The Rainy Day Cardboard Princess Fairy Rocketship

This is an oldie but a goodie. A few years ago I tackled a rainy day playdate with one cardboard box, some tissue paper, markers, curly ribbon, and glitter and fairy dust and what not, and this is what the little darlings created:

A Flyboat!

Happy Homemaking Tips for the Angry American

Today, Easy Rider has a guest blogger: Fern Fergleson. I owe her money based on a bad bet I made back when I was positive that Bush would be a one-termer just like his dad. Fern is wanted in a few states, so she would only let me publish is this one photo of her cat, Limbaugh. Fern Fans can catch her in Road Trip to Pluto the SF Fringe Fest on Sept. 16th. She might be doing something with people, or pod people...I'm not sure which.

Hello America! How are ya? It’s me, your faithful patriot Fern Fergleson. Big news, Fern fans, I had to change the name of my podcast, “Tea Party” because me and the rest of my Tea Partiers just couldn’t get along. For one thing, they made their ham salad with light mayonnaise (and we all know light mayonnaise is a communist plot to lower the cost of health care by prematurely unclogging America’s arteries). For another, they are all strict anti-abortionists, while I firmly believe that abortions should be mandatory for all communist fetuses. Now, old Fernie is no dummy. I know that you can’t tell by a sonogram if a baby is going to be born a communist, but I know for a fact that an amniocentesis will show that kind of thing right away. You can’t hide pinko, not even in the womb. Sigh. Gosh, now the only members of my branch of the Tea Party are myself and my cat, Limbaugh (who is also pro-pinko-abortion and anti-light mayo). I call our new show, wait for it, dun duh daaaa!!! Tea for Two! How lol is that, Americans?

For now, the good folks here at Easy Rider have let me piggy-back on their weird little blog. Okay, it’s time for some happy homemaking tips! The other day, I received this troubling question:

Dear Fern,

I recently orchestrated a heinous, vicious, cold-hearted terrorist plot against our totalitarian government. How do I break the rap?

Sincerely,

Maligned in Michigan

Oh gosh, Maligned, I don’t know if I can help you. Ever since our presidency was stolen by an Arabian pinko-commie from Kenya with a forged birth certificate from a fake state (Hawaii? I don’t think so. American states have snow, Americans!), decent people who want to break the law to fight totalitarianism are suddenly treated like common criminals. It is so darned unfair. Those poopy-head pinkos will use any excuse to throw us real Americans in jail. I ask you, real America, what is worse: totalitarianism or killing totalitarians? Totalitarianism, by gosh! Now, I’m not sure what totalitarianism is, but I’m sure by-golly that it is killing our once great country just as surely as Ellen is going to kill American Idol!

Now this next question is one that Fern can actually answer because it’s about housekeeping: my specialty.

Dear Fern,

Spring cleaning time has rolled around again, but I’ve been too terrified to even start polishing my silver gravy service set. This whole thing started when those commie liberals passed their Armageddon-and-pork-ridden health care bill. How can I focus on cleaning when the world is going to end soon? Help!!!

Signed,

Messy in Massachusetts

Jeepers, Messy, I can tell by the three exclamation points that this spring cleaning fiasco has got you in quite a tizzy! Here’s a little happy homemaking hint: just throw your fine silver in the dishwasher with an open jar of Tarn X and wait. It comes out a different color every time: like a gumball machine. What fun!

Now I’m going to need you all you little Fernatics to just cool your jets about this health care bill. Here is what I know for sure about it:

1.    It is full of pork, and not the good kind like ham salad, but the bad kind like ham salad made with light mayo.
2.    It kills old people.
3.    It legally requires all American citizens to get an abortion, a gay marriage and a Toyota.

Here is what I don’t know for sure, but I can pretty much guess:

1.    It will cause milk to sour and wheat fields to wilt in fields across this great land.
2.    Its reflection can’t be seen in a mirror.
3.    It legally mandates fire, brimstone and frogs to fall from the sky and for a cloud of locusts to cover the earth.

So you see, Messy, there is plenty to be just scared spitless of, but if you’re going to die, wouldn’t you rather face your maker with sparkling silver? It’s like I always say, behind every filthy house is a hell-bound housekeeper.

Okay, I have time for one more letter. This next one is from my own home state of Minnesota! Go Vikings!

Hey Fern,

Was that you who broke into my house and left a needlepoint sampler, stitched with the words “Die, Baby Killer”, in my foyer? I’m sure it was. I just want you to know that I’m pressing charges.

Al Franken
U.S. Senator, Minnesota

Dear Commie in the Capitol,

First of all, that was not me, but if it was, I would be able to send all Fern fans who send me an email with the words “baby killer” in the subject line with their very own Die, Baby Killer needlepoint pattern (please include hoop size and name and address of the baby killer you would like to terrorize).

Second of all, I can see someone hasn’t been paying attention to America’s own blue-eyed messiah, Glenn Beck. Oh gosh, he just gets cuter and cuter the crazier you liberals make him. I mean, my, my! I’d let him lift my red white and blue apron anytime. Sigh. Where was I? Oh that’s right, if you would listen to Glenn hunky Beck you would know that you pinko commie liberals deserve everything that is coming to you because you are using totalitarian tactics and anyone who uses totalitarian tactics deserves a mailbox full of anthrax…and squirrels…radioactive squirrels with Swine flu. (Want to do it yourself, Fernatics? Gosh, just send me an email with the subject line “mailbox of death” and I’ll give you your own radioactive/flu-ridden squirrel recipe: high-altitude instructions included for all you mountain folk.)

Oh, and third of all, you have some nerve calling me a thief, Mr. Senate seat stealer, we are still waiting for our third re-count. Besides, if you didn’t want me to break into your house, why did you leave your windows breakable? Hmm?

Well, that’s all for Fern! I’ll leave you with this: a great American once said, when they crammed a health care bill down the throat of my neighbors, I said nothing because I really didn’t know them all that well and also because they leave their Christmas lights up past New Years. When they crammed a health care bill down the throat of my friend, I still said nothing because I was kind of tired from my gardening aerobics class. But when they crammed a health care bill down my own throat, I still didn’t say anything because I couldn’t talk with all that paper in my mouth.

What are you complaining about, drunky?

I usually avoid going out on weekends and Monday holidays like Britney Spears avoids underpants*, but I decided to go to a playground in Noe Valley on President's Day. First of all, I really wanted to meet some out-of-town friends for a rare playdate and, second, I figured everyone would be busy celebrating at their local Toyota dealer, as is tradition in this country. I must have misjudged the economic repercussions of the whole gas-pedal-of-death thing because the playground was quite full. It wasn't so full that the girls couldn't have a good time, but it was full of people who don't normally go the playground.



At first, I was kind of glad to be surrounded by non-regulars because Snappy has developed quite the little rep as "The Kid Who Thinks Other People's Babies are Her Personal Baby Dolls and Will Not Hesitate to Undress and Redress Them" (I'll take this opportunity to apologize to the nannies and moms and dads of babies that my child has hurt/violated), but then Something Happened. The other moms and I were standing around, chatting about stuff that moms usually talk about like...I don't know...pop tarts and hot water bottles? Anyways, we were all chatting like we were on the Group W bench, when we heard a loud, aggro, slightly hung-over male voice say:

"Will the mom of the little boy banging on that pole please tell him to stop!"

It was at that point that we noticed that a little boy was banging on a pole...it wasn't like it wasn't loud, it was just that it melted into the noises that one expects (or should expect) at a busy playground on Gas Pedal of Death day. I looked from the little boy to the source of the complaint, a middle-aged man playing tennis (TENNIS!) on the adjacent court. I stared at him, befuddled beyond belief. It defied logic. Here was this guy, making a rhythmic, loud sound in a public place, complaining about someone else making a rhythmic, loud sound. Thankfully, one of the moms immediately told this guy that 1. he was crazy and 2. he could forget about it and 3. he was also really, really crazy. And then of course the mom of the little boy told him to stop because moms don't like it when their kids bother people, even stupid people who don't see that there is no difference between Thwap Thwap Thumpty Thwap and Bang Bang Bang.

I never really recovered from my shock and befuddlement to ask that tennis playing dude where the hell he got off--which is too bad because I'm still wondering--, but I it did make me think about all of the many other jerks who really have no business complaining:

• Anyone who has ever walked drunkenly down a residential street at 3 am, loudly talking and/or complaining about "That One Ho at the Bar" should never, ever be allowed to complain about the crying baby at the restaurant/mall/wine bar. Sorry, but you did the crime, now do the time.
• Anyone who has ever gotten on an airplane and then put their seat back so that they are, essentially, sitting in the lap of the person behind them and then leaving it like that for the duration of the flight is not allowed to complain about the kid kicking the back of their seat. Really? You don't like my daughter's Dora sneakers hitting your lower back? Well I don't like your dandruff falling onto my pretzels...so deal with it.
• Anyone who has ever asked a women to show her tits at Mardis Gras in Nola, or at a motorcycle weekend or in a restaurant/mall/wine bar (or has ordered anything from the cretins over at Girls Gone Wild) has no business complaining about public breastfeeding. This is non-negotiable.
• Anyone who has ever, during a night of drinking** and/or sushi bingeing, left bodily fluids (or good forbid solids) on a public sidewalk has no business complaining about parents who change diapers in public. Okay, yeah, I'm sure it's gross but so is stepping in chunks on your way to the bus stop in the morning.
  
  
  

I'm sure there's more...please leave them in the comments.

*For those of you expecting a balloon drop, this was actually only the 99th joke this blog has made about the fact that Britney Spears occasionally goes out sans poonani shield, but thanks for playing.

**Yes, I know there are two of these based on drunks, but, just like babies are just like little stoners (look at this pretty thing! No, don't eat it, just look at it!), little kids are like drunks...and we have to put up with them because, come on, we've all been there.

Maim Your TV: Or How Barbie's Little Sister Betrayed Me.

I know a lot of people say that TV is bad for kids, and even worse for toddlers (because they think Elmo is real and that Dora really hears them when they yell back at her, and they are too young to get how really funny that is...ha, stupid toddlers), but you know what is worse? Living in a filthy house with a crazy mom, so I've always used the magic of TV to distract my little thunderball of energy from pulling all her clothes out of her bureau and throwing them around her room for the 5th time in one particular day. As she got older, its repetitive nature helped her with her speech and language issues, its inclusive fun-for-all entertainment created an even tighter bond with Pixie, her BFF, and its mind-numbing qualities distracted her from her everyday new-person-in-a-new-world fears.

The only problem with it is that one of her fears (besides public bathrooms and vacuum cleaners) could be random stuff that happens in cartoons. Now, I think most rational, self-preserving adults are afraid of public bathrooms, and anyone who's seen the Jaws bit from Mr Mom can relate to being scared spitless of vacuums, but the things in her cartoons that frighten her seem strange and arbitrary. There's the flying V in Sesame Street, a firefighter episode of Wow Wow Wubzy, the opening scene of Toot and Puddle, a rocket ship going up, up, up and then down, down, down in Yo Gabba Gabba, a bathtub scene in little bear and about half the crap that goes on in Dora and Diego. I didn't know why, but every time an offending episode came on, she would either cry or run out of her room and hide under her blanket. We kept a running mental list of the scary badness and used the power of Tivo to avoid them. For awhile, that worked perfectly, Snappy got to watch TV, and we all got to live in a fairly neat and sane house.

Then, IT happened. We were in Tahoe on vacation. Snappy was a little off her game, in a new place, experiencing a new season and was in bad need of distraction. Our first morning there, we had planned on going out to play in the snow right after an in-room breakfast of yogurt and Cheerios, and Snappy was anxious and wanted to skip the breakfast altogether. Then, joy of joys, I found an episode of her new favorite show, Little Einsteins (a show designed to embarrass us all by making preschoolers smarter than their parents) on the hotel TV, we were both stoked beyond stoked at this development and settled in for a wonderful, relaxing start to our busy day. I busted out the laptop and logged onto Facebook while Snappy ate her cereal and watched Quincy play Swan Lake on a bunch of floating instruments.

Now sure, a small child with a giant harp flying around his head combined with the melancholy key of E minor (I guess...who knows, they didn't have Little Einsteins when I was a kid), can be a bit creepy, but Snappy found it down-right traumatizing, so much so that I actually grabbed for my cellphone, thinking that her piercing "help me" scream was surely a sign of internal bleeding or a brain tumor. But no, it was just freaking Quincy and his freaking flying harp. Snappy clawed at the door, I shut the TV cabinet and we finished getting dressed in the elevator. For the rest of the weekend there was no TV. No distractions for any of us, and at the end of a long day in Tahoe, sometimes distractions are pretty darn nice.

But no, she wouldn't have it. The show had scared her so much, she was afraid of the television itself. If it weren't for that cabinet, I would've had to wheel the damn thing out into the hall like they did at the end of Poltergeist. When we got home, Snappy was done with all of it. Sesame Street, Blues Clues and Ni Hao Kai -Lan were dead to her. There was no more Yo Gabba Gabba, no more Little Bear, no Wonder Pets or Wow Wubzy, her Backyardigan DVDs sat, collecting dust and the season pass of Pinky Dinky Doo continued to record and delete, unwatched. Little Einsteins was not even discussed, except occasionally in furtive, trembling whispers and even then it was referred to as The Abomination.



Luckily, this was around Christmas and she was soon to receive the greatest distraction ever made by man or nature: a three-story dollhouse with a porch and an elevator. It was an even better distraction than television. She could spend hours in her room, listening to the pop radio station and whirling her princesses and Pink Girl among the floors, re-enacting scenes from Disney movies she used to watch and the Knuffle Bunny books she still read. Joy of joys! I was able to clean again, and not just clean, but organize. One day, while I was cleaning out the DVD cabinet, I found an old dvd someone had given me when Snappy was a baby. It had come free with something or another. I remember thinking I would probably end up throwing the darned thing out before Snappy would watch something called "Kelly Dream Club". It just looked so stupid. Look at it:



But then Pixie came by for a rainy day visit. The dollhouse was not easily shared, and craft projects seemed to only last a matter of seconds. I was desperate. I popped Kelly Dream Club into the PS2 and the girls were zombified in an instant. It was about little girls who had lockets that granted wishes, and being little girls, they wished for two things: 1. to find out what it is like to be fairies and 2. to find out what it is like to be princesses. What else is there besides fairies and princesses? Nothing, according to Pixie and the Snaps, they watched it twice in a row without flinching. It had no conflict, no creepy music and (joy of freaking joys) no flying harps.

The next time Pixie came over, they didn't even watch Kelly Dream Club, they played Kelly Dream Club. Which sounds complicated, but consisted solely of dressing up in little princess and/or fairy outfits and running around until Snappy would yell, "Keeya!" in a voice that clearly said "I am Kelly and I am having an adventure with my best friend, Keeya". Then Pixie would reply "Yes!" in a voice that clearly said "I am Keeya and I am having an adventure with my best friend, Kelly". Considering that my childhood games of Charlie's Angels was just a bunch of little girls running down the driveway, falling and yelling "Bosley!", it was impressively complex and nuanced by comparison.

After listening to the impassioned shouts of "Keeya!" and "Yes!" for over an hour, I realized that this Kelly Dream Club thing was a bone fide phenomenon. I Googled it and immediately found out the WORST NEWS EVER. First of all, Kelly is Barbie's little sister, which is not the worst news ever, but it's still pretty bad. I mean, what happened to Skipper? Did they give her up for adoption? Who knows, but the Worst Thing Ever is that Kelly has gone the way of Skipper. Yep. She's gone to the great Malibu Dream House in the sky. Curse you Mattel! Now I can not spend too much money for Kelly Dream Club dolls or bed sheets or dress-up clothes or even a new Kelly Dream Club DVD. I should have seen it coming. Stupid Mattel. You blew your wad on the first DVD. Where else do you go after fairies and princesses? Nowhere. I was mad. I wanted to burn all of their factories down.



But perhaps, just perhaps, I was over-reacting. Because yesterday, while Snappy was playing "one princess gets caught in a cage and then another princess saves her" in her dollhouse, I re-organized her room, re-arranging the clothes in her drawers and re-purposing her changing table as a bookshelf. An hour later, I walked in to find that she had thrown said clothes and books around her room. I called her in, "sorry, Mum!" she chirped. I gave her a stern talking to and made her help me pick up everything and put it back. While we were working, her favorite Weezer song came on the radio and she sang along, dancing while she threw the clothes back in her drawers. Okay, Mattel. You just got lucky.

Hate on Haters...Wherever You Are.

*

It's a riddle that has confounded philosophers for ages: if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to see it, does it make a sound? Maybe. But a better question might be, if a hater never leaves the confines of the World Wide Web, should we really give a flying fark about him and his hate? This is the conundrum I faced recently when a mom friend of mine sent me a purportedly enraging link to a Salon.com article by Lynne Harris called "Everybody Hates Mommy." Get it, like Everybody Loves Raymond only...well, I'm sure you get it.

But I kid, I kid. The article made some valid points about whether or not modern day moms are unfairly maligned and stereo-typed. I agree that moms deserve tons of respect. Heck, I think everyone should call their mom daily, and send bi-weekly muffin baskets, to thank her just for taking the time to push your selfish, giant head out of her lady bits. (I also think it's high time Hallmark came out with a card specific to that sort of thing.) However, the evidence of this hate was gleaned mostly from online comments. And that's where I have a problem with the article. Sure, I'm all for sticking up for moms (and dads), but do we really need it? I mean, aside from a few random crazies and whackos, do any of these online mom-haters ever take their hate offline?

I, personally, in real-life, have never been called a selfish, entitled, stroller-nazi, breeder scum. And I've been one...um...a mom that is...for 3 1/2 years now. I've never been yelled at on an airplane, I've never been given attitude at a coffee shop and I've never gotten a tongue lashing at a diner. Nope, my daughter and I are allowed to roam freely, without reproach wherever we choose to go. So...my question is, why should we care about online jerks? I mean if we walked by a pack of surly teens, loitering outside the 7-11, we wouldn't expect them to stop what they're not doing to come and hold the door for us, would we? No, we would expect them to mumble (and possibly even yell) something dirty and derogatory about us or our body parts. So why, when those very same surly teens take the time to get a screen name and click on the "comment" link, do we give them more power?

Ha Ha! Made you self-conscious!

I have no idea, but we do. A short time after the mommy-hating article came out, a friend of mine admitted that, after some online backlash had gotten particular nasty, he had actually been afraid to leave the house with his toddler for a few days. At first, I was surprised. I told him he shouldn't give a sweet crap what a bunch of online jerks and, if he had gone out, he would have found that people would smile and wave at him and his result of his selfish breeding...heck, some nice person would probably even hold the door open for them at the 7-11. But then I remembered a time when I decided to take Snappy to be studied for science in the hippiest place on earth, Berkeley.

I was scared. I had a baby who was unable to breast feed, but also needed to be fed every two hours, and that would mean bottles...of formula...in public...in Berkeley. Because of the hate I saw online, I was afraid that lactivistas would scream things like "breast hater" and "baby killer" every time I whipped out the bottle. I practiced my calm yet snarky explanations of cleft palate and how hard it is to suck through a straw with a hole in it, as well as a running count of the time, in hours, minutes and seconds, that I had chained my stupid self to a hospital-grade pump in a vain attempt to get my milk to come in. I was prepared for the onslaught. And, guess what? No onslaught. Not only did no one scream at me for bottle feeding in Berkeley, they didn't do it in San Francisco or New Hampshire or anywhere else I gave my precious little angel ounces upon ounces of Devil's Teat Juice (aka Safeway O Organics brand formula).**

It's time we took back the day (stroller-nazis don't go out at night). Fair is fair. Eye of the tiger and all that. It's time all us stinky, entitled, selfish breeders stopped caring about what a bunch of Jimbos and Nelsons think about us, and go out into the real world (the place, not the reality show) and live our lives as if no one is watching. Because no one is, and if they are...F them.

*i love this picture. I found it on the web. I will gladly give credit to the creator.

**yep. I know the whack-job lactivistas are going come out of the woodwork to comment on this post of this usually un-commented upon blog, but I promise to only publish those comments from whack-jobs who have clearly read this post. Show your work, whackos.

Salmonella Punch: Another in the "Blogs About Blog Comments" Theme.

It seems strange to be blogging about a comment left in a blog (Easy Rider or another one), but as I've mentioned, I enrolled in National Novel Writing Month, and I'm trying to save myself, and my word count, for that. Besides, I've blogged about comments I've left in The Poop before. I like to consider them my sister blog...my much more popular and professional sister (the bitch). Also, what The Poop did today was pretty epic, and I think someone should say something about it. And since Updike is sadly no longer with us, I nominate myself.

See, The Poop is not your momma's parenting blog. It's a bit different in that, despite its large comment count (ahem), it tries to act as a non-judgmental, non controversial place for parents to weigh in on The Lighter Side of parenting. Every once in awhile, the trolls come in and spoil the party and the very next post is designated a Sunshine and Rainbows blog...usually (usually) about a topic so uncontroversial that the trolls have no choice but to stay away. Ah...it's like a big cyber breath of fresh air.

Well, I guess the trolls have been getting a bit rowdy lately because Poop Poobah, Peter Hartlaub, announced Troll Appreciation Day, secretly (the little minx) through Facebook, with the following status update:

The Troll Appreciation Day code of conduct is on the discussion board. In short, Troll Appreciation Day is tomorrow (Friday) morning. The troll post will be the one that goes up in the 7 a.m. range. Please comment as if you were a troll. Don't write anything that will get you banned for life or attack anyone who's not in on the joke. Be creative (not a problem on this blog) and have fun! -Peter

He then wrote a blog about puppies and balloons and how great it is to raise kids in the Bay Area...you know, stuff that is sure to get the trolls riled up. I had to run out to the playground, but I quickly channeled my inner troll (I have quite the cantankerous side) and wrote this:

First of all, will you please stop calling it the Bay Area, no one actually from the Bay Area calls it the Bay area. Gawd! You make me want to find you, and punch you in the back of the head...and then run. I'm sure I will escape because I can tell by the way you write that you are not very fast.

That said I can find many problems with your "supposed" top 4. (Also, why 4? The magic number is 3. Next time, be succinct.)

1. Puppies and balloons? Are you crazy? Do you not know what puppies and balloons carry? Salmonella. Especially balloons. Jeez.

2. Oh for the love of Krishna, do NOT take your kids to the Farmer's Market. Everyone knows that the first thing a child will do when faced with a large amount of produce is to start throwing stuff. Especially the melons and pumpkins. --And all that smashed melon and pumpkin pulp on the sidewalk is a breeding ground for salmonella.

3. Are you serious? You really want to put your kids in a CAR? A CAR? Oh my GAAAWWWD! Are you really that stupid? The first thing kids do when they get into a car is they start throwing things. And god help you if you've actually had the unbelievable DUMBNESS to drive your kid to the pumpkin patch. There is NO WAY you will be able to see out your window with pumpkin pulp all over it. You think that S-Curve is tricky now? Just try it while trying to peek out through a hole in the pumpkin guts. You can't. You will cause a 12 car pile-up on the Bay Bridge. Oh and I know you are such a bleeding-bleeping-heart liberal that you will actually get out of your car and try to HELP the victims. Well guess what...that victim? He's got salmonella. And now, so do you. Congratulations, moron.

4. (I still can't believe you need 4! You are so verbose, you should be shot.) TV!?! Oh for the love of Glen-Beck-splayed-on-a-cross!!!!! Did it not occur to your tiny, Jim Beam-pickled brain that the FIRST, the absolute, very FIRST thing kids do when they watch TV is throw things!!!????!!!! And what is the first thing they are going to grab? Go ahead, guess...I'll wait. What's that? A remote? Sure, maybe, but isn't there something else...even closer? An old shoe? Of course, I should've figured you for a bad housekeeper, no...guess again. Popcorn! Brava, princess! Popcorn. And where do we get popcorn from, Agatha Christie? C-c-c-c-....Corn. That's right, Nancy Drew. Corn. And who likes to eat corn, Trixie Belden? No. No. No. No!!!! You'll never get it, female Bobsey Twin, so I'll just tell you: Chickens. And what disease do chickens spread? Claw and beak disease, very good Scarecrow and Mrs King! And what else, yes, Miss Marple, that's right...SALMONELLA!!! But you never even thought of that, did you you bald Charlie's Angel? No. Moron.

Oh that is it. I'm coming down there. Prepare the back of your head to be punched. Better yet, no, don't prepare, I want it to be a surprise. You know what, before I punch you, I'm going to treat my hand with Purell. And by Purell, I mean salmonella! Surprise!!!

After 192 comments, some from people in on the gag (all of them hilarious, Poop fans are straight-up funny mf-ers!), some not, and quite a few actual trolls, Peter declared Troll Appreciation Day a success! And I agree. I couldn't be more pleased...and I'll say, I was even more pleased to see that Mr Hartlaub had the decency to post the following picture:

You are on notice, Trolls! Be good or beware the Salmonella punch!

Hey, New York Times...where's your comment?

Oh my holy Jeebus, you guys! Easy Rider finally got a comment from someone that was not one of my friends (you all know who you are. Shout out!). All I had to do was throw out a bunch of wild accusations and unfair criticisms against people I don't know, while listing their full names in my last post.

I'm shocked. I wasn't expecting this. I'd like to thank my parents for my snarky sense of humor, Google, of course, The New York Times writer, Hilary Stout for writing the ridiculously bad article in the first place, and oh...I can't forget to thank Devra Renner, co-author of Mommy Guilt, and innocent by-stander in the indignant rage bomb the fore-mentioned article set off.

Devra commented because in my post "An Open Letter to the New York Times", I called out her co-author, Aviva Pflock (come on, Aviva...no comment from you? I made fun of your name, fer gawds sake...what am I three?) for being quoted as saying, about parental yelling, "“What blew us away about that is that the one thing you really have ultimate control over is the tone of your voice.” Devra claims that the tone of Times article was not in line with her "tough-titty" Brooklyn-stlye of parenting, but she seemed a bit miffed that I called her Mommy Guilt a "stupid parenting book" or something like that. Poor Devra isn't familiar with my twisted sense of humor, and I hope she knows that I was trying to poke fun of myself and my lazy journalistic style by calling a book I had admittedly never read "stupid".

What is not stupid is their Parentopia blog post in response to being "featured" in the New York Times. It contains actual solutions, without condemnation, to the problems that cause the yelling in the first place--something you will not find in Stout's article. It also contains (I'm assuming) well-researched assertions, and dignified journalistic integrity--things you will NOT find here.

Well, I'm knee-deep in the weeds with this stupid (just kidding) National Novel Writing Month thing, so I won't be writing much more this month, but I want to just quickly thank Devra for her comment, and for offering me a copy of her book, even though she probably suspects I won't read it.

I'd also like to say that I assume that Kathy Griffin is secretly married to Perez Hilton. And that once a month or so, Oprah Winfrey chooses one Harpo employee to publicly flog. And that Bill Gates is the one who gave Ellen DeGeneres the swine flu. Poor Ellen, and just weeks after she got over that broken clavicle she got in that bar fight with Johnny Depp.