accidental feminist

stump the 6 year old genius February 27, 2008

Even my brilliant little Bassie has her Piaget moment. Like this one, which happened this morning:

(Hacking coming from the bathroom; I enter to see Bassie spitting a phlegm glob into the toilet)

Me: Are you okay?

Bassie: Yeah, it was just shnook (our little pet name for mucous) from when I was little.

Me: What do you mean, “from when you were little”.

Bassie: Like when I was little, and I couldn’t blow my nose.

Me: Oh, so not “from” when you were little, “like” when you were little.

Bassie: No, “from” when I was little.

Me: (I verify) Uh, so how long have you had that shnook inside you?

Bassie: Oh, about two years.

It really gives you some insight into how normally intelligent people can be so terribly wrong about something and remain convinced that they are right. (Or someone can feel free to make the argument that it was, in fact, inside her for two years, albeit in a different form, and thereby make me out to be the fool.)

Once = “Make Art!” February 25, 2008

Oh, what a beautiful movie. It’s (according to my count) the second (the first being “Lost in Translation”) in a line of what seems to be a trend of films that deal honestly and intelligently with a really difficult concept: two people, both committed to other people (either by law or in their hearts), find themselves drawn to each other. They have an intense “romance” (although they are not sexually intimate), but choose not to pursue it in the end, and to return to their previous (perhaps “ever-present”) relationships. In both, you are moved in so many ways. On the one hand, you’re sort of rooting for them to get together, because they are so cute and good for each other, and because they are the romantic protagonists of the movie. On the other hand, aren’t the girls sort of cheating on their spouses by having this incredibly intimate relationship with another man? On the other hand, their relationship with that first man really is non-existent/he’s a creep/the folk singer with the scruffy beard is so cute!

At the end of the movie, you’re torn, because it’s probably “best” for everyone, but it just seems like their relationship was so, you know, cinematically wonderful.

At any rate, I am so glad their song beat out all those cookie-cutter crappy ones from “Enchanted”, especially because I’m guessing that the title “Once” is a post-modern re-imagining of the phrase “Once Upon A Time”, and the film actually succeeds in recouching the tropes of the fairy tale romance in a complicated and real world, and “Enchanted” was trying to be a post-modern, self-referential jab at Disney, but ended up just being more of the same.

Here’s Glen and Marketa at the Oscars. How sweet!

a poem by dina February 19, 2008

Look at the dark, space sky.
Why is it? Tell me why.

five rat stud February 14, 2008

And this is why fathers of teenagers teen their sons to “go ahead and have a good time”, while they remind their daughters that “no one wants to buy the cow when they can get the milk for free”. Although I would like to verify that with a study on the effect of the sexual stench of females on males.

Also, I would like to take issue with this statement: “It’s unlikely that males would evolve a signal that makes them unattractive to females.” It would seem so, wouldn’t it. And yet, anyone who has lived in a co-ed dorm might have some anecdotal data that says otherwise…

(thanks for the link, yosefblog!)

primary school February 6, 2008

I took the girls to do their/our/my civic duty yesterday and vote in the Primary. They were very excited, which just warmed my little heart. My little politicos! So we opted for the electronic booth (I figured that would be more exciting for them), and we got to push the little buttons on the screen (”Just like the ATM!”) Then we got our stickers and left. But Dina was not happy:

Dina: That wasn’t voting!

Me: What do you mean? Yes it was!

Dina: No, it wasn’t!

Me: Why, because nothing happened? They have to wait until everyone’s done, then count the votes all together.

Dina: But where was Barack Obama?!?!?!

Apparently, in Dina’s idealized America, you get to meet the candidates at the polling station. Or at least the ones from your state. I think she’s spoiled from having seen Stephen Colbert as Grand Marshall in the Northwestern Homecoming Parade last year.

And, for an instant, I entertained the notion of going on a wild goose chance throughout the city looking for Obama. In fact, it wouldn’t have been that wild; I think we could have found him pretty easily. But then I decided that once we got to wherever he and his supporters were, they would just complain that it was too hot or they couldn’t see, or they were hungry. So we went home.

Open Letter to Tom Brady February 3, 2008

Dear Tom:

Yes, for the second year in a row, I actually cared who won the Super Bowl (and not just because I was nostalgic for the Super Bowl Shuffle™ like last year!) Oh, Tom, you are surely the better quarterback: you are more talented, more handsome, more awesomer. You don’t do as funny a commercial as Eli, but, hey, i get it, you’re a leading man type, not a character actor.

But you just couldn’t seem to throw that ball tonight, Tom. Did you see that play when Eli just kept running, even when they were hanging off his jersey like little monkeys, then chucked it up to whichever Giants receiver it was (see? I didn’t even bother to learn their names, Tom; that’s how little they meant to me), and that guy caught the ball between his hand and his helmet and just held it like it was gonna run away? That was a sweet play! Why didn’t you make it?

And yet, despite the fact that you sullied what would have been a record-breaking 19-0 season, you are still super awesome because you will still go home to Giselle, although tonight you may be too tired to reap your just desserts (read: lick whipped cream off her perfect body).

I did, however, and please forgive me, have this sick fantasy that somehow Payton would find his way to her box during the game and charm her with his down-home, laid-back style, thereby having you get screwed by both brothers in one night.

Probably a long shot, huh? Sort of like the Giants’ win tonight. Oh, uh-uh, I din’t. Yes, Tom, I did.