A Rock To Tie A String Around

I’m confused by the term ‘mommyblogger’. Mostly, because I’ve been called one lately, by more than a few people. By the very most raw definition, I suppose it’s fitting – I am a Momma, and proud of it. However, if you read back through my archives, I rarely blog about anything to do with my genius son, who at a mere two years old can say his alphabet (most of the time) and count to ten, sometimes eleven. Not to mention the fact that he can spot a kitty at a hundred yards and frequently freaks out passing strangers by shouting “Hello! Howru?” He’s a genius, cute too, but that’s not my point.

I think in order to be a true mommyblogger, you have actually blog about your child with some passing frequency, and I also think there must be some kind of prerequisite that you offer parenting advice and/or crafty tips. I do none of these things. I suck at crafts; my parenting advice is limited to a shrug of the shoulders and a profound ‘Huh, no idea, good luck with that.’

I suppose I could start offering up some of the advice that I get from family and friends….that’ll land me in social services land pretty quick. For the record, I never take this advice – it’s just offered to me on a regular basis by my outstandingly Scottish mother and neighbors. I’m actually amazed that any Scottish children live to adulthood.

For example, my son, Mr. Adorablepants, is doing this really cute thing where he smacks and headbutts us. Precious right? Sometimes it’s because he’s frustrated that I want to comb his hair, sometimes it’s because I am being totally unfair and making him put on shoes, sometimes I think he’s just channeling his own internal Tyler Durden. So I asked my Scottish neighbor, she’s in her sixties, has kids and grandkids, reminds me of my mom in many, many ways.

Her advice? Bite him. Yes, you heard me right, bite him. As I tried to scrape my jaw off the sidewalk, she told me this fascinating anecdote about raising her kids and how when they’d hit or kick, she’d just reach over and give them a little nip on the arm, like a dog. They’ll stop right away, she said, laughing and cooing at Adorablepants who was staring at her in horror.

In the early months when Mr. Adorablepants was colicky and attempting to set the world record for straight hours of screaming, I called my mother to see what I should do. Her advice? Rum. Yes, she advised rum. A little sip of rum will quiet the baby right down. I shouldn’t knock it, not like I haven’t heard the drunken baby solution before – the advice is the same the world over, it just seems to depend on your geographical location as to what flavor of alcohol. My husband’s Russian/Jewish family advised Vodka for the same purpose. I’m not sure where my mom got Rum; it doesn’t seem like a particularly Scottish brew….

Not the actual Adorablepants - he's more of a Guiness kind of guy

The Scottish seem to have a more free-range approach to child raising. It makes sense when I think of my childhood. I grew up in the mountains, and my sister and I would literally run in the woods from sun up till it was cold and dark outside. The other day Mr. Adorablepants made a beeline down our driveway and was headed straight for the middle of the street where a giant, filthy mud puddle was beckoning him. I yanked him back to safety before he made the asphalt. My Scottish neighbor shook her head at me in a way that said ‘oh you poor dumb girl’ and said, “You young women are so over worried, how’s he ever going to learn?” Learn what? What it’s like to get hit by a car? Or what it feels like to contract malaria from puddle water?

In terms of crafts I fail at mommyblogging as well. For Christmas this year I decided that because we are chronically cash-strapped, that Mr. Adorablepants and myself were going to make the presents for his grandparents. Mr. Adorablepants happens to be a champion finger painter; he’s like Jackson Pollack with a dash of Picasso with just a taste of Magritte – a genius. Anyhow, I decided that Adorablepants would paint the canvases and I would make frames for them and tada! Presents.

Disclaimer: Not the actual Adorablepants, all stunts were perfomed by a stand-in

Personally, I thought they turned out pretty darn all right. Downright okay. The reviews I got from the grandparents were this: “It was so creative, really, unlike anything else we’ve ever seen….” In my experience describing something as ‘creative’ is a euphemism for ‘ugly and weird’.

So there ya go folks, this is my one and only mommyblog. No product endorsements included and no usable advice either – please, for the love of all things holy, don’t use the Scottish parenting advice.

But here’s a few mommyblogs I would recommend:

http://sarcasticmom.com/
http://undomesticdiva.typepad.com/
www.redbrownblondeandbald.com

So read away, and stay away from the Rum.

I think I have the Na’vi blues. You know, the pandemic that’s running rampant across the country, affecting mostly dorks and the emotionally unstable? If you’ve escaped as a result of either a staunch (and well grounded) refusal to watch James Cameron movies, or because you’re just awesome and/or mentally healthy – the Na’vi blues has been classified as depression brought on by watching James Cameron’s Avatar and the crushing realization that real life will never, ever be as beautiful as Pandora.

Although, in Pandora you run the risk of being eaten by a giant rat thing and stomped by enormous rhinos, not to mention the imminent threat of being clawed to death by the big bird-dragons. (In my perfect paradise, all wildlife is fuzzy, vegetarian and likes to cuddle.) Never mind all that though, when you get past the ridiculously dangerous predators in Pandora, you get to plug your hair into plants and CGI’d animals and commune with nature.

I think we’re all suffering from the Pandora Blues. It’s been a creeping epidemic for some time now, and I think we have James Cameron to blame. The Abyss was the first movie to exhibit unearthly CGI effects, Cameron’s stilted writing and character development. Titanic followed in the tradition, bigger than life sets, ships, characters, flowing dresses that in real life would have caught on fire as Rose ran in slow motion through the coal burning room.

I don’t think Avatar is to blame, necessarily, but I do think it pushed us over the edge. There are a lot of CGI wonder movies out this year. The Lovely Bones is another that created a heaven (sorry – not heaven, it’s the in-between) that is so beyond our imagining beautiful that it makes our everyday lives look drab by comparison. That’s kind of the problem though, in The Lovely Bones, the novel by Alice Sebold – Susie Salmon’s in-between wasn’t glorious CGI’d rolling planets of butterflies and turquoise skies melting into impossibly high snow-capped mountains.

It was a the high school where Susie would have gone if she hadn’t died, and hundreds of dogs that ran across the field to her house at twilight to play. It was faintly skunk-scented air that reminded her of home. It was effective in its simplicity. If Sebold’s theory that we create our own afterlife is correct, that is more on par with what us normal folks will imagine, it won’t be enormous blooming roses trapped under a lake of clear blue tinted ice, it will be our homes at the time we felt most safe, most at peace. It will be warm oatmeal cookies and fireplaces that keep the house just perfectly cozy.

But that doesn’t make for very good cinema, does it? So Avatar and The Lovely Bones both have broken the bar for beautiful. Anything else will too much like real life – no wonder we’re depressed.

It’s all symptomatic of a much bigger restlessness. We’ve made our celebrities impossibly good looking, too skinny to be a ‘normal’ person, their lives too dramatic to be at all comparable to our own. We revel in finding photographs of celebrities doing ‘normal’ stuff like going to the coffee shop without makeup on – in fact you can get whole tabloids who specialize in celebrities without makeup doing human things like buying groceries. Then we sit back and act shocked that they aren’t red carpet gorgeous all the time.

It seeps into our politics. We want wondrous results, and we want them NOW. While logically we know that many of the reasons for our current economic recession started eight, even ten years ago – you see hoards of outraged voters, ready to drop kick Obama for not fixing the problem in under a year. Before Obama was even inaugurated you started hearing hints of ‘The Obama Recession’.

I think it’s less about politics, I find that the more the person actually knows about politics, the less likely they are to start pointing fingers at any one president be it Obama, Bush or Clinton.

No, I think it’s more of the Pandora Depression, we took the concept of Hope and Change and turned it into 200 story tall trees with little white jelly fish magical souls floating on our shoulders when it should have been a gentle twilight and a field of happy dogs.

Hope and Change are concepts, the reality of our country and our lives is that things take time, and the results rarely resemble what you imagined. The real power of Hope and Change is the concept that you will always be able to deal with unexpected results and gradually, over time, forward motion won’t be as difficult as it once was.

I want to throw a fork at John Edwards.

Today, John Edwards admitted that he lied to Nightline and that Reille Hunter’s baby girl is, indeed, his daughter. And not only is she his daughter but that he also went to enormous lengths to try to cover up the incident back in February 2008 when the baby was born. Allegedly he relocated Hunter from North Carolina to Santa Barbara and rewarded her silence with a three million dollar home. On top of that, he actually faked the DNA results and talked a campaign staffer named Andrew Young into taking the fall for him and claiming paternity. Oh, and did I mention that all this was happening while Edwards was cheating on his cancer stricken wife?

Dog.

I bet another three million that we would never have heard this admission if Andrew Young wasn’t about to publish a tell-all memoir of his experiences on Edwards campaign. Oh, did I mention that the powers that be are investigating Edwards’s use of campaign funds for his 2008 election bid?

He was my horse early on in the 2008 election; he was my pick in the 2004 election. I was never crazy about John Kerry, but I was excited by the prospect of Edwards in office. So when the primaries started heating up back in 2008, I had my fingers crossed for Edwards even though backing him meant that it would be another white man in office. I still backed him.

I liked his health reform policies. I liked his proposal of regional health care markets. I liked that he wanted to do away with the Defense of Marriage Act and legalize marriage for all couples – be they gay or straight. I also liked that he wanted to withdraw from Iraq within ten months. I can’t say I really believe that it would have happened, or that his health care reform would have been met with any less animosity than Barack Obama’s reform attempts. But, I wanted to believe it.

But now, now…well, now I want to throw a fork at him, hard. I will never understand the urge that overcomes men in power, be they democrats or republicans, to compromise their integrity, destroy their family, and blow up their public image at a time when the entire country is staring at them and not only judging them, but also looking for cracks in their shiny veneer. I just don’t get it.

Is the urge for sex that strong? Seriously men, you have to help me out here – is that it? Or is it, as I suspect it might be, something else – a need to feel powerful, like you’re so much the shiz-nit that you can have any woman you want. You can skip all the niceties, the dating, the wooing, the compliments and the dinners and skip right to sex. Then, when it gets complicated, you can buy a three million dollar house in Santa Barbara (I’d say mansion, but knowing Santa Barbara – Hunter is probably living in a two bedroom bungalow with no yard, three million doesn’t go all that far…..) and ship your trophy and unfortunate offspring across the country.

My mother has a theory (to her it’s more like a doctrine) that when dealing with executive branch elections, we should only elect the old money rich. Her logic is that old money rich has nothing to prove, and isn’t going to be constantly trying to show off the size of his man bits to his staffers. She says that when we vote for rags to nouveau riche aka John Edwards, we’re voting for someone who is going to be by default in shock from the amount of power that they just inherited and thereby constantly trying to prove what a great, important man he is.

And before you say it…er…write it….there are 10,000 examples of Kennedy’s and Clintons to prove her wrong. This is what makes Christmas at my house really, really fun.

Nonetheless, it’s an interesting theory. Part of the reason I liked Edwards initially was his son of a coal miner, boy made good charm. But I suppose what I really have to admit to myself is that I like that quality in theory but when I think about the sheer amount of shit that the President of the United States has to take from the good ol’ boys club also known as the Senate, I want someone who doesn’t think he has to prove anything to anybody. I want a Kennedy, an Obama. I want someone who could stare down the Harvard Law Review and not blink. I don’t want folksy charm or uplifting anecdotes about Edward’s coat of many colors. I want balls.

I just hope that the victims of John Edwards downward spiral find some peace.

I like to fantasize about moving to exotic foreign countries, like Canada. So every once in awhile, I find myself up late with insomnia, googling phrases like ‘so you want to become a Canadian’ or ‘how to move to France’. My findings will be the topic of another, more in depth blog, I promise, but it’ll have to wait. I got sidetracked by crazy. As it turns out, it’s hard to move to a foreign country, the French government doesn’t seem at all enthusiastic about my plan of not working and instead sitting in quaint little cafes and eating baguettes all day. Pfftt….who knew the French were so uptight?

So I turned my sights to more attainable countries, I figured that maybe if I go to a less popular place…the immigration process will be easier. I did a little hunting around and found this guy named Max, who wants to start his own autonomous community and house it in the middle of a third world county where presumably they won’t notice it’s there or won’t care.

I know that you’re thinking – this sounds like my college roommate, the first roommate, the one I suspected of being the uni-bomber, the one who constructed voodoo dolls out of paper clips and left them scattered on my bed when I’d go to class. That roommate, the one that mysteriously disappeared after winter break….. I think this is a male version of my college roomie, all grown up and full of ambition.

Max’s idea is called The Liberty Colony. I had a hard time actually finding his site…maybe he has it under super Liberty Colony induced security….but here’s a link to a discussion wherein Max tries to sway people to his cause:

http://mises.org/Community/forums/t/2725.aspx?PageIndex=1

The basic idea is that the Liberty Coloneers would be exempt from all the stifling, controlling government meddling and free to practice full entrepreneurial freedom. They’ll make millions! Of course….since they’ll be living in a third world county (some suggestions on the site include Somalia, Afghanistan) the likelihood that their amazing products and/or services will be funded by the locals is slim. I guess they’ll be utilizing the world wide web….of course, they can do that already, and they don’t have to live in Puntland. But there must be something I’m missing about the allure of The Liberty Colony, right?

Worried that they might be a little close-minded? Just like my college roommate was close-minded when I asked if she would consider not cleaning her frog tank in the shower stall….. Don’t worry, The Liberty Colony accepts all sorts of different political views: “a variety of groups to include conservatives, libertarians, anarcho-capitalists, minarchists and a variety of other variously named groups.”

See? True diversity. Libertarians and anarchists!

Max is serious. Just like my college roomie was serious about never washing her hair. He only wants hard-core applicants, and this is not for the faint of heart. If you go to the Liberty Colony, of course, since the location is to be kept secret – that’ll be hard…. But if you go, you are signed on for a year contract, after that you’re free to ‘do as you please’, c’mon, are you going to get an offer like that from France?

“…in the first year the initial Colonists agree to be governed by the initial PDA. After one year is expired they are released from that obligation and can do as they please…”

Max is totally reasonable. Just like my roomie was totally reasonable when she used my teapot to make ramen noodles, thus making my next cup of tea taste like powdered chicken Ceylon….

If this really is my ex-roomie, then I think I’ll have an in. I might even get waved the tax that Max is proposing to charge his new inhabitants. Did I accidentally say tax? That’s not what I meant, Max would never ‘tax’ anyone; taxes are a symptom of communist socialist fascist regime bent on destroying personal liberty. That’s not what the Liberty Colony is all about. No, Max is simply requiring operational costs – that are paid directly to him for the privilege of living in rural Afghanistan….

Interested? Max is taking the first 100 applicants as soon as he can mix the Kool-Aid…I mean take the applications. Want to help? Here’s some suggestions that Max offers:

“Also, there are other ways to help:
1. Spread the word about the site.
2. Help recruit colonists.
3. Help sponsor a specific Colonist or contribute to the general fund to pay for the Colonists. Every bit helps.
4. Volunteer to be a mod in the forums and post in the forums.”

You can also contact Max at: info@libertycolony.com

In fact, if you actually do contact Max, and get a reply – I’ll send you a prize….granted that prize will be something I find around my house, and will be of varying value….but a prize nonetheless. It’s a contest!

I’ve come to appreciate the spam that tries to infiltrate my blog. I really have. Since I started this blog last year, the quality of spam has gone up tenfold. In the old days, I used to check my comments and be hit with five to ten comments pending approval that all said:

“Try Levitra! Best For Your Face! Best Love For You and Yours.”

I’m not sure what Levitra does, but I am pretty sure that it doesn’t belong on your face.
Then the spam took a different turn – it showed up all in Russian or Arabic. My first reaction was ‘I’m a global sensation! Go Me!’ Then as I read the Russian…I picked up certain key words – namely ‘Levitra’, ‘Viagra’, and ‘Cepocal’.

Either my global audience is worried about my face, or there was no global audience, only global spam.

But, I’ve got to say, the spam that’s hitting my inbox lately is of a much higher quality. I think the spam bots have learned that I am susceptible to flattery, and they’re working me, oh yes they are.

For example:

“Aw, this was a really quality post. In theory I’d like to write like this too – taking time and real effort to make a good article… but what can I say… I procrastinate alot and never seem to get something done.”

This comment comes from my new BFF Tad, whose email is www.buyumbrellastrollers.com. A suspicious person might just think that Tad is buttering me up so I approve his comment and then anyone who clicks on his name, wanting to know more about my BFF, will be directed to a site that sells umbrella strollers and possibly Levitra.

Cynics. I think Tad is sweet on me. Take for example this next comment:

“It appears that you have placed a lot of effort into your article and I require more of these on the net these days. I sincerely got a kick out of your post. I don’t really have much to say in response, I only wanted to comment to reply wonderful work.”

This love note comes to me from my next in line BFF, Billy. Billy virtually resides at www.bodybuildersusa.com. I like a man who takes care of himself. Billy was so blown away by my extra stupendous writing that he couldn’t even say much in response, he just dropped in to stroke my ego, and possibly sell me some Viagra.

I’ve figured out three rules that future spammers need to follow if they are to get past the ironclad, bulletproof moat that surrounds my comment section.

Rule #1: Kiss My Ass
Rule #2: Kiss My Ass
Rule #3: Kiss My Ass

Yep, that’s really the secret folks, just kiss my ass. Tell me that your blown away by my writing, tell me that you accidentally found my blog and now you think you have a crush on me, tell me anything – as long as I don’t find pharmaceuticals or foreign mail order bride ads in your tagger – you’re golden.

Sometimes though, I get some readers who sound a little disappointed:

“Wow. A New Year but where are the new posts? Please write something new ”

Poor Bill at www.onlinebusinessopportunities.com. I’ve been neglecting him and now he’s sad. Good thing he’s making so much money from home, or else he’d need some Levitra for his face.

Lots of people try to cheer me up. I get tons of jokes:

“Why did the chicken cross the road? To buy discount vicodin at www.cheappharms.com’

Don’t worry, I didn’t get it the first time either – it’s kinda a joke bomb, it’ll go off in about three hours and you’ll find yourself howling with laughter for seemingly no reason. Or maybe it was the side effects of the generic pain meds….

In any case, readers, keep it coming. I especially like the real comments, the ones that let me know you’re out there. But vicodin jokes are good too…..

I don’t understand Twitter. Against my better judgment, the husband convinced me to try Twitter, and I’ve been at it for a couple of weeks. He told me it was like Facebook – if you like Facebook, you’ll love Twitter. He said it was an excellent place to broadcast the random ‘news’ articles I find, or the blogs I like or just post random statements about myself without the self-conscientiousness that I occasionally feel on Facebook. No offense intended Facebook – it’s just that with Facebook, I understand that even if I’m bored or in an insomniatic fit and I feel like posting a new update every five minutes – I shouldn’t. I’ll look crazy and I’ll drive my friends crazy.

Plus, I pretty much know most of my Facebook peeps – a lot of us grew up in the same small town together, some of us worked together in theatre, some of us teach together, some of us know mutual people and appreciate the same interests i.e. writing, reading, Swedish horror movies….. It’s like a really big, slightly disjointed family. We stay on our best behavior and generally appreciate each other’s quirks.

Not Twitter. Twitter is crazy land to me.

The best analogy I can come up with is that Facebook is like Wine With Friends Night – and Twitter is Drunken Binge on Tequila Night With Co-Workers.

You’ve all been there, or maybe you’ve just had to hear about it, or clean up after your roommate….either way – you know what I’m saying.

Wine With Friends Night means that we all get together, have a few too many glasses of something expensive and start talking about whether the Japanese ‘Ringo’ can even be compared to the ‘The Ring’ and why ‘No Country For Old Men’ made a better movie than book whereas ‘The Road’ made a better book than movie, and the merits of Cormac McCarthy.
Every once in awhile, as the night progresses, someone says something off the wall, then quietly excuses themselves to the bathroom and we all forget about it, they return and we order another bottle of merlot and keep on keepin’ on.

No one pukes in their hair, no one punches the bartender, and no one threatens their mother.
Not on Twitter – I mean Drunken Tequila Night With Co-Workers.

On Drunken Tequila Night, you’re hanging out with a bunch of people that you don’t really know very well. You might know that they bring a lean cuisine frozen pasta meal for lunch everyday that makes the microwave smell like marinara, and you might know that they have a hot boyfriend/girlfriend whose picture they keep on their desk. But you don’t really know them.

On Drunken Tequila Night, everyone is vying for attention. Everyone wants to be special, wants everyone else to see how pretty they are, how popular they are, how clever and witty they are, and most of all how hot they look when they giggle.

On Drunken Tequila Night, conversation eventually dissolves into random fact-bearing nuggets like:

“Hot Chocolate!!!!”

“I like Toast!”

“My right boob is smaller than my left boob!”

and occasionally, the totally inappropriate but psychologically telling outbursts such as:

“My mom is a heartless bitch who should have had an abortion.”

Incidentally, I ‘unfollowed’ that guy….

My point is this – I don’t get Twitter. I currently have eighteen followers and am following ninety-three people. I get flooded with people’s random, tequila induced thoughts every time I log on. I’m trying to figure out why I should care, or why they should care that I watched ‘Let The Right One In’ on Netflix last night.

In differentiating between Twitter and Facebook – there also seems to be a breakdown in the level of responsibility involved.

On Facebook – if someone posted something scary like ‘I just can’t take it anymore’ – I bet their inbox would be flooded with ‘are you okay’s?’ and their phone number that shows up on your profile would be called a few dozen times. Maybe not, but I’m hoping that’s the truth. I’ve done it, not the post but the phone calls and the follow messages demanding that people let me know they’re all right.

But, in Twitter land – if someone tweets that same thing – they’re likely to be ignored, or at best ‘retweeted’ – which basically translates to ‘I read this and while I can’t be bothered to make a comment, I’ll gladly repeat you”

Help me out people. I want to like Twitter, I mean Oprah likes it and she’s never steered me wrong….or has she?

Amazon thinks I’m a Teenage Republican Conspiracy Theorist. I have no one but myself to blame for this miscommunication either. I vaguely understand the concept behind the intelligent search thingy that Amazon does, from what I understand, it’s similar to the way that Tivo works – if you like this, then you’ll love this – that concept. Both search engines process your search results, and then come up with similar items that they think you might like.

It’s creepy.

For the longest time Tivo kept suggesting that we record Spongebob Squarepants based off my husband’s season pass to record The Simpsons. Spongebob and Simpsons are not similar, not by a long shot – although, I laugh at both of them, I give them that.

Tivo also thought that I would like every entertainment news report, and took the liberty of recording Entertainment Tonight at least twenty times a day. I finally had to sit Tivo down and have a talk with it and explain that just because I recorded The Soup of E – that doesn’t necessarily mean that I care about celebrity gossip news, so please stop interrupting my shows to record Celebrities Gone Wild and Twenty Something Skinny Girls Grocery Shopping Expose 2010.

Despite frequent and heartfelt talks, Tivo and I weren’t able to work it out, and I had to dump him for DVR. DVR doesn’t try to think for me and I appreciate that. He just takes orders and does what I ask, that ‘s really what I prefer in intuitive technology.

I’m worried about my relationship with Amazon. I look up some fairly random books – sometimes for research purposes, sometimes I’m trying to check prices on books I want to order for school, sometimes I’m trying to find out more about the teenage vampire books my students are reading, sometimes I check out the books that are on the top ten sales ranking.
It’s all pretty innocent.

However, Amazon is doing that thing where it wants to try to anticipate my behavior. The other day, Amazon suggested that I buy Going Rogue by everyone’s favorite asshat Sarah Palin. My first question was – C’mon Amazon, what would lead you to think that I would ever want to spend money on that self-serving piece of fiction disguised as a memoir? So I did a little homework on my search patterns.

It turns out that earlier this month, I looked at a book called The War On Christmas – How The Liberal Plot To Ban The Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought by John Gibson. It was going to be part of a blog that never materialized. It looks like a really funny book, although I’m not sure that’s the intent. On the cover it shows a Christmas Tree (or should I call it a Baby Jesus Tree?) being yanked away by the evil liberal conspirators.

Never mind that the Baby Jesus Tree is a pagan tradition that comes from the Solstice Celebration. Double never mind that Christmas in general was the compromise to get the godless pagans to stop celebrating Solstice and give their mid-winter celebration a Christian tinge. Never mind all that, especially never mind the fact that historically the really hardcore Christians like the Puritans refused to celebrate Christmas because of it’s pagan roots and even banned the holiday.

Check it out – http://masstraveljournal.com/features/boston-cambridge/when-christmas-was-banned-boston

But never mind all that, I was looking at this book and snickering at the 800 comments that followed. One guy said that when we don’t celebrate Baby Jesus Day, we are infringing on his right to practice his religion. I guess it’s all or nothing for that one.

Anyhow, based on that search – Amazon suggested ‘Going Rogue’ by everyone’s favorite gal Sarah Palin, ‘Arguing With Idiots by America’s Mascot’ for the Mentally Unhinged Glen Beck, and ‘Guilty: Liberal Victims and Their Assault on America’ by the Queen of the Delusional – Ann Coulter.

Now, I’m embarrassed for anyone to log into Amazon under my account, what will they think of me?

It’s not always like this though. Below the right wing political books, were ‘more suggestions’. These encompassed the work I do on Amazon for my teenage students. Under More Suggestions they thought I might like ‘Eclipse’ by Stephenie Meyer, ‘The Vampire Diaries’ by L. J. Smith, and ‘The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants’ by Ann Brashares.

The best I can figure, Amazon thinks I’m sixteen years old with a set of deeply Republican parents.

The art of the holiday newsletter seems to be a shaky ground. And, granted, I’ve never tried writing one, so I’m not much of one to talk; however, the reason I’ve never written one is because I’ve seen them go a bad direction more than once.

In my estimation, the holiday newsletter should be the basics of what’s going on with you and your family, all the good stuff, upbeat takes on the bad, and well wishes for the people you are sending it to. Sometimes, this is accomplished. More often than not, the holiday newsletter becomes a scary little window into the fucked up lives of your friends and neighbors.

I recently got a holiday newsletter that was written from the perspective of the author’s cat. I learned from the holiday newsletter that the cat really liked the tree, loved kibble and wished she had more ribbons to play with. I also learned that the author has way too much time on her hands. I surmise that nothing of great importance has happened to the author this year, and hence she felt compelled to draw upon the experiences of her cat for holiday fodder.

Speaking of cats, some holiday newsletters let some cats out of the bag that probably should have stayed locked up. These are the letters where the author tells us things about their families that have us cringing. The kind of information that makes our next face-to-face encounter uncomfortable because I can’t stop thinking about the anger management class their husband took or the sleep disorder their kid has.

This holiday newsletter reads like literary diahhrea, the author can’t stop talking about their explosive IBS or the itchy rash that was covers their husband’s man bits, or really embarrassing episode of stress related bedwetting that their school age son struggled with last summer.
Uh huh. I don’t want to know this stuff. I want to know that your kid made the honor roll, that your vegetable garden grew enough tomatoes this summer to last the winter through, and that your husband likes his job. In short, lie to me. Please. Next time I see you, I don’t want to be wondering about what kind of itch cream your man is using.

I’m not sure what it is – maybe it’s the festive holiday borders, dancing Santa’s and purple reindeer holding hooves make us think that we can write about ANYTHING and it will automatically become socially acceptable.

The most popular form of newsletter blunder, in my expert opinion, is the ‘All About Me’ letters. While it’s a far cry from the intimate details that belie the IBS Explosion Newsletter and way more sane than the Channeling My Cat letter – the All About Me – is more interesting in what it doesn’t say rather than what it actually does.

I’m great, I’m back in grad school, and I’m living in the best apartment ever. Okay, great for you – but last I checked you had two kids and a husband. What happened to them? See what I mean? I’m happy that my friend/cousin/co-worker is doing great, but you can’t help but wonder if they actually flipped over to the crazy side and their counterparts i.e. kids, husband, etc… are living in another state all of a sudden or are locked in the attic desperately waiting for someone to notice their absence.

I just think there are certain topics that maybe we shouldn’t cover in holiday newsletters, such as: Rehab, Relapses, Cats, Bedwetting, Boils, Rashes, Puss or Rotting Food.

You all think I’m being hyperbolic – but you have not seen the horror I have witnessed in my stash of holiday family newsletters

Just think about it people – and next time you want to write a widespread letter to your family – consider this: What Would Dancing Santa Do?

We currently rent a house in a neighborhood where most people own their houses, or so it appears. By merit of living in this neighborhood, our neighbors make automatic assumptions about us, most of them positive. For one, they assume we are much wealthier than we actually are. They (they referring to the string of families on the block who also have toddlers and thus we spend a lot of standing out in the lawn time watching the kids play) are constantly surprised that I work. And even more surprised that I work for survival and not just for something to fill the time or give me a sense of fulfilled civic duty.

They also assume that since I am but a lowly high school teacher/writer that my husband must be the CEO of some major company or vice president of a bank. He can’t just be a normal guy with a normal job, he can’t be that.

We don’t live in Beverly Hills by the way, not even close. But our humble little west side neighborhood had recently attracted a flock of families that in previous years would have looked at living in Beverly Hills type neighborhoods and because of the current economy, they ended up here.

Most of my neighbors are also Catholic, and their kids go to private Catholic elementary and preschools. By merit of the fact that we’re not Catholic and I teach in a public school, they have all assumed that we must be the only other logical choice: Jewish. Which I suppose technically we are, my husband’s family has ethnic Jewish roots, but they were never religious Jews. My family is about as British as you can get so I’m enjoying the misperception, Jewish is much more interesting than British. But the neighbors are extremely careful to explain to me whenever their kids go around selling candy bars for the their classes, that if I don’t feel comfortable contributing, there’s no pressure to buy the chocolate bar. Good to know, unfortunately I really like chocolate.

I walk the neighborhood with my son and I feel like an imposter. I know I’m probably reading into the situation a fair amount. In the immortal words of Dr. Phil – if you really knew what people thought of you, you’d be surprised how much they don’t. But I feel like I’m keeping up a ruse by merit of living here.

As I walk my neighborhood, however, it occurs to me that I’m not the only imposter. In a three-block radius, there are probably five homes up for foreclosure, five more that are up for sale and have been for a year or more. A house down the street has been on the market for over two years, the price has been slashed in half, and still no one’s buying. Even my fancy neighbors who bought out one of the little houses and turned it into a two-story mansion – they confided that they were running out of money so the wife was waiting tables at night to pay their mortgage.

So, I suppose I wonder who the real imposter is? Is it me, who only rents on this side of town because I’m friends with my landlady? Or is it them, who can’t afford to live where they wanted to live, so they moved to the West side, only to find out that they can’t really afford it here either?

Like I said before, I don’t live in Beverly Hills. In fact, thanks to a History of LA class I recently took at Northridge University, I found out that my little neighborhood has historically been known as the slum of Santa Monica. It was the place that all the black and brown people lived when they couldn’t live in the Santa Monica city limits. If you went about four blocks toward the ocean, the property values escalated dramatically, even though the houses looked exactly the same. This precedent goes back to the fifties and sixties. And while I would like to think that this kind of perception has changed, it’s still much cheaper to buy here than it is four blocks away.

Hence, my new fancy neighbors. They moved in, tore down the original houses, and built mansions that barely fit on the property boundaries. The original houses are dwarfed in comparison, and are starting to resemble the service quarters to the estate of the not-quite-rich-enough-for-Beverly-Hills Crowd.

It’s not really anyone’s fault. Well, maybe it’s the fault of the ever-elusive economy that we’ve all been forced into the position of living as imposters to our former lives. Things we were able to afford for our entire adult lives suddenly are unreachable. Situations we were able to remedy by cutting back a little or working a little more in the past are suddenly now red alert financial crisis because there’s no extra money, nothing to cut back on, and no extra work.

I have faith it’s all going to get better. I also think the only way that it’s ever going to do that is if we start living the lives we can actually afford.

Amanda Knox is either innocent and there has been a tremendous miscarriage of justice, or she’s the scariest sociopath to make international headlines in a long time. I realize that statement sounds obvious, either she’s guilty or innocent, and in a case like Amanda Knox’s, there’s no gray area. Either she tortured, tormented and eventually slashed Meredith Kercher’s throat in cold blood, or she is completely, totally innocent.

I’ve read a lot of blogs and articles by legal types who make the point that if this case took place in South Central, Los Angeles, and the girl being accused was black and poor instead of white and upper middle class, this case would never have made the papers. Instead, that Amanda Knox would have been convicted two years ago and probably would be facing life in prison, not just twenty-six years.

They’re probably right. However, it’s all a moot point, because the truth of the matter is that it didn’t happen in State Street, Chicago – it happened in Italy, to an angel faced girl next door, who might just be a psychotic murderer.

Let me be clear, my legal savvy comes almost exclusively from Law and Order, SVU with a few drops of A Few Good Men, To Kill A Mockingbird, and Matlock on the side. So feel free to set me straight but – the Italian justice system’s willingness to let the prosecution offer ‘theoretical circumstantial evidence’ seems really wacky. I can’t imagine the blond District Attorney from SVU letting that one slide by.

In short, the prosecution was allowed to offer up their theory of a possible scenario wherein Amanda Knox, Raffaele Sollecito and Rudy Guede tortured and killed Kercher while tormenting her with perverse sexual comments. Even though there was little to no basis for their theory, the prosecution was allowed to extrapolate upon things they thought Knox could possibly have said in the moment.

Maybe, they’re right, maybe their guesses were far milder than what Meredith Kercher actually experienced in her last moments. But maybe they’re flat out wrong too. The idea of theoretical circumstantial evidence hits me a bit like the spectral evidence that they allowed during the Salem Witch Trials. Back in 1692, since it was a theocracy, they allowed spectral evidence during the trial. Essentially, it means evidence that doesn’t have any basis in reality. I could go in and say that my neighbor appeared to me in a dream and punched me in the jaw and then I woke up and had a pimple in the same place, so it was obviously my neighbor’s fault. While this sounds crazy, it’s how they were able to hang twenty-nine people.

I think I watch too many horror movies, but Amanda Knox scares the crap out of me. She scares me more than John Gotti – ruthless crime boss murderer, she scares me more than Aileen Wuornos – drug riddled psychotic, she even scares me more than Charles Manson who encapsulates a little of both. Possibly, because with these three, I feel like I would have seen them coming. Amanda Knox looks like someone I would have hired to babysit my son, someone I would have loved for my son to date if he were twenty years old. She looks like someone I would trust.

I think inherently, we’re all capable of murder. I don’t necessarily believe that murderers are made of different stuff than the rest of us; they just have a few triggers that most of us never have to deal with, namely opportunity and willing accomplices. It’s a little like that Seinfeld episode where Elaine is contemplating what would happen if she murdered the cable guy. I think everyone has a moment like that at some point. It’s not so much the evidence of murderous rage, rather astonishment that a stranger would trust us so much as to come into our house, defenseless, and put themselves in a vulnerable position such as half in and half out of our kitchen cabinet while they fix our sink.

I’ve always wondered if plumbers, cable guys and the lot think about this stuff before they enter strange houses. If that were me, and granted I’m a little morbid at times, I would be wondering if every job at a strange house was going to be my last. I would be wondering if I was going to be on the evening news a few weeks down the road as the cops are digging me out of the backyard.

My guess is that if most people thought like this, we wouldn’t have cable guys, plumbers or the people from the city who check your furnace and relight your pilot light.

I think we forget how breakable we are. The Talented Mr. Ripley illustrates this rather well. Tom Ripley wasn’t a murder until he accidentally broke Dickie Greenleaf. But the Tom Ripley’s are way scarier than the Joe Pesci’s anyday. I would never have trusted Tommy DeVito. But Tom Ripley has a very Amanda Knoxlike quality.

I guess I’ll have to wait until SVU does a show based on this case to really see the inner workings of the court system. Till then, my thought are with the families of both the victim and the accused.