HAPPY HOLIDAYS, DAMN IT!

I probably shouldn't even honor this faux-controversy by writing about it on my blog, but since I think my readership is up to, you know, zero, I hardly think I am adding to the problem. Plus, it's bugging me.

As a Jewish person who also celebrates Christmas with my pseudo-Catholic mom, I have always thought "happy holidays" makes the most sense, since you don't know which of the many holidays the person you're speaking to might be celebrating, and no matter what, they are celebrating New Year's Eve/Day, so chances are, the plural is relevant. Plus, even atheists have a day or two off of work, which is called a "holiday," so it's grammatically correct, accurate, and inclusive. But it has never bothered me when people say, "Merry Christmas" to me since even if it's not accurate, it's still nice, and maybe that should be the most important thing, right?

But not anymore. Because of the creation of this faux-controversy, now it is reasonable to assume that a person saying "Merry Christmas" is in fact a disciple of Bill O'Reilly, a person who buys in to the belief that there's a "War on Christmas," despite all evidence to the contrary. This person is not just being nice when s/he says "Merry Christmas." This person is now saying, "I am a beleagured Christian who is suffering the slings and arrows of oppression in this country! Where there is so much hate for Christianity that there's even a war on Christmas! So I will fight against those secular liberal PC-police* (by which I mean Jews) by saying to you, 'Merry Christmas!' So hah!"

And conversely, "Happy Holidays" is no longer a nice, inclusive thing to say. It now means, "No! I am the truly beleagured one! You are a moron! So hah!" So basically, this faux-controversy has taken two perfectly nice phrases, which were used in good spirit and cheer, with the intent of making someone else a little bit cheerier, and made them combative phrases. Great.

I even heard one woman say that her minister told her to say "Merry Christmas" because it's a merry Christmas to her. Funny, I thought speech was intended to communicate with others, not to serve as a constant, out-loud diary.

*Wouldn't it make a great Project Runway challenge to have them design uniforms for the PC police?

Together Forever

So I was fooling around on the Barbie Collectibles website (What? Shut up.) and they have a collection titled "Together Forever," which is Barbie and Ken as various - okay, two - famous couples. Guess which couples go under the heading "Together Forever"?

Romeo and Juliet.

AND

King Arthur and Queen Guenevere!

Hahaha!

Now, I guess I could see the first one. I mean, they are "together forever" if one considers, in a romantic, moony light, that they died together and their souls are bound and blah blah blah. Or, in an unromantic light (my personal choice), their corpses are probably sticking around. Still, "together forever" probably shouldn't imply "only because they killed themselves before they could get a taste of 'forever', or even, say, a week together."

But King Arthur and Queen Guenevere? Have the folks at Mattel never read a book or seen a movie at all?

Oh! Access to Care! Is That What We Do Here?

I'm sure I don't have to expound at length on my views about pharmacists not dispensing pills because of their religious beliefs here. I mean, obviously, I think that if a pill is legal to be prescribed, and has been prescribed by a liscensed doctor, it should be dispensed by a liscensed pharmacist. I have also been discussing the legal ramifications of freedom of religion with my parents (who are both lawyers - corporate lawyers, but still willing to discuss First Amendment law with me as the whim strikes me) and have come to the conclusion that if your field requires you to do something your religion forbids, you shouldn't be in that field. I understand that individual employers should make reasonable accomodations for religious practices, but presumably, those accomodations don't apply to the entirety of a field of practice. For instance, religious Jews can't work on Friday nights and Saturdays, and I'm assuming there are religious Jews who've sought employment at bars, movie theaters, etc. And individual bars, etc., may have to come to an agreement with those employees, perhaps by giving them all the Sunday or Thursday night shifts, and using them on Christmas and Easter, etc. But I also assume that the recreation field - movie theaters, bars, nightclubs, etc. - don't have formalized procedures for dealing with religious Jewish employees. And you don't even have to go through formalized procedures to become a movie theater employee. Pharmacists go to school for four years AFTER getting a college degree. I'm sure that at some point in school, they're like, by the way, some people have sex before they get married but don't want to have babies, and there are pills you may be required to dispense to that end.

But anyway. I found this article interesting. I think right now, the situation is that there is a religious right contingent within the pharmacalogical community which is intent on not giving birth control to women. (I don't know which contingent is suddenly against mental health medications, or painkillers, but whatever.) And I think the rest of the community is kind of going along with the fight, because it might result in more power for pharmacists, and I get the sense that, very much like actual younger siblings, pharmacists are constantly trying to prove themselves against/wrest power from their big sibling (See what I did there? Gender-free!), actual doctors. But now BigSib is telling LittleSib that it has resources, that it will quash this attempt to gain power. And the non-religious contingent of the pharmacalogical community will want to move the hell away from that if this is going to be the result. So, yay! Go, doctors!

Glass Slippers and Abusive Husbands

A study about women who love fairy tales and their abusive husbands has been receiving some attention in the blogosphere lately, so I thought I'd give my opinion, as a long time lover of fairy tales, and wife of a non-abusive husband.

Obviously, there are lots of problems with this study. First, there's the sample size - 67 women. A study done of 67 women could not accurately determine anything of value, really. And then, there's the total lack of a "control group." I am sure one could do a similar study and determine that there was a strong preference for wearing blue jeans among women who've been subject to domestic violence. But if you don't look at 67 women who haven't, then you really don't know anything. And a childhood love of fairy tales is just as common as a predeliction for blue jeans in modern industrialized countries. So I don't know why asking 67 self-described victims of domestic violence whether they liked fairy tales growing up tells anyone anything.

There's also a problem, though, with the way they seem to be interpretting the texts. In the AFP article, the author of the study, grad student Susan Darker-Smith, is quoted as saying, " "They believe if their love is strong enough they can change their partner's behaviour." I don't know how one would read fairy tales in their semi-original form and come to the conclusion that one could change one's partner, as the fairy tales, typically, have fairly limited characterization skills. When I was about eight years old, my mother bought me The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, translated by Jack Zipes, and I tore through it. (Later, she picked up herself, and grew worried about me liking such a bloody, gory, disgusting book. But, to her credit, she merely checked with me to make sure it wasn't twisting my brain and let me alone.) And the thing is, no one, male or female, has such a strong personality - or such a strong personal growth - that one can accurately determine that the woman changes the man through the strength of her love. The Beast in "Beauty and the Beast" is just beastly in form, really. It's not even implied that it's his fault that Beauty has to stay with him - her father plucks a rose from a magic bush and that's pretty much that. The Prince isn't even Charming in Grimm's; he's just a prince.

The cinematic renditions of these stories - with two hours rather than a couple of pages to fill - go far deeper into the characterizations, and thus Disney's Beauty and the Beast, Drew Barrymore's Ever After, and modern-day Cinderella classic Pretty Woman all play on the theme of a good woman changing the behavior and even personality of a formerly not-so-nice guy. Even Shrek, which went one step better than Beauty and the Beast by allowing the girl to be unattractive, too, centered around the taming of an ogre into a nicer ogre because of the love of a good, if feisty, woman. Those depictions (along with all other romantic comedies ever) seem to do far more to promote the idea that you can change a man by loving him than the original fairy tales would. Which would be fine and well, except the study does single out the fairy tale "literature," and favors TV- and movie-watching as the anecdote to these bad, bad bedtime stories. Again, from the AFP, "Darker-Smith said she believed younger generations exposed to television and other entertainment media may react differently and be less submissive than those weaned solely on literature." How on earth is she determining that TV and movies, laden with images of good girls making bad boys good, will be better for women than Cinderella?

I would also like to note, for those of you who've dismissed fairy tales as get-a-man, fast-as-you-can claptrap, that most of Grimm's Fairy Tales have nothing to do with finding a husband, and there are a surprising number of stories about women getting their brothers out of some kind of trouble, either self-induced or evil-forces induced. Not that it's a feminist paradise in there - it's usually the sisters' ability to stay quiet for extended periods of time, or be submissive and "good," which save the day. And there are A LOT of wicked stepmothers and mothers-in-law. I'm just saying. They're not all, "Someday, my prince will come, and until then, I've got mopping to do."

My Husband is Knitting

My husband is knitting.

I probably shouldn't be surprised. Although my husband has never done anything quite this effeminate before (aside from relishing Jane Austen movies, I guess), he's always had a casual disregard for gender roles, or, in fact, any rules imposed by a society which clearly does not operate at as high an intelligence level as he himself possesses. Also, it makes sense. He's very physically dexterous, and he needed a new project. And why should I be so hung up on gender roles that I think it's weird for boys to knit?

But I thought we were buying the yarn, the needles, and the Stitch&Bitch for me.

What happened was, I recently took up embroidery with this lovely kit. I happened to be with my m-i-l when I purchased it, and she mentioned that she'd heard knitting was making a comeback, and she'd like to take it up herself, because not only would she be able to make nice, warm things for her family (a major value for her), but she might stop biting her nails. So I bought her the Stitch&Bitch, and the requisite supplies, for Mother's Day. This prompted my husband to lament, for the four hundred and second time, that I haven't yet learned to knit. I ignored him, but then I started reading, and I got interested. Also, I bought a hank of yarn, which looks like a coil of yarn rather than the standard ball or skein, for his mother, and the two of us had a great time rolling it in a ball for her. He had an especially good time, as he went a lot faster than me. So he decided that we would buy all the necessary equipment for me this week, and he would roll yarn into a ball, and that would make him happy.

But now he appears to be knitting. And having a great time. He's told me I don't need the book, he'll just show me. But why should I learn how to knit if he's going to do it? I've got embroidery projects to work on.

Faith and Science

I have just completed my semester-long course in the Bible as Literature - the New Testament. This was, of course, material I'd never read before so it was very exciting for me and as a consequence, I talked so much about it that my husband was about ten seconds from inventing the human mute button. But here's something I've yet to talk about too much. Why is it that any Christian gives a shit about evolution being taught in public schools under the heading "science"?

I realize, of course, that many Christians do not give a shit, and in fact, the majority of people who fill in the bubble next to "Christian" on surveys and forms that still have the temerity to ask are not batshit crazy and do not wish to interfere with science curriculae. But the majority of people who do wish to interfere with science curriculae identify themselves not only as Christian, but as extremely Christian, as Evangelical or Fundamentalist Christian, or some other variety of Christian that in most cases boils down to "batshit crazy." And why? Now I feel I know something about Christianity, I feel I can state, with some authority, that it should not matter to a person who believes in the ideals put forth by people like Paul whether science classrooms teach evolution or not, because to care about things like that is to belie the whole notion of faith. Faith is believing in something when there is no proof, when all provable evidence is either indifferent or against what you believe. So faith should pretty much roundly ignore science, no?

Paul writes all over his letters (or, for the more Biblically correct term, "epistles") that faith in Jesus is all that's important now. He even puts an interesting spin on the story of Abraham to prove that faith is the all-important thing. In it, he's disproving the significance of the law, not of science, but it can be applied either way. Paul reasons that Abraham was deemed "righteous" because when God said to him, "Pack your bags, move to this unknown land, and you will be father to great nations," Abraham said, "Sounds good to me," even though there was no reason to believe that any of this would work out, since he had never heard of this place and he was already too old to think of fathering anything. So if Abraham is supposed to be your model, isn't the exercise in faith in the word of Bible that much stronger in the face of some really serious scientific proof of evolution than it would be if there were no such proof? If it were still reasonable to believe that the world was created by God in six days, would it really be so faithful to do so?

Also, these guys tend to want their faith taught as science. That seems blasphemous to me. Why should God have to hold himself up to the standards of the scientific method? That is totally anti-thetical to the very concept of God.

Anyway, I was just wondering.

Maybe My Problem is the Desire to Send Letters

They printed my angry letter in Psychology Today! I almost forgive them for printing such an asinine article. I like being published.

I got pissed at the article "The Emperor's New Woes" which is asinine even from the title. It's by Sean Elder, one of the boys behind Bastard on the Couch, the male answer to Bitch in the House. Feel free to read the text yourself, but basically it says that men have been "blindsided" by their wives suddenly wanting them to have, like, feelings, and be, like, friends with them. Even though their wives are icky-picky girls. And it's so unfair because they expect them to have feelings, but to hold down jobs at the same time! It's just terrible, because, hey, they (men) were willing to let their wives have jobs, and even be proud of them, but if they (women) expect them (men) to have feelings just like icky-picky girls, they have to be out of their minds. It's just terrible that "Today, simply not cheating on your wife or beating your kids doesn't make you a good husband or father." Yes, that's a direct quote. Go on, look. Furthermore, while men might be willing to make that extra step towards sharing their icky-picky feelings, they'll only do it if their wives will put out more. No, really. No, really. Go read the article. I'm not making this up.

So I wrote them a letter, saying that if men were still feeling blindsided, they'd been asleep since 1975, and isn't it irresponsible of PT to print articles suggesting emotional intimacy is icky-picky to boys, and isn't feminism supposed to be about everyone? They editted a little, but they printed it! Yay!

And then they printed an article about how day care is bad for children. Argh. But what's even more "argh" about it is that the only sure statistic printed is that children in day care more than 45 hours a week exhibit more bad behaviors and emotional problems. Leaving out the true measure of bad behavior, let's examine, shall we? The work week is supposed to be 40 hours a week. Figure a half hour to and from the work place to pick up the kid and that's exactly 45 hours a week. So the kids who are exhibiting problematic behaviors are the kids with overworked parents. So maybe the problem isn't day care at all. Maybe the problem is overworked parents, corporations that don't allow for family lives, and cultures that keep everyone feeling guilty about every minute they don't spend being "productive." Maybe. They also claim that this study is also looking at quality of care and quality of parenting when the children are at home, but it doesn't say they're controlling for these variables, just looking at them, and the results of the looking aren't mentioned. And these articles always read as cautionary tales to parents (read: mothers) not to put their kids in extended day care, which is sexist but expected, but what about parents who actually have to work, or their kids will have malnutrition problems on top of their emotional problems? Just argh.

Now, I went to day care starting when I was six months old. I was probably in day care 45-50 hours a week. I was always the first dropped off and the last picked up, which I thought made me special. My parents were still excellent parents who made lots of quality time for me. I was an abnormally well-behaved child, and now I've got no more emotional trauma than the average 23-year-old.

Except for this pesky desire to keep sending letters to PT.

Adventures in Subbing - A Backlog

Day One - February 23, 2005 It is my very first day of subbing ever. I am awakened at 10 to 6 and told to go to C_____ High School. I am relieved to learn that it is right by school - so I can just head to class afterwards - but not so relieved to learn that it is right by school - not the best neighborhood in the world. I expected this, but I'm still very nervous. Discipline is my main weakness and I think I might need it more than ever today.

I am right. I get to the school twenty minutes before I was told to - and, as it turns out, twenty minutes before the home room bell rings. They ask what I specialize in. I don't specialize in anything; it's my first day. But I say English, because, well, duh. "Okay, we'll give you Mr. Whoever," says one of the secretaries.
"No, don't give her Mr. Whoever. I'm saving Mr. Whoever for the end."
"Well, who should I give her?"
"I don't know. Do you mind having a seat?"
I sit for twenty-five minutes. The first bell rings. They are still sorting things. Finally they give me Ms. Davis and tell me to go to room 205. This is evidently all the instruction they plan on giving me. I flip open the book they hand me. I have Geometry, Algebra and Reading? Huh? I also have unclear lesson plans for the latter two and no lesson plans for the first one. I tell them this. "Oh, they have books. Just have them flip open their books."
"But - "
"You have a free periods 2 and 3. You can come back down then and ask more questions."
Geometry is my first period. "But-"
"Honey, you've got to go! Homeroom started five minutes ago!"
So I go. They do not have books. The books are locked in the cabinet. I don't have the combination. My first period, my first day of subbing, and I have a geometry class with no lesson plans and no textbooks.

The day does not get better. I keep trying to get more questions answered - why do students keep wandering in and out of my classroom and then claim that they don't belong in my class? How am I expected to take attendance? Where is the bathroom? What kind of teacher teaches math and reading? - but none are forthcoming. I keep going down to the office during my free periods, but they keep sending me to some other teacher's class for more subbing duties. This other teacher is in school; she just has a meeting. Why she has a meeting during her class times, I don't know. I do know that two students almost get into a fistfight in one of her classes while I am there. My presence does not stop them at all. I try to get them to read. One of them may or may not be illiterate. The others are at about a second-grade reading level. They're freshmen in high school.

One kid threatens to hit me. He later tries to turn over a desk/chair thing while another student is sitting in it. Even once I know you're supposed to check IDs, students wander in and out of my classroom as if I am not standing there. I finally get the question about why I teach such varied subjects. It's because these are Special Needs kids. In this school, that does not mean lower IQs or learning disabilities. That means eSpecially Needs a kick in the behind.

When I get to my own class (the one in which I am a student) that evening, my friend asks me what's wrong. "First day of subbing," I reply. She understands completely. She's had first days of subbing before. Well, at least one. She says I look like hell.

I figure, though, that it's a good thing my first day was so rough. Now, what can they possibly give me to top this?

Day Two - March 2, 2005 O____ School, an elementary/middle school, calls me. I had given them my name a couple of weeks ago and said I lived in the area. I am a little nervous that I'll get really little kids, but I'm so grateful I'm not going to Collins that it's fine. I don't; I get eighth graders, and apparently, the "good" eighth graders. I appear to be teaching reading and organizational skills. Or something. I am given explicit lesson plans. Mostly, I am to administer tests and oversee Quiet Reading Time. The eighth-grade kids think they are bad-asses. One in particular, whose worst crime is talking when I tell him not to, wants to know if he's in trouble. If I write him up, he tells me, he'll be suspended. I tell him that if he doesn't want to get suspended, he should stop doing things that would get him written up, but inside I laugh. Kid, I think, you have no idea. I also have seventh graders who think they are bad-asses. They are slightly worse than the eighth-graders. One student keeps farting, causing laughing riots and much movement among other kids. One kid, who clearly fancies himself a Jack Black-style class clown, tells me his name is Seymour Butts. "First of all," I tell him, "it doesn't hurt me if you get marked absent. Second of all, if you want to be class clown, you need better material. That joke was old when my grandfather was your age." All in all, a much better day. I tell the sub coordinator that I would be delighted to return.

Day 3 - March 4, 2005 And return, I do. This time, to sub - get this - gym! It is to laugh! But it's kind of a fun day. I have all ages this time. Most are really pumped to participate. We play Line Soccer, the kind where you divide the class in two teams, have them stand against opposite walls and assign them coresponding numbers, and then call out those numbers so only a few kids play at a time. I scream a lot, I lose my voice, and I discover that third and fourth graders love to tattle-tale. I also discover that most of these kids could whoop my ass. They do multiple push-ups, sit-ups, running - and they do it enthusiastically! By the end of the day, I have completely lost my voice, making it hard to chear for my sister-in-law when we see her in The Vagina Monologues that night.

Day 4 - March 11, 2005 O_____ hasn't call me so I go back to C_____ the next day. I get excited when I see that the students have a half-day, and I don't have kids in my last two periods. I think this means I can leave early. It does not. I have to stay for the Staff Development meeting, which is boring. But then, so is most of my day. I am subbing for the Culinary Arts teacher, who is on maternity leave, but I'm not allowed to actually cook with them. I'm basically allowed to babysit them. I get them to talk about the food they like, a little, but that's about it.

Day 5 - March 28, 2005 I haven't worked in a couple of weeks, because I had a lot of work to do before I went to the Bahamas, and then both I and the students in the CPS district had spring break. I wasn't even going to work today, but O_____ called at 8:40 to tell me to come over right now. So I do. They're using me as a teacher's aid to two Special Needs kindergarteners - one in the morning session, one in the afternoon session. (Kindergarteners here only go to school for half a day.) The one in the morning session has apparently made subs run out of the school crying after half an hour. It's why the sub coordinator is so reluctant to tell me what I'm actually doing. But I think the kid is okay. His parents won't have him diagnosed, and refuse to admit there is a problem at all, but, based on my limited knowledge of the one autistic kid my m-i-l tutors, I think this kid has a slightly lesser degree of autism than that kid, and possibly some attention and hyperactivity disorders as well. The main thing he does is yell, but he doesn't seem to yell maliciously. He just seems to yell when he's really excited. Although it's clear that there is no point to him being in this classroom. He cannot interact with the other kids; he cannot get anything out of the actual education going on. But he certainly does not make me want to run out of the building crying.

The next kid has Ausberger's and is clearly very smart. He's just not great at interacting with the class, and he gets distracted easily. He's obsessed with coinage, which is funny, and routine, which makes it difficult to be his sub. This is true in general, and especially of younger kids, but with kids with mental problems already there's a definite mistrust of me and why I'm there. But he's not overtly bad for me. He just isn't as good for me as he would be for his regular aid. All in all, an interesting day.

Day 6 - April 1, 2005 I accept the job at O____ before I realize that it is April Fool's Day. But nothing bad happens. I get third-graders, who haven't moved beyond "Made you look!" as a form of practical joking. They are the same third-graders I had for gym. Some of them remember me. They all seem to like me. They are a little rowdy but nothing too bad. They are also tattle-tales. One of them reminds me of my sister. Aw.

A Vacation and a News Story

I really didn't want to be the 9,765,482nd blogger writing about Terri Schiavo. I barely know anything about the case, but what I know about it tells me that half her problem is that 9,765,482 people are interested, and a couple hundred of them have elected posts in the federal government. (The other half of her problem is that she's a vegetable.) So I was going to write about my vacation to the Bahamas instead.

But the thing is, the Bahamas is lovely to go to, but not very interesting to talk about. Want to know what happened? There was sunshine. Lots of it. There was lolling about poolside. The combination of these two factors led to the copious application of sunscreen, which was, for the most part, successful. There was the eating of much shellfish. There were the endless security lines. But mostly there was the sun and the water and the sunscreen. Not very thrilling for you my readers (all two of you).

The Terri Schiavo case, on the other hand, has meat. Lots of meat. I'm just going to take a little bite. And it is to say this: Monsieur le Presidente, this "culture of life" of which you and your cronies cannot stop speaking - will it be arriving in Afghanistan or Iraq any time soon? What about your old state of Texas, responsible for so many of the death penalty executions in this country?

What's that you say, Mr. President? That's different? There are situations in which life must be sacrificed for some other purpose? Especially if that life belongs to someone darker than us? Huh. Interesting. A person's own better interest, a person's own request, to die instead of being kept alive by life support, is not a good enough purpose?

No, you say, Senor el Presidente? (In case you can't tell, I don't speak Spanish.) Would I be in support of suicide in general, you ask? Well, not exactly, no. I do find suicide understandable and lamentable at times. But "supporting" or not "supporting" suicide is a bit beside the point. The problem with people committing suicide is not in the act itself. It's the despair that leads them to the act that's a problem. Sometimes, that despair is relatively personal and psychological, and therefore, what we, as a society, must do to demonstrate our lack of support for suicide is ensure that access to psychological and psychiatric care is easy and affordable, that there are no stigmas attached to seeking such care, and that there is widespread knowledge about the access to such care. Sometimes, that despair is a bit more societal, say, when gay teenagers feel despair at the way society will discriminate against them (aHEM, President Bush) and thus commit suicide in record numbers. That's also something we need to work on. (AHEM! Geez, I hate it when I have this big a frog in my throat, Mr. President.) My stance on suicide is similar to my stance on teen pregnancy and STI transmissions - I'm not "in favor" of those things; but mostly what I'm not in favor of is the things that lead to those things - lack of education and access to contraception. But I already know you and I don't see eye to eye on this one, Mr. President & Co.

In Terri Schiavo's case, the (presumed and supported by her husband) desire for suicide has roots in the despair over her medical condition. Her medical condition cannot be helped. Medical science, as a rule, makes advances everyday, so we're already working on preventing as many future Terris as possible, but Terri herself can no longer be helped. So why are we forcing her to live with the despair? Why isn't that just as good a cause as anything you use to justify mass killings, Mr. Bush?

And that's all I'm going to say about that.

If I Had a Million Dollars

So I am now addicted to VH1. Not all of it. I have a Tivo so I can pick and choose, instead of just putting it on. Mostly what I choose is the Fabulous Life of . . . series. I think it's, well, fabulous. You know what's especially hilarious about it? That the VH1 commentators can constantly react with such shock; that they can so very consistently apply their own salaries to the celebrities' lifestyles. I was watching one about celebrity kids, and they were oohing and aahing over some family - the Travoltas, perhaps? - going on an around-the-world vacation over the summer. Imagining these kids going back to school that fall, they were gushing, "Oh, what did you do this summer? I worked at camp, I went to Disney World, I went . . . around the world?!!! How many kids can say that? They're just going to be the coolest kids at school." Well . . . not at the Travolta's kids' school. Or whoever. At the Travolta's kids' school, lots of kids probably take extravagant vacations over the summer. I mean, they probably do go to Disney World, but they probably get to rent the park out, you know?

Or yesterday, I was watching Fantabulous Homes. They were all on top of Jerry Seinfeld for putting a baseball field on his bajillion dollar property in Long Island. "What a waste!" they cried. "The land under that field is probably worth $15 million!" So what? A baseball field sounds like a perfectly good use of space to me. I mean, this isn't public property. He bought it as part of his home. So he's not going to, I don't know, put a homeless shelter there. Not that these people would have cared; they talk about Angelina Jolie's house in Cambodia and they don't even mention her charitable work. But a baseball field would be great at your house! Your friends could come over. Your kids' friends could come over. I mean, he didn't build a stadium. It's just the diamond. I didn't even see bleachers or anything.

Then again, I also thought that Aaron Spelling using two of his 128 rooms in his mansion as gift-wrapping rooms sounded totally reasonable. I mean, if you're Aaron Spelling, you have a lot of gifts to give. And wrapping them actually takes up a lot of space. When I was working as a receptionist last year, I was helping the head secretary wrap the Christmas gifts the company was sending out, and they weren't really big presents - just candies and cookies and nuts - but we needed to completely transform the space between our cubicles, plus use an empty room in the back, plus use part of the warehouse, and the wrapping, etc., was all stored in a closet. Gift-wrapping is space-consuming! And I'm sure Aaron Spelling is not just sending out gifts with drugstore wrapping and $0.99 ribbon, either.

Maybe I was just meant to be ridiculously wealthy, so this all makes perfect sense to me.

Welcome to my World

Most of my posts will start out like this: I should be doing homework, but . . .

This first post will be no exception. I should be doing homework, but . . . I've decided I need a spot on Blogger! And now that I have one, it's back to Pierre Bourdieu.

But first, a few things about me. I'm a twenty-three-year-old grad student in English Literature. I'm married. I live in Chicago, but I'm from New Jersey. I love raspberry lime rickeys, and not just because they're named after me.