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The “Karen” I’m Not Judging

March 8, 2024

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, current events, family life, freethought/humanism, health & wellness, hiking, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), nature, politics, radio & podcasts, Recreation, reproductive rights, science, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , Comments Off on The “Karen” I’m Not Judging

Department Of First Things First

Happy birthday to Son K.

K at age 29 9, demonstrating both his flexibility and artistic sensibility, neither of which
led to the career in interpretive dance he was considering at the time this photo was taken.

*   *   *

Speaking of a delightful person’s birthday, which only happened because his mother gave birth to him, let moiself  segue to….

Department Of Don’t You Want To Listen To The Entire Podcast Now?

Now as in, after reading this delightful quote, from Cat Bohannon, PhD, researcher on the evolution of narrative and cognition and author of Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Evolution, from her interview on the People I Mostly Admire podcast.

“…I talk a surprising amount about penises
for a book about the evolution of the female body.
But because the penis and the vagina co-evolve,
naturally we’re going to have to talk about dong.”

Naturally.

 

 

Here is PIMA host Steven Levitt’s intro to the episode featuring Bohannon:

I did not expect to like this book. I’m generally just not that interested in things that happened 200 million years ago, or even 10,000 years ago…. But in chapter after chapter, Cat Bohannon offers such a fresh and surprising perspective that I couldn’t put the book down…. Are her hypotheses right? I have no idea….But one thing I’m pretty confident about, you will not listen to Cat Bohannon and say she’s boring.

The PIMA episode’s title, Is Gynecology the Best Innovation Ever?, refers to Bohannon’s intriguing proposition re human evolution:  more than our discovery of fire, agriculture, the wheel, and other inventions, human’s survival and flourishing was due to reproductive choice and midwifery, the forerunner to obstetrics/gynecology.  As our Homo habilis ancestors’ brains (and thus their brain buckets – i.e., heads) expanded, the females’ pelvises did not.  Women assisting other women in labor allowed the human population to survive and increase.

 

 

Excerpts from PIMA host Steven Levitt’s interview with Cat Bohannon:

LEVITT:
If you ask people’s opinion about the most important discoveries that humankind has made, common answers might be harnessing fire, agriculture, the advent of language, but you give a different answer…gynecology? How can gynecology be our most important human invention?

BOHANNON:
… Tool use is all about manipulating something in your environment to overcome some inherent problem….  What was our most important innovation in our ancestral line? Well, what were our biggest problems? In evolutionary biology, there’s something called a hard selection. That’s when you have problems with your reproduction because evolution, of course, works by generations building over time, literally making babies, having them survive to have their own babies, and maybe produce more bodies that have this trait that your body has.
Well, if you have something that messes up your reproduction, if it’s hard for you to make a baby, then your line is probably headed for extinction. If human pregnancies are the absolute shit show that they are, that is hard selection. That is our biggest problem.
A chimpanzee, one of the animals that we are most closely related to, both obviously and genetically — a chimp mom’s labor is about 40 minutes. A first-time human mom is about 12 to 16 hours….And that’s before we even try to start squeezing out the actual giant-headed babies that our species likes to make. It’s also true that our pregnancies are longer than you would expect for an animal our size.
And it turns out, the threshold for when we give birth is not necessarily how big the head gets, to get out the small lemon-sized hole, which as we know is problematic. No, it’s actually a metabolic threshold. At what point would building this body any further actually be deleterious to the mother’s body because it’s simply too costly to keep doing it? In other words, we give birth, we go into labor when we do, typically at full term, because doing it any longer would kill us.

 

 

LEVITT:
Yeah, marginal cost becomes greater than marginal benefit. It’s interesting how biology and economics are basically the same thing.

BOHANNON:
Yeah, exactly. So if it’s the case that you end up with a lot of moms that are crippled for life, that die in the process, (then their) offspring die in the process….
But it isn’t just the moment of giving birth that matters for the advent of gynecology, because there’s a long ramp of reproductive history that comes before, and a long tail of a woman living in a female body that comes after….
…the most important thing we ever did was get our hands on the levers of reproduction to overcome our most basic problem, which is that (humans) suck at making babies.
We should be like the giant panda. We should be a curiosity in somebody else’s zoo. We should never have gotten to eight billion people in the world.
But we did. And the only way we did, to be honest, is by building societies that could support the kind of interdependence that helped females give birth in ways that didn’t kill them and cripple them.

 

 

 

*  *   *

Department Of There’s (Usually More Than) Two Sides To Every Story…

Some stories are octagonal, when you get right down to counting the sides. The story of the “Central Park birding incident” has at least four sides, including that of
* the birder
* the news media’s shameful failure to accurately report and follow up on the incident (read: correct their mistakes and oversights),
* social media’s (surprise!) rush to laud and reward the party deemed “innocent” while labeling, judging, and tormenting the party deemed “Karen,”
* the Karen who turns out not to be one.

” ‘Slit your wrists,’ strangers texted me.

‘If anyone deserves prison rape, it’s you,’ people I had never met called me to say.

‘The noble thing to do is to remove yourself from society…so please kill yourself.’

I’m Amy Cooper, but you probably know me as ‘Central Park Karen.’ You may not know my name, but you probably know my story—or at least the two-minute version of the story that was broadcast all over the world without key facts or context. “

 

 

Amy Cooper’s opinion piece was published in Newsweek (their “My Turn” feature) in November.  I just got around to reading it now.  IMO everyone who passed judgement upon her – read: everyone who heard the story as portrayed on your media of choice (including moiself ) –  should read it.

Most people think they know what happened:  the widely promoted narrative was that a racist White woman walking her dog in a Central Park birding area threatened and then called 911 on a Black man, after he told her she needed to leash her dog and began recording her with his cell phone.  Most people don’t know who threw the first punch, so to speak –i.e., who made the first threat – in this incident; most people, in their rush to judgement, don’t know that the story they heard and/or read about left out so many crucial details.

“On May 25, 2020, in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, when anxieties ran high, I took my dog—whom my life revolved around—for a walk.

I visited Central Park in the morning, during the hours when dogs were allowed off-leash.   [1]   On my way home, I chose to take an unfamiliar path, landing in ‘The Ramble,’ a secluded area of Central Park.

Seconds later, I heard a voice boom: ‘Get out of here. You shouldn’t be here.’ I saw a man who began yelling at me that my dog should be on his leash.

Before recording me, Christian Cooper yelled out: ‘If you’re going to do what you want, I’m going to do what I want, but you’re not going to like it.’

Those were his exact words. Words Christian admitted to saying, on Facebook, the very day of the incident.

And yes, I was scared.”

I was a female, alone in a secluded area of Central Park, with a man yelling at me and threatening me. As a victim of a sexual assault in my late teens, I was completely panicked for my safety and wellbeing.”

Right there is a situation most women can understand.  Unfortunately, far too many of us (and one is to many) have had experiences with male strangers who’ve yelled at/threatened us.  Skin color, schmin color – the fact that Christian Cooper (the man who confronted Amy Cooper; no relation) is Black did not enter my mind when I read Amy Cooper’s report of their initial encounter.  Instead, what came to mind were the incidents I’ve faced over the years, as a woman hiking/running/walking – simply daring to exist – outside, “alone,” and facing a man’s harassment and threat, regardless of whether or not he thinks I did something to “deserve” it.

Fuck the man’s skin color; fuck his age, or height, accent, apparel….  Because here is an unfortunate truth that women live with:  even without a personal history of sexual assault, most women’s radar would be up in the same situation as Amy Cooper found herself in (my radar went up just reading her account).  And although I might not be as “completely panicked” as she was, I’d be urgently strategizing as to how I could protect moiself  from a man who is threatening, (Jaysus Fecking Keerist!)  I’m going to do what I want, but you’re not going to like it.

 

 

“Then Christian, who did not own a dog, bizarrely tried to lure my dog to him with treats, immediately raising a red flag.   [2]   News stories of poisoned dogs quickly came to mind.

My mama-bear instincts kicked in. I immediately pulled my dog tight by his collar, fearing that something would happen to him.

Acting from a place of panic and vulnerability, I told Christian that I was going to call the police and what I planned to say, hoping that would be enough to dissuade him from his earlier threat.

Instead, Christian taunted me to call the police. Seeing no other choice, I called 911 and described the man who was threatening me. But due to very spotty service in the park, I had to repeat my description of Christian multiple times.

The 911 tape makes it very clear that the dispatcher couldn’t hear me due to the poor connection—yet this fact went unreported, skewing perceptions of my actions.    [3]

There were never any racial implications to my words. I just felt raw fear, and desperately wanted help.

Later that day, Christian took to Facebook to proudly describe to his followers that he instigated the encounter and boasted that he keeps a bag of dog treats to lure in off-leash dogs.

Consider that for a moment. He admitted to instigating the incident.”

 

 

I’m not a “birder” but I play one on TV but I know a few bird-watching enthusiasts.  I like them, and I like birds.  I like to look at birds and other fauna and flora and have loved hiking in and exploring “natural areas” and nature preserves since moiself  was a wee lass.  I’ve been frustrated innumerable times when I’ve encountered people whom I judge as not being respectful of the protocol when recreating in a woodland, desert, mountain, and/or beach environment (e.g., going off trail and thus contributing to erosion; allowing their dogs off leash where it is not permitted; not cleaning up after their dog; dropping trash, etc.).  Thus, I think I can understand CC’s frustration with what he saw as yet another scofflaw ignoring the rules of a birding area.

There is another protocol worthy of consideration:  how you handle your first encounter with a stranger whom you think/know is violating some kind of rule.  Why assume the worst from the beginning – where does that get you?  Why did CC assume AC was a scofflaw, instead of considering that perhaps this was her first time in the area and/or she didn’t see the signs about leashing dogs in that area?  Why go from zero to 120 at the get-go?  Who appointed CC as The Ramble’s protocol enforcer?

 

 

“I was not the first or only person Christian Cooper had threatened in Central Park.

Jerome Lockett has stated that Christian also aggressively threatened him, luring in his dog. Jerome said he knows of two fellow dog owners who experienced the same behavior from Christian, but they don’t want to come forward because they are white, and Christian is Black. They fear being canceled—as I have been.

None of this was reported.
Stark omissions in coverage completely altered my life.
and there is no correcting after the fact.
I, and others affected by this incident, could only live in the false, hateful narrative.”

( excerpts, emphases mine, “I Was Branded the ‘Central Park Karen’. I Still Live in Hiding.”
Newsweek, My Turn, 11-7-23  )

There are more details in Amy Cooper’s article which deserve your consideration, including the fallout for her life.  After CC’s video went viral, AC had her personal information posted online by trolls, received “hundreds of threatening graphic images, death threats, and hate mail,”  [4]  was fired from her job by her PR-conscious employer (without a chance to defend herself), has had long stretches of unemployment, had to go into hiding, was falsely accused of filing a false police report…. [5]

Meanwhile, Christian Cooper has parlayed his headline-making experience into a career as “The Black Birder,” including a book contract, numerous video and television appearances, a guest essay with the NY Times, and a gig as a host on a National Geographic show, Extraordinary Birder.

Now then: Black men in the USA face a different world than white women and men, no doubt about it.  Shouldn’t Amy Cooper have realized that, given the world we live in, her reporting to the police that she was being harassed by a Black man might put that man’s life in danger?  That is certainly what moiself  thought, at first.  However, if she feared that *she* was in danger, that probability-of-danger-for-him would take a back seat to the urgency of her – of any person’s – instinct for self-protection.  And when you call the police to report that a person is threatening you, guess what they want to know?  A description of the person, which includes gender, ethnicity, age, height, attire….

Also….

Something that seems to have been forgotten, or at least brushed aside, from the Central Park Birding Incident, ® is a something which has gnawed at me even before I read Amy Cooper’s article:

All women walk through a different world than men of any skin tone.
Why are men not cognizant of that reality –  because it’s not theirs?

Why is no one holding Christian Cooper accountable for failing to realize
that yelling at/threatening a lone woman in a secluded area
will cause her to fear for her safety?

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [6]

 

*   *   *

Parting Shot:  I love it when/I hate it when…

I love it when an Expert In Her Field ®  sez, “we’re going to have to talk about dong.”

 

*   *   *

May we appreciate that we are not “a curiosity in somebody else’s zoo;”
May we wait for the story behind the story before we pass judgement;
May we appreciate the times when we’re going to “have to talk about dong;”
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] “Off-leash hours in Central Park are from 6:00 am–9:00 am and 9:00 pm–1:00 am.” (from  A Dog’s Guide to Central Park. )

[2] When I read this sentence of her article to MH, before I could go on to the next sentence he said that he’s fear/assume that the guy was intending to poison his dog.

[3] The New York Times reported in October 2020 that Amy had made a second 9-1-1 call against Christian, in which she alleged that Christian had tried to assault her.  However, the Times later made a correction, saying that the second call was when a 9-1-1 dispatcher called *her* back.

[4] Which she still gets, to this day.

[5] The NY prosecutor’s office, feeling the media and political pressure, filed the charges, which were quickly dismissed because Amy Cooper had done no such thing.

[6] “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 Possible Hazards I’m Not Avoiding

January 12, 2024

Robyn Parnell annoyances, community, current events, family life, freethought/humanism, friends, hiking, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), making fun of lawyers and/or doctors, nature, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, Recreation, school, The Write Stuff (literary life), Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Possible Hazards I’m Not Avoiding

Department Of Imagine My Surprise

It’s been a while since I received any income from my writing; thus, when I received the yearly royalty statement from the publishing company that publishes the play I’ve written, moiself  was expecting the usual statement showing me the royalty I am owed.  Brief explanation for the folks who are how-publishing-works–impaired:   [1]    depending on the contract, publishing houses/companies, particularly those specializing in plays for off-off-off-off Broadway (as in, for schools, church groups, community theaters), may keep payments in escrow and may not issue a royalty check until the royalties earned are above a certain amount (usually a very, very, small amount).

I’ve had a piddling royalty rollover with that publishing company for years, since the last time someone bought the script for my play.  On December 28 my yearly statement informed me that a check for the June – December 2023 reporting period would be issued, and I received it in early January.  So, although I have writing income to report for 2023, the amount…well, I’m sure if there were actual humans involved in reading my e-filing tax returns, the response I might receive when said reader(s) come across lines 1-9 on my 1040  form might be akin to

 

*   *   *

Department Of This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

After not having been to the coast for several weeks,  [2]  MH and I returned to see several “No Access” signs, posted at places which seemed to us to be bafflingly random.

I checked out some local news (social media) groups to find out more about the signs.  Amidst all of the  Seriously?/you’ve got to be kidding posts, someone noted

“(the signs) might have something to do with the lawsuit in Newport…
 Municipalities/counties/state had an injury lawsuit exemption for recreational trails. Someone was hurt on a bridge, sued and won on appeal. The closures are happening in other places as well.”

 

 

Now, this first no access sign we saw was on nothing we’d previously considered to be a trail; rather, it was by a path, at the end of a street about four blocks from our house, which leads ~ 50 feet through dune grass to the beach.

That FB poster is (was?) correct, moiself  thought: there’s a state law declaring that people who hike or bike or walk their dogs along the beach or prance through the forest or otherwise engage in recreational activities (“recreate”) do so at their own risk…I think? I found the statute:

ORS 105.682

Liabilities of owner of land used by public for recreational purposes….

(1) Except as provided by subsection (2) of this section, and subject to the provisions of ORS 105.688 (Applicability of immunities from liability for owner of land), an owner of land is not liable in contract or tort for any personal injury, death or property damage that arises out of the use of the land for recreational purposes,….

when the owner of land either directly or indirectly permits any person to use the land for recreational purposes,…. The limitation on liability provided by this section applies if the principal purpose for entry upon the land is for recreational purposes…

and is not affected if the injury, death or damage occurs while the person entering land is engaging in activities other than the use of the land for recreational purposes….

(2) This section does not limit the liability of an owner of land for intentional injury or damage to a person coming onto land for recreational purposes….

( excerpts; my emphases;  Oregon public statutes )

Another local news group commentor wrote,

“The change came about after someone in Newport got hurt on a city-maintained bridge that was on the WAY to the recreational area and sued.  This has had a huge ripple effect up and down the Coast (and probably throughout the state). Tillamook County closed two access roads to Oceanside, and at next week’s City Council meeting in Rockaway Beach, one of the key agenda items is whether to close all beach access….”

We looked for more information about this lawsuit and its effects in several news outlets.  Here’s the scoop as per the city newsletter, Manzanita Today (1-8-24):

Manzanita Avoids Most Beach Access And Other Trail Closures After Court Decision

“A 2022 decision by the Oregon Court of Appeals and affirmed by the state’s Supreme Court, has forced some coastal cities to close all beach access trails….
The consequences of the court case will likely lead to a legislative fix in the upcoming short session of the Oregon Legislature, but many coastal residents
and visitors may wonder how things got this far.
Here are the facts of the case.
Nicole Fields  [3]  regularly walked her dogs on Agate Beach in Newport and used a city-maintained access trail to reach the beach. One day, as Ms. Fields returned from the beach with her dogs and a friend, she slipped on a bridge and seriously injured her leg. She sued Newport for damages. Newport tried to assert ‘recreational immunity’ under an Oregon law intended to encourage landowners to allow recreational use of their land. Ms. Fields argued that walking on the beach access trail to engage in recreational walking on the beach was not itself recreational. She was just crossing the city’s property to start or finish her recreational activity of walking on the beach. The court decided that a trial court must, in effect, determine what Ms. Fields intended while walking on the trail. Was that part of her recreational activity or did she intend merely to use the trail to get back and forth to the beach?
Thus, whether the City of Newport (and its insurer, CIS Oregon) ultimately prevailed, they would still incur the substantial expense of a jury trial. CIS provides liability insurance to many cities and counties, including Manzanita and Tillamook County. Because of that potential liability, CIS has recommended closure of all improved trails used to access any recreational area….”

 

 

WTF, if only.

“The consequences of the court case will likely lead to a legislative fix in the upcoming short session of the Oregon Legislature.”  Yes, of course.  Unfortunately, human nature being what it is…

 

“It’s your fault I tripped over my own feet!”

 

… that won’t prevent someone from suing when they fall-down-go-boom.  Moiself  understands the no-access signs from a liability point of view (one such lawsuit could wipe out funds for coastal towns and villages).  Still, signs – and apparently, existing laws – mean nothing if someone is determined to sue others for their life choices and/or the random accidents that we are all at risk, from the moment we rise out of bed until we return to said bed at the end of the day.

That dog walker could have slipped on her own rain-slicked driveway, tripped over her shoelaces or down her own front porch stairs, or gotten tangled up in her dog’s leash…..  But, whatever caused her fall, she did it on the pedestrian bridge, and then got around the law by claiming that she was not *yet* recreating, but using the bridge as a passageway to get to where she was *going* to recreate…

 

 

Artful, isn’t it?  Congratulations to her scum-sucking ambulance chasing lawyer attorney for the legal and cognitive gymnastics on that one!

The city newsletter article went on to note that Manzanita’s Public Works Director attempted to limit the number of trail closures by inspecting and rating the condition of every trail within city limits.  He made a chart of city trails, which he ranked in five numerical categories:

1. Poor (many hazards noted);
2. fair (some hazards noted);
3. average (few hazards noted);
4. good (no hazards noted);
5. excellent (no hazards noted)

MH and I were familiar with them all, and know that many of the “trails” on this list are just beach access points and undeveloped road crossings, rather than actual hiking trails.  The chart showed “…the trails that will be closed and signed to warn users to walk at their own risk because of “possible hazards.”

MH beat me to the suggestion:

“Let’s find the most ‘dangerous’ trails and walk on all of them!”

And so we did. We girded our loins and, at our own risk, did all seven trails on the #1 and #2 (Poor and Fair) lists.  Barely escaped with our lives, lemme tell ya.

Possible hazards.

It’s a world of danger out there.  Some people should just never leave their house.

 

Be sure to have your lawyer’s number on speed dial the next time you leave your abode – something like this might be hiding behind the city trash can by the bridge on the way to the trail to the beach….

 

*   *   *

Department Of Things We Probably Will Not See Changed In The New Year,
But It Would Be Nice To Try, If Only To Please Miss Manners

(  excerpts from “Miss Manners: What topic most grinds Miss Manners’ gears? Self-philanthropy.”  Oregonlive.com  1-1-24  )

DEAR MISS MANNERS: You must receive a lot of the same, or similar, questions. I’m just wondering: What are the most-asked ones?

GENTLE READER: Well, they are not, as may be supposed, about which fork to use. That is a question posed only by people wanting to declare that manners are trivial. Such people tend to be consistent in not having any….

There is also a topic that always shocks Miss Manners but has become increasing prevalent: blatant greed.

People have gotten shameless about demanding money from family, friends and strangers alike. Even the ubiquitous gift registry, with its transparent whitewash, is giving way to the outright demand for money. Any occasion will do –  birth, death and anything in between –  as an excuse for begging.

It seems to Miss Manners that there are enough serious causes that need addressing before solvent people are justified in engaging in self-philanthropy.”   [4]

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Past Regrets Which Live In The Present

Moiself, after hearing a podcast in which a gay person spoke about not being out in high school due to a fear of being teased and/or bullied, had the following memory flash.

Dateline:

That would be my senior year in high school.  I can’t remember which pep squad member asked me to participate in a short skit the cheerleaders were planning for an end-of-year, Senior class only, school assembly.  I do remember being recruited with the we-need-someone-who’s-not-afraid-to-be-ridiculous-and-that’s-YOU enticement.  I was told that, along with the cheerleaders, the cast of the skit would be three students:  moiself; the school’s best drama student (male), and another male student.  There would be no rehearsal, but we could get out of class early to prepare and thus, since the assembly itself took up one class period, we could skip two classes – sign me up, I said.

We three students were given “costume” guidelines and the skit scenario/outline.  [5]  Within the scenario we could ad lib the rest (we had no dialogue).

Brief skit summary:  The curtain rose to reveal the auditorium stage, empty but for a bench at center stage, upon which sat a Dorky Boy.  Dorky Boy (the drama student) was tall and skinny, clad in highwater pants, a short sleeved, plaid shirt and bow tie, wore thick horn-rimmed eyeglasses and clutched a lunch box to his stomach.  A provocatively sleazily dressed girl (that’s moiself’s  cue) entered from stage right.

 

My costume was a slit-up-the-side cancan skirt and fishnet stockings, tight fitting sleeveless top (comically stuffed brassiere), too much makeup…similar to this on the classy scale.

 

Sleazy girl strutted across the stage, past the DB.  She turned back and begins to flirt with DB, but he was embarrassed/appalled and tried to ignore her.  She sat down on the bench, he scooted away from her, she scooted toward him…after a few seconds when it looked as if she might end up chasing him around the bench, a Sexy Stoner Surfer Dude®  swaggers in from stage left. SSS Dude had shoulder length, sun-streaked blond-red hair, wore mirror sunglasses, a Hawaiian shirt, a puka shell necklace, low-slung cutoff shorts which reveal his toned abs, and flip-flop sandals   [6]    SSSD did his own laidback stage strut toward the occupants of the bench.  Sleazy Girl immediately turned her attentions toward the SSSD who, after giving her the once-over, exchanged looks with DB, and the two boys linked arms and pranced off stage.  Sleazy Girl was flabbergasted, and flounced off stage in an indignant huff while the cheerleaders broke into a chorus of…I can’t remember the exact words, but the cheer ended with something like,

“gimme a Q and a U and a E-E-R,
Q-U-E-E-R is what you are.”

 

 

Really.

Yep.  Of course, that was then and this is now.  Still, doesn’t that count, as even a relatively mild case, of high school homophobia, no matter how unintentional (“it’s just supposed to be funny”)?  I knew of at least four teachers at our school, and several students, who were gay (and not out, in the case of the teachers, of course), and later would know of other students I went to school with who were gay but who were not out at the time (even to themselves, in some cases).  But I never thought of how they might react: I never considered that they might think the skit in any way was about targeting or even referring to them.  Here’s how clueless about Such Things®  I was, back then:  I thought the joke was on the character *I* was playing!  As in, she considered herself to be hot stuff, but the cool surfer dude found her so repulsively skanky he’d rather run off with the nerd.

Back to the future: I would like to ask one of those students what they thought of the skit.   [7]   Were they aware of their own sexual orientation at the time, and if so, did the skit make them uncomfortable, or hurt their feelings?  Perhaps they don’t even remember it (it was three minutes out of four years of school), and if so, will it be *my* bringing it up that causes the discomfort?  I have rarely recalled that skit in the decades since high school (I’ve rarely had reasons to do so); still, every ten years or so something sparks that memory, along with my regret for participating in something “comedic” that essentially amounted to punching down.

I don’t know who was responsible for the skit – was it a sketch the cheerleaders had been taught at cheer camp, or did they hear about it from another school’s pep squad?  The head cheerleader was a girl I’d known since junior high, although not well – I knew “of” her more than I knew her (we hung with different academic and friend groups).  We became better acquainted two+ decades after high school, and I was delighted to discover that she is one of the most life-positive, human rights-affirming, feminist, pro-woman, pro-people people I know – a person who would now renounce that skit (if she’d even remember it). Yet another example of how anyone can get caught up in the moment, in a “joke” that might not be so funny….   [8]

 

 

While such an organization was unimaginable when I was in high school, I did a search on the subject and, yee haw!, there is a GSA club in the Santa Ana school district (although, this is not their logo, and the club is now the QSA ).

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [9]

“Religion tries to give us maps of sexuality that are no better than
 a 2,000-year-old map of my hometown.”

( Darrel Ray, Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality )

 

 

*   *   *

May you make it a goal to avoid self-philanthropy;
May you update both the physical and emotional maps of your hometown;
May you accept the fact that life is composed of possible hazards;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Which is most anyone with an EQ greater than their inseam.

[2] due to finishing up with The Kitchen Remo That Ate Our Brains®

[3] The person suing was not mentioned in all of the reports I read, but it is part of the public record now, and I must confess that a part of me wants her to be shamed for this.  I’m sorry she injured her leg; I’m sorry for any person who inures themselves in any way, but sorry does not equal, “someone else’s fault/someone else pays.”

[4] My vote for term of the year…the year is young, I realize.

[5] To call it a plot would be too ambitious.

[6] The student they recruited for that role basically played himself.  No wardrobe changes for him; he even had the puka shells.

[7] I’m thinking of privately messaging him, and asking for his feedback, which I will include in next week’s post, anonymously and if I have his permission.

[8] Sorry; no footnote here.

[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 Spell I’m Not Casting

October 20, 2023

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

Department Of Yeeeeeesssssss! Thought Of The Week

Dateline:  Tuesday morning 7:45 AM-ish; morning walk, stomping through wet leaves, on what promises to be a blustery day. Listening to a Clear + Vivid podcast episode (Laurel Braitman: Writing Wrongs).  Braitman is a writer whose interests and topics include grief, mental health and medicine, and the importance of self-expression and storytelling, especially for doctors and others working “on the frontlines of humanity.

At the end of every C+V podcast, host Alan Alda asks his guests seven quick questions, all connected with the concept of communication.  When he asked Braitman question #6, What gives you confidence?  She answered that being outside, in nature; “non-human nature” gives her confidence, and moiself  was intrigued by the way she phrased it:

“I never feel better than when I’m walking through a forest, with no mirror.”

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Surprising Moiself  By Honoring This Dead Celebrity

That would be Suzanne Somers, who died this week, on the day before her #77 birthday.

Among Somers’ many ventures in life, her Wikipedia bio lists actor, author, businesswoman, and “health spokesperson.”  Let moiself  get that last, dubious moniker out of the way.  I don’t know whether or not that title was self-proclaimed, but Health personified certainly didn’t ask Somers to speak for or represent her, in any way.  And Somers’ crazy-ass nonsense controversial stands on the risks and efficacies of bioidentical hormone replacement therapy, her conspiracy-laden critique of the ACA/“Obama care” (a “socialist Ponzi scheme,” really?)   [1]  and promotions of alternative cancer treatments raised the red flags among people who have studied those issues for decades – read: scientists, doctors, medical researchers – people who actually know what they are talking about.  (note: Somers died of a recurrence of breast cancer, for which she had refused the recommended chemotherapy).   [2]

However, she had moiself’s  admiration for two things: her ground-breaking (at the time) fight for salary equity, and her sense of humor.  As per the former, Somers is best known for playing Chrissy Snow, the (not-quite-so) Dumb Blonde®  on the sitcom Three’s Company.  TC was one of the highest rated TV shows in the late 70’s early 80’s, due in most part to the interplay of the three lead actors, and in particular, the between Somers’ and John Ritter’s characters.  When it was time for contract re-negotiations in season 5,  Somers demanded an increase in salary to match what co-star Ritter was making: $150,000 per episode (her salary was $30k/episode).  Nothing against Ritter, but he did not have five times the screen time nor five times as many lines to memorize as Somers – who had at least five times the magazine covers and other publicity ventures for the show.  Nevertheless, he was being paid *five times* what she was, for doing the same thing: costarring on a sitcom.

 

Sound familiar, ladies?

 

Those In Charge Of Such Things® (the network execs) set an example of what happens to women who seek salary equity: they offered Somers a $5k salary increase…and eventually fired her.  Somers went on to score other acting gigs and ascend the throne of informercials and entrepreneurship – she hawked everything from jewelry, clothing (the “Three-Way Poncho,”  [3]  skin care products….  Most memorably, she became the spokeswoman for the toning muscle exercise devices with the memorable names of the Thighmaster and the Buttmaster.  Her promotion of the latter was responsible for my admiration of her humorous timing.

 

 

In the early 90’s, when Somers was promoting the Buttmaster, she took the device everywhere with her. She promoted it on talk shows, in interviews, etc., even when she was doing the gig to ostensibly promote some other aspect of her life (e.g., her Las Vegas stage act). This was also around the time when then Pope John Paul II was touring the United States.  I remember reading about her interview with a reporter who, knowing Somers was raised Catholic, asked Somers what she would do if she were invited to meet the Pope – would she bring along the…uh…exercise device?  Somers said that she would.  Okay, the reporter pressed, but what would she do if the Pope noticed the device and asked her what it was?  Her reply:

“I’d say, ‘It’s a Buttmaster, Your Holiness.’ ”

 

“I swear to God, ‘Buttmaster.’ ”

 

*   *   *

Department Of The War I’m Not Avoiding Writing About

Except that I kinda/sorta am…because it makes me want to abandon all hope; because it makes moiself  want to apply a Buttmaster to the craniums of some very sincere, well-meaning, rubbish -spouting people, when I hear their responses to Israel’s response to the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians.

“…excellent English translations of both the original Hamas Covenant and its successor can easily be found on the internet.

… the original covenant spells out clearly Hamas’s genocidal intentions. Accordingly, what happened in Israel on Saturday is completely in keeping with Hamas’s explicit aims and stated objectives….

The covenant opens with a message that precisely encapsulates Hamas’s master plan…the document proclaims, ‘Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it’….

After some general explanatory language about Hamas’s religious foundation and noble intentions, the covenant comes to the Islamic Resistance Movement’s raison d’être: the slaughter of Jews. ‘The Day of Judgement will not come about,’ it proclaims, ‘until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.’ ”

( “Understanding Hamas’s Genocidal Ideology:  A close read of Hamas’s founding documents clearly shows its intentions.”
The Atlantic, 10-10-23 )

Truth#1: It is possible for reasonable, good-hearted folks to hold multiple opinions and feelings about this war; it is possible to empathize with a repressed minority, and realize that the injustices experienced by the Palestinians are a breeding ground for violent zealots to recruit hearts and minds to promote and carry out acts of terrorism.

Truth #2: The latter does not excuse the former; never never.  NEVER.

Still, the foreboding admonition (variously attributed to leaders, from President JFK to  MLK, Jr.) comes to mind:

“Those who make peaceful change impossible,
make violent change inevitable.”

I have strong opinions as to the wrongness, both morally and strategically, of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, and have been frustrated for – crap, how old am I? – for as long as I can remember,   [4]  about the fact that the so-called leadership on both sides of the Israel/Palestine dispute attains and maintains power by fomenting fear of and hatred for The Other.  Each side also appeals to their respectively held tenets of their so-called Divine Right to occupy that disputed part of the world.  Neither side seems to fully comprehend that the *only* true security for both sides, for all sides, will be peace.

 

 

But, although left-leaning moiself  has done as much as I can to avoid exposure to such things, I still have heard and read about leftist groups and individuals declaring themselves pro-Palestinian in ways that seem to excuse, via “understanding,” the terrorist attacks by Hamas.  Again, I have been trying to avoid most of this butt-frostingly naive rhetoric, and cringe with embarrassment on behalf of those who lack enough self-awareness to know what they are supporting, when I hear them sanitize the barbarity of the Hamas terrorist attacks as, “anti-colonial resistance.”

To those who think they are supporting a repressed/colonized people: do not fool yourself for one moment into thinking that Hamas is pro-Palestinian.  Palestinians suffer greatly under Hamas.

Poor Palestinians; they can’t catch a break.  While “Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip continued to face Israel’s oppression, domination, fragmentation and segregation under its brutal occupation and apartheid,” the Palestinian authorities continue to “…heavily restrict freedom of expression, association and assembly,” and hold “scores of people in arbitrary detention and subjected many to torture and other ill-treatment,” have carried out executions and committed war crimes, such as those in 2022 during three days of fighting with Israel, when Hamas used “…unguided rockets in populated civilian areas and killing at least seven Palestinian civilians.”    [5]

 

 

Good people of the Earth:  absolutely, advocate for the right of Palestinians to be able to have a homeland and to determine their own destiny.  And absolutely *open your eyes* and know that the radical régime of Hamas will have none of the latter, for anyone, least of all their own people, whom they oppress under the guise of governing.

What are the values you want to support, for all people, everywhere?

 * Civil rights; women’s rights; LGBTQ rights?

* Freedom of – and *from* –  religion?

* Democratic enfranchisement of all citizens?

* The right of children – boys *and* girls –  to be educated
(in subjects other than memorizing the Quran and Islamic doctrine)?

* The right of all people to live in peace?

Hamas supports None. Of. That.

Hamas supports Islamism, and sharia law.   [6]  But just not any kind of Islamism – it must be *their* flavor (Hamas are Sunni, and they have harassed and assaulted Palestinian Muslims who are Shia).

With Hamas, as with other extremist groups, the world is entirely binary.   [7]      You must be Muslim – and not even being Muslim is enough – you must be the right kind of Muslim,  [8]  you must *their* kind – or you are an infidel, worthy of death.

 

 

 

“If you’re an LGBTQ+ parent, you should worry about Hamas gunning down your kids. Did that get your attention? Sounds outrageous, doesn’t it? Guess what? Hamas feels the same way about LGBTQ+ people and their families as they do about Israelis. Let me make this crystal clear: If an LGBTQ+ family moved into Gaza, Hamas would kill them. LGBTQ+ Palestinians are afraid to let their families know they are gay for fear that they will be murdered. Many have been killed — or successfully escaped — as reported in PGN and in media around the world.

Hate is hate.

Like many of you watching the carnage in Israel this week, my sorrow and outrage were too much to bear. Seeing the bloodshed of toddlers having their throats slit; pictures of mothers, children, and Holocaust survivors being kidnapped; and whole villages being gunned down was more than any civilized person should witness. But it’s not just Israelis that Hamas hates. They hate you as well. And when I say ‘you,’ I mean ‘LGBTQ+ people.’ Much like how they feel about Israel, they believe we should not exist as well.

Yet, there are members of our community who are so full of self-hate or are so masochistic that they would love the person that would kill them? They praise Hamas and make apologies for their actions this week. Some go as far as to support what Hamas did this week. Think about that: Supporting the kidnapping of a woman who survived the Holocaust. Supporting an organization that wants, and has always wanted, the genocide of an entire race.”

( “Hamas hates you as well,” Philadelphia Gay News, 10-11-23 )

 

 

As I type this, the world awaits Israel’s responses,  short and long term.  Hamas gave no warning before their assaults upon Israeli civilians, because civilian carnage was what Hamas intended.  The Israeli government and military will go after Hamas – they *have to* go after Hamas.  Sadly but inevitably, there will be heavy civilian Palestinian casualties, despite Israel’s warning for civilians to evacuate.  The Hamas operatives will embed/hide among the civilian populace of their own people, because that’s what terrorists do.

 

 

A day or so after the Hamas attack I saw that someone had posted the above, an “inspirational” picture on FB – a picture which has been making its way around social media.  The picture showed three tween-age-ish boys, each looking somewhat awkwardly into the camera (as in, “my parents made me do this”), each dressed in the garb of and/or holding icons of their respective family’s religion:   [9]  Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, the three monotheistic faiths which have historical ties to Jerusalem.   Somewhere in the text accompanying the first post moiself  saw was a request for “prayers for peace.”

Yeah, knock yourself out hearing those prayers, Yaweh, Jesus, and Allah.  Because that’s been working so well for seventy-five years.   [10]

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of If I Were A Witch And Had The World’s Most Powerful Wand
And The Greatest Spell-Casting Ability In History…

I’d wave my wand in the direction of the Middle East while muttering, Absurdum religioso evanesce, and turn all of its hatred-holding residents into a bucket full of gentle, contented baby sloths.

 

 

*   *   * 

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week    [11]

 

( Luke 12: 49-52 for context )

 

*   *   *

May you walk through a forest with no mirrors;
May you never excuse barbarity, even when enacted on behalf of the oppressed;
May you sieze the opportunity to say, “It’s a Buttmaster, Your Holiness;”
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] see The New Republic’s  Susanne Sommers is a dangerous medical hack for an entertaining summary of her stands on those issues.

[2] She did, however, allow some “conventional” treatment of her disease, including radiation therapy.

[3] Does that sound vaguely… suggestive…or is it just moiself ?

[4]  “As in, why is this fucking mess still such a fucking mess?!?!?!”  And in my less noble moments, I confess to having thoughts like “Put a dome over the entire area, let those who want/agree to live together in peace get out, and enclose the others and let them hate themselves to death and leave the rest of the world out of their violence and chaos….”

[5] Amnesty International, Palestine (state of).

[6] Islamism in the Gaza Strip (Wikipedia) The Islamic group Swords of Truth threatened to behead female TV broadcasters if they didn’t wear strict Islamic dress. “We will cut throats, and from vein to vein, if needed to protect the spirit and moral of this nation,” their statement said.

[7] And good luck being “gender queer,” or political or cultural queer, in that world – they allow for no such gray areas in sexuality (or just about any aspect of life). They will, however, allow for a red area, which will be around your throat or other parts of your body, after you are executed for “moral turpitude” (the Hamas term for homosexuality).

[8] Sunni, and not Shia, Whabbi, Salafi, Berelvi, Sufi, or Deobandiite….

[9] Notice I don’t say, “*his* faith…even though there is a 90+% chance those boys will take on the rites and superstitions of their parents, especially in that part of the world.  I think it’s a form of child abuse, to declare a child is a certain religion, when, realistically, children have no say in it, no independent choice in the matter.  It’s equally abusive/absurd to say, that an 11-year-old boy is a Republican, when he is a child of two registered Republican parents.

[10] The modern state of Israel was established by a UN resolution in 1948.

[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 S-Words I’m Not Mispronouncing

January 14, 2022

Robyn Parnell annoyances, books & magazines, current events, exercise & fitness, extended family, family life, friends, hiking, nature, Oregon, Recreation, school, science, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , Comments Off on The S-Words I’m Not Mispronouncing

Department Of Starting The New Year With A Memory Of Teacher Appreciation

Someone once lost an argument with me….

 

 

No; really.

Someone once lost an argument with me….

 

Who does she think she is, ME ?!?

(hint: this is called, foreshadowing)

I’ll try again.

Someone once lost an argument with me re the correct the answer to the question, “What is the USA’s ‘National Pastime’?'”  Someone said the answer was baseball; moiself  pointed out that our national pastime is criticizing other people’s parenting skills.  [1]  Someone began his rebuttal, then quickly conceded.

Another easy target for critique is K-12 schoolteachers. I recently ran across some grousing about teachers, which caused me to reflect upon how it is so easy – too easy – to look back and criticize schools and teachers, to parse what they neglected to do, or what they did do, but did wrongly or inadequately.    [2]   I wanted to take a different tack, to start the new year.  And so, here is A Good Thing ® which happened to me, when I was in grade 3, courtesy of select staff members of Wilson Elementary School.

 

“I have to have that Parnell girl in my class?  Give me a minute while I check my Valium supply….”

 

Background info (as in, a memory spark):  Dateline: a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away (college, late 1970s).  I was out to dinner with my Boyfriend. In a tender moment ® and apropos of something I cannot now recall, BF reached across the table, used his index finger to brush a strand hair off of my forehead, and said he’d noticed that, sometimes when I was tired and/or had something cold to drink  (I was drinking a glass of ice water at the time   [3]  ), I spoke with a soft lisp. BF said he found that little tic of mine to be “adorable.”

I thought he was nucking futs, and told him so.

 

 

What was he talking about – nobody had ever said anything like that to me?!  For some reason, moiself  was…not pleased. But I asked a couple of close friends, who confirmed BF’s observation.  The next night I telephoned my parents, and my mother filled me in.

“Oh, I haven’t thought of that in years – don’t you remember?” she began.

Up until age eight or nine I apparently spoke with a slight lisp. I say “apparently” because I have no recollection of having done so.  But after the afore-mentioned memory spark inspired me to phone home, my mother confirmed that, yes, I’d spoken with a “minor” lisp as a child.  Mom said that they (my parents) had consulted with my early teachers (grades K-2), who advised *against* giving me any speech treatment or therapy. Their reasoning was that I was an early and confident reader, a “social leader” among the other students,   [4]  and a straight A student. In other words, my lisp did not seem to be an impediment in my life. It was barely obvious to adults, and I wasn’t teased about it by other children.  Why risk singling me out and making me feel like there was something wrong with me?

However, my third-grade teacher advocated for speech therapy, which my parents agreed to. Thus, for a couple of months I got excused from class, twice a week in the afternoon, to go to a special group therapy meeting, with other kids in the school who also lisped.

Wait a minute, Mom, seriously? Wouldn’t I remember this?

It took me a moment, and then I had the face-palming realization:

Holy Misarticulated sibilants –THAT was speech therapy?!?!?

 

 

I had completely forgotten about that group.

Indeed, for a period of a little less than two months, third-grader moiself  got to leave class a couple of times a week, during afternoon reading sessions, to join a group of four or five other kids (all of them younger than I and in the first or second grades), and we got to play board games.

As the memory came back, I recalled thinking at the time that the games were somewhat childish – but, hey, it got me out of class and doing something different.  Also, my teacher and the nice young woman (the speech therapist, although I didn’t know that that’s what she was) who ran the games acted like it was an honor to be chosen for the group.

The games consisted of the participant students rolling dice and hopping their game tokens around a game board.  When you landed on certain squares you had to draw a card from the pile of cards next to that square, and pronounce the words or describe the pictures and/or actions being depicted on the cards – all of which…hmmm…started with an S, or sometimes a Z or Th  (“Three sealions are serving seaweed soup and sandwiches to Sally.“)   The speech therapist looking on would make some comments about pronunciation, but after the first few sessions she mostly hung back, as the students began to correct one another.  And then we’d get candy, or some kind of prize.

 

 

Here is where the Teachers  [5]  Doing Their Job Right ® comes in.

I’ve heard other adults tell of how they (or their children) were embarrassed for needing special help in school – whether for speech or physical or academic impediments – in part because of how they were singled out and/or removed from class to receive the tutoring they needed.  Not only did I have no shame whatsoever in going to (what I did not realize was) speech therapy, I thought it was yet another privilege I was given, like being able to go to The Back Of The Class without asking for my teacher’s permission.

The Back Of The Class, consisting of a table and two bookshelves, was the class’s mini-library.  Those students who finished their work early during individual project times (and who had been deemed by the teacher to be mature enough to self-monitor their behavior) could get up from their desks, quietly go to the back of the room, and take whatever book they wanted from the library back to their desk.

 

 

I consistently finished my in-class assignments earlier than the other students. My teacher noted this early on in the school year; she also noted how I got easily bored (and prone to mischief involving distracting my peers) when I had nothing to do.  She wisely instituted the “class library policy,” and so I got to read Kon Tiki (for what seemed like 20 times) and other adventure stories, instead of just sitting in my seat fidgeting while my classmates finished their math worksheets, handwriting practice, etc.

My teacher had already enlisted me in helping other students with their multiplication tables and spelling lists; it was an easy leap for moiself  to think that the speech therapy board games were yet another way in which I was being recruited to help Other Kids ®.  The teacher’s and therapist’s deft handling of the situation – aided in part by my own cluelessness – had me thinking that I was getting rewarded for academic success by being able to leave class –  *not* having to stay after class, or miss part of recess or lunch break – and go play games (even if it was with other kids who talked funny).

 

*   *   *

Departments Of One Of The Word’s Cruelest Ironies

BTW: Whose brilliant idea was it, for the word lisp to have an s in it?

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Keeping The Relationship Fresh,
Chapter 198 In A Never-Ending Series

Dateline: January 2; MH and I go for a “Second Day”   hike  [6]  at the newly opened Chehalem Ridge Nature Reserve. The reserve is home to upland forests, oak woodlands wetlands and other habits, and its ten miles of intersecting trails offers several lovely views of the Tualatin Valley, Mt. Hood, and other Willamette Valley/Portland Metro area sights.  The area’s recent snowfalls were an added hiking bonus (read: a challenge, re icy trails), and were a good backdrop for other kinds of nature observations, such as this picture MH took, and posted on FB:

 

MH’s caption: “Can anyone identify this scat with a size 13 shoe for scale?”

 

MH received comments, ranging from helpful to guffaw-worthy, in response to his question.  The science/biology-minded folks got into comments re color and texture, while others just enjoyed the possibility for thinly-disguised poop jokes.

Moiself’s contributions included:

– It’s slightly greenish, with the striations that may be… Plant matter?… Fur? But it’s not pellets so it’s not a deer or other ungulate
– Our biology-trained daughter (who has also worked with big cats) thinks it’s bobcat scat, and that the striations are fur, not plant matter.

 Other scoops on the (presumed) poop:

– The tapered end and size makes me think Coyote.
The green is odd, was it near a wetland?
-To me it looks like a cat’s fur ball hack…
which would explain the fur and greenish liquid oozing.

Then, this past Monday morning, I saw that MH had made an addition to his post:

“I tried googling for bobcat hair balls. There’s a video of a bobcat bringing one up, but I didn’t come across any good pictures. There was this lengthy page that includes stories of domestic vs bobcat….”

To which moiself  had to reply:

“I tried googling for bobcat hair balls.”
Now, there’s an afternoon well spent.

I have heard that *gentle* teasing can keep a relationship young.   [7]  That may be debatable, but surely one of the more fulfilling aspects of a decades-long relationship is discovering something that you are surprised to know about your partner. Never would I have predicted, as a new bride over thirty-some years ago, that a sentence containing the phrase “…googling for bobcat hairballs” would ever be used by my beloved.

 

 

*   *   *

Punz For The Day
Scat Edition

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

Why did the Packy the elephant 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 any one.

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.   [8]

 

 

*   *   *

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.

 

 

*   *   *

May you have a legitimate reason for “googling hairballs;”
May you cherish memories of a really good teacher;
May you read a series of Chuck Norris jokes that makes you laugh so hard
you fear a proverbial pants-wetting session may ensue;

 

Chuck Norris peed here.

 

…and may the (continent) hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] All together now: specifically, mothers.

[2] I am not in anyway implying that teachers should be immune from critique…and I have *plenty* of I-can’t-believe-they-did-this examples from my own life as a student, who had to deal with massive teacher fails.

[3] His theory was that the ice numbed my tongue, making it easy for my mouth and tongue to slip back into my former lisp, which I was subconsciously controlling…or something like that.

[4] Is that teacher-speak for, “bossy?”

[5] I include the speech therapist in that category.

[6]  “First Day Hikes are part of a nationwide initiative led by America’s State Parks to encourage people to get outdoors.  On New Year’s Day, hundreds of free, guided hikes will be organized in all 50 states….” (from “First Day Hikes,” American Hiking Society )

[7] That, and appreciation – or at least toleration – of fart jokes.  And, this should go without saying (so I’ll type it,) farts.

[8] 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.

The Heroes I’m Not Worshipping

December 3, 2021

Robyn Parnell community, extended family, family life, friends, hiking, Holidays, Holy Shit!, making fun of Norwegians and/or the Irish, Me so happy, nature, Oregon, science, travel, Wow, YEE HAW!, Yikes!, Zoo , , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Heroes I’m Not Worshipping

Department Of Holy Mother Of Romulus And Remus –
I Saw An Effin’ Wolf

Dateline: Wednesday, circa 12:45 pm, Oregon highway 26, headed west (toward the coast), at about milepost 15 or 16. The movement from the north (right) side of the road caught my eye; in the micro-mico-millisecond it took me to register the movement I took my foot off the accelerator and thought,

Oh, great, a deer is about to spring across the road.

There was no springing. That micro-micro movement morphed into an elegant running creature, crossing the two-lane highway, a mere 20-30 feet ahead of me.  The animal was the size of a deer but definitely not a deer; my mind immediately tried to register, “coyote,” except that I’ve seen plenty of coyotes running across roads (or fields) or loping on/crossing hiking trails ahead of me. This canid was the size of a deer and had long, thin legs and different body posture from a coyote (its long tail was horizontal to its spine, not tucked, as a coyote’s would be).  I’ve never seen a canid run like that, the way it held its large, majestic head, so very upright, like one of those carousel animals….

 

The wolf’s head was like this, vis-à-vis its posture…but nothing remotely zebra-ish otherwise

 

Yes, moiself  knows I am babbling right now, but holy fuck, this is the first wolf I’ve seen this close  [1]   and I am (still, two days later) gobsmacked.  Oh, but for a camera mounted on my car’s front bumper!

There are wolves in Oregon.  Many (but not all) of them are tagged (for tracking/ study purposes), and most live in the eastern part of the state, although wolves can and do roam…and a few of Oregon’s have roamed as far as So Cal .  The one which crossed the road in front of me appeared to be heading toward Tillamook county…looking for a cheese fix, perhaps?

*   *   *

Department Of Life Is So Unfair

Yet another of life’s inequities to ponder:

If you donate a kidney, everybody loves you and you’re a total hero.

But try donating five kidneys and suddenly everyone is yelling
and the police get involved….

 

*   *   *

Department Of Sunday In The Park With George

Tuesday In The Park With Robyn

 

 

Apologies to the late Stephen Sondheim.  I’m sure the opening to moiself’s  blog would have been better if Sondheim had composed it, given the complex polyphony which was his style.    [2]   May we all take a moment to pause to remember and appreciate he-who-was-arguably among the greatest of American lyricists and composers.

 

Bravo, Stephen.

 

 

And now, three vignettes of my Tuesday In The Park.

Dateline: Tuesday, circa 7: 15 am.  Which way shall I go this morning? I decide to do the to-and-from to a light rail station which, given my circuitous route, will be a 3-3.5 mile jaunt.  I take one of the trails leading through a neighborhood park, when what to my wondering eyes did appear

 

 

I pause to document the odd (to me) sight, then post the picture on my Facebook page, soliciting explanations:

“OK; what’s the story here? A fire extinguisher, about 25 yards from the nearest house, under a tree, in a bunch of wet leaves?”

There were some creative hypotheses.  I liked my daughter Belle’s offering best:

“They were deep frying a turkey and forgot to bring that back in.”

Vignette the Second

Department Of Appreciating A Form Of Reasoning Which
Is The Process Of Drawing A Conclusion
Based On Premises Generally Assumed To Be True;
As In, Using A Logical Premise To Reach A Logical Conclusion.

Same morning walk, 20 minutes later: now the sun is trying to rise above the cloudy horizon. I’m taking a winding road through a neighborhood adjacent to the park, a road I traverse at least once a week on my way to the walkway which leads to the afore-mentioned light rail station.  As moiself  rounds a corner I exchange good morning greetings with a couple I have come to know by sight.  They and their three canine companions are out for (what I assume is) the morning ritual of dog owners everywhere: that which moiself  thinks of as the “P Five” – the Puppy People’s Predawn Poop Perambulation. ®

It appears my presumptions are spot-on.  A the couple passes by on the other side of the street I notice that the (presumed) husband has two plastic bags of (presumed) doggie-doody swinging from a strap around his wrist.

Ain’t deductive reasoning grand?  Truly, ’tis a cognitive process we often take for granted… until we meet a #45 conspiracy theorist who wouldn’t know the concept of deductive reasoning from his ass if it were wrapped in a MAGA hat and sticking out of a hole in the ground.   [3]

 

 

Vinaigrette the Third

Department Of Later That Same Morning…

I have reached the station and am headed home.  I am walking on a pathway near the athletic fields west of the station. Yet another dog-walking couple with whom I have an I Hi-there-we-pass-each-other-at-least-once-a-week relationship    [4]   are walking toward me.  As we approach each other we all look skyward at the same time, toward the sounds of at least five different, low-flying, scraggly V formations of Canada geese, calling out to their comrades as they head southeast to…wherever.

The man points his finger upward and says,

“That’s a very nice sound, isn’t it?”

Moiself  points to my rain-or-shine hat, then at their respective visors, and replies:

“Yes, it is.
And it’s very nice – and very smart – of us to have hats on
when we’re walking underneath flying birds.”

The three of us chuckle as we pass one another, our mirth punctuated by the sound of…uh, plops… from overhead landing on the grass on either side of the walkway.

 

“I hate it when they wear protection.”  “Yeah; we’ll get ’em next time.”

 

Department Of Belated Content Warnings

Moiself  just realized I missed the opportunity to apply a content warning to the previous segments: two of my three park vignettes involved a mention of shit “animal droppings.”

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Kill Your Heroes

Dateline: a week or so ago, MH and I were discussing a recent podcast we’d both (separately) listened to, in which one of the stories presented involved an immigrant Chinese worker exploited by a railroad baron.  We somehow segued to the subject of power, as in, having power over the lives of others, and how easy it is to draw lines and reach binary conclusions, particularly when we judge the wielding of power in the past.  Railroad tycoon = bad.  Chinese railroad worker = good.

It’s an interesting subject to ponder: how would the immigrant railroad worker have behaved if he’d been the one with the power?  Perhaps he was downtrodden at work; what about when he returned home where, as a man in a patriarchal society, he had power over others simply by virtue of his gender?  Would he have shared his power with his wife and daughters? Would he have encouraged their own dreams and aspirations, or subjected them to foot binding and/or denied them access to education as per the other cultural torture norms of his time and place?

 

 

No matter what our intentions, moiself  thinks it’s healthy to keep a certain supposition in mind:   [5]  that most if not all of us may be just a couple of rungs on the authority ladder away from being the despots our descendants might denigrate.

Moiself  remembers the less-than-positive reaction I have garnered over the years, when I’ve been asked the question, “Who are your heroes?” and I’ve replied, truthfully, “I have no heroes.”

There are historical figures whom I admire for specific things they did: causes they fought for, injustices they tried to right, etc.  That said, I do not believe in having “heroes” because it seems that we – and by “we” I mean, every human being but moiself  ( ahem, I mean of course, every human being *including* moiself  ) – do not know how to apply perspective – that is, how to consider so-called heroic people for the flawed human beings they are.

 

 

Some great scientist will – someday very soon, I hope – discover the key to fixing global warming.  But, years later when it is revealed that she was, say, consistently rude to waiters and others in the service industry and disparaged anyone whom she considered to be “beneath” her, our descendants will argue over whether or not such a practitioner of classism should have a high school named after her…and should the Nobel committee rescind the prize they bestowed upon her?

Early 20th century activist Margaret Sanger was inspired (in part by her own family history) to work to liberate women from early death and abject poverty due to their lack of bodily autonomy which consigned them to lives of serial breeding.  Sanger withstood withering criticism, ostracization, imprisonment, physical attacks and threats to her life, from individuals and powerful organizations (read: the Catholic church) alike, not only for advocating birth control, but also for simply teaching women about their own bodies and reproductive cycles – which was illegal!

Sanger strongly believed that the ability to control family size was crucial to ending the cycle of women’s poverty. But it was illegal to distribute birth control information. Working as a visiting nurse, she frequented the homes of poor immigrants, often with large families and wives whose health was impaired by too many pregnancies, miscarriages, or in desperation botched abortions. Often, too, immigrant wives would ask her to tell them “the secret,” presuming that educated white women like Sanger knew how to limit family size. Sanger made it her mission to 1) provide women with birth control information and 2) repeal the federal Comstock Law, which prohibited the distribution of obscene materials through the mails, and regarded birth control information as such.
( “Margaret Sanger,” womenshistory.org )

 

 

Margaret Sanger also made some comments which, taken out of time and context, are used as a cudgel – particularly during political campaigns by conservative, anti-abortion Republicans – to discredit Sanger and to brand her (and, by association, Planned Parenthood and any organization supporting birth control and women’s reproductive autonomy) –  as  “racist.” 

Sanger’s stated mission was to empower women to make their own reproductive choices. She did focus her efforts on minority communities, because that was where, due to poverty and limited access to health care, women were especially vulnerable to the effects of unplanned pregnancy. As she framed it, birth control was the fundamental women’s rights issue. “Enforced motherhood,” she wrote in 1914, “is the most complete denial of a woman’s right to life and liberty.”

That’s not to say that Sanger didn’t also make some deeply disturbing statements in support of eugenics, the now-discredited movement to improve the overall health and fitness of humankind through selective breeding…. She was, of course, not alone in this viewpoint: In the 1920s and 1930s, eugenics enjoyed widespread support from mainstream doctors, scientists and the general public.
( “What Margaret Sanger Really Said About Eugenics and Race,” Time, 10-14-16 )

What Margaret Sanger may or may not have thought about eugenics does not change her ground-breaking accomplishments in helping to unshackle generations of women from  lives of compulsory brood mare-ism.

 

 

Likewise, Nelson Mandela deserves high praise for his tenacious fight against the immorality of apartheid.  But if you elevate the man to a myth, you’ll be disappointed to find that your great moral hero sacrificed his family life to his causes (and expected them to do the same), did almost nothing to alleviate or even acknowledge the growing AIDS crisis in his country (he later admitted to being “shy” re talking about a sexually transmitted disease), and upheld and instituted economic policies which have kept poor South Africans living in much the same conditions as when they were under apartheid, while the country has had to live with “…growing insecurity, violence, and crime.”

The more you know about historical figures, the more material you will have for being disappointed in or by them.  They were creatures of their time, as we are, of ours.  Even the most prescient of us will be judged harshly by future generations.

So, admire the ideals and actions  [6]   of justice warriors – certainly!   But just as certainly, never worship the creatures behind the causes.  Don’t idolize *people;*  do venerate the high *principles* for which those flawed people have fought.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of A Blast From Christmas Past

Dateline: Southern California, in the late 1960s – early 1970s.  For some reason, for a few years in the Westchester area of Los Angeles the “in” holiday décor was having a giant (as in, eight to ten foot tall) red wooden candle in your front yard.  [7]   I’m 100% sure how the fad began; I seem to recall my Uncle Joe telling me that some guy had made one for his yard, his neighbors admired it and he made some more for them, and then other home carpenters/crafty-types figured it out, and it took off from there.

When visiting our LA relatives (my aunt and uncle, Gwen and Joe Baker, and their five children) during the Christmas season my family would drive around their neighborhood at night, just to see the big ass candles.  All of the yard candles had the same setup:  a lone red candle, with a spotlight illuminating the candle from base to the top.  At the base of the candle were wooden letters, painted white, spelling out the name of the family in whose yard the candle stood.  In two or three cases I can recall, the word at the base of the candle was, “Noel” or “Yule,” but for 99% of the candles it was the family name.

Uncle Joe was quite the carpenter hobbyist (one of my favorite creations of his was a motorized wooden Santa and elves display that he put out on the rooftop, every Christmas).  Joe constructed a Christmas yard candle for his family’s front yard, with their surname “Baker” prominently spotlighted.  A few days after my grandmother admired her daughter Gwen’s and SIL Joe’s yard candle, Joe drove down to Santa Ana and installed, in my grandmother’s front yard, the candle he had made for her.  Thus, Edna Gertrude Hole   [8]   became the only person in Santa Ana (as far as we knew) who had an eight-foot-tall red candle in her front yard with a spotlight illuminating her last name.

 

I haven’t been able to find any pictures of the Westchester yard candles.  Think of something like this, only made of wood, with a white top, eight feet tall, in someone’s front yard, with a sign at the base.

 

My grandmother left her yard candle up for that one holiday season.  The day after Christmas she telephoned Joe and asked him to come and fetch it.  The thrill wore off for her, the third or fourth night Edna Hole answered her doorbell – which had been rung by a person who’d been walking or driving by – and found herself listening to a total stranger sharing their concerns regarding her holiday décor:     [9]

“Excuse me, I don’t want to embarrass you, but I think you’ve misspelled, ‘Holy.’ “

*   *   *

Punz For The Day
Heroes-Not-To-Be-Worshipped Edition

Q. Why did Wonder Woman stop checking her email?
A. Her inbox was loaded with Spamazons.   [10]

If Iron Man and Silver Surfer teamed up, would they would be alloys?

Q.  What does Peter Parker say when people ask him what he does for a living?
A.  Web designer.

Have you heard of The Incredible Hulk’s new fashion line?
It’s all the rage.

 

*   *   *

May you see a wolf before you die (but not see it and then…die);
May you applaud the deeds and have forbearance for the deed-doers;
May your holiday yard décor provide confusion and/or entertainment
to passing strangers;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] The wild ones I saw in Alaska were much farther away, and the ones in zoos don’t “count.”

[2] Yeah, but could you hum along to it?

[3] Yes and obviously, I can mangle mix those metaphors with the best of them.

[4] But this couple has only one dog between them…which seems kinda stingy.

[5] This space does not need a footnote.

[6] Should, of course, those ideals and actions be truly admirable, as opposed to ill-considered, rash, or merely attention-seeking.

[7] And then, just three or four years after the fad started, no one put up the candles anymore.  What happened?

[8] Yes, that was her real (married) name.  She was born Edna Gertrude Moran; Hole was her husband’s family surname – apparently, it was prestigious name in the tiny Norwegian town they came from, but in America?  No surprise it never occurred to my mother to keep her birth surname.

[9] I always wondered, why didn’t she just remove her family name, and keep the candle?

[10] That’s enough with the footnotes.

The Certain Color Of Shirt I’m Not Wearing

October 15, 2021

Robyn Parnell are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), community, current events, freethought/humanism, hiking, Isms (religion), movies, music, nature, Oregon, politics, school, science, travel, TV, Wow, YEE HAW!, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Certain Color Of Shirt I’m Not Wearing

Department Of Jeff Bezo’s Minions Do Not Know Star Trek: TOS Lore

As delighted as moiself  was to see that Captain Kirk ( William Shatner ) finally  [1]   got to go into space (via Wednesday’s Blue Origin spacecraft ), I was gobsmacked to view the pictures being posted online, of Shatner and his fellow Blue Origin crew members.  Shatner was wearing a yellow green shirt; the others wore red shirts.

 

 

Yes, red shirts.   [2]

This is a bad omen, moiself  thought to moiself, before my second thought kicked in:

This *has* to be a photoshopped joke.  And a good one, at that.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Artistic License

Dateline: Saturday mid-morning, hiking in the trails in the hills around the Portland Audubon Sanctuary with MH.  ‘Twas a beautiful day, with that combination of the evergreen fir and leaf-dropping deciduous scenery that seems unique to the Pacific Northwest.  We were pleasantly surprised to have the trail to ourselves.

After our hike I decided to appreciate the port-o-potty in the Audubon parking lot.   Moiself  had left my phone at home; thus, I had to prevail upon MH to take a picture of the drawing someone had done on the inside of the p-o-p door.

The picture, which MH and I dubbed Pizza Man, illustrates the importance of punctuation, and how the lack of it can lead to misunderstandings…or just mysteries.

 

 

Whaddya think? What message was the honeypot vandal artist trying to convey, armed with only his imagination and a black Sharpie ®?

Moiself can think of several possibilities, including:

*  Pizza Man is speaking as a god, who is apologizing for…something.  In which case it should read, “Sorry,” god;

* The artist is apologizing to his god, for having drawn a human face so strangely that it resembles a slice of pizza with eyes and a mouth;

* Pizza Man is the speaker – he is apologizing to his deity for what he has done or is about to do (in the outhouse, or elsewhere)?

* Pizza Man not actually a pizza, but someone who has disfigured himself by consuming so much pepperoni that the little greasy sausage rounds are sprouting on his face, and thus is apologizing to his god for his gluttony;

* The artist is apologizing to anyone who views his drawing and mistakenly thinks it is of a Pizza god.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of The Last Time

“For everything you do, there will be a last time you do it. This is a direct consequence of your mortality.  Because you will someday die, there will be a last time you tie your shoes, pay your taxes, and eat chocolate….

Sometimes people know they’re doing something for the last time. This is the case with the condemned prisoner eating his last meal. More commonly though, people do something without realizing this is the last time they will do it. They instead act on the assumption that they will do the thing again in the future, perhaps hundred of more times.

Along these lines, consider the last time you played hopscotch, the last time you made a phone call with a rotary phone…
Did you realize at the time that it was the last time that you would do those things?  Realize too that’s it’s possible you have eaten chocolate for the last time – I sincerely hope that this isn’t the case, but only time will tell.”
( excerpt from “The Last Time Meditation” )

 

“Like, I’m supposed to take a selfie with *this*?”

 

Can you remember the last time you ____

* wore a diaper instead of “big boy/big girl” pants?
* rode a tricycle when you were a child, before graduating to a two-wheeler bike?
* played hopscotch or tetherball on an elementary school playground?
* aced (or flunked) a high school test?
* told a joke to your (now deceased) grandparent?
* used a rotary telephone to make a call?
* used a typewriter (manual or electric) to type a school paper, or office memo?
* rented a DVD from Blockbuster?
* went to a huge, arena-style concert by your favorite rock band, whose
drummer later died after he choked on his own vomit
members are now either deceased or retired?
* copied a document from your computer onto a floppy disc?

And if you can remember, do you recall thinking, “Hey, what if this is the last time I _____ (ride a tricycle; tell a joke to Grandma….)?”

For the last year or so I’ve been using a meditation app developed by neuroscientist, philosopher, author Sam Harris. The Waking Up  app has a variety of features, including

* a short daily guided meditation (11 – 13 minutes duration)
*  a series of guided meditations on different subjects (Contemplative Action; The Spectrum of Awareness;
Consolations; Meditation for Children….)
* Q & As with Jack Kornfield and other meditation/mindfulness teachers;
* lessons on the fundamentals of meditation
* a simple meditation timer, which you can set for any length

When I use the app,    [3]   moiself  typically either listens the daily meditation, or does my own meditation with the app’s timer.  Earlier this week I scrolled through the app’s practices, and one title caught my eye:  a series of twenty-two short talks – “The Stoic Path, by William B. Irvine – on the philosophy and practical applications of stoicism.

 

 

Philosophy professor and author Irvine offers a modern take on stoicism, which we philosophy laypersons often misunderstand as per our limited experience with the subject (15 minutes on Marcus Aurelius in our Intro to Philosophy class, and we’re all experts).  If asked to picture or define a stoic I bet your first thought (along with moiself’s ) would be of a person who is so even-keeled as to be almost detached – someone seemingly unaffected by the downs – and ups – of life.

However, In the philosophical realm, a Stoic is someone who cultivates a world view wherein one’s personal ethics are informed by stoic virtues, logic, and understandings on the natural world.

 

“Please tell me the segue to rotary phones is just around the corner….”

 

I’m at the very beginning (day four) of the series, and am enjoying Irvine’s expositions.  He includes stories from his own personal and family life to illustrate how techniques of stoicism offer a road map  [4]  toward equanimity – by minimizing worry and focusing our mental and emotional efforts on what we can control, by learning how to deal with the inevitable “insults” of grief and loss, and aging, by putting into perspective the temporal and ultimately ephemeral temptations of power, fame and fortune.

Moiself  finds it quite interesting, and also an expanded take on somewhat familiar territory.  The virtues (translate: sound Life advice) espoused by stoicism remind me of Buddhist and mindfulness tenets – from what I’ve listened to so far, there is a good deal of common ground between them.  Check it out, if you’re interested.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Things For Somebody Else To Do

OK, calling all one-panel cartoonists…or anyone who can draw better than I can.  [5]

While listening to The Last Time  moiself  got a picture in my head, of a scenario I thought might make a good comic strip:

A prison guard enters a Death Row prison cell. He places a food tray containing a traditional last meal – grilled steak, fried chicken, a loaded baked potato, and a double hot fudge sundae – in front of a prisoner who is scheduled for execution later that evening.
The prisoner waves off the tray with, “No thanks; I’m watching my cholesterol.”

You’re welcome.

 

This is how my artist’s rendition would turn out.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Musings Apropos Of Nothing

Speaking of getting all philosophical on your ass, I have many questions dealing with the Mysteries of Life ®.  This one is for musician Dave Grohl:

What are Foos?
And why do you devote your exceptional musical talents to fighting them?

 

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Deep Thoughts Continued
Division Of The Existential Crises Of Aging

Why is it that when you’re over age fifty people stop asking you what your favorite dinosaur is?

It’s like they don’t even care anymore.

 

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of A Sentence I Never Thought I’d Be So Happy To Hear

“And if we’re lucky, tomorrow there’ll be dead bodies!”

See footnote   [6] for context.  Or, better yet, use your imagination.

 

 

*   *   *

Pun For The Day
Philosophy Edition

How can you make a philosophy student leave your porch?
Just pay them for the pizza.  [7]

Did you hear about the monk who got a Ph.D. in existential philosophy?
You might say he was a deep friar.

Why can’t kleptomaniacs understand sarcastic philosophical jokes about themselves?
Because they take things literally.

Why is it unwise to place philosophy textbooks in front of a stallion?
Because you shouldn’t put Descartes before the horse.    [8]

 

*   *   *

 

May you uncover the mystery of Port-o-Potty Pizza Man;
May someone ask you what’s your favorite dinosaur;
May you never board a spacecraft manned by a crew of all Redshirts;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] He’s 90.  Really.

[2] Redshirt is a term used by fans of Star Trek to refer to the ST characters who wear red Starfleet uniforms – typically, security guards or other characters who are expendable, and often killed, after having utterred only a line or two of dialogue (or sometimes none at all).

[3] Not quite daily. I’ve other meditation apps which also have timers, guided sessions, ambient music….

[4]  Is that too dated of an analogy?  Maybe I should use, “GPS”?

[5] Which would be anyone who can hold a pencil in their hands. Son K has drawn some good comic strips over the years; maybe I should ask him.

[6] Uttered by the exterminator, whom I affectionately think of as “Rat Man,” as he was explaining how he would be baiting and setting the traps he’d laid in our house’s crawlspace and then returning next day to retrieve the results.  (The traps had been laid down several days ago, baited but not set – this lets the rats [that have invaded our crawlspace] get used to the traps and think that they are a safe source of yummy peanut butter).

[7] No footnote necessary here.

[8] I certainly can’t end this with #6 being the last footnote.

The Blog Post I Wasn’t Planning On

January 8, 2021

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, category-free rants, community, current events, exercise & fitness, extended family, family life, foodie, freethought/humanism, friends, games & puzzles, general ruminations, health & wellness, hiking, Holidays, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), kayak, making fun of lawyers and/or doctors, making fun of Norwegians and/or the Irish, movies, music, nature, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, Recreation, reproductive rights, school, science, sports, The Write Stuff (literary life), theatre, travel, TV, Wow, Yikes!, Zoo , Comments Off on The Blog Post I Wasn’t Planning On

Noteworthy science podcast anecdotes; musings on how we understand, use (and misuse) the term “educated;” wondering how and why some people can believe in the efficacy of intercessory prayer; a bad pun or two; the last Partridge of the Week, etc.  I don’t know if the subjects I had planned to address in today’s post were more profound, but they were certainly more fun, than…this.

As in, What. Happened. On. Wednesday.

“It is my considered judgment that my oath to support and defend the Constitution constrains me from claiming unilateral authority to determine which electoral votes should be counted and which should not.”
(Vice President Mike Pence, 1-6-21, in a letter to members of Congress.  From “Pence defies Trump, says he can’t reject electoral votes,” apnews.com )

“Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done….”
( #45‘s tweet, after Vice President Mike Pence acknowledged he does not have the power to throw out electoral votes )

*   *   *

Someone needs to be shot for insurrection. 

If #45 had the cojones he accused Pence of lacking, he‘d call a press conference, resign, then blow his brains out   [1] on live television.  He‘d get the “biggliest ratings, ever!” which is and always has been his ultimate concern.

*   *   *

 

“Prevoskhodno! This is all going according to plan.”

 

*   *   *

 

How many times did I read or hear, during the last four years,

“Yeah, I know he (#45) is a dick a horrible person as a person, but I’m voting for him because of ______ (conservative policy).”

As friend MM so succinctly put it,

“Everyone who voted for Trump for tax cuts and judges, you own this.”

 

*   *   *

What was it that the anti-Vietnam war protestors chanted as they were beaten by Chicago police in 1968?

“The whole world is watching.”

 

 

And they were.  And we are.

*   *   *

Department Of Get Him Out, Now.  How Can You Not?

Congress: Impeach. Invoke the 25th amendment – #45 is clearly “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”    [2]   Get the SCOTUS to lead a squad of Capitol Police to arrest him.  Whatever it takes.

Please, no cries of, “But we only have to hang on another two weeks, for the good of the country…”

No.

For the good of the country,
he needs to go. Would *anyone else* who had fomented a riot – committed sedition – *not* be held accountable?

For the good of the country,
his legacy, as MH put it, “needs to be appropriate.”

For the good of the country,
we cannot let strongman hooliganism subvert or even delay our democratic processes.

For the good of the country,
we need to show the world – we need to show ourselves – that we have not become another anarchic banana republic our laws and ideals have actual meaning.

And, if he is allowed to just…leave, do you really want any portion of your tax dollars to go to his presidential pension?  $219,000 a year, for the rest of his deplorable life, living among whatever other deplorables can stand to abide with him?   [3]

 

“A Russian dacha or a North Korean apartment – your choice, Comrade.”

*   *   *

May we get the kind of honest, decent, compassionate leadership we need;
May you-know-who finally get what he deserves;
May circumstances allow moiself  to return to “regular programming” next week;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

[1] Not to worry; it’d be a small splatter, considering the target.

[2] Section 4, 25th Amendment to the US Constitution.

[3] There need to be more footnotes, but the only appropriate footnote regarding this deranged disaster of democracy is an unending torrent of FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK !!!

The Dinner With Mel Brooks I’m Not Having

July 3, 2020

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, current events, exercise & fitness, extended family, family life, freethought/humanism, friends, games & puzzles, hiking, movies, music, nature, politics, Recreation, reproductive rights, sports, The Write Stuff (literary life), theatre, TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Dinner With Mel Brooks I’m Not Having

Department Of SpellWalking is Spellbinding

What, you may ask, is this “SpellWalking” thing you’ve been hearing so much about?  And if you haven’t heard about it….

Spellwalking Spellwalking Spellwalking Spellwalking
Spellwalking Spellwalking

…there. Now you have.

You Must Check This Out ®.

Here’s the description of the activity, from the  brilliant   [1]   industrial engineer living in San Francisco who started it.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, I started going on near-daily walks to help combat the monotony of being cooped up indoors all day. To spice things up a bit, I decided to plan my walking routes such that the paths I took formed letters and words. I call this activity SpellWalking. I live in San Francisco, a city favorable to SpellWalking due to the multiple intersecting gridiron street patterns to choose from.

( From the SpellWalking website
Yes, it has I website; it’s a *thing,* y’all)

Check out the grid patterns – they are delightful, and mostly feature San Francisco neighborhood names.

Moiself’s favorite (so far), due to its proximity to greenspaces, is the Haight.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Say What?
Sub-Department Of What Is The Emoji For Your Ears Doing A Double Take?
Division Of Unfortunate Government Employee Names

Dateline: Tuesday; circa 11 am; listening to the car radio while running an errand. I tuned into the Oregon Public Broadcasting channel, to the end of a story announcing the appointment of the man who will be Oregon State University’s 15th president. Current OSU president Ed Ray will step down, to be replaced by F. King Alexander.

 

 

Yep, that’s what I heard – followed by those voices coming from the radio in my own mind, speculating about what form the complaints he (the new OSU president) will receive from those who are unhappy with his leadership:

“That F** King Alexander….”

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Speaking Of How My Brain Works…

I have layperson’s/”hobby” interest in neurology and neuropsychology – in how (scientists think) the brain works.  In my If-I-Had-To-Do-It-All-Over-Again ® mode, I might have pursued neuroscience and/or cognitive psychology-related fields, instead of following the highly lucrative and emotionally satisfying and rewarding batshit crazy “creative” path.

 

 

But I have this one problem   [2]  when it comes to reading articles about neuroscience and behavior and basic cognition. Whenever I read about a certain part of the brain, a part located deep in the temporal lobe and most strongly associated with memory, ’tis difficult for me to get past the name of said brain region.  I’ve learned that moiself cannot take whatever I am reading seriously until I deal with an image that always – as in, every F. King Alexander time – comes to mind.

Here’s what happens: I picture a college campus setting – a university whose student body is comprised solely of herbivorous, semiaquatic ungulate mammals native to sub-Saharan Africa.   And I face that image, appreciate it, and set it aside…until I come to the part in the article which says, in essence, “Let’s explore what we know about the hippocampus…” and I am immediately transported back to that same setting, with moiself  being led on a campus tour by a student guide…

 

“And over on the left is our renowned fine arts center….”

 

One might think that, with the interest in/reading about this neuro-stuff (excuse the fancy-pants, science jargon) I claim to do, moiself might have figured out why my brain does this.  Nah; not gonna go there. I suppose I enjoy it enough that the why doesn’t matter. It’s not something I would want to “fix.”

 

Fraternity rush season at the Hippocampus is intense.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Not All Of The Oldies Are Goodies

Dateline: same as my first lame story highly entertaining anecdote. I switched my car’s radio from the OPB channel to KQRZ, a local station which plays music from the past (aka “oldies”), and I heard a song moiself  hadn’t thought about in years.

Wildfire was popular when I was a certain age. The song had always seemed melodically anemic to me, and I’d never paid much attention to it when it somehow got regular airplay. This time I decided to actually listen to the lyrics, and….wow.

 

“Is that a good wow, or a bad wow?”

 

Wow as in, this dull ditty was a hit song?

The song’s narrator tells the brief tale of a young woman who supposedly died during a blizzard while searching for her escaped pony, “Wildfire.” The song’s narrator is in his cabin or somewhere – we don’t really know – in an early winter storm; an owl has perched outside of his window, which he takes as a sign that Ghostly Dead Girl is calling for him to join her and spend eternity riding her stupid horse lacking the horse sense to NOT run off into a blizzard pony with her.

The End.

Wow  as in, there’s not much to the story, is there?  It’s too insipid to be tragic.

*   *   *

Department Of An Oldie Who Was One Of The Best Of The Goodies

“Mel comes over most every night. We’ll have dinner and watch “Jeopardy!” and “Wheel of Fortune.” After dinner, we’ll watch a movie, if anything good is playing that night. We once said, “Any movie that has the line, ‘Secure the perimeter,’ you know it’s good.”
(” Carl Reiner: Why Van Dyke is the best, Trump the worst and Mel Brooks is a savvy movie critic. ”  USA Today, 5-1-19 )

Goodbye, Carl Reiner.

Who is left among that generation of influential entertainers?  Mel Brooks; Betty White; Norman Lear; Dick Van Dyke?

Reiner leaves behind an impressive body of work and a loving family, but here’s what makes me “grieve” the most, when I think about it:  now that Carl Reiner is gone, who will Mel Brooks have dinner with?

My favorite Carl Reiner-directed movie is “All of Me,” which features wonderful work by actors Lily Tomlin and Steve Martin.  Frail, condescending, wealthy socialite Edwina Cutwater (Lily Tomlin) engages the help of a guru to “transmigrate” her soul upon her death to the body of a healthy young woman. Edwina enlists lawyer Roger Cobb (Steve Martin) to change her will to leave her entire estate to the young woman. Edwina dies within minutes of signing the updated will, but via an ill-timed accident she ends up inhabiting Roger’s body, sharing it with him and controlling his body’s right side. Edwina and Roger are forced to work together to find a way to get her soul out his body, as well as to navigate mundane but essential tasks, as in this scene below, when Roger desperately needs to use the bathroom.

Enjoy…better yet, watch the entire movie, which is surprisingly sweet and sentimental despite its I-am-SO-sure premise.

 

 

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Even Harder To Comprehend Than Cosmic String Theory
Is The “Success” Of Certain Attention Whores Celebrities

Carl Reiner, he of the multiple “slash” talents (comedian slash actor slash writer slash director slash producer….), was more than deserving of the fame and acclaim – and arguably, most importantly, the respect –  which he received over a lifetime (his career spanned seventy-three years!), from both his audience and his show business peers.

And then, we have…oh, shit. I have to type this surname, don’t I, if I’m going to pursue this bizarre reflection?  Let’s just say the name rhymes with lard-ashian.

 

“For F. King Alexander’s sake, just type, ‘Kardashian,’ you big baby.”

 

Moiself  has never seen the Kardashian show. Of course, living in the culture, doing crossword puzzles, standing in line at the grocery store where there’s nothing to look at but the tabloid headlines or the ill-fitting clothing of the guy in front of me and I need to avert my eyes sideways lest they be further assaulted by the worst case of plumber’s crack I’ve ever seen…I can’t really avoid having a rudimentary knowledge of their existence.

And rudimentary will do, because there’s not much to know.  They are famous, for…for what?  For wanting to be famous.

Maybe there’s more to the show than that. Yeah…and maybe Chief Little Bunker-Bitch will join the Black Lives Matter movement and lead protesters in replacing statues of Robert E. Lee with gold-plated vaults containing the entire Spike Lee filmography.

I feel fully comfortable in judging this Show-That-I-Have-Not-Seen, and here is why.  The Kardashians actively and openly seek celebrity, and in my opinion and that of many others who are Smarter And More Educated Than Moiself, ® that in and of itself is the sign of an unbalanced personality and bloated ego.

Kardashians and those like them pursue fame, as opposed to merely tolerating (or even grudgingly accepting) celebrity status as a by-product of something they’ve done, which is the “normal” or usual way fame attaches itself to a person.

Despite my being someone friends and family would describe as being outgoing or extroverted, fame or celebrity – being recognized by strangers – is something I have studiously avoided all my life (my former editors, pushing for me to do more publicity, might snarkily add that avoiding fame was the one aspect of my fiction writing career at which I excelled ). Thus, I am somewhat bemused and mostly appalled by those who actively seek to be in the proverbial glare of the spotlight.

Fame or celebrity comes to you, in most cases, if you do something notable and/or something which brings you to the public’s attention (e.g. in the performing arts).  Not to be confused with the infamy accorded a mass murderer, you may become famous if, for example, you’ve acted in acclaimed movies. Yet, even then, the amount of fame coming your way cannot be determined by a cut and dried formula.  It’s interesting to consider the variables, some having to do with the life a celeb leads, whether they actively sought the limelight outside of their professional lives or desperately tried to avoid it (and thus got more attention for that avoidance), and other factors seemingly random.  Why did the paparazzi ignore a young(er) Sally Field, but pursue Angelina Jolie?  (That answer seems obvious on the surface, but maybe Ms. Field had some really juicy hidden details of her life that a dedicated celebrity snoop could have unearthed). Why have talented, award-winning actors Meryl Streep and Frances McDormand not been subjected to the kind of tabloid attention that talented, award-winning actors Julia Roberts and Jennifer Lawrence received?

However those actors may have played on it or downplayed it, their respective fame is due to actions or accomplishments on their part. Their celebrity is a consequence, not an predecessor, of their careers.

And then you have the reality TV stars – yep, I picked the low hanging fruit that is the Kardashian family – who want celebrity (but will settle for notoriety) first, before they’ve done anything to “merit” it.  It’s back-asswards:  once they have fame…for seeking fame…in order to keep their fame they need to figure out how to do something attention-worthy other than to be seeking attention.  The LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! stage they should’ve outgrown by age eight becomes a thing in itself. You get fame and celebrity for wanting fame and celebrity, and in order to keep up the public’s interest in your fame and celebrity you must continually pursue it in extreme and tasteless ways.

But thanks to the advent of Reality TV, which has brought us our first Reality TV president, the whole concept of tasteful may have gone out the window…

 

*   *   *

Department Of See This Movie, Right Now

Unless you’re on your way to the COVID ward of the hospital.

Otherwise, at one point in your life you’ve either been a frightened yet determined 17-year-old, or you’ve known one or (hopefully) have been a compassionate and loyal friend to one, as this movie so matter-of-factly and movingly depicts.

Never Rarely Sometimes Always

*   *   *

Pun For The Day

I just found out that I’m color blind – the news came completely out of the green.

 

*   *   *

 

May you enjoy your own variation of a classic curse phrase ( F. King Alexander! );
May you think twice before approaching a “famous” person when they are not in the process of actively seeking fame;
May your sense of propriety pass The Tasteful Lady‘s scrutiny;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

[1] Partial disclosure – can you ever make a *full* disclosure? – he’s my nephew.

[2] Yes,  those who know me well might interject here that moiself has a lot more than just one problem… but how’s about if y’all control your intrusive thoughts on the matter and we can get back to the subject?

The Grumpy Grandpa I’m Not Correcting

June 26, 2020

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, community, current events, family life, freethought/humanism, friends, hiking, movies, nature, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, school, science, TV, Yikes!, Zoo , , , , , , 2 Comments

Another Fact Abscess Feminist Ruins A Family Outing  Enlightens A Grateful Grandpa

My offspring, K and Belle, successfully fledged several years ago. When they were young (ages 1-5), their respective daycare/preschool teachers knew that, rain or shine, they wouldn’t be in class on Wednesdays, as that was our zoo/museum outing day.  Nine out of ten times, we’d go to the Oregon Zoo.

Those zoo trips were before the massive, community bond-supported revamping, updating, and expansion of the zoo and its animal habitats. There weren’t many visitors then – particularly on windy/rainy days, which were our favorites, because it often seemed if we had the zoo all to ourselves.  [1]  Several of the zookeepers got to recognize us, and we them. The staff were impressed and amused by K’s and Belle’s flourishing interest in animals and wildlife conservation and liked that we always greeted the keepers by name and asked (or tried to ask) interesting questions about the animals.

That the zookeepers took the time to speak with us (often quite extensively, and when it was obvious they had *real* work to do) is one of several factors moiself  credits for both K and Belle going on to be in the Zoo Teens program while in high school and then majoring in the Biological Sciences in college.

I’d also like to think that I “modeled” or that K and Belle inherited (nature?  nurture?) that interest from me. Moiself  was quite the animal nerd growing up, particularly in grade school.  My parents recognized and encouraged that interest, and for years I always received at least one nature-themed/animal facts book for my birthday and Christmas presents.  Thus, informed and armed, I was able to spoil the fun of many a prepubescent boy – who was trying to be naughty by teasing his female classmates about this AMAZING animal he’d come across – by explaining that a titmouse was in fact *not* a well-endowed rodent, but a petite North American songbird.

 

 

As always, I digress.

One of my interests at the zoo was not only watching my kids watch the animals, but watching the other zoo visitors. In that older version of the zoo, near the Penguin House, there was a habitat wherein dwelt a solitary, enormous, beautiful, Alaskan Brown bear named Marcia  (Marsha? Or Martha? Don’t know the spelling; her name was not on the information card on the habitat; we’d learned about her from the zookeepers   [2] ).

On days when there were many other zoo visitors and we stopped by Marcia’s habitat, inevitably – I mean, without fail – other adults would “mis-identify” the bear.  Always the male visitors (and also quite a few of the females) would remark, to themselves or to the kids who were with them, something along the lines of,

“Wow, get a load of that bear, he’s so big! Look at his paws…”

I would then take the opportunity to say, “Actually, her name is Marcia.” My comment/correction  would oftentimes lead to brief but interesting, personal-connection type conversations about the zoo and the animals, and sometimes my kids and I would learn something new, from a visitor who had talked with a zookeeper at another exhibit and had an interesting animal fact/behavior tidbit to share.  If the person seemed receptive, I would sneak in a factoid about how a zookeeper told me that the majority of the zoo’s resident animals were female…and how another zookeeper, and more than one biologist I’d met, told me that the majority of the world’s biomass is female but that an individual animal’s gender is usually misidentified by non-biologists when they use a pronoun other than “it” to refer to the animal.  For example, if you espy a wild animal when you’re out and about – say, a garter snake when you’re hiking the Wildwood trail in Forest Park – it is most likely a “she snake,” even though you or your hiking companion(s) will probably call it, or think of it as, a “he.”

With two exceptions moiself  can recall, these interactions at Marcia’s habitat were always positive (which is why I kept engaging in them).  In exception #2, an older dude got his grandpa tighty-whities in a knot when I spoke up after he’d pointed out the bear to (what I assumed were) his two grandkids, as well as to moiself and my two kids, and exclaimed, “Look at that HUGE bear – can you guess how strong he is?”

“She sure is something – she’s one of our favorite animals at the zoo!” I cheerfully chirped. “And, actually, her name is Marcia.”

The man’s face slowly but surely morphed into Grumpy Old Man, get-offa-my-lawn!  territory, as his granddaughter waved to the bear and called out, “Marcia – she’s Marcia! Hi, Marcia!”

“Why does that matter?” he said to me. 

“What do you mean?” I asked, not knowing if the “matter” he was wondering about was the bear’s name or its sex.

“Why does it matter?” he repeated, now looking full-blown irritated, as if he thought I were trying to show him up in front of his grandkids (neither of whom were paying any attention to the adults, but were standing with my kids, waving to the bear). “Does it matter if it’s a he or a she?”

Moiself  donned my best, well-practiced, kill him with kindness visage, raised my voice to a perky, non-threatening octave above my usual tone, and delivered my reply with bared teeth pretending to be a smile a friendly grin:

“Well, obviously it does, or you wouldn’t object to being corrected about a simple fact.”

He muttered under his breath and herded his grandkids away from the exhibit. The little girl turned back and called out, “Marcia!  Marcia! Bye, Marcia!”

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Telling Grandpa Why It Matters

If Grumpy Gramps had stuck around and showed an ounce of amiable interest in the subject, I might have told him that I also would have offered a corrective comment had he misidentified the bear’s species, or its coloration or predation habits or dietary needs (“Look at that black bear/purple grizzly bear/orange sun bear – you know, in the wild, polar bears climb trees to hunt penguins  [3]….”), or any other basic fact about it. An animal’s sex or gender   [4]  is just another one of those basic facts.

The most obvious “proof” as to how important this is, Gramps, is that when I pointed out this particular, simple, factual error, did you notice how many of your feathers got ruffled?

I have taken it upon moiself  to be a “Squirt Gun Ambassador” re the natural world, hoping to incorporate the playfulness/good humor that this childhood summer toy brings to mind, when dealing with this particular issue, which is of importance TO THE ENTIRE WORLD (whether the entire world realizes it or not).

 

 

The SQUIRT gun issue to which I refer is my Sex Question Identification Reparations Therapy ®  crusade, regarding peoples’ tendency to apply male pronouns to all animals they see, unless the animal is obviously female (e.g., nursing its young).  I go the other direction, and use “she” instead of “it” (which I used to always do, and which I’ll get back to doing some day, when people stop defaulting to using “he”) to refer to an animal whose gender is unknown.  My crusade is somewhat analogous to, and in part inspired by, actor Geena Davis’ campaign on gender inequity in entertainment media.

Media is one of the most important factors influencing our values. Women and girls are 51% of the population, but entertainment media is bereft of female characters, with a ratio of approximately 3:1 male characters to female characters since the 1940s.
(Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media )

……When her…daughter was a toddler, and (Davis) started watching movies with her, she realised how woeful the depictions of women in family movies really were.
She was particularly struck by just how few speaking characters in these films were female. She took this point to industry colleagues, but most denied it. Well-meaning and sincere, they couldn’t see a problem.
Davis pressed on – she wanted to see the numbers….she sponsored the largest study carried out on gender depictions in family-rated films and children’s television…and found that for every female speaking-character, there were 2.5 or three male characters – a figure unchanged since 1946.
Furthermore, the vast majority of those female characters were stereotypical or highly sexualised, with ambitions largely related to romance. Even crowd scenes were only made up of 17% women….

 

Hollywood thinks women just don’t like to “gather,” or flee from monsters….

 

“What if we are inculcating generation after generation to believe that low representation of women is the norm?” (Davis) asked her audience.
So her institute commissioned more research: this time, a global study of gender in film in the 10 biggest film markets in the world. The findings were “bleak”: of those characters seen to be holding a job, 77.5% were male and 22.5% were female. Women in leadership and science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM fields were dramatically underrepresented in film, she said, and of the 127 characters that held political office, only 12 were women.
This lack of onscreen depiction contributes to symbolic annihilation, Davis said, by which those that don’t see themselves reflected on screen believe they are unimportant. She quoted damning statistics that show the more hours of television a girl watches, the fewer options she thinks she has in life.

(“How Geena Davis became a champion for women on screen,”
The Guardian, 3-5-17 )

*   *   *

Department Of And While I’m On The Subject…

Can we agree to get rid of those dreadful feminizing/diminishing suffixes appended to people, animals, and professions?

If you come to a party at my house, I am your host, not your hostess.

 

And I won’t be serving these, BTW.

 

Your doctor, if she is a woman, is your doctor, not your doctress. Lions are male and female; there is no need for “lioness” as an identifier. If you name your Aunt Erva in your will as the person who will manage your estate, she should be called your executor, not your executrix.

Still with me, Grumpy Gramps? Since you asked it’s important, to know the animal’s correct gender because girls need to know that what is female is present, in the world, everywhere.  Girls often grow up into women who lack the confidence to move through the world as easily and powerfully as men do, because they don’t think that the world belongs to them.  Unintentionally and sometimes deliberately, girls get presented with skewed perceptions of their “place” – even of simply how many of them there are  [5]   –  in the world.  In the images and examples girls *and* boys are shown, the default for everything is male, especially if the thing in question is perceived as being big and powerful.

It’s important because a person will want to care for the world and that which is in the world, to seek education and take action – from studying to be a geologist to learning to do their own basic auto maintenance and repairs – if they think these things are truly and equally theirs.  If it belongs to you, then you feel a sense of responsibility for it. Despite the progress made in the past few decades, girls (and boys) still look at the world, at the images and descriptions presented to them, and see it as primarily belonging to, and inhabited and ruled by, boys and men.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Remember That Which Will Eventually Kill Those Of Us Who Survive The Rest Of This Ca-Ca?

Global warming/climate change – the human-induced warming of the planet  – has been getting our attention span short shrift these days, what with the pandemic, poor policing of POC and other parts of the panoply of poop parading past.   [6]

After my pitch for gender label inclusivity, I’ve not much energy left for another harangue.

 

 

I’ll leave y’all with this analogy on the subject. At many a dinner party discussion, I’ve listened while friends have lamented the conundrum of how and why otherwise rational-seeming people can ignore the evidence  of climate change and/or that some “aware” people tacitly admit that the evidence is real, but find ways to avoid thinking about it and/or don’t want to act on this evidence because they view any such actions as impeding their current lifestyle, or that they believe that individuals cannot make any significant changes to the problem.

I’ve had to bite my tongue when well-meaning people whom I admire and even love have sincerely claimed not to understand such willful ignorance…because they do the same thing, with regards to the same issue. They are all willing and enthusiastic participators in the environment-razing, carnivore fodder industry.

They all eat (factory-farm grown and processed) meat.

I’ve decided to be silent no more.  I will try my Girl Scout Best  [7]  to *not* be of those self-righteous scolds, but the next time someone starts with the, “How can those people ignore the evidence ?!?!?” wail I will gently point out that their lament is not only rhetorical, but disingenuous. They know, or *should* know, exactly why “those people” want to ignore the evidence of climate change because they themselves use the same rationale for ignoring the evidence on meat consumption:

* because they don’t want to alter their current way of life;

* because they don’t want to make the necessary changes, which they view as making sacrifices and being inconvenienced;

* because they just don’t want to be bothered.

Some of the most thoughtful people I know find ways not to give the problems of animal agriculture any thought, just as I find ways to avoid thinking about climate change and income inequality….
Animal agriculture is now recognized as a leading cause of global warming….
We cannot protect our environment while continuing to eat meat regularly. This is not a refutable perspective, but a banal truism….cows produce an enormous amount of greenhouse gas. If cows were a country, they would be the third-largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world.
According to the research director of Project Drawdown — a nonprofit organization dedicated to modeling solutions to address climate change — eating a plant-based diet is “the most important contribution every individual can make to reversing global warming.”
Americans overwhelmingly accept the science of climate change. A majority of both Republicans and Democrats say that the United States should have remained in the Paris climate accord. We don’t need new information, and we don’t need new values. We only need to walk through the open door.

 ( “The End of Meat Is Here: If you care about the working poor,
about racial justice, and about climate change,
you have to stop eating animals,” Jonathan Safran Foer,
 NY Times 5-21-20 )

*   *   *

Pun For The Day

 

*   *   *

May you carefully consider which evidence you are choosing to ignore;
May you remember that I’m a writer, not a writress;
May you enjoy an adolescent’s misunderstanding of “titmouse;”
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

[1] I remember at least two occasions where we saw no other human beings, with the exception of the zookeepers and other zoo employees.

[2] And two keepers told me two different names for that bear: “Martha” and “Marcia.”

[3] Despite all the cute cartoons you may have seen, polar bears and penguins never interact. Polar bears are northern pole denizens while penguin species all live south of the equator. And neither of them climb trees.

[4] I realize these are loaded terms, used interchangeably and not always in the same manner, by humans.

[5] The world human population male/female ratio consistently hovers around 50-50,   but you wouldn’t know that if your only statistic in this matter came from your consumption of popular media, where the male characters consistently and overwhelmingly outnumber the female.

[6] I counted at least eight Ps there.

[7] Well, in my case, Girl-Scout-drop-out best….

The Maturity I’m Not Developing

April 26, 2019

Robyn Parnell books & magazines, current events, extended family, foodie, friends, general ruminations, hiking, music, nature, Oregon, politics, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Maturity I’m Not Developing

Department Of Existential Questions That Cannot Be
(Or Perhaps Are Best Not) Answered

Why didn’t this song get more airplay in its day?  You gotta love almost anything by The Legendary Stardust Cowboy, one of the pioneers of psychobilly   [1] (and the writer of perhaps one of the most misunderstood love songs of that genre, “I’m Standing In A Trash Can (Thinkin’ About You).”

 

*   *   *

Department Of Adventures In Maturation
Sub-Department Of Better Late Than Never

Dateline: Last Saturday morning. MH and I are descending the (not-so) “secret” hillside trail in North Manzanita. He stops to take a picture of a flower, which takes several minutes; moiself continues on ahead of him. I hear fast footsteps coming from behind, step to the side of the trail, and look back to behold a man in his late 70s or so – older looking; very trim and fit – running downhill.  He is wearing something like this on his chest…

 

 

…which appears to be a runner’s hydration vest – a short, lightweight vest with two symmetrical water bottle pockets in the front. Olde Running Man’s vest looks akin to the contraption the above picture, only his has water bottles on both sides, giving him   [2] a glorious approximation of…well…of jiggling man-boobs.

As he passes by, I am ever-so tempted to say, “Nice jugs.”  BUT I DIDN’T.

You’re welcome.

Yes, maturity is a life-long journey for some of us. A few years ago (say, in my late 50s), who knows what moiself would have called out.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Realities That Are Almost To Dreadful To Contemplate

“As horrific as this president is, he is a symptom of much deeper problems. Even foreign influence plays on [national] wounds that we refuse to address: income inequality, racism, corruption, a willingness to excuse bigotry,” she tweeted. “He can stay, he can go. He can be impeached, or voted out in 2020. But removing Trump will not remove the infrastructure of an entire party that embraced him; the dark money that funded him; the online radicalization that drummed his army; nor the racism he amplified and reanimated.”
(From a tweet by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D- NY),
as reported in Newsweek)

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Mystery Solved
Sub-Department Of I’m Not Sure Why This Came To Mind, But It Did

So: in every photo I’ve seen of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II wherein she is making a public appearance, she is holding a pocketbook.  It’s always a discreet little handbag – not festooned with the Crown Jewels or anything equally ostentatious – but, still. Why does the Queen of England – the Queen of anything – carry a purse?

 

I have more pressing matters to attend to, but your query is appreciated.

 

She doesn’t pay for anything; she has no need to carry her id and credit cards in case she wants to visit an ATM, ya know? She has attendants to see to her every need, and it’s not like the dignitaries and various heads of state she meets for tea expect her to whip out her wallet and say, “I’ve got this.”

A couple of Curious About The Inscrutable Ways Of The Universe ® friends and moiself pondered this very question, several years ago. [3]   After applying due diligence, we came up with the only logical assumption: Pragmatic and experienced monarch that she is, QEII’s pocket book contains two items: a flask of Jack Daniels, and a six-pack of condoms.

 

Well, that might explain the enigmatic smiles.

 

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Department of Epicurean Excursion   [4]

Featuring this week’s cookbook, author and recipe:

The Arab Table: Recipes and Culinary Traditions, by May Bsisu   

Recipes:

* Musaka Betinjane (Eggplant in Pomegranate Syrup)

*Salatat el Malfoof (Shredded Cabbage Salad)

* Mudardara (Warm Lentils with Rice)

My rating:

 

☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

See footnotes for Recipe Rating Refresher.  [5]

 

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May you carry only the essentials in your royal handbag;
May you never even think of commenting on what is on an old man’s chest;
May our frightening political realities inspire you to do something other than go through your cookbooks;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

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[1] Psychobilly, as per Wikipedia’s explanation, is “…is a rock music fusion genre that mixes elements of rockabilly and punk rock.”

[2] In my observant mind, at least.

[3] Yes, we were sober. And employed.

[4] A recurring feature of this blog, since week 2 of April 2019, wherein moiself decided that moiself would go through my cookbooks alphabetically and, one day a week, cook (at least) one recipe from one book.

[5] * Two Thumbs up:  Liked it

* Two Hamster Thumbs Up :  Loved it

* Thumbs Down – Not even Kevin would like this (Kevin, a character from The Office, would eat anything.)

* Twiddling Thumbs: I was, in due course, bored by this recipe.

* Thumbscrew: It was torture to make this recipe.

* All Thumbs: Good recipe, but I somehow mucked it up .

* Thumby McThumb Face: This recipe was fun to make.

* Thumbing my nose: Yeah, I made this recipe, but I did not respect it.

 

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