Girl Detective

I said I would be less tough on Veronica. I lied.

This episode was only good in the corners, it was rotten throughout. Hookers, bad jokes about hookers, winking at guy stuff about hookers, an evil madam with bad plastic surgery. Awful stuff. A plot that is a mishmash of True Romance (G. Grod’s call) and a storyline from season two of Rescue Me. Veronica and Logan bore me. Not to tears, though, because the cast had more than enough of those to go around. Ack. The Battlestar geekery was gratuitous, too. I remember laughing a few times, though, like when Veronica comes back to her house and says she’s going to Logan’s to meet two hookers. That line had the proper sarcastic edge that the rest of the ep sorely lacked.

Didn’t you hear Warren Ellis? Or me agreeing with him? Enough with the frackin’ crying, already. Baltar, Starbuck, Sam, Dee, and Apollo were all in tears. And enough with the drinking, too. Tears and drunkenness do not character development make. At the end of the ep, the four crossed lovers were in exactly the same boring place they were at the beginning. It is not enough to write “ugh” to convey my frustration and disgust. Imagine me rolling my eyes while doing a disgusted, escalating “ugh” that starts all the way down in my belly.

And Joe R at Television Without Pity makes this excellent point:

Bonus Scene: Roslin interrogates Caprica Six! And it wasn’t part of the episode so we could watch Lee and Tyrol bitch about their women! So not cool!

There, I’ve said it. You know it’s true. You want to believe (like I did) that putting your kid in front of a video of classical music paired with bright, colorful images will stimulate their brains. Well, it will, but more toward ADD than genius. I tried to be polite about my dislike of this line when I wrote about Mimi’s Toes, since I have many friends who love it. But the Baby Einstein creator is an honored friend of Laura Bush, and a Forbes article reminds us that there is no evidence that baby electronica is helpful, and much to suggest that it’s harmful.

Baby Einstein is mediocre stuff that targets parents’ hopes and fears about their children’s intelligence. Don’t fall for it. Instead, read a well-written book to your child. Play a non-electronic game with her. Take him outside for some fresh air and exercise. Play some real music, instead of the Muzack-y baby classics. Our son Drake enjoys the Paste magazine CD samplers.

I’m writing in our basement, where the temp hovers in the mid-fifties. I have on a coat, scarf, warm socks, slippers. I put on gloves when the cold impairs my typing; I take them off when their bulk does same. Why type in the cold basement? The light is bright, even augmented by a few windows. There are fewer distractions. And it is two floors down from the napping boys, so I am less likely to wake them if I move around.

Sadly, Drake is having one of his ever-more common non-napping days, and baby Guppy did not get the memo that afternoon naps should last over an hour. Since I believe strongly in 2-hour naps, we’re having some conflict. It would seem I’m cold down here for nothing.

#4 in my 2007 book challenge was Mockingbird, a biography of Nelle Harper Lee. I read both To Kill a Mockingbird and In Cold Blood last year, and this was an interesting and informative companion book. This is the first and only bio of Lee, so Shields has the good fortune of no competition, as well as the good timing to publish in the wake of the films Capote and Infamous. Exhaustively researched in spite of Lee’s refusal to participate, the book did not feel tight and polished. I saw a number of typos (e.g., “the” left out of “on other hand”), usage errors (e.g., another thing coming, rather than the lesser known but correct “think”), and unwieldy sentences. The strength of the book is the exhaustive research of the author, particularly around the time that Lee wrote To Kill a Mockingbird and helped Capote research In Cold Blood. There was good evidence of her writing habits, her strengths and weaknesses, and her family ties. It also gave different views into certain aspects of In Cold Blood. Shields attempts to answer the obvious question of why Lee never wrote another book as early as the introduction. I wasn’t sure why he would want to give away his conclusions so quickly after he did all the research that follows. The detailed intro also made a lot of what followed feel repetitive. The subject was fascinating, but the book itself would have benefited from more thorough editing, both of copy and in structure.

My friend Rock Hack noticed after her second child that she could manage accessories or makeup, but not both. I find myself living that dichotomy on a regular basis. Today I have on a bracelet and earrings that match my sweater, but not a jot of makeup. Thank goodness for tinted moisturizer.

Another friend said that having another child meant that she could do the laundry, but couldn’t manage to put it away. I’m living that one all the time too. I shift my pile of clothes back and forth between the top of my dresser and the bed for days.

The past several years I’ve skipped New Year’s Resolutions. Instead, I’ve jotted down a few wishes for change in my journal, then forget about them. Lo and behold, when I check back at the end of the year, they’re usually under way.

Goal setting was a big part of my last job. I learned that vague goals are almost certain to fail, and that whenever possible it helps to have a quantifiable or concrete goal.

This year, though, I feel the urge to steel my resolve. What’s more, I intend to do it vaguely. In short, this is the year I want to get organized and clear out the junk.

I still have boxes of paper from each of the last three moves. I have two more piles, one for each child. I have magazines that are years old. Over the years, I’ve done a decent job at cleaning out wardrobe, books, comics and CDs. The paper, though, continues to accumulate.

I have some specific strategies to accomplish the great paper purge. I’ve called to cancel one catalog. Each time I receive one, I’ll call to cancel. I will re-register my name on the junk-mail removal list. I’ll try to let magazine subscriptions lapse. I won’t sign up for more. I will only buy magazines when I travel, or on special occasions. I will not borrow them from doctors’ offices anymore. I’m going to try to get all recurring bills and statements sent electronically.

I’m still going to have book, movie and writing goals. Those are important to me, and setting goals reminds me to prioritize them. But this year I’m setting an extra one of reducing the garbage in, after increasing the garbage out. It’s like a paper diet. I just hope this isn’t hubris.

#68 in my reading challenge was Strunk and White’s Elements of Style. I don’t know how long this slender volume has been sitting on my shelf. A while, I suspect, since it is a third edition, published in 1979. (A fourth edition was published in 1999, and an illustrated edition in 2005.) More than once, a writing instructor has said it’s worth reading, not only as reference, but also cover to cover. I found it by turns perceptive, funny, and irritating. An example of the latter:

The use of he as pronoun for nouns embracing both genders is a simple, practical convention rooted in the beginning of the English language. He has lost all suggestion of maleness in these circumstances. The word was unquestionably biased to begin with (the dominant male), but after hundreds of years it has become seemingly indispensable. It has no pejorative connotation; it is never incorrect.

I disagree, for reasons detailed in the usage note on he from The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition:

Traditionally the pronouns he, him, and his have been used as generic or gender-neutral singular pronouns, as in A novelist should write about what he knows best and No one seems to take any pride in his work anymore. Since the early 20th century, however, this usage has come under increasing criticism for reflecting and perpetuating gender stereotyping. · Defenders of the traditional usage have argued that the masculine pronouns he, his, and him can be used generically to refer to men and women. This analysis of the generic use of he is linguistically doubtful. If he were truly a gender-neutral form, we would expect that it could be used to refer to the members of any group containing both men and women. But in fact the English masculine form is an odd choice when it refers to a female member of such a group. There is something plainly disconcerting about sentences such as Each of the stars of As Good As It Gets [i.e., Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt] won an Academy Award for his performance. In this case, the use of his forces the reader to envision a single male who stands as the representative member of the group, a picture that is at odds with the image that comes to mind when we picture the stars of As Good As It Gets. Thus he is not really a gender-neutral pronoun; rather, it refers to a male who is to be taken as the representative member of the group referred to by its antecedent. The traditional usage, then, is not simply a grammatical convention; it also suggests a particular pattern of thought. · It is clear that many people now routinely construct their remarks to avoid generic he, usually using one of two strategies: changing to the plural, so they is used (which is often the easiest solution) or using compound and coordinate forms such as he/she or he or she (which can be cumbersome in sustained use). In some cases, the generic pronoun can simply be dropped or changed to an article with no change in meaning. The sentence A writer who draws on personal experience for material should not be surprised if reviewers seize on that fact is complete as it stands and requires no pronoun before the word material. The sentence Every student handed in his assignment is just as clear when written Every student handed in the assignment. · Not surprisingly, the opinion of the Usage Panel in such matters is mixed. While 37 percent actually prefer the generic his in the sentence A taxpayer who fails to disclose the source of ______ income can be prosecuted under the new law, 46 percent prefer a coordinate form like his or her; 7 percent felt that no pronoun was needed in the sentence; 2 percent preferred an article, usually the; and another 2 percent overturned tradition by advocating the use of generic her, a strategy that brings the politics of language to the reader’s notice. Thus a clear majority of the Panel prefers something other than his. The writer who chooses to use generic he and its inflected forms in the face of the strong trend away from that usage may be viewed as deliberately calling attention to traditional gender roles or may simply appear to be insensitive.

The Elements of Style is a classic, and deservedly so. Much of it details the kind of common sense that is easily forgotten or confused. It is limited, though, both in scope and adaptability. I recommend The Chicago Manual of Style for the former, and The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language for the latter.

And it’s done pithily, even. I’m enjoying the mid-season break of the TV shows I watch. Former favorites Veronica Mars and Battlestar Galactica have disappointed. I tried one ep of Friday Night Lights on a friend’s recommendation, but was annoyed. My Name is Earl and House have been pretty good, but the only show I actively miss is The Office. I hadn’t questioned my ennui much until my husband sent me this link from Warren Ellis’ blog. Normally, Warren’s enfant-terrible-morphed-into-grumpy-old-man rants bug me, but this time I think he’s hit it, though his target of Sci Fi TV was too narrow. It’s a much bigger problem that pervades too many shows.

There’s too much fucking crying. Veronica is crying to Logan that he let a house burn down. Logan is crying to Veronica that she wants him to change. Baltar and Caprica cry to torpid piano music. People are crying on Heroes because the waitress died. The cheerleader has tears in her eyes constantly. And the time I watched Friday Night Lights at least FOUR characters cried.

[And yes, for you nitpickers, there has been a smattering of crying on the shows I claim to like. Cuddy cried on House, but only after he was super mean to her. And Michael cries on The Office. But that's funny.]

I’m with Warren on this one. Stop fucking crying.

OK, OK, Athena is allowed to cry when she gets her baby back from the Cylons. But that’s it. I mean it.

I can’t begin to tell you how sorry I am that I bought Merry Christmas from the Chipmunks last year. I had a fit of nostalgia, and wanted to share something from my childhood with Drake. He ignored it. Until this year, when he plays it over and over again.

The Chipmunks do not get funnier, or less annoying, with repeated listenings. Mommy madness, indeed.

I don’t like Season 3 of Battlestar Galactica, either. I’m bored. I’m annoyed. I’m not seeing anything new or interesting. I am waiting to see if it gets better, or if I’m done with it. I am strugging to recall anything from the last episode that advanced the storyline on the Galactica. All I saw was a hackneyed plot, repeats of characterizations that have been done better before, and a seemingly random killing off of a minor character. As for the Cylons: the Cylon three-way? Ick. The piano music is enough to drive me away on its own. And what about the baby?!

Helen Oxenbury’s Tom and Pippo books are out of print! As a lifelong fan of children’s books, I know I should be accustomed to the out-of-print thing, One of my family’s favorite holiday tales, Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas, has long been out of print even though it was turned into a quite decent holiday special by Jim Hensen. Even so I haven’t become sufficiently inured to learning that a book I want isn’t easy to buy.

The Tom and Pippo books were recommended by a reader, who said that she had an entire collection. Lucky reader! The copies at our library are quite ragged, but they’ll have to suffice for now. I can hope that they come back into print, as sometimes happens with popular authors and illustrators. The simple text coupled with the charming drawings, and the sweet relationship between the boy and his toy monkey should have a wider audience than those of us that comb library shelves and used-book stores.

One of the memorable sequences from the movie Reality Bites was when the main character, played by Winona Ryder, is asked to define irony. Stymied, she finally blurts, “I know it when I see it!”

A few years later, Alanis Morrissette would have a hit with “The Ironic Song”, though many people commented correctly that some of her examples weren’t ironic, they just sucked.

Dictionary.com says “The essential feature of irony is the indirect presentation of a contradiction between an action or expression and the context in which it occurs.” Wikipedia quotes the American Heritage Dictionary that irony is not “unfortunate coincidences or surprising disappointments that ’suggest no particular lessons about human vanity or folly.’”

This all leaves me wondering. Last week I commented to a friend that I was feeling ground down by the ongoing viruses in the family, as well as the menial childcare tasks like changing poopy diapers. A few days later, Baby Guppy had to go to the emergency room, and was prescribed an antibiotic that caused diarrhea. As I wrote earlier, it likely was a virus, so the antibiotic was probably not necessary.

So which, if any, of these is ironic? I think the new virus and increase in soiled diapers are ironic; I learned that I didn’t have things so bad beforehand. The probably-useless antibiotic, though? I think that one likely just sucks.

This quote by Zadie Smith was excerpted at Boing Boing.

But the problem with readers, the idea we’re given of reading is that the model of a reader is the person watching a film, or watching television. So the greatest principle is, “I should sit here and I should be entertained.” And the more classical model, which has been completely taken away, is the idea of a reader as an amateur musician. An amateur musician who sits at the piano, has a piece of music, which is the work, made by somebody they don’t know, who they probably couldn’t comprehend entirely, and they have to use their skills to play this piece of music. The greater the skill, the greater the gift that you give the artist and that the artist gives you. That’s the incredibly unfashionable idea of reading. And yet when you practice reading, and you work at a text, it can only give you what you put into it. It’s an old moral, but it’s completely true.

It’s a lovely reminder that reading is a skill, and one to be practiced over a lifetime. I frequently heard a dismissive “I didn’t like it” when I taught college composition and asked my students to read an essay. This often meant “I didn’t understand it.” But I’ve heard the same phrase and the same dismissal in disappointing book discussions, when the other readers don’t engage with the text. I heard Cold Mountain called too long, and The God of Small Things too depressing.

When I don’t like a book, I often engage MORE with the text, not less. (See this at Chicklit for an example.) I struggle to ascertain what it is that disappointed me. As I’ve grown as a reader, my criticism has become more complex, just as my interaction with the text has.

I can’t help the uncharitable part of me, though, that wonders if I’m reading too much into the quote. I think it implies Smith thinks she is an artist of great skill who can’t be comprehended entirely by readers. But I’ll squash the part of me that thinks so, and just appreciate her insight into reading.

Baby Guppy had a cold. Then he got an ear infection and was treated with amoxicillin. Then a week went by and he spiked a fever. I assumed he’d had a recurrence of the ear infection. But his ears were clear, as was his chest, but his white blood cell count was high, suggesting a bacterial infection. While we waited for the results of various cultures, he was treated with another antibiotic. He kept being feverish and waking at night, but was happy during the day and when he was fever free. Yesterday, the doc said if he was still feverish today to bring him in. He was at midnight, so we gave him ibuprofen. And that seemed to end the fever.

And then, I spotted some spots. A rash.

D’oh.

Roseola. A virus. High fevers for 3 days or so, then fever breaks, a rash erupts, then goes away, the end. That’s what it probably was.

Still no explanation for the high white count, but the rest seems to be explained.

Drake had this once, and I feel like I should have recognized it again as the non-serious virus it was. The problem (ha! as if there’s only one) is that there is never one cause. Is the fever viral? Bacterial? Is the night waking due to teeth? The answers are rarely clear and definite, though the roseola rash provides a quick retro-diagnosis. I feel like I’m on an episode of House where they never figure out what’s wrong.

Life seems to be leading me lately, rather than me leading a life. Sometimes, I end up with pie. Other times, I end up in the emergency room.

Bad news first. I’ve been telling myself that I’ll get rest once the family is well again. One or more of us has been sick since the end of September. Normally good-natured baby Guppy seems to have an infection, cause unknown. He’s been feverish, fussy, and has long periods of only wanting to be held, and only by G. Grod and me. We didn’t dither on getting him to the doc, but after an ear exam and a chest xray, he had to go to the ER for further tests, which are so far inconclusive.

But about the pie. Last week, I prepared to roast a butternut squash to then puree and freeze for Guppy. But I figured I might as well roast the other two squashes I had, which I’d been using as decorations. One was a hubbard, the other a small pie pumpkin. So I roasted them and pureed the butternut, and the hubbard, and added pumpkin pie spices to the pumpkin when I realized that there was so much of it that I could freeze some for the baby and make a pie with the rest. So I did. And the good news and the bad news are that the pie was awesome. Moist, smooth, silky. I did not, though, want to learn that making pumpkin pie from scratch results in a delicious pie. I’d lived my life up to this point operating under the blissful assumption that making pie from canned pumpkin was just as good and far easier than using fresh pumpkin.

In the case of the pie, though, at least I had a delicious dessert as consolation for hard work, lots of mess, and the disintegration of a life-long belief. But unless Guppy is fever-free by tomorrow, there are more doctor appointments, waiting rooms and tests in our future. I’m having trouble seeing the upside.

Baby Guppy is no longer content to stay where we put him, and this is also true for his changing table. I put him on his back to change his diaper, and he flips over to his tummy, then tries to crawl off the table. Diaper changes are an unpleasant fact of life, made more difficult when I have to employ strong-arm tactics.

And yet another example of how ridiculous it is when people insist that babies have built-in survival mechanisms. Babies don’t always act in their own best interests, which is why it’s good they have these things called parents.

My husband G. Grod and I were at our wits end last weekend with Drake’s behavior. He threw extravagant tantrums (e.g., a twenty minute one on the front lawn of church), he did WWF-style body slams on baby Guppy, he hit and kicked us repeatedly, and he laughed when we punished him by taking away his cars or giving him a time out. Things were so out of hand that I even checked out parenting books from the library, something I have avoided almost entirely until now.

Then on Tuesday, I picked him up from pre-school, and the teacher and his friend’s mother said he’d complained that his ear hurt. I’d been asking for days if it did; he always said no. So I made an appointment for him and found that the ear he wasn’t complaining about was infected, and the one he WAS complaining about was not only infected, but had a blister on his eardrum. I didn’t know whether to be happy that he told SOMEBODY, even if it wasn’t me, or aggravated with the proof against the parental platitude of “oh, when they’re older it’s easier because they can tell you what’s wrong.” But I was definitely relieved that there was an explanation for the downturn in behavior. After a few days of antibiotics, though, I’m still wishing for a more dramatic upswing.

Season 3 of Veronica Mars doesn’t hold the same thrill for me as did Season 1, but it’s still pretty entertaining. Last week, I noted that the TA’s hair was weird, and he might be a woman, and in that case couldn’t be the rapist. Boy did I feel silly for making that assumption when he told Veronica smugly that there had been no DNA evidence in the case yet.

With the disclaimer that I’m terrible at predicting things on shows, I will venture to guess that the TA was not born with male DNA and male parts. Either he’s a pseudo-hermaprodite (male DNA, but physically more female looking than male) or he was born with female DNA and has either undergone reassignment treatment (hormones and/or surgery) or cross dresses in order to identify as a male.

Just because he’s not what he seems doesn’t mean he’s the villain, though, and I hope he’s not. I have no problem with making B-movie actors (Harry Hamlin and Steve Gutenberg) the bad guys, as they were in Seasons 1 and 2. But a transsexual as the villain just adds to the objectification and vilification of an already marginalized group.

Logan’s mysterious announcement at the end of the last episode made me roll my eyes and hope that he was with another girl. Long ago I loved the chemistry between them. Now they bore me. My favorite couple on TV now is Helo and Athena from Battlestar Galactica.

And speaking of TV couples, I’m suspicious of how Bones can progress and not kill the chemistry between the leads. Did anyone else feel last week’s Vegas episode felt like something out of Angel? Maybe it was the goofiness.

Today I have been:

peed on
smeared with poop
stabbed at with a pen
hit
kicked
smeared with snot
coughed on
sneezed on
screamed at

I don’t know why I’m depressed. Motherhood is SO rewarding.

Kidding. I can tell I’m doing better because today has merely bent, not broken me. I got a long, hot shower in, and that made a world of difference.