Category Archive

I found this web site via GitterCritter, and it’s going to provide me with hours of enjoyment between now and November.

Since none of you was able to come up with a good Barack Obama joke on your own, I thought I owed it to you all to spread the good news about the Barack Obama Quote Generator.

Hope you’re enjoying your weekend as much as I’m enjoying my waffles.

And if you visit the BOQG, please share the results here.

I rarely recommend internet reading material, and even more rarely–like never–do I recommend stuff that could be described as “heartwarming.”  Because I have an image to maintain, you know.  But this morning I read something that I found very touching, and I’m not sure I can even explain why I found it so touching that I had to share, but here it is.

Mike Gallagher is a conservative radio host.  I don’t listen to his show, except for snippets I hear on promotional spots, so I couldn’t tell you what it was like, but I read his tribute to his wife, Denise, who lost her fight with cancer a couple weeks ago.  I remember hearing that announced on another conservative talk show at the time and thinking, “Oh, that’s a shame,” because it’s always a shame when someone’s loved one dies.  But I didn’t give it any more thought than that.  Then I saw this column on Townhall.com, and I don’t know why I decided to read it.  I guess I thought it was kind of odd that he chose to say goodbye to the late Tony Snow and his own wife in the same column, so maybe I was curious.  It turned out that Tony Snow was a personal friend, so it made sense, but the column is really about his wife.

I wouldn’t call it a tear-jerker.  I didn’t cry.  It was just so real–just a simple, sweet column about his wife and his grief.  Nothing fancy.  I admit I’m inordinately fond of eulogies.  They coax us into putting aside our petty differences and help us realize that people are so much more complex than we give them credit for.  It speaks to someone’s basic decency and to our common humanity.  Each of us will die, and each of us will lose someone dear, and each of us needs to live better and appreciate more while we’re here.

So the truth comes out:  I’m just an old softy.  At least on Fridays.  Never fear, cynicism and snarkiness will return on Monday.  Meanwhile, have a good weekend.

As is my wont, I am poaching my sister’s “wacky search term” blog because I am too lazy to come up with my own themes.  Also, there are some real gems this week that I just have to share.

I would estimate that a simple majority of the search terms in my blog stats are harmless and not really of interest.  I get a lot of folks searching for stuff about Elvis (THE Elvis, not my Elvis).  Also, a lot of folks searching for “things Mormons won’t tell you.”  (Lift up your heart and rejoice, gentle surfer, for Mormon secrets are revealed here every day.)  Also, a lot of folks looking for information on giraffes and also for giraffe-print bathing suits.

What’s interesting to me is how often I get searches for extremely random things.  I get multiple hits a week for “holk,” for example.  Who knew so many people didn’t know how to spell “hulk”?  Or have people really been looking for my son’s story?  Also, you would be surprised how many people out there are looking for “how to pump your own stomach.”  Kids, do me a favor:  don’t try that at home.  Get professional help.  You’ll thank me later.

I get a lot of gay-themed searches, the most common of which is “yul brynner gay.”  Let me state for the record, kids:  YUL BRYNNER WAS NOT GAY!  Stop asking!  I also get a lot of pregnancy-themed searches, the most common of which is “70 percent effaced.”  I also get a lot of pervert searches–and I will spare you the worst of those, as they will not be funny but merely disturbing and icky and will make you want to take a shower, and you may not have easy access to a shower where you are right now.  Then there is the combination pregnancy-pervert search, the most common of which is “pregnant ladies naked” or “pregnant ladies having sex.”  But my personal favorite is the Mormon-pervert search.  Those searches always make the cut for this blog theme.  I have been waiting for the super-combo pregnant-Mormon-pervert search, but thusfar I have been disappointed.  Seems hard to believe, but true.

Of course, there are the inevitable toilet-training searches, the most common of which is “thomas the tank engine potty chair.”  I’m telling you, the cats who license Thomas the Tank Engine are missing out on a sizable niche market.  There also appears to be a sizable niche market for toilet-training perverts.  These aren’t the same perverts who search for “ladies peeing.”  These are the perverts searching for variants of “toilet training mistress.”  The first time I saw that in my stats, I thought it was funny.  It’s gotten progressively rather unfunny as time goes by and I get at least one or two hits a week from people who have Freudian/Mommy issues.  I’m not disturbed so much as I am sad.  And a little bit worried.  About myself.

So anyway, without further ado, here are this week’s wacky search terms:

mormons repressed homosexuals - this has been a popular one this week, probably because of the shirtless missionary calendar I posted about Monday.

breastfeeding “ahi tuna ” pump dump - I don’t know.  It just sounds funny.

pantyhose sweepstakes -

eating burger king while pregnant bad - Indeed.  I’ve been there.

is it okay for 9 month baby to watch bar - No.  You should wait until your baby is at least 12 months before you let her watch the bar.  Ideally, you should wait until she can pour the drinks without spilling.  But use your best judgment.

hell testimonies from mormons who went- Do you have a testimony of hell?  I do, but I’ve never been there.  Unless 10 years of toilet training counts.

trike rear window - Sounds like some luxury trike, eh?

nude “kingdom hall” - My first-ever Jehovah’s Witness-pervert search!  Yes!

donuts valium - What can I say, they’re two great tastes that taste great together.

what can mormons eat - Donuts yes, valium no.  Unless you have a prescription.  For both.

nose hook fetish - Is this supposed to be “hook nose fetish”?  Or is there some kind of weird nose paraphenalia out there that I don’t want to know about?

general grievous coloring pages - I get many, many searches for General Grievous, and a lot for General Grievous coloring pages.  What happens when Star Wars geeks breed.

“rich lady” “cabana boy” - Sorry, wrong number.

are actors in gay movies really gay? - I don’t know, but I can tell you that none of these actors is Yul Brynner.

nectarine porn - Wha?

parable yeast - Huh wha?

“alison arngrim” nude - Dude, this is Nellie Oleson.  Someone wants to see Nellie Oleson nude.  And the disturbing part is that this isn’t the first time!

antichrist costume - This is the one I find most intriguing.  Who wants an Antichrist costume, and what are they hoping to find?

what blue luggage debra messing carried - It would seem that this person has either a debra messing obsession or a luggage obsession, possibly both.  Regardless, the answer, sadly, cannot be obtained here.

fat person chocolate mousse cartoon - Okay, I don’t even need to see the cartoon.  Just seeing these words strung together is enough for me.

dummies for housework - Usually it’s the other way around, but I like this better.

sissified guys made girls - Again, the Mormon calendar thing.

giraffe religious group - Where do I sign up?

laidies having babies naked - I don’t know about the rest of you, but I had all my babies naked.  It’s not like I’ve got a Baby Gap in my womb, you know what I’m saying?

piggly wiggly portrait - I’m just getting this image of an oil-on-canvas pig picture hanging in someone’s drawing room.

yoda and cindy mccain picture - “Vote for me you must.  Help you it will.”

mormon modesty suit - I know they’re probably looking for swimsuits, but the picture I got was something like a fat suit.  Which is funnier.

show me ladies having babies - This should become a catch phrase.  “Show me the ladies havin’ babies!  (Naked!)”

white trash garbage can - A garbage can for white trash, or a garbage can designed by white trash?  Could people of other races also use it, provided they were tacky enough?

road rage alphabet of manliness - Remember that old Judy Tenuta commercial where she said “beefy burritos of manhood!”?  That’s how I hear this phrase in my mind.

getting killed in sleep - Augh!

50 cents to see the big girraffe - Which reminds me, I should charge more.

valium and weight loss - Here’s a tip:  lose the donuts.

yeast giggles - I don’t know what this is, but it makes me laugh.

cartoon wimen that have sexy and cute bo - I think this might be my first cartoon-pervert search.  But seriously, who searches for sexy cartoon women on the internet?

faye grant butt - Of all the pervert searches this week, I think I like this one the most.  Because who even remembers who Faye Grant is, much less harbors curiosity about her butt?

eeyore pooping - I didn’t want to know, but–too late.

leia orcks socks and hates han solo - I’m having trouble parsing this.   Is “orcks” supposed to be a verb here?  If so, how does one “orck” and more specifically, how does one orck a sock?  And why would one?

slipknot jesus mask - Maybe this is the antichrist costume guy.

normal mormon - And it led you here?  I’m flattered!

“how to get sympathy” - If you find out, let me know.

pregnant ladies in the 80’s - Why the ’80s?  For the cool maternity outfits?  Or the big hair?  A specialized pervert indeed.

beef gas pains pregnant women - Another specialized pervert, or just a girl with regrets?

do mormons wear swim suits? - Yes.  Except when we’re among our own kind, and then we swim bare nekkid.  Just kidding.  That never happens.  Except at BYU.

vice decadence debauchery indulgence- As Brigham Young said, “This is the place”!  I may make this my new tag line.

But the special prize winner is the following “Incoming Link of the Month”:

http://www.pogues.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=8811

This blog is in a foreign language, so I have no idea what it’s about, but I just get this sense that my son’s picture of Joseph Smith’s martyrdom is not really appropriate for it.

Happy Googling, friends!  Adieu.

According to the New York Times, comedians are having a hard time making fun of Barack Obama.  Reasons vary.  Some people think the late-night talk show and comedy writers are going easy on Obama because of ideology.  That may be true, but I tend to believe what most of the writers and producers in this article claim:  there’s no easy laugh here.  To wit:

He’s not old.

He’s not a womanizer.

He says “nuclear” correctly.

To the best of our knowledge, he knows how to spell “potato.”

What’s left?

I knew this was a weakness of Obama’s months ago.  I knew it when I saw his guest appearance on Saturday Night Live, where he attended Hillary’s Halloween party.  That sketch wasn’t very funny to begin with, but the fact they stuck Obama in it and gave him, like, one punchline–which fell flat–just serves as more evidence that Obama is too dignified to be president.  He’s so clean and articulate, how can you possibly mock him?  Not to mention that he is the candidate of hope and change.  Since when is hope funny?  Change can be funny, but not if it’s all based on hope.  As Mel Brooks said, “Tragedy is when I cut my finger.  Comedy is when you fall into a sewer and die.”

No one wants Barack Obama to fall into a sewer and die.

The question is, do we really want this for America?  Four years of no cheap shots at the President?  What kind of country will we turn into?  A bunch of sissies buying arugula at the Whole Foods?  You see, right there.  Obama eats arugula.  It sounds at first like it’s funny, or that it ought to be funny, but it’s just not very funny.  Arugula isn’t funny.  Rutabaga is funny, but thusfar we’ve heard no report of Obama having a fondness for rutabaga.  What are you going to do?

Well, I for one will not stand idly by while my country stops laughing at public figures, just because they’re skinny and they talk pretty.  It’s obvious that we need more Barack Obama jokes circling out there.  So please use the comment space to leave jokes about Barack Obama–jokes you heard, jokes you made up just now, jokes you heard from someone else but pretend are your own–and let’s get our laughter on while we still can.

I’ll start.  How many Barack Obamas does it take to screw in a light bulb?

None.  If you have enough hope, the light bulb will change itself.

Yeah, that sucked.  You all had better do better.  I warn you, though, it’s harder than it looks.

1.  Cold laminating sheets:  not worth it.  Not to me, I mean.

2.  Every day I’m alive, Mother Earth dies a little bit.  She dies because I’m killing her.  Because that’s how I roll.

3.  I could eat kettle chips until my butt fell off.  In fact, I think I will.

4.  I am addicted to trivial pursuits.  Not Trivial Pursuit, the game.  Just regular old trivial pursuits.  Facebook, Spider Solitaire, crossword puzzles.  It’s not harmless.  It’s a real disease.  My prediction:  the next time I try to pursue something trivial, my husband will try to stop me, and he will reference this blog.  He will use my own blog against me, internet friends.  He won’t understand that I don’t wish to be helped.

5.  Every time I start to blog about something, I lose interest.  Sorry, kids.

So I was surfing random crap on the interwebs last night, and I found this article from the Daily Mail about women who won’t have babies because they’re not eco-friendly (HT: Mormon Mommy Wars).  By “they” I mean, the babies, of course–not the women, who are eco-friendly, and that’s why they’re not having babies.  You probably figured that much out by yourself, but it’s Monday, and I thought for those of you who might still be recuperating from the long weekend (in America, not Daily Mail Land), I might make it a tad clearer.  Anyway, it’s kind of an entertaining story–not the sort of thing to take seriously, as it’s the Daily Mail and all the other stories have something to do with gay sex or Tom Cruise’s unsightly back fat (yeah, Google, I’m asking for it now)–but the part I liked the best was when Toni explained how much nicer her and her husband’s life was without children (just in case we were Americans recuperating from the long weekend and couldn’t figure it out ourselves):

“Every year, we also take a nice holiday - we’ve just come back from South Africa.

“We feel we can have one long-haul flight a year, as we are vegan and childless, thereby greatly reducing our carbon footprint and combating over-population.”

I never feel guilty for having four children, but occasionally I feel guilty about not being vegan.  Now Toni has made me feel a little better, though.  You see, even my carbon footprint could be bigger, but I feel a sense of responsibility to the earth–unlike those jerks who take their four kids to South Africa once a year.  Some people are so selfish.

In other news, I also discovered that Nicole Kidman just gave birth.  I didn’t even know she was pregnant.  Or rather, I’d forgotten that she was pregnant.  Now that I hear tidings of the blessed event, I seem to recall that I read once about her pregnancy, in the supermarket checkout or thereabouts.  It was a girl, btw.  Don’t go reading the Daily Mail if you don’t need to.

Guess what I did this weekend.  No, don’t guess, I’ll tell you.

1.  I ate a foot-long hot dog.  Twice.  (Figure that out on your own, hungover Americans.)

2.  I painted my nails red, white and blue.

3.  I cleaned out half of my bedroom closet.  Now I can open the door all the way.  But don’t expect me to post pictures.  Because of #4.

4.  I uploaded 50,000 pictures to my Photobucket account, for the grandparents’ sakes.  I posted a humongous photo-and-video post at our family blog on the Blog Host of Suckitude (again, for the grandparents’ sakes), and it took for-freaking-ever.  While I was at Photobucket, though (all stinking day long), I finally got to see the Yoplait Seamstress commercial that I’ve heard so much about.  I hear about it because I get at least two Google hits a week from people looking for “yoplait lite seamstress.”  Anyway, I finally saw it because Photobucket played it for me every time I uploaded a new album.  So I got to see it, like, forty times.  It’s a reasonably cute commercial, but I’m not sure I understand the depth of its Google-worthiness.  I just thought I’d mention, as an aside to any random passers-by who are desperately searching for the Yoplait Lite Seamstress, you can see her all you like (and more) if you just open a Photobucket account and start uploading pictures like crazy.  At least, on Saturday you could.  Maybe by now they’ve moved on to something else.  ‘Twould be a shame, as that commercial is obviously very popular.  Yoplait should post it on YouTube.  But then I wouldn’t get as much traffic anymore.

Speaking of traffic, I am way more addicted to Facebook than anyone with as few friends as me has any business being.  I started a Scrabulous game with my sister, but then she went to Utah for a week, and now I have no one to play with.  Did I mention that I suck at Scrabble?  I do.  People are afraid to play Scrabble with me because they think, English major, writer, I’m going to kick their bootays–but no, I will not.  It is embarrassingly easy to beat me.  Probably why my sister hasn’t bothered logging in to Facebook to finish the job.  That and the fact she’s on vacation.  Also, I keep changing my X Files quote.  That’s a lot of fun.  My husband made me a Zombie, but my heart just hasn’t been in the brain-eating business, so that application’s pretty much being wasted.  I should get more friends.

Giraffemom:  Where’s Elvis?

Mister Bubby:  He’s eating watermelon naked.

Giraffemom:  Good for him.

---

I’ve been teaching Princess Zurg to sew.  I was going to say this is like the blind leading the blind, but I actually know a lot more about sewing than I’ve let on.  I know enough about sewing that I can mend clothes, but I have not attempted anything more ambitious than that.  It’s kind of silly to get ambitious about sewing when you don’t have a sewing machine, and it’s kind of silly to get a sewing machine when you’re not ambitious about sewing.

Sewing machines are expensive, as I recall, but I figure I’ll buy one when PZ is ready to take the sewing thing to the HNL.  I think I could even operate a sewing machine, if I had one.  I took Home Ec in the eighth grade (I still don’t remember why I did that, it was so unlike me, but do it I did).  I watched my mother sew a lot.  So I think I could remember how to use a sewing machine.  I wouldn’t be able to thread the bobbin–I’ve never been able to do that–but I could probably figure out the other stuff.  It’s like riding a bike, eh?

I made a skirt in Home Ec.  It was baby blue and so very ugly.  I don’t remember ever wearing it.  But it was my first encounter with a sewing machine that I remember.  My last encounter with a sewing machine was when I was trying to sew my own temple dress.  Now that I think on it, I seem to recall that using a sewing machine was not so much like riding a bike after all.  I think I sewed half of the bodice, and then I had to go do something else.  My mother finished the rest of the dress that afternoon.  Which was fine, because I really only wanted to have the dress, not so much make it.  I was married in that dress and I wore it for ten years, even through four pregnancies (it was high-waisted, with a full skirt–also, I tend to carry my babies just above the knee anyway).  It’s somewhat dilapidated now, so I decided to retire it.  I bought a new temple dress.  It’s wash-and-wear, very pretty.  I won’t be sewing myself a dress in the foreseeable future, especially since there’s no one here to finish it once half of the bodice is done.  Also, I’ve never tried to sew sleeves.  They scare me.

Where I was going with this was this:  PZ has been mending some of her Barbie clothes, and I got the idea that she would enjoy sewing her own Barbie clothes, if only she knew how.  Which made me think, “If only I knew how.”  And that made me think, “Wait a minute, I’m not as dumb about sewing as I make out to be.  I know stuff.  I could teach myself how to make Barbie clothes, and then I could teach PZ, and then she would have herself a fun little activity to channel all her energy into, instead of evil.”

So I figured that I could probably find out about sewing Barbie doll clothes on the internets.  You would think that, wouldn’t you?  What with all the information on the world wide web, somebody somewhere has probably posted something about making your own Barbie clothes.  Right?  Turns out, not so much.  I found lots of sites selling Barbie doll clothes patterns at ten bucks a pop.  The only thing I could find for free was how to make Barbie doll clothes out of old socks, or some such nonsense.  Seriously, lady–socks?  Old socks?  For Barbie?  Please.

So I had to get creative.  I found an article on how to make your own dress patterns.  It was intended for human clothes, but I figured if it worked for humans, it could probably work for Barbie, no?  (The reverse is not often true, of course, but that’s another subject.)  So I took Barbie’s measurements.  She has a 6-inch bust and a 1 1/2-inch waist–which is proportionate to me when I’m pregnant and I confuse my waist with my neck–but this isn’t the place to discuss Barbie’s body issues.  So yeah, I took Barbie’s measurements–the center front line, the shoulder seam line, the whateveryoucallit line–and I wrote them all down, and I tried to make a template from that.  This was one of those situations where the ability to visualize 2-D objects in 3-D is really helpful.  I am somewhat deficient in that category.  My strength in linear math did not help me.

So I had to get more “hands-on,” as they say.  I draped some fabric around Barbie and estimated where cuts should be made, and I tried to make a template that way.  It was more successful than the pure-math attempt, but it left much to be desired.  I must have made four different Barbie bodices–whole ones, not just half-ones–before I ended up with one that was almost perfect.  Technically, almost perfect is perfect enough for me.  I was so pleased with myself that I made Barbie a skirt (she has 4 3/4 inch hips), and I was so pleased with myself then that I attached the skirt to the bodice, and behold, Barbie was clothed!  Not in high fashion apparel, as I was working with remnants of an old bed sheet, but it would have made a darn fine temple dress.  Except there were no sleeves.  Sleeves still scare me.

I can’t tell you the sense of accomplishment I felt.  Such triumph over tools and raw materials–all with my own little brain and hands.  I tried to share the joy with my husband, but you know men.  He didn’t really seem to “get it,” you know?  I sewed a dress, mate.  A freaking dress. He said he was happy for me, that he could tell it made me feel like more of a woman–but that wasn’t it.  I felt like a fashion designer!  It was like a whole new world had been opened to me.  I could sew Barbie clothes.  I could teach my daughter to sew Barbie clothes.  We could sew Barbie formal gowns, cocktail dresses, full skirts, straight skirts, A-line skirts–the possibilities were endless!  Everyone bow before the Barbie-dress master!  Don’t mess with me, girl, or I’ll go Vera Wang on your 4 3/4-inch @$$.

Now, if only I had time to do this again.  Then we’d really be in business.

I have not been motivated to do much of anything lately, not even blog. My medication is in limbo, and the Reese’s peanut butter cups are not performing their usual magic, so maybe I am just in a bad mood, but it’s a woman’s prerogative to get annoyed for no good reason, at least once a month during her era of fertility, so if you’re not in the mood for petty carping, look elsewhere. You know, that sentence makes me sound much angrier than I probably am. I must have a lot of suppressed rage or something. Well, let’s do this thing.

This is not a Mormon blog. It’s a blog written by a Mormon lady who occasionally goes all Mormony on you. I enjoy mocking my own culture sometimes–not to be all subversive and in your face, but because that’s just how I roll. I mock because I love. I love being a Mormon, and I love Mormondom in general. That doesn’t mean I’m blind to the church’s flaws and weaknesses, in its leadership and/or its membership. Some people wonder why, considering all my doubts and alleged square-peggishness, a sarcastic suckhead like me sticks with an institution that is  designed for cookie-cutter sheep-type people with great teeth and awesome hair. Well, the fact is I am not that special, I don’t like my boat rocked, and my teeth and hair are pretty great, if not outstanding. But it comes down to this: the church is my home. Mormons are my family. We’ve got our skeletons and our crazy Aunt Myrtles. I can take good-natured jokes about this stuff because I’m willing to own the kooks and the skeletons. And in turn I can joke about it because I have such deep affection for the community–an affection I think is obvious to anyone who reads me without prejudice.

It is not obvious to a certain subset of Mormons, people who think being Mormon means never having to be ironic. I’m sorry that you people are irony-deficient. I wish there were a supplement you could take, because then you wouldn’t leave random comments on my site telling me that I’m bigoted and have no manners. This happens from time to time, and I usually shrug it off because, whatever, they don’t know me and they don’t care, why waste the emotion. When somebody leaves a comment like, “Your a little retard, Mormons are great,” I don’t even feel compelled to correct their spelling, or to point out that “retard” is not a euphemism that charming people use. I definitely don’t see the point in explaining that I myself think that Mormons are great, because if they didn’t want to understand the first time, they’re usually not motivated to get it the second time either.

So sometime last year I wrote a verbose review of a Mormon movie called Church Ball–which is an awful movie, largely because it is supposed to be a wacky comedy but it is not a bit funny, but also because it tries too hard not to be Mormon–and recently I got this comment on that post:

I must say, I have seen some of the Halestorm movies for the first time recently and has really enjoyed it. So did quite a few of my friends and family. Personaly I did not like “Sons of Provo”. I did not see “Church Ball” and would like to recomend the few that I found to be quite hillarious. So it could just be a matter of taste. I should also just remind you that if you only find movies funny if it contans an age restriction, profanity, swearing, nudity, adultery, etc. you cannot expect good clean family fun to entertain you and should thus not try and review it. The movies me and my family found to be quite entertaining are the following: “Baptists at our barbeque”, “The R.M.”, “Take a chance”. Hope you find that a little more to your taste. There are also other “mormon” movies, not by Halestorm that are really good. As far as your blog goes, I find it a little tasteless as anyone would find any blog trying to demean an institution because of personal issues.

First of all, where to begin. I’m assuming that if you enjoy Halestorm movies, you must be Mormon. I’m not going to assume that you’re a bad person, but I do figure that we won’t be running into each other at the cinema anytime soon. If you enjoy Halestorm movies, along with your family, who I’m sure are all lovely people, then bully for you. I enjoy a good rerun of What’s Happenin’, and I hope people don’t judge me too harshly for that. I liked Sons of Provo, you did not. That’s fine. Unlike my husband and ten-year-old, I don’t think everyone has to like what I like. Sons of Provo doesn’t fry your burger, and that’s good enough for me. Live and be well. You have not offended me.

What does trip my where-do-you-get-off wire is this implication that my failure to be entertained by Halestorm must be a function of my obvious jadedness. Maybe I “only find movies funny if it contans an age restriction, profanity, swearing, nudity, adultery, etc.” and thus have no business trying to review wholesome entertainment for decent folk.

I’ll have you know, missy–or mister, whichever–that I don’t think profanity and nudity make a movie funny, and I haven’t seen a movie with an “R” rating in more than twelve years. But unlike some people, I don’t think a movie’s good just because it has no swearing in it, and I’m not so desperate to be entertained that I’ll just laugh randomly and hope that a joke shows up to meet me halfway. When you’re recommending a movie to me, I want to know why it’s good, not that it’s inoffensive. Technically, I suppose Church Ball is inoffensive, unless you think it’s sinful to be boring.

That was my problem with Church Ball: it was boring. You’ve never seen it; you’re lucky. I have seen it, and that makes me the expert. It was not funny. It would not have been funnier if they’d said the F-word a lot. It would not have been funnier if they’d used the word “ass” instead of “butt.” It would not have been funnier if any of them had been naked. It would not have been funnier if the entire cast had been naked. It would not have been funnier if there had been more sinning. What would have made it funnier was if there had been authentic characters and a coherent storyline. Perhaps with your limited cinematic experience, you believe that authentic characters and coherent storylines can only be achieved through obscenity. That has not been my observation.

As to the movies you recommended, I haven’t seen any of them but The R.M. I didn’t find The R.M. a very good movie, but it was funnier than Church Ball, by at least a hundred points. Its quality was uneven, but it did have an authentic main character and a semi-coherent storyline. It would have been even funnier if it had been less lame, but swearing probably wouldn’t have helped a bit.

Also, I have seen other non-Halestorm Mormon movies, and some of them are very good. They are not Oscar caliber, but Mormon cinema is in its infancy, and I judge low-budget films by a slightly different standard. Maybe that’s the soft bigotry of lower expectations, but it’s not the kind of bigotry you’re talking about.

Which brings me to your last sentence: “As far as your blog goes, I find it a little tasteless as anyone would find any blog trying to demean an institution because of personal issues.”

I confess I do not know what to do with this. Which institution am I demeaning? If I say that Halestorm tends to make low-quality movies (which it does) and that Mormon filmmakers have yet to produce a Citizen Kane (or whatever), I am not demeaning Mormon filmmaking in general. Actually, I’m doing it a favor by letting it know how it can improve, and I think I do it in a way that’s considerably nicer than Simon Cowell’s constructive criticism.  I am certainly not demeaning the Church or its people.  The Church and its people deserve better than Church Ball.  And The R.M., no offense to it or the lovely people who find it hilarious.  The only “personal issues” I have are with people who think it’s “tasteless” not to embrace mediocrity in the name of good, clean fun.

You know what I think is tasteless?  Chalking up your disagreements with someone to a personal grudge or a psychological problem because you are overly sensitive about your religion and your taste in movies.  Thank you for putting me in my place.  Now you can go get a life.

This is one of those days I’d like to just start over from the very beginning. I know I could do it a lot better. As it stands, I have screwed up so much that I can never turn it around, and there is nothing else to do but pray that tomorrow begins quickly.

So at my daughter’s new school, the kids are reading this book, Hoot by Carl Hiaasen. You may have heard of it. It was also a movie. I’ve never seen it; maybe you have. You may know of Carl Hiaasen, or even be a fan of his work–his usual genre is adult comic mystery. I’ve never read any of his books, though I’ve meant to. I’ve heard they’re clever. Hoot was his first book for the juvenile market. (He’s written another since then, Flush, about which I know nothing.) So yeah, the kids at Princess Zurg’s school have been reading it, and PZ has been none too thrilled about it. Actually, she’s been morally outraged.

Well, “outraged” is really too strong a word. She has concerns that the book is not appropriate for her because it has some bad words. Words like a slang term for flatulence that rhymes with “art” (most prominent). Words like “damn” and “hell.” Words like “ass.” Words like “dumbass.” You might think it odd that I’ll write out damn and hell and ass but I shrink at spelling ****. That’s because in our house we allow our children to say “damn” and “hell” so long as they’re using the words in the religious sense. We’ll even let them say “ass” if they’re using it in the donkey sense. (Especially if they’re reading the Bible–so, you know, religious usage. Last night we were reading the Book of Mormon together and I told them they could say “dumbass” so long as they pronounced it “dumb…ass.”) They are not allowed to say ****. Because we are not animals, okay? Good manners are important, and so far I’ve had no luck getting them to eat with utensils, so don’t begrudge me my small niceties. Please.

Anyway, PZ knows the aforementioned words are not being used in any religious sense in this book, Hoot, and thus these words are making her feel uncomfortable, like she’s doing something wrong, i.e. reading inappropriate material. She knows she’s not supposed to read inappropriate material. Well, Sugar Daddy and I have told her that these words, distasteful as they might be, are pretty mild by most obscenity standards, and she probably isn’t headed down the slippery slope to Pottymouthville just by reading this book, and she certainly isn’t committing sin; we think she should finish reading the book because it touches on some issues she might find interesting, and it would behoove her to get some practice ignoring minor irritations and focusing on the big picture, as it were. However, we’ve also said that if she keeps reading and the book is really, really making her feel bad, Western Civilization would probably survive if one less fourth-grader in the world was able to engage in thoughtful discourse about Carl Hiaasen’s Hoot; we’d talk it over with her teacher and find her another book to read. (We talked this over with her teacher, who is totally cool with this plan. She just wants the kids to read.)

So PZ is still reading the book, but she still complains about it. The other day she came home and was embarrassed because the book talked about “kissing someone’s butt.” And that’s just gross, right? Not to mention wrong, if you’re going to take a literal read of that expression, which PZ does, as she has led such a heretofore-sheltered life. At her old school, she was among children who tended to act younger than their age; here she is among children who tend to act older than their age, and that is the baseline for how the adults treat them. She is still trying to wrap her head around that.

Because I’d encouraged her to finish the book, I thought I should read it myself, so I could have more useful conversations about it with her. I found a copy at my local library branch–which was provident in itself, as my local library branch is teeny-tiny and mostly has copies of nuthin’–and I finished reading it this weekend. It’s a mildly entertaining book. I wasn’t bored by it. I didn’t find it riveting. I also didn’t find it terribly sophisticated, and I hesitate to posit that my standards were simply too high. I read at least seven of the Left Behind books, for crying out loud, not to mention The Nanny Diaries. But I don’t want to get off on a tangent. Hiaasen has probably forgotten more about plotting mysteries than I will ever know, so whatever–”whatever” as in, whatever failings I imagine the book to have from a literary standpoint, it’s still entertaining and it also raises some thought-provoking questions.

The story is about some kids who try to save an owl habitat from some corporate developers. The thought-provoking questions are “how far should you go for a cause you believe in?” and “is it okay to break the law if your cause is just?” and “which is more important in making a moral decision, your mind or your heart?” These are questions I want PZ to ask herself and to discuss with me. This is part of why I want my kids to read, so they will think about issues that might not enter their brains otherwise. Also, so that they’ll leave me alone so I can read. But that’s less pertinent to my story here.

Moving right along, I realize that this scenario is going to recur with greater repercussions as PZ gets older and she’s asked by her teachers to read books that contain far more offensive material than that found in Hoot. Yes, PZ is bound to lighten up a bit as years go by, but I wouldn’t bank on her lightening up that much. I mean, sure, that would be my dream–lighten up, sweetie!–but I’ve known plenty of people with sensitive natures that never have lightened up. Not by high school, not by college, not by ladies’ auxiliary book club night. I tried to start a book club for my ladies’ auxiliary several years ago, and one of our (very few) members had definite concerns about whether or not the books we read would be “up to Gospel standards,” whatever that means. Well, I think I know what she meant by that, but how on earth do you answer that when your first selection is Fear of Flying? (Just kidding, we never read that–though how awesome would that have been? Hee hee hee.)

When I was high school age, I went to church with kids who felt caught between their moral values and their school’s required reading. They found books like The Catcher in the Rye and Brave New World offensive and morally objectionable, and they didn’t see why they should have to read them. Well, on the one hand, there is not a shortage of good books written in English over the last 200 years, and probably there are enough without “objectionable” material to fill a class syllabus. I sure won’t try to argue that point. However, it’s not that simple. It’s pretty easy to lead a full life and even pass yourself off as an educated person without having read The Catcher in the Rye. Probably you could skip Brave New World also. But you’d be missing a lot more than you would by skipping Hoot. Amongst the orgies and the general debauchery there are larger themes–and moral arguments–being articulated. (The irony is that it always behooves religious zealots to read anti-Utopian novels, but it’s hard to get the full benefit when you’re fixated on the naughty parts.)

Then there’s Huckleberry Finn. No one I went to school with ever objected to Huckleberry Finn on moral grounds–not that these kids loved the n-word or even appreciated good literature, but the n-word just wasn’t a big enough deal for them to protest. But there are other students, elsewhere, for whom the n-word is a big deal, much bigger and more offensive than the F-word. While I’m sure there are all kinds of high school graduates–some of them honors students, alas–who have never actually read Huckleberry Finn, I don’t think that’s a good thing. One could argue that by skipping Huckleberry Finn you are missing out on more than you would miss by skipping The Catcher in the Rye, Brave New World, Catch-22, and Bless Me, Ultima–but the real point is the same old story: you’re missing the larger themes, the moral lessons, because you can’t get past certain words or the exposition of certain events.

So don’t get me wrong–I don’t argue that students should always have to read every book on every public school reading list. I imagine there will be books my daughter is uncomfortable with that maybe I don’t think are so vital to her education. But I’m now hyper-conscious of how subjective this is. How much is too much to miss? Myself, I don’t like missing anything. But PZ has different sensibilities than I have. I want to be sensitive to that, but at the same time I want her to challenge herself. (Also, have you read the Bible lately? It’s filthy! I don’t want to put her off religion any more than I already have.) So while it’s much too early to stress out over, I have to blog about something, and here it is (or was–I guess it’s mostly over now). How do you decide what’s too “inappropriate” and what’s appropriate enough?

Last night the husband and I were watching videos on Onion News Network, including one in which it’s reported that John McCain “vows to replace Secret Service with his own bare hands.” (It’s pretty funny, as “John McCain is one mean **********” jokes go, but it contains some language that doesn’t quite meet the standards of couth for this blog.)  So I was thinking about how we elect presidents, and how many folks base their votes on something other than a careful analysis of the candidate’s policy positions and resume.  Usually we speak of this pejoratively, like a person will vote based on which letter is after the candidates name (”R” vs. “D”), or which candidate you’d like to have a beer with, or which candidate is taller–you know, superficial stuff like that.  (Yes, party affiliation, height–it’s all just window dressing.  What happened to discussing the issues?)  And I was thinking that it’s entirely possible–nay, probable–that a large segment of the American electorate does in fact pick the president on the basis of who would be more likely to win in a fistfight.

Think about those elections in recent memory.  Say what you will about President Bush–say he’s unfit to be president, that he’s the worst leader of the free world you could possibly imagine–that could all very well be true, but can you seriously argue that he wouldn’t clean John Kerry’s clock in a fair fight?  Seriously, who couldn’t clean John Kerry’s clock?  Robert Byrd, maybe.  Maybe.  If Democrats did in fact hold fistfights instead of primaries, Howard Dean would have been the nominee in 2004.  He still would have lost in November because the man is crazy and has no discipline–but it would have been a lot more interesting to watch.

I think Bush could have taken Al Gore, too.  Maybe not Al Gore today, as he’s bulked up a bit and under a lot less stress–plus, he has that Nobel prize he can clonk people over the head with.  But Al Gore in 2000 was another story; he hadn’t come into his own yet, he lacked confidence.  I would have been totally comfortable with a fistfight in lieu of a recount in 2000.  We could have left the Supreme Court out of it altogether and the nation would have healed much faster.  (Easy for us, as we weren’t the ones getting the old Texas one-two in the face repeatedly.)

And I think it’s obvious that Bill Clinton would have won both of his “elections.”  I mean, Bob Dole only had the one good arm, God bless him, and he wasn’t taking Viagra yet, so far as I understand it (which, admittedly, I don’t, and I don’t want to, so don’t correct me).  And even if George H.W. wasn’t the wimp everyone thought he was, how was a man of his genteel demeanor supposed to take on both Bubba and Ross Perot?  Not that Ross Perot is that tough, but how was “41″ supposed to concentrate on taking the big guy down with old H. Ross yapping at his heels the whole time?  What a nuisance!  Even in a two-man fight, though, I suspect Clinton would have prevailed.  Bush was out of touch, and Clinton would have helped him feel America’s pain, if you catch my meaning.

As for 1988, I think we all know that the only person Michael Dukakis could take in a fistfight is John Kerry.  And maybe Gandhi, but only because Gandhi is dead.  And a pacifist.

Ronald Reagan was 69 years old in 1980, but according to his doctors he was in amazing physical condition for a man his age.  He could have taken Jimmy Carter in, like, five minutes.  Reagan was even older when he ran for re-election, and less spry, but when your competition is Walter Mondale–no offense to him, but come on.  And anyway, what kind of American bets against the Gip?  (Oh, really?  Well, I guess we know which America you pledge allegiance to.)

I would venture that almost every president elected in the twentieth century would have won in a fistfight against his opponent, with the exceptions of Jimmy Carter (unless someone kidnapped Gerald Ford and replaced him with Chevy Chase) and Woodrow Wilson.  Yes, even FDR would have won most of his bouts–not because his opponents were too “gentlemanly” to fight a disabled man, but because FDR had very good upper-body strength, and he would have used the wheelchair to his advantage.  (I came this close to minoring in history in college.  I bet you can tell.)

And by this measure–i.e. fisticuffs–we can see that John McCain is the rightful Republican nominee this year.  If we’d had fistfights instead of primaries, Mitt Romney would have been down for the count in Iowa and wouldn’t have dared to show his face in New Hampshire.  Huckabee would have gone a few more rounds, but never having mastered the roundhouse kick (despite all of Chuck Norris’s tutorials), he would have had to concede in Florida.  Ron Paul wouldn’t have been in competition because fistfighting isn’t mentioned anywhere in the Constitution.  And let’s face it, the other guys didn’t want it badly enough.

As for the Democrats, Hillary would be your nominee today.  Not because her opponents were afraid to fight a girl, but because she is just that bada$$.  I’m still half-expecting her to win in November.

So, just as an amusement–something to keep us entertained until the party conventions this summer–here is a 2008 Presidential Fistfight Poll for you:

Take my poll!

I’m not above poaching other people’s blogs when it suits my purposes. I don’t care if they are my sister.

Here is an updated list of the most interesting search terms that led to my site:

“reading while driving” - I am envisioning getting pulled over and cited for having an open novel on my dashboard.

“mother in law suntanning topless” - I didn’t read that. Did you read that? Me either.

“ldsdisciplinarywomen” - I got two or three hits for this in a week. You’d have to be an old-timer and/or slightly obsessed with me to remember when I blogged about these ladies. And yes, it’s exactly what it looks like.

“pooping in the toilet - mental illness” - This would explain a lot about my children’s toileting habits.

“mormon women naked in church” - Ha! You wish.

“wynona ryder’s panty hose size” - Pervert.

“vintage glow worm boiler brochure” - I keep repeating this phrase to myself, over and over again, like it should be familiar to me and I just can’t place it. I really don’t know what the heck it means.

“sleep country spokeslady” - That would be my husband, trying to live out his sick fantasies online again. (Actually, I just had the disconcerting realization that it probably was my husband. Moving right along.)

“housewife not feeling validated kids dri” - Dri–? Driving you crazy? Driving you to drink? Driving you to blog? Tell me about it.

“vyvanse wetting pants” - Honey, that wasn’t the Vyvanse. It was the third pregnancy.

“yule brynner gay” - LIAR!

“spouses cheating at m&m mars in cleveland” - There are niche markets in porn, and then there are niche markets.

“i am mormon and having an affair” - With the Sleep Country lady? I knew it! [Sob]

“simi natural knockers” - I’m pretty sure I know how this happened. My husband is from Simi Valley, California, and I once used a particular slang term for breasts on this site, and heaven knows “natural” is a word I throw around all the time. But was this person looking for non-surgically-enhanced breasts from Simi Valley? Door knockers made of natural wood, manufactured in Simi Valley? Did they really mean “semi-natural knockers”? I’m going crazy not knowing.

“how to draw general grievous(hard)” - Not for my son it isn’t.

“chevy commercial dog licking feet jingle” - Dude, I don’t know what you’ve been told, but we’re Ford people.

“larvae in my house” - I’m a bad housekeeper, kids, but not that bad.

“barbie hair games but doing boys in it” - Wow, that’s…not a place I want to go.

“pregnant housewives free” - No, they’re not, son. Trust me.

“gummi gay” - LIAR!

“miserable marriage naperville” - I can’t remember ever mentioning Naperville on this blog.

“garlic beret moustache” - ???

“adventist logo tie tack” - I am beginning to understand that my site is a major source of information about Seventh-day Adventists. I didn’t ask for this responsibility, but I will try to live up to it as best I can.

“im pregnant and i just had burger king” - And the baby is two years old and healthy. Don’t fret, sister.

“giraffe struthers” - My first thought when I read this was “what does Sally Struthers have to do with giraffes?” Then I saw another search for “struther of a giraffe,” and I thought, “Maybe a struther is something I should know what it is.” Then I tried to find out what, exactly, a “struther” is and how it relates to a giraffe. According to Wikipedia, a “struther” is a theoretical unit of currency “conceived to highlight the trade-offs and social costs in various economic pursuits.” It was named after Sally Struthers, who, you might recall, used to do those commercials begging us to send money to save starving children in developing countries, mainly in Africa. Africa has giraffes. There’s your connection. Don’t tell me I never taught you anything.

“sink pee” - I get a lot of this, even though the sink is one place in my house where people don’t pee. If only my kids would pee in the sink! You have no idea.

“holk” - I wasn’t as curious about “holks” as I was about “struthers.” I just wanted to use this as an excuse to revisit more of my son’s art.

“mormons bikinis” - First they’re naked in church, and now they’re in bikinis! Ladies and gentlemen, the Mormons have gone wild!

“mistress insists i wear diapers” - I guess the “mistress toilet training” didn’t work out?

“giraffe belt buckle purse” - Must. Have.

“women peeing in the sink” - Again with the sink pee.

“eldridge cleaver anatomically correct” - Let me put it this way: I have no reason to believe he wasn’t. But come on, already. We Mormons don’t all know each other that intimately!

“slipknot having sex with sheep” - That’s it, pal. No more Halloween masks for you!

“ladies peeing in public” - Public sinks, no doubt.

“my child vomits everytime he eats noodle” - This isn’t funny, and yet it is. Explain.

Enjoy the first weekend of June, gentle readers.  Adieu.

A few days ago I posted a photo of myself on this blog, and I later made a comment to my friend subarcticsuburbia that it wasn’t actually me, but Jennifer Aniston.  I said that because a while back subsub posted a photo of Jennifer Aniston in a bikini and said it was her–it was just a joke, not like she was trying to make us all think she was secretly Jennifer Aniston–anyway, it was some funny crap, but I can’t find the original post, so you’ll just have to take my word for it.  In other words, you had to be there.

Anyway, I myself look nothing like Jennifer Aniston, nor do I really aspire to look like Jennifer Aniston–a very attractive woman, not like I’d kill myself if I looked like her, I’m just saying:  I look nothing like her, and if someone offered to give me an extreme makeover so that I could look like her, I would say no–because, dude, that’s not me.

Let me tell you who else is not me.  Lots of people think I look like somebody they know.  I’m talking about complete strangers, not people who do in fact know me.  No one I know for real has ever come up and asked, “Do I know you?”  People who really know me remember that they know me and where they know me from.  Some of them even remember my name (or at least half of it).  Complete strangers, though–people who have never met me before–lots of them think they have met me before, that they must have gone to school with me or we know mutual friends, or something, because I am just too familiar not to have been met by them before.  I tell them that I’m quite sure we’ve never met before–because if I don’t remember it, did it really happen?–and thank them for not confusing me with someone who owes them money.

Sometimes the person says, “You know, you look just like my cousin.”  I look like a lot of people’s cousin.  It’s always a cousin, too–never a niece or a sister-in-law or the girl at the copy shop–and fortunately never an ex-girlfriend or someone on that America’s Most Wanted show.

But a lot of other times, the person says, “No, I know we’ve met before.  You have to help me out here.”  I said to one strange lady, “Really, I just have one of those faces,” and she said, “No, you don’t.”  O-kay.  So maybe you can help me, ma’am–why does everyone think they know me when they can’t remember who I am and I have no idea who they are?  No one can ever answer that.

Could it be that I just look like somebody famous?  Not Jennifer Aniston-famous, but some famous face that no one can ever remember the name of?  It’s possible that I do look like a celebrity and just don’t know it, because I don’t know who any celebrities are anymore.  I could look like somebody on one of those reality TV shows.  Maybe my doppelganger was on Jerry Springer once.  I wouldn’t know.  No, really, I wouldn’t.  Oh, like you’ve never watched Jerry Springer and denied it?  Whatever.

In the past I was told by several people, including my mother-in-law, that I looked like Claire Danes.  Claire Danes used to be a famous actress.  I don’t know what she does now.  (I saw her on the gofugyourself web site several months ago; she was walking around town with Billy Crudup.  I remember because every time I read the name “Billy Crudup,” I think, “Who is Billy Crudup, and does he actually pronounce his name ‘crud’-'up’?”  Sorry, my mind is easily boggled.)  I didn’t really look like Claire Danes, but I wore my hair like Claire Danes, which is apparently close enough for some people.

I do think I look more like Claire Danes than I do like Jennifer Aniston.  If a plastic surgeon told me, “I can make you look just like Claire Danes,” I would probably say, “No, thank you, I think I look enough like her already.”  But I wouldn’t look that much like her.

My best friend once told me I was the spitting image of Private Jessica Lynch.  She said when Jessica Lynch’s photograph was shown on the news, she turned to her husband and said, “Holy cow, that girl looks just like Mad!”  At the time I didn’t have TV, so I didn’t know what she was talking about, but then Jessica Lynch turned up on the cover of Newsweek, and even I was impressed by the resemblance.

My husband wasn’t impressed, though.  He couldn’t see why anyone would say that Jessica Lynch and I looked alike, other than the fact that we were both “reasonably attractive women.”  Hmph.  Well, as soon as I saw other pictures of her, I had to agree.  She is reasonably attractive, and we look nothing alike.

I could totally work that uniform, though–right, honey?

Anyway, now they have that “celebrity look-alike” face recognition thing at MyHeritage.com  The first time I did it, it told me I looked most like Shania Twain.

I look absolutely nothing like Shania Twain.  Of course, it also matched me with Frank Sinatra and Condoleezza Rice, two other people I look nothing like, so whatever.

I decided to do it again this weekend, using a different photograph (of myself), and it didn’t tell me I looked like Shania Twain.  Or Frank Sinatra or Condi Rice.  This time I came out as Sela Ward.

Sela Ward also used to be a famous actress.  But she’s not as young as Claire Danes, and apparently neither am I.

Nevertheless, I do not look like Sela Ward.

It also told me I look like some people I’ve never heard of, plus Rosario Dawson, Kate Beckinsale, Judi Dench, and Marg Helgenberger, whom I have heard of, but I look nothing like.  I wouldn’t mind looking like Marg Helgenberger, when I get to be of a certain age, but I’d rather look like Claire Danes.  The face recognition genie never matches me with Claire Danes, even though I look more like her than any other celebrity I can think of.  Not that I look a lot like her, but looking a lot like somebody apparently isn’t a criterion here, so what gives?

For years people used to tell me and my sister, bythelbs, that we looked exactly alike.  Not “you could be sisters” alike, but exactly alike.  Like, “You could be twins!”  Which was kind of disconcerting to us because we didn’t think we looked like twins at all.  Not identical twins, anyway, which was what these people were implying.  No offense to each other, but we just didn’t see that strong a resemblance.  The other day, though, I woke up, walked into the bathroom, looked in the mirror, and who did I see?  My sister.  Crazy!  Sure, once I really woke up and my eyes were focusing again, I saw the real me–the one that doesn’t look that much like my sister–and I’ve been looking like myself to me ever since, but still, I was kind of freaked out.  It was the first time I could ever see what some people might have been talking about.

Not that I look like my sister as much as I look like Claire Danes.  I’m just saying.

One of the reasons I don’t post pictures of myself (well…not of my face, anyway) is that I know many of you already picture me looking a certain way, and I don’t want to spoil what your imagination has conjured up–even if you do picture me as some fat lady in curlers and a housedress.  This is your fantasy, not mine.  Our friend Scott has a theory that I look like Zooey Deschanel:

To which I can only say, “Why, yes, I do look like Zooey Deschanel (despite the fact that she looks nothing like Claire Danes).  Except for the hair.  My hair is red.  Or it will be, when I finally get around to dying my roots again.”  However, I know many more of you picture me as an actual giraffe lady.  Which I guess I asked for.  Hopefully, though, you do not have this in mind:

Or this:

But again, it’s your fantasy, not mine.

I just hope Claire Danes doesn’t take it personally.

I don’t know how it is in other minivans, but in our minivan, the seatbelts for the middle row can be anchored at either the middle row seats or the back row seats.  I can think of a very good reason why you might want this feature on one side of your minivan–the side where back row seating is accessible from the side door and you don’t want the shoulder harness getting in the way.  In our minivan, that shoulder harness isn’t usually in use because that’s where the baby’s car seat is, and I honestly have no idea how what we do with that seatbelt most of the time, because as long as it’s not in my way, I never think about it.  But in theory, I can understand the practicality of having this kind of flexibility in seatbelt anchoring–on that side of the car.

What I’ve had trouble wrapping my head around this morning is why you would need this feature on the other side of the car–the side of the car where no one can get to the backseat without crawling over the people in the middle seats and therefore it is the people who are in your way and not the shoulder harnesses per se.  I wouldn’t be thinking about this issue at all, if it weren’t for the fact that the release buttons for these shoulder harness anchoring thingies are only accessible through a slot that is about four millimeters long and two millimeters wide.  At the middle row–the row where open doors create space between the seat belt anchors and the rest of the world–there is room for an adult human hand to maneuver a thin metal object, such as a car key, into this tiny slot and thereby release the shoulder harness from said contraption.  At the back row, where there are no side doors, there is no room for an adult human hand to both hold and maneuver a car key to release the shoulder harness, should it be anchored in that location.  I know this because when Elvis got in the car this morning, the shoulder harness was anchored at the back row–why?  because Elvis put it there yesterday.  But this morning he didn’t want it there.  He wanted it back at the middle row, where it belonged.  And because he wanted it, and because it was 8:05 a.m. and Mister Bubby was already late for school and I wanted the screaming to stop before my ears started bleeding, I tried to resolve the issue.  I was unsuccessful.  We had to buckle his seatbelt with the shoulder harness anchored from the back.  He got over it, my ears didn’t bleed, and MB was five minutes late for school, as I’d originally planned.

Everything’s fine.  The seatbelts are functional.  People can get in the back seat.  The car can be driven safely.  But for some reason I can’t stop thinking, why, why, WHY would you want your seatbelt shoulder harnesses to have this theoretical flexibility of anchorage locale and simultaneously want it to be impossible to disengage aforementioned seatbelts from the back seat, should you get a wild hair and decide to mix things up a bit?  It makes no sense to me.  Who are they designing this car for, except an autistic five-year-old boy who wants to drive his mother insane?  Why do you need the shoulder harness for the middle row seat on the driver’s side–where the backseat is not accessible from the side door–to be anchored anywhere but the middle row seat area?  What would be the purpose?  I suppose I don’t do enough camping and outdoorsy stuff.  I’m sure if you’re hauling sports equipment or timber or something, the purpose reveals itself rather rapidly, but in the abstract, it is eluding me.   In the five years of owning a minivan and installing child safety seats in said minivan, it has never occurred to me to anchor the shoulder harness in the back row on that side of the car.  Perhaps I don’t know what I’ve been missing.  I suppose I will find out, as it is now stuck there for life.  Unless my husband decides it needs to be moved, in which case he will release the shoulder harness with his secret man powers while I’m not looking and then refuse to tell me how he did it because I’m a smart girl, I took calculus, and he won’t believe I can’t figure it out myself, I am obviously just being lazy, and why don’t I make some cookies so the boys will like me?

Mmmm.  Cookies.

A metal nail file would probably work.  Or a letter opener.  Hey, a letter opener–why didn’t I think of that?

Because my sister tagged me, and it was like a triple-doggy dare I couldn’t resist!

Ahem.  “A Meme in 10 Pictures (or so).”

#1 - Kitchen sink

Ordinarily I am pretty good about dishes.  I don’t have dishophobia, like some people I could mention.  But this morning my sink is less than Fly Lady shiny.

#2 - Inside fridge

You know, when I look at it this way, it doesn’t seem so gross.  No one said I had to do a close-up, I guess.

#3 - Favorite shoes

I don’t know if they’re my favorite shoes.  They’re just the flashiest, and the ones I happen to be wearing right now.  I got them on the cheap at the Payless Shoesource BOGO 1/2-off sale!  Actually, I mostly bought them to impress Princess Zurg.

#4 - Closet

It didn’t specify “inside” or “outside,” but I figured if I took a picture of a door, some might consider that cheating.  Please bear in mind, though, that the housekeepers just came last week, and I had to cram all my junk somewhere.  Okay, so this junk has been in here for the last six months.  So sue me.

Yes, I know, that’s at least half of it a picture of a door, but I couldn’t open the door all the way, so what was I supposed to do?

#5 - Laundry pile

I’m not sure what is meant by laundry “pile” (singular?), so I took a couple different pictures.  I’m in the middle of a laundry marathon, so my hampers (plural) are mostly empty, but here is a picture of some laundry that needs to be folded:

And here’s some laundry that still needs to be laundered:

#6 - What the kids are doing right now

At least this was what they were doing when I took the picture.

They look so sweet when they’re watching television.  Like little angels.

# 7 - Favorite room

I can’t say any room is my favorite right now, as the whole house is pretty much a pig sty–but I am rather fond of this spot at the top of the stairs.  Look how clean it is!

#8 - Toilet

You’d think people would have had enough of my toilet pictures by now, but I guess supply must meet demand.

I offer no explanation for the following.

If it makes you feel any better, this potty chair has never, ever been used.  Not in its intended capacity, anyway.

#9 - Fantasy vacation

Why would I need a vacation, when I have all this?  What more could a woman ask for?

But if you held a gun to my head, I would love to go back to the Sylvia Beach Hotel in Newport, Oregon.

I think I would like to stay in a different room than Poe’s this time.

#10 - Self-portrait

I never said I wasn’t a cheater at heart.

My recital last Thursday went very well, though I felt a tad let down when it was over. I had worked so hard, and it was so much fun, I really wanted to do it more than once. I’m sure my husband is glad that I’m not doing it more than once. He was supportive during the six weeks of extra rehearsals, but as he put it, “I’m happy to support you, but I’ll be happier when I don’t have to support you anymore.” So there it is. My moment in the spotlight is over, and my husband doesn’t have to support me again until next spring. Congratulations, honey!

I think all the complaining I did about the long, long, looooonnnnnng drive to my sister’s house in Washington served as some kind of pre-emptive strike, as I encountered absolutely no traffic either to or from my destination. Not in Tacoma, not in Seattle. On Memorial Day weekend! I must have been doing the Lord’s work, because the other side of the freeway was a parking lot, but on my side it was like the parting of the Red Sea. I made each trip in less than four-and-a-half hours, and I wasn’t even speeding (much). Fate loves nothing better than to prove me wrong (or more specifically, to prove me a big fat sissy whiner).

About one thing I was not wrong, though: Girlfriend napped in the car and was subsequently up all night, both Friday and Monday. There was no joy in being right on that count, alas. It was a small price to pay, though, for the three of us had a wonderful weekend–especially Princess Zurg, who had the time of her life playing with all of her cousins.

Sugar Daddy asked me what we all did this weekend, and I’m not sure what he was expecting me to report. When my family gets together, it is sort of an event in and of itself. In fact, this is the first time all of my siblings and I have gotten together since my wedding eleven years ago. (At least, I think my siblings were all at my wedding. That day’s kind of a blur for me.) We all fell into our usual patterns: my older sister cooked a lot, my younger sister helped her, my youngest sister read a book, and I dealt with my needy children. I don’t remember what my dad and brother were doing.

Well, my brother was there to go on dates with a girl, so a lot of the time he was doing that. The girl came over for dinner on Sunday night, so I got to meet her. She seemed nice. I hope he marries her. I really can’t tell you how much I want my brother to get married and married soon. Mostly because I know he would like to get married. But also because there’s this stigma against unmarried Mormon men of a certain age (say, 25). Usually not without good reason, as Mormon men are highly motivated to marry young, and the most common reason for a Mormon man not to marry young is that he’s creepy or has bad personal hygiene. Yes, this is a cruel stereotype, not unlike the stereotype of unmarried Mormon women over 21 being either a) fat or b) CUCKOO! CUCKOO! CUCKOO! (For the record, I was “b.”) Anyway, I’m anxious for the next phase of his life to begin. He’s out of school and he’s got a job. And he’s related to me, so you know he’s good-looking. (Tall, long neck, doleful eyes.) So what’s the hold-up?

I’m being facetious, just so you know. It’s not like I’m pressuring him to get married. I mentioned not a word about it all weekend. I didn’t even so much as ask about his ladyfriend, much to SD’s dismay. SD wanted to know he smooched her. I said I didn’t know. Only I said it like, “I don’t know, you freak, what kind of pervert knows stuff like that about her baby brother?” He couldn’t believe that I hadn’t asked him about it. He said he would ask him himself when he sees him next week. Men and their giggly gossiping. Bah!

My sister just got a Wii Fit, and so we played with that some. I should be opposed to the Wii Fit on principle, and yet I couldn’t help but be impressed with how technology makes even the most mundane exercise more exciting. It was really fun–much better than being out playing in the sunshine. I did some Wii yoga. I learned that my center of balance is slightly to the left. I also learned that I suck at virtual hula-hooping. Also, that my Wii Fit Age was 32. Woo-hoo! I don’t know what they base their calculations on, but who am I to question the Wii Fit?

Anyway, it was a great visit. I think the fact that I had only two of my kids with me contributed heavily to the greatness thereof. When I left, I thought, “We should come back again soon. But not all six of us.”

Princess Zurg was an easy traveling companion this time around. After we listened to the Corpse Bride soundtrack once (only once!), she let me play whatever CD’s I wanted to. I listened to Joan Armatrading, Todd Rundgren, Chaka Khan, and Split Enz. I even listened to some Better Than Ezra. “No, girl, you did not!” Yes, girl, I did. (Well, not the whole CD, just part of it.) I listened to ABC’s Lexicon of Love twice. That album kicks butt. It’s like Chic meets James Bond. One thing I’ve always enjoyed about ABC is that they put together some really clever rhymes. If you gave me a pound for the moments I missed/And I got dancing lessons for all the lips I should have kissed/I’d be a millionaire; I’d be a Fred Astaire. You have to imagine it being sung by some guy all overwrought and yet still British. Or maybe you have to be there. Maybe you have to have bad taste in music. Well, same to you, pal.

On the other hand, I spent the last leg of my trip listening to that other Chic-inspired British band, Duran Duran, and I was struck yet again by how messed-up those cats’ song lyrics are. They’re not clever, but neither are they inane. They’re beyond inane. They’re beyond ridiculous. “I’m dancing on the valentine”? “There’s a dream that strings the road with broken glass for us to hold”? What does any of that mean? It doesn’t mean anything! Really, there’s only one way to make sense of these lyrics: they were obviously some kind of code. Like, spy stuff. “The eagle has landed.” “The fat man walks alone.” “The union of the snake is on the climb.” If I had unlimited free time, I could probably decipher all of it eventually. You should watch in a few years for my book titled Is There Something I Should Know? How Duran Duran Helped Us Win the Cold War. Or alternatively, Notorious: How We Won the Cold War Despite the Best Efforts of Duran Duran. It’s unclear to me as of yet which side they were really on. (Research for this project may have to wait until I’ve finished my self-help tome, Everything I Needed To Know in Life I Learned from Depeche Mode. Chapter One: “People Are People.”)

So I’m back at home, super-behind on the laundry, house rapidly falling into chaos, but at least I did a blog for you. All for you. None of it was for me. Except maybe that part about Duran Duran. Okay, I promise I’ll write something more interesting tomorrow. Or the next day. We’ll see how I’m feeling.

I’m too busy to write a long, rambling post about all the crap that happened to me this morning. Suffice it to say that it involved missing a bus and being twenty minutes late to an appointment. What I really wanted to do was wish my dear husband a happy anniversary–eleven years, baby!–and, you know, fish for well wishes and congratulations from the rest of you because that’s the kind of attention whore I am. That’s all.

We will be celebrating our eleventh anniversary in style this evening, as it is my tap recital (where I will be dressed as a vintage attention whore). Wish me luck, or a broken leg, or whatever it is we show business people do. I’m looking forward to this recital because I worked very hard for it, and I’m just hoping that I don’t goof it up because that would make me mad. The good news is that if I do goof it up, it won’t be that noticeable, as I spend most of my time onstage in the back row. The bad news is that there is one part at the very beginning when I’m in front, and I have to go into this pose after executing a turn, and roughly half of the time I lose my balance on that pose. In the world of dance, this is known as a “problem.” So hopefully I will keep my balance tonight, but if I don’t, at least everyone will have a few laughs at my expense and I will therefore have brought joy to the audience, which is really what I strive for, as an attention whore. Believe it or not.

Tomorrow my daughters and I are making the long-a** drive up into Washington to see my sister, my other two sisters, my brother, and my father. Two of my sisters live in Washington. My brother, who lives in Maryland, is coming out to Washington to meet a girl. My other sister is flying in from Missouri, and my father’s flying in from California. And I’m driving for four-and-a-half hours, maybe five or six, depending on whether or not I get entangled in Seattle’s rush hour, which I believe starts at 2 p.m. and lasts until roughly 7 p.m. If I leave here by nine, I should make it. Unless I run into some inexplicable traffic jam in Tacoma again. Suckitude. It’s only because I love my family of origin so much that I make such sacrifices. Yes, I am making a really big deal out of it because I know my sister’s reading this.

I actually don’t think I’d mind the drive so much, if it were just me. I like driving by myself. I can listen to whatever music I want, stop to go to the bathroom if I have to–and more importantly, not when I don’t have to–and I never ask myself, “How much longer until we get there?” Okay, sometimes I do, but it’s rhetorical, and only in Tacoma. And it’s more like, “How much longer can this possibly take???” But at least I can enjoy the solitude. Driving with children in the car is a joyless enterprise. On the plus side, I won’t have Elvis. On the minus side, I will still have Girlfriend, and there’s just no good way to travel with a two-year-old. I will be spending the whole time worrying that she’s going to sleep too much in the car and won’t sleep that evening, when I really, really want her to. Or I will be spending the whole time cursing because she’s not sleeping in the car, and worrying that she’s just going to crash at around 5 p.m. and wake up at 8 p.m., which is a whole other hell. I can only hope that Sugar Daddy knows where all the parts to the portable DVD player are, so I can electronic-babysit her all the way to Seattle. It’d be just like staying home, only with better restraints! (I’m kidding.)

Well, I have packing to do. You all enjoy your respective weekends. Ciao!

Recently my sister, bythelbs, had a “crazy search terms” contest (which I won, and not because of nepotism but because I rock the crazy-search-terms world). Ordinarily I don’t make a habit of looking at the search terms stats on my blog because it’s like those people who get the genealogy bug and just get obsessed with tracing their roots–I get caught up in the story of how people arrive at my web site, which is clearly inappropriate for most of these people’s needs.  I also discover that a lot of people show up here looking for child pornography–a scenario I do not like to think about, unless I make up some elaborate fairy-tale ending in which the sicko pervs are so charmed by my wit and shennanigans that they are inspired to pursue more wholesome forms of entertainment for the rest of their lives.  (Note to sicko pervs:  Get off the internet.  Save yourselves.)

However, I couldn’t resist this time.  There were way too many of these gems to post on my sister’s site, so I gave her the best ones and you’re getting the leftovers.  Just kidding.  (Well, no offense, kids, but there was a contest going on.)

“come with me little girl on a magic carp”:  Obviously, this is supposed to be a search for Steppenwolf’s “Magic Carpet Ride,” but doesn’t a magic carp sound a lot more interesting? 

“toilet stomach gurgle puke or vomit”:  Only the story of my LIFE.

“gay life in oregon”:  Oregon is a great place for the gay life.  So is this blog.

“big boobs amateur”:  As opposed to the professional big boobs.  There’s a difference.  You might say there’s a big difference.

“i am confused and i do not know what to”:  Me either, my friend.  Me either.

“potty training donkeys”:  I don’t get it.  What’s with all the potty training searches? 

“how to pump a stomach at home”:  !!!

“mormon and ‘elimination communication’”:  I would love to know how these two things intersect in the searcher’s mind.  Is he or she looking for a Mormon approach to elimination communication?  The Mormon doctrinal position on elimination communication?  There is that widespread belief that Mormon women plan to spend eternity being pregnant and giving birth, so I guess it follows logically that we would also spend eternity toilet training.  In which case it looks like I really have made my home a heaven on earth.

“how to pronounce gefilte”:  Like it’s spelled, meshuggah goy!

“bottom costume midsummer”:  At first I thought this was another one of those sicko perv things, and then I realized it was just some naive Shakespeare lover.  I can’t remember the last time I Googled with such innocence.

“mormons doctrine of losing reproductive”:  What?  Losing reproductive what?  Reproductive rights?  Reproductive capabilities?  Reproductive organs?  Where do I sign up?

“duran’s ‘infested tone’”:  I’m sure this could only have led to one of my many posts on Duran Duran.  This has not heretofore been public knowledge, but it’s in my blog mission statement to bring culture to the masses.  I’m glad I could make a difference.

“can tuna ahi fish be eaten by sda member”:  It’s also in my mission statement to educate the masses on the dietary habits of Seventh-day Adventists, especially as it relates to foods rich in Omega-3 fatty acids.

“why cant mormons go out on sundays”:  Because Sunday is when we stay home and use our reproductive before we lose it.

“lisa jangles”:  Okay, this was the name of Sugar Daddy’s first character on Knights of the Old Republic.  He let Mister Bubby name her, and MB was actually planning to marry her when he grew up, but then he turned five and moved on to other ladies.  Or maybe he hasn’t.  Maybe he’s on the internet looking for his childhood sweetheart.  Maybe Lisa Jangles is the name of a famous porn star.  Maybe MB isn’t allowed to use the computer anymore.  I’m going to stop talking about this.

“how did odin lose his eye”:  This is where SD wipes away a tear and wonders how he got so lucky to have a wife who quotes Manowar songs on her blog.

“things mormans wont tell you about”:  Here’s something I will tell you about, dude–it’s MorMON.  MorMON, dammit!

“wacky mormon beliefs”:  You might try to narrow your search a little, buddy.

“yoplait lite ’seamstress’”:  I am racking my brain trying to think of how low-fat yogurt relates to needlework.  I’ve got nothing.  I’m throwing it out to you all now.

“mistress + toilet training”:  And I thought my life was hard.

“nymphomaniac blog mormon”:  I’m pretty sure every Mormon gal with a blog shows up on this search, but I’m probably the only one who actually gets visited as a result of such a search.  Why?  Because I’ve got the toileting posts and the cultural stuff to recommend me.  This is where it all intersects, baby. 

This might be the weirdest thing I have ever seen.

My initial response was, “I wanted to like that. But I think it just made me really uncomfortable.” Then I decided to watch it again. Why? I don’t know. Do you ever pass by a really bad traffic accident and then decide to go back and have another look? Me either. And yet I did here. I can’t explain myself.

On second viewing, I thought maybe I did like it. Because it is just that bad. It’s really bad. On the other hand, it is also awesome. How can I reconcile these two facts? I should watch it again. And yet, I should not. I should let the thing die. I should not post it on my blog. So why is it here?

I think that maybe, rather than being like watching a bad traffic accident, it is like pressing on a bruise to convince myself that it doesn’t hurt that much. See, I’m pressing on it and it doesn’t hurt that much. Except that it does. It hurts worse. But then I start to think I like to hurt. That’s what this video is like.

HT: Mormon Mommy Wars. Thanks for nothing, ladies.

Tomorrow the housekeepers are supposed to come, and this house is a disaster area.  Ever see that old Whoopi Goldberg movie, Corrina, Corrina?  There’s that scene where Whoopi/Corrina the housekeeper goes to clean a rich person’s house and it’s a disaster area but she has to clean it anyway because that’s her job?  That’s not my housekeepers’ job, cleaning disaster areas.  They clean surfaces “reasonably free of clutter.”  None of my house’s surfaces are currently “reasonably free of clutter.”  I am so tired.  I don’t know how I will get the surfaces reasonably free of clutter in the next 18 hours.  Yesterday Elvis got into his closet and discovered all of the boxes full of stuff that the insurance people packed up after the fire and which we haven’t seen fit to deal with yet.  Elvis saw fit to deal with it all.  By “deal with it,” I mean that he opened all of the boxes and dumped their contents onto his bedroom floor.  Including the box of miscellaneous toy parts which I was planning to throw away when no one was looking.  Including the box of our framed pictures, one of which had its glass pane broken when the box fell to the floor.  It was uncool.  The whole situation is uncool. 

I know, you should have my problems.  Why am I blogging when I have so much to do?  Because I’m a lazy crapface who likes to whine, that’s why.  Haven’t you figured that out yet?

I’ve been stress-eating like nobody’s business lately.  If you’ve ever seen the episode of 30 Rock where Alec Baldwin’s mom is coming to visit and he starts eating everything in sight, you have a pretty good picture of what’s going down in my house these days.  I don’t know what I’m stressed about, unless it’s this whole business of institutionalizing my oldest child part-time, weaning the unweanable baby, potty-training the un-potty-trainable five-year-old, and finding a babysitter for this afternoon.  Well, I found a babysitter for this afternoon, so maybe that explains why I’ve only eaten one breakfast today.  If I manage to find resolution on the other three, I might give up food altogether. 

Haha.  That’s funny.

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Lately I find myself an aficionado of the Stuff White People Like blog, but I’m a little uncomfortable with it because I can’t help thinking how white it is to enjoy having your race mocked.  It reminds me of that episode of The Simpsons where Homer says, “It’s true!  We’re so lame!”  Then I wonder how white it is to watch The Simpsons, and then quote it like everyone’s supposed to know what you’re talking about.  All this self-conscious irony–that’s #50 on the list of stuff white people like–well, it’s almost like I’m trying to pretend I’m not really white, or at least that I’m not so white as those other white people, that maybe I’m one of those white people nobody thinks of as white because I’m such a credit to my race and all.  And then I remember that I’m a Mormon living in flipping Oregon, and baby, it just doesn’t get any whiter than that.  So when white is all there is to be, it can make you wonder why–but why wonder?  Why…wonder?

This can only end badly.

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I think that two-in-one shampoo + conditioner is more properly called Shampoo for People Who Don’t Really Need a Conditioner But Want To Feel Like They’re Doing Right by Their Hair Even Though They Can’t Afford To Spend Such Quality Time with It.  But you could only fit that name on the large, economy-size bottles, so I guess that’s why they just decided to go with “2-in-1″ instead.

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A little quirk about me that you may not know:  I like my scrambled eggs runny.  Yeah, because I’m just that gross.  But lately I find that I can’t make runny scrambled eggs.  Just the light and fluffy kind.  It’s very disconcerting.  When did I lose my edge? 

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Is it just me, or are vending machines the land of Junk Food That Time Forgot?  You can’t just get ordinary chips there.  It’s all nacho-cheese-flaming-salsa-and-bacon flavored chips.  Like they’re trying to humiliate you by forcing you to admit that you’re so desperate for calories that you’ll not only eat white-cheddar-barbecued popcorn that’s three months past its expiration date, but you’ll pay two-and-a-half times the retail price for the privilege.  It’s just gratuitous.

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Something to make his daddy proud–Elvis’s latest vocabulary addition?  “Falco.”

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I’m not really in a hurry for my kids to grow up, but I do have a modest list of Milestones That Can’t Come Too Quickly.  At the very top of the list is “Using the toilet for all waste-elimination activities.”  Actually, you should picture that at the top of the list in all caps, bolded, and in letters three feet