and Dickie Smothers and more look back on their experiences transforming TV comedy with the innovative and controversial series,” The Hollywood Reporter,  11-25-17 )

 

 

Moiself  found  much to respect about the man.   [4]   Besides the excellent and varied films Reiner wrote/produced/acted in/directed –  and it’s mind-boggling to fathom that the same guy who directed  This is Spinal Tap  also helmed  Misery and Ghosts Of Mississippi  – I admired Reiner’s political and community involvement, and what seemed to be his general sense of decency, kindness, perspective and humility.  In all the interviews I heard/read about with Reiner over the years, he seemed well aware of the leg-up advantages/entry to showbiz *he* had, that others equally (or more) talented and driven lacked, via the connections that came from being the son of Hollywood icon Carl Reiner (and thus he counted among his family friends such comedy legends as Mel Brooks and Normal Lear).

Bravo, Rob Reiner.  When it comes to your contributions to the cinematic arts, on a scale from one to ten, you go to eleven.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Nailing the Reason Why In Eighteen Words…

Dateline: 12-9-25; The Washington Post advice columnist Carolyn Hax, responding to a Letter Writer’s dilemma.  LW seeks Hax’s perspective in a why-do-does-he-do-this-and-what-can-I-do-about-it  situation:

The LW’s father-in-law does not like the name the LW and her husband chose for their daughter, and he keeps insulting LW’s toddler daughter’s name ( yes, this child is the FIL’s granddaughter!), in front of the LW *and* the little girl.  FIL continues to do this, even after LW asked him to stop.  However, FIL no longer taunts his granddaughter about her name when his son is present, after his son (LW’s husband) asked his father to back off. 

“…. But that’s why misogyny is so persistent and so insidious:
You get nose-blind to an everyday stench.”
( Carolyn Hax, from Father-in-law isn’t subtle about hating his granddaughter’s name )

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of It’s So Difficult To Choose….

…but this might be my favorite of the Edward Sorel drawings in my FFRF 2026 calendar.

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [5]

 

 

*   *   *

May you not go nose-blind to the everyday stench of prejudice;
May you treat yourself to a Rob Reiner film retrospective;|
May you take the opportunity to go to eleven;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Specifically, in the pear tree daughter Belle purchased and (with the help of MH) planted many years ago

[2] Which is something list makers list, and although I’m a list maker I haven’t done that one yet, but it does seem to deserve some kind of special notation….

[3] Whose other writing alum included comic/actor/author/banjoist/perennial SNL host Steve Martin and musician Mason Williams.

[4] Including that ground-breaking fart joke, for which I will be forever grateful.

[5] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists.   No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.”  Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org

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