Happy Silly Halloween

‘Tis the season for the annual handwringing about Slut-o-ween – the “sexy” costumes that have become de rigeur for women and now, it seems, prepubescent girls, too. Trixie at The American Virgin posted a picture of Miley Cyrus’ nine-year-old sister dressed up as … a dominatrix? Hard to say, but as my own nine-year-old Bear [...]

Read Full Post »

The Perfect Modularity of East German Housing

The German Democratic Republic built a lot of apartments from prefab material in an effort to alleviate their perennial housing shortage. They had a great name for it, Plattenbauweise, which is only a long word when you consider the technique is called “Large Panel System building” in English. Basically, the builders took a bunch of [...]

Read Full Post »

Transformer Porn

The other day, a friend of mine mentioned that her son and a friend of his (both in middle school) had been discovered searching for porn on the Internet. Now, that probably describes a few million teenagers in this country, but they were searching specifically for transformer porn. It sounds like the parents were admirably [...]

Read Full Post »

So Much for “Not Ready for Prime Time”

The Political Cat posted this clip of Al Franken questioning Mark de Bernardo, an arbitration lawyer and apologist for Halliburton subsidiary KBR. I was blown away by Franken’s intelligence and empathy. The clip is longish but it’s worth watching the whole thing to see him make mincemeat of Mr. de Bernardo in the last third.
[...]

Read Full Post »

Non-Jaundiced Memories of Newborn Days

My next-door neighbors, who just welcomed an infant daughter into their lives, had to make a trip to the ER today because she appeared jaundiced. She’ll be fine, the doctors said. She won’t need to be readmitted. They were lucky.
I was glad for my neighbors. But as I heard their story, I also flashed back [...]

Read Full Post »

The Family that Votes together … Stays Together?

Ever heard of “family voting”? I hadn’t, either, until I came across the term in a translation project on Eastern Europe. It might sound warm and fuzzy at first blush. It’s anything but.
Here’s what the UN has to say about family voting:
A particular issue that often affects women and merits attention in voter education efforts [...]

Read Full Post »

Caturday: Scary Clown Edition

My kids are more creeped out than amused by clowns. They must have got it from me. One of my worst childhood memories dates from when I was 10 or 11. I was in the church basement with my Sunday school class, watching a movie in which a white-painted, bald mime was pursued by a [...]

Read Full Post »

Einstein Fail: I Want My Money Back

So I read in the New York Times that the Baby Einstein company is offering a money-back deal for those of us whose kids watched their silly videos and didn’t turn out to be the next Stephen Hawking … yet. I’ll confess to owning the original Baby Mozart, plus Baby Shakespeare and a couple more. [...]

Read Full Post »

Literally Squeezing the Joy out of Fashion

I really appreciated Melissa’s fierce post on fashion earlier this week at Shakesville, wherein she pillories the industry for selling shame as much as clothes. She laments long-mothballed bridesmaid dresses and this recent shopping tribulation expedition:
We go to a plus-size store. Immediately upon entering, I feel overwhelmed and anxious. I hate shopping. I hate clothes. [...]

Read Full Post »

Classical Gas Approaches Plasma, Asymptotically

I haven’t been very bloggerific lately. Real life – teaching, grading, watching kids’ soccer – has cut way into my time for writing. So in lieu of my half-baked thoughts, this (via Jim Yeager at Skippy the Bush Kangaroo):

Tommy Emmanuel shows his virtuosity, but his technical brilliance is never overshadowed by [...]

Read Full Post »

An Unusual Case of Father-Blaming

One reason I remain fascinated by the Heene “balloon boy” spectacle is that you don’t often see such a blatant case of father-blaming in the media. I can easily name famous mothers who murdered – Susan Smith, Andrea Yates – but I can’t think of a father who killed his kids and drew similar media [...]

Read Full Post »

Four-part Harmony Collides with Wookies; World Does Not End

Maybe it’s just ’cause I’m the daughter of a mother who has sung in barbershop quartets for the last quarter century. Maybe it’s because I remember Jaw, ET, the original Star Wars trilogy, and Indiana Jones from their big-screen debuts. Maybe I’ve got a secret Wookie fetish, but if so, it’s hidden even from me. [...]

Read Full Post »

Thirty Republican Senators Are Clowns Who Tolerate Gang Rape

Why does it take two of our comedians – Al Franken and Jon Stewart – to show how there’s nothing funny about rape?
I’m impressed at the great job Al Franken has done so far. He just authored and won passage of an amendment that will stop the government from awarding contracts to companies that bar [...]

Read Full Post »

Endless Backlog Caturday

My dear departed Grey Kitty was the queen of hairballs. No sooner had she ejected one than another was in the works. My husband used to liken her digestion to a busy airport.
That’s an unfortunate but apt description of my endless pile of grading. No sooner have I ejected one set of papers … well, [...]

Read Full Post »

How to Prove You’re a Lousy Parent

So you’ve probably all heard about the balloon boy, even if you watch as little TV news as I do (zero, that is). Yesterday, Falcon Heene, a six-year-old boy in Fort Collins, Colorado, went missing. His family reported that he had apparently floated away with an enormous helium balloon that they kept tethered next to [...]

Read Full Post »

Baby, It’s Judgmental Outside

Figleaf is asking what folks think are the creepiest old song lyrics, as viewed from our (now hopefully enlightened) present-day perspectives on gender and power. I have to agree with him on Rod Stewart’s “Tonight’s the Night.” (Virgin child indeed! How can you think that line these days without picturing Roman Polanski, Jack Nicholson’s hot [...]

Read Full Post »

My Adventure As an Electro-Pincushion

If you’ve been reading Kittywampus for a while, you know that I’ve had some weird health problems ever since Inauguration Day (a coincidence that still amuses me, when I’m able to laugh about my problems). For a while there, I thought I was losing my ability to think straight. Maybe I did lose it; you [...]

Read Full Post »

More on Letterman: Workplace Romances and Horndog Bosses

Once upon a time, long, long ago, I spent a couple of years outside of academia, working for the state of California at a regulatory agency. This was the mid-1980s, and so deregulation was en vogue, even though most of my coworkers were Democrats who’d never voted for Reagan. The day after the SCOTUS nomination [...]

Read Full Post »

Caturday: Baby Lions in Columbus!

Congratulations to mama lion Asali and daddy Tomo, parents of three cubs born on September 22.
(Photo: Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, via the Columbus Dispatch)
A few days ago, zookeepers finally got to check them out, acccording to the Columbus Dispatch:
The triplet lion cubs born at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium two weeks ago got their first [...]

Read Full Post »

Letterman’s Disingenuous Confession

I’m not so sure Letterman’s confession – possibly the most-discussed since St. Augustine’s – deserved to be held up as a model for future public figures who cheat on their partners. I agree with Fran Langum (aka Blue Gal) that Ensign, Sanford, and Vitter could learn a little something from Letterman in the “don’t be [...]

Read Full Post »