many things make a post
March 17, 2009
* Polydextrose is not a flower; or, yet again, "eat food; not too much; mostly plants."
* Nathan Fillion is the Next Great TV Leading Man. To which I say, duh.
* My new favorite poem: "The Meaning of Life."
* I am not a vengeful woman, for the most part. But this guy deserves his own special hell.
* This statement will get me smacked-down but -- I don't disagree with "The Case Against Breastfeeding" by Hanna Rosin. Which is my tepid way of saying that breastmilk is not a miracle elixir, no matter how much we might want it to be.
* The best thing about March.
* Author headshots and retouching. How much is too much?
* This probably deserves its own post but how f'ed up is my own self-worth that I think Simon Jones has a point in this screed against the women he has knocked-up having the gall to no longer be sex kittens. Even though I know Jones is an ass (and know at least two women with kids IRL who have been cheated on because their husbands are Jonesian narcissists), a very small part of me still feels culpable. Oh, patriarchy. Where haven't your tendrils reached?
* Jo Walton on Tim Powers. I want them to write a book together.
* Justine Larbalestier give the best writing advice ever.
In other news, I had to run downtown at 11 a.m. to pick up a very late birthday gift for my Dad -- sorry, Dad -- and the St. Patty's Day revels had already started. Ah, youth. Bet you a nickel most of 'em will be completely incapacitated by happy hour. Pacing, kids. It's called pacing.
Shamrock Shakes arrived here in about mid-February, probably because McD's has to compete with millions of custard places which have their own versions.
Ah, sometimes life in the Land of Dairy is good.
Posted by: PL | March 17, 2009 at 12:31 PM
I read the Simon Jones thing and just think that he and his wives are whiny and immature. He's got a narrow view of womanhood. The wives think it's OK to lie to get what you want. Maybe they deserve each other.
Then again, I'm just irritable today.
Posted by: Trish | March 17, 2009 at 01:37 PM
So long as people think it's wrong to experiment on babies and pregnant women, we will not know "the truth" about breast milk--or much else about childhood and pregnancy. It's one of those catch-22s.
I can't even tell how those author's pictures have been retouched. Am I blind?
Posted by: Anna | March 17, 2009 at 02:35 PM
I won't bite your head off. I read Rosin's article in DH's Atlantic a few days ago & while I don't agree with everything she says, I think she makes some interesting points.
Posted by: Katy | March 17, 2009 at 07:01 PM
I agree with Trish. Simon the Spineless and the Incredible Lying Wives deserve each other. Their children deserve better (or at least more honest) parents. Feh. FEH.
Also, I loved Elizabeth Gilbert's TED talk. It hadn't occurred to me to question the whole tortured artist thing before...
Posted by: Melanie | March 17, 2009 at 07:56 PM
On the retouching - if you look at her waist and arm in the full body shots, you'll see that they are notably thinner. Same with her cheek in the head shot. It's subtle, yes, but jumps out once you spot it.
I don't know that I agree 100 percent with Rosin either but do feel it's a discussion that needs to be had without people getting all worked up. Never going to happen, tho.
I second all of the FEHs at Simon and his wives. The story just caught me at a weird moment, when I was feeling all matronly.
And, just on a personal level, I find it hard to really create anything while in the midst of torture, either physical or psychic. A certain amount of clear-headedness is important for the process, I think. YMMV.
Posted by: Adrienne | March 18, 2009 at 09:21 AM
Leaning a bit towards being a sociobiologist, I tend to think bf'ing along with lots of the things we do in parenting doesn't have the * *importance* we want to place on it in terms of our children. Ignoring the health benefits (passive immunity especially) the one aspect I personally really did not agree with Rosin is the hassle/effort/tying one down argument. It is so much easier for me to bf than to purchase formula, prepare and clean bottles. And rarely, after the tiny infant stage have I even found myself in the need to bf in public and again I'd rather not have to lug along bottles and formula and water to do so. By the time an infant could hold a bottle herself she could be eating bananas at the park or wherever. I think pumping sucks though so if I wasn't able to work part-time I don't know if I would have lasted EBF as long as I did.
Posted by: mamatried | March 19, 2009 at 10:11 AM