Friday

urban hipster parents

"I believe if God hadn’t meant for my daughters to be attired in Moschino, He would not have their toddler line discounted at Century 21."

Or so says Mary Elizabeth Williams in her hilarious essay today.

hurrah for trial lawyers

I am so sick of the Republican Party blaming everything from the flu vaccine shortage to the Space Shuttle crash on trial lawyers.

In my experience, just as with abortion, people are generally opposed to trial lawyers until they or someone they love needs one.

I sincerely doubt that George Bush or Bill O'Reilly or Ann Coulter would not sue if their child or parent or best friend or THEY were badly injured by a careless doctor or crazy driver.

Of course, if one of these people wanted to sue, they could pay an attorney up front to represent their interests. However, if the average, working or middle class American needs to seek redress through the civil court system, they wouldn't be able to but for the fact that trial lawyers are willing to work on contingency, meaning that if one of these lawyers take the case and lose, they make not one penny.


Thursday

Jane jumping Reba Posted by Hello

Wednesday

voodoo hand in the peace camp

My favorite quote (among many) from this story is this one:

''It sort of looked like a voodoo hand, with hooked, beckoning fingers."

Dana "Daytrippn" Wilson


And I think I'm changing my middle name, too.

Elliot amusing himself at a horse show Posted by Hello
Here is a picture of Henry, age 13 as of last week.  Posted by Hello
I love this picture of Jane. Posted by Hello

Tuesday

my life

Periodically, someone points out to me that somewhere on the Web, a conversation is taking place about my writing and my personal life. One such discussion is apparently hopping now in Usenet.

For the past few years, these conversations have generally taken the form of people active in mean, nasty "childfree" ( as opposed to childless) newsgroups and e-mail lists laughing about the fact that I ended up divorced. They seem to find some irony in this, despite the fact that I've never handed out marital advice to anyone. (Their definition of irony seems to be straight from the Alanis Morrisette dictionary)

Their poorly reasoned point appears to be that, because I write about parenting, my marriage should have been divorce-proof. Or that because at various periods during my marriage, I was happy and believed I would remain happily married, it's just hilarious that it turned out I was wrong. They openly revel in the sad parts of my divorce, about which I've written some essays.

But here are two newsflashes for my bizarro online critics:

Newsflash #1: I'm happy. The divorce was really hard and painful, but it's over. I'm healthy, young, STILL love being a mom, and am enjoying a fun social life, a great job, my house, my dogs, politics, good beer, loud music, my knitting, horses, friends and just life in general. So save your schadenfreude for somebody else.

Newsflash #2: If you read the comments from these people, the truth eventually wiggles out; they don't care whether I'm married or not, happy or not, a mother or not, or right or wrong about various issues upon which I have an opinion. No, in fact these people are mostly bitter that I get paid to write and they don't.

Unfortunately, that's not something I or anyone else an help them with, since to become published, one must be able to write well on topics people actually care about, rather than simply engaging in online-groupthink-navel-gazing with a bunch of malcontents who already agree on how rotten the world is. At the very least, an aspiring writer should understand what's ironic and what's simply unexpected or incongruous (as in, "that woman who wrote a book about attachment parenting is now divorced")

Get a life, folks. Mine's taken.

Hugs 'n' kisses-

KAG



i love this blog

http://www.smallhand.blogspot.com/

wilco + spongebob = my new favorite movie

BURBANK, Calif. (AP) -- Country music is everywhere -- even under the sea. A song by Wilco is one of the tracks on the soundtrack for "The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie," opening nationwide next month. And set for release on November ninth is "The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie: Music From The Movie And More." Wilco's Jeff Tweedy says he fell in love with SpongeBob when he heard him describe the darkness at the bottom of the sea as "advanced darkness." Tweedy adds writing a song for the movie automatically makes him "the coolest dad on the block." Other artists on the soundtrack album include Avril Lavigne and The Flaming Lips.

Sunday

wooderson strikes back

This is too funny.

Apparently there is a real Bobby Wooderson who went to school with Richard Linklater and now he is suing Linklater for ruining his life with the movie, Dazed and Confused.

That's just priceless. I have to say it seems a little bizarre that Linklater just used these guys' names in his movie (which is on my top ten faves list) instead of making up new ones, but I absolutely love it that Wooderson is a real person currently walking the arth.