Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Made-up holiday

Today be "International Talk Like a Pirate Day." Me pirate name be
My pirate name is:
Iron Mary Flint
A pirate's life isn't easy; it takes a tough person. That's okay with you, though, since you a tough person. Like the rock flint, you're hard and sharp. But, also like flint, you're easily chipped, and sparky. Arr!
Get your own pirate name from piratequiz.com.
part of the fidius.org network


Seriously, I love this kind of totally fake celebration. No Hallmark cards, no Nutrasweet sentimentality, just lots of excuses for being silly. There is, for example, an Austin band playing tonight called "The Jolly Garogers." They play heavy metal in pirate costumes. Is this a great country or what?

Thursday, September 14, 2006

Sunday, May 28, 2006

The most significant thing that happened this week was that Andy was denied admission to the AISD Gifted and Talented program. This was important to me because I think he's bored in class, and next year is the God !$%^&&!!! TAKS exam. He's the best reader in his class, meaning he will get completely ignored in a regular classroom while the teacher spends all of her time working with the two or three totally helpless kids. At least Mills is a good school, with a really good student body, so the peer pressure works in favor of academics rather than against it. I have to say after speaking to the counselor, I'm convinced AISD hasn't been sued enough. The admission program in more litigious school districts seems to be based entirely on taking a test. Here, however, there's a whole bunch of subjectivity in the process. I talked to the counselor, and she said that he lost out in two areas: his "academic scale" (I presume this means grades, but PhD's in education don't speak standard English) and, God forbid, his parent nomination wasn't high enough. The parent nomination is the form I filed out. I, HIS MOTHER, cost him admission to the gifted program. Now, after hearing from some friends on this one, I have grave doubts about a program for gifted students that relies at all on parent input. What difference does it make if I'm an idiot? For that matter, and more related to the litigation thing, why does the district care whether or not I'm brilliant, so long as Andy has the mental capacity for the work he'll be expected to do? A friend of mine analyzed this as a test for the parents, as in trying to find out just how much of a monster I'm willing to be to make sure Andy does his work. My mother-in-law, a former elementary school teacher, suggested that this was a way to eliminate gifted students with bad parents, which then makes life just a whole lot easier for the teacher. I agree with both suggestions.The most disturbing thing about requiring parental application is that it automatically excludes gifted kids from any background below middle class, and quite a few of the middle-middles as well. Think for a minute: how many parents who themselves didn't finish high school, or don't speak English, or work two jobs so that their family can both eat and get vaccinations and antibiotics when necessary are going to complete a two-page form to get their child in a class with more homework? This is a nice way of avoiding the problems of really smart kids in bad schools. Having been a really smart kid in a less-than-stellar school, during the 1970's, heyday of dumbass "reforms" designed to allow us to express our creativity but not necessarily to impart nasty old facts to us, my sympathies are entirely with the kids here. (And yes, that was an extremely long and complicated sentence. $50 fine from the Grammar Police.) There is nothing worse than being a bright kid from a bad school. Within the school, your choices are to be picked on by lackwit bullies for showing an interest in class work, or become a discipline problem and win status with brains by creatively solving the problem of how many ways one can drive a teacher insane. Outside of the school, everyone assumes you're a moron because that's all that school generally produces. No wonder these kids become problems. The average kid stuck there is bad, but losing brilliant kids to boredom and bad habits costs us so much, when saving them costs us so little. In this case, just the price of a test. The form itself was laughable. I can imagine the average Joe Sixpack father of a bright kid reading it and finding confirmation for every public school horror story every reported on talk radio. A couple of the sample questions will demonstrate:
Does your child use adult words? Yeah, and you should how well he does the hand gestures!!
Is your child interested in adult problems and issues, like political issues or pollution?
(This is my real answer, not the snarky one about how much they liked him at the Davos summit in April.) I am very careful to avoid exposing Andy to very much in the way of adult problems, because I don't believe that a seven-year-old is emotionally prepared to think about thinks like global warming or the Iraq war. He does have a strong interest in learning about the past, as in knights and heroes, and information about his ancestors and their lives. I believe it's more important for him to develop ethics and empathy before he starts applying himself to his duties as a citizen.
There were other questions about his desire to solve problems creatively and some such. How much I longed for a question about his hobbies or pets. Something normal. But no. Apparently if he hasn't rewired the cars to run on eggshells and coffee grounds, he's not GT material. The rest of the process was more objective. She said his IQ was tested at 110, which is the high end of average, defined as 100 +/- 10 points. Why they can't say 90 - 110 she didn't explain, but he's at the higher end of average. He did much better on the math part of the testing * 114, well withing qualification range * than he did on the verbal part. In fact, he got a perfect score on one component of that, only missing out on the part of the test designed for 5th graders. This rather amazes me, given that Steve and I think mathmetics is a plot by the aliens to distract us so they can invade. Andy and Aaron are products of a devious breeding experiment in verbal ability, but math just wasn't in there. More to the point, Andy makes bad grades in math, "adequate," instead of the "skilled" and "advanced" in all his other subjects. This is either proof that the school got the wrong set of test scores, or further evidence that he belongs in the gifted program because he's so bored in regular class. He didn't do so well on the "traits, applications and behaviors" and on the portfolio of class work. Personally, I think this is too subjective for them to consider, since boredom, dislike of classmates, or other emotional traits can obscure the results. While I'm thinking about it, this part of the test is vulnerable to a Title VII challenge. I don't have a hard time believing that, say, black or Hispanic boys would never pass it. Think about this for a minute. You're a teacher, with a budding Will Smith in your class, who is clearly gifted but also a major pain in the butt. How easy it will be to call the kid "unmotivated" and keep him in boring regular classes, reserving the coveted gifted program for dimmer but harder working kids. Now, I have no problem with rewarding hard work, but not by confusing it with better mental wiring. Give that kid an accelerated class, but put Will in the gifted progam where he can learn to like school. Andy lost out because he isn't very good at "applying himself." Gee, thaaaat's a shock. A seven or eight year old boy doesn't like to work hard and only does what he needs to get by. Never occured to them that at least one solution is to give him MORE stuff that he needs to get by on. Finally, they consider creativity and memory. Andy did really well on memory, which is no surprise, but not so well on creativity. I don't know how you make a kid more creative, or for that matter how you could tell such a thing in one morning's test, but I'm not going to hire consultants to improve this. For that matter, I think they're wrong, but, again, how is it possible to argue against something so fluid? I am generally very happy with AISD, and it really surprised me that they came up with a policy this lame. Andy has had good teachers at Mills, who have allowed him to read books more advanced than his grade level, and have put him in faster reading groups and other more enriched areas. The problem is that there's only so much the regular teacher can do. I'm now going to try and get him in something called a "cluster class," which is somewhat accelerated beyond the regular material, and with more emphasis on one or two subject areas. I'll report on my success later.
posted by Kitty 6:29 PM 0 comments
Tuesday, May 23, 2006

I'm going to have to figure out in the next few days how to post pictures. My tomato plants have begun to produce, and the fruit is gorgeous. I planted four heirloom varieties: an orange and red striped one called "Mr. Stripey," a green one called "Green Zebra," a beefsteak, and a brandywine. The brandywine has me worried because the first three or four blossoms fell off without setting fruit. Brandywine is one of the world's most beautiful tomato varieties, dark plummy red and almost fluted. Just gorgeous.
posted by Kitty 6:55 PM 2 comments
Wednesday, May 17, 2006

The baby wrens have fledged and flown, which makes me both sad and yet amazed. They went from eggs to avian teenagers in 24 days. And I think Andy's growth is quick. We survived the sleepover. Four eight-year-old boys. I liked all of 'em. I'm sure I've made myself hated among parents for providing my son with an X-box, which all of the boys adored. I actually hated the idea of video games before we got this one, and now, of course, I'm converted. Now, not all games are welcome in my home. No "first person shooter," nothing involving evading the police or committing crimes. Same rules as movies: no on-screen blood and the good guys have to win. Within those guidelines, however, X-box has lots of nice stuff. Most Disney, Pixar, and Dreamworks movies now have associated games, which is kind of fun. Andy is particularly fond of "The Incredibles" and "Chicken Little." His all-time favorite, however, is Lego "Star Wars." This is the familiar movies acted out by Lego dolls on Lego sets. It includes the parody movie "Revenge of the Brick," adapted from the last movie. I have to say Lucasfilm's masterwork is better done with small plastic figures than with live actors. Inspired by the "Da Vinci Code," the lastest wretched piece of dreck to make the best-seller lists, I have been thinking about bad books I liked. I'm a real novel snob, so other than paperback mysteries, I don't have a lot of fiction to confess. My real failing is celebrity biographies, especially autobiographies. If the celebrity is a movie star from a family of European aristocrats, that's the best. I had load of fun last year reading Christopher Lee's autobiography. His grandfather was an Italian marchese and his mother a countess. Gramps escaped from Italy, where his support for Garabaldi had made life uncomfortable to Australia, where he became part of a travelling theater company. Gramps was, in addition to being from the oldest of European noble families, an accomplished operatic tenor. Still, it must have been something to go from a palazzo in Rome to outback shantytowns. I'd love to read a book about him. More on this later, when I have some time.
posted by Kitty 5:46 PM 0 comments
Saturday, May 13, 2006

Wow, three posts in two days!! I'll never keep this up. I just found the following website: http://www.notwithoutmyhandbag.com/babynames/13.html, which I highly recommend. I learned from this site that one of my obsessions has a name: caconomenology. Caconomenology is the study of ugly names. For years I've kept an informal list of some of the horrors inflicted on innocent babies by their presumably stoned parents. I had no idea that anyone else shared my hobby, but apparently there is a growing set of people appalled by idiotic monikers. Please, visit, and I hope sincerely that none of you had parents that did anything this bad to you.
posted by Kitty 1:07 PM 0 comments

In further honor of Mother's Day, I thought I'd add a post about our newest houseguests. We have a pair of Carolina wrens and their four hatchlings living on our back porch. I can't get a picture, because their corner is too dark, and because I don't want to scare the kids or the parents by hovering over their nest. Here's a link for information about Carolina wrens: http://www.mbr-pwrc.usgs.gov/Infocenter/i7180id.html They have pictures, song recordings, and general information about habits and such. Why did I pick this for Mother's Day, when yesterday I complained about housework? Well, it seems that Carolina wrens are the perfect example of daddy sharing housework. The wrens mate for life, quite faithfully. They are resident year-round in one territory, established the first time they mate. The interesting thing is that Pops is an extremely involved parent. In fact, he'll take over childrearing once the little darlings are avian first-graders, so Mom can go have another clutch of eggs at another place in the territory. Judging from this pair, Dad takes over a ton of drudge-work. From shortly after dawn until sunset, the adult bird flits around the yard, catching yummy bogs -- spiders, mostly -- and hauling them back to the nest for the babies. Thanks to this devotion, we have four hatchlings peeking their tiny feathered heads out of the nest. Dad's involvement in the icky part of childrearing means he had more offspring going into the next generation. Thus, we have natural selection supporting the idea that Dad ought to pull his own domestic weight. More dishes washed, more genes going out into the future. Happy Mother's Day.
posted by Kitty 6:33 AM 1 comments
Friday, May 12, 2006

In honor of Mother's Day, I thought I'd write something about the new Caitlin Flanagan book, "To Hell With All That." Ms. Flanagan has said that she wants her book to be a Valentine to the Fifties housewife, whose domestic skills brought order and civilization to her unruly brood. If only. Ms. Flanagan is a skilled writer, finding absurdity in almost any situation. The much-described scene in which she screams for the nannie Paloma to come and clean up her son's vomit is worth the price of the book. It is, however, one of the few times Ms. F. actually manages to make fun at her own expense. That is the great flaw in her work; she doesn't really see the irony in her own position as a writer with a household staff who nevertheless posits the superiority of domestic life for women. That brings me to the other great problem with her work. She has expressed a desire to honor housewives - she wrote an essay for the Atlantic Monthly complaining that women no longer describe themselves as housewives, they are "stay-at-home Moms," shifting the emphasis from wifehood to motherhood. Ms. F. does not consider that shift a good thing. Her most controversial paragraph, judging from the number of times its been cited in blog posts and reviews, describes the dismay of the modern husband at the thought of talking his wife, who, among other problems, is "economically independent of him" into having sex. He decides instead to watch ESPN. It isn't clear why her economic indepence would make him prefer Stanley Cup highlights to intimacy, but it bothers Ms. F. A lot. I think one can find some enlightenment on this point in the response Ms. F. made to a letter writer who suggested that Ms. Flanagan's husband should help with the housework. The response is the letters to the editor section of the June 2004 Atlantic. Ms. Flanagan states, "Why would I want to? [make hubby share housework] He is the head of the household, and I treat him as such." ARRRRGGH!! Having done the world the enormous favor of being born male, hubby is forever exempt from doing anything unpleasant. Of course, Ms. F. doesn't do any of it either, so I suppose she's being fair. Still, the implication is that the rest of us should give our husbands clean houses, hot food, sex, and never insist he tear himself away from SportsCenter to wash dishes. If she wants to lionize domestic work, this is NOT the way to go about it. Assigning icky chores to women alone doesn't raise their status. We've been stuck with icky stuff for thousands of years because women were, presumably, too stupid to do anything else. Keeping it that way just means that domestic chores continue to demand scant respect. This makes me sad, because I agree with Ms. F. that most of civilization takes place at home. If we don't mind living in chaotic hovels about to be seized by the health department, wear ratty, dirty clothes, and eat entirely from McDonald's, well then, by all means ignore domestic life. But for the overwhelming majority of us, that live without servants, one of the two adults in the house will have to cook and clean. Even if we're lucky enough, as Steve and I are, to be able to hire a cleaning service regularly, someone has to manage the daily spiffing up or the place becomes unbearable during the two weeks between visits. Also, the maids don't cook, do dishes, or make the place orderly enough for their cleaning to be effective. I want dishwashing and laundry to be regarded as the necessary tasks they are, not as punishment for the sins of Eve, which is what Ms. Flanagan makes it. It would not be fair for me to rag on Caitlin Flanagan and her gendered vision of cleaning and to fail to address the leftist variant of her idea. A number of feminists, most notably Barbara Ehrenreich, have expressed the opinion that it is exploitive for middle-class households to hire someone to clean up. I do not understand why paying someone to vacuum is so much worse than paying someone to, say, repair the roof, mow the lawn, or unclog the drains. Hiring work is hiring work. The implication in Ms. Eherenreich's stance is the same as Ms. Flanagan's: domestic work is worse than any other kind. It is my personal opinion that regaining private life, including establishing some dignity to housework, will be one of the issues dominating the 21st century. We settled the public life questions in the 20th century. No one much argues in favor of any other form of government besides full-sufferage democracy. We fought two world wars and spent fifty years in an almost-war over the question of who has the right to govern or choose those who govern. Now, we need to settle the question of who provides the civilized citizens to establish that liberal democracy. We could have a worse start than to decide that housework doesn't come with a chromosome assignment.
posted by Kitty 6:14 PM 0 comments

In honor of Mother's Day, I thought I'd write something about the new Caitlin Flanagan book, "To Hell With All That." Ms. Flanagan has said that she wants her book to be a Valentine to the Fifties housewife, whose domestic skills brought order and civilization to her unruly brood. If only. Ms. Flanagan is a skilled writer, finding absurdity in almost any situation. The much-described scene in which she screams for the nannie Paloma to come and clean up her son's vomit is worth the price of the book. It is, however, one of the few times Ms. F. actually manages to make fun at her own expense. That is the great flaw in her work; she doesn't really see the irony in her own position as a writer with a household staff who nevertheless posits the superiority of domestic life for women. That brings me to the other great problem with her work. She has expressed a desire to honor housewives - she wrote an essay for the Atlantic Monthly complaining that women no longer describe themselves as housewives, they are "stay-at-home Moms," shifting the emphasis from wifehood to motherhood. Ms. F. does not consider that shift a good thing. Her most controversial paragraph, judging from the number of times its been cited in blog posts and reviews, describes the dismay of the modern husband at the thought of talking his wife, who, among other problems, is "economically independent of him" into having sex. He decides instead to watch ESPN. It isn't clear why her economic indepence would make him prefer Stanley Cup highlights to intimacy, but it bothers Ms. F. A lot. I think one can find some enlightenment on this point in the response Ms. F. made to a letter writer who suggested that Ms. Flanagan's husband should help with the housework. The response is the letters to the editor section of the June 2004 Atlantic. Ms. Flanagan states, "Why would I want to? [make hubby share housework] He is the head of the household, and I treat him as such." ARRRRGGH!! Having done the world the enormous favor of being born male, hubby is forever exempt from doing anything unpleasant. Of course, Ms. F. doesn't do any of it either, so I suppose she's being fair. Still, the implication is that the rest of us should give our husbands clean houses, hot food, sex, and never insist he tear himself away from SportsCenter to wash dishes. If she wants to lionize domestic work, this is NOT the way to go about it. Assigning icky chores to women alone doesn't raise their status. We've been stuck with icky stuff for thousands of years because women were, presumably, too stupid to do anything else. Keeping it that way just means that domestic chores continue to demand scant respect. This makes me sad, because I agree with Ms. F. that most of civilization takes place at home. If we don't mind living in chaotic hovels about to be seized by the health department, wear ratty, dirty clothes, and eat entirely from McDonald's, well then, by all means ignore domestic life. But for the overwhelming majority of us, that live without servants, one of the two adults in the house will have to cook and clean. Even if we're lucky enough, as Steve and I are, to be able to hire a cleaning service regularly, someone has to manage the daily spiffing up or the place becomes unbearable during the two weeks between visits. Also, the maids don't cook, do dishes, or make the place orderly enough for their cleaning to be effective. I want dishwashing and laundry to be regarded as the necessary tasks they are, not as punishment for the sins of Eve, which is what Ms. Flanagan makes it. It would not be fair for me to rag on Caitlin Flanagan and her gendered vision of cleaning and to fail to address the leftist variant of her idea. A number of feminists, most notably Barbara Ehrenreich, have expressed the opinion that it is exploitive for middle-class households to hire someone to clean up. I do not understand why paying someone to vacuum is so much worse than paying someone to, say, repair the roof, mow the lawn, or unclog the drains. Hiring work is hiring work. The implication in Ms. Eherenreich's stance is the same as Ms. Flanagan's: domestic work is worse than any other kind. It is my personal opinion that regaining private life, including establishing some dignity to housework, will be one of the issues dominating the 21st century. We settled the public life questions in the 20th century. No one much argues in favor of any other form of government besides full-sufferage democracy. We fought two world wars and spent fifty years in an almost-war over the question of who has the right to govern or choose those who govern. Now, we need to settle the question of who provides the civilized citizens to establish that liberal democracy. We could have a worse start than to decide that housework doesn't come with a chromosome assignment.
posted by Kitty 6:14 PM 1 comments
Tuesday, August 29, 2006

I'm just making a short post to make sure the blog doesn't expire. I promise more this weekend. Love to all
posted by Kitty 5:53 PM 1 comments
Friday, July 14, 2006

Caleb Stegall wrote this a few days ago for the Dallas News. He dislikes the national and the worldwide, and much prefers the local or particular. He calls for a third party, a "vibrant regionalism" that seeks to permit regional cultural and religious particularities to emerge from the fog of federalized regulation and be made manifest in our schools, courthouses, businesses and civic organizations. And it would provide incentives to keep cultural capital local. It would encourage people to work, study and raise families close to where they grew up. It would seek ways to promote local culture and would cultivate loyalty to our neighbors and a fierce love for our own places. Am I the only one who reads "cultural and religious particularities" and immediately thinks of Jim Crow laws and polygamous Mormons? The reasons for those hated federal intrusions was because those local "particularities" inflicted rather intense pain on one or another disinfranchised local group, usually women or an unpopular racial group. I can't see how we can protect unpopular groups from bad "particularities" while permitting too many good ones. In fact, I find it rather easy to imagine a vibrant Jihadist madrassa growing up under Mr. Stegall's regime. Certainly the federal government is a very blunt instrument, but quite often such bluntness is necessary. I can't imagine Mr. Stegall federalizing the Alabama National Guard to enforce integration. But perhaps more troubling is this paragraph: There's an irony inherent in a system like our own that identifies the individual as the fundamental unit of political, social and economic order. Because it shears the individual of the republican virtues cultivated within communities of tradition in the name of empowering him, it actually makes the individual subject to tyranny. Limitless emancipation in the name of progress is, it turns out, the final and most binding mechanism of control. If the individual isn't the "fundamental unit of political, social, and economic order" who is? How do you have elections if voting isn't done by individuals? Just what does get rights and privileges? Mr. Stegall mentions "communities of tradition," which supposedly cultivate virtues. Do the communties get to vote? If rights and privileges don't stay at the individual level, they must migrate up to those communities he likes so much. Communities are groups, and groups have hierarchies. So, by locating social power in "communities of tradition," Mr. Stegall effectively empowers the leaders of those hierarchies -- the heads of the communties -- with the ability to veto the decisions of everyone below him. (The head will always be a "him," too.) How is this NOT tyranny? Is it any less tyrannical to have the tyrant nearby? Mr. Stegall has an admirable distrust of utopianism, at least as practiced by progressives. When the oldest sources of order – which are at root religious – are abandoned along with their traditions and taboos, the resulting void of meaning is by necessity filled with some ideology promising one form or another of perfect happiness in the here and now. And these systems of self-salvation creep not toward liberation, but toward total control. This would be more persuasive if he himself were not such a utopian. He offers vague plans for devolving authority down from the feds and up from the individual, all the time assuming that the people who finally get to run things will be never, ever misuse their authority. This, even though those people have no checks or balances. Just because the geographical limits of their absolute power are narrow is no reason to presume that it's not absolute or absolutely corrupting.
posted by Kitty 7:52 PM 0 comments
Tuesday, July 04, 2006

"The Devil Wears Prada" inspired a few more thoughts, related to the relationship between fashion and feminism. Now, many people will, quite reasonably, say that there is none. Many of those people will themselves be feminists. We're suppose to be above all that frivolous nonsense, designed to divert female energy from changing the world to worrying about acquiring this season's must-have handbag. Don't get us started on high heels, either. Many others stay away from the women's movement because of the Andrea Dworkin - image: ratty hair, obese, clad in deliberately ugly clothes. I never found the words to explain what bugged me so much about that early 70's attitude until I saw a documentary on Afghan women after the 9/11 attacks. The Taliban forbade all forms of cosmetics, yet many women risked painful and severe punishments to smuggle in mascara and blush. Make-up was sexual and Western, and therefore evil. Ms. Dworkin and her philosophical sisters never lived in the Bible Belt. The current face of conservative Protestantism is the suburban megachurch, with its coiffed and polished Republicans, but when I was growing up, there were still a lot of old-fashioned Pentacostals, who held the same view of cosmetics and fashion as the Taliban. My family wasn't in that group, but there were enough of 'em to make their attitude influential. Make-up and fashion were still somewhat forbidden, racy, and, consequently, the perfect emblem of freedom. My mother and I went to Dallas every six weeks to restock the Clinique supply. To us, the Nieman-Marcus cosmetics department was rather like a cathedral -- it's magnificence transcended reality. We were really Someplace. We'd get a 1/4 pound of Godiva chocolate and a coke at the snack bar, and we were in heaven. We knew it wasn't reality, but man was it ever fun. Too many of my liberal friends will read that sentence and immediately conclude I'm a shallow nitwit. My experience wasn't "authentic." It was too dependent on Nieman's status-symbol image; too 'consumerist,' not enough odor of sweat and soil. I think the leftists, the Pentacostals, and the Taliban all have something in common, and it's closely related to the idea of "authenticity" that fashion somehow denies. The fashion industry thrives on the imitation of status. I can't be Audrey Hepburn, but I can buy her scarf. Because there's no way to determine whether I got the money from a trust fund, a successful real-estate sale, a theft, or just loaded up the VISA, possession of the scarf really doesn't convey any information about my place in society. Also, because anyone with a credit card can have one, the original scarf itself actually loses a lot of its status-symbol worth. (By the way, none of these thoughts are original with me. Adam Smith said a lot of the same things.) The fashion industry, more than any other aspect of industrialism, corroded the supports of the old hierarchies. You can't tell how important anyone is just by looking anymore. Fundamentalists are the original literalists, but fashion, and its cousins in art and entertainment, is all about image and metaphor. As the make-up artist Way Bandy said, "beneath the surface, there's more surface." The fundies are terrified of being wrong, but fashion depends on planned obsolescence. This year's right is next year's dreadful. Boatloads of quite unfrivolous cash depend on making us prefer cerulean to turquoise next year. (For the uninitiated, cerulean is bluer than turquoise. And no, you can't just say "light blue.") Certainty isn't possible. If one's entire personality depends on certainty, this is deeply offensive and must be stopped. Thus, Communists, Pentacostals, and the Taliban all agree that this must be stopped. You will have noticed by now that I never once mentioned sex. Everyone thinks fashion is all about being sexually attractive, but I don't think the evidence supports that. One look at a six -foot tall size 4 should have stopped that argument. For historical support, note that foot-binding, white lead face powder, tight corsets, and belladonna eyedrops have all been the peak of fashion, and are all either quite unhealthy or actually poisonous. If sexually attractiveness is about reproductive fitness, how on Earth can it require poison? The one thing all of those traits, and Hermes Kelly bags, Jimmy Choo stilletto heals, and powdered wigs have in common is that costliness. Until the industrial revolution, fashion was the exclusive province of the upper classes. It only spread downward when factories started producing lots of the required products. Humans are hierarchical, but the fashion industry makes that much harder. While the ambitious and clever betas and downward love this, the ones comfortable in their places really lose, since now, not only are they lower in the pack anyway, but they lose relative status since their position is no longer easily perceived. They have to do something to show their importance, which means they risk being wrong. Wow, I never really meant to spend multiple paragraphs on something quite this pretentious. Oh, well. Next one will be really silly. Promise.
posted by Kitty 8:12 PM 0 comments
Saturday, July 01, 2006

I saw "The Devil Wears Prada" tonight. Definitely a chick flick, but not as much as, say, "Bridget Jones' Diary." Anyone who's ever worked for a sadist lunatic can appreciate the movie. I've worked for three sadistic lunatics, two of whom were incompetent as well as sadistic. In that spirit, I invite anyone who wishes to post a comment describing your most horrible boss story.
posted by Kitty 8:30 PM 0 comments
Wednesday, June 28, 2006

I just heard that J. K. Rowling has given an interview in which she confirms that two main characters die in the final Harry Potter book. I do hate to hear that she's planning on offing one of the three principals though. I had rather hoped she'd relent. She also implied that she might kill Harry so that no one else could ever use the character. I have a pretty good track record guessing who dies. I figured out Sirius Black -- only main character with nothing to add to the story, and his death left Harry in possession of lots of useful things, not least of which is the house itself. Thus, he was the obvious one to buy it. Dumbledore's death was foretold a million times, and the Authority Figure -- think Merlin, Gandalf, Obi Wan -- pretty much has to die for the main character to take over. Basic Fantasy World Plot 101 stuff. Now that the obvious ones have gone, however, what happens next? So, here's my guess for who dies in the next book:1. Arthur Weasley, and at least one and possibly two of his chilren. Arthur has an ongoing personal feud with Lucius Malfoy. The feud wasn't emphasized enough in the movies, but is a big part of "Chamber of Secrets" and "Goblet of Fire." Arthur has long been an effective opponent of the Death Eaters, and is now highly influential in the ministry. Finally, and most important, he's the most important adult male in Harry's life now, and killing him will appear to Voldemort like killing Harry's father again. I don't think Molly is going to die, because, among other things, she's actually related to the Blacks and the Malfoys, and I think that relationship will be detailed in the next book. She has to be alive for that bit of the plot. 2. Hagrid. He's an object of contempt to the Death Eaters, but he is also physically powerful and immensely loyal to Dumbledore. Getting rid of him will appear to Voldemort as weakening Dumbledore's influence and threatening Harry. I think he's going to die to protect his brother, who won't deserve or appreciated it. Also, there is something of a pattern in her killing off characters with color names. "Albus," meaning "White," Dumbledore, Sirius Black, and Rubeous, i.e. Red, Hagrid. She likes patterns and word games, and I think she'll stick with this one. 3. Narcissa Malfoy. Dies at the hand of her sister protecting Draco, who then benefits from the protective effect of her love. I'm not sure if Draco dies before he gets redeemed, but I'm perfectly sure he does get redeemed. He'll either die or live out his life in poverty and insignificance to make up for the crimes of his family. Lucius dies too, but he's too repulsive to merit his own paragraph. 4. Severus Snape. I don't think Harry kills him, but I do think he's a double agent. The combination of him having taken the Unbreakable Oath to protect Draco and Dumbledore's lastwords being "Please, Severus," clearly indicate that he killed Dumbledore at D.'s own direction to prevent Draco from becoming a killer. Snape is the one person other than Neville who has a chance to kill Voldemort. 5. Ron. I really, really want to be wrong about this, but if either Ron or Hermione buys it I'm going to bet on Ron. For one thing, there are such a large number of Weasleys they make rather good expendables. Always another one for vengence later. Also, Ron has a serious weakness in that he feels overshadowed by Harry, Hermione, and his brothers. Ron's sin is envy, and Voldemort works very well with envy. I see V. exploiting Ron's deeply submerged envy at Harry and Hermione's skill, in such a way as to allow either one of them, probably Hermione, to end up in danger. Ron sacrifices himself when he sees what he caused. 5. Neville. I really, really, really, really want to be wrong on this count because Neville is my favorite character. I also am less convinced of this one than the other four. Neville could easily have been the boy in the prophecy. Voldemort and the Death Eaters hold him in contempt, and she likes to make small and weak things be the means of ending big and powerful ones. I see Neville actually being the one who takes out Voldemort, and the LeStranges who tortured his parents, and Voldemort's utter astonishment that something he thought of as weak could destroy him. She uses lots of Christian images and tropes in the other books, and the idea of the weak and powerless vanquishing the big and strong is the most important Christian plotline there is. Voldemort respects Harry's skill and strength, which means he'll be on guard for Harry. He dismisses Neville, so Neville is going to be able to sneak up on him. The question is whether Neville dies or not. Given the Christian themes, I think Neville almost has to. Self-sacrifice to defeat the ultimate evil. There is plenty of evidence that I'm wrong, however. The biggest bit is that Neville and Luna are now a couple. She doesn't like to kill off love interests, and if Neville survives, it's so he can marry Luna. I don't think Harry dies. For one thing, Scholastic Press is a business, and whatever she might think as an artist, money talks. Parents are not going to shell out $25 for a book once they know the main character dies in the end. These are still children's books and children like happy endings. Also, it works against the overriding theme of the books -- Love Wins Out. If Harry -- The Boy Who Lived -- dies, then Lily's self - sacrifice was meaningless and the whole story arc was pointless. I think Harry lives, marries Ginny, and becomes the Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor at Hogwarts. On some peripheral points, Dumbledore comes back through Draco's Hand of Glory. Remember that Dumbledore's hand suffered from some awful rotting disease. Somehow, D. changed his own live hand for Draco's corpse one. The corpse hand poisoned him. I also wonder whether Voldemort experiences redemption before he dies. In Dracula, Bram Stoker writes of the relief and happiness on the vampire's face when he finally dies. Ms. R is a well-read and thoughtful woman, and she might want to mimic that scene at the end. Also, it makes a nice, round plot if Ultimate Evil achieves some understanding of his sins at the end of his life. Finally, McGonigle becomes the new Hogwarts headmistress.
posted by Kitty 5:39 PM 1 comments
Saturday, June 24, 2006

As promised, here are some pictures of Steve, Andy, and Aaron. Since I'm in charge here, there will be no pictures of me. Ever. This is Steve on Father's Day, sitting in a deck chair grooving to his iPod and sleeping.
This is, of course, Andy and Aaron in the Eastside "Y" pool. The pool has a couple of water slides and few other attractions of that sort, meaning we're here pretty much every weekend in the summer if it's not raining, which it pretty much doesn't do anymore, so this is a major hangout. Since blogger is being picky about images this afternoon, I can't post the pictures I took of the pool -- actually, it's two pools, this one and a lap pool -- today. Maybe later. Anyway, enjoy the pics and comment freely.
posted by Kitty 2:14 PM 0 comments
Wednesday, June 21, 2006

My sons share a bedroom, which makes for some very interesting bedtime conversations. Tonight, for example:Aaron: Mommy, I'm going to marry Kathryn, Ellie, and Maggie. (three classmates at preschool.)Andy: Aaron, you can't do that. Some of them have to be your ex-wives!Me: Well, you can't marry more than one person at one time, but you don't have to have an ex-wife. Daddy doesn't have any. Aaron: Can I marry you, then? Daddy can marry Grandmother Tess. At that point, I decided it was time for lights out.
posted by Kitty 8:28 PM 2 comments